WEBVTT - Part One: The Man Who Invented The Military-Industrial Complex 0:00:03.000 --> 0:00:08.240 It's uh, it's this What's happening now? Is the podcast 0:00:08.360 --> 0:00:12.280 that this is? I'm Robert Evans. Another introduction in the bag? 0:00:12.440 --> 0:00:14.800 How do we do? Sophie? Are we? Are? We? Are 0:00:14.840 --> 0:00:17.680 we solid? Is that one gonna three? Out of time? 0:00:18.280 --> 0:00:21.480 Are we gonna win? A potty? I wish that's what 0:00:21.520 --> 0:00:25.400 it was called. Yeah, that's the Imaginary Podcast award I invented. 0:00:25.680 --> 0:00:28.720 I'm Robert Evans. This is Behind the Bastards, a terrible 0:00:28.800 --> 0:00:35.479 podcast about terrible people. Um that's made incompetently by me. UM. 0:00:35.600 --> 0:00:38.519 I hope everybody's doing all right. Our guest today is 0:00:38.560 --> 0:00:42.720 Allison Stevenson. Allison is a writer, a comedian, and creator 0:00:42.760 --> 0:00:45.440 of the Audible original Like Mother. Alison. How are you 0:00:45.520 --> 0:00:49.320 doing today? I'm doing not so bad. Not so bad 0:00:49.640 --> 0:00:55.480 is excellent in it literally is as good as you 0:00:55.520 --> 0:00:59.760 can be doing. Yeah, Allison, how do you feel about Germans? 0:01:00.960 --> 0:01:05.959 You know not? Let's just say this. I am a Jew, 0:01:07.840 --> 0:01:09.240 so let me be more to the point. How do 0:01:09.280 --> 0:01:13.840 you feel about the existence of the German state? No? 0:01:14.120 --> 0:01:17.000 I mean, you know, I've been dying to go to Berlin. 0:01:17.640 --> 0:01:20.840 It's a great town. Great town, had some rough, rough 0:01:20.880 --> 0:01:26.120 patches a while ago. Um, some sort of wall or something. Yeah. Yeah, 0:01:26.319 --> 0:01:28.440 we're gonna be talking today about a lot of stuff. 0:01:28.480 --> 0:01:30.760 The guy that we're chatting about is a fellow named 0:01:30.800 --> 0:01:33.960 Alfred Krupp. Does the name Krupp mean anything to you, M, 0:01:35.560 --> 0:01:38.720 I don't know. I don't think so, does it? Yeah? 0:01:38.760 --> 0:01:42.440 Without Krupp, there's no Germany. Um, Like, no German state 0:01:42.480 --> 0:01:46.279 ever comes into existence without Alfred Krupp. UM. And also 0:01:46.480 --> 0:01:50.480 no World War One, and also probably no World War 0:01:50.520 --> 0:01:54.880 two h and also maybe no international arms trade today. 0:01:54.920 --> 0:01:58.480 He's that guy. He's that kind of dud um. Yeah, 0:01:58.480 --> 0:02:02.600 he's a he's a fascinating character. Um. And today we're 0:02:02.600 --> 0:02:04.600 going to chat about him. But we're gonna start by 0:02:04.680 --> 0:02:08.519 talking about something that happened on October first, two thousand seventeen, 0:02:09.280 --> 0:02:12.200 when a submarine built in Germany by the Tyson Krupp 0:02:12.280 --> 0:02:15.960 shipyard in Kiel, North Germany, set sail for Egypt. It 0:02:16.040 --> 0:02:18.639 was the fourth submarine the Egyptian government had ordered from 0:02:18.639 --> 0:02:20.840 Tyson Krupp since the start of the Arab Spring, and 0:02:20.880 --> 0:02:23.880 its total cost was one point four billion euros. On 0:02:23.919 --> 0:02:25.720 its way to Egypt, had stopped at the port city 0:02:25.720 --> 0:02:28.080 of Emden, where it met a French made Corvette class 0:02:28.120 --> 0:02:31.240 attack ship, which was also built for the Egyptian Navy. Now, 0:02:31.240 --> 0:02:33.440 the hundreds of millions of euros in profit that these 0:02:33.440 --> 0:02:36.240 boats represented came from the taxes in natural wealth that 0:02:36.360 --> 0:02:38.680 on paper ought to belong to the people of Egypt. 0:02:39.040 --> 0:02:41.240 But they don't because Egypt is owned by the dictator 0:02:41.280 --> 0:02:43.200 who took power there in two thousand and fourteen after 0:02:43.200 --> 0:02:47.080 a military coup, Abdul Fata Alcisi. During his six years 0:02:47.080 --> 0:02:49.360 in power, CC has brutally cracked down on free speech, 0:02:49.400 --> 0:02:54.000 fought an unsuccessful but horrifically bloody counterinsurgency against Islamic extremists, 0:02:54.120 --> 0:02:57.920 and repeatedly murdered moderate protesters. Under his reign, food prices 0:02:57.919 --> 0:03:00.840 have risen and poverty in Egypt has sword. Three percent 0:03:00.919 --> 0:03:04.760 of the country is now in poverty. UM. So things 0:03:04.760 --> 0:03:07.480 aren't going great in Egypt, and one factor is that 0:03:07.680 --> 0:03:10.840 the country is basically owned by the military, which is 0:03:11.000 --> 0:03:14.919 grafting tax money in order to buy weapons from Germany. UM. 0:03:15.000 --> 0:03:16.840 And of course, a significant amount of the money that's 0:03:16.840 --> 0:03:19.200 paid to Tyson Krupp winds up in the pockets of 0:03:19.560 --> 0:03:23.520 ALCSI and of his his his buddies, Because that's just 0:03:23.560 --> 0:03:27.680 the way that military appropriations work in the global south. Um. 0:03:27.880 --> 0:03:29.800 This is happening not just in Egypt but all over 0:03:29.840 --> 0:03:32.360 the world, but particularly in Egypt, because no country on 0:03:32.400 --> 0:03:35.960 Earth buys more German weapons than Egypt. Um. And this 0:03:36.040 --> 0:03:37.560 actually has been going on a lot longer than you 0:03:37.640 --> 0:03:40.840 might think. We'll talk about that a little bit later. Also, 0:03:40.920 --> 0:03:43.760 as a note, Tyson Krupp makes all of the elevators 0:03:43.800 --> 0:03:47.360 you've ever been in. Um. So, yeah, this is freaky. 0:03:47.520 --> 0:03:50.040 But like I was, for some reason, I was thinking 0:03:50.040 --> 0:03:55.840 about elevators, but I was thinking about Schindler. Yeah, I mean, 0:03:56.480 --> 0:03:59.760 it's it's, it's it's We won't be talking about it 0:04:00.080 --> 0:04:04.360 per much this episode, but Alfred Krupp's descendants absolutely, Uh, 0:04:04.480 --> 0:04:07.800 we're responsible for tens of thousands of slave laborers in 0:04:08.080 --> 0:04:11.400 concentration camps to make German submachine guns. They're cool dudes, 0:04:11.600 --> 0:04:16.360 the Krups. Um. Yeah no, this this family's this family's 0:04:16.400 --> 0:04:19.480 got some history to it. Um. And Yeah. So I 0:04:19.720 --> 0:04:22.320 started with that story because I think it illustrates kind 0:04:22.360 --> 0:04:26.640 of a weird continuity because the relationship between Germany and 0:04:26.720 --> 0:04:29.359 Egypt and the selling of weapons actually started in the 0:04:29.440 --> 0:04:33.000 eighteen hundreds, and it's continued without break ever since, through 0:04:33.040 --> 0:04:37.119 two world wars and like three or four different regimes. Um. 0:04:37.120 --> 0:04:39.720 And it's kind of a mark of how even though 0:04:39.960 --> 0:04:42.480 you know you've got guys like the Kaiser, guys like Hitler, 0:04:42.520 --> 0:04:45.480 the leaders at the top change, the people actually making 0:04:45.480 --> 0:04:47.320 the weapons and in a lot of ways driving the 0:04:47.360 --> 0:04:51.719 conflicts don't change because, for one thing, the Krupp, who 0:04:51.760 --> 0:04:54.520 was in charge of German arms production during World War 0:04:54.560 --> 0:04:57.760 Two got arrested and sentenced at Nuremberg and did three 0:04:57.839 --> 0:05:00.200 years of a twelve year sentence and died the wealthyest 0:05:00.200 --> 0:05:02.360 man in Europe because the Allies needed him to make 0:05:02.400 --> 0:05:05.400 weapons for the Cold War. Um, these are the guys 0:05:05.600 --> 0:05:08.880 who are who never get punished. Like right, we we 0:05:09.240 --> 0:05:11.160 throw all the blame at the Hitler's and the Girbels 0:05:11.240 --> 0:05:13.800 and stuff, and like, obviously those guys are fucking monsters. 0:05:13.800 --> 0:05:16.200 But the dudes who made the weaponry that allowed them 0:05:16.240 --> 0:05:17.839 to do what they did, and the same thing with 0:05:17.880 --> 0:05:22.039 World War One, those guys never get punished because everyone 0:05:22.120 --> 0:05:24.200 wants them to make guns that they have a posse, 0:05:24.320 --> 0:05:26.159 and everybody wants what they have, which is the ability 0:05:26.160 --> 0:05:31.120 to make more fucking guns. It's good ship Yeah, it's great. Yeah, 0:05:31.120 --> 0:05:33.400 I was like, great that sounds That's exactly how I 0:05:33.520 --> 0:05:38.000 described that. Yeah, it fucking rules. So Alfred Krupp, it 0:05:38.040 --> 0:05:39.680 would be fair to call him like he's kind of 0:05:39.720 --> 0:05:41.960 like the real Tony Stark, right, if you want the 0:05:42.000 --> 0:05:45.000 actual guy like he's he's he's a brilliant engineer, inventor, 0:05:45.040 --> 0:05:49.320 innovator who sold weapons to everyone on the planet um 0:05:49.360 --> 0:05:51.320 and who had and who was like a visionary. He's 0:05:51.360 --> 0:05:53.560 not just a businessman. He's a guy who's able to 0:05:53.600 --> 0:05:57.040 like innovate killing machines and in fact, after a certain point, 0:05:57.120 --> 0:05:59.200 the only thing he was really capable of thinking about 0:05:59.240 --> 0:06:01.320 was how to build our guns to murder people with. 0:06:01.760 --> 0:06:05.320 Um That's basically all this man ever did. Yeah. Yeah, 0:06:05.360 --> 0:06:09.320 he's got some musky quality to him, although unlike Elon Musk, 0:06:09.360 --> 0:06:17.080 Alfred was talented. So yeah, um, before we talk about Alfred, 0:06:17.120 --> 0:06:18.719 we've got to learn a little bit about his family, 0:06:18.760 --> 0:06:21.360 because the Crups go back quite a bit in Germany. 0:06:21.480 --> 0:06:23.599 The first information we have on the family, the first 0:06:23.640 --> 0:06:26.640 Crup that we know about, was a fellow named Aren't Krupp, 0:06:26.640 --> 0:06:29.560 who moved to a city called Essen sometimes in the 0:06:29.640 --> 0:06:32.560 late fifteen hundreds now Essen is located in the Ruhr, 0:06:32.680 --> 0:06:34.919 which is a coal rich region that's the center of 0:06:34.960 --> 0:06:38.120 German industry. UM. But at the time it was a sleepy, 0:06:38.160 --> 0:06:40.440 small city and we know very little about aren't because 0:06:40.960 --> 0:06:42.520 but that he was a man of means. We know 0:06:42.560 --> 0:06:44.839 it was rich because he signed his name in a 0:06:44.880 --> 0:06:47.320 book that was held in the city like Hall and 0:06:47.360 --> 0:06:49.880 if you had a signature back in the hundreds, you 0:06:49.920 --> 0:06:53.720 were rich. Like nobody was signing ship unless you had 0:06:53.760 --> 0:06:58.120 money back then. Um. Our most important source for this 0:06:58.160 --> 0:07:00.560 episode is the book The Arms of Crup which was 0:07:00.600 --> 0:07:02.800 written in the nineteen sixties by a guy named William 0:07:02.800 --> 0:07:05.320 Manchester who was a british Man who had actually fought 0:07:05.320 --> 0:07:07.960 against Krupp guns as a young English soldier. And I 0:07:07.960 --> 0:07:09.840 don't normally gush about the books that we have on 0:07:09.880 --> 0:07:11.840 this show, but I feel the need to hear because 0:07:11.880 --> 0:07:14.640 the while The Arms of Krupp is preposterously long, it 0:07:14.720 --> 0:07:18.160 is a massive, massive book. It's very readable. William is 0:07:18.160 --> 0:07:20.679 a really, really funny writer, and I enjoyed every page 0:07:20.680 --> 0:07:22.880 of this book and I absolutely recommend reading it if 0:07:22.920 --> 0:07:25.640 you want to learn about the arms trade that currently 0:07:25.640 --> 0:07:27.720 dominates the world because it's it's kind of about how 0:07:27.720 --> 0:07:30.360 it all got started. Um, And for an example of 0:07:30.480 --> 0:07:33.600 William's writing style, I'm gonna quote here how he explains 0:07:33.960 --> 0:07:36.880 that he knew Aren't Krupp was probably fat, because this 0:07:36.960 --> 0:07:39.800 is this is fun. Well, the record indicates nothing beyond 0:07:39.840 --> 0:07:42.240 a faceless blob. It is safe to hazard something about 0:07:42.280 --> 0:07:45.480 the first Crup's physiognomy. First, Almost certainly he lacked the 0:07:45.480 --> 0:07:48.840 gauntness of later krups. Aren't was a sixteenth century German merchant, 0:07:48.880 --> 0:07:50.480 and we know quite a lot about the customs of 0:07:50.520 --> 0:07:53.520 that class. They were, above all dedicated. Glutton's girth was 0:07:53.600 --> 0:07:56.160 proof of prosperity. The man who could out eat his 0:07:56.200 --> 0:08:00.240 neighbors was admired everywhere. One performer devoured thirty eggs, a 0:08:00.240 --> 0:08:02.280 pound of cheese, and a large quantity of bread in 0:08:02.280 --> 0:08:04.600 a single sitting. He then fell dead and became a 0:08:04.680 --> 0:08:07.600 national hero. Seven hour meetings were not uncommon. It has 0:08:07.600 --> 0:08:09.520 been estimated that the well to do spent half their 0:08:09.520 --> 0:08:13.360 waking hours either masticating or defecating. And these circumstances, only 0:08:13.400 --> 0:08:16.040 an abnormal metabolic rate could prevent a rich man from 0:08:16.040 --> 0:08:19.280 becoming obese, which I did not know and find fascinating 0:08:19.600 --> 0:08:24.040 that's so weird. I kind of feel like we should 0:08:24.040 --> 0:08:28.880 bring that back a little. Just yeah, it would be 0:08:28.920 --> 0:08:31.920 easier to chase down Jeff Bezos if he wasn't strong. 0:08:32.120 --> 0:08:40.520 You're right, I just find that amazing. That, Like becoming 0:08:40.559 --> 0:08:42.439 a national hero back then was like, yeah, he ate 0:08:42.520 --> 0:08:47.360 himself to death? What a guy? Uh died a hero? 0:08:47.960 --> 0:08:50.360 I hope my kids grow up to eat themselves to 0:08:50.400 --> 0:08:55.520 death one day. So what little we do know for 0:08:55.559 --> 0:08:58.040 sure about Aren't suggests that he embodied what would come 0:08:58.080 --> 0:09:00.680 to be one of the key Krupp family characteristics, the 0:09:00.679 --> 0:09:03.720 ability to profit from tragedy. Twelve years or so after 0:09:03.800 --> 0:09:06.640 he moved to Essen, the bubonic plague stuck struck, and 0:09:06.679 --> 0:09:09.080 about half the town died. Corpses were piled up with 0:09:09.080 --> 0:09:11.400 no one to bury them. Whole neighborhoods became graveyards. All 0:09:11.400 --> 0:09:13.080 the good plague. Should you know the good plague ship 0:09:13.160 --> 0:09:17.080 we're there now? Yeah, classics, this is extra meaningful for us. Yeah, 0:09:17.440 --> 0:09:21.120 classic plague. Uh So, while other men sold their property 0:09:21.120 --> 0:09:23.280 and drank themselves to death before the plague could get them, 0:09:23.280 --> 0:09:25.200 Aren't bet that he would live through the plague, and 0:09:25.200 --> 0:09:27.600 he bought up their abandoned properties. So all these guys 0:09:27.600 --> 0:09:29.200 are like, we're all going to die, let's sell our 0:09:29.240 --> 0:09:31.520 homes and buy liquor, and aren't like, y'all buy your 0:09:31.520 --> 0:09:33.640 fucking houses. I don't think I'm gonna die. And that's 0:09:33.640 --> 0:09:36.320 how the Crupp family first ends up super rich because 0:09:36.360 --> 0:09:38.840 they buy up all of these people's property when they 0:09:38.880 --> 0:09:42.360 plague gets it's it's always property, it's always lands, the 0:09:42.400 --> 0:09:47.120 only thing that's valuable. Oh my god, I say, ignoring 0:09:47.160 --> 0:09:51.520 the real estate collapse that happened like ten years ago. Yeah, 0:09:51.720 --> 0:09:54.959 I just like the first Superman movie. Anyway, we don't 0:09:55.000 --> 0:09:57.440 know much about the Crups who immediately followed, aren't, other 0:09:57.480 --> 0:09:59.800 than that they survived the Thirty Years War of eight 0:10:00.000 --> 0:10:03.240 into sight with their wealth and property. Intact, this would 0:10:03.240 --> 0:10:05.040 not have been easy. The area Essen was in was 0:10:05.080 --> 0:10:08.640 invaded by Danes, Swedes, Spaniards, Bohemians, and worst of all, 0:10:08.679 --> 0:10:12.320 the French um and about two thirds of the population 0:10:12.360 --> 0:10:16.600 of Germany died during that war. So again, and also, 0:10:16.679 --> 0:10:19.280 there's no Germany during this Like I'm saying Germany because 0:10:19.280 --> 0:10:22.480 people roughly know the geographic area Germany doesn't exist at 0:10:22.480 --> 0:10:25.080 this point, Like it's a bunch of warring kingdoms like 0:10:25.080 --> 0:10:28.040 you've got the Prussians and the Austrians and the Fans 0:10:28.200 --> 0:10:32.760 and Bohemians filthy bohemians. Yeah, um, all these different all 0:10:32.760 --> 0:10:34.760 these different people, they're all and they're always shooting each 0:10:34.800 --> 0:10:36.920 other too, and they're getting shot by everybody else, and 0:10:36.960 --> 0:10:39.280 they're they're they're kind of One of the things that's 0:10:39.280 --> 0:10:41.360 interesting about the Germans in this period is that they're 0:10:41.360 --> 0:10:46.040 like famously um, famously polite and humble because they get 0:10:46.080 --> 0:10:49.120 their asses kicked so much um, which is a reputation 0:10:49.160 --> 0:10:51.079 that changes because of the things that we're about to 0:10:51.120 --> 0:10:55.600 talk about in this episode. I think I know they 0:10:55.640 --> 0:11:00.880 stopped being humble after a while. Yeah, yeah, uh so 0:11:01.280 --> 0:11:04.400 the Crep family basically, yeah, despite all of this disaster, 0:11:04.440 --> 0:11:07.559 they managed to expand their land holdings and expand their wealth, 0:11:07.600 --> 0:11:10.199 and that suggests that they all kind of inherited, aren't 0:11:10.200 --> 0:11:13.040 strait of profiting from disaster. We know that one of 0:11:13.040 --> 0:11:15.400 Ourn's sons was a fellow named Anton Krupp, who was 0:11:15.440 --> 0:11:18.079 the first member of the family we have decent documentary 0:11:18.120 --> 0:11:20.600 information on. We know, for example, that at one point 0:11:20.600 --> 0:11:24.079 he received a significant municipal find for quote, beating doctor 0:11:24.200 --> 0:11:27.280 Hasselman in the street, which I think rules you just 0:11:27.640 --> 0:11:31.520 got to a fist fight with a doctor. I think 0:11:31.520 --> 0:11:34.520 he got like a bad diagnosis or something. Yeah, I 0:11:34.520 --> 0:11:37.560 mean doctors then weren't really doctors. They were just they 0:11:37.559 --> 0:11:41.080 were drug dealers, which only about half of doctors aren't 0:11:41.120 --> 0:11:46.800 out today, so penicillin pushers. Back then it was just 0:11:47.440 --> 0:11:53.360 it was just and Scotch in Mercury. They were like 0:11:53.440 --> 0:11:58.080 the original seven eleven. Yeah, well they were the original 0:11:58.160 --> 0:12:00.440 guy in front of the seven eleven who has a 0:12:00.480 --> 0:12:07.400 really bulgy coat, so he's In sixteen twelve, Uh, Anton 0:12:07.520 --> 0:12:08.959 married a guy who was at the time one of 0:12:09.080 --> 0:12:13.040 Essen's most prominent gunsmith's, and Anton got into the gunmaking business. 0:12:13.440 --> 0:12:15.959 He was selling about a thousand barrels per year during 0:12:16.040 --> 0:12:18.199 the Thirty Years War, and he was described in the 0:12:18.280 --> 0:12:21.920 town council meeting as our highly honored patriot Lord. Now, 0:12:21.920 --> 0:12:24.079 the Crups didn't get straight into the arms business from there, 0:12:24.080 --> 0:12:27.080 and in fact, after Anton they stopped for decades. Uh. 0:12:27.160 --> 0:12:29.000 The family made most of its money because they owned 0:12:29.000 --> 0:12:31.679 a large store and they collected rent from properties, and 0:12:31.679 --> 0:12:33.440 this was enough to make sure that the family's wealth 0:12:33.440 --> 0:12:36.199 grew every year. In the mid sixteen, hundreds of crupt 0:12:36.240 --> 0:12:39.560 named Matthias bought fields east of the town wall would 0:12:39.559 --> 0:12:41.920 become the site of the crupt gun works that later 0:12:42.000 --> 0:12:45.160 armed Germany through two World Wars. By the late sixteen hundreds, 0:12:45.240 --> 0:12:48.560 one writer described the family as the uncrowned kings of Essen. 0:12:49.040 --> 0:12:51.800 When Matthias died in sixteen seventy three, the town left 0:12:51.800 --> 0:12:54.840 his position the office of town clerk, unfilled until his 0:12:54.920 --> 0:12:57.080 oldest son was old enough to take the jobs. That's 0:12:57.080 --> 0:12:59.600 how big a deal this family is in late sixteen hundreds. 0:13:00.240 --> 0:13:03.640 Now corrupt fortunes waned throughout the seventeen hundreds as frivolous 0:13:03.640 --> 0:13:06.120 family members and bad luck whittled them down from the 0:13:06.120 --> 0:13:08.199 family that owned the town to just another kind of 0:13:08.320 --> 0:13:10.200 rich family who weren't as rich as they used to be. 0:13:10.679 --> 0:13:12.599 They bought a large steel foundery at one point, but 0:13:12.640 --> 0:13:14.560 they sold it in the early eighteen hundreds, and this 0:13:14.640 --> 0:13:17.880 leads us to Friedrich Krupp. In short, Fredrick was ambitious, 0:13:17.920 --> 0:13:20.319 but either dumb or unlucky. He liked to spend money, 0:13:20.320 --> 0:13:22.160 and he had no real talent for making more of it. 0:13:22.440 --> 0:13:24.880 In eighteen ten, he inherited the modern equivalent of a 0:13:24.880 --> 0:13:27.800 million dollars uh Friedrich had other siblings but the Krupt 0:13:27.840 --> 0:13:30.440 family tradition was for the oldest son to get everything, 0:13:30.760 --> 0:13:32.760 and this is how the family succeeded in holding onto 0:13:32.800 --> 0:13:34.440 all of their wealth and influence over the years, but 0:13:34.480 --> 0:13:36.439 it put them at a disadvantage when a real dummy 0:13:36.480 --> 0:13:38.640 happened to fall out of a corupt ladies womb first, 0:13:38.880 --> 0:13:42.800 And that's what happened with Fredrick. Yeah, his first decision 0:13:42.840 --> 0:13:45.320 was to scrap the business like the store that his 0:13:45.360 --> 0:13:47.800 ancestors had made all of their money with, and instead 0:13:47.840 --> 0:13:51.600 invested in an exciting new venture cast steel. Now, at 0:13:51.640 --> 0:13:54.240 the time, people are real shitty at making metal, Okay, 0:13:54.240 --> 0:13:56.720 So like metals hard, right, Like you've got bronze, which 0:13:56.720 --> 0:13:59.360 is pretty easy to make and kind of durable, but 0:13:59.480 --> 0:14:01.760 it's it's sucks when it comes to making cannons. Like 0:14:01.800 --> 0:14:04.520 if you're trying to blow things up through bronze, you 0:14:04.520 --> 0:14:07.840 can only make shoot things that are like projectiles so large. 0:14:07.880 --> 0:14:11.400 It can only handle so much powder without exploding. Um, 0:14:11.440 --> 0:14:14.800 So it's yeah, it's just not a great thing to 0:14:14.840 --> 0:14:17.400 make cannons out of. It was the only thing to 0:14:17.679 --> 0:14:20.880 do it. Yeah, So like at the time, steel had 0:14:20.920 --> 0:14:22.800 existed for a while, and in fact, some people will 0:14:22.840 --> 0:14:25.240 suggest like you know, the Spartans. Everybody talks about how 0:14:25.240 --> 0:14:29.440 they were like famously good warriors. Um, there's actually a 0:14:29.520 --> 0:14:32.200 school of thought among historians that's just like they weren't 0:14:32.200 --> 0:14:35.040 any better at fighting than anyone else, but the nature 0:14:35.160 --> 0:14:38.120 of the iron that was in there, uh, that was 0:14:38.200 --> 0:14:41.360 like in near Sparta was very easy to kind of 0:14:41.400 --> 0:14:45.080 accidentally turn into steel. And steel is a thousand times 0:14:45.080 --> 0:14:48.240 better than any kind of like ancient metal, than bronze 0:14:48.320 --> 0:14:51.040 or than just straight iron. It's just much more durable. 0:14:51.240 --> 0:14:53.760 And so the Spartans had steel blades and that's why, 0:14:53.880 --> 0:14:56.360 like they were famous because just because they had better technology. 0:14:56.360 --> 0:14:58.040 And that's kind of what everyone was looking for in 0:14:58.080 --> 0:15:01.880 the Napoleonic era, right, Like, no one's good at metal yet. 0:15:02.320 --> 0:15:05.760 People have started to figure out how to make steel, um, 0:15:05.880 --> 0:15:08.440 but they haven't gotten good at it. And cast steel 0:15:08.640 --> 0:15:10.960 is like modern steel. It's like the ship that you 0:15:11.000 --> 0:15:13.760 can make skyscrapers with. It's the ship that you can 0:15:13.800 --> 0:15:16.960 make battleship cannons with. It's it's like kind of the 0:15:17.040 --> 0:15:19.600 necessary precursor to the modern world. You can't have the 0:15:19.640 --> 0:15:23.920 modern world without quality steel. And people had started to 0:15:23.960 --> 0:15:26.680 figure it out, particularly the British had kind of started 0:15:26.720 --> 0:15:29.720 to figure out how to reliably make modern steel, which 0:15:29.760 --> 0:15:31.960 again is cast steel. When I talk about cast steal, 0:15:31.960 --> 0:15:34.680 that's what I'm talking about, but no one was very 0:15:34.720 --> 0:15:37.560 good at it. And Friedrich Krupp becomes obsessed with making 0:15:37.600 --> 0:15:39.600 cast steel. He thinks that's how he's going to revive 0:15:39.640 --> 0:15:41.880 the family fortunes. And then a quote now from a 0:15:41.880 --> 0:15:45.960 passage in the arms of Krupp and the Napoleonic eraic 0:15:45.960 --> 0:15:47.960 cast steele had a special cash a. It was the 0:15:48.040 --> 0:15:51.680 nuclear fission of its day, mysterious, glamorous, seemingly limitless in 0:15:51.760 --> 0:15:55.440 its possibilities. Steel, low carbon, iron, tough and malleable is 0:15:55.520 --> 0:15:58.200 not a natural phenomenon, and in a time when chemistry 0:15:58.280 --> 0:16:00.680 was poorly understood, it was regarded as a marvel. In 0:16:00.720 --> 0:16:03.400 the past, smelters had produced small quantities of it by 0:16:03.400 --> 0:16:06.960 manipulating ore and carbon with rods, meantime regulating the flow 0:16:07.000 --> 0:16:09.160 of air through bellows to produce the metal. They worked 0:16:09.160 --> 0:16:11.720 on its field, on its appearance, on hunches, and on 0:16:11.800 --> 0:16:15.320 slights and arcana, handled down from fathers to sons. Until 0:16:15.320 --> 0:16:17.720 the nineteenth century. These hit or miss methods were good enough, 0:16:17.760 --> 0:16:20.360 but now in the spring of the machine age, Europe 0:16:20.360 --> 0:16:23.120 was crying for big chunks of high quality steel. The 0:16:23.160 --> 0:16:26.480 old smiths couldn't help, nor could the operators of blast furnaces. 0:16:26.480 --> 0:16:29.640 Furnaces produced only cast iron, which, with its high urban 0:16:29.880 --> 0:16:33.400 carbon content, was too brittle to be satisfactory. Attempts were 0:16:33.400 --> 0:16:35.840 made to fuse several small ingots of steel and cast 0:16:35.880 --> 0:16:38.400 them as a single block. The smiths were frustrated because 0:16:38.400 --> 0:16:40.480 the oxygen in the air combined with the carbon and 0:16:40.520 --> 0:16:43.600 the steel, ruining the whole batch. Yet some men could 0:16:43.640 --> 0:16:46.440 bring the thing off. The secret existed and had been discovered, 0:16:46.520 --> 0:16:49.600 to the great annoyance of Napoleon. The discoverers were Englishmen. 0:16:49.840 --> 0:16:52.080 Not only had the British cornered cast Steele, they held 0:16:52.120 --> 0:16:54.920 their monopoly of it for seventy years. So the British 0:16:54.920 --> 0:16:57.080 figure out cast Steele and no one on the continent 0:16:57.160 --> 0:16:59.640 has it. And this is one of Britain's main military 0:16:59.680 --> 0:17:02.520 advance edges, as they have good steel, and Napoleon wants 0:17:02.520 --> 0:17:04.880 it because he's still fucking around with brass cannons, which 0:17:04.920 --> 0:17:08.560 are trash um. And so you know, Napoleon is at 0:17:08.560 --> 0:17:12.040 this point, fucking Napoleon. He's the he's the Emperor um 0:17:12.200 --> 0:17:15.280 and Germany is just like a bunch of little warring states. 0:17:15.280 --> 0:17:17.840 So everyone kind of is looking to Napoleon, even the 0:17:17.880 --> 0:17:21.520 people outside of his borders. Young Friedrich Krupp became obsessed 0:17:21.560 --> 0:17:23.600 with the idea of figuring out how to cast steal 0:17:23.640 --> 0:17:28.359 for himself and his people. And yeah, Napoleon announced a 0:17:28.440 --> 0:17:30.920 prize to whoever could figure out how to cast steal 0:17:31.000 --> 0:17:33.159 for continental Europe. He was going to give them like 0:17:33.200 --> 0:17:36.040 thousands and thousands of pieces of gold, and it was 0:17:36.080 --> 0:17:38.600 just a fortune worth of fucking French money. And so 0:17:38.680 --> 0:17:42.199 in eighteen eleven, Friederich Krupp founded the cast Steel Works 0:17:42.280 --> 0:17:45.640 with the ambition of like winning the prize that Napoleon 0:17:45.680 --> 0:17:48.160 had set out. Now, this was an ambitious goal because 0:17:48.160 --> 0:17:51.000 Friedrich had no idea what he was doing. He grew 0:17:51.040 --> 0:17:53.520 increasingly obsessed with trying to puzzle out the secrets of 0:17:53.560 --> 0:17:56.400 cast steel and burnt through his entire inheritance to buy 0:17:56.480 --> 0:17:59.240 property and equipment, while at the same time neglecting the 0:17:59.280 --> 0:18:01.240 store that had brought his family most of their wealth. 0:18:01.560 --> 0:18:03.960 His eyes were always on the prize the Emperor had promised, 0:18:03.960 --> 0:18:06.680 and he began making loud public boasts about he how 0:18:06.720 --> 0:18:09.320 he basically already figured out how to make cast steel. 0:18:09.720 --> 0:18:12.240 In December of eighteen eleven, he declared his loyalty to 0:18:12.280 --> 0:18:15.040 the Emperor of France. This was bad timing since it 0:18:15.119 --> 0:18:17.840 was at the precise moment that Friedrich declared his fealty 0:18:17.840 --> 0:18:20.560 to France that the Emperor lost his entire army in Russia. 0:18:20.880 --> 0:18:24.040 So Fredrick like declares himself loyal to the French crown 0:18:24.119 --> 0:18:26.160 and then the French crown loses all of its power 0:18:26.200 --> 0:18:29.400 by getting massacred in the frozen steps of Russia. Bad 0:18:29.440 --> 0:18:33.120 timing for Friedrich. Yeah, uh, so he basically his loyalty 0:18:33.160 --> 0:18:36.159 wound up guaranteeing him a doomed job digging trenches for 0:18:36.200 --> 0:18:38.119 a French army that got its ass handed to it 0:18:38.160 --> 0:18:40.919 by Prussia while Napoleon was running away from the Cossacks. 0:18:41.280 --> 0:18:43.840 And the good news is that nationalism didn't exist back then, 0:18:43.880 --> 0:18:46.120 so most people in s and felt as much loyalty 0:18:46.119 --> 0:18:48.439 to France as they did to Prussia, because again, no 0:18:48.440 --> 0:18:50.600 one's really German then, so as soon as Prussia took 0:18:50.640 --> 0:18:55.760 over in Napoleon's empire collapsed, nobody like got revenge on Friedrich, 0:18:55.800 --> 0:18:57.320 which is what would have happened later so he got 0:18:57.400 --> 0:19:01.080 to core. Now he's got no money. Yeah he's broke. Now, 0:19:01.160 --> 0:19:03.639 yeah he's broke his ship. Um he gives. Yeah, he 0:19:03.680 --> 0:19:05.639 loses all of his money trying to make cast steele. 0:19:05.720 --> 0:19:08.159 He fails. The emperor he was hoping to get a 0:19:08.160 --> 0:19:11.000 reward from is no longer the emperor, and it's just 0:19:11.160 --> 0:19:13.720 yeah trash luck and also kind of a dumb guy. 0:19:14.320 --> 0:19:18.800 Um so, yeah, Fredrick wasn't completely like a failure. He 0:19:18.840 --> 0:19:22.119 succeeded in getting the Krupt families first military contract, but 0:19:22.160 --> 0:19:25.280 which was just like supplying steel bayonets uh and he 0:19:25.359 --> 0:19:27.680 sold quality tools and dies, but he was never able 0:19:27.720 --> 0:19:30.000 to make enough money fast enough to like make up 0:19:30.000 --> 0:19:31.879 for all of the debts he had incurred trying to 0:19:31.920 --> 0:19:34.200 figure out how to make cast steel, and of course 0:19:34.240 --> 0:19:37.800 the other family business failed. Uh So Fredrick did throw 0:19:37.800 --> 0:19:39.720 a bunch of money into making a big machine shop 0:19:39.760 --> 0:19:42.800 which was finished in eighteen nineteen, but only worked about 0:19:42.800 --> 0:19:45.159 half the year because he fucked up on like it 0:19:45.200 --> 0:19:47.159 would rely on the local river in order to be 0:19:47.200 --> 0:19:49.760 able to function, because you don't have like electricity then, 0:19:49.800 --> 0:19:52.000 so people will use rivers to like move the different 0:19:52.000 --> 0:19:55.120 wheels and ship that need to anyway, it's a bad 0:19:55.200 --> 0:19:57.760 He makes a bad bet and his fucking machine shop 0:19:57.800 --> 0:19:59.560 doesn't work, and he spends the last two years of 0:19:59.560 --> 0:20:02.639 his life poverished in bedridden, ranting and coherently about his 0:20:02.720 --> 0:20:05.560 ruined life and fortune. He dies at age thirty nine. 0:20:06.160 --> 0:20:08.800 Uh yeah, so kind of a bummer of a story. 0:20:09.240 --> 0:20:15.960 Uh yeah, So, don't always chase your dreams. Don't don't 0:20:16.080 --> 0:20:19.560 ever chase your dreams. Never ever chase your dreams. If 0:20:19.560 --> 0:20:22.199 there's one lesson of this podcast is that dreams are 0:20:22.200 --> 0:20:27.320 a bad idea. Um. Yeah, if everyone would just sit 0:20:27.359 --> 0:20:29.480 alone in a dark room until they died, we would 0:20:29.520 --> 0:20:34.320