Speaker 1: It's uh, it's this What's happening now? Is the podcast
Speaker 1: that this is? I'm Robert Evans. Another introduction in the bag?
Speaker 1: How do we do? Sophie? Are we? Are? We? Are
Speaker 1: we solid? Is that one gonna three? Out of time?
Speaker 1: Are we gonna win? A potty? I wish that's what
Speaker 1: it was called. Yeah, that's the Imaginary Podcast award I invented.
Speaker 1: I'm Robert Evans. This is Behind the Bastards, a terrible
Speaker 1: podcast about terrible people. Um that's made incompetently by me. UM.
Speaker 1: I hope everybody's doing all right. Our guest today is
Speaker 1: Allison Stevenson. Allison is a writer, a comedian, and creator
Speaker 1: of the Audible original Like Mother. Alison. How are you
Speaker 1: doing today? I'm doing not so bad. Not so bad
Speaker 1: is excellent in it literally is as good as you
Speaker 1: can be doing. Yeah, Allison, how do you feel about Germans?
Speaker 1: You know not? Let's just say this. I am a Jew,
Speaker 1: so let me be more to the point. How do
Speaker 1: you feel about the existence of the German state? No?
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I've been dying to go to Berlin.
Speaker 1: It's a great town. Great town, had some rough, rough
Speaker 1: patches a while ago. Um, some sort of wall or something. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking today about a lot of stuff.
Speaker 1: The guy that we're chatting about is a fellow named
Speaker 1: Alfred Krupp. Does the name Krupp mean anything to you, M,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't think so, does it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Without Krupp, there's no Germany. Um, Like, no German state
Speaker 1: ever comes into existence without Alfred Krupp. UM. And also
Speaker 1: no World War One, and also probably no World War
Speaker 1: two h and also maybe no international arms trade today.
Speaker 1: He's that guy. He's that kind of dud um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's a he's a fascinating character. Um. And today we're
Speaker 1: going to chat about him. But we're gonna start by
Speaker 1: talking about something that happened on October first, two thousand seventeen,
Speaker 1: when a submarine built in Germany by the Tyson Krupp
Speaker 1: shipyard in Kiel, North Germany, set sail for Egypt. It
Speaker 1: was the fourth submarine the Egyptian government had ordered from
Speaker 1: Tyson Krupp since the start of the Arab Spring, and
Speaker 1: its total cost was one point four billion euros. On
Speaker 1: its way to Egypt, had stopped at the port city
Speaker 1: of Emden, where it met a French made Corvette class
Speaker 1: attack ship, which was also built for the Egyptian Navy. Now,
Speaker 1: the hundreds of millions of euros in profit that these
Speaker 1: boats represented came from the taxes in natural wealth that
Speaker 1: on paper ought to belong to the people of Egypt.
Speaker 1: But they don't because Egypt is owned by the dictator
Speaker 1: who took power there in two thousand and fourteen after
Speaker 1: a military coup, Abdul Fata Alcisi. During his six years
Speaker 1: in power, CC has brutally cracked down on free speech,
Speaker 1: fought an unsuccessful but horrifically bloody counterinsurgency against Islamic extremists,
Speaker 1: and repeatedly murdered moderate protesters. Under his reign, food prices
Speaker 1: have risen and poverty in Egypt has sword. Three percent
Speaker 1: of the country is now in poverty. UM. So things
Speaker 1: aren't going great in Egypt, and one factor is that
Speaker 1: the country is basically owned by the military, which is
Speaker 1: grafting tax money in order to buy weapons from Germany. UM.
Speaker 1: And of course, a significant amount of the money that's
Speaker 1: paid to Tyson Krupp winds up in the pockets of
Speaker 1: ALCSI and of his his his buddies, Because that's just
Speaker 1: the way that military appropriations work in the global south. Um.
Speaker 1: This is happening not just in Egypt but all over
Speaker 1: the world, but particularly in Egypt, because no country on
Speaker 1: Earth buys more German weapons than Egypt. Um. And this
Speaker 1: actually has been going on a lot longer than you
Speaker 1: might think. We'll talk about that a little bit later. Also,
Speaker 1: as a note, Tyson Krupp makes all of the elevators
Speaker 1: you've ever been in. Um. So, yeah, this is freaky.
Speaker 1: But like I was, for some reason, I was thinking
Speaker 1: about elevators, but I was thinking about Schindler. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's, it's it's We won't be talking about it
Speaker 1: per much this episode, but Alfred Krupp's descendants absolutely, Uh,
Speaker 1: we're responsible for tens of thousands of slave laborers in
Speaker 1: concentration camps to make German submachine guns. They're cool dudes,
Speaker 1: the Krups. Um. Yeah no, this this family's this family's
Speaker 1: got some history to it. Um. And Yeah. So I
Speaker 1: started with that story because I think it illustrates kind
Speaker 1: of a weird continuity because the relationship between Germany and
Speaker 1: Egypt and the selling of weapons actually started in the
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds, and it's continued without break ever since, through
Speaker 1: two world wars and like three or four different regimes. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's kind of a mark of how even though
Speaker 1: you know you've got guys like the Kaiser, guys like Hitler,
Speaker 1: the leaders at the top change, the people actually making
Speaker 1: the weapons and in a lot of ways driving the
Speaker 1: conflicts don't change because, for one thing, the Krupp, who
Speaker 1: was in charge of German arms production during World War
Speaker 1: Two got arrested and sentenced at Nuremberg and did three
Speaker 1: years of a twelve year sentence and died the wealthyest
Speaker 1: man in Europe because the Allies needed him to make
Speaker 1: weapons for the Cold War. Um, these are the guys
Speaker 1: who are who never get punished. Like right, we we
Speaker 1: throw all the blame at the Hitler's and the Girbels
Speaker 1: and stuff, and like, obviously those guys are fucking monsters.
Speaker 1: But the dudes who made the weaponry that allowed them
Speaker 1: to do what they did, and the same thing with
Speaker 1: World War One, those guys never get punished because everyone
Speaker 1: wants them to make guns that they have a posse,
Speaker 1: and everybody wants what they have, which is the ability
Speaker 1: to make more fucking guns. It's good ship Yeah, it's great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was like, great that sounds That's exactly how I
Speaker 1: described that. Yeah, it fucking rules. So Alfred Krupp, it
Speaker 1: would be fair to call him like he's kind of
Speaker 1: like the real Tony Stark, right, if you want the
Speaker 1: actual guy like he's he's he's a brilliant engineer, inventor,
Speaker 1: innovator who sold weapons to everyone on the planet um
Speaker 1: and who had and who was like a visionary. He's
Speaker 1: not just a businessman. He's a guy who's able to
Speaker 1: like innovate killing machines and in fact, after a certain point,
Speaker 1: the only thing he was really capable of thinking about
Speaker 1: was how to build our guns to murder people with.
Speaker 1: Um That's basically all this man ever did. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's got some musky quality to him, although unlike Elon Musk,
Speaker 1: Alfred was talented. So yeah, um, before we talk about Alfred,
Speaker 1: we've got to learn a little bit about his family,
Speaker 1: because the Crups go back quite a bit in Germany.
Speaker 1: The first information we have on the family, the first
Speaker 1: Crup that we know about, was a fellow named Aren't Krupp,
Speaker 1: who moved to a city called Essen sometimes in the
Speaker 1: late fifteen hundreds now Essen is located in the Ruhr,
Speaker 1: which is a coal rich region that's the center of
Speaker 1: German industry. UM. But at the time it was a sleepy,
Speaker 1: small city and we know very little about aren't because
Speaker 1: but that he was a man of means. We know
Speaker 1: it was rich because he signed his name in a
Speaker 1: book that was held in the city like Hall and
Speaker 1: if you had a signature back in the hundreds, you
Speaker 1: were rich. Like nobody was signing ship unless you had
Speaker 1: money back then. Um. Our most important source for this
Speaker 1: episode is the book The Arms of Crup which was
Speaker 1: written in the nineteen sixties by a guy named William
Speaker 1: Manchester who was a british Man who had actually fought
Speaker 1: against Krupp guns as a young English soldier. And I
Speaker 1: don't normally gush about the books that we have on
Speaker 1: this show, but I feel the need to hear because
Speaker 1: the while The Arms of Krupp is preposterously long, it
Speaker 1: is a massive, massive book. It's very readable. William is
Speaker 1: a really, really funny writer, and I enjoyed every page
Speaker 1: of this book and I absolutely recommend reading it if
Speaker 1: you want to learn about the arms trade that currently
Speaker 1: dominates the world because it's it's kind of about how
Speaker 1: it all got started. Um, And for an example of
Speaker 1: William's writing style, I'm gonna quote here how he explains
Speaker 1: that he knew Aren't Krupp was probably fat, because this
Speaker 1: is this is fun. Well, the record indicates nothing beyond
Speaker 1: a faceless blob. It is safe to hazard something about
Speaker 1: the first Crup's physiognomy. First, Almost certainly he lacked the
Speaker 1: gauntness of later krups. Aren't was a sixteenth century German merchant,
Speaker 1: and we know quite a lot about the customs of
Speaker 1: that class. They were, above all dedicated. Glutton's girth was
Speaker 1: proof of prosperity. The man who could out eat his
Speaker 1: neighbors was admired everywhere. One performer devoured thirty eggs, a
Speaker 1: pound of cheese, and a large quantity of bread in
Speaker 1: a single sitting. He then fell dead and became a
Speaker 1: national hero. Seven hour meetings were not uncommon. It has
Speaker 1: been estimated that the well to do spent half their
Speaker 1: waking hours either masticating or defecating. And these circumstances, only
Speaker 1: an abnormal metabolic rate could prevent a rich man from
Speaker 1: becoming obese, which I did not know and find fascinating
Speaker 1: that's so weird. I kind of feel like we should
Speaker 1: bring that back a little. Just yeah, it would be
Speaker 1: easier to chase down Jeff Bezos if he wasn't strong.
Speaker 1: You're right, I just find that amazing. That, Like becoming
Speaker 1: a national hero back then was like, yeah, he ate
Speaker 1: himself to death? What a guy? Uh died a hero?
Speaker 1: I hope my kids grow up to eat themselves to
Speaker 1: death one day. So what little we do know for
Speaker 1: sure about Aren't suggests that he embodied what would come
Speaker 1: to be one of the key Krupp family characteristics, the
Speaker 1: ability to profit from tragedy. Twelve years or so after
Speaker 1: he moved to Essen, the bubonic plague stuck struck, and
Speaker 1: about half the town died. Corpses were piled up with
Speaker 1: no one to bury them. Whole neighborhoods became graveyards. All
Speaker 1: the good plague. Should you know the good plague ship
Speaker 1: we're there now? Yeah, classics, this is extra meaningful for us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: classic plague. Uh So, while other men sold their property
Speaker 1: and drank themselves to death before the plague could get them,
Speaker 1: Aren't bet that he would live through the plague, and
Speaker 1: he bought up their abandoned properties. So all these guys
Speaker 1: are like, we're all going to die, let's sell our
Speaker 1: homes and buy liquor, and aren't like, y'all buy your
Speaker 1: fucking houses. I don't think I'm gonna die. And that's
Speaker 1: how the Crupp family first ends up super rich because
Speaker 1: they buy up all of these people's property when they
Speaker 1: plague gets it's it's always property, it's always lands, the
Speaker 1: only thing that's valuable. Oh my god, I say, ignoring
Speaker 1: the real estate collapse that happened like ten years ago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just like the first Superman movie. Anyway, we don't
Speaker 1: know much about the Crups who immediately followed, aren't, other
Speaker 1: than that they survived the Thirty Years War of eight
Speaker 1: into sight with their wealth and property. Intact, this would
Speaker 1: not have been easy. The area Essen was in was
Speaker 1: invaded by Danes, Swedes, Spaniards, Bohemians, and worst of all,
Speaker 1: the French um and about two thirds of the population
Speaker 1: of Germany died during that war. So again, and also,
Speaker 1: there's no Germany during this Like I'm saying Germany because
Speaker 1: people roughly know the geographic area Germany doesn't exist at
Speaker 1: this point, Like it's a bunch of warring kingdoms like
Speaker 1: you've got the Prussians and the Austrians and the Fans
Speaker 1: and Bohemians filthy bohemians. Yeah, um, all these different all
Speaker 1: these different people, they're all and they're always shooting each
Speaker 1: other too, and they're getting shot by everybody else, and
Speaker 1: they're they're they're kind of One of the things that's
Speaker 1: interesting about the Germans in this period is that they're
Speaker 1: like famously um, famously polite and humble because they get
Speaker 1: their asses kicked so much um, which is a reputation
Speaker 1: that changes because of the things that we're about to
Speaker 1: talk about in this episode. I think I know they
Speaker 1: stopped being humble after a while. Yeah, yeah, uh so
Speaker 1: the Crep family basically, yeah, despite all of this disaster,
Speaker 1: they managed to expand their land holdings and expand their wealth,
Speaker 1: and that suggests that they all kind of inherited, aren't
Speaker 1: strait of profiting from disaster. We know that one of
Speaker 1: Ourn's sons was a fellow named Anton Krupp, who was
Speaker 1: the first member of the family we have decent documentary
Speaker 1: information on. We know, for example, that at one point
Speaker 1: he received a significant municipal find for quote, beating doctor
Speaker 1: Hasselman in the street, which I think rules you just
Speaker 1: got to a fist fight with a doctor. I think
Speaker 1: he got like a bad diagnosis or something. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean doctors then weren't really doctors. They were just they
Speaker 1: were drug dealers, which only about half of doctors aren't
Speaker 1: out today, so penicillin pushers. Back then it was just
Speaker 1: it was just and Scotch in Mercury. They were like
Speaker 1: the original seven eleven. Yeah, well they were the original
Speaker 1: guy in front of the seven eleven who has a
Speaker 1: really bulgy coat, so he's In sixteen twelve, Uh, Anton
Speaker 1: married a guy who was at the time one of
Speaker 1: Essen's most prominent gunsmith's, and Anton got into the gunmaking business.
Speaker 1: He was selling about a thousand barrels per year during
Speaker 1: the Thirty Years War, and he was described in the
Speaker 1: town council meeting as our highly honored patriot Lord. Now,
Speaker 1: the Crups didn't get straight into the arms business from there,
Speaker 1: and in fact, after Anton they stopped for decades. Uh.
Speaker 1: The family made most of its money because they owned
Speaker 1: a large store and they collected rent from properties, and
Speaker 1: this was enough to make sure that the family's wealth
Speaker 1: grew every year. In the mid sixteen, hundreds of crupt
Speaker 1: named Matthias bought fields east of the town wall would
Speaker 1: become the site of the crupt gun works that later
Speaker 1: armed Germany through two World Wars. By the late sixteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: one writer described the family as the uncrowned kings of Essen.
Speaker 1: When Matthias died in sixteen seventy three, the town left
Speaker 1: his position the office of town clerk, unfilled until his
Speaker 1: oldest son was old enough to take the jobs. That's
Speaker 1: how big a deal this family is in late sixteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: Now corrupt fortunes waned throughout the seventeen hundreds as frivolous
Speaker 1: family members and bad luck whittled them down from the
Speaker 1: family that owned the town to just another kind of
Speaker 1: rich family who weren't as rich as they used to be.
Speaker 1: They bought a large steel foundery at one point, but
Speaker 1: they sold it in the early eighteen hundreds, and this
Speaker 1: leads us to Friedrich Krupp. In short, Fredrick was ambitious,
Speaker 1: but either dumb or unlucky. He liked to spend money,
Speaker 1: and he had no real talent for making more of it.
Speaker 1: In eighteen ten, he inherited the modern equivalent of a
Speaker 1: million dollars uh Friedrich had other siblings but the Krupt
Speaker 1: family tradition was for the oldest son to get everything,
Speaker 1: and this is how the family succeeded in holding onto
Speaker 1: all of their wealth and influence over the years, but
Speaker 1: it put them at a disadvantage when a real dummy
Speaker 1: happened to fall out of a corupt ladies womb first,
Speaker 1: And that's what happened with Fredrick. Yeah, his first decision
Speaker 1: was to scrap the business like the store that his
Speaker 1: ancestors had made all of their money with, and instead
Speaker 1: invested in an exciting new venture cast steel. Now, at
Speaker 1: the time, people are real shitty at making metal, Okay,
Speaker 1: So like metals hard, right, Like you've got bronze, which
Speaker 1: is pretty easy to make and kind of durable, but
Speaker 1: it's it's sucks when it comes to making cannons. Like
Speaker 1: if you're trying to blow things up through bronze, you
Speaker 1: can only make shoot things that are like projectiles so large.
Speaker 1: It can only handle so much powder without exploding. Um,
Speaker 1: So it's yeah, it's just not a great thing to
Speaker 1: make cannons out of. It was the only thing to
Speaker 1: do it. Yeah, So like at the time, steel had
Speaker 1: existed for a while, and in fact, some people will
Speaker 1: suggest like you know, the Spartans. Everybody talks about how
Speaker 1: they were like famously good warriors. Um, there's actually a
Speaker 1: school of thought among historians that's just like they weren't
Speaker 1: any better at fighting than anyone else, but the nature
Speaker 1: of the iron that was in there, uh, that was
Speaker 1: like in near Sparta was very easy to kind of
Speaker 1: accidentally turn into steel. And steel is a thousand times
Speaker 1: better than any kind of like ancient metal, than bronze
Speaker 1: or than just straight iron. It's just much more durable.
Speaker 1: And so the Spartans had steel blades and that's why,
Speaker 1: like they were famous because just because they had better technology.
Speaker 1: And that's kind of what everyone was looking for in
Speaker 1: the Napoleonic era, right, Like, no one's good at metal yet.
Speaker 1: People have started to figure out how to make steel, um,
Speaker 1: but they haven't gotten good at it. And cast steel
Speaker 1: is like modern steel. It's like the ship that you
Speaker 1: can make skyscrapers with. It's the ship that you can
Speaker 1: make battleship cannons with. It's it's like kind of the
Speaker 1: necessary precursor to the modern world. You can't have the
Speaker 1: modern world without quality steel. And people had started to
Speaker 1: figure it out, particularly the British had kind of started
Speaker 1: to figure out how to reliably make modern steel, which
Speaker 1: again is cast steel. When I talk about cast steal,
Speaker 1: that's what I'm talking about, but no one was very
Speaker 1: good at it. And Friedrich Krupp becomes obsessed with making
Speaker 1: cast steel. He thinks that's how he's going to revive
Speaker 1: the family fortunes. And then a quote now from a
Speaker 1: passage in the arms of Krupp and the Napoleonic eraic
Speaker 1: cast steele had a special cash a. It was the
Speaker 1: nuclear fission of its day, mysterious, glamorous, seemingly limitless in
Speaker 1: its possibilities. Steel, low carbon, iron, tough and malleable is
Speaker 1: not a natural phenomenon, and in a time when chemistry
Speaker 1: was poorly understood, it was regarded as a marvel. In
Speaker 1: the past, smelters had produced small quantities of it by
Speaker 1: manipulating ore and carbon with rods, meantime regulating the flow
Speaker 1: of air through bellows to produce the metal. They worked
Speaker 1: on its field, on its appearance, on hunches, and on
Speaker 1: slights and arcana, handled down from fathers to sons. Until
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century. These hit or miss methods were good enough,
Speaker 1: but now in the spring of the machine age, Europe
Speaker 1: was crying for big chunks of high quality steel. The
Speaker 1: old smiths couldn't help, nor could the operators of blast furnaces.
Speaker 1: Furnaces produced only cast iron, which, with its high urban
Speaker 1: carbon content, was too brittle to be satisfactory. Attempts were
Speaker 1: made to fuse several small ingots of steel and cast
Speaker 1: them as a single block. The smiths were frustrated because
Speaker 1: the oxygen in the air combined with the carbon and
Speaker 1: the steel, ruining the whole batch. Yet some men could
Speaker 1: bring the thing off. The secret existed and had been discovered,
Speaker 1: to the great annoyance of Napoleon. The discoverers were Englishmen.
Speaker 1: Not only had the British cornered cast Steele, they held
Speaker 1: their monopoly of it for seventy years. So the British
Speaker 1: figure out cast Steele and no one on the continent
Speaker 1: has it. And this is one of Britain's main military
Speaker 1: advance edges, as they have good steel, and Napoleon wants
Speaker 1: it because he's still fucking around with brass cannons, which
Speaker 1: are trash um. And so you know, Napoleon is at
Speaker 1: this point, fucking Napoleon. He's the he's the Emperor um
Speaker 1: and Germany is just like a bunch of little warring states.
Speaker 1: So everyone kind of is looking to Napoleon, even the
Speaker 1: people outside of his borders. Young Friedrich Krupp became obsessed
Speaker 1: with the idea of figuring out how to cast steal
Speaker 1: for himself and his people. And yeah, Napoleon announced a
Speaker 1: prize to whoever could figure out how to cast steal
Speaker 1: for continental Europe. He was going to give them like
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands of pieces of gold, and it was
Speaker 1: just a fortune worth of fucking French money. And so
Speaker 1: in eighteen eleven, Friederich Krupp founded the cast Steel Works
Speaker 1: with the ambition of like winning the prize that Napoleon
Speaker 1: had set out. Now, this was an ambitious goal because
Speaker 1: Friedrich had no idea what he was doing. He grew
Speaker 1: increasingly obsessed with trying to puzzle out the secrets of
Speaker 1: cast steel and burnt through his entire inheritance to buy
Speaker 1: property and equipment, while at the same time neglecting the
Speaker 1: store that had brought his family most of their wealth.
Speaker 1: His eyes were always on the prize the Emperor had promised,
Speaker 1: and he began making loud public boasts about he how
Speaker 1: he basically already figured out how to make cast steel.
Speaker 1: In December of eighteen eleven, he declared his loyalty to
Speaker 1: the Emperor of France. This was bad timing since it
Speaker 1: was at the precise moment that Friedrich declared his fealty
Speaker 1: to France that the Emperor lost his entire army in Russia.
Speaker 1: So Fredrick like declares himself loyal to the French crown
Speaker 1: and then the French crown loses all of its power
Speaker 1: by getting massacred in the frozen steps of Russia. Bad
Speaker 1: timing for Friedrich. Yeah, uh, so he basically his loyalty
Speaker 1: wound up guaranteeing him a doomed job digging trenches for
Speaker 1: a French army that got its ass handed to it
Speaker 1: by Prussia while Napoleon was running away from the Cossacks.
Speaker 1: And the good news is that nationalism didn't exist back then,
Speaker 1: so most people in s and felt as much loyalty
Speaker 1: to France as they did to Prussia, because again, no
Speaker 1: one's really German then, so as soon as Prussia took
Speaker 1: over in Napoleon's empire collapsed, nobody like got revenge on Friedrich,
Speaker 1: which is what would have happened later so he got
Speaker 1: to core. Now he's got no money. Yeah he's broke. Now,
Speaker 1: yeah he's broke his ship. Um he gives. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: loses all of his money trying to make cast steele.
Speaker 1: He fails. The emperor he was hoping to get a
Speaker 1: reward from is no longer the emperor, and it's just
Speaker 1: yeah trash luck and also kind of a dumb guy.
Speaker 1: Um so, yeah, Fredrick wasn't completely like a failure. He
Speaker 1: succeeded in getting the Krupt families first military contract, but
Speaker 1: which was just like supplying steel bayonets uh and he
Speaker 1: sold quality tools and dies, but he was never able
Speaker 1: to make enough money fast enough to like make up
Speaker 1: for all of the debts he had incurred trying to
Speaker 1: figure out how to make cast steel, and of course
Speaker 1: the other family business failed. Uh So Fredrick did throw
Speaker 1: a bunch of money into making a big machine shop
Speaker 1: which was finished in eighteen nineteen, but only worked about
Speaker 1: half the year because he fucked up on like it
Speaker 1: would rely on the local river in order to be
Speaker 1: able to function, because you don't have like electricity then,
Speaker 1: so people will use rivers to like move the different
Speaker 1: wheels and ship that need to anyway, it's a bad
Speaker 1: He makes a bad bet and his fucking machine shop
Speaker 1: doesn't work, and he spends the last two years of
Speaker 1: his life poverished in bedridden, ranting and coherently about his
Speaker 1: ruined life and fortune. He dies at age thirty nine.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, so kind of a bummer of a story.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, So, don't always chase your dreams. Don't don't
Speaker 1: ever chase your dreams. Never ever chase your dreams. If
Speaker 1: there's one lesson of this podcast is that dreams are
Speaker 1: a bad idea. Um. Yeah, if everyone would just sit
Speaker 1: alone in a dark room until they died, we would
Speaker 1: have no Hitler's, no Stalin's nod, no penicillin either. So
Speaker 1: it's a mixed bag. Um yeah, but we're not leaving
Speaker 1: our houses. How are you going to get sickin syphilis? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah anyway. Uh Alfred So, Alfred Krupp was Friederich's son,
Speaker 1: and he was fourteen years old when his dad died.
Speaker 1: But that was enough to make him a man by
Speaker 1: the standards of the time, and he was, to say
Speaker 1: the least, an odd child. He was terrified of fire,
Speaker 1: which is like not unreasonable, but if your entire family
Speaker 1: business is operating a forge. It's kind of weird that
Speaker 1: you're scared of fire. Um. He was fascinated by smells,
Speaker 1: and particularly the smell of horseship, which he loved more
Speaker 1: than anything in the entire world. This dude, his entire life,
Speaker 1: loves horseshit like candle get enough of it. Thinks that
Speaker 1: it like inspires him and like sets his mind going
Speaker 1: and gives him his best ideas and it's great for
Speaker 1: his health. Like, he absolutely loves horseshit. Is there anything
Speaker 1: behind us or is it just we don't I don't know,
Speaker 1: but it's his entire life. We'll talk about horseshit a
Speaker 1: few times in this episode because he's fucking loves horsepoop. Damn. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very strange. He was equally insistent. As much as
Speaker 1: he loved horsepoop, he was insistent that his own breath
Speaker 1: was poisonous, and so he moved around constantly in order
Speaker 1: to avoid breathing it in. He was convinced that if
Speaker 1: he stayed in the same room for too long, he'd
Speaker 1: breathe in all the oxygen and die. He's very weird dude.
Speaker 1: As a result of this, sleep was a nightmare for him.
Speaker 1: He couldn't really sleep. He had chronic insomnia his whole life.
Speaker 1: Like he's just a miserable, neurotic wreck of a man
Speaker 1: who loves horseship. It's awesome, damn. Yeah, yeah, he's he's
Speaker 1: a very strange dude. And I'm gonna quote William Manchester
Speaker 1: writing a little bit more about him here. What can
Speaker 1: I ask ye? How so was he like carrying horseship
Speaker 1: with him? He just made sure horseshit surrounded all of
Speaker 1: his homes and also later in life, made sure that
Speaker 1: his homes had specific like ducks to take the smell
Speaker 1: of horseship up into his rooms. He wanted everything around
Speaker 1: him to smell like horseshit at all times. He loved.
Speaker 1: He could not get enough horship. This is really making
Speaker 1: me want to smell horseship. It's great. Like it's not
Speaker 1: as bad as normal ship because they're vegetarians, right, Like
Speaker 1: they don't eat meat, like I've I grew up with
Speaker 1: like cows and horses and ship on like pastures and
Speaker 1: like it's not as bad as you know, dogshit or something.
Speaker 1: But it's not a pleasant smell. It's ship, you know,
Speaker 1: all right? Yeah, anyway, here's William Manchester writing about this
Speaker 1: weird ass poop love and dude. Yeah, his chronic insomnia,
Speaker 1: which would have crippled another executive, actually may have made
Speaker 1: Alfred more efficient. He was such a bundle of neurotic
Speaker 1: quirks that they seem to have supported one another at night.
Speaker 1: For example, he wrote business memoranda. A compulsive writer. Over
Speaker 1: thirty thousand of his letters and notes are excellent. He
Speaker 1: trained himself to scribble in the dark, crouched sweating under
Speaker 1: his eyder down after dawn flushed his workers from their beds,
Speaker 1: they would find scrawled praise or scorn he propped on
Speaker 1: their benches to them. His energy was a marvel to us.
Speaker 1: The greater marvel is that he kept this up for
Speaker 1: over fifty years without once being institutionalized. So he's a
Speaker 1: bizarre man. And Robert fu anyway, this is the man
Speaker 1: who helps in vent the military industrial complex and creates Germany. Um,
Speaker 1: he's a fun, fun dude. Quite a fantastic way to
Speaker 1: introduce this episode. I meant so Alfred inherited a tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of debt in a broken business because again, his
Speaker 1: dad was kind of a dumbass, but Alfred was not
Speaker 1: dumb the one thing you like. Again, Unlike Elon Musk,
Speaker 1: he's legitimately a genius, uh. And he was very shrewd enough.
Speaker 1: He was shrewd enough to see what assets he had.
Speaker 1: The forges he'd inherited were substantial, and while his father
Speaker 1: never unlocked the secrets of cast steel um, they were
Speaker 1: good enough to make stuff people could use and for
Speaker 1: So for four years Alfred toile, learning through trial and
Speaker 1: error how to make stronger and more useful steel, and
Speaker 1: also developing an eye for business. He broke even for
Speaker 1: the first time in eighteen thirty, and from then on
Speaker 1: his career moved steadily upward. He'd inherited four workers from
Speaker 1: his father, and thanks to a family loan in eighteen thirty,
Speaker 1: he hired five more employees. That year Alfred was inherited workers. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: workers go come with the company. The they're still kind
Speaker 1: of like like their peasants still at this period, so
Speaker 1: it's kind of like it's it's it's not you don't
Speaker 1: quite own them, because they can quit and go find
Speaker 1: other work. But it's really uncommon. You tend to work
Speaker 1: for the same people your dad worked for, right, Like
Speaker 1: that's kind of the norm. This is not that far
Speaker 1: from medieval times, right, Yeah, Alfred actually is responsible for
Speaker 1: kind of turning Krupp into one of the first like
Speaker 1: modern style businesses in the world. Like he inventced the pension,
Speaker 1: among other things. Um, yeah, he's a weird dude. Uh so. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Alfred was obsessive. He wrote his workers relentlessly to ensure
Speaker 1: the steel they produced was as close to perfect as possible.
Speaker 1: He toured with samples of his products all through central
Speaker 1: Germany and returned home after three months with pockets filled
Speaker 1: with orders. In his first sales trip abroad. Alfred had
Speaker 1: found his first true talent salesmanship. In eighteen thirty four,
Speaker 1: when the thirty six Germanic States of Europe established their
Speaker 1: first common market, which abolished all the internal tariffs. Alfred
Speaker 1: pompously sent the government a letter declaring that he would
Speaker 1: meet all the German Union steel needs on his own.
Speaker 1: This was a lie. He couldn't do anything near this,
Speaker 1: but as got it, got his name and people in
Speaker 1: government's ears, and that was his goal. So as Alfred
Speaker 1: developed new methods of making better and better steel, he
Speaker 1: grew equally paranoid about corporate espionage. He started requiring all
Speaker 1: of his employees to swear personal oaths of loyalty, and
Speaker 1: he started locking them into the works when they were
Speaker 1: doing their job. Um, he's again kind of a dick.
Speaker 1: That seems to be a theme. Is like paranoia with
Speaker 1: these types of people. Yeah, I mean, one could argue
Speaker 1: it's not doesn't make them bad at their jobs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. Uh So he hired a bunch more people.
Speaker 1: He brought in his close relatives to help him manage
Speaker 1: the growing plant, and in eighteen thirty eight he felt
Speaker 1: comfortable enough to leave on his first international sales trip
Speaker 1: to France and England. France had a lot of business
Speaker 1: to offer corrupt in most days, he returned to his
Speaker 1: hotel Triumphant with more steel orders to send back home,
Speaker 1: but on the rare occasions when he was turned down,
Speaker 1: Alfred collapsed entirely. At one point, he was bedridden for
Speaker 1: five days after a French company refused to buy his product. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's neurotic again. On the whole, the trip was a success,
Speaker 1: but when he left France for England, his goal was
Speaker 1: not to make more sales. Because English steel was still
Speaker 1: the best in the game. Alfred was kind of verging
Speaker 1: on cast steel but he wasn't as good or consistent
Speaker 1: as what the English could make. Um In England was
Speaker 1: the most industrialized nation in Europe at this point. Krupp
Speaker 1: had nothing that they wanted, so he couldn't sell anything
Speaker 1: to them. But he wasn't there to sell. He was
Speaker 1: there to engage in corporate espionage, and thankfully for the
Speaker 1: English steel industry, he was terrible at it. His first
Speaker 1: plan was to England, enter England on a fake passport
Speaker 1: with the name that he thought based on nothing nothing
Speaker 1: sounded English, uh Alfred Croup Crup instead of care upp like.
Speaker 1: He thought that that would make him pass. He bought
Speaker 1: a pair of spurs, which English gentleman wore in those days,
Speaker 1: and he teamed up with another Germanic merchant, with the
Speaker 1: idea of that that they would pretend to be British
Speaker 1: people looking to learn the secrets of fine steel production,
Speaker 1: have some sort of accent give him away. Well, the
Speaker 1: other thing that would give them the way is that
Speaker 1: neither of them spoke English. It wasn't even that they
Speaker 1: had an access They only spoke German. Alfred had memorized
Speaker 1: a couple of pleasantries from a phrase book, but he
Speaker 1: could not talk to people. Um. He had figured that
Speaker 1: the dozen words he knew and his fake name would
Speaker 1: let him pretend to be an Englishman who just spent
Speaker 1: time on the continent for a while, and it did
Speaker 1: not work. Everyone who met him immediately realized he was German,
Speaker 1: but they didn't care either, like they weren't scared that
Speaker 1: he would spy on them. Um. And he was so
Speaker 1: bad at espionage that some of the English steelmakers he
Speaker 1: met even figured out that he was Alfred Kruoke without
Speaker 1: saying him saying a word, and they still gave him
Speaker 1: tours of their factories because they're like, he's not going
Speaker 1: to figure it out by just walking around the factory floor,
Speaker 1: and he didn't. He was terrible at spying on people.
Speaker 1: He stayed there for five months and he learned nothing,
Speaker 1: and he also sold nothing. And it didn't matter anyway,
Speaker 1: because before much longer Krupp figured out how to make
Speaker 1: cast steal of their own, and once he was home,
Speaker 1: he set to work figuring out how to take advantage
Speaker 1: of the fact that now he made pretty much the
Speaker 1: best steal out side of England, and the obvious answer
Speaker 1: was the armaments industry. On his way home from England,
Speaker 1: Alfred had developed a dream of making a new steel cannon,
Speaker 1: and this was very controversial at the time. At this
Speaker 1: point in Europe, all cannons were bronze, and for complex
Speaker 1: metallurgical reasons. I don't understand bronze cannons. Number one, we're
Speaker 1: only really short range cannons. Like the big guns that
Speaker 1: you had in World War One that could bombard cities
Speaker 1: from miles away. You couldn't make those out of bronze.
Speaker 1: They had to be steel because they would explode under
Speaker 1: the pressures that those big guns did, and bronze cannons
Speaker 1: couldn't be breech loading cannons. This is an important but
Speaker 1: kind of like I don't know, nuanced gun different. So,
Speaker 1: barrel loading cannons work the way they sound, right. You
Speaker 1: you jam a bunch of powder into the barrel, then
Speaker 1: you shove a cannon ball in there, and you light
Speaker 1: it from behind and it shoots the cannon ball out right.
Speaker 1: That's the cannons you see in all the pirate movies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a breech loading cannon loads the way that like a
Speaker 1: double barreled shotgun does today, where you put the round
Speaker 1: in at the back of the gun. This has a
Speaker 1: bunch of advantages. It makes it fire a lot faster,
Speaker 1: allows for more advanced kind of gunnery. It allows for
Speaker 1: like shells that are instead of just like a cannon ball.
Speaker 1: It allows for explosive shells to be fired. It's kind
Speaker 1: of in order to have a modern artillery, you have
Speaker 1: to have a breech loading gun. Um. People have been
Speaker 1: dreaming about them for a while. Leonardo da Vinci had
Speaker 1: sketched breech loading guns and they tried. People have tried
Speaker 1: to make them for centuries, but they'd always exploded and
Speaker 1: killed the people manning them. So folks have just figured
Speaker 1: it's impossible to date. Yeah, So Krupp has a dream
Speaker 1: that he can make this like a steel cannon that
Speaker 1: will allow him to do all this fun kind of
Speaker 1: canon stuff that he wants and envision your your future. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it makes sense that I'm going to get
Speaker 1: this gun, right. Yeah, I'm gonna make the best gun
Speaker 1: anybody's ever made so that Europeans can kill each other better.
Speaker 1: That that's that's this whole this guy's whole entire life. Um,
Speaker 1: And yeah it was. You couldn't really have like because
Speaker 1: brass cannons were the only le cannons that existed. You
Speaker 1: couldn't really have big guns even Napoleon. Like Napoleon was
Speaker 1: a famous artillery man, but his guns actually were pretty
Speaker 1: tiny compared to like what we now consider modern artillery.
Speaker 1: To beat well, they were big, they were big compared
Speaker 1: to him. Yeah, they were. That's that's very fun. Actually,
Speaker 1: you know, so much go Ahead tried to do in
Speaker 1: his masculinity. I mean, he had, he had reason to
Speaker 1: be he did. He did almost beat all of Europe
Speaker 1: and in several wars. Um, so you know what, you know,
Speaker 1: you know who didn't beat Europe in several wars? It's
Speaker 1: time for an ad break, and that's not really bad?
Speaker 1: Are we not sponsored by the brun Napoleon? No? No, no,
Speaker 1: he is not sponsoring this episode, unfortunately, with us unfortunate,
Speaker 1: I have geared this entire episode to winning the Bruce favor. Um. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess we'll try to get Czarist Russia as a sponsor.
Speaker 1: Until then, here's some ads. We're back, and I'm being
Speaker 1: informed that some tragedy seems to have befallen the Romanov dynasty.
Speaker 1: So I don't think we're going to be getting a
Speaker 1: sponsorship from the Czar either. And that that is a
Speaker 1: real bummer. I'm hearing good things about this Linen character, though,
Speaker 1: so we might be able to I think he might
Speaker 1: like adds a lot. It seems like a real products
Speaker 1: and services kind of do. We'll figure it out. So,
Speaker 1: uh yeah, bronze cannons are kind of the standard in
Speaker 1: Europe at the time. And this dream of like the
Speaker 1: fact that uh that Alfred Kripp wants to make steel
Speaker 1: guns is not just like it's it's not just seen
Speaker 1: as like it's not seen as like a revolutionary thing.
Speaker 1: It's seen as madness because people had tried to make
Speaker 1: steel cannons and wrought iron cannons and they've always been disasters.
Speaker 1: And in fact, in eighteen four for the United States
Speaker 1: had built a twelve inch wrought iron smooth bore canon
Speaker 1: for the USS Princeton Um and on the ship's Gala voyage,
Speaker 1: they tried to fire it and it exploded, killing the
Speaker 1: Secretary of the State and Secretary of Navy. UM. So
Speaker 1: people aren't just like this won't work. People are like,
Speaker 1: it's reckless to even try to make these guns, you
Speaker 1: fucking idiot. Um. And another reason why people are obsessed
Speaker 1: with bronze cannon at the time is that Napoleon had
Speaker 1: been beaten by Wellington with bronze cannons, right like Wellington
Speaker 1: like bronze guns had beaten Napoleon forty something years ago,
Speaker 1: and people are like, why would we need to change
Speaker 1: It was good enough to fight Napoleon, It's good enough
Speaker 1: for anything we could possibly use it as. And it's
Speaker 1: kind of worth noting here that at this point, you know,
Speaker 1: it's been decades since Napoleon's defeat, like more than a generation,
Speaker 1: and artillery had not changed at all. Like if you
Speaker 1: could imagine if we were still using the exact same
Speaker 1: weaponry that like we'd used in Vietnam or Korea. Um, Like,
Speaker 1: that's kind of the situation Europe is in in in
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty, um, because things just didn't advances quickly back then. Um.
Speaker 1: So it's it's it's seen as kind of odd. In
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty Krupp and his workers put together a three
Speaker 1: pound cannon for an exhibition in London. And these exhibitions
Speaker 1: were like the arms trade shows of the day. There
Speaker 1: were places where all of the rich industrialists and scientists
Speaker 1: would come and bring all of their latest innovations and
Speaker 1: achievements and stuff. This is like the birth of the
Speaker 1: This is the industrial revolution, the birth of the steel age.
Speaker 1: So people are figuring out new ship every year, and
Speaker 1: like every year so they'll gather in a new city
Speaker 1: to show off the cool ship that they've invented. And
Speaker 1: most of it's like like a violent science fair. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not all guns. A lot of it is like agriculte.
Speaker 1: People are showing off plows and ship, but the guns,
Speaker 1: like in CREP is kind of the first person to
Speaker 1: realize that, like, well, most of the products there are
Speaker 1: like tractors and plows and light bulbs, the thing that
Speaker 1: people asking that feeds people. Yeah, it guns are what
Speaker 1: people care about. Journalists don't write about the boring ship,
Speaker 1: they write about the guns. Everybody thinks the guns are neat.
Speaker 1: So he built this cannon a little bit earlier, this
Speaker 1: first steel cannon, and nobody wanted to buy it. But
Speaker 1: he figured, like, maybe if I take it to this exhibition,
Speaker 1: because people just fucking love weapons, that will build up
Speaker 1: enough buzz that ILL can start selling some of this ship. Now,
Speaker 1: he brought more than just a cannon to show off
Speaker 1: his company's new capabilities. He's had his workers slathered together
Speaker 1: what has been the largest bar of cast steel ever produced.
Speaker 1: It weighed thousands and thousands of pounds. Um. And yeah,
Speaker 1: so he just like he brought this giant lump of
Speaker 1: metal and a cannon to this show. Um, and his
Speaker 1: enormous steel ingod actually won the expedition because that was
Speaker 1: like for years in the eighteen fifties, every one of
Speaker 1: these exhibitions, the product that would win would be like
Speaker 1: an increasingly large lumps of metal because people are just
Speaker 1: look at how much metal I can make? Now I
Speaker 1: can make more metal. And most of this is because
Speaker 1: like railroads the big thing at the time, right, So
Speaker 1: by making like, by making like a ten thousand pound
Speaker 1: piece of steel, you're saying like I could make a
Speaker 1: fucking railroad for your ass. Real goddamn quick, that's the
Speaker 1: whole that's the whole deal, you know. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: weird time. Um. So he wins the exhibition because of
Speaker 1: his steel ingod, and the judges completely ignore his steel cannon,
Speaker 1: and Alfred was frustrated at first because again his cannon
Speaker 1: had been ignored by all the people he'd wanted to
Speaker 1: buy it too. But journalists were drawn to the gun
Speaker 1: and At first, the press piled on about what a
Speaker 1: bad idea a steel cannon would be, the Observer's The
Speaker 1: London Observer wrote, the brittleness of steel is so great
Speaker 1: that we doubt whether it would resist any successive charges
Speaker 1: of powder. But pressed within the London News and the
Speaker 1: Daily News had to admit that the cannon was almost
Speaker 1: hypnotizing lee beautiful. One reporter regretted that Krupp hadn't shown
Speaker 1: devices for quote, grinding corn, or surgical instruments or something
Speaker 1: more appropriate to this peaceful age and to the exhibition
Speaker 1: than a modern field piece. I mean, did he test
Speaker 1: it out? Yeah, yeah, yeah, they fired it and stuff.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah yeah. I mean like people just kind of
Speaker 1: doubted that it would continue working and stuff. But like
Speaker 1: again he most of them like came around because they
Speaker 1: just thought it was so beautiful. And there's this one
Speaker 1: British journalists who writes that, like it's kind of fucked
Speaker 1: up that we're trying to do the show about like
Speaker 1: the advance of technology, and like you don't come here
Speaker 1: with like new farming implements or new surgical tools, but
Speaker 1: you bring like a giant gun. Um. But that guy
Speaker 1: was actually kind of the one who misjudged what people
Speaker 1: wanted at the time because the United States section of
Speaker 1: the fair to show you how different things were the US,
Speaker 1: all we brought was a massive plow. No, we brought
Speaker 1: like farming equipment, Yeah, farming equipment, a bunch of paintings
Speaker 1: of farms and ship. Uh. And everyone ignored it. Everyone
Speaker 1: ignored it in favor of the big german gun. Um.
Speaker 1: And that taught Alfred a lesson, which is that people
Speaker 1: only let people don't give a ship if you make
Speaker 1: stuff that will improve their lives. They like killing machines.
Speaker 1: Yeah it's good, it's good. Yeah, it's absolutely Um. I
Speaker 1: don't buy a bunch of old cannons, you know, or
Speaker 1: a bunch of old I don't buy a bunch of
Speaker 1: old farming implements. I buy antique German handguns. It's weird,
Speaker 1: that's what people do. Huh. If I could afford it, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're beautiful and fucking plows are lame. You want to eat? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I got put a plow in my apartment. And talking
Speaker 1: about so, Alfred Krupp was the only man at the
Speaker 1: time who really like realized this that like that you
Speaker 1: could basically at this point in time, weapons technology was
Speaker 1: entirely driven by militaries, and like there were there were
Speaker 1: outside firms who would make weaponry for them, but it
Speaker 1: was basically like, hey, we need this kind of gun,
Speaker 1: and they'd figured out how to they try to figure
Speaker 1: out how to make it. Alfred was the first person
Speaker 1: to be like, I'm going to make something they don't
Speaker 1: want and I'm going to force them to want it.
Speaker 1: That was new and he was the first guy to
Speaker 1: figure this out. Okay, okay, it was slow going at first.
Speaker 1: Generals and admirals and secretaries of war are inherently conservative men,
Speaker 1: and changed frightened them. They wanted to stick with what
Speaker 1: had worked before, and brass cannons had worked before. It
Speaker 1: was almost impossible to get a new weapons system going.
Speaker 1: But journalists love new shiny things and they love weapons,
Speaker 1: and so to their readers. And basically, Krupp figured out
Speaker 1: that he could stoke in nations demand for guns by
Speaker 1: playing to the fact that people are drawn to guns
Speaker 1: kind of inherently, and he took a lot of advantage
Speaker 1: of that. Um, people suck. Yeah, they're not great. It's
Speaker 1: kind of a bummer, but it works very well for him. Um.
Speaker 1: Although it is a bit of a slow burn. So
Speaker 1: at the time, advertising was not really a thing that
Speaker 1: existed in its modern concept, Like there were ads, but
Speaker 1: like the ad industry did not exist. Um and so yeah,
Speaker 1: Krrupt like knew that these exhibitions, like even if no
Speaker 1: one bought his product bringing it there could still be
Speaker 1: a success because it would generate interest and that would
Speaker 1: generate buzz and that would eventually lead the sales. Now,
Speaker 1: by this point in the eighteen fifties, Crupt became a
Speaker 1: had become a fairly large and successful steel company. He
Speaker 1: had thousands of employees by this point, and what they
Speaker 1: made their money on was making cast steele axles and
Speaker 1: springs for trains and and train tires like what are
Speaker 1: called train tires, which is basically like like the roly
Speaker 1: wheels on trains. Like he could make very like the
Speaker 1: best steel to make trains possible. All of the early
Speaker 1: train tracks in the United States are made with crub steel. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like that's that's how he gets rich. Like they're not
Speaker 1: making any money off of guns at this point. They're
Speaker 1: making guns, but nobody's fucking buying them. Like governments want
Speaker 1: trains and ship and that's what they're making their profit
Speaker 1: off of UM, and so Alfred's commitment to weaponry was
Speaker 1: was kind of weird. UM and his new like he
Speaker 1: gets increasingly upset obsessed with it, and for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: his kind of growing obsession with guns comes at the
Speaker 1: same time that his mom dies and he finds himself single.
Speaker 1: See now it's sounding very like edible something some falon like,
Speaker 1: you know, some penis thing going on. I don't know,
Speaker 1: because he's a weird guy. When it comes to his
Speaker 1: relationships with women, you could desperately. Yeah, that's that's why
Speaker 1: easy to come on. His money is basically his wife.
Speaker 1: Not that he like had sex with her or anything,
Speaker 1: but his mom cooked his food and kept his house
Speaker 1: clean and made his bed, and he had no desire
Speaker 1: for a wife while he had his mom because he
Speaker 1: wanted he wanted a mommy wife like that was his
Speaker 1: His His priority was having a coming another. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been wild about it. He met the love
Speaker 1: of his life after writing into town from a long
Speaker 1: work trip and spotting her in the audience at a play.
Speaker 1: Her name was Bertha, and she was less than half
Speaker 1: his age and not at all interested in him, But
Speaker 1: he was in love with her and he was rich,
Speaker 1: and that was all that mattered to the people who
Speaker 1: got to make decisions on whether or not Bertha got married.
Speaker 1: She could barely stand Alfred, and it's kind of hard
Speaker 1: to blame her. The man was frightened to stand near
Speaker 1: his own breath, and he loved the smell of hoorship.
Speaker 1: It was kind of a hard sell falling in love
Speaker 1: with Alfred krupp. Uh. His opening quick up, Yeah, definitely quirky.
Speaker 1: His opening pickup line to her was where I supposed
Speaker 1: I had nothing but a piece of cast steel, I
Speaker 1: had a heart, which I guess is kind of sweet. Huh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not a terrible opening line for the age. Wouldn't
Speaker 1: get me going, but no, but like you know, it
Speaker 1: was a different time. Yeah, I mean it, and it
Speaker 1: didn't work on her, to be fair, Ye's probably what
Speaker 1: he followed that up with. Yeah. Yeah. Now. William Manchester
Speaker 1: notes quote, given Alfred's temperament, domestic happiness was impossible. No
Speaker 1: one could live with such a man. He could barely
Speaker 1: stand himself. The match was doomed, and all that remained
Speaker 1: was to define the exact nature of the distress. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not a good relationship, but oddly enough, Bertha was
Speaker 1: the cold one in the couple. Whatever else you can
Speaker 1: say about Alfred, he was absolutely in love with his wife,
Speaker 1: and he would spend his life obsessed with Bertha. Now,
Speaker 1: it was a love that knew nothing about her and
Speaker 1: like was absolutely uninterested in actually understanding her needs in
Speaker 1: order to please her, because again, he was kind of
Speaker 1: incapable of understanding other people in any way, shape or form.
Speaker 1: But he was madly in love with her, and she
Speaker 1: kind of despised him. It's a bummer. Huh. That sounds
Speaker 1: like the perfect relationship to me. Yeah, that's like the
Speaker 1: kind of guy I'm looking for. Yes, I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't think that you are. I don't think anybody wants
Speaker 1: to be with Alfred grow not specifically, but so in
Speaker 1: order to woo her after getting married, he constructed a
Speaker 1: massive and completely insane house for her, the Garden House,
Speaker 1: which was a gigantic, mostly glass building that incorporated incorporated
Speaker 1: a number of greenhouses into it, which were meant to
Speaker 1: grow beautiful hot house flowers. It also held habitats for peacocks,
Speaker 1: grape vines, pineapple groves, all on this giant glass castle
Speaker 1: in the middle of Essen, which doesn't sound terrible. So far,
Speaker 1: that sounds lovely, um, but there were some weird aspects
Speaker 1: of it. Well worse than that, actually, because he built
Speaker 1: the garden house directly in the center of his giant
Speaker 1: steel factory, and if you've never been in a steel smelter,
Speaker 1: they put out an enormous amount sutain pollution, and as
Speaker 1: a result, within months, every window of the garden house
Speaker 1: was permanently stained brown and caked in filth. All of
Speaker 1: the plants died. I have to assume the peacocks did too.
Speaker 1: He had basically moved his wife to a glass mansion
Speaker 1: in the middle of a smokestack god ideot, and to
Speaker 1: make matters worse, the house had one other feature I
Speaker 1: haven't mentioned yet. There was a glass crow's nest peeking
Speaker 1: out of the top of the roof, so that Alfred
Speaker 1: could spy on his workers at all times. So it
Speaker 1: was kind of a nightmare. In other words, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: quote from the Arms of Crook here. Alfred was installing
Speaker 1: heavier and heavier machinery, and the grunt of his steam
Speaker 1: hammers rocked the foundations of his home. Bertha couldn't keep
Speaker 1: glasses on her sideboard if she put them out after breakfast,
Speaker 1: all would be cracked by lunch. Alfred didn't seem to mind.
Speaker 1: He was proud of the house and who his wife's annoyance.
Speaker 1: He became a homebody. When she complained about the dishes,
Speaker 1: an admiring friend jotted down her husband's reply, it's only
Speaker 1: a few porcelain plates. I'll make the customers pay for them.
Speaker 1: And when she countered with a plea that he take
Speaker 1: away for just one evening to a concert, he answered sharply, sorry,
Speaker 1: it's impossible. I must see that my smokestacks continue to smoke,
Speaker 1: and when I hear my forge tomorrow, that will be
Speaker 1: music more exquisite than the playing of all the world's fiddles.
Speaker 1: So terrible man to be married to. Yeah, it is
Speaker 1: probably not surprising that Bertha left him as soon as
Speaker 1: she possibly could. And obviously she couldn't leave him, leave
Speaker 1: him like there was no getting divorced as the wife
Speaker 1: of a rich woman in the eighteen fifties in the
Speaker 1: center of Europe. But she claimed to be sick with exhaustion,
Speaker 1: and maybe she might have been a hypochondric, but basically
Speaker 1: she she played well enough at being ill um or
Speaker 1: she actually got ill because they did live in a
Speaker 1: poison box in the middle of a factory that Alfred
Speaker 1: just kind of would spend send her off to different
Speaker 1: spas and health cares and stuff in various fancy towns.
Speaker 1: Like that's what you did if you were rich and sick,
Speaker 1: you would go off to some spa to get to heal. Um,
Speaker 1: so he sends her. Yeah, it's not wildly different. They
Speaker 1: get a private island just to unwind. Yeah, and that's
Speaker 1: basically what Bertha spends the rest of her life doing. Um.
Speaker 1: She's almost never home, only did for like appearance's sake.
Speaker 1: Every now and then Alfred would visit her, but it's
Speaker 1: incredibly awkward and she clearly doesn't want him there. Um,
Speaker 1: And I mean fair enough horseshit. Yeah, it's not unfair
Speaker 1: on her part, but it is very sad because Alfred
Speaker 1: never stopped being in love with her. He wrote her
Speaker 1: constantly laying out every detail of his life in business
Speaker 1: and agonizing, like granular detail, which is why we know
Speaker 1: so much about him everything everything. Question, do we know
Speaker 1: what she did? She smell like horseship? Like what's my
Speaker 1: what's the Like? No, I don't think so, would you
Speaker 1: mean like, oh, I got you a new candle, and
Speaker 1: it would just be like a horse can. He just
Speaker 1: liked having horses all around wherever he lived, so that
Speaker 1: they would ship around where he lived and it would
Speaker 1: smell like horseship because that was his favorite thing. It's
Speaker 1: very strange you're saying things, but I'm still stuck on
Speaker 1: the horse ship. It's it's kind of impossible not to
Speaker 1: think about because I've never heard of any one having
Speaker 1: that particular I mean, it seems like a kink at
Speaker 1: this point, right, it's got to be like his biographer
Speaker 1: even described it as a fetishistic devotion to poop, like
Speaker 1: it's very weird. Um now, uh So, Alfred again wrote
Speaker 1: out every detail of his life to his wife, and
Speaker 1: these this constant stream of letters, and Bertha clearly did
Speaker 1: not care and barely responded. She would occasionally justify her
Speaker 1: lack of response by saying she was too exhausted by
Speaker 1: her illness to write. Alfred solved this problem for her
Speaker 1: by providing her with a series of form letters that
Speaker 1: she could just fill in the blanks on in order
Speaker 1: to respond to him. And we have these form letters
Speaker 1: and they are the cringeest documents I've ever read in
Speaker 1: my entire life. Oh my god. Yeah, here's one of
Speaker 1: the form letters that he gave his wife. I received
Speaker 1: your note of blank and note they're from with parentheses
Speaker 1: pleasure dash sorrow, and she could just kind of check
Speaker 1: whichever one she was feeling that things are going not well.
Speaker 1: As for myself, I am very well, thank goodness, and
Speaker 1: yet certainly uh and certainly not yet plump and fat,
Speaker 1: but hope this will remain so soon Like these are
Speaker 1: all like different fill in blanks and stuff, and then
Speaker 1: it continues for like, since my last letter, I've been
Speaker 1: for a drive regularly every day through the delightful Tier
Speaker 1: Garden and go twice a day for one hour walking
Speaker 1: there in the most charmful company, which a king would
Speaker 1: give millions to see. And again, this was not what
Speaker 1: she had actually done. This is what Alfred had written
Speaker 1: out for her to send back to him, because this
Speaker 1: is what he assumed she was doing every day. He
Speaker 1: was kind of trying to direct her life by having
Speaker 1: this letter and the hope that she would do exactly
Speaker 1: what he'd written in the letter if she was going
Speaker 1: to be sending the letter back to him. It's very straight,
Speaker 1: it's very strange. Yeah. The letter ended with I am
Speaker 1: longing to be back with my dear husband and hope
Speaker 1: above all else that he will be pleased with me. That. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he wrote that for her, and then he ended it
Speaker 1: with only do not write me too often. That embarrasses
Speaker 1: me because I cannot reply yours has ever birtha That
Speaker 1: is one of the saddest things I've ever read, old man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's pathetic. It's really a bummer, Robert. You know what
Speaker 1: isn't one of the saddest things you've ever read? The
Speaker 1: products and services that support this podcast. Yes, yeah, they
Speaker 1: are fully devoted to their husbands, which happened also to
Speaker 1: be Alfred Krupp. But thankfully he's been dead for decades,
Speaker 1: so more than a century. Really products, all right, we're back, Okay.
Speaker 1: So Alfred's cannon business at this point was going no
Speaker 1: better than his marriage. By eighteen fifty two, he still
Speaker 1: had not received a single contract for his new artillery,
Speaker 1: and so Alfred experimented with another revolutionary advertising tactic, the
Speaker 1: freeze sample, better known for little plastic cups of snacks
Speaker 1: at Sam's Club and we little coffee cups a trader
Speaker 1: Joe's crupt did the same thing with field cannons. He
Speaker 1: sent the whole cannon for free to the King of
Speaker 1: Prussia because he couldn't sell it, and he also had
Speaker 1: another one made and sent off to Czar Alexander of Russia. Well,
Speaker 1: the King of Prussia couldn't have cared less. The Czar
Speaker 1: immediately se to testing the cannon, firing thousands of shots
Speaker 1: through it and then example examining the barrel for imperfections.
Speaker 1: When he saw it was untouched, the Tsar declared the
Speaker 1: cannon a freak of nature and ordered his men to
Speaker 1: preserve it in the National Artillery Museum rather than ordering
Speaker 1: more or something. Which is a bit of a bummer.
Speaker 1: So like he can't catch your break and selling people
Speaker 1: killing machines, which really fucks up. Um, starting to feel
Speaker 1: bad for this guy. Am I supposed to hate him? Yeah, eventually,
Speaker 1: but he is a sad character. Yeah. So there was
Speaker 1: clearly no money in guns, but Alfred couldn't stop making guns.
Speaker 1: He and his team designed and built a new twelve
Speaker 1: pound cannon, and they brought three of these. And when
Speaker 1: I say a twelve pound cannon, that's the size of
Speaker 1: the weapon at fire of the ball that it fires
Speaker 1: is twelve pounds, like the gun is hundreds and hundreds
Speaker 1: of pounds um. So they brought three of these gargantuan
Speaker 1: weapons to Paris for eighteen fifty five for the Universal Exposition,
Speaker 1: which is another one of these big technology expositions. And
Speaker 1: again at this point Krup had made a grand total
Speaker 1: of zero dollars on cannons. The company made its money
Speaker 1: by this point selling revolutionary railway tires for which Krup
Speaker 1: had a patent, and by making machine tools. Krup brought
Speaker 1: another gigantic steel ingot to this exhibition two, and this
Speaker 1: one was so large that it collapsed the floor it
Speaker 1: was standing on and nearly killed all the judges because
Speaker 1: it's like tens of thousands of pounds. And he won again,
Speaker 1: of course his tet one again. Yeah, yeah, well I
Speaker 1: almost killed everybody, like that's got like clearly this is
Speaker 1: the best piece of metal. It nearly killed us all.
Speaker 1: Yet oddly enough, they're not at all interested in the
Speaker 1: killing machines that he makes. But of course, as usual,
Speaker 1: the press and the actual people who attend the show
Speaker 1: are fascinated by his guns, and Alfred had divined devised
Speaker 1: like a beautiful way to show them off. A special
Speaker 1: display with three steel cannons and six polished steel breastplates.
Speaker 1: It was the talk of the exhibition, but after six
Speaker 1: months on display only one order came through, twenty six
Speaker 1: steel cannons for said Pasha, the Wally of Egypt. And
Speaker 1: this is what I was talking about at the beginning.
Speaker 1: This is the start of the Germans selling arms to Egypt,
Speaker 1: and it continues in twenty Egypt imports more German guns
Speaker 1: than any other country. So the starts under Alfred Rupp
Speaker 1: and it has not ended since. But selling a few, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's weird, how how and it's the same company.
Speaker 1: It's Krupp in the modern era selling them submarines. It's
Speaker 1: crupt selling them cannons in the eighteen fifty two. Uh yeah, yeah, interesting.
Speaker 1: But selling a few guns to Egypt was not enough
Speaker 1: to make a meaningful amount of money for a company
Speaker 1: the size of CRP. As the eighteen fifties drew to
Speaker 1: a close, Alfred was still subsidizing his canon habit by
Speaker 1: selling train parts. He nearly sold an order of three
Speaker 1: hundred twelve pound guns to the Emperor Napoleon the Third,
Speaker 1: but the deal fell through because a French family, the
Speaker 1: Schneider's had just started a new gun works at the Crusoe.
Speaker 1: They lobbied the king to not buy German guns, and
Speaker 1: the first salvo would would become an incredibly competitive international
Speaker 1: arms market. So yeah, the three big gun companies in
Speaker 1: World War One and World War Two are Krupp, Schneider, Crusoe,
Speaker 1: and UM Armstrong, which becomes Vickers. And like that's all cut.
Speaker 1: Like Krupp is the first of them, Schneider forms next,
Speaker 1: and we're about to get to Armstrong. But like, these
Speaker 1: are the companies whose arms race is why we have
Speaker 1: World War One, because they're all selling guns to each other.
Speaker 1: And like, the thing that makes World War One happen
Speaker 1: more than almost anything else is there's a provocation. You know,
Speaker 1: the archstud gets shot, but that stuff like that had
Speaker 1: happened before. The reason that they actually wound up fighting
Speaker 1: is that there was this interlocking series of rearming schedules
Speaker 1: and everyone was convinced that they were in the best
Speaker 1: position as opposed to their rivals, and then if they
Speaker 1: waited to have a war in another couple of years,
Speaker 1: their rivals would have better guns. So that's like why
Speaker 1: the fucking war happens. And this is this is the
Speaker 1: start of that process. So Krup's first major international success
Speaker 1: came courtesy of Russia. After years of admiring Krup's cannon
Speaker 1: in his museum, the z Are finally started buying crupt
Speaker 1: guns in bulk. They started buying thousands of these weapons.
Speaker 1: And this sets international arms dealers of fire trying to
Speaker 1: crop copy Krup steel cannons. And it sets there the
Speaker 1: governments of these countries equally on edge out of fear
Speaker 1: of falling behind. Alfred designs a breach loading cannon in
Speaker 1: the late eighteen fifties, and when he tries to sell
Speaker 1: it to the English because his own company didn't want it,
Speaker 1: another firm called Armstrong edges him out and promises the
Speaker 1: Crown they can make the same gun, but better in English.
Speaker 1: And this was this is really the start the first
Speaker 1: arms race. Is this like like Alfred starts selling guns
Speaker 1: to the Russians. That freaks out the English and the French.
Speaker 1: He's trying to sell guns to those governments, but they
Speaker 1: build up their own firms and they all start competing
Speaker 1: as to who can get the best guns fastest. That
Speaker 1: starts now, um, yeah, from the arms of quote, the
Speaker 1: arrival of Armstrong completed Europe's deadly triumphranate krupt, Schneider and
Speaker 1: Armstrong over the next eighty years, were to be celebrated
Speaker 1: first as shields of national honor and later, after their
Speaker 1: slaughtering machines were hopelessly out of control, as merchants of death.
Speaker 1: So that's pretty cool. But yeah, that's good stuff. And
Speaker 1: it all comes from this guy who just like is
Speaker 1: obsessed with making cannons and wants people to like his cannons,
Speaker 1: and it it leads to the killing fields of World
Speaker 1: War One. It's pretty sweet. It's like a real admirable,
Speaker 1: Like I could see me in like a classic American movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah he is. He's this bootstraps figure, you know, his
Speaker 1: dad leaves him in debt and like nobody takes him seriously.
Speaker 1: Everybody laughs at his guns, and then his guns wind
Speaker 1: up killing people. Yeah, and it's funny. In World War One,
Speaker 1: a bunch of the shells that the British were firing
Speaker 1: at Germans and killing German boys with um had Krupp
Speaker 1: markings on them because they Krupp had the patent on
Speaker 1: the type of explosive shell that was most common in
Speaker 1: World War One. So all of the foreign countries who
Speaker 1: were using like shells with Crupp patented like explosives in
Speaker 1: order to kill German kids. Those shells had Krupp written
Speaker 1: on them because that was part of the legal contract
Speaker 1: they signed. Damn, isn't that fucking cool? I don't know
Speaker 1: if that's the word i'd use, but I think it's
Speaker 1: fucking sweet. I think it's awesome. I think that's that's
Speaker 1: just great because again, you know, people talk about the
Speaker 1: deep state, this is an actual example of that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. You've got, you know, these different governments. You've
Speaker 1: got the French king in the war that we're about
Speaker 1: to talk about, You've got the Republic of France and
Speaker 1: World War One. You've got you know, the Great Britain,
Speaker 1: and you've got you know, the fucking the Imperial Germany
Speaker 1: and the Nazi Germany. But behind it all are the
Speaker 1: same arms companies run by the same families that are
Speaker 1: to this day, in a lot of cases still selling
Speaker 1: guns to people. Jesus, it's awesome. It fucking rules. It's
Speaker 1: so good. Again, not the word I would use for
Speaker 1: but yeah. By eighteen sixty two, Krupp was at kind
Speaker 1: of almost the apex of his power, his dominance of
Speaker 1: London's eighteen sixty two Grand Exhibition was absolute. Past fairs
Speaker 1: had taught him that the mob doated on weapons, and
Speaker 1: he played to the gallery. An artist from the Illustrated
Speaker 1: London News sketched a group of objects exhibited by Mr
Speaker 1: Krupp of Essen, Prussia, and the sketch bristles with objects
Speaker 1: of murder. One journalist did find a pair of Royal
Speaker 1: road wheels, which have been run nearly seventy four thousand
Speaker 1: miles without having been again put into the lathe. But
Speaker 1: he was a digger and exception. His colleagues eyes were
Speaker 1: riveted on Alfred's artillery, and their speeches and their cheers
Speaker 1: were strident. The Morning Post, the Daily News, the News
Speaker 1: of the world were enthralled. The Spectator rapturously told of
Speaker 1: ladies standing in mute delight, and men dreaming of the
Speaker 1: battle music of the future. Even the Times saluted the
Speaker 1: almost military discipline which prevails in krupt steelworks at essence,
Speaker 1: and concluded, we congratulate Krupp on the pre eminent position
Speaker 1: which he occupies. And just like, oh man, I can't
Speaker 1: wait for this to kill me. They didn't you know,
Speaker 1: it's weird that they didn't. Really a lot of them
Speaker 1: didn't seem to be thinking about the fact that, like
Speaker 1: their grandchildren would be murdered by the tens of thousands
Speaker 1: by the descendants of these machines. And it does say
Speaker 1: a lot about human nature that like corrupt also invents
Speaker 1: railroad wheels which can go for tens of thousands of
Speaker 1: miles without having to be repaired, Like a revolutionary development
Speaker 1: that makes international trade possible, That makes it that criss
Speaker 1: crosses continents, that like makes so many wonderful things possible. Um,
Speaker 1: but nobody cares about that because Krupp brought guns and
Speaker 1: like all these women are just like it doesn't go boom, yeah,
Speaker 1: men dreaming of the battle music of the future, which
Speaker 1: is actually the death sounds of their grandchildren. Like there
Speaker 1: were babies born during this that would diet to the
Speaker 1: descendants of these guns. It's awesome. It says so many
Speaker 1: good things about people. Soon Krupp was selling arms all
Speaker 1: around the world. Prussia started buying his guns. Finally, after
Speaker 1: he gave some to uh, so he gave it, like
Speaker 1: he couldn't sell a big cannon he brought to this exhibition,
Speaker 1: so he gives it to the King of Prussia, and
Speaker 1: that convinces the King of Prussia to buy his guns again.
Speaker 1: It's a good tactic. Um Austria puts and orders his
Speaker 1: guns Russia, but brings buys more steel cannons, which inspires
Speaker 1: Turkey to start buying steel cannons. It had taken over
Speaker 1: a decade, but through a mix of savvy advertising and
Speaker 1: ingenious design, Alfred Krupp had succeeded in creating demand for
Speaker 1: his inventions. A local Berlin newspaper reported on one particularly
Speaker 1: large cannon deal with Russia by giving Alfred the nickname
Speaker 1: by which you would come to be known in history,
Speaker 1: the canon King. Wow. I mean I call him the
Speaker 1: horseship King. He loves himself some horseship he does, he does.
Speaker 1: So that's in the end of part one. How you feeling, Allison,
Speaker 1: I mean ship, I'm not. I can't get over at
Speaker 1: you guys. I don't know if I can be on
Speaker 1: part two. Yeah, it's very strange. There's more good horseship
Speaker 1: stuff in part two. Yeah, no, no, no, no, lots
Speaker 1: more horseship to come. So how we how we doing?
Speaker 1: How we feeling Allison? Fine? Good? Good? Yeah? Are you
Speaker 1: feeling optimistic about human nature. Uh, you know no, but
Speaker 1: I think that's the point, right, Yeah, it's so you're
Speaker 1: supposed to feel bad. I'm gonna go feel bad about
Speaker 1: the nature of humanity while I cradle uh my nineteen
Speaker 1: tin mouser um and enjoy you know the same thing
Speaker 1: that all of those people in eighteen sixty two. Can
Speaker 1: I have a cannon for for for for for a present, please,
Speaker 1: I will do my very best to find you a cannon.
Speaker 1: So not one of those shitty brass ones. I YEA
Speaker 1: with a good ship guys, the non worship version. Fucking
Speaker 1: crups stall baby, Alison, Do you have any plugs to
Speaker 1: plug by the way, I have my the daunible original
Speaker 1: Like Mother, Like Like Mother. It is nothing like what
Speaker 1: we've been talking about. It is a mother daughter comedy
Speaker 1: starring Ye and Susie Sman and we just argue a
Speaker 1: lot and it's very Jewish and fun. So yeah, if
Speaker 1: you yeah, check that out. No horship involved, There is
Speaker 1: no guarantee. Wait now, I'm Mike, wait is there Yeah,
Speaker 1: no horseship, but tune in for part two of this episode,
Speaker 1: in which there will be a tremendous amount of horseship.
Speaker 1: So strap in, buckle up, and prepare for the manure
Speaker 1: filled conclusion of the life of Alfred Krupp on Thursday.
Speaker 1: Yeah h