WEBVTT - Part Two: The Man Who Invented The Military-Industrial Complex 0:00:00.240 --> 0:00:07.040 Hmm. Welcome back to the horse Shittingest Podcast and all 0:00:07.160 --> 0:00:10.240 the Land behind the Bastards. This is part two of 0:00:10.280 --> 0:00:14.560 our episode on Alfred Prupp, Faimed Arms, Maven and horse 0:00:14.560 --> 0:00:18.119 poop Lover. Uh. My guests as in part one is 0:00:18.160 --> 0:00:23.440 Alison Stevenson, writer and comedian Alison How are you doing today? Uh? 0:00:24.120 --> 0:00:27.520 You know, excited to hear more about horseshit. Yeah, there's 0:00:27.520 --> 0:00:30.200 definitely more horse ship in this. Also, a lot of 0:00:30.240 --> 0:00:36.960 people get killed. Um and uh spoiler, we get a Germany. Okay, 0:00:37.600 --> 0:00:40.160 ready to learn how Germany came about? Yeah, man, let's 0:00:40.200 --> 0:00:42.680 do it. Yeah. It's one of those things that has 0:00:42.720 --> 0:00:46.680 nothing but positive consequences. Thank god. Can you imagine life 0:00:46.680 --> 0:00:50.720 without Germany? How different history would have been. That's facts, 0:00:51.080 --> 0:00:54.720 that's bad. I'd have more relatives, problems, you would. You 0:00:54.720 --> 0:00:58.440 would definitely have more a lot of a staggering amount 0:00:58.480 --> 0:01:01.160 of people. A lot of Germans would have more relatives 0:01:01.160 --> 0:01:05.560 if there had never been a Germany. Actually I will 0:01:05.600 --> 0:01:08.840 say there would be too many English people. Um, yeah, 0:01:08.959 --> 0:01:13.560 don't want that. So all the historic events we've discussed 0:01:13.600 --> 0:01:17.360 so far, we're happening during a mostly forgotten by modern standards, 0:01:17.360 --> 0:01:20.959 but very violent period called the Wars of German Unification. 0:01:21.480 --> 0:01:24.000 So for most of the last few centuries, Germany hadn't 0:01:24.000 --> 0:01:26.319 been a thing. It had been a patchwork of often 0:01:26.360 --> 0:01:30.440 warring and always quarreling kingdoms, and the kind of thing 0:01:30.520 --> 0:01:33.520 that became Germany started to gradually coalesce, together with the 0:01:33.560 --> 0:01:35.800 birth of the German Common Market, which we talked about 0:01:36.120 --> 0:01:39.800 last episode in the German Confederation. But Germans being Germans, 0:01:39.840 --> 0:01:41.480 it was going to take a series of wars to 0:01:41.520 --> 0:01:44.800 actually seal the deal. One of those wars, in eighteen 0:01:44.840 --> 0:01:48.560 sixty four involved Prussia and Austria allying to fight Denmark, 0:01:48.600 --> 0:01:50.400 which at the time controlled a chunk of land and 0:01:50.400 --> 0:01:53.840 what we now would consider northern Germany. Um, Denmark used 0:01:53.840 --> 0:01:56.640 to have possessions outside that weird little fucking is the 0:01:56.640 --> 0:01:58.000 most or whatever the fun you want to call it, 0:01:58.120 --> 0:02:00.080 sticking out of the top of Europe. They owned a 0:02:00.080 --> 0:02:03.160 bunch of the continent, and the Germans were like, but 0:02:03.360 --> 0:02:05.640 that should be ours, and so they had they had 0:02:05.640 --> 0:02:07.800 a war. Now, when this war kicked off in eighteen 0:02:07.840 --> 0:02:11.440 sixty four, the Danish army was small but extremely experienced. 0:02:11.440 --> 0:02:14.120 It included one of the highest proportions of combat veterans 0:02:14.120 --> 0:02:16.799 and continental Europe, and in the past that had made 0:02:16.800 --> 0:02:19.359 all of the difference in European wars, you know, more 0:02:19.400 --> 0:02:22.119 than minor difference differences in musketry or cannon was whether 0:02:22.160 --> 0:02:24.840 or not your your troops were veteran, because like guns sucked, 0:02:25.040 --> 0:02:28.880 and cannons also kind of sucked. Um, So what really 0:02:28.919 --> 0:02:30.480 mattered was if you had a bunch of guys who 0:02:30.480 --> 0:02:32.560 were able to like stand together when they got shot 0:02:32.560 --> 0:02:35.200 at and then charged the other guys with sharpened sticks 0:02:35.240 --> 0:02:38.120 like that was kind of what determined battles. Um. And 0:02:38.160 --> 0:02:40.440 the Danes had that, and the German army was like 0:02:40.919 --> 0:02:44.520 completely inexperienced. Um, they were well drilled in everything, but 0:02:44.560 --> 0:02:48.520 they had never actually been in battle, and so everyone 0:02:48.600 --> 0:02:50.919 kind of when this started assumed that the Danish army 0:02:51.000 --> 0:02:53.400 was going to win. But for this war, the Danes 0:02:53.400 --> 0:02:56.880 were armed with brass cannons and muzzle loading muskets, while 0:02:56.919 --> 0:02:59.280 the Prussians and the Austrians had been armed by Kroop 0:02:59.360 --> 0:03:03.400 with breach steel cannons. They also had drice needle guns, 0:03:03.440 --> 0:03:06.760 which were essentially the first bolt bolt action rifles. So 0:03:06.919 --> 0:03:09.280 both the Prussian and Austrian armies were again made up 0:03:09.280 --> 0:03:11.640 of guys who had never fought before. But that didn't 0:03:11.639 --> 0:03:14.480 wind up mattering, because with their advanced cannons and rifles, 0:03:14.639 --> 0:03:17.239 they cut the Danish army to pieces without breaking a 0:03:17.320 --> 0:03:20.440 sweat thanks to their advanced firepower. This was the first 0:03:20.560 --> 0:03:23.240 time that a European war had been decided purely by 0:03:23.360 --> 0:03:26.640 arms technology, and it would not be the last. So obviously, 0:03:26.720 --> 0:03:29.480 like you look at European conquest of of you know, 0:03:30.000 --> 0:03:33.320 North America, South America, Africa which is kind of starting 0:03:33.320 --> 0:03:36.720 in this period, Southeast Asia, they always have a technological 0:03:36.720 --> 0:03:39.680 advantage on their opponents, but in European wars, they'd all 0:03:39.720 --> 0:03:42.720 been equal enough that what had mattered was like quality 0:03:42.760 --> 0:03:45.840 of generals and like how good your troops were. This 0:03:45.880 --> 0:03:48.440 is the first time that one European army goes up 0:03:48.480 --> 0:03:51.440 against another with such an advantage in technology that nothing 0:03:51.440 --> 0:03:55.240 else matters. Um. Yeah, and it kind of freaks people 0:03:55.240 --> 0:03:58.760 out because they'd always assumed that, like, well, we're all equal, right, 0:03:58.800 --> 0:04:00.920 Like when we fight these other people who aren't white, 0:04:01.080 --> 0:04:03.040 we always have an edge, but when we fight each other, 0:04:03.120 --> 0:04:07.520 we're all on the same And now, yeah, suddenly that 0:04:07.640 --> 0:04:13.920 isn't true anymore. And yeah, so for the first time, 0:04:13.960 --> 0:04:16.919 you know, people start flipping out about this. Both Austria 0:04:16.920 --> 0:04:19.039 and Prussia start putting in orders for more guns, and 0:04:19.080 --> 0:04:21.280 of course Alfred was happy to sell to them both. 0:04:21.480 --> 0:04:23.680 And this actually kind of piste off the King of Prussia, 0:04:23.920 --> 0:04:25.960 who was presently in the process of getting into a 0:04:26.000 --> 0:04:28.719 war with his former ally Austria. So Austria and Prussia 0:04:28.880 --> 0:04:31.440 fight den Or fight the Danes and win and take 0:04:31.440 --> 0:04:33.839 a big chunk of Germany. Um. And then they go 0:04:33.880 --> 0:04:36.040 to war with each other. In By eighteen sixty six, 0:04:36.080 --> 0:04:39.039 both nations were mobilizing to fight, and Krupp had penning 0:04:39.120 --> 0:04:42.160 orders from both sides. And since Essen was in Prussia, 0:04:42.440 --> 0:04:44.760 like he's under the King of Prussia, who's not happy 0:04:44.800 --> 0:04:46.760 about the fact that he's arming the guys, they're about 0:04:46.800 --> 0:04:49.599 to go fight. So the Kings is this kind of 0:04:49.640 --> 0:04:52.000 the first time that this sort of thing is happens, Yes, 0:04:52.120 --> 0:04:55.800 this is the first time that this is happening. Um, 0:04:55.880 --> 0:04:59.359 which is again yet another like uh thing that we 0:04:59.400 --> 0:05:02.800 can thank al Ford Krupp for. Yeah, thank you, Yeah, 0:05:02.800 --> 0:05:06.880 thanks buddy. So the King's war minister sends Alfred a 0:05:06.960 --> 0:05:09.440 letter I venture to ask you whether you are willing 0:05:09.440 --> 0:05:13.000 out of patriotic regard to present political conditions to undertake 0:05:13.080 --> 0:05:15.960 not to supply any guns to Austria without the consent 0:05:16.040 --> 0:05:18.880 of the King's government. Now, at this point, Alfred Krupp 0:05:18.920 --> 0:05:21.560 had put a lot of stock into being a patriotic gunmaker, 0:05:21.880 --> 0:05:24.320 and this was a pretty hobbiest conflict of interest between 0:05:24.320 --> 0:05:27.240 his nation and his business. Alfred did the right thing, though, 0:05:27.279 --> 0:05:30.120 and avoided responding for nearly a week. When he finally 0:05:30.160 --> 0:05:32.320 did reply, he wrote that he knew very little about 0:05:32.360 --> 0:05:35.320 the political conditions and planned to go on working quietly. 0:05:35.640 --> 0:05:37.880 He pointed out that Vienna wouldn't get their new cannons 0:05:37.920 --> 0:05:40.800 until June, and that the King could impound krup shipments 0:05:40.800 --> 0:05:42.839 if he wished, so, like, what was the big deal? Like? 0:05:43.800 --> 0:05:46.279 It probably won't get there in time to kill your soldiers? 0:05:46.279 --> 0:05:50.359 Why are you complaining? This? Piste off the King of Prussia, 0:05:50.440 --> 0:05:52.320 and he called Krupp in for a special meeting with 0:05:52.400 --> 0:05:55.520 himself and his right hand man, Otto von Bismarck. It 0:05:55.560 --> 0:05:57.560 says a lot about how valued Krupp was that the 0:05:57.640 --> 0:06:00.360 King was afraid to offend him, merely urging him not 0:06:00.400 --> 0:06:04.040 to fulfill Austria's order too quickly. But Alfred was irritated 0:06:04.040 --> 0:06:08.480 by even this, insisting that he had to fulfill his obligations. Then, 0:06:08.520 --> 0:06:11.080 sensing an opportunity for a sale, he warned the King 0:06:11.120 --> 0:06:15.320 that Prussia's defenses were inadequate. Um. So yeah, so he 0:06:15.320 --> 0:06:17.159 he tells the King like basically like, I'm not going 0:06:17.200 --> 0:06:19.720 to stop selling guns to your enemies. And then he's like, hey, 0:06:19.720 --> 0:06:22.120 by the way, your current guns aren't good enough and 0:06:22.160 --> 0:06:24.320 you might get your ass kicked in this war, maybe 0:06:24.320 --> 0:06:27.200 you should buy some more guns, which freaks out the 0:06:27.279 --> 0:06:30.000 King of Prussia. Um, but Alfred is happy about that. 0:06:30.040 --> 0:06:33.000 He writes home to his employees that evidently startled him, 0:06:33.000 --> 0:06:35.880 which was what I wanted. Um. And then, after all 0:06:35.920 --> 0:06:39.240 of this, because again Alfred cannot read a room, he 0:06:39.279 --> 0:06:45.279 asks for a loan from the crown. So he's like, yeah, 0:06:45.600 --> 0:06:51.080 kind of kind of bad at reading people. This k yeah. Obviously, 0:06:51.080 --> 0:06:55.280 the King says no, and Alfred is flummixed as to why. So. 0:06:55.520 --> 0:06:58.000 Over in France, the Emperor Napoleon the Third had been 0:06:58.000 --> 0:07:00.320 pretty psyched that Prussia and Austria were going to war. 0:07:00.480 --> 0:07:03.400 German unification terrified the French, and he had been relieved 0:07:03.400 --> 0:07:04.800 at because he thought that they were going to have 0:07:04.839 --> 0:07:06.880 like a long and bloody war that would exhaust them 0:07:06.920 --> 0:07:09.920 both and that would make France safer. But the opposite happened. 0:07:09.920 --> 0:07:13.120 The war lasted only seven weeks because you know, mainly 0:07:13.520 --> 0:07:15.920 the Prussians had a hell of a lot better guns 0:07:16.040 --> 0:07:18.520 than the Austrians, and a lot more of them. Krup 0:07:18.560 --> 0:07:21.640 cannons functioned mostly marvelously, but there were flaws with the 0:07:21.680 --> 0:07:24.600 design that only revealed themselves under battle. A handful of 0:07:24.600 --> 0:07:27.080 flawed guns exploded and killed their crews, and the sent 0:07:27.120 --> 0:07:30.440 Alfred into a depressive spiral. It provided an opportunity for 0:07:30.480 --> 0:07:33.239 the war King's war minister, a kind of unhinged advocate 0:07:33.240 --> 0:07:36.360 of brass cannons, to start demanding that preuscious switched away 0:07:36.400 --> 0:07:39.760 from steel guns and back to brass. Now desperate, Krupp 0:07:39.800 --> 0:07:41.880 offered to give the army hundreds of free guns. He 0:07:41.880 --> 0:07:44.360 found himself so anxious over the whole debacle that he 0:07:44.400 --> 0:07:46.280 fled to be with his wife in a spa town 0:07:46.520 --> 0:07:48.640 where he was incredibly out of place, and wound up 0:07:48.640 --> 0:07:51.000 embarrassing her in front of her friends. And you kind 0:07:51.000 --> 0:07:53.160 of assume, based on the context, the men that she 0:07:53.240 --> 0:07:55.480 was cheating on him with, Like he sort of shows 0:07:55.520 --> 0:07:57.720 up out of nowhere in this like crowd of people 0:07:57.760 --> 0:08:00.640 that she's like friends with and fucking and he's like 0:08:01.280 --> 0:08:04.200 bummed because his guns killed their their gunners, and it's 0:08:04.240 --> 0:08:07.320 just it's a very awkward situation. Um Thankfully, he proves 0:08:07.400 --> 0:08:10.520 himself incapable of relaxation and assumed back at home and 0:08:10.560 --> 0:08:12.920 his fifth Palace, trying to sell guns to another one 0:08:12.920 --> 0:08:15.920 of his nation's enemies, France, because he's also a man 0:08:15.960 --> 0:08:19.520 who never learns anything. Damn. In eighteen sixty eight, he 0:08:19.520 --> 0:08:21.760 showed up but yet another Paris exhibition with a brand 0:08:21.840 --> 0:08:24.800 new fourteen inch gun, which he described as a monster 0:08:24.920 --> 0:08:27.960 such as the world has never seen. The barrel alone 0:08:28.000 --> 0:08:30.920 weighed fifty tons. The powder charge for each shell was 0:08:30.960 --> 0:08:34.199 a hundred pounds. Emperor Napoleon the Third awarded krup the 0:08:34.240 --> 0:08:36.720 highest honor of the exhibition, and a bunch of fancy 0:08:36.760 --> 0:08:39.880 French military awards. He started talking about buying from Krupp 0:08:39.880 --> 0:08:42.880 and Bulk, and Alfred sent France a catalog of his wares. 0:08:43.320 --> 0:08:46.120 The Emperor kept Krups hopes, hope hopes up for months, 0:08:46.320 --> 0:08:48.640 but his generals were convinced that brass cannons were all 0:08:48.679 --> 0:08:51.800 that French France needed. The Emperor, who had written a 0:08:51.800 --> 0:08:54.280 book about the use of artillery, decided not to buy 0:08:54.360 --> 0:08:56.680 from Krupp after all and gave him a terse rejection. 0:08:57.000 --> 0:09:00.000 Alfred sank into yet another depression. He sent the giant 0:09:00.120 --> 0:09:02.560 canyon cannon he'd bought brought to the exhibition to the 0:09:02.640 --> 0:09:04.880 King of Prussia, and he sent an identical gun to 0:09:04.920 --> 0:09:07.400 the Czar in order to keep his biggest client happy. 0:09:07.760 --> 0:09:10.199 Alfred was a lot more popular internationally than he was 0:09:10.240 --> 0:09:13.000 within the bounds of Prussia. Representatives from the United States 0:09:13.000 --> 0:09:15.120 offered to let him move to Alabama and start a 0:09:15.160 --> 0:09:18.319 factory there. He turned them down. Japan and Sweden sent 0:09:18.360 --> 0:09:22.360 members of their royal families to tour his factories. Turkey, Brazil, Belgium, 0:09:22.400 --> 0:09:24.920 and Russia all showered him with awards. None of this 0:09:25.040 --> 0:09:28.360 meant much to Alfred. The only international acclaim he valued, was, 0:09:28.400 --> 0:09:32.120 of course, money and interestring So like he's in this 0:09:32.160 --> 0:09:34.920 interesting situation because the Prussian government is like constantly the 0:09:34.960 --> 0:09:37.920 actual military is constantly pushing back on buying more of 0:09:38.000 --> 0:09:41.280 his guns. But the king gets locked into an agreement 0:09:41.280 --> 0:09:44.160 with Alfred to where Prussia won't buy weapons from any 0:09:44.160 --> 0:09:48.280 other company. At the same time, Krupp is like, like, 0:09:48.480 --> 0:09:50.520 and this is because crup basically threatens them. He's like, 0:09:50.520 --> 0:09:52.480 if you buy guns from anybody else, then I will 0:09:52.520 --> 0:09:54.680 sell my guns to all of your enemies. And this 0:09:54.760 --> 0:09:57.160 is kind of weird because he's also actively trying to 0:09:57.200 --> 0:10:00.320 sell his guns to all of he's still do doing it. 0:10:00.320 --> 0:10:04.840 It's kind of weird that it works. Um, but it does. Uh, 0:10:04.880 --> 0:10:07.559 And it doesn't seem to matter to the Prussian government 0:10:07.559 --> 0:10:10.680 because Kreup at this point is tens of thousands of 0:10:10.720 --> 0:10:13.760 workers and like it's described as a state within a state, 0:10:13.840 --> 0:10:17.079 Like it's become as powerful in some ways as the 0:10:17.440 --> 0:10:19.760 government of Prussia. And this is again the first time 0:10:19.800 --> 0:10:25.640 that happens photo capitalism. Yeah, this is early capitalism. This 0:10:25.679 --> 0:10:29.520 is the first massive international arms concern, and it's so 0:10:29.600 --> 0:10:31.720 big that it's able to get the government to agree 0:10:31.760 --> 0:10:34.120 not to buy from anyone else while they're selling to 0:10:34.200 --> 0:10:37.520 all of the government's enemies. Like, that's very interesting that 0:10:37.559 --> 0:10:39.280 Alfred is able to do this, And it's because the 0:10:39.320 --> 0:10:44.000 cannons are that much better than anyone else's guns. M now, 0:10:44.040 --> 0:10:46.600 and around this same time, Alfred started designing a new 0:10:46.640 --> 0:10:50.040 home for himself. His factory had polluted essence so badly 0:10:50.080 --> 0:10:51.800 by this point that it was no longer fit for 0:10:51.880 --> 0:10:55.200 human habitation. His workers would continue to live there, of course, 0:10:55.200 --> 0:10:58.920 but Alfred wanted fresh country air. He interviewed dozens of architects, 0:10:58.920 --> 0:11:01.240 but decided in the end to go with himself. He 0:11:01.320 --> 0:11:04.680 designed a building based around three main concerns. Number one, 0:11:04.880 --> 0:11:07.280 he believed that standing or sleeping in one room for 0:11:07.320 --> 0:11:09.480 too long was toxic. He would consume all of the 0:11:09.520 --> 0:11:11.800 air and suffocate, so his house had to have hundreds 0:11:11.800 --> 0:11:14.720 of rooms. Number two, he was terrified of fire, so 0:11:14.760 --> 0:11:17.120 the entire building needed to be made from stone. And 0:11:17.240 --> 0:11:20.200 number three, he was absolutely in love with the smell 0:11:20.240 --> 0:11:22.280 of poor ship, so the hare house had to be 0:11:22.280 --> 0:11:25.839 built so that it waked the feces at all times. Beautiful, 0:11:26.400 --> 0:11:30.560 it's it's an amazing house, and it's crazy. In the sixties, 0:11:30.600 --> 0:11:32.400 when this book that I was one of the big 0:11:32.400 --> 0:11:34.800 sources for this, was written, they didn't know how many 0:11:34.880 --> 0:11:37.079 rooms it had. Like the counts of the number of 0:11:37.160 --> 0:11:39.520 rooms in this mansion varied by up to a hundred 0:11:39.840 --> 0:11:42.480 like nobody was quite sure. Because he had god, he 0:11:42.600 --> 0:11:44.680 liked to spy on people, so it had hundreds of 0:11:44.720 --> 0:11:47.200 secret passageways in and behind the rooms that he could 0:11:47.200 --> 0:11:50.240 crawl through and watch people while they were in his houts. 0:11:50.640 --> 0:11:52.280 People would just like wake up in the morning and 0:11:52.280 --> 0:11:54.679 he would have notes in their bedroom about their behavior 0:11:54.720 --> 0:12:00.920 the day before. Yeah, he's he rules, Uh, you gotta 0:12:00.960 --> 0:12:08.479 love Alfred, but I want to about in the making. Yeah. 0:12:08.679 --> 0:12:11.360 So from the arms of quote, he gave a lot 0:12:11.400 --> 0:12:13.120 of thought to this, this being how to get as 0:12:13.200 --> 0:12:15.600 much horseshit smell into the house as possible. And then 0:12:15.600 --> 0:12:17.840 it came to him in in a flash, what an idea. 0:12:17.920 --> 0:12:20.440 He could build his study directly over the stable with 0:12:20.480 --> 0:12:23.520 shafts to waf the scent upward. And that is precisely 0:12:23.559 --> 0:12:26.120 what he decided to do, crowing so to speak on 0:12:26.200 --> 0:12:33.040 his private dunghill. Jeez, fucking dude loves horseshit. And it's 0:12:33.040 --> 0:12:36.800 funny because like damn, all these kings and queens come 0:12:36.840 --> 0:12:38.720 to visit him and stay at his house, and like 0:12:38.760 --> 0:12:41.760 they all comment that like fucking smells like ship here 0:12:41.800 --> 0:12:45.600 when it's wronger this guy, and thank you, it does smell, 0:12:45.760 --> 0:12:48.199 and they can't do anything, like they can't not go 0:12:48.360 --> 0:12:51.199 because he's the guy with the guns you have. It's 0:12:51.240 --> 0:12:55.040 it's it's a very strange situation, but it is an 0:12:55.040 --> 0:12:57.240 evidence that if you're rich and successful enough, you can 0:12:57.280 --> 0:13:01.760 make everybody indulge your like very bizarre our whims. Eighteen 0:13:01.880 --> 0:13:04.600 seventy came and in June of that year, Prince Leopold 0:13:04.640 --> 0:13:06.840 of Holands all Learned decided to accept the job of 0:13:06.880 --> 0:13:09.920 being Spain's king, because apparently that's how royalty worked in 0:13:09.920 --> 0:13:12.840 those days. This really pissed France off because they didn't 0:13:12.880 --> 0:13:15.040 like the idea of being surrounded on both sides by 0:13:15.040 --> 0:13:18.559 Germanic monarchs. The Fridge Foreign Minister threatened Berlin, and the 0:13:18.640 --> 0:13:20.600 King of Prussia backed down and asked his son to 0:13:20.840 --> 0:13:22.880 not accept the offer to be the king of Spain. 0:13:23.320 --> 0:13:26.040 But this was not enough for France. France in fact 0:13:26.120 --> 0:13:29.439 demanded a royal apology from the King of Prussia. This 0:13:29.480 --> 0:13:31.200 was a bridge too far for the King of Prussia 0:13:31.280 --> 0:13:33.520 and he refused. He drafted up a telegram and he 0:13:33.559 --> 0:13:35.800 handed it to Otto von Bismarck, who was basically like 0:13:35.840 --> 0:13:38.680 Ottos like the prime minister. He's like basically the guy 0:13:38.760 --> 0:13:41.760 running the country for the king. And Otto decides that 0:13:42.040 --> 0:13:45.080 this this telegram isn't defensive enough and so he edits 0:13:45.080 --> 0:13:47.920 It to make it basically a declaration of war because 0:13:47.960 --> 0:13:49.959 there was a bunch of French territory he'd been eyeing 0:13:50.000 --> 0:13:52.760 a while he wanted to like take it over for Germany. 0:13:52.880 --> 0:13:55.440 And he also wanted to test out the German military 0:13:55.480 --> 0:13:58.160 because at this point, France is the pre eminent military 0:13:58.200 --> 0:14:01.000 force in Europe. A generation or so earlier, they've taken 0:14:01.040 --> 0:14:03.440 on the entire rest of the continent, and one for 0:14:03.559 --> 0:14:06.200 the most part right up until the end. And Bismarck 0:14:06.720 --> 0:14:09.960 wanted to prove that Germany was now the stronger military force, 0:14:10.000 --> 0:14:12.200 and he calculated that France was not as strong as 0:14:12.240 --> 0:14:16.199 she thought she was, particularly in the crucial realm of artillery. 0:14:16.360 --> 0:14:18.120 And he also kind of thought that this war would 0:14:18.120 --> 0:14:20.760 be a good opportunity to finally unify Germany as a 0:14:20.800 --> 0:14:24.000 single political entity for the first time in history. Bismarck 0:14:24.120 --> 0:14:26.800 was the guy who had orchestrated Prussia kind of gobbling 0:14:26.840 --> 0:14:29.360 up all of these German kingdoms, and he saw war 0:14:29.400 --> 0:14:32.960 with France is basically the same. Like so for Bismarck 0:14:33.000 --> 0:14:35.400 in this period, he spent his whole life cobbling together 0:14:35.600 --> 0:14:38.640 this what what becomes Germany, and he sees war with 0:14:38.720 --> 0:14:40.920 France is like the equivalent of a dude with a 0:14:40.960 --> 0:14:43.600 low rider sees a fiesta parking lot like it's a 0:14:43.600 --> 0:14:46.800 place to show off this Germany that he's built. So 0:14:46.920 --> 0:14:49.320 that's that's kind of what Bismarck does. And so what 0:14:49.520 --> 0:14:53.240 is basically starts as one king asking another to apologize 0:14:53.280 --> 0:14:55.640 and the other king saying no, turns into a war 0:14:55.760 --> 0:14:58.080 that kills hundreds of thousands of people as a result 0:14:58.120 --> 0:15:02.960 of all this, which is awesome, okay, okay, worth it, Yeah, 0:15:03.080 --> 0:15:06.640 totally worth it. So at the time, everyone expects France 0:15:06.680 --> 0:15:09.480 to win. Newspapers, all right, that the Prussian causes doomed. 0:15:09.720 --> 0:15:12.440 German peasants cut their corn down early, certain that French 0:15:12.440 --> 0:15:15.480 invaders would soon be stomping through their fields. Instead, what 0:15:15.640 --> 0:15:18.760 followed was a slaughter. The French had better rifles, but 0:15:18.800 --> 0:15:22.280 they had brass cannons and the Germans had steel, crooked cannons, 0:15:22.480 --> 0:15:24.520 and that turned out to be all that really mattered. 0:15:25.240 --> 0:15:27.760 The whole war came down to a siege in a 0:15:27.800 --> 0:15:30.280 city called Mets, and I'm gonna write about read about 0:15:30.320 --> 0:15:33.000 that from an article in World Crunch that kind of 0:15:33.040 --> 0:15:37.800 contextualizes this battle. Modern warfare began in eighteen seventy at 0:15:37.800 --> 0:15:40.400 the Siege of Metz, the first the final battle in 0:15:40.440 --> 0:15:42.480 the Franco Prussian War. It was the first time that 0:15:42.560 --> 0:15:46.400 the true scale of industrial metallurgical death revealed its true potential. 0:15:46.520 --> 0:15:49.600 Over two months, the Prussian artillery bombarded French troops hold 0:15:49.640 --> 0:15:52.200 up in the city's fortifications. The Wheach army had the 0:15:52.240 --> 0:15:54.960 same number of cannons the bronze artillery of Napoleon the 0:15:55.000 --> 0:15:57.760 Third's army was no match for the range, accuracy, and 0:15:57.840 --> 0:16:01.440 durability of pruscious steel cannon. Some hundred and ninety three 0:16:01.480 --> 0:16:04.400 thousand French soldiers were killed to the Prussians five thousand, 0:16:04.440 --> 0:16:07.720 seven hundred and forty casualties. After mess came to Siege 0:16:07.760 --> 0:16:11.080 of Paris, the collapse of the Napoleonic dynasty, the unification 0:16:11.120 --> 0:16:14.400 of Germany, and the birth of the Second Reich. So 0:16:15.000 --> 0:16:17.920 this battle is very we don't like nobody fucking talks 0:16:17.960 --> 0:16:20.480 about the eighteen seventy Franco Prussian War. It's one of 0:16:20.520 --> 0:16:23.080 the most important wars in history. Because Germany comes out 0:16:23.120 --> 0:16:26.520 of it. They declare Germany in Versailles. The reason that 0:16:26.600 --> 0:16:28.840 World War One ends with the Treaty of Versailles is 0:16:28.880 --> 0:16:32.040 because the Germans humiliate the French here in eighteen seventy 0:16:32.360 --> 0:16:35.040 sign a treaty in Versailles that leads to the creation 0:16:35.040 --> 0:16:39.000 of Germany, and fucking two generations later, the French want 0:16:39.000 --> 0:16:41.560 to do the same thing in Versailles when they beat Germany. 0:16:41.640 --> 0:16:44.240 Like that's that's why that all happens. It all starts here. 0:16:44.560 --> 0:16:46.760 And this is the first modern battle and the first 0:16:46.840 --> 0:16:50.840 modern death toll. Right before then, a hundred three thousand 0:16:50.960 --> 0:16:53.720 was like an insane number of people to die in 0:16:53.760 --> 0:16:58.240 a in a war, let alone, like a long battle. Um. 0:16:58.760 --> 0:17:01.720 And in here it's like one part of the war. Um. 0:17:01.760 --> 0:17:04.440 It's just like this, this tremendous death toll that had 0:17:04.480 --> 0:17:07.000 not been seen earlier in the same kind of time frame. 0:17:07.080 --> 0:17:11.320 It's just it's it's it's a fucking nightmare. Um And yeah, 0:17:11.400 --> 0:17:15.919 like it's uh, this is like where the modern world 0:17:16.000 --> 0:17:17.560 is kind of borne out of this battle, and it's 0:17:17.560 --> 0:17:19.720 born because of krupt cannons, because there was so much 0:17:19.760 --> 0:17:21.800 better than the brass cannons the French had. It really 0:17:21.840 --> 0:17:24.640 did just come down to that. Now France had been 0:17:24.680 --> 0:17:27.120 on the cusp of building its own steel cannons via 0:17:27.200 --> 0:17:30.240 its own giant Arms company Schneider, but their production was 0:17:30.280 --> 0:17:32.119 halted before they could get out in time for the 0:17:32.160 --> 0:17:34.840 war because of a communist strike, and so you can 0:17:34.880 --> 0:17:37.240 actually say that communism helped lead to the birth of 0:17:37.280 --> 0:17:39.159 the German state as a result of this, which is 0:17:39.200 --> 0:17:45.439 another interesting little tidbits. Yeah, so corrupt guns would get 0:17:45.440 --> 0:17:47.880 another chance to impress the world and kill a funkload 0:17:47.920 --> 0:17:51.520 of people after the actual fighting had mostly ended. See, 0:17:51.680 --> 0:17:54.800 the emperor himself was captured, you know, in the battles 0:17:54.840 --> 0:17:56.840 before this, and his army routed, but the city of 0:17:56.880 --> 0:17:59.000 Paris refused to surrender, and there was kind of like 0:17:59.040 --> 0:18:01.520 a revolution in this city. Is like we're going to 0:18:01.600 --> 0:18:04.040 take back France on our own, like funk our emperor 0:18:04.040 --> 0:18:07.320 and stuff like we'll we'll fight the Germans um, which 0:18:07.359 --> 0:18:11.520 is of course like a swell. It's pretty suicidal because 0:18:12.119 --> 0:18:14.360 Krupp has these you know, we've been talking about these 0:18:14.359 --> 0:18:16.920 giant guns he's been building just to show off. Well, 0:18:16.960 --> 0:18:19.159 now they get used and they're not any use on 0:18:19.200 --> 0:18:22.480 a battlefield because they have ranges that are measured in miles, 0:18:22.800 --> 0:18:25.000 but they're long enough away that you can be outside 0:18:25.000 --> 0:18:27.359 of a city and level the city from like five 0:18:27.440 --> 0:18:30.520 miles away and that had never been done before. So 0:18:30.560 --> 0:18:32.720 what you see with the Siege of Paris is a 0:18:32.760 --> 0:18:35.520 sneak peek to how Warwood looks seventy years later, when 0:18:35.600 --> 0:18:38.600 you have you know, bombers reigning down bombs on cities 0:18:38.640 --> 0:18:41.000 from miles up. This is the same thing, but with 0:18:41.119 --> 0:18:43.840 artillery on the ground, just blowing the ship up out 0:18:43.840 --> 0:18:47.800 of Paris without troops ever entering the city. Oh god, yeah, 0:18:47.800 --> 0:18:55.720 it's the first time that happens, thanks to Alfred Krupp. Okay, okay, yeah, 0:18:55.760 --> 0:18:58.440 it's good stuff. We're gonna talk a little bit more 0:18:58.480 --> 0:19:01.679 about how he murdered a whole on to people. But first, 0:19:02.240 --> 0:19:05.000 you know, who doesn't shell Paris from five miles away? 0:19:06.200 --> 0:19:16.000 Who the products and services that support this podcast. We're 0:19:16.040 --> 0:19:19.960 back and we're talking about the siege of Paris. So 0:19:20.320 --> 0:19:22.439 again as saying, this is like the first time that 0:19:22.560 --> 0:19:26.240 a city is destroyed from a distance without troops ever entering. 0:19:26.280 --> 0:19:29.360 It as like a military tactic, and it was very 0:19:29.400 --> 0:19:32.160 controversial at the time. Bismarck was immediately like, yeah, just 0:19:32.160 --> 0:19:34.520 just kill everybody in Paris if they resist, and his 0:19:34.640 --> 0:19:37.919 generals were like, well, that's a that's a crime, sir um. 0:19:37.920 --> 0:19:40.480 But eventually they decided to do it. And yeah, I'm 0:19:40.480 --> 0:19:44.560 going to read a quote from Hate Winds. Yeah, yeah, 0:19:44.600 --> 0:19:47.720 it always does. Um, so I'm gonna find I'm gonna 0:19:47.760 --> 0:19:50.160 read a quote from a collection of eyewitness accounts from 0:19:50.160 --> 0:19:52.959 the Siege of Paris that were gathered by Salem College. 0:19:53.320 --> 0:19:56.560 Quote a Colonel Heitzler and his wife. We're giving breakfast 0:19:56.640 --> 0:19:59.520 at Avrone to several friends. A servant being in the room. 0:19:59.640 --> 0:20:03.480 One of the guests was laughing with the hostess and said, no, butters, certainly, 0:20:03.480 --> 0:20:05.440 but there may be a shell in its place. And 0:20:05.760 --> 0:20:08.040 as he spoke, a shell burst in the room, killed 0:20:08.160 --> 0:20:11.040 six of the party and wounded severely the host and hostess, 0:20:11.280 --> 0:20:13.280 and only the doctor of the regiment and the servant 0:20:13.320 --> 0:20:16.119 got off unscathed. The remains of the six came just 0:20:16.240 --> 0:20:18.280 now to valde Grass Hospital, but it was such a 0:20:18.359 --> 0:20:22.320