WEBVTT - Concentration Camps Are Back, So Let's Talk About Their History 0:00:03.279 --> 0:00:06.240 Hello, friends and or loved ones. I am Robert Evans, 0:00:06.240 --> 0:00:08.080 and this is Behind the Bastards, the show where we 0:00:08.119 --> 0:00:10.319 tell you everything you don't know about the very worst 0:00:10.360 --> 0:00:13.119 people in all of history. With me this week is 0:00:13.160 --> 0:00:19.239 my guest Jakis Neil, host of Culture, King's comedian actor, Uh, 0:00:19.440 --> 0:00:23.960 Golden Gloves boxer. No, I did that one last time. Um, hey, 0:00:24.040 --> 0:00:26.480 it's it's good to have Kis. So this is a 0:00:26.520 --> 0:00:30.120 show where I read a story about someone terrible or 0:00:30.200 --> 0:00:33.960 that explains something behind someone terrible to a guest who's 0:00:33.960 --> 0:00:36.640 coming in cold. Normally we do like a Gallexadam Hussein 0:00:36.760 --> 0:00:39.520 or Hitler or something too special for that. No, today 0:00:39.560 --> 0:00:41.760 we've got a different one. Um, based a little bit 0:00:41.800 --> 0:00:44.120 on some stuff that's in the news. Obviously, Uh, there 0:00:44.120 --> 0:00:47.559 are some camps with children concentrating some children who have 0:00:47.600 --> 0:00:50.760 been separated from their families on the border. So I 0:00:50.800 --> 0:00:52.760 felt like now might be a good time to do 0:00:53.479 --> 0:00:56.400 Behind the Bastards that delves into the history of concentration 0:00:56.440 --> 0:00:59.680 camps because it's a weird and fascinating history, and uh, 0:01:00.280 --> 0:01:02.640 it gets behind several bastards. We will be talking about 0:01:02.680 --> 0:01:05.800 the guy who invented concentration camps. Really oh yeah, oh ship, 0:01:06.400 --> 0:01:10.320 there's a deep dive. But he's he's kind of the 0:01:10.360 --> 0:01:14.040 ultimate bast Yeah, he's one of the king bastards. There's 0:01:14.640 --> 0:01:20.199 there's so many terrible people, murderers, murderers. Didn't invent murder No, well, 0:01:20.600 --> 0:01:24.960 well yeah, but we don't know who that is. Yeah, yeah, 0:01:25.080 --> 0:01:28.640 but the person who invented the concentration calps, he is 0:01:28.680 --> 0:01:31.679 in a special realm of his own. He is and nobody, 0:01:31.720 --> 0:01:35.160 nobody's heard about this guy except for concentration camp nerds, 0:01:36.280 --> 0:01:38.640 like everyone on this podcast is about to be yeah, 0:01:38.840 --> 0:01:42.640 so yeah, I'll get into it all right. So archaeologist 0:01:42.640 --> 0:01:45.000 studying Hadrian's Wall in England suggested that he may have 0:01:45.040 --> 0:01:47.919 found evidence of the first concentration camps and all of history, 0:01:48.120 --> 0:01:50.200 built for captives from tribes on the other side of 0:01:50.200 --> 0:01:52.160 the wall and held as a guarantee of good behavior. 0:01:52.600 --> 0:01:55.960 Other archaeologists suggests these were early refugee camps operated by 0:01:56.000 --> 0:01:58.920 the Romans to protect people fleeing from a societal breakdown 0:01:59.000 --> 0:02:01.120 north of the wall. We'll never know for sure. It 0:02:01.200 --> 0:02:05.720 is possible that various cultures have instituted ideas that kind 0:02:05.720 --> 0:02:08.560 of were concentration camps for thousands of years. There's no 0:02:08.639 --> 0:02:11.120 tracing it all the way back, but we can trace 0:02:11.200 --> 0:02:14.280 the roots of our modern conception of a concentration camp. 0:02:14.440 --> 0:02:17.760 And they start with Andrew Jackson. What. Yeah, well he 0:02:18.120 --> 0:02:20.480 didn't invent the concentration camp. But it's important to know 0:02:20.520 --> 0:02:24.359 this history to understand what comes next. Uh. Sondrew Jackson 0:02:24.400 --> 0:02:26.560 was born in seventeen sixty seven, seventh President of the 0:02:26.639 --> 0:02:29.280 United States. His father died in a logging accident. He 0:02:29.320 --> 0:02:31.799 grew up really poor and really mean. When he was 0:02:31.840 --> 0:02:33.520 a kid, he got stabbed in the face in the 0:02:33.560 --> 0:02:35.560 hand by a British officer because he wouldn't clean the 0:02:35.560 --> 0:02:39.840 guy's boots. Um, he was a salty dude. Uh. Good 0:02:39.840 --> 0:02:42.280 reason to be salty though. Yeah. Yeah, he did have 0:02:42.320 --> 0:02:45.320 good reason to be as he was like starving for 0:02:45.360 --> 0:02:48.720 a long time. His dad died when he was real young. Uh. 0:02:48.720 --> 0:02:50.959 He got shot a bunch when he was inaugurated as president. 0:02:51.000 --> 0:02:52.720 There was a bullet in his lung. That was that 0:02:52.840 --> 0:02:54.400 was there his whole life. He he was he was 0:02:54.440 --> 0:02:56.200 just coughing up blood his whole life because he just 0:02:56.240 --> 0:02:58.840 always had bullets inside of him. He was a tough guy. 0:02:59.000 --> 0:03:02.600 This should be a great origin story. It is a story. 0:03:02.800 --> 0:03:06.160 And he probably killed more human beings personally than any 0:03:06.200 --> 0:03:09.399 other president. Like, he shot a lot of people personally, 0:03:09.480 --> 0:03:12.000 not like ordering people to do it. He almost beat 0:03:12.000 --> 0:03:13.280 a guy to death with a cane. He was a 0:03:13.280 --> 0:03:16.720 tough dude, is what we're saying. Uh, we'll probably wind 0:03:16.760 --> 0:03:18.600 up doing the whole episode on just him at some point, 0:03:18.639 --> 0:03:21.360 but right now we're going to talk about his relationship 0:03:21.400 --> 0:03:23.520 to the Native Americans and how that contributed to the 0:03:23.520 --> 0:03:27.239 development of concentration camps. So in eighteen twelve, Jackson was 0:03:27.280 --> 0:03:30.320 elected major general in the Tennessee Militia because we used 0:03:30.320 --> 0:03:33.000 to vote on generals back in the day. Uh, as 0:03:33.000 --> 0:03:34.760 you might guess from the year the War of eighteen 0:03:34.760 --> 0:03:36.880 twelve was on. By this point, our history books tend 0:03:36.920 --> 0:03:39.040 to reduce that to just you know, the White House 0:03:39.080 --> 0:03:42.600 got burned. Yeah, it was a lot more than that. 0:03:42.640 --> 0:03:44.840 And there were actually a couple of other wars that 0:03:44.880 --> 0:03:47.880 were grouped into the War of eighteen twelve, and one 0:03:47.920 --> 0:03:50.600 of them was the Red Stick War. Have you heard 0:03:50.600 --> 0:03:53.800 of the Red Stick War? Uh? No, it sounds fun, 0:03:54.000 --> 0:03:56.560 doesn't Yeah. It sounds like sounds like cute, It sounds 0:03:56.600 --> 0:04:00.720 like the beginnings of baseball. Yeah, We're seen each other 0:04:00.760 --> 0:04:05.160 for years, and then we realized, yeah, well okay, no, 0:04:05.320 --> 0:04:07.720 it's actually it was a a civil war within the 0:04:07.800 --> 0:04:11.600 Creek Nation, the Creeker and Indigenous people uh to sort 0:04:11.640 --> 0:04:15.960 of like the East Dish United States area, like southeast 0:04:16.040 --> 0:04:18.040 of the US, like almost all the way down from 0:04:18.080 --> 0:04:21.080 like parts of like Virginia down to like Florida. So 0:04:21.120 --> 0:04:23.880 the Creek Nation was a pretty sizeable like Native nation 0:04:23.920 --> 0:04:26.719 at this point in time. UM and the Red Sticks 0:04:26.720 --> 0:04:29.240 were one faction within the Creek and their name came 0:04:29.279 --> 0:04:31.360 from the fact that they carried red war clubs that 0:04:31.400 --> 0:04:34.200 they would beat people to death with UM because they 0:04:34.200 --> 0:04:36.479 were pretty tough dudes, and they believed that the best 0:04:36.480 --> 0:04:39.080 way to defend their land from the encroaching Americans was 0:04:39.120 --> 0:04:42.200 to murder them. Uh. They were encouraged in this thinking 0:04:42.240 --> 0:04:45.000 by British agents who wanted to do anything they could 0:04:45.040 --> 0:04:47.400 to funk with the Americans during the War of eighteen twelves. 0:04:47.400 --> 0:04:49.479 They would give the Red Creek food and money and 0:04:49.480 --> 0:04:52.080 stuff and try to get them to work with Americans. 0:04:52.080 --> 0:04:54.360 So a band of these Red Sticks winds up murdering 0:04:54.400 --> 0:04:58.000 two families of American settlers near Nashville. They were executed 0:04:58.000 --> 0:04:59.680 by the rest of their tribe who didn't want any 0:04:59.680 --> 0:05:01.840 trouble with the Americans. But this wind up provoking a 0:05:01.920 --> 0:05:05.080 civil war within the Creek nation. So Jackson and his 0:05:05.160 --> 0:05:07.640 militia wind up on the side of the Creek who 0:05:07.680 --> 0:05:10.719 didn't like killing settlers. Right, they fight a war with 0:05:10.760 --> 0:05:13.000 the Red Sticks. So it's like Jackson and most of 0:05:13.040 --> 0:05:15.479 the Creek on one side and the Redness Sticks on 0:05:15.520 --> 0:05:18.040 the other side. Yeah, and this winds up coming to 0:05:18.080 --> 0:05:21.000 an end in like eighteen fourteen. So Jackson does so 0:05:21.040 --> 0:05:22.919 well in the war that he becomes a major general 0:05:23.000 --> 0:05:26.160 in the army. He gets put in charge of Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, 0:05:26.240 --> 0:05:28.680 and the Creek Nation. This meant that he was in 0:05:28.760 --> 0:05:31.360 charge when it became trying to negotiate a peace treaty 0:05:31.400 --> 0:05:33.880 at the end of the Red Stick War. The Madison 0:05:33.880 --> 0:05:36.640 administration wanted us to be nice to the Creek because 0:05:36.640 --> 0:05:38.560 they met James Madison didn't want to sunk with him. 0:05:38.560 --> 0:05:41.320 But Jackson was like, fun these guys because he was 0:05:41.440 --> 0:05:45.480 a monster. Yeah, So he decides to punish the Red 0:05:45.520 --> 0:05:48.560 Sticks and the Creek who had fought alongside his forces 0:05:48.600 --> 0:05:50.800 like all the same. So he just takes half of 0:05:50.839 --> 0:05:53.320 the land of the Creek nation, Like, so he decided 0:05:53.360 --> 0:05:55.120 he fought yeah, yeah, yeah, he foxed them over to 0:05:55.240 --> 0:05:57.400 he takes twenty three million acres away from the guys 0:05:57.400 --> 0:06:00.800 who've just been fighting with him. Three million acres. I 0:06:01.920 --> 0:06:06.000 can't fathom. Yeah, how back in the day one man 0:06:06.160 --> 0:06:08.640 could have all they were This is like a Kanye lyric. 0:06:08.920 --> 0:06:12.000 How could one man have all that power? It's it's 0:06:12.040 --> 0:06:15.200 weird just because he didn't die, Like that's a big 0:06:15.240 --> 0:06:17.680 part of it is, like, yeah, if you survived to 0:06:17.720 --> 0:06:20.159 be old enough, yeah, and then you just that's like 0:06:20.320 --> 0:06:23.479 man like, if that's the case, fifty cent ship on 0:06:23.720 --> 0:06:27.599 half of America. If nine times and not die, fifty 0:06:27.640 --> 0:06:29.880 cent could have been a president in the eighteen hundreds, 0:06:29.960 --> 0:06:32.279 he would have been fucking hard as ship. Ye he was. 0:06:32.680 --> 0:06:36.159 That was the main qualification, was not dying and have 0:06:36.200 --> 0:06:39.120 a couple of bullets in you. Yeah. So the Creek 0:06:39.240 --> 0:06:42.280 nicknamed Jackson sharp Knife because he was a he was 0:06:42.320 --> 0:06:45.479 a dick. Yeah, and Andrew Jackson, you know, gets into 0:06:45.480 --> 0:06:47.880 politics after he becomes a general. H he became a 0:06:47.920 --> 0:06:51.560 strident advocate for fucking over Native Americans. In eighteen twenty nine, 0:06:51.600 --> 0:06:54.000 he was looked at president. In eighteen thirty, he championed 0:06:54.080 --> 0:06:57.200 the Indian Removal Act, which is one of the more 0:06:57.240 --> 0:07:02.040 sinisterly named eighteen thirty. Yeah, and he delivered this message 0:07:02.040 --> 0:07:05.599 to Congress quote, we now propose to acquire the countries 0:07:05.640 --> 0:07:07.720 occupied by the Red Men of the South and West 0:07:07.760 --> 0:07:09.960 by a fair exchange, and at the expense of the 0:07:10.000 --> 0:07:12.480 United States, to send them to land where their existence 0:07:12.480 --> 0:07:15.640 may be prolonged and perhaps made perpetual. Doubtless, it will 0:07:15.680 --> 0:07:17.640 be painful to leave the graves of their fathers, But 0:07:17.720 --> 0:07:19.920 what do they more than our ancestors did or than 0:07:19.920 --> 0:07:22.880 our children are doing. Now, that's like him being nice 0:07:22.960 --> 0:07:27.000 about He was mean but eloquent. Yeah, yeah, he's And 0:07:27.040 --> 0:07:29.320 he said that this policy was not only liberal, but 0:07:29.480 --> 0:07:31.360 generous to the to the what he called them the 0:07:31.400 --> 0:07:34.720 Redman because it was the most racist time that's ever 0:07:34.760 --> 0:07:39.480 been e thirties us. That's like, that's is that before 0:07:39.480 --> 0:07:46.720 the emancipation too? Oh yeah, that's like the slaves And yeah, 0:07:46.840 --> 0:07:50.360 it's a it's a dark time in American history. Jackson 0:07:50.920 --> 0:07:53.120 three years later would deliver another speech where he was 0:07:53.160 --> 0:07:56.400 even less nice to the Native Americans and basically said 0:07:56.400 --> 0:07:59.760 that they weren't intelligent enough to have any land in 0:07:59.800 --> 0:08:03.160 an America, and so it was they must necessarily yield 0:08:03.160 --> 0:08:06.280 to the force of circumstances and ere long disappear like 0:08:06.280 --> 0:08:09.280 like they're they're destined to be screwed because we're screwing 0:08:09.360 --> 0:08:12.120 them so much. Yeah, this is a dude. And yeah, 0:08:12.360 --> 0:08:14.960 it's so crazy. It's so crazy. How I know we 0:08:15.000 --> 0:08:20.400 will eventually get to this, But how parallel some of 0:08:20.400 --> 0:08:25.160 these thoughts ye are to our current person in power? 0:08:25.360 --> 0:08:28.840 Or it is is insane? Yeah? Yeah, well, and you 0:08:28.880 --> 0:08:33.000 know it's It's worth noting that when President Trump met 0:08:33.040 --> 0:08:35.720 with the remaining Indian code talkers from World War Two, 0:08:36.160 --> 0:08:38.240 he met them in front of a picture of Andrew Jackson, 0:08:38.840 --> 0:08:42.800 which I didn't know. I heard that was a thing. Yeah, 0:08:42.840 --> 0:08:44.960 and because I'm lazy, I didn't read why it was 0:08:45.000 --> 0:08:48.480 a thing. But now I know. This is why what 0:08:48.640 --> 0:08:52.240 a dick. So Andrew Jackson's any removal policy winds up 0:08:52.320 --> 0:08:55.720 leading to, uh, the eviction of natives from the land 0:08:55.760 --> 0:08:57.520 that he had sort of said that they had to leave. 0:08:57.520 --> 0:08:59.680 So his idea was like, we have to push them 0:08:59.679 --> 0:09:02.319 all into reservations. That was the evolution of this policy. 0:09:02.320 --> 0:09:03.719 As we kicked them off the lane that we want 0:09:03.760 --> 0:09:06.679 to take, but we'll give them motherland. Um. So this 0:09:06.760 --> 0:09:09.640 is not quite a concentration camp, but there are aspects 0:09:09.640 --> 0:09:11.800 of the process that look a lot like stuff you'll 0:09:11.840 --> 0:09:16.240 see in you know, the twentieth century. So the most 0:09:16.280 --> 0:09:18.679 clear example of that is in the U. S. Army 0:09:18.720 --> 0:09:20.600 was sent to a victim bunch of Cherokee who refused 0:09:20.600 --> 0:09:22.480 to move from the land that they were told to vacate. 0:09:23.440 --> 0:09:26.680 So the army took seventeen thousand Cherokee and two thousands 0:09:26.679 --> 0:09:29.000 of their black slaves because nobody's entirely a good guy 0:09:29.040 --> 0:09:34.760 in the eighteen thirties over um and forced them onto camps. 0:09:34.880 --> 0:09:36.800 Uh So, three hundred or some of them died in 0:09:36.840 --> 0:09:39.160 the camps and then they get marched into Oklahoma, which 0:09:39.160 --> 0:09:41.640 is basically one big reservation at that point in time. 0:09:42.080 --> 0:09:44.720 Four thousand Cherokee die on the march to Oklahoma. This 0:09:44.760 --> 0:09:48.599 is march. That is a long march. I don't know 0:09:48.640 --> 0:09:54.000 if you've ever walked from like Tennessee to Oklahoma, but don't. Yeah, man, 0:09:54.240 --> 0:09:55.760 I set out to do it, and I was like, 0:09:55.800 --> 0:10:00.480 at they're a block awful. So, yeah, when the Cherokee 0:10:00.520 --> 0:10:03.240 arriving Oklahoma, they're placed on reservations, which is a type 0:10:03.280 --> 0:10:05.760 of camp designed to concentrate Native Americans into a small 0:10:05.800 --> 0:10:08.080 area so they can't carry out guerrilla wars against the state. 0:10:08.480 --> 0:10:11.160 This policy continued until eighteen eighties seven, when the government 0:10:11.160 --> 0:10:13.480 decided that Native Americans had been pretty well beaten and 0:10:13.559 --> 0:10:16.320 enacted the DAWs Act, which split reservation land up in 0:10:16.320 --> 0:10:19.880 individual allotments that Natives could then sell to white people, 0:10:20.440 --> 0:10:22.280 which was basically a way of being like, we'll give 0:10:22.280 --> 0:10:23.920 you a little bit of cash for your land, and 0:10:23.960 --> 0:10:26.640 then you don't have land anymore. Um. And then also, 0:10:26.720 --> 0:10:29.880 did you say that they had already been well beaten? 0:10:30.480 --> 0:10:35.480 I mean, yeah, it's just that's a crazy Well, I 0:10:35.480 --> 0:10:38.439 guess we've beat you enough. It worked, is what I'm saying. 0:10:38.559 --> 0:10:40.679 Is like the resistance, if you're looking at and this 0:10:40.720 --> 0:10:43.800 is important to understand what comes next. If you're associate 0:10:43.840 --> 0:10:46.920 path looking at the US policy against the Native Americans, 0:10:46.920 --> 0:10:49.600 it worked. You know, in the early eighteen hundreds, they 0:10:49.600 --> 0:10:51.720 were a real threat to white people's ability to take 0:10:51.720 --> 0:10:56.280 over North America, and this strategy broke them. If you 0:10:56.280 --> 0:10:59.360 don't care about human rights or dignity or anything like that, 0:10:59.559 --> 0:11:04.680 it functioned. Uh So, it's terrible, but other people in 0:11:04.760 --> 0:11:07.160 history would pay attention to the example that the Americans 0:11:07.160 --> 0:11:10.600 set in our policy towards Native Americans. Now we're going 0:11:10.640 --> 0:11:14.360 to veer off of North America and were to uh Spain. 0:11:14.960 --> 0:11:16.760 The same year as the Trail of Tears, eighteen thirty 0:11:16.800 --> 0:11:18.800 eight also saw the birth of a guy named Don 0:11:18.920 --> 0:11:22.800 Valeriano Whaler in Nicolau. Uh. He was born on the 0:11:22.840 --> 0:11:25.080 island of Mayorca. Yeah, it is a good name. A 0:11:25.080 --> 0:11:27.720 lot of names for people in those days. Yeah, not 0:11:27.840 --> 0:11:29.839 just two or three. Um. So he was born in 0:11:29.920 --> 0:11:32.480 my Orca, which is a part of Spain. He grew 0:11:32.600 --> 0:11:35.120 up with dreams of military glory, but Alas was only 0:11:35.160 --> 0:11:38.559 four ft ten when he turned fifteen. Uh. He listed 0:11:38.559 --> 0:11:41.600 in the Toledo Military Academy. He was below the Spanish 0:11:41.640 --> 0:11:44.559 military's minimum height requirements, but they let him join anyway 0:11:44.600 --> 0:11:46.400 because they just finished having a bunch of civil and 0:11:46.480 --> 0:11:48.680 colonial wars and they didn't have enough soldiers. They were like, oh, 0:11:48.720 --> 0:11:53.720 it's okay if you're tiny. Uh yeah, maybe he won't 0:11:53.720 --> 0:11:57.360 get shot shot. Um. He went up actually being really 0:11:57.360 --> 0:11:59.960 good at army stuff. Here in the nicknames Skipio from 0:12:00.080 --> 0:12:03.240 his fellow students, who was Skipio Africanus, was a famous 0:12:03.440 --> 0:12:06.400 Roman general who was really tough, and Whaler had a 0:12:06.440 --> 0:12:08.880 reputation of being really tough, which in those days meant 0:12:08.920 --> 0:12:11.360 you just didn't get sick and die easily, because like 0:12:11.440 --> 0:12:14.280 that was just fucking Europeans. Whenever they would go to 0:12:14.400 --> 0:12:16.680 the like half of them would die from the fever. 0:12:17.400 --> 0:12:21.679 So if you survive that, you're tough. Yeah, so yeah. 0:12:21.800 --> 0:12:25.719 Valariano Whaler wound up sent to Cuba in eighteen sixty three, 0:12:25.800 --> 0:12:28.520 where he developed a reputation for being the only colonial 0:12:28.559 --> 0:12:31.439 officer who wouldn't drink alcohol. U Spanish officers in this 0:12:31.559 --> 0:12:34.160 time had a habit of drinking nothing but enormous quantities 0:12:34.200 --> 0:12:37.120 of cold champagne uh instead of water because they thought 0:12:37.120 --> 0:12:40.400 it kept them safe from malaria, kept them safe. But 0:12:43.000 --> 0:12:45.439 so he drank water and he was Yeah, he was, 0:12:45.480 --> 0:12:47.520 which made him popular with the soldiers because they didn't 0:12:47.520 --> 0:12:49.679 get champagne and it also he was probably the only 0:12:49.800 --> 0:12:52.199 sober Spanish guy on the islands. That's why he was 0:12:52.240 --> 0:12:55.880 so good. That everybody out there fighting wars drunk, it's 0:12:55.880 --> 0:13:00.280 a it's a lobar. He figured it out. Like those days, 0:13:00.280 --> 0:13:03.559 sober and I'm going to kill not blacked out the 0:13:03.600 --> 0:13:08.160 whole time. So Cuba was a pretty chill place in 0:13:08.240 --> 0:13:10.360 eighteen sixty three. From the Spanish point of view, there 0:13:10.360 --> 0:13:12.439 wasn't any resistance to their rule at that point, or 0:13:12.440 --> 0:13:15.280 at least not effectively. Whaler's time there started well because 0:13:15.320 --> 0:13:18.079 he won the Spanish national lottery and became super rich, 0:13:18.840 --> 0:13:21.160 which is great. Then he caught the yellow fever, which 0:13:21.240 --> 0:13:23.439 tried to kill him but didn't quite uh and in 0:13:23.559 --> 0:13:26.280 fact just made him stronger. Um so that would be 0:13:26.320 --> 0:13:27.760 a benefit for the rest of his life is that 0:13:27.880 --> 0:13:30.679 he wouldn't get yellow fever again. That fall, as he 0:13:30.760 --> 0:13:33.040 was recovering from the fever, a war broke out in 0:13:33.080 --> 0:13:36.000 the nearby Dominican Republic, which was also owned by Spain. 0:13:36.600 --> 0:13:39.079 The Dominicans had just been invaded by Haiti, and pretty 0:13:39.120 --> 0:13:41.640 much as soon as the Spanish through Haiti back, the 0:13:41.679 --> 0:13:43.800 Dominicans were like, well, okay, now we want to be 0:13:43.880 --> 0:13:46.360 an independent nation and we want Spain gone too. So 0:13:46.440 --> 0:13:48.679 Whyler got sent over to the Dominican Republic to fight 0:13:48.679 --> 0:13:51.480 an insurgency against Spanish rule. He became a staff officer 0:13:51.559 --> 0:13:53.920 and eventually earned a promotion to lieutenant colonel. And a 0:13:53.960 --> 0:13:56.640 bunch of awards for his gallantry. The conflict went great 0:13:56.679 --> 0:13:58.640 for him because he got a bunch of awards, but 0:13:58.720 --> 0:14:00.959 Spain wound up losing control of the Dominican Republic in 0:14:01.040 --> 0:14:04.160 eighteen sixty five. So Whyler gets transferred over to a 0:14:04.200 --> 0:14:06.920 Spanish embassy in Washington, d C. Where he caught the 0:14:06.960 --> 0:14:08.920 tale into the Civil War and picked up some really 0:14:08.960 --> 0:14:13.280 cool ideas from America. Uh. Which yeah, now this is 0:14:13.440 --> 0:14:16.120 a might not be the idea you're expecting. This is 0:14:16.120 --> 0:14:18.679 a quote from the book British Concentration Camps, which was 0:14:18.720 --> 0:14:21.080 a major source for this podcast and will have the 0:14:21.160 --> 0:14:23.040 length to all the other sources up on the website 0:14:23.360 --> 0:14:26.280 behind the Bastards dot com. So anyway, Whaler winds up 0:14:26.320 --> 0:14:29.280 in the d C embassy, uh, and he starts reading 0:14:29.280 --> 0:14:31.640 about the tactics and hearing about the tactics being used 0:14:31.680 --> 0:14:35.680 by a general named WILLIAMS. Sherman. Uh. In the south quote. 0:14:35.800 --> 0:14:38.440 Not only with Sherman an exponent of brittle warfare, burning 0:14:38.560 --> 0:14:41.000 entire towns to terrify the enemy into submission, he also 0:14:41.080 --> 0:14:43.760 waged a campaign which some thought amounted to genocide against 0:14:43.800 --> 0:14:46.800 the Indians, using this as slogan. The only good Indian 0:14:46.920 --> 0:14:49.640 is a dead one. Sherman harry the Indians mercilessly, seeing 0:14:49.680 --> 0:14:51.480 that they were pinned up in camps where they died 0:14:51.480 --> 0:14:55.440 from starvation and illness. Sherman's activities both against the Confederacy 0:14:55.480 --> 0:14:57.720 and the Indians made a great lasting impression upon the 0:14:57.760 --> 0:15:00.400 young soldier, who went on to govern several Spanish colonies. 0:15:01.160 --> 0:15:03.760 So Whaler gets sent over to the US and it's 0:15:03.840 --> 0:15:07.880 like these guys, they're good at suppressing people. Yeah, yeah, 0:15:08.640 --> 0:15:11.280 So Whaler gets transferred back to Spain for a little while. 0:15:11.320 --> 0:15:14.000 But then in eighteen sixty eight, the Cubans decide they're 0:15:14.000 --> 0:15:17.560 not happy with Spanish rule and they have a revolution. Uh. 0:15:18.240 --> 0:15:21.480 So Whaler gets sent over to Cuba uh and fights 0:15:21.560 --> 0:15:23.040 in what's called the Ten Years War, which is a 0:15:23.080 --> 0:15:26.480 war from six sixty eight seventy eight against the Spanish government. 0:15:26.960 --> 0:15:29.080 By all accounts, it was a pretty badass conflict. I'm 0:15:29.080 --> 0:15:30.720 gonna quote here from a book called The War with 0:15:30.840 --> 0:15:34.000 Spain by Charles Morris. That's about the Cuban armies in 0:15:34.080 --> 0:15:36.600 this time they were fighting in Spain. The strength of 0:15:36.640 --> 0:15:40.040 the insurgents lay largely in their horses. They were admirable horsemen. 0:15:40.120 --> 0:15:42.520 Riding like cossacks or cowboys, and far superior in this 0:15:42.640 --> 0:15:44.600 respect to the Spanish cavalry, a few of whom were 0:15:44.600 --> 0:15:46.840 trained to the saddle. Many stories are told of the 0:15:46.880 --> 0:15:49.040 women who wrote in their ranks and wielded the machete 0:15:49.040 --> 0:15:51.400 even more fiercely than the men, and there is little 0:15:51.440 --> 0:15:53.600 doubt that these stories have some foundation in truth. The 0:15:53.680 --> 0:15:55.960 favorite mode of fighting by the insurgents was to harass 0:15:56.000 --> 0:15:58.520 the Spanish troops with skirmish fire, in which they sought 0:15:58.560 --> 0:16:01.000 to pick off the officers by sharp shooting. Then, if 0:16:01.040 --> 0:16:03.440 the opportunity presented, they would dash forward in a wild 0:16:03.520 --> 0:16:06.240 cavalry charge, machete in hand, and seek to wreak havoc 0:16:06.320 --> 0:16:09.240 on the ranks of the foe. Pretty badass. A bunch 0:16:09.280 --> 0:16:13.400 of ladies with machetes kind of horses, yeah, or just 0:16:13.600 --> 0:16:16.560 in general, I just yeah on horses and yeah, yeah, 0:16:16.760 --> 0:16:20.080 it's like wonder woman are the Amazon? Yeah? I feel 0:16:20.080 --> 0:16:22.240 like Danny Trejoe could make that into a movie. Let's 0:16:22.240 --> 0:16:24.840 get a production company. Yeah you hear that, Danny. Yeah, 0:16:25.120 --> 0:16:27.480 there's a bunch of ladies on horses of machetes cutting 0:16:27.520 --> 0:16:30.840 up Spanish soldiers. Man make it happen. So Whaler was 0:16:30.880 --> 0:16:33.080 put in command of a six man unit, which he 0:16:33.240 --> 0:16:35.640 quickly turned into the deadliest unit in the Spanish army. 0:16:36.000 --> 0:16:37.720 There were no rules at the time in the Spanish 0:16:37.760 --> 0:16:40.120 military for how to fight insurgeon, so Whaler made up 0:16:40.240 --> 0:16:41.960 rules of his own, the most important of which was 0:16:42.040 --> 0:16:44.400 that there were no rules. His troops were ordered to 0:16:44.400 --> 0:16:46.560 give no quarter to the enemy. The enemy was to 0:16:46.600 --> 0:16:49.840 find as anyone near a combat area, including civilians. He 0:16:49.960 --> 0:16:52.440 became famous for his brutality, and was at one point asked, 0:16:52.600 --> 0:16:54.640 is it true that your men returned from battle holding 0:16:54.680 --> 0:16:57.640 the severed heads of their enemies by the hair? Whaler replied, 0:16:57.880 --> 0:16:59.720 what do you think war is? And war men have 0:17:00.040 --> 0:17:03.440 mean one job to kill? Yeah, you predicted that, didn't 0:17:03.480 --> 0:17:06.000 call that? Yeah, you know, you're get to feel for 0:17:06.040 --> 0:17:09.280 this guy. Get the field the great minds. Yeah. So, 0:17:09.400 --> 0:17:11.400 part way through the war, Whaler gets recalled to Spain 0:17:11.560 --> 0:17:14.200 because there's a monarchist uprising in Spain. The whole eighteen 0:17:14.240 --> 0:17:16.920 hundred Spanish is civil war after fucking civil war. Yeah, 0:17:17.040 --> 0:17:19.520 I mean they'd lost so many territories. Yeah time too, 0:17:19.760 --> 0:17:22.479 it's not a great time. Yeah. Uh so, Yeah, Spain's 0:17:22.480 --> 0:17:25.520 having like a monarchist uprising, so Whaler goes back to 0:17:25.680 --> 0:17:28.280 help fight it. He has some fighting outside of Valencia, 0:17:28.320 --> 0:17:31.119 which doesn't go well, but then the general fighting him 0:17:31.200 --> 0:17:33.320 dies and that guy's army sort of falls apart, so 0:17:33.359 --> 0:17:35.280 Whaler kind of wins, and then the government sends him 0:17:35.320 --> 0:17:38.520 next to Catalonia where there's like kind of a leftist 0:17:38.600 --> 0:17:42.080 workers uprising, and he promptly just murders everyone he suspects 0:17:42.080 --> 0:17:44.840 of being connected to the rebels. Spanish citizens didn't like 0:17:44.960 --> 0:17:47.040 seeing the tactics they cheered him to use in Cuba 0:17:47.080 --> 0:17:49.159 being used on them at home, so General Whaler was 0:17:49.200 --> 0:17:53.280 reprimanded and removed from that particularly. This is still four 0:17:53.320 --> 0:17:56.240 ft I think he's about four ft eleven. He grew 0:17:56.280 --> 0:17:59.400 a little bit more, not all that much. Yeah, grew 0:17:59.600 --> 0:18:02.760 in all the blood he's drawn, just standing on it. 0:18:04.080 --> 0:18:07.560 Tiny little man just bathing in blood. Yeah. Yeah, he's 0:18:07.600 --> 0:18:10.120 he's a monster. So his career for the next few 0:18:10.160 --> 0:18:11.639 years is kind of up and down. He served as 0:18:11.680 --> 0:18:15.080 the military governor in the Philippines from eight to eighteen 0:18:15.160 --> 0:18:17.919 ninety one. He bounce around so much in just well 0:18:17.960 --> 0:18:20.840 because they're like, we can't have him in Spain because 0:18:20.920 --> 0:18:24.080 he's too brutal and people don't like seeing what we 0:18:24.200 --> 0:18:26.680 do to our colonial possessions being done in Spain. But 0:18:26.880 --> 0:18:29.000 we need a guy to put down insurgencies, and he's 0:18:29.040 --> 0:18:31.239 fucking good at good at it's just saying he's good 0:18:31.280 --> 0:18:33.560 at it. Charge here, come on over, yeah, yeah, go 0:18:33.680 --> 0:18:36.000 crush these insurgents now. So he winds up in the 0:18:36.000 --> 0:18:39.440 Philippines fighting insurgents. One four month campaign. He succeeded in 0:18:39.520 --> 0:18:42.440 wiping out rebels on the island of Mendano through the 0:18:42.520 --> 0:18:45.760 use of something called trocha, which were fortified military lines 0:18:45.800 --> 0:18:50.200 built to isolated insurgents. So General Wayler invented a new tactic, 0:18:50.280 --> 0:18:52.800 which is basically he would fortify towns and villages and 0:18:52.840 --> 0:18:55.320 then he would force civilians in rural areas to leave 0:18:55.359 --> 0:18:59.119 their farms and congregate in those walled rural villages that 0:18:59.200 --> 0:19:01.840 he built UM, and then he would build these like 0:19:02.000 --> 0:19:04.720 fortified lines around areas he knew the rebels were in 0:19:04.800 --> 0:19:06.479 to kind of isolate them so you can pin them 0:19:06.480 --> 0:19:10.520 into smaller and smaller areas exactly forced them to fight UM. 0:19:10.640 --> 0:19:13.359 This worked out very well, and in November eight Whaler 0:19:13.400 --> 0:19:15.800 returned to Spain as a newly elected senator. He didn't 0:19:15.800 --> 0:19:17.320 get to spend much time on the job because the 0:19:17.320 --> 0:19:20.640 revolutionary workers movement in Catalonia again started threatening to act 0:19:20.680 --> 0:19:23.920 against the state. Whaler arrested hundreds of them. Uh and 0:19:24.200 --> 0:19:27.560 became very popular among Spaniards who weren't angry working class people. 0:19:28.000 --> 0:19:30.600 Multiple towns declared him their adopted son. He was made 0:19:30.640 --> 0:19:33.360 a senator for life and credited with saving civilization from 0:19:33.359 --> 0:19:40.440 the barbaric workers. Uh So now now they so this 0:19:40.720 --> 0:19:44.800 is where we are in eighteen nine when another revolution 0:19:44.880 --> 0:19:47.680