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Speaker 1: Also media here, everyone, Robert Evans here, and before we

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Speaker 1: get to the episode, obviously a lot of people in

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Speaker 1: Gaza need a lot of different help. But we've been

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Speaker 1: connected to the Algazawi family by a friend of ours

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Speaker 1: who's doing aid work there. Right now. They are trying

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Speaker 1: to get fourteen members of their family out of Gaza

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Speaker 1: before you know, things get any worse for them, and

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Speaker 1: they're raising money to do so on go fund Me.

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Speaker 1: If you google help al Gazawe family escape Gaza go

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Speaker 1: fund Me, you can find it. Algazawie is spelled a

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Speaker 1: l g h a zz a w I. Yeah, we're

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Speaker 1: trying to help them, you know, get to a safer place,

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Speaker 1: So please consider donating if you can. Ah, boy, howdy.

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Speaker 1: You know what I love more than anything is a nice,

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Speaker 1: good piece and new Hitler news. You know, for whatever reason,

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Speaker 1: we don't get a lot of that anymore. Baffling as

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Speaker 1: to why, but I just came across the story's not new,

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Speaker 1: but it's hit social media the way these things apparently

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Speaker 1: sometimes do when people realize there's engagement to be gotten.

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Speaker 1: And the title of this New York Post article, Joe Kassebian,

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Speaker 1: our guest host of the Lions by Doggies podcast co

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Speaker 1: host and Sophie, my producer. The headline of this article

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Speaker 1: is Adolf Hitler's last living relative convicted of pedophilia. Now,

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Speaker 1: and that we get a picture of like a man

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Speaker 1: who looks to be in his sixties, with like a

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Speaker 1: bald head that's entirely a tattoo, very yellow teeth and look, folks,

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Speaker 1: no one would love it more than me. If there

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Speaker 1: was there was some new Hitler gossip that made the

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Speaker 1: family look bad. There's no fresh Hitler article, some fresh hitlerisms.

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Speaker 1: The first the first line of the article is a

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Speaker 1: man claiming to be Adolf Hitler's last living relative has

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Speaker 1: been convicted of pedophilia. And this guy is a creep

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Speaker 1: and his last name is apparently Hitler. But there's other

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Speaker 1: there's other Hitler's. He has other living relatives, right like

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Speaker 1: this guy. Even if this guy is related to Hitler,

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Speaker 1: which I have not done the work to confirm, he's

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Speaker 1: not the last Hitler. I mean, I wish he's gonna do.

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Speaker 2: You know, when you're convicted, When when you're convicted or

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Speaker 2: charge of pedophilia, you gotta take some of the heat off,

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Speaker 2: Like man, anybody googles my name, They're just gonna go

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Speaker 2: with pedophilia, pedophilia. How can I possibly beat that as

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Speaker 2: a headline? I know, I'm a Hitler.

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Speaker 1: He is the one guy who could mitigate being convicted

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Speaker 1: of pedophilia. Is like, okay, this is bad, but compared

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Speaker 1: to my uncle Hitler, well, let's say, you know, like

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Speaker 1: it always reminds me that, you know, Willie Hitler, Hitler's

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Speaker 1: nephew retired to Upstate New York after serving in the

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Speaker 1: US Navy in World War Two and then died and

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Speaker 1: kept to see he changed his last name to I

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Speaker 1: think is Stuart Hustin or something like that. You would

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Speaker 1: want to, you know, if you're not a Hitler.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, And one of his neighbors said, you know what,

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Speaker 2: like because all it once it came out who he was.

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Speaker 2: Like then the local news is interviewing all his neighbors,

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Speaker 2: and one of my favorite lines I think I've ever

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Speaker 2: read in any local news piece is his neighbors like,

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Speaker 2: you know what, now that you mentioned it, he did

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Speaker 2: kind of look like Hitler. He did kind of have

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Speaker 2: a Hitler vibe doing Yeah, there's Hilary.

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Speaker 1: There's another story that's a bit more accurate than this,

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Speaker 1: which is that all of Hitler's last living relatives agreed

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Speaker 1: independently not to have kids. Not entirely true. There are

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Speaker 1: a number of Hitler relatives who are like, probably shouldn't

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Speaker 1: make any more of this, probably had enough of the Hitler's.

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Speaker 2: All the Hitler's gathering around this circle, putting their hands

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Speaker 2: in and say backshots on.

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Speaker 1: Three it is. You know, I do actually kind of

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Speaker 1: feel like maybe it's worse to be like as a Hitler,

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Speaker 1: I'm not going to have any kids because you're kind

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Speaker 1: of leaning into his weird attitudes about genetics, because yeah,

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Speaker 1: Hitler wasn't Hitler. Wasn't Hitler because of his his genes.

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Speaker 1: He was Hitler because of his Hitler.

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Speaker 2: That reminds me of So I can actually talk about

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Speaker 2: this now because they never made me sign an NDA,

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Speaker 2: but the History Channel interviewed me to possibly host a

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Speaker 2: show about Hitler a couple months ago, and man, I

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Speaker 2: wanted the jobs story, god damn much, and for some

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Speaker 2: reason it involved me repelling down rock walls and stuff.

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Speaker 2: I'm not entirely sure why, but they'll share.

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Speaker 1: How did you really report on Hitler.

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Speaker 2: Specifically Hitler's DNA, Like I didn't give a single flying

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Speaker 2: fuck because the topic is so stupid. But I'm like,

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Speaker 2: you're telling me I get to be on the History Channel,

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Speaker 2: repelled on rock walls and it's about dumb shit about

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Speaker 2: Hitler's DNA.

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Speaker 1: Just sign me.

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Speaker 2: This is like if you told eight year old to

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Speaker 2: be to get to do this, you'd be fucking ecstatic.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Wow, that was a long descent. Speaking of long descents,

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Speaker 1: let's talk about the last ten years of Hitler's life. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: there's good ways you could do that. You know, Joe,

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Speaker 1: everybody he loves talking Hitler. Not everybody loves talking Hitler,

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Speaker 1: but enough people do that. It's a pretty reliable source

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Speaker 1: of content for a number of people.

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Speaker 2: And never in this shows for people who do a

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Speaker 2: job like me and you, is a never ending font

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Speaker 2: of content.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, he really has done the podcasters and History Channel

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Speaker 1: documentary producers of the world a solid Speaking of things,

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Speaker 1: people love to talk about World War Two. Now, I

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Speaker 1: don't think it's controversial to say most people who have

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Speaker 1: a favorite war that war's World War Two, right, And

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Speaker 1: people love talking World War Two for the same reason

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Speaker 1: that Warhammer forty thousand is now the most profitable export

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Speaker 1: in British history. It's got a little bit of everything, right.

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Speaker 1: And if the experience you're looking for in a war

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Speaker 1: is an almost Michael Scott like story of executive incompetence

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Speaker 1: leading to disaster and unbelievable awkwardness, well the Big Dub

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Speaker 1: Dub does has that one in spades. Brother. And this

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Speaker 1: brings me back to the story of Joe of Stalin

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Speaker 1: and his buddies, which now includes Lavnti Barria as an

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Speaker 1: integral member and at this point pretty experienced ethnic cleanser.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 1: He's good at deportations. He's done a lot of practice. Right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: he's up there, right, top ten percent of deporters in

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Speaker 1: the world at this moment, right, almost unquestionably. And you know,

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Speaker 1: nineteen forty, nineteen forty one, prior to Operation Barbarassa, everybody

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Speaker 1: in Stalin's inner circle, almost everybody. We'll talk about malatav

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Speaker 1: In a second, but most of the people in Stalin's

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Speaker 1: inner circle, including Stalin, no, some kind of conflict is

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Speaker 1: coming with the Nazis, right Stalin though, And again when

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Speaker 1: people say that and that's accurate, they often mean that

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Speaker 1: to be like, everyone knew that a war like World

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Speaker 1: War II was for Russia was coming and they did not. Right,

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Speaker 1: Stalin would not have made a lot of the choices

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Speaker 1: he made if he felt like the World War Two

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Speaker 1: that Russia got was right in the office, right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: he'd probably be a little bit less pergy, a little

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Speaker 1: less pergy, a little more, have some kind of effective

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Speaker 1: defenses set up for the Wehrmacht, you know, e a

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Speaker 1: little less keep his entire air force grounded so it

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Speaker 1: gets blown up on the tarmacx E. You know, couple

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Speaker 1: of things he might have done.

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Speaker 2: Kills so many pilots they can't even fucking fly effectively.

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Speaker 1: Some changes would have been made. Right. And when I

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Speaker 1: say that, like Stalin doesn't know the war that's coming

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Speaker 1: is coming, it's part of what I'm saying is because

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Speaker 1: Stalin is certain a conflicts coming, but he thinks they've

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Speaker 1: got years before anything happens. Right, he thinks they've got

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Speaker 1: we've got enough time to rebuild the Red Army from

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Speaker 1: the purges, and not just to do that, but when

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Speaker 1: the USSR moves west to take eastern Poland, to take

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Speaker 1: all these like Baltic states, right, Stalin has his troops

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Speaker 1: disassemble the fortifications on their western border. Right because he

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Speaker 1: wants to move those up, right. He doesn't want there

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Speaker 1: to not be fortifications. But he's like, well, we'll take

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Speaker 1: these apart and we'll rebuild a defensive line closer to

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Speaker 1: the new border right with the West. We just move

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Speaker 1: forward a lot. But there's like an awkward period in

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Speaker 1: between taking apart the fortifications that had existed and getting

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Speaker 1: the new ones up. And they're not going to have

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Speaker 1: that new set of fortifications up by July of nineteen

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Speaker 1: forty one, when the Nazis unleash Operation Barbarossa, which is

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Speaker 1: still the largest military operation in the history of mankind

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Speaker 1: hopefully always will be. I want to see it get beat. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: always going to put star like that. Yeah, you don't

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Speaker 1: attempt anybody into beating the Guinness Book of World Records

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Speaker 1: like the execution Now you get to close it up.

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Speaker 1: Oh god, I would love to see the Guinness Book

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Speaker 1: of World Records entry for that though, just based on

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Speaker 1: the executioner one. Yeah. While Stalin is convinced that there's

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Speaker 1: going to be a fight and Hitler's obviously got one plan,

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Speaker 1: there's this awkward innerstittle period in late nineteen forty where

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Speaker 1: Molotov as the USSR's foreign policy guy and is the

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Speaker 1: dumbest guy who's close to Stalin. I don't know if

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Speaker 1: that's generally agreed by historians myriad having read a couple

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Speaker 1: books about these guys. Molotov was kind of the dipshit

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Speaker 1: of the crew, right.

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Speaker 2: He doesn't seem like the sharpest sickle of the hammer.

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Speaker 2: You know, he is not the best of them, right,

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Speaker 2: And Molotov is kind of notably the guy who is

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Speaker 2: most convinced that, like we actually might be able to

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Speaker 2: ally with the Nazis to fight the British. You know,

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Speaker 2: he has kind of a fantasy that this might be possible.

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Speaker 2: And he has this fantasy because Joaquing von Ribbentrop, who's

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Speaker 2: his opposite I mean again.

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Speaker 1: It's the Molotov Ribbon Tromp packed, right. People are aware

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Speaker 1: of this, Yeah, Joaquim von ribin Tropp, his opposite number

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Speaker 1: in Germany, has kind of like incepted this idea that like, oh,

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Speaker 1: you know what, I know, our bosses don't get along,

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Speaker 1: but like I feel like Hitler might let the USSR

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Speaker 1: in the tripartheid pack. You could be member number four.

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Speaker 1: You could be on a team with heavy hitters like

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Speaker 1: Italy come on Italy.

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Speaker 2: You know notable military mass friends Benito Mussolini.

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Speaker 1: You know who always pulls their weight in twentieth century war.

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Speaker 1: The Italians, guys, don't worry. They can't possibly switch sides

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Speaker 1: on us again. It is very funny. Italy is like

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Speaker 1: the case study of a country this amazing period of

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Speaker 1: like utter military dominance and then just never gets their

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Speaker 1: shit together again for a thousand years. I'm being a

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Speaker 1: little unfair to a couple of the city states, but

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Speaker 1: it's for the purposes of comedy. I don't think. I

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Speaker 1: don't think anyone really thinks there was ever a serious

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Speaker 1: possibility of like the USSR and the Nazis allying against

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Speaker 1: the British in a realistic way, right, But Molotov thinks

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Speaker 1: it might be possible for a while now again he's

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Speaker 1: not fully convinced of this, and Ribin Trop it's kind

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Speaker 1: of a back and forth with trying to like keep

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Speaker 1: Molotov on board with the idea, and Ribin Trap, who's

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Speaker 1: also a little bit of a dipshit nearly has a

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Speaker 1: panic attack because, like Molotov is in Berlin, they're they're

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Speaker 1: talking all this through and the British launch an air

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Speaker 1: raid and you know, Rippentrop is like, don't worry Molotov,

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Speaker 1: the Brits are already beat And in a rare moment

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Speaker 1: of lucidity, Molotov asks, well, then who is dropping the

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Speaker 1: bombs on us? If you've got the British on the ropes,

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Speaker 1: who is bombing your capital? Which, to be fair to Molotov,

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Speaker 1: that's not a bad question in the moment to ask

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Speaker 1: that'll buff out. It's a little buff out of Berlin.

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Speaker 2: I have the last gasp from a dying empire carpet

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Speaker 2: bombing the capitol. It's war, right, Your.

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Speaker 1: Capital is gonna get a little completely destroyed in a

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Speaker 1: way that very few cities in history have ever been destroyed.

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Speaker 1: But hey, it comes with sixties. It's going to be great.

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Speaker 1: It's great for real estate prices, ask Roterdom. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: Roderdam's gonna eventually be doing very well. So this does

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Speaker 1: not deal directly with Barriya, but I found it pass

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Speaker 1: and Sheila Fitzpatrick's book on Stalin's team that I enjoyed

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Speaker 1: too much not to share. Malatav had a meeting with

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Speaker 1: Hitler too, and observed with interest that he was trying

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Speaker 1: to do propaganda on him. Evidently he was very one sided,

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Speaker 1: an extreme nationalist as Chauvins, who is blinded by his ideas,

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Speaker 1: which is not a bad description of Hitler. I just

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Speaker 1: find the Hitler's doing propaganda on me. Imagine that from Hitler.

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Speaker 1: You think this guy shouldn't have propaganda me. I don't know.

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Speaker 2: He seems like such an honest customer. Every other time.

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Speaker 1: Propaganda from a Hitler. No. So, Barry's actual role in

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Speaker 1: this period pretty obvious. As the USSR spymaster, he is

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Speaker 1: responsible for ferrying beams of information to Stalin that make

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Speaker 1: it very clear the Germans are about to invade. There's

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Speaker 1: a lot of data on this, right, They had no

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Speaker 1: good realon and Barria, I mean not to his credit

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Speaker 1: because of what he's about to do is not handle

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Speaker 1: this the best way he can. But Barria has plenty

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Speaker 1: of info to be like, well, yeah, obviously they're about

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Speaker 1: to fucking invade, right, Like they have three million men

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Speaker 1: masked on the border. This is not the hardest thing

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Speaker 1: to figure out.

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Speaker 2: They're just camping. You know how the Germans love fresh air.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I he love tens. He loves the ground. It's

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Speaker 1: very nice. My German accent terrible anyway. So this is

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Speaker 1: a dangerous position to be in because Stalin has already

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Speaker 1: made up his mind that the Germans are not going

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Speaker 1: to invade right yet. You know, so, Bary it you

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Speaker 1: can't just go to Stalin and be like, you're wrong,

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Speaker 1: they're obviously about to invade, because telling Stalin he's wrong

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Speaker 1: is a great way to wind up not alive anymore,

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Speaker 1: you know. So Mary has got to thread the needle

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Speaker 1: of he has to warn Stalin because when they do invade,

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Speaker 1: you don't want Stalin to be like, where was the

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Speaker 1: fucking evidence of this, right? Why didn't you? You also

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Speaker 1: have to set it up in a way that you're

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Speaker 1: not saying I told you so, because he'll just kill

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Speaker 1: you right this. This is a tough to be fair

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Speaker 1: to bury you. That's a hard position to be in.

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Speaker 1: You know, there's no inforgen.

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Speaker 2: Waiting inline to be the one that finally gets to

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Speaker 2: kill Barria, like, oh please let him fuck up.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, they've got like a ton teene going now. In

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Speaker 1: a memo written just days before the invasion, Barria laid

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Speaker 1: out a huge number of warning signs that one was imminent,

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Speaker 1: before concluding with forced cheer that since Stalin had figured

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Speaker 1: out nothing was going to happen. It was all probably fine.

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Speaker 1: It is kind of a masterclass and ass covering. But

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Speaker 1: part of protecting his own ass was that Barria had

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Speaker 1: to attack the military officers who were trying to warn

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Speaker 1: Stalin and the intelligence officers who were trying to provide warnings.

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Speaker 1: Right And in his book, Sangster writes, quote, Barria also

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Speaker 1: knew the facts and was worried about an attack in

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Speaker 1: the Caucasus oil fields. It amounted to a curious problem

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Speaker 1: because such was the fear of Stalin that no one

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Speaker 1: wanted to disagree with him or even suggest he was

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Speaker 1: wrong or upset him. Barria went so far as to

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Speaker 1: accuse the head of military intelligence of being a liar,

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Speaker 1: even though his own information backed those observations. Now, I

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Speaker 1: think the funniest maybe example of how deranged things get

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Speaker 1: is that, like obviously Germany had a lot of communists

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Speaker 1: before the Nazis win, a lot of those communists just

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Speaker 1: kind of sink back into the woodwork, the ones who

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Speaker 1: are not prominent enough that they're going to get purged

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Speaker 1: or at least not going to spend too long in

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Speaker 1: a camp. Right, A lot of guys get put in

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Speaker 1: a you know what are called wild concentration camps for

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Speaker 1: a while and they have a bad time, but they

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Speaker 1: eventually get out and an east number of these guys

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Speaker 1: get drafted into the Wehrmont later, right, and some of

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Speaker 1: these significant number I think of these guys in the

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Speaker 1: lead up to Operation Barbarosa are like, well, I don't

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Speaker 1: want to invade Russia. I am still a communist, and

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Speaker 1: they sneak across the border to try and warn the Russians, right,

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Speaker 1: to try to warn Comrade Stalin, like, hey, guys, the

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Speaker 1: fascists are coming, right, assuming.

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Speaker 2: The immediately seriously and nothing bad happens to these loyal

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Speaker 2: German communists.

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Speaker 1: They are treated as spies. That's what you get for

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Speaker 1: trying to stop Operation Barbarossa Damn. On June twenty second,

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Speaker 1: nineteen forty one, some three million Germans, complete with a

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Speaker 1: lot of tanks and trucks but even more horses, cross

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Speaker 1: the Soviet border and start committing war crimes like there

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Speaker 1: was a shortage at the war crime store, which is

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Speaker 1: just a TJ Max. In the first few days, the

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Speaker 1: Wehrmacht encountered minimal resistance and Soviet losses were nightmarishly like

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Speaker 1: high enough. Basically pretty much any other country in the

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Speaker 1: history of the world would have collapsed from the kind

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Speaker 1: of casualties the Soviets are taking in these early days

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Speaker 1: of barbarosso right, like they are using the entire modern

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Speaker 1: day active duty strength of the US Army, and some

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Speaker 1: of these engagements in terms of like captured, right primarily.

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Speaker 2: The only time you ever read about casualty numbers quite

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Speaker 2: like this is reading about like, I don't know, any

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Speaker 2: war involving China.

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Speaker 1: Right right, right, yeah, like the the the War over

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Speaker 1: the Heavenly Kingdom, the Hong Kong or Taipei Rebellion Kingdom,

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Speaker 1: which a series of about kingdom.

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Speaker 2: Right, thanks for that, layup, Robert, Yeah, these are unthinkable.

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Speaker 1: Like again, the entire US would collapse if we had

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Speaker 1: losses like this. It's impossible to really comprad what casualties

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Speaker 1: that we suffer today.

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Speaker 2: Oh the entire population of Cleveland.

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Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, we lost to Portland out there, sorry, guys.

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Speaker 1: Most of San Francisco just got captured. So Barria had

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Speaker 1: given out orders, you know kind of because again there

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Speaker 1: the ver not just not the Wehrmacht, but the Luftwaffa

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Speaker 1: is doing like some cross border air reconnaissance and stuff

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Speaker 1: in the days leading up to this, right, and on

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Speaker 1: the day of the attack, right, Obviously, planes are heading

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Speaker 1: in a lot of areas ahead of the ground troops.

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Speaker 1: They're doing attacks, they're bombing airfields. And because it's it's

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Speaker 1: unclear initially is this an invasion, is there some sort

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Speaker 1: of fuck up? I mean, it's pretty clear to people

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Speaker 1: who are not blinkered by, you know, not wanting to

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Speaker 1: anger Stalin what's happening. But Barria, acting on Stalin's orders,

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Speaker 1: orders that Soviet troops not fire on these planes that

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Speaker 1: have crossed in the Soviet air space because like Stalin

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Speaker 1: doesn't want to provoke a fight, right, little laid on

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Speaker 1: the draw there, j Stall. Maybe they're just lost, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: maybe they're just lost and bombing our airfields mistakenly. Maybe

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Speaker 1: they think they're their own airfields and they just need

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Speaker 1: to get rid of some planes. It happens after his

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Speaker 1: fallen execution, Barry was denounced as a trader in Soviet

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Speaker 1: history books for this. But this is not really fair.

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Speaker 1: This is the only time I'll say this. That's not

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Speaker 1: really fair to bury you. As Sangster points out, Barria

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Speaker 1: had in fact Warren Stalin on June twelfth, writing that

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Speaker 1: in a few instances they the German aircraft had penetrated

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Speaker 1: sixty miles or more in the direction of military installations

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Speaker 1: and large troop concentrations. Stalin appeared paralyzed and decided not

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Speaker 1: to blink in case it provoked the Germans really bad call.

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Speaker 1: I think we can all agree here.

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Speaker 2: Don't look, I understand that they're bombing us. Maybe it's

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Speaker 2: some misunderstanding that only exists in the warped brain of

353
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Speaker 2: pre stroke Stalin.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, hope, maybe pre stroke Stalin. We don't know

355
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Speaker 1: when that first one hit, right, He may throwing a

356
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Speaker 1: blood clot at this point. Yeah, he in a couple

357
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Speaker 1: of clots.

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Speaker 2: So what they say about j stall really clatty.

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Speaker 1: Really claudi fella. Now, depending on who you ask after

360
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Speaker 1: the invasion, like in the immediate aftermath of the invasion,

361
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Speaker 1: Stalin either has this panic attack or just a mental collapse,

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Speaker 1: or he executes a complex face saving plan based on

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Speaker 1: Russian history, And the truth is probably kind of all

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Speaker 1: of the above. Right, we do know that he is panicked,

365
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Speaker 1: and not hard to see why. If three million Germans

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Speaker 1: invaded me, I would probably be a little worried.

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Speaker 2: Right, you normally you have to pay for that kind

368
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Speaker 2: of treatment. No, I had three invade me at a

369
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Speaker 2: hostel once, and it was a real problem until I

370
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Speaker 2: found out they had mally. Then things got a lot better,

371
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Speaker 2: but it was rough for a little while. Let me

372
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Speaker 2: tell you now, we know Stalin was furious for once

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Speaker 2: it himself. Right, he has this line where he's like,

374
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Speaker 2: we including himself in this like foolishly squandered Lenin's great inheritance.

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Speaker 1: Right, there's like this moment where he's like he can't deny, like, oh,

376
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Speaker 1: this is a real this is a real fuck up

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Speaker 1: on my part.

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Speaker 2: This could have gone a lot better, Guys, I kind

379
00:20:14,760 --> 00:20:16,720
Speaker 2: of dropped the ball on this one, you know.

380
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Speaker 1: What, I've fucked up a bit here. And he immediately

381
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Speaker 1: flees the Kremlin for his country house, where he locks

382
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Speaker 1: himself away for the rest of the government for I

383
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Speaker 1: think like a week, and you have to presume he

384
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Speaker 1: gets the kind of drunk that no one else has

385
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Speaker 1: ever gotten. Right, this is probably a unique level of

386
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Speaker 1: fucked up, Like this is a Sherman invasion.

387
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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's uh, you know, the doctor Manhattan floating

388
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Speaker 2: on the Moon's surface level of enlightened drunk.

389
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Speaker 1: Now, the people who will say like he was also

390
00:20:49,080 --> 00:20:51,399
Speaker 1: kind of doing he was he was he was in

391
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Speaker 1: his reaction to the invasion directly sort of sign posting

392
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Speaker 1: some stuff from Russian history will point out that like

393
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Speaker 1: even the Terrible who is the ruler of Usia from

394
00:21:00,520 --> 00:21:03,399
Speaker 1: like fifteen forty seven to fifteen eighty four, had fucked

395
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Speaker 1: up in a pretty huge and obvious public way himself,

396
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Speaker 1: and when he did in the wake of it, he

397
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Speaker 1: like fled to hide alone so that his nobles could

398
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Speaker 1: come and find him and beg him to come back right.

399
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Speaker 1: And this is sort of like he felt like there

400
00:21:16,119 --> 00:21:18,280
Speaker 1: was this need for him to be like, I made

401
00:21:18,320 --> 00:21:20,840
Speaker 1: a mistake and them to say, we still want you

402
00:21:20,880 --> 00:21:24,800
Speaker 1: to run things right. I don't sure. I'm not enough

403
00:21:24,800 --> 00:21:27,800
Speaker 1: of an expert on like why that was necessary. But

404
00:21:27,840 --> 00:21:30,320
Speaker 1: people will argue that by sort of fleeing to his

405
00:21:30,400 --> 00:21:34,000
Speaker 1: datcha like this, Stalin was doing the same thing. And

406
00:21:34,160 --> 00:21:37,280
Speaker 1: I don't see why that wouldn't be part of his calculus, right.

407
00:21:37,400 --> 00:21:39,479
Speaker 2: It makes more sense than a man like Stalin to

408
00:21:39,520 --> 00:21:43,160
Speaker 2: have like a complete emotional breakdown. Sure, he's not really

409
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Speaker 2: a man that felt emotions.

410
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Speaker 1: Right and I don't see why it can't be both,

411
00:21:47,520 --> 00:21:49,600
Speaker 1: why he can't be Like, I'm really fucked up, and

412
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Speaker 1: maybe this is the end for me, but also maybe

413
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Speaker 1: my best chance is to like do this thing that

414
00:21:54,200 --> 00:21:58,360
Speaker 1: there's already kind of like a precedent for in history, right,

415
00:21:58,440 --> 00:22:01,000
Speaker 1: A little bit, a little bit, a little bit from Colin,

416
00:22:01,200 --> 00:22:06,520
Speaker 1: a lot from a lot from Vodka. Now, you know,

417
00:22:06,920 --> 00:22:09,520
Speaker 1: in Ivan the Terrible's case, the nobles are I'm guessing

418
00:22:09,560 --> 00:22:11,399
Speaker 1: they were his boyers. I think that's the term you

419
00:22:11,440 --> 00:22:15,800
Speaker 1: know for it. In Stalin's case, the nobles that have

420
00:22:15,840 --> 00:22:18,320
Speaker 1: to come and like ask him to retake the reins

421
00:22:18,320 --> 00:22:20,879
Speaker 1: of power are his circle of buddies. And this is

422
00:22:20,880 --> 00:22:23,600
Speaker 1: going to include our boy Barria. And so they all

423
00:22:23,640 --> 00:22:26,040
Speaker 1: show up at the Datcha, and Barria, before they show

424
00:22:26,119 --> 00:22:28,160
Speaker 1: up at the Datcha to go pick Stalin up off

425
00:22:28,200 --> 00:22:30,639
Speaker 1: of his sick puddle in the floor, Barry is like,

426
00:22:31,080 --> 00:22:34,400
Speaker 1: we should form a new organization, the State Defense Committee,

427
00:22:34,400 --> 00:22:37,280
Speaker 1: to organize the war effort. And what'll really makes Stalin,

428
00:22:37,320 --> 00:22:39,800
Speaker 1: what'll really pick him up, like perk him up, is

429
00:22:39,840 --> 00:22:41,800
Speaker 1: if we make him the head of this thing before

430
00:22:41,840 --> 00:22:45,040
Speaker 1: we come and get him right. Come on again, in charge,

431
00:22:45,160 --> 00:22:47,880
Speaker 1: Come on, buddy, one thing you got to give him.

432
00:22:48,080 --> 00:22:50,680
Speaker 1: You know, not every bastard is the best at something

433
00:22:50,720 --> 00:22:52,480
Speaker 1: I've ever heard of. He might be the best ass

434
00:22:52,560 --> 00:22:57,080
Speaker 1: kisser I've ever heard of. You know, he's tongue deep

435
00:22:57,080 --> 00:22:59,480
Speaker 1: in the Yeah, you're right, You're right, he is. He

436
00:22:59,520 --> 00:23:04,399
Speaker 1: has passed the colon. He's like the Geene Simmons up

437
00:23:04,400 --> 00:23:05,680
Speaker 1: and there he is.

438
00:23:05,680 --> 00:23:09,920
Speaker 2: Feasting like he's at a golden corral of ass, which

439
00:23:09,960 --> 00:23:10,320
Speaker 2: is just.

440
00:23:10,320 --> 00:23:14,560
Speaker 1: A golden corral. So Barry and everybody else they all

441
00:23:14,600 --> 00:23:17,159
Speaker 1: travel to Stalin's Datcha to a share him. Hey, buddy,

442
00:23:17,560 --> 00:23:20,040
Speaker 1: we still love you, right, we still want you to

443
00:23:20,080 --> 00:23:23,760
Speaker 1: be our czar effectively, right, And Barry is like, and look, man,

444
00:23:23,840 --> 00:23:26,560
Speaker 1: we made this whole new committee. You're in charge of it.

445
00:23:26,920 --> 00:23:29,240
Speaker 1: Don't you want to come back and maybe we all

446
00:23:29,280 --> 00:23:32,400
Speaker 1: do a World War two together? And Stalin he kind

447
00:23:32,400 --> 00:23:34,520
Speaker 1: of like looks down at the floor, and he looks

448
00:23:34,600 --> 00:23:37,119
Speaker 1: up at his buds and like the music, the heartwarming

449
00:23:37,200 --> 00:23:40,080
Speaker 1: music starts to play and he's like, yeah, let's do

450
00:23:40,160 --> 00:23:42,919
Speaker 1: a World War two. And then everybody hugs. You know,

451
00:23:43,400 --> 00:23:50,879
Speaker 1: I it was three days from retirement. I do kind

452
00:23:50,920 --> 00:23:54,240
Speaker 1: of want a World War II. Stalin's Inner Circle movie,

453
00:23:54,240 --> 00:23:58,119
Speaker 1: but starring the main two characters from the Lethal Weapon franchise.

454
00:23:58,680 --> 00:24:02,000
Speaker 2: Oh my god, yeah, I mean to be fair, Mel

455
00:24:02,040 --> 00:24:04,960
Speaker 2: Gibson is anti Semitic enough to play Joseph Stalin.

456
00:24:06,000 --> 00:24:09,680
Speaker 1: Honestly, he could be either of them, right, yeah, yeah,

457
00:24:10,680 --> 00:24:13,400
Speaker 1: So the reality is that everybody gets back to work,

458
00:24:13,520 --> 00:24:16,760
Speaker 1: you know, in relatively short order, but not in a

459
00:24:16,760 --> 00:24:20,399
Speaker 1: way that is initially effective or efficient. Again, these guys

460
00:24:20,440 --> 00:24:22,479
Speaker 1: have a lot of skills, right, They're not bad at

461
00:24:22,480 --> 00:24:24,840
Speaker 1: everything that they do. Barria is the stuff we've talked

462
00:24:24,840 --> 00:24:27,280
Speaker 1: about him doing in terms of organizing these deportations and

463
00:24:27,320 --> 00:24:29,800
Speaker 1: mass executions. They're bad things to do, but he does

464
00:24:29,840 --> 00:24:32,880
Speaker 1: them competently. None of them really know how to wage

465
00:24:32,920 --> 00:24:36,120
Speaker 1: the largest war in the history of human experience, right,

466
00:24:36,440 --> 00:24:40,040
Speaker 1: which just quite a task. Yeah, you got you gotta

467
00:24:40,040 --> 00:24:43,200
Speaker 1: figure you gotta pick up the ropes as you go along. Right,

468
00:24:43,400 --> 00:24:47,440
Speaker 1: we can't all be George S. Patton, the reincarnation of Hannibal.

469
00:24:50,440 --> 00:24:52,560
Speaker 1: What a beautiful maniac. We'll talk about him one of

470
00:24:52,560 --> 00:24:57,040
Speaker 1: these days. He's got an episode or two. Real bastard,

471
00:24:57,280 --> 00:25:00,840
Speaker 1: right about the one, Garren, but wrong about everything else. True.

472
00:25:01,320 --> 00:25:05,400
Speaker 1: So Stalin's first instinct, because things are going very badly

473
00:25:05,480 --> 00:25:08,200
Speaker 1: for the USSR is to try and sue for peace.

474
00:25:08,280 --> 00:25:10,159
Speaker 1: He has a lot of territory, and he's like, if

475
00:25:10,200 --> 00:25:13,080
Speaker 1: Hitler just wants land, I'll give him some fucking land.

476
00:25:13,240 --> 00:25:15,840
Speaker 1: Can we work this out right, I've got a lot

477
00:25:15,840 --> 00:25:18,359
Speaker 1: of Retsia. I can afford the burn. You know, you

478
00:25:18,359 --> 00:25:21,639
Speaker 1: want some Baltics, you want the Baltics, you want some

479
00:25:21,680 --> 00:25:26,359
Speaker 1: of Ukraine. Take it. I didn't even want it. Zukov

480
00:25:26,640 --> 00:25:29,560
Speaker 1: visits shortly after the invasion, being one of the few

481
00:25:29,600 --> 00:25:33,600
Speaker 1: guys who's in the military incompetent that's left alive, and

482
00:25:33,680 --> 00:25:37,479
Speaker 1: he meets with Barria and Stalin and it's again, you know,

483
00:25:37,680 --> 00:25:40,359
Speaker 1: any report you have from inside the inner circle in

484
00:25:40,359 --> 00:25:43,760
Speaker 1: this period is imperfect. I trust Zukov more than most

485
00:25:43,800 --> 00:25:45,760
Speaker 1: of these guys, not that he doesn't have some face

486
00:25:45,800 --> 00:25:47,600
Speaker 1: saving to do, but I trust him more than most

487
00:25:47,600 --> 00:25:50,760
Speaker 1: of them. And he claims that when he meets with

488
00:25:50,800 --> 00:25:53,560
Speaker 1: these guys, they are both like in panic mode and

489
00:25:53,680 --> 00:25:57,520
Speaker 1: convinced that victory is impossible right the doom, saying Berry

490
00:25:57,600 --> 00:26:00,960
Speaker 1: and Stalin are both so like black pilled on their

491
00:26:01,040 --> 00:26:04,800
Speaker 1: chances that at one point Zukov has to ask, Comrade Stalin,

492
00:26:05,119 --> 00:26:08,040
Speaker 1: do I have permission to do my job. Right, You

493
00:26:08,119 --> 00:26:11,080
Speaker 1: are clearly panicking too much to handle anything, right now?

494
00:26:11,320 --> 00:26:16,520
Speaker 1: Can I go do a war? Right? Silence descends upon

495
00:26:16,520 --> 00:26:18,560
Speaker 1: the room after this, and just a few months later,

496
00:26:18,840 --> 00:26:21,600
Speaker 1: this would have ended with Zukov shot in a ditch, right,

497
00:26:22,119 --> 00:26:24,920
Speaker 1: but Baria. All that happens in this case is barry.

498
00:26:24,960 --> 00:26:27,360
Speaker 1: It just kind of gives this limp warning that, like, well,

499
00:26:27,359 --> 00:26:30,760
Speaker 1: the opinion of the party is important, the party being Stalin,

500
00:26:31,000 --> 00:26:33,359
Speaker 1: and Zu guy's like, I fuck about that right now? Man, Like,

501
00:26:33,400 --> 00:26:35,040
Speaker 1: do you want to win this fucker or not? You know,

502
00:26:35,600 --> 00:26:40,880
Speaker 1: there's not going to be a party in a three weeks. Yeah,

503
00:26:40,920 --> 00:26:44,640
Speaker 1: So obviously this is not a military history podcast. There's

504
00:26:44,640 --> 00:26:46,560
Speaker 1: plenty of places where you can go to read about

505
00:26:46,560 --> 00:26:49,520
Speaker 1: how the situation in the East gets turned around. Well

506
00:26:49,560 --> 00:26:51,800
Speaker 1: it's not the East to Stalin, it's largely the west,

507
00:26:51,840 --> 00:26:54,040
Speaker 1: but you get you know what I'm saying. While millions

508
00:26:54,119 --> 00:26:57,920
Speaker 1: upon millions of people are dying fighting the Nazis, life

509
00:26:57,920 --> 00:27:00,919
Speaker 1: gets a lot better for Burrio. World War two is

510
00:27:01,080 --> 00:27:04,720
Speaker 1: really good for him because of all of the people

511
00:27:04,760 --> 00:27:07,120
Speaker 1: close to Stalin, he's one of the guys who's kind

512
00:27:07,160 --> 00:27:10,040
Speaker 1: of most useful in this situation, right, because he's a

513
00:27:10,080 --> 00:27:13,680
Speaker 1: logistics guy, you know, and prior to the outbreak of war,

514
00:27:13,960 --> 00:27:17,800
Speaker 1: the security agencies had already been fairly centralized, and once

515
00:27:17,840 --> 00:27:21,280
Speaker 1: the war really kicks, everything gets centralized within the NKVD,

516
00:27:21,640 --> 00:27:24,600
Speaker 1: which makes him unequivocally the most powerful security chief in

517
00:27:24,640 --> 00:27:27,520
Speaker 1: the history of like almost any country, there's not a

518
00:27:27,520 --> 00:27:29,439
Speaker 1: whole lot of competition, and.

519
00:27:29,440 --> 00:27:32,200
Speaker 2: There's even elements during World War Two where the NKVD

520
00:27:32,400 --> 00:27:36,760
Speaker 2: has its own military formations and Baria patently refuses to

521
00:27:36,840 --> 00:27:38,919
Speaker 2: allow the Red Army to command them, and he has

522
00:27:38,960 --> 00:27:40,040
Speaker 2: the power to do so.

523
00:27:40,520 --> 00:27:42,240
Speaker 1: He sure does, and he's not going to be great

524
00:27:42,280 --> 00:27:44,800
Speaker 1: at that part. But what he is good at he

525
00:27:44,880 --> 00:27:46,840
Speaker 1: is kind of one of the guys who's in charge

526
00:27:46,880 --> 00:27:50,439
Speaker 1: of this very famous effort to basically disassemble all of

527
00:27:50,480 --> 00:27:53,720
Speaker 1: these Soviet heavy factories that are producing war material and

528
00:27:53,800 --> 00:27:56,439
Speaker 1: move them east right so they can get reset up.

529
00:27:56,440 --> 00:27:59,360
Speaker 1: And he's because he's so good at logistics. He's one

530
00:27:59,400 --> 00:28:02,160
Speaker 1: of the guys organizing this in a big way, right,

531
00:28:02,200 --> 00:28:03,879
Speaker 1: And he's from at least what I've read, seems to

532
00:28:03,960 --> 00:28:06,640
Speaker 1: have been competent in this kind of stuff. He does

533
00:28:06,680 --> 00:28:09,520
Speaker 1: a lot of in addition to running security, a lot

534
00:28:09,560 --> 00:28:12,160
Speaker 1: of because a lot of like what the NKVD armed

535
00:28:12,240 --> 00:28:15,520
Speaker 1: units are doing is ensuring that like supplies get places right,

536
00:28:15,600 --> 00:28:18,639
Speaker 1: because obviously you need soldiers doing that to some extent,

537
00:28:19,040 --> 00:28:21,520
Speaker 1: and I don't think he's incompetent at this now. In

538
00:28:21,520 --> 00:28:23,600
Speaker 1: addition to all of the practical shit that he's doing,

539
00:28:23,680 --> 00:28:26,280
Speaker 1: Barrya finds time to get up to some hideously evil

540
00:28:26,320 --> 00:28:30,359
Speaker 1: bullshit as well. The vulgar regions. Of course he does.

541
00:28:30,440 --> 00:28:32,840
Speaker 1: This is our boy barrier we're talking about here.

542
00:28:33,040 --> 00:28:35,000
Speaker 2: You know, he's not going to shelve his hobbies during

543
00:28:35,040 --> 00:28:37,439
Speaker 2: a whole world he's surrounded by death. This is what

544
00:28:37,520 --> 00:28:38,480
Speaker 2: he was built for.

545
00:28:39,040 --> 00:28:41,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, this is what he was built for, just

546
00:28:41,760 --> 00:28:45,320
Speaker 1: like our audience was built to be advertised too. So

547
00:28:46,040 --> 00:28:50,880
Speaker 1: take out your credit card, marry it to me. I'll

548
00:28:50,960 --> 00:28:53,360
Speaker 1: buy some stuff for you or for me, you know,

549
00:28:53,680 --> 00:28:57,640
Speaker 1: for some people. And bury a coin. M Yeah, bury

550
00:28:57,640 --> 00:29:08,840
Speaker 1: a coin our our new crypto currency. We're back and

551
00:29:09,320 --> 00:29:13,760
Speaker 1: my Burier coin is now worth I don't know, seven

552
00:29:13,880 --> 00:29:18,360
Speaker 1: negant revolvers or almost thirty five dollars, So that's pretty great.

553
00:29:18,640 --> 00:29:20,760
Speaker 2: I feel like the instructions are unclear in bury a

554
00:29:20,840 --> 00:29:23,280
Speaker 2: coin for people who don't know you can actually use

555
00:29:23,360 --> 00:29:25,920
Speaker 2: three slurp juices on your bury a coin.

556
00:29:26,080 --> 00:29:30,040
Speaker 1: M Yeah, and that's how you get a Melankov. I

557
00:29:30,040 --> 00:29:31,800
Speaker 1: don't know, I don't know. Maybe I'm not sure how

558
00:29:31,840 --> 00:29:34,160
Speaker 1: this would work. I'm not really sure how we how

559
00:29:34,200 --> 00:29:36,640
Speaker 1: we would to play this now, in addition to all

560
00:29:36,720 --> 00:29:39,120
Speaker 1: of the practical shift this day again, so the Vulgar

561
00:29:39,160 --> 00:29:43,480
Speaker 1: region includes a semi autonomous kind of German republic. It's

562
00:29:43,520 --> 00:29:46,760
Speaker 1: what it's called semi autonomous. Right, this is a part

563
00:29:46,800 --> 00:29:49,760
Speaker 1: of the USSR, but it's not a part of the USSR.

564
00:29:49,760 --> 00:29:51,880
Speaker 1: That's stall in trust prior to the war. And because

565
00:29:51,920 --> 00:29:55,560
Speaker 1: these people are like ethnically German, this isn't gonna be.

566
00:29:55,640 --> 00:29:57,800
Speaker 1: That's not a good time to be an ethnic German

567
00:29:57,920 --> 00:30:00,840
Speaker 1: in the Soviet Union. Right, probably don't need to explain

568
00:30:00,880 --> 00:30:05,680
Speaker 1: why Baria has NKVD men dress up as German paratroopers

569
00:30:05,920 --> 00:30:08,640
Speaker 1: and land and towns in this area to test the

570
00:30:08,680 --> 00:30:12,960
Speaker 1: loyalty of German ethnicity citizens. Their reaction, which I think

571
00:30:13,040 --> 00:30:16,240
Speaker 1: is like the normal reaction of civilians to soldiers swarming

572
00:30:16,280 --> 00:30:18,360
Speaker 1: are area, which is like, please don't kill me, I'll

573
00:30:18,360 --> 00:30:21,280
Speaker 1: do whatever. Right, It's the way most people act in

574
00:30:21,320 --> 00:30:25,320
Speaker 1: this situation. Yeah, Yeah, Their reaction was used as a

575
00:30:25,320 --> 00:30:29,640
Speaker 1: pretext to abolish this quote unquote autonomous republic and forcibly

576
00:30:29,680 --> 00:30:32,520
Speaker 1: ship hundreds of thousands of Volga Germans East, mostly to

577
00:30:32,600 --> 00:30:36,720
Speaker 1: Siberia or Kazakhstan. This is going to prove to be again,

578
00:30:36,880 --> 00:30:40,520
Speaker 1: there's this other frenzy of deportations that hadn't really ended

579
00:30:40,600 --> 00:30:43,320
Speaker 1: from like the wave we talked about last episode, but

580
00:30:43,440 --> 00:30:46,880
Speaker 1: millions more people are deported because they're considered traders by

581
00:30:46,920 --> 00:30:50,080
Speaker 1: DNT of their ancestry, and of course these brutal actions

582
00:30:50,080 --> 00:30:52,800
Speaker 1: forcing these people thousands and thousands of folks die right.

583
00:30:53,240 --> 00:30:57,640
Speaker 1: Amy Knight writes this about that period of deportations. Barr

584
00:30:57,720 --> 00:30:59,880
Speaker 1: A's matter of fact reports, of course, reveal nothing of

585
00:31:00,040 --> 00:31:02,680
Speaker 1: the human suffering that was wrought by this many Holocaust

586
00:31:03,040 --> 00:31:06,000
Speaker 1: Tens of thousands, including women, children, and old people perished

587
00:31:06,000 --> 00:31:09,000
Speaker 1: while they were being transported like cattle in overcrowded railway

588
00:31:09,040 --> 00:31:12,320
Speaker 1: cars without water or food. In the process of shipping

589
00:31:12,320 --> 00:31:15,240
Speaker 1: the Chechens in Engush, the NKVD had decided that it

590
00:31:15,240 --> 00:31:17,840
Speaker 1: could make do with fewer railway cars by crowding forty

591
00:31:17,840 --> 00:31:20,720
Speaker 1: five instead of forty persons into each carriage, a perfectly

592
00:31:20,760 --> 00:31:24,000
Speaker 1: reasonable decision. He observed since almost half the contingent were children.

593
00:31:24,400 --> 00:31:26,240
Speaker 1: He added that they had also been compelled to do

594
00:31:26,320 --> 00:31:30,360
Speaker 1: without sanitation facilities, and consequently an epidemic of typhus had

595
00:31:30,400 --> 00:31:32,840
Speaker 1: broken out. One of those who survived the trip later

596
00:31:32,880 --> 00:31:36,640
Speaker 1: described it in cattle cars filled to overflowing without lighter water.

597
00:31:36,720 --> 00:31:39,760
Speaker 1: We traveled for almost a month to our destination. Typhus

598
00:31:39,800 --> 00:31:42,280
Speaker 1: was having a heyday. There was no medicine during the

599
00:31:42,280 --> 00:31:45,480
Speaker 1: shortstops at lonely uninhabited stations. We buried our dead near

600
00:31:45,520 --> 00:31:47,920
Speaker 1: the train and snow that was black from engine soot.

601
00:31:48,200 --> 00:31:50,400
Speaker 1: It was forbidden, with punishment of death, to go more

602
00:31:50,440 --> 00:31:53,080
Speaker 1: than five meters from the train. Many more died of

603
00:31:53,120 --> 00:31:58,640
Speaker 1: famine disease once they had reached their destination. So not good. Yeah,

604
00:31:58,760 --> 00:32:02,680
Speaker 1: bad stuff, you'd say. And in terms of how Barria

605
00:32:02,880 --> 00:32:06,400
Speaker 1: feels about this human catastrophe that he's overseeing, we have

606
00:32:06,560 --> 00:32:09,400
Speaker 1: his constant notes to Stalin suggesting that he should be

607
00:32:09,400 --> 00:32:13,320
Speaker 1: awarded for the stunning successes he'd experienced in doing ethnic cleansings.

608
00:32:13,840 --> 00:32:16,920
Speaker 1: The war years were indeed good for Barria, but he

609
00:32:17,000 --> 00:32:20,720
Speaker 1: had a constant annoyance. By necessity, the military was given

610
00:32:20,760 --> 00:32:23,560
Speaker 1: a great deal of independence and latitude because you kind

611
00:32:23,560 --> 00:32:25,680
Speaker 1: of need them, right, You can't fuck with them the

612
00:32:25,680 --> 00:32:28,600
Speaker 1: same way when they're actually the only thing stopping the

613
00:32:28,720 --> 00:32:32,720
Speaker 1: Nazis and they even purge officers anymore, right, Right, that

614
00:32:33,120 --> 00:32:36,400
Speaker 1: is Barry's attitude, right, because guys like Zookov are increasingly

615
00:32:36,480 --> 00:32:39,719
Speaker 1: allowed to make major calls and even questioned Stalin's judgment

616
00:32:39,960 --> 00:32:42,080
Speaker 1: and barry Is judgment, and that's going to piss off

617
00:32:42,120 --> 00:32:46,680
Speaker 1: both Barria and Stalin. Barria does continuously through the war

618
00:32:46,720 --> 00:32:49,720
Speaker 1: try to force his way into making military command decisions,

619
00:32:49,880 --> 00:32:53,160
Speaker 1: and this is something he's always bad at. In October

620
00:32:53,160 --> 00:32:56,680
Speaker 1: of nineteen forty one, Soviet pilots spotted German troops advancing

621
00:32:56,680 --> 00:33:00,600
Speaker 1: on Moscow. Barria took the photographs and hid them, telling

622
00:33:00,640 --> 00:33:04,040
Speaker 1: everyone they were warmongering and trying to cause a panic.

623
00:33:04,520 --> 00:33:07,600
Speaker 1: Sangster notes that time and time again, Barria tried to

624
00:33:07,640 --> 00:33:10,200
Speaker 1: threaten his way into giving orders to the military, and

625
00:33:10,200 --> 00:33:12,640
Speaker 1: the military has to go to Stalin to be like,

626
00:33:12,920 --> 00:33:16,720
Speaker 1: can you fucking get this guy in pocket, Like you

627
00:33:16,760 --> 00:33:19,480
Speaker 1: know how bad things are right now, it's October of

628
00:33:19,560 --> 00:33:20,160
Speaker 1: forty one.

629
00:33:20,760 --> 00:33:23,840
Speaker 2: Look, Joe, can you point this guy towards another minority

630
00:33:23,880 --> 00:33:26,160
Speaker 2: that needs to be sent to Kazakhstans will leave us

631
00:33:26,160 --> 00:33:28,400
Speaker 2: alone for another two weeks, have him do.

632
00:33:28,480 --> 00:33:31,800
Speaker 1: Another crime against humanity. We're we've got some shit to

633
00:33:31,880 --> 00:33:36,479
Speaker 1: handle here now. One of Barry's more ridiculous blunders came

634
00:33:36,600 --> 00:33:39,320
Speaker 1: during the height of the fighting, when every rifle was

635
00:33:39,400 --> 00:33:42,240
Speaker 1: needed and Barrus sought to equip a bunch of his troops.

636
00:33:42,240 --> 00:33:45,640
Speaker 1: These NKVD soldiers guarding rear areas far from the fighting

637
00:33:46,040 --> 00:33:48,959
Speaker 1: with the very best weaponry, right, because the Soviets are

638
00:33:48,960 --> 00:33:50,720
Speaker 1: starting to produce what are legitimately going to be some

639
00:33:50,760 --> 00:33:52,800
Speaker 1: of the best guns of the war. Right, some of

640
00:33:52,840 --> 00:33:55,560
Speaker 1: these like first automatic rifles and stuff that are kind

641
00:33:55,600 --> 00:33:58,240
Speaker 1: of in wide circulation, and they don't initially have a

642
00:33:58,240 --> 00:34:00,160
Speaker 1: lot of these, and they're kind of all needed. But

643
00:34:00,240 --> 00:34:04,000
Speaker 1: Barria wants the shiny toys for his guys, even though like, well,

644
00:34:04,040 --> 00:34:06,040
Speaker 1: some dude who's actually going to be shooting a bunch

645
00:34:06,080 --> 00:34:09,480
Speaker 1: of Germans should probably have these guns before your guys, Right,

646
00:34:09,520 --> 00:34:13,400
Speaker 1: you're like guarding a train station maybe, And when Voronov,

647
00:34:13,400 --> 00:34:16,960
Speaker 1: who's a top general, informs Stalin of this, Barria whispers

648
00:34:16,960 --> 00:34:20,440
Speaker 1: to Voronov, just you wait, will fix your guts.

649
00:34:20,960 --> 00:34:26,200
Speaker 2: Sure, such as does sounds like it could be simultaneously

650
00:34:27,239 --> 00:34:30,360
Speaker 2: a threat or the worst pickup line I've ever.

651
00:34:30,200 --> 00:34:35,240
Speaker 1: Heard, right, right, yeah, Now, Barrier reserves a special hatred

652
00:34:35,280 --> 00:34:39,640
Speaker 1: for Georgie Zukov because Zukov reasonably good at being a general.

653
00:34:39,840 --> 00:34:42,800
Speaker 1: Right there's again, like anyone who's in this position, a

654
00:34:42,880 --> 00:34:46,319
Speaker 1: number of valid criticisms of his command choices here. But

655
00:34:46,360 --> 00:34:47,640
Speaker 1: he's not an idiot, you know.

656
00:34:47,800 --> 00:34:52,080
Speaker 2: Certainly one of the top two that the Soviet Union

657
00:34:52,320 --> 00:34:55,720
Speaker 2: produces between him and Bogramia and right right.

658
00:34:55,600 --> 00:34:57,520
Speaker 1: And he's in the same set. I would compare him

659
00:34:57,520 --> 00:34:59,799
Speaker 1: in some ways to a guy like Grant, where there's

660
00:34:59,840 --> 00:35:01,839
Speaker 1: time where you can say, like, he's just throwing men

661
00:35:01,880 --> 00:35:04,440
Speaker 1: into a meat grinder, but also like, well, I don't know,

662
00:35:04,480 --> 00:35:08,160
Speaker 1: there weren't that was probably unavoidable to some extent. We

663
00:35:08,160 --> 00:35:10,759
Speaker 1: can argue how much less it could have been. But

664
00:35:11,040 --> 00:35:14,120
Speaker 1: he's in a tough situation. I wouldn't have wanted his job.

665
00:35:14,800 --> 00:35:18,560
Speaker 2: Like sometimes sometimes a meat grinder is your only choice.

666
00:35:18,840 --> 00:35:20,960
Speaker 2: We did a series in the Battle of Kurskill a

667
00:35:21,040 --> 00:35:23,200
Speaker 2: while ago, and this is like, oh no, this is

668
00:35:23,239 --> 00:35:25,840
Speaker 2: like a solid battle plan. As long as one of

669
00:35:25,880 --> 00:35:29,640
Speaker 2: the checklist is like we can we can lose a

670
00:35:29,680 --> 00:35:31,839
Speaker 2: lot more people than you can, which is a legit

671
00:35:32,000 --> 00:35:35,360
Speaker 2: a military strategy. It's just it looks really bad on paper.

672
00:35:35,440 --> 00:35:39,680
Speaker 2: Later on, yeah it's ugly, but it's World War two, right,

673
00:35:39,840 --> 00:35:42,520
Speaker 2: like Zukov is. And because of this, Zukov is even

674
00:35:42,640 --> 00:35:47,280
Speaker 2: after the war, he's not totally impervious, like he takes

675
00:35:47,280 --> 00:35:50,839
Speaker 2: some hits after the war, right, but even after the war,

676
00:35:50,960 --> 00:35:53,160
Speaker 2: he can't be purged in the same way other guys

677
00:35:53,200 --> 00:35:54,920
Speaker 2: can because he's fucking.

678
00:35:54,719 --> 00:36:00,960
Speaker 1: Zukov, right, you know, and hates this right. This scares

679
00:36:00,960 --> 00:36:02,719
Speaker 1: the shit out of Stalin, and Barry is kind of

680
00:36:02,760 --> 00:36:05,719
Speaker 1: just jealous beyond words at the guy. In May of

681
00:36:05,800 --> 00:36:08,799
Speaker 1: nineteen forty five, as things are winding down and the

682
00:36:08,840 --> 00:36:12,120
Speaker 1: Red Army enters Berlin, it becomes clear that the time

683
00:36:12,160 --> 00:36:15,560
Speaker 1: of greatest threat was well passed. Right, Stalin can get

684
00:36:15,600 --> 00:36:18,320
Speaker 1: back to tightening his grip on power, and these military

685
00:36:18,320 --> 00:36:20,480
Speaker 1: guys have a little bit less clout because we're not

686
00:36:20,520 --> 00:36:25,280
Speaker 1: really at risk of losing anymore. Right, So Barya starts

687
00:36:25,280 --> 00:36:27,000
Speaker 1: to kind of try to push to get back to

688
00:36:27,080 --> 00:36:30,040
Speaker 1: murdering anyone competent to posing a threat to whatever bullshit

689
00:36:30,120 --> 00:36:31,960
Speaker 1: he wants to pull. And as a result of this,

690
00:36:32,320 --> 00:36:35,400
Speaker 1: Zukov winds up in both Stalin and Barria's sites, and

691
00:36:35,400 --> 00:36:38,400
Speaker 1: I'm going to quote from Amy Knight here. Barria managed

692
00:36:38,400 --> 00:36:42,279
Speaker 1: to get his deputy, Ivan Serov, appointed Zukov's assistant, serving

693
00:36:42,320 --> 00:36:46,160
Speaker 1: as chief of the Civilian Administration the Soviet Zone of Germany. Henceforth,

694
00:36:46,200 --> 00:36:49,080
Speaker 1: reports began to trickle back to Stalin about Zukov, that

695
00:36:49,120 --> 00:36:51,040
Speaker 1: he was boasting about his victories and even that he

696
00:36:51,080 --> 00:36:55,000
Speaker 1: was planning a military conspiracy against Stalin. Bary's men also

697
00:36:55,000 --> 00:36:57,920
Speaker 1: did all they could to keep important information hidden from Zukov.

698
00:36:58,200 --> 00:37:00,239
Speaker 1: It turns out, for example, that he was not told

699
00:37:00,280 --> 00:37:02,680
Speaker 1: that Hitler's body had been found. He did not know

700
00:37:02,719 --> 00:37:05,480
Speaker 1: that autopsies were carried out and an investigation launched to

701
00:37:05,480 --> 00:37:08,120
Speaker 1: confirm the identity as well as the cause of death,

702
00:37:08,960 --> 00:37:12,279
Speaker 1: which is like wild considering what Zukov's job is at

703
00:37:12,320 --> 00:37:14,759
Speaker 1: this time, that you're not letting him know that you've

704
00:37:14,800 --> 00:37:18,480
Speaker 1: autopsied to Hitler. All of this culminates and Jay Stall

705
00:37:18,560 --> 00:37:20,960
Speaker 1: denouncing our boy Zukov near the end of forty five

706
00:37:21,080 --> 00:37:24,080
Speaker 1: during a meeting at the Kremlin. Zukov notably is not

707
00:37:24,239 --> 00:37:26,800
Speaker 1: at that meeting, but he has eventually summoned to stand

708
00:37:26,840 --> 00:37:29,800
Speaker 1: before the war Council and made to answer for his crimes.

709
00:37:30,280 --> 00:37:33,560
Speaker 1: It is sometimes suggested that Stalin wanted to have him executed,

710
00:37:33,760 --> 00:37:35,960
Speaker 1: and he kind of floats this to the other military

711
00:37:36,040 --> 00:37:39,239
Speaker 1: leaders of the USSR, and they're like, what the fuck

712
00:37:39,280 --> 00:37:43,160
Speaker 1: are you talking about, man Zukov. You want to kill Zukov? Now,

713
00:37:43,760 --> 00:37:46,840
Speaker 1: that's not going to work out, And it says a

714
00:37:46,880 --> 00:37:49,439
Speaker 1: lot about his position that Stalin has to back off

715
00:37:49,480 --> 00:37:51,560
Speaker 1: on this right. Some of this might just be the

716
00:37:51,600 --> 00:37:55,200
Speaker 1: fact that like Eisenhower and Zukov are legitimately buddies. One

717
00:37:55,239 --> 00:37:57,759
Speaker 1: of my favorite cute facts of the war is that,

718
00:37:57,880 --> 00:38:01,440
Speaker 1: like they get along so well that, like Zukov gets

719
00:38:01,520 --> 00:38:04,320
Speaker 1: shipped Coca Cola. I think for the rest of his life.

720
00:38:04,320 --> 00:38:05,200
Speaker 1: That's made just.

721
00:38:05,239 --> 00:38:09,000
Speaker 2: For him, if I remember correctly. He also Eisenharer also

722
00:38:09,000 --> 00:38:12,280
Speaker 2: gives Zukov like a fishing kit that he used a box,

723
00:38:12,520 --> 00:38:14,480
Speaker 2: yeah for he uses for the rest of his life.

724
00:38:14,680 --> 00:38:17,040
Speaker 1: It's if I'm not mistaken. The tackle box that Eisenheer

725
00:38:17,080 --> 00:38:19,279
Speaker 1: gives him is by his bedside when he dies, which

726
00:38:19,320 --> 00:38:22,440
Speaker 1: suggests like it's not really hard because like Eisenhower and

727
00:38:22,480 --> 00:38:26,040
Speaker 1: Zukov are like the only two guys that can understand

728
00:38:26,120 --> 00:38:27,280
Speaker 1: being in that position.

729
00:38:27,560 --> 00:38:30,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're gonna they're gonna get along great.

730
00:38:30,520 --> 00:38:33,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not surprised they had some things in common.

731
00:38:34,000 --> 00:38:36,759
Speaker 1: So during the war, Baria also makes clever use of

732
00:38:36,760 --> 00:38:38,840
Speaker 1: the Gulag system that he had helped to build or

733
00:38:38,960 --> 00:38:41,440
Speaker 1: at least helped to expand, in order to further Soviet

734
00:38:41,480 --> 00:38:44,000
Speaker 1: war aims in a way that furthered his career. And

735
00:38:44,040 --> 00:38:46,719
Speaker 1: this is possible because prior to the outbreak of hostilities,

736
00:38:46,760 --> 00:38:48,720
Speaker 1: a lot of people who had been arrested and taken

737
00:38:48,719 --> 00:38:53,480
Speaker 1: into custody were scientists, engineers, and physicists, and Baria, again

738
00:38:53,760 --> 00:38:56,400
Speaker 1: not a dumb man, knows that he doesn't want to

739
00:38:56,480 --> 00:39:00,120
Speaker 1: kill these people because you get you can get officer

740
00:39:00,200 --> 00:39:02,520
Speaker 1: who are okay or at least train them up. You

741
00:39:02,560 --> 00:39:07,080
Speaker 1: can replace political men, you can't really replace genius scientists

742
00:39:07,080 --> 00:39:10,359
Speaker 1: and physicists easily, right, Yeah, So he keeps a lot

743
00:39:10,400 --> 00:39:12,920
Speaker 1: of these guys in pocket. He has like special prisons

744
00:39:12,960 --> 00:39:15,719
Speaker 1: for them that are certainly a lot safer than the

745
00:39:15,760 --> 00:39:19,400
Speaker 1: other prisons. And when the war really gets running, he

746
00:39:19,520 --> 00:39:23,200
Speaker 1: gets these guys working designing new weapons systems and stuff

747
00:39:23,239 --> 00:39:25,840
Speaker 1: for the Soviet Union. And that's one of the things

748
00:39:25,840 --> 00:39:27,960
Speaker 1: that gives Barry a lot of clout in this period

749
00:39:28,040 --> 00:39:30,000
Speaker 1: is he has a lot of these guys who had

750
00:39:30,000 --> 00:39:33,080
Speaker 1: been kind of, you know, out of favor prior to

751
00:39:33,320 --> 00:39:34,960
Speaker 1: the war, and he's, you know, he's able to get

752
00:39:35,000 --> 00:39:37,880
Speaker 1: them working. A lot of these guys get their sentences commuted,

753
00:39:38,040 --> 00:39:41,000
Speaker 1: right because they're so necessary. And this is going to

754
00:39:41,040 --> 00:39:44,240
Speaker 1: really play into what happens next because barry Is direct

755
00:39:44,239 --> 00:39:47,040
Speaker 1: involvement in the production of war materiel is evidence of

756
00:39:47,239 --> 00:39:50,319
Speaker 1: not just his general cunning, but his understanding that his

757
00:39:50,440 --> 00:39:54,439
Speaker 1: position is based on continually putting himself directly in front

758
00:39:54,440 --> 00:39:57,239
Speaker 1: of Comrad Stalin's eyes at all times. Whatever Stalin is

759
00:39:57,239 --> 00:39:59,880
Speaker 1: focused on, Stalin's focused on the war. I need to

760
00:39:59,880 --> 00:40:01,920
Speaker 1: be making shit for the war. At least I need

761
00:40:01,960 --> 00:40:04,560
Speaker 1: to be facilitating the making of shit for the war, right,

762
00:40:04,560 --> 00:40:08,120
Speaker 1: because that's the way to maintain my position after the war.

763
00:40:08,360 --> 00:40:10,359
Speaker 1: I don't know if you're aware of this shoe. It

764
00:40:10,480 --> 00:40:12,800
Speaker 1: ends in the Pacific with the US dropping a couple

765
00:40:12,800 --> 00:40:15,360
Speaker 1: of nuclear bombs, right, I think I've heard of it. Yeah,

766
00:40:15,719 --> 00:40:17,840
Speaker 1: kind of a big deal. The fact that we do

767
00:40:17,960 --> 00:40:21,480
Speaker 1: this and when we drop these bombs, there's a strong

768
00:40:21,600 --> 00:40:23,920
Speaker 1: argument to be made that the primary reason reason we

769
00:40:24,000 --> 00:40:26,040
Speaker 1: do drop them is to make a big show of

770
00:40:26,080 --> 00:40:29,200
Speaker 1: force to the Soviet Union. Right. This is heavily debatable.

771
00:40:29,200 --> 00:40:31,279
Speaker 1: I certainly don't. Some people will make the claim that

772
00:40:31,400 --> 00:40:33,720
Speaker 1: is not supported that like, oh, Japan was right about

773
00:40:33,760 --> 00:40:36,840
Speaker 1: to surrender without it, and like, no, they were like

774
00:40:37,000 --> 00:40:39,600
Speaker 1: trying to float this thing whereby the emperor would stay

775
00:40:39,640 --> 00:40:42,160
Speaker 1: the emperor and they'd get to handle their war criminals

776
00:40:42,239 --> 00:40:43,800
Speaker 1: on their own. Not really the same.

777
00:40:44,120 --> 00:40:48,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were not agreeing to unconditional surrender, which was

778
00:40:48,239 --> 00:40:51,760
Speaker 2: the I believe since Yalta was the main and only

779
00:40:51,920 --> 00:40:57,000
Speaker 2: acceptance of things. Yeah, there's many layers to the atomic bombing, right,

780
00:40:57,120 --> 00:40:59,480
Speaker 2: And none of this is saying the atomic bombing is

781
00:40:59,520 --> 00:41:00,840
Speaker 2: a feed of a whole crime.

782
00:41:01,000 --> 00:41:01,880
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that.

783
00:41:02,040 --> 00:41:05,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, but there is, especially when you look into you know,

784
00:41:06,080 --> 00:41:08,960
Speaker 2: Operation Downfall, which would have been the mainland invasion of Japan,

785
00:41:09,280 --> 00:41:12,840
Speaker 2: which would have been significantly worse and also still included

786
00:41:12,920 --> 00:41:15,920
Speaker 2: nuclear weapons, right, you know, almost could have been some

787
00:41:16,080 --> 00:41:17,920
Speaker 2: point strophically worse.

788
00:41:18,640 --> 00:41:20,839
Speaker 1: All of that can be true, and also true that

789
00:41:20,920 --> 00:41:23,240
Speaker 1: we drop those bombs in large part because we wanted

790
00:41:23,239 --> 00:41:25,399
Speaker 1: to make a point to the Russians, right, yeah, yeah,

791
00:41:25,560 --> 00:41:29,360
Speaker 1: those at the same time, right, and what becomes clear

792
00:41:29,440 --> 00:41:32,759
Speaker 1: to the Stalin and to everybody who's not who's like

793
00:41:33,280 --> 00:41:36,160
Speaker 1: has any level of like, I don't know intellect at

794
00:41:36,160 --> 00:41:39,040
Speaker 1: this point is that once the US has dropped nukes,

795
00:41:39,360 --> 00:41:41,680
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union's going to need nukes of their own

796
00:41:41,960 --> 00:41:44,360
Speaker 1: right very quickly to see how they get to that

797
00:41:44,880 --> 00:41:46,799
Speaker 1: and look like, the whole lesson of the twenty first

798
00:41:46,800 --> 00:41:49,400
Speaker 1: century is, never give up your nukes. If the Ussa's

799
00:41:49,440 --> 00:41:52,760
Speaker 1: piss statue right, or if Russia is pissed at you, you're.

800
00:41:52,680 --> 00:41:56,560
Speaker 2: Generally like a solid bullet proofst to have as a nation. Yeah,

801
00:41:56,800 --> 00:41:59,719
Speaker 2: if you have them, keep the fuckers right. I don't

802
00:41:59,800 --> 00:42:00,719
Speaker 2: love that that's.

803
00:42:00,480 --> 00:42:02,719
Speaker 1: The lesson of the twenty first century, but it's hard

804
00:42:02,760 --> 00:42:03,360
Speaker 1: to argue with.

805
00:42:03,640 --> 00:42:06,440
Speaker 2: And that's why I personally never gave up my nuclear weapons.

806
00:42:06,480 --> 00:42:09,800
Speaker 1: Now I'm not a person in my desk yeah, yeah,

807
00:42:10,160 --> 00:42:12,800
Speaker 1: you know, I just keep one on me at all times.

808
00:42:12,800 --> 00:42:14,560
Speaker 1: I like to strap it to my bicycle when I

809
00:42:14,600 --> 00:42:16,760
Speaker 1: go cycling. You know, people give me a wide berth.

810
00:42:16,960 --> 00:42:22,080
Speaker 1: It's part of myself everyday. Carry yeah yeah, nuke, yeah, flashlight,

811
00:42:22,360 --> 00:42:27,040
Speaker 1: just the basics. If you were tasked with the job

812
00:42:27,080 --> 00:42:30,719
Speaker 1: of developing a nuclear arsenal for your country, neighborhood, or household.

813
00:42:31,200 --> 00:42:32,200
Speaker 1: What's your first.

814
00:42:31,960 --> 00:42:34,359
Speaker 2: Step going to be, Oh, to spy on the people

815
00:42:34,360 --> 00:42:35,360
Speaker 2: who already have one?

816
00:42:35,800 --> 00:42:38,960
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, that is actually exactly what happens, right, And

817
00:42:38,960 --> 00:42:41,680
Speaker 1: that's why Stalin is going to eventually appoint Barrier to

818
00:42:41,719 --> 00:42:44,400
Speaker 1: handle this job. Right, And it's not hard again, very

819
00:42:44,400 --> 00:42:45,880
Speaker 1: it makes a lot of sense. Barry is not just

820
00:42:45,920 --> 00:42:48,600
Speaker 1: a talented organizer. He's proved he's good at kind of

821
00:42:48,600 --> 00:42:51,080
Speaker 1: the materiel game, and that's a part of figuring out

822
00:42:51,080 --> 00:42:53,879
Speaker 1: how to make a nuke. He's also pretty good at

823
00:42:53,880 --> 00:42:57,359
Speaker 1: building a team to like accomplish a goal, and he's

824
00:42:57,400 --> 00:43:00,000
Speaker 1: also pretty good at massacring those teams, you know, when

825
00:43:00,040 --> 00:43:03,680
Speaker 1: they need to be massacred. Barria is also the spymaster,

826
00:43:03,840 --> 00:43:06,919
Speaker 1: and a lot of the Soviet bomb ambitions are going

827
00:43:07,000 --> 00:43:10,239
Speaker 1: to be shall we say, floated by their ability to

828
00:43:10,360 --> 00:43:13,279
Speaker 1: infiltrate the nuclear weapons programs of the United States and

829
00:43:13,320 --> 00:43:16,759
Speaker 1: the United Kingdom. Right, So Barry is actually appointed to

830
00:43:16,760 --> 00:43:19,160
Speaker 1: head up the Soviet Adam bomb project on August seventh,

831
00:43:19,239 --> 00:43:22,359
Speaker 1: nineteen forty five, the day after the US bomb Hiroshima,

832
00:43:22,440 --> 00:43:25,320
Speaker 1: and he creates a new department at the NKVD Department

833
00:43:25,480 --> 00:43:28,720
Speaker 1: s which is going to host the agency's nuclear research efforts.

834
00:43:29,080 --> 00:43:31,759
Speaker 1: This is not the beginning of Soviet efforts of developing

835
00:43:31,800 --> 00:43:34,520
Speaker 1: towards developing a bomb. Of course, the Soviet Union does

836
00:43:34,560 --> 00:43:38,000
Speaker 1: not lack for skilled scientists. In as early as nineteen forty,

837
00:43:38,120 --> 00:43:41,520
Speaker 1: Soviet physicist Ai Kirschhatov had given a report to the

838
00:43:41,560 --> 00:43:45,480
Speaker 1: Academy of Sciences about how a theoretical nuclear weapon might work.

839
00:43:46,080 --> 00:43:48,920
Speaker 1: Petr Kapitska, who is I think probably the most famous

840
00:43:48,960 --> 00:43:51,880
Speaker 1: Soviet physicist of the era, had brought the matter up

841
00:43:51,920 --> 00:43:55,000
Speaker 1: again in nineteen forty one. And the main reason the

842
00:43:55,040 --> 00:43:57,760
Speaker 1: USSR falls so far behind the US on this research

843
00:43:57,840 --> 00:44:00,440
Speaker 1: is they get invaded, right. That throws a little bit

844
00:44:00,440 --> 00:44:03,560
Speaker 1: of a wrench in things that'll slow down. We might

845
00:44:03,600 --> 00:44:06,359
Speaker 1: not have been able to do the things that we

846
00:44:06,360 --> 00:44:08,880
Speaker 1: were doing if we were like fighting the Nazis and

847
00:44:08,920 --> 00:44:11,399
Speaker 1: the Sandias, you know, probably would have been a little

848
00:44:11,480 --> 00:44:15,040
Speaker 1: harder to establish that facility. Oppenheimer would have been a

849
00:44:15,040 --> 00:44:18,640
Speaker 1: different movie, as much nudity, but differently shot. You know,

850
00:44:19,480 --> 00:44:22,000
Speaker 1: still would watch it, still would watch it. So to

851
00:44:22,080 --> 00:44:24,560
Speaker 1: help make up for this gap that's caused by the

852
00:44:24,600 --> 00:44:27,719
Speaker 1: fact that they're fighting this war, Barria spymaster for the

853
00:44:27,840 --> 00:44:31,880
Speaker 1: USSR starts collecting and disseminating nuclear secrets from the British,

854
00:44:32,000 --> 00:44:34,680
Speaker 1: US and German nuclear programs. This is something he's doing

855
00:44:34,760 --> 00:44:37,440
Speaker 1: all throughout World War Two right now. One of his

856
00:44:37,480 --> 00:44:40,680
Speaker 1: best s buies is a guy named Klaus Fuchs, who

857
00:44:40,719 --> 00:44:43,040
Speaker 1: missed his true calling in a join in joining the

858
00:44:43,040 --> 00:44:46,200
Speaker 1: adult film industry and thus was forced to study mathematics

859
00:44:46,200 --> 00:44:50,319
Speaker 1: and physics. At age nineteen, he joined the German Communist Party,

860
00:44:50,360 --> 00:44:52,799
Speaker 1: which was difficult because he happened to turn nineteen in

861
00:44:52,920 --> 00:44:56,719
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty, a notably bad time to be a German Communist.

862
00:44:57,080 --> 00:45:00,680
Speaker 1: Great to the Nazis. Yeah really, really, we add timing

863
00:45:00,719 --> 00:45:05,680
Speaker 1: on turning nineteen fucks Fuchs. Whatever. So, when the Nazis

864
00:45:05,719 --> 00:45:08,840
Speaker 1: takeover a few years later, Fuchs deports himself over to

865
00:45:08,920 --> 00:45:11,400
Speaker 1: England and he gets a job as the research assistant

866
00:45:11,440 --> 00:45:14,160
Speaker 1: to a professor of physics. He receives his PhD in

867
00:45:14,239 --> 00:45:16,680
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty seven in physics, and then he gets another

868
00:45:16,760 --> 00:45:20,239
Speaker 1: PhD at the University of Edinburgh just for fun. He

869
00:45:20,280 --> 00:45:22,600
Speaker 1: applies for British citizenship at this point, but is a

870
00:45:22,640 --> 00:45:25,360
Speaker 1: little late on the draw. Failing to beat the outbreak

871
00:45:25,400 --> 00:45:28,240
Speaker 1: of war, he was interned in Quebec for a spell

872
00:45:28,239 --> 00:45:30,920
Speaker 1: before one of his professors pull strings to let him out,

873
00:45:30,960 --> 00:45:33,960
Speaker 1: basically being like, we're trying to build nukes. The British

874
00:45:33,960 --> 00:45:37,640
Speaker 1: Adam Bomb project, which is under the code name Tube Alloys,

875
00:45:38,040 --> 00:45:41,120
Speaker 1: starts in like you know, around this time, and in

876
00:45:41,160 --> 00:45:43,480
Speaker 1: May of nineteen forty one, he gets kind of brought

877
00:45:43,520 --> 00:45:46,759
Speaker 1: out of internment to work on this project. Right, So

878
00:45:47,000 --> 00:45:50,840
Speaker 1: Fuchs's work got him. I'm basing this on the character

879
00:45:50,960 --> 00:45:53,400
Speaker 1: from Barry. I assume it's pretty close to that.

880
00:45:53,520 --> 00:45:56,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, I assume it's the same. They even look probably similar.

881
00:45:56,200 --> 00:45:58,400
Speaker 1: It's fine, it's probably played by the same actor. In

882
00:45:58,480 --> 00:46:02,480
Speaker 1: my heart at least. So Fuchs's work gets him British

883
00:46:02,520 --> 00:46:06,000
Speaker 1: citizenship in late nineteen forty two, and it's one of

884
00:46:06,040 --> 00:46:09,640
Speaker 1: those things where he's a great scientist and what a reward, Yeah,

885
00:46:09,719 --> 00:46:13,960
Speaker 1: becoming British. Yeah, congratulations, you're now a British citizen. Like,

886
00:46:14,400 --> 00:46:16,960
Speaker 1: can I go to Canada? Stough? Yeah, not going to

887
00:46:17,040 --> 00:46:20,360
Speaker 1: be Canadian. Maybe. As soon as he gets this job,

888
00:46:20,600 --> 00:46:23,439
Speaker 1: he starts working as a spy for the GRU right

889
00:46:23,880 --> 00:46:25,520
Speaker 1: or for I think it's the I guess the KGB.

890
00:46:25,600 --> 00:46:27,600
Speaker 1: At this point, I forget. I always mix up my

891
00:46:27,680 --> 00:46:29,600
Speaker 1: spy agencies again, they go through a bunch of them

892
00:46:29,640 --> 00:46:34,000
Speaker 1: at this point, right, But he's handing Soviet spies classified

893
00:46:34,000 --> 00:46:36,960
Speaker 1: information about British nuclear ambitions right, kind of through the

894
00:46:37,000 --> 00:46:40,279
Speaker 1: whole war period. And he's really good at this, right,

895
00:46:40,560 --> 00:46:42,600
Speaker 1: He's good enough at this that not only does no

896
00:46:42,640 --> 00:46:46,040
Speaker 1: one notice that he's spying on the British nuclear weapons

897
00:46:46,040 --> 00:46:49,279
Speaker 1: program for the Soviet Union, but he gets transferred to

898
00:46:49,360 --> 00:46:52,240
Speaker 1: Los Alamos to help the Americans with their much cooler

899
00:46:52,320 --> 00:46:56,359
Speaker 1: Adam bomb. There he calculates the YU I think he's

900
00:46:56,400 --> 00:46:58,560
Speaker 1: the first guy to calculate the yield of an atomic

901
00:46:58,640 --> 00:47:02,400
Speaker 1: blast and like a precise manner, and he studies implosion methods.

902
00:47:02,440 --> 00:47:04,120
Speaker 1: He's one of the people who's there to see the

903
00:47:04,120 --> 00:47:07,799
Speaker 1: Trinity test in person. And he continues spying during this

904
00:47:07,840 --> 00:47:10,080
Speaker 1: whole period of time, which he sees as his duty

905
00:47:10,120 --> 00:47:14,160
Speaker 1: to the cause of global communism. As Russia's spymaster, or

906
00:47:14,200 --> 00:47:17,160
Speaker 1: at least one of them. Barria oversaw the project of

907
00:47:17,280 --> 00:47:20,040
Speaker 1: using Fuchs and several other spies who were close to

908
00:47:20,080 --> 00:47:23,120
Speaker 1: the project. I found an article published by Columbia University's

909
00:47:23,160 --> 00:47:27,840
Speaker 1: Atomic Heritage Foundation that notes Fuchs also passed detailed information

910
00:47:27,880 --> 00:47:30,880
Speaker 1: about the hydrogen bomb to the Soviet Union. Some experts

911
00:47:31,000 --> 00:47:33,799
Speaker 1: estimate that Fuchs's intelligence enabled the Soviets to develop and

912
00:47:33,840 --> 00:47:36,640
Speaker 1: test their own at atomic bomb one to two years

913
00:47:36,680 --> 00:47:40,440
Speaker 1: earlier than otherwise expected, and there's a little debate about this.

914
00:47:40,640 --> 00:47:43,360
Speaker 1: I think the US is kind of saying at the

915
00:47:43,440 --> 00:47:46,279
Speaker 1: end of World War Two, the Soviets will probably have

916
00:47:46,360 --> 00:47:49,840
Speaker 1: their own bomb by nineteen fifty three somewhere around there.

917
00:47:50,120 --> 00:47:53,239
Speaker 1: Obviously they beat that by several years, and forty eight

918
00:47:53,320 --> 00:47:56,000
Speaker 1: is when they do it, And it's pretty widely agreed

919
00:47:56,040 --> 00:47:58,200
Speaker 1: it's because they have a lot of really good intel

920
00:47:58,239 --> 00:48:01,560
Speaker 1: from their spies, right, that this definitely moves up the timeframe.

921
00:48:01,800 --> 00:48:04,080
Speaker 1: And if I remember correctly, with the first Soviet nuke

922
00:48:04,200 --> 00:48:07,200
Speaker 1: is effectively a copy of like one for one copy

923
00:48:07,239 --> 00:48:09,680
Speaker 1: of the American one. Yeah, in a lot of ways

924
00:48:09,680 --> 00:48:12,120
Speaker 1: it is. I'm not enough of an expert on nukes

925
00:48:12,120 --> 00:48:15,200
Speaker 1: to lay into that, but it's widely agreed that all

926
00:48:15,200 --> 00:48:18,920
Speaker 1: of the spying that Barrier is managing moves forward the

927
00:48:19,320 --> 00:48:23,680
Speaker 1: timeframe on this significantly. Right, It's possible maybe Stalin doesn't

928
00:48:23,719 --> 00:48:27,239
Speaker 1: live to see a Soviet nuke without the spying program, right.

929
00:48:27,600 --> 00:48:30,000
Speaker 1: I don't know how likely that is, but it's possible,

930
00:48:30,640 --> 00:48:33,160
Speaker 1: And when it comes to the morality of doing this,

931
00:48:33,800 --> 00:48:37,239
Speaker 1: it's kind of something I can't really fault them for, right,

932
00:48:37,560 --> 00:48:40,480
Speaker 1: Like I don't like nukes. I think it's bad that

933
00:48:40,600 --> 00:48:43,680
Speaker 1: either Trump or Putin right now could end all civilization

934
00:48:43,800 --> 00:48:46,359
Speaker 1: on a whim. But I know the US pretty well,

935
00:48:46,520 --> 00:48:48,799
Speaker 1: and if I'm heading up a country that's already been

936
00:48:48,840 --> 00:48:51,640
Speaker 1: invaded by US and realizes they're about to be the

937
00:48:51,640 --> 00:48:54,439
Speaker 1: big enemy, I'm going to try to build my own nuke.

938
00:48:54,680 --> 00:48:56,640
Speaker 1: You know, of course I would do the same thing.

939
00:48:56,680 --> 00:48:59,960
Speaker 1: Who wouldn't, right, No, I mean, likeeah.

940
00:49:00,239 --> 00:49:04,400
Speaker 2: Like geopolitics is inherently immoral. You can't bring ethics and

941
00:49:04,440 --> 00:49:08,080
Speaker 2: morals into geopolitics, and especially when it comes to you know,

942
00:49:08,120 --> 00:49:10,480
Speaker 2: once that the box has been open and nukes exists,

943
00:49:10,920 --> 00:49:17,360
Speaker 2: it's kind of a vacation of your moral obligation. I

944
00:49:17,360 --> 00:49:19,600
Speaker 2: guess you could put to like, defend your country if

945
00:49:19,640 --> 00:49:20,920
Speaker 2: you don't take one.

946
00:49:21,440 --> 00:49:23,839
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it is I think like we can look

947
00:49:23,840 --> 00:49:27,399
Speaker 1: at this new like these nuclear programs as like Schrodinger's

948
00:49:27,440 --> 00:49:31,840
Speaker 1: greatest crime against humanity, where like right, one could argue

949
00:49:31,840 --> 00:49:33,960
Speaker 1: the fact that the US and the Soviet Union builds

950
00:49:33,960 --> 00:49:37,160
Speaker 1: so many of these things stops a more devastating war

951
00:49:37,160 --> 00:49:40,319
Speaker 1: from occurring, but also at any moment today they could

952
00:49:40,400 --> 00:49:43,200
Speaker 1: end everybody's life, So we really don't know how this

953
00:49:43,280 --> 00:49:44,799
Speaker 1: is going to shake out in the long run.

954
00:49:44,840 --> 00:49:47,080
Speaker 2: It's one of the biggest motherfuckers of the ultimate defense

955
00:49:47,080 --> 00:49:50,600
Speaker 2: against the nuclear bombs and another nuclear bombs. So you're kind

956
00:49:50,600 --> 00:49:54,840
Speaker 2: of you either allow yourself to become a plausible victim

957
00:49:55,000 --> 00:49:58,640
Speaker 2: of said bombing or build your own doomsday device and

958
00:49:58,800 --> 00:50:01,719
Speaker 2: threaten not with like self defense are like, if you fuck.

959
00:50:01,520 --> 00:50:06,719
Speaker 1: With me, I will set the atmosphere on friar. If

960
00:50:06,760 --> 00:50:12,800
Speaker 1: we have a big enough fight, everybody dies. Yeah, MESSI situation. Now,

961
00:50:13,120 --> 00:50:17,080
Speaker 1: Barria did, or Stalin did, consider handing the job of Nuksar,

962
00:50:17,239 --> 00:50:19,440
Speaker 1: which is a thing people will call Barria and is

963
00:50:19,480 --> 00:50:20,640
Speaker 1: a pretty cool jobs side.

964
00:50:20,719 --> 00:50:22,880
Speaker 2: That's a sick name. That's my new sky band name.

965
00:50:22,920 --> 00:50:27,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, Nuksar, Right. He considers handing the job initially to

966
00:50:27,520 --> 00:50:31,239
Speaker 1: the actual scientist Kapitska, but Stalin decides that someone that

967
00:50:31,360 --> 00:50:33,600
Speaker 1: famous is a bad pick, so he picks a lab

968
00:50:33,680 --> 00:50:38,279
Speaker 1: director named Kirchatov in general management of the program was

969
00:50:38,280 --> 00:50:42,200
Speaker 1: initially Molotov's duty before Barria gets that job, but Molotov

970
00:50:42,360 --> 00:50:44,160
Speaker 1: is bad at this, because he's bad at a lot

971
00:50:44,200 --> 00:50:48,400
Speaker 1: of things. Kirshatov had direct contact with Barria because Barria

972
00:50:48,480 --> 00:50:51,000
Speaker 1: is sending him all this info for on spies, and

973
00:50:51,040 --> 00:50:53,920
Speaker 1: near the end of forty four Kirchhatov starts pushing to

974
00:50:53,960 --> 00:50:57,439
Speaker 1: get Barry of the job. One of his colleagues later said, now,

975
00:50:57,440 --> 00:51:00,920
Speaker 1: of course every one knows that he Baria was bloody hangman.

976
00:51:01,200 --> 00:51:03,279
Speaker 1: But at that time Kirtchatov turned to a member of

977
00:51:03,280 --> 00:51:05,400
Speaker 1: the polit Bureau, a man with great authority who had

978
00:51:05,440 --> 00:51:08,440
Speaker 1: influence over Stalin. Right, this guy sucked, but he was

979
00:51:08,480 --> 00:51:10,799
Speaker 1: maybe the best dude for the job. So that's who

980
00:51:10,840 --> 00:51:13,400
Speaker 1: I wanted to have it. Right now, Barry is not

981
00:51:13,440 --> 00:51:15,480
Speaker 1: actually in the polar Bureau until forty six, but you'd

982
00:51:15,480 --> 00:51:17,279
Speaker 1: get the idea. These guys wanted to make a bomb,

983
00:51:17,360 --> 00:51:19,759
Speaker 1: and they know that Barry is probably going to be

984
00:51:19,760 --> 00:51:23,520
Speaker 1: competent at running the program. Amy and Night writes about

985
00:51:23,560 --> 00:51:27,200
Speaker 1: how the project actually got underway. Much of the construction

986
00:51:27,239 --> 00:51:30,560
Speaker 1: of building an installation was done by the NKVD. Since

987
00:51:30,640 --> 00:51:34,360
Speaker 1: nineteen forty six, MVD prisoners, as was the mining of

988
00:51:34,440 --> 00:51:38,360
Speaker 1: uranium and radium. Prisoners were also used for atomic energy research.

989
00:51:38,440 --> 00:51:41,320
Speaker 1: Fifty percent of which was done in special NKVD centers

990
00:51:41,360 --> 00:51:45,200
Speaker 1: called sharashi, such as those described in Solnitzen's The First Circle,

991
00:51:45,480 --> 00:51:49,719
Speaker 1: where highly trained specialists worked in captivity. The atom bomb

992
00:51:49,800 --> 00:51:53,640
Speaker 1: project ironically shows a gentler side to Barria. It's perhaps

993
00:51:53,680 --> 00:51:55,920
Speaker 1: closer to the kind of manager that he would have

994
00:51:55,960 --> 00:51:58,360
Speaker 1: been if he'd been born later and gotten a corporate

995
00:51:58,440 --> 00:52:02,040
Speaker 1: job right when he couldn't or anyone who pissed him off. Right, Yeah,

996
00:52:02,040 --> 00:52:05,200
Speaker 1: if he's just like a middle manager at like Sears.

997
00:52:06,080 --> 00:52:09,080
Speaker 1: This is because he can't just kill these guys, right,

998
00:52:09,200 --> 00:52:13,000
Speaker 1: they're world class physicists, and there's not an innumerable number

999
00:52:13,040 --> 00:52:14,000
Speaker 1: of those dudes.

1000
00:52:13,800 --> 00:52:16,359
Speaker 2: Right, He can't doll them through violence and.

1001
00:52:16,320 --> 00:52:18,960
Speaker 1: Thrights, right, And he doesn't want to torture them because

1002
00:52:19,000 --> 00:52:21,680
Speaker 1: that might make them not good at doing the job anymore,

1003
00:52:21,680 --> 00:52:24,799
Speaker 1: because torture is generally bad for you being a scientist.

1004
00:52:25,280 --> 00:52:27,759
Speaker 1: Kapitzka is well aware of this, and he does not

1005
00:52:27,920 --> 00:52:30,600
Speaker 1: get along with Barria, complaining to Stalin that the man

1006
00:52:30,719 --> 00:52:34,720
Speaker 1: wasn't even a scientist and didn't understand physics. Barrier retorted

1007
00:52:34,719 --> 00:52:38,040
Speaker 1: that Kapitzka didn't understand people, and they may have both

1008
00:52:38,080 --> 00:52:42,000
Speaker 1: been kind of right in this regardless, Kapizza starts asking

1009
00:52:42,080 --> 00:52:45,720
Speaker 1: Stalin to remove him from the project. Stalin shows Barrier

1010
00:52:45,760 --> 00:52:48,640
Speaker 1: this letter, and Barria invites Kapizza to come over to

1011
00:52:48,760 --> 00:52:52,719
Speaker 1: his house for a talk. Knowing Barria, that usually means

1012
00:52:52,719 --> 00:52:54,480
Speaker 1: he's going to kill you. That's right, that's not a

1013
00:52:54,480 --> 00:52:57,719
Speaker 1: good letter. Yeah, that's not a good letter. But that's

1014
00:52:57,719 --> 00:52:59,719
Speaker 1: not at all what happens because he can't really get

1015
00:52:59,760 --> 00:53:01,560
Speaker 1: rid of this guy. And I'm going to quote from

1016
00:53:01,600 --> 00:53:04,960
Speaker 1: Knight's book here. Barria, who apparently wanted to make amends,

1017
00:53:05,160 --> 00:53:08,279
Speaker 1: then went himself to see Kapizza, bringing with him a

1018
00:53:08,280 --> 00:53:12,640
Speaker 1: magnificent present, a double barreled to the rifle. He gives

1019
00:53:12,680 --> 00:53:14,640
Speaker 1: him a gun to try to get him to build

1020
00:53:14,640 --> 00:53:18,520
Speaker 1: a bob. It's just such a different barrier than you

1021
00:53:18,560 --> 00:53:20,960
Speaker 1: get the rest of this story because he has to

1022
00:53:21,040 --> 00:53:22,839
Speaker 1: kind of turn the oil on a little bit.

1023
00:53:22,920 --> 00:53:25,960
Speaker 2: There's something like even more evil about this because it

1024
00:53:26,040 --> 00:53:29,120
Speaker 2: tells you this whole time, he didn't have to be

1025
00:53:29,320 --> 00:53:31,920
Speaker 2: the way that he was. No, they didn't have to

1026
00:53:31,960 --> 00:53:35,400
Speaker 2: be a violent psycho. He enjoyed it because he could,

1027
00:53:35,800 --> 00:53:39,279
Speaker 2: you know, influence people to get what to do what

1028
00:53:39,360 --> 00:53:42,759
Speaker 2: he wanted them to do by being you know, a

1029
00:53:42,800 --> 00:53:47,040
Speaker 2: middle management people person and instead he's like, I'm going

1030
00:53:47,120 --> 00:53:49,680
Speaker 2: to beat him to death until their eyes popound instead.

1031
00:53:49,840 --> 00:53:54,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, there's a future where Barrier just gives everybody

1032
00:53:54,040 --> 00:53:57,080
Speaker 1: a gives tens of thousands of people guns instead of

1033
00:53:57,160 --> 00:54:03,600
Speaker 1: murdering them. Rented Baria chairman, Right, Yes, he just ghosts

1034
00:54:03,040 --> 00:54:08,120
Speaker 1: the NRA route on this. Speaking of the NRA, that's

1035
00:54:08,160 --> 00:54:18,359
Speaker 1: the only supporter of this podcast. Ah, we're back. I'm

1036
00:54:18,400 --> 00:54:21,680
Speaker 1: feeling good, having a happy day, having a good time.

1037
00:54:22,000 --> 00:54:26,279
Speaker 1: Never want to stop at all, So let's get back

1038
00:54:26,280 --> 00:54:30,880
Speaker 1: to it. Perhaps thanks to Fuchs' example, Barria did not

1039
00:54:30,960 --> 00:54:33,760
Speaker 1: trust the scientists that he and the whole USSR relied

1040
00:54:33,760 --> 00:54:36,160
Speaker 1: on to build their atom bomb. You know, he's the

1041
00:54:36,200 --> 00:54:41,360
Speaker 1: spy guy. Not surprising why his NKVD provided strict security.

1042
00:54:41,360 --> 00:54:43,719
Speaker 1: And while the best scientists may not have been murderable,

1043
00:54:44,000 --> 00:54:47,279
Speaker 1: they were open to other kinds of punishments. Right. You

1044
00:54:47,320 --> 00:54:50,239
Speaker 1: get wildly different accounts of Barria as a manager, and

1045
00:54:50,360 --> 00:54:52,799
Speaker 1: I think based on the amount of coercion he had

1046
00:54:52,840 --> 00:54:56,359
Speaker 1: to employ for each person. One of Kerschatov's colleagues later

1047
00:54:56,400 --> 00:55:00,040
Speaker 1: claimed Barria was a terrifying man, vile. We all knew this.

1048
00:55:00,160 --> 00:55:03,879
Speaker 1: Our very lives dependent on him, but Russian physicist Juli

1049
00:55:04,040 --> 00:55:07,319
Speaker 1: Caraton had a different take. Barry A quickly hardened all

1050
00:55:07,360 --> 00:55:10,719
Speaker 1: work on the project with necessary scope and dynamism. This man,

1051
00:55:10,760 --> 00:55:14,200
Speaker 1: who personified evil in the country's modern history, possessed at

1052
00:55:14,239 --> 00:55:17,160
Speaker 1: the same time tremendous vigor and efficiency. It was impossible

1053
00:55:17,200 --> 00:55:20,160
Speaker 1: not to admit his intellect, willpower and purposefulness. He was

1054
00:55:20,200 --> 00:55:22,719
Speaker 1: a first class manager, able to bring every job to

1055
00:55:22,760 --> 00:55:26,399
Speaker 1: his conclusion. And I can't tell you who's closer to right.

1056
00:55:26,640 --> 00:55:29,279
Speaker 1: Perhaps it's just a matter of opinion based on what

1057
00:55:29,360 --> 00:55:30,040
Speaker 1: your job was.

1058
00:55:30,440 --> 00:55:33,920
Speaker 2: I mean, honestly, from everything that we've heard, it sounds

1059
00:55:34,040 --> 00:55:37,520
Speaker 2: like the second guy is probably true. Yeahake is probably

1060
00:55:37,560 --> 00:55:41,479
Speaker 2: like he's an evil fucker, but like every single job

1061
00:55:41,560 --> 00:55:43,600
Speaker 2: he's been put in charge of, with the exception of

1062
00:55:43,680 --> 00:55:47,359
Speaker 2: weaseling his way into military operations, he's incredibly good at

1063
00:55:47,520 --> 00:55:51,200
Speaker 2: He has like imcompicable attention to detail because he's a

1064
00:55:51,480 --> 00:55:56,160
Speaker 2: fucking insane person. Right, he's a huge asshole, but he

1065
00:55:56,280 --> 00:55:59,520
Speaker 2: does like this works well. The Soviets get their bomb

1066
00:55:59,600 --> 00:56:04,160
Speaker 2: pretty fucking quick, you know. Barria also helps head up

1067
00:56:04,160 --> 00:56:07,719
Speaker 2: the recruitment of former Nazi scientists for atomic research, which

1068
00:56:07,760 --> 00:56:09,759
Speaker 2: is the thing that the Soviets do with almost as

1069
00:56:09,840 --> 00:56:12,600
Speaker 2: much gusto as the United States. Now, one thing I

1070
00:56:12,640 --> 00:56:15,160
Speaker 2: will give the Soviet Union initially is that, unlike in

1071
00:56:15,200 --> 00:56:18,720
Speaker 2: the US, they're Nazi scientists are basically put in prison

1072
00:56:18,760 --> 00:56:21,879
Speaker 2: at first, and every activity is carefully monitored and their

1073
00:56:21,880 --> 00:56:26,880
Speaker 2: liberty is curtailed because they're Nazis, right right. Barria actually

1074
00:56:27,000 --> 00:56:30,200
Speaker 2: changes this because he goes to visit the factory basically

1075
00:56:30,200 --> 00:56:33,080
Speaker 2: where these guys are working, and he's like, well, you're

1076
00:56:33,120 --> 00:56:36,160
Speaker 2: not meeting any of your timetables, what's wrong And they're like, well,

1077
00:56:36,160 --> 00:56:39,120
Speaker 2: we're in prison and that's not very fun. And so

1078
00:56:39,239 --> 00:56:42,799
Speaker 2: he actually reforms the conditions for these German scientists and

1079
00:56:42,920 --> 00:56:47,319
Speaker 2: like makes their lives a lot nicer. Yeah, memory serves me. Well,

1080
00:56:47,640 --> 00:56:50,600
Speaker 2: the Soviets actually tooken more Nazi scientists.

1081
00:56:50,719 --> 00:56:54,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Barria is responsible for them treating them a

1082
00:56:54,680 --> 00:56:58,320
Speaker 1: lot better, you know, which from a managerial standpoint is

1083
00:56:58,360 --> 00:57:01,479
Speaker 1: a good idea. From a moral standpoint, not great.

1084
00:57:02,560 --> 00:57:05,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, but again the historia written all over it, like

1085
00:57:05,160 --> 00:57:08,960
Speaker 2: with very verfitt Sears middle manager, Like we've like we've

1086
00:57:09,360 --> 00:57:14,160
Speaker 2: discussed he's an incredibly efficient bastard, one of the most

1087
00:57:14,200 --> 00:57:15,200
Speaker 2: efficient honestly.

1088
00:57:15,520 --> 00:57:19,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, very efficient and like for again, obviously the

1089
00:57:19,320 --> 00:57:22,560
Speaker 1: right decision from a making a nuke faster point of view.

1090
00:57:22,680 --> 00:57:25,920
Speaker 1: Right Barria is present both through the start of the

1091
00:57:25,960 --> 00:57:29,880
Speaker 1: first Soviet atomic reactor on December twenty fifth, nineteen forty six,

1092
00:57:30,240 --> 00:57:32,840
Speaker 1: and the detonation of their first Adam BAM on August

1093
00:57:32,880 --> 00:57:36,320
Speaker 1: twenty ninth, nineteen forty nine. There is a fun coda

1094
00:57:36,400 --> 00:57:40,560
Speaker 1: to that story. After the successful blast, he kissed Kershatov

1095
00:57:40,640 --> 00:57:43,160
Speaker 1: and said, in essence, thank god this worked. I would

1096
00:57:43,200 --> 00:57:47,160
Speaker 1: have had to kill somebody otherwise. But after that, God forbid,

1097
00:57:47,200 --> 00:57:49,480
Speaker 1: I'll have to go back to the old me. Yeah,

1098
00:57:49,520 --> 00:57:50,960
Speaker 1: I know what. I have to go back to the

1099
00:57:51,000 --> 00:57:54,040
Speaker 1: old May. But then after this moment of elation, he

1100
00:57:54,080 --> 00:57:56,920
Speaker 1: starts to panic again because he's like, oh my god,

1101
00:57:57,200 --> 00:57:59,840
Speaker 1: what if this doesn't look didn't look like the American blast?

1102
00:58:00,160 --> 00:58:02,680
Speaker 1: Is my mushroom cloud normal? Do I have? Did I

1103
00:58:02,760 --> 00:58:05,400
Speaker 1: have a good mushroom cloud? Daddy? And he has to

1104
00:58:05,440 --> 00:58:08,040
Speaker 1: call one of his spies who'd been at the Los

1105
00:58:08,040 --> 00:58:12,480
Speaker 1: Alamos tests to like confirm that their nuke blast was normal. Like,

1106
00:58:12,720 --> 00:58:15,400
Speaker 1: it's beautiful, Barrier, You've got a really good.

1107
00:58:15,360 --> 00:58:22,360
Speaker 2: Mushroom Cloudroom cloud measuring competition nobody mushroom cloud that that

1108
00:58:22,400 --> 00:58:25,320
Speaker 2: they got to experience a few years before your mushrooms cloud.

1109
00:58:25,520 --> 00:58:28,600
Speaker 1: Stalin's gonna love it, man, He's gonna really like it.

1110
00:58:28,640 --> 00:58:33,120
Speaker 1: Don't feel bad. It's what's more important is with not

1111
00:58:33,320 --> 00:58:35,800
Speaker 1: like see And I talk about this a lot, cho

1112
00:58:35,920 --> 00:58:38,640
Speaker 1: I think it's really my primary moral issue with the

1113
00:58:38,640 --> 00:58:42,640
Speaker 1: Oppenheimer movie is that it provides this, like really unrealistic

1114
00:58:42,680 --> 00:58:45,480
Speaker 1: expectation for how a mushroom cloud should look. And I

1115
00:58:45,520 --> 00:58:49,360
Speaker 1: think a lot of secret policemen and dictators out there

1116
00:58:49,360 --> 00:58:51,880
Speaker 1: working on their own nukes are gonna feel like my

1117
00:58:52,040 --> 00:58:54,280
Speaker 1: nuke isn't good enough if it doesn't look like the

1118
00:58:54,280 --> 00:58:57,360
Speaker 1: Oppenheimer nuke. And that's just it's it's fucked up. You know.

1119
00:58:57,640 --> 00:59:00,520
Speaker 1: It's the same as having Channing Tatum's beautiful ass out

1120
00:59:00,520 --> 00:59:03,000
Speaker 1: on display for everybody to look at. It's such an

1121
00:59:03,080 --> 00:59:07,640
Speaker 1: unreasonable standard, you know, fair all nukes are beautiful.

1122
00:59:07,840 --> 00:59:10,400
Speaker 2: They're keeping they're keeping all of us with you know,

1123
00:59:10,840 --> 00:59:14,960
Speaker 2: normal sized mushroom clouds, very making us very self conscious

1124
00:59:15,000 --> 00:59:19,200
Speaker 2: about the horrific devastation that our mushroom I don't want

1125
00:59:19,240 --> 00:59:19,520
Speaker 2: to know.

1126
00:59:19,520 --> 00:59:22,600
Speaker 1: What movie you're thinking of with Channing Tatum. That's what

1127
00:59:22,640 --> 00:59:28,080
Speaker 1: I imagine, I know, I just wanted to make sure

1128
00:59:28,080 --> 00:59:30,440
Speaker 1: that your your reference was in fact from like ten

1129
00:59:30,520 --> 00:59:33,959
Speaker 1: years ago, like it usually. I just want to say,

1130
00:59:34,000 --> 00:59:36,440
Speaker 1: because I know Kim Jong un listens to this podcast

1131
00:59:36,480 --> 00:59:40,520
Speaker 1: a lot, your nukes are valid, Your your world ending

1132
00:59:40,560 --> 00:59:44,520
Speaker 1: hell weapons are beautiful, and I see you, Kim John.

1133
00:59:45,000 --> 00:59:46,960
Speaker 1: You know, I just wanted to know. I just wanted

1134
00:59:47,080 --> 00:59:49,120
Speaker 1: to know that. And I feel the same to the British.

1135
00:59:49,200 --> 00:59:52,480
Speaker 1: Whatever fucking ship they call a nuke, right, it's good enough, guys,

1136
00:59:52,840 --> 00:59:53,560
Speaker 1: it's good enough.

1137
00:59:53,600 --> 00:59:59,280
Speaker 2: Smoke cloud and beans, it's a fucking ship, buddy.

1138
00:59:59,360 --> 01:00:06,520
Speaker 1: Sandwich yeah they call those, and and potato chips sandwiches. Yeah,

1139
01:00:06,560 --> 01:00:08,600
Speaker 1: they've got one of those loaded onto a sub. Why

1140
01:00:08,640 --> 01:00:10,360
Speaker 1: not right at the point at which they use them.

1141
01:00:10,360 --> 01:00:15,720
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter. So anyway, Barrya eventually gets convinced that

1142
01:00:15,760 --> 01:00:18,480
Speaker 1: his nuke is good enough, and he calls Stalin. This

1143
01:00:18,560 --> 01:00:21,000
Speaker 1: is like the chief moment of it. He's so excited

1144
01:00:21,000 --> 01:00:23,560
Speaker 1: to get to tell's boss we've got a nuke now,

1145
01:00:23,880 --> 01:00:26,960
Speaker 1: and all Stalin says is I've heard and then hangs up.

1146
01:00:28,240 --> 01:00:34,480
Speaker 1: Can just Stalin move? He can't like praise him too much? No, absolutely,

1147
01:00:34,480 --> 01:00:37,280
Speaker 1: you gotta be really careful in this moment, right, and

1148
01:00:37,360 --> 01:00:40,520
Speaker 1: Barrya gets furious and he threatens the operator on the

1149
01:00:40,560 --> 01:00:42,560
Speaker 1: phone line and he's like, you have put a spoke

1150
01:00:42,640 --> 01:00:45,480
Speaker 1: in my wheel, Trader, I'll grind you to a pulp.

1151
01:00:46,640 --> 01:00:51,400
Speaker 2: It's like, oh, my name is Steve. Name you named

1152
01:00:51,400 --> 01:00:54,040
Speaker 2: the telephone operator sitting right next to you.

1153
01:00:54,000 --> 01:00:59,560
Speaker 1: If you have complaints. So this was possibly the fact

1154
01:00:59,560 --> 01:01:02,400
Speaker 1: that stal And responds this way evidence of his growing

1155
01:01:02,480 --> 01:01:06,120
Speaker 1: dissatisfaction and distrust in Baria, right, which is heightened by

1156
01:01:06,120 --> 01:01:09,240
Speaker 1: the fact that in these post war years, Stalin is

1157
01:01:09,280 --> 01:01:13,760
Speaker 1: deteriorating rapidly. He had always been paranoid. World War two

1158
01:01:13,920 --> 01:01:17,760
Speaker 1: ages him not hard to see why right, and in fact,

1159
01:01:17,800 --> 01:01:21,080
Speaker 1: a famous neurologist. Stalin had been having issues for a while.

1160
01:01:21,600 --> 01:01:26,080
Speaker 1: In nineteen twenty seven, a famous Russian neurologist had diagnosed

1161
01:01:26,120 --> 01:01:29,880
Speaker 1: him with a paranoia, and Stalin had had the man poisoned.

1162
01:01:30,240 --> 01:01:32,680
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty seven, another one of his doctors had

1163
01:01:32,720 --> 01:01:36,520
Speaker 1: written of Stalin he was headstrong, consistent, and had extraordinary

1164
01:01:36,560 --> 01:01:40,120
Speaker 1: willpower and nerves of iron, excellent memory. He suffered mainly

1165
01:01:40,160 --> 01:01:44,960
Speaker 1: from two pathological states, megalomania and a persecution complex. Stalin

1166
01:01:45,000 --> 01:01:45,960
Speaker 1: had this guy shot.

1167
01:01:46,320 --> 01:01:49,240
Speaker 2: So there's also like, you know, most of the best

1168
01:01:49,280 --> 01:01:51,800
Speaker 2: doctors in the Soviet Union got taken out during the

1169
01:01:51,880 --> 01:01:53,080
Speaker 2: Doctor's plot.

1170
01:01:53,200 --> 01:01:56,560
Speaker 1: Right, well that, yeah, that's coming up. But even before that,

1171
01:01:56,800 --> 01:01:59,680
Speaker 1: Stalin is having guys purged from saying like, hey man,

1172
01:02:00,400 --> 01:02:03,440
Speaker 1: maybe take some CBD homie, you know, like chill out

1173
01:02:03,440 --> 01:02:04,080
Speaker 1: a little bit.

1174
01:02:04,360 --> 01:02:07,120
Speaker 2: After like the sixth or seventh doctor to get whacked

1175
01:02:07,200 --> 01:02:09,800
Speaker 2: for like giving some a diagnosis you have, You're you're

1176
01:02:09,840 --> 01:02:12,480
Speaker 2: the eighth doctor that has to go in like nah

1177
01:02:12,680 --> 01:02:16,440
Speaker 2: do it is jacked, yoke, dick down. He is the

1178
01:02:16,760 --> 01:02:20,040
Speaker 2: pinnacle of Russian man twelve pack. My god, I've never

1179
01:02:20,080 --> 01:02:22,680
Speaker 2: seen so many abs. I've never I've never seen a

1180
01:02:22,720 --> 01:02:25,320
Speaker 2: man have abs on his legs before. And you know what,

1181
01:02:25,600 --> 01:02:28,480
Speaker 2: even though he's not Russian, he's Georgian. He is the

1182
01:02:28,520 --> 01:02:31,200
Speaker 2: pinnacle of Russian manliness. Nothing wrong.

1183
01:02:31,680 --> 01:02:36,040
Speaker 1: Absolutely, your knees are actually additional abs. It's remarkable. I've

1184
01:02:36,080 --> 01:02:37,200
Speaker 1: never seen anything like it.

1185
01:02:37,480 --> 01:02:39,640
Speaker 2: I've never seen a dick do a push up before.

1186
01:02:39,720 --> 01:02:40,640
Speaker 2: It was incredible.

1187
01:02:41,640 --> 01:02:44,560
Speaker 1: So there's probably not much that medically could have been

1188
01:02:44,600 --> 01:02:48,200
Speaker 1: done about the fact that Stalin is increasingly unhinged, and

1189
01:02:48,240 --> 01:02:50,000
Speaker 1: it starts to have especially in the kind of this

1190
01:02:50,120 --> 01:02:52,920
Speaker 1: late period, a series of strokes that are steadily degrading

1191
01:02:52,960 --> 01:02:58,120
Speaker 1: his capacity to function. We don't know precisely what's going on, right,

1192
01:02:58,400 --> 01:03:01,760
Speaker 1: we can intuit some from the actual medical reports we

1193
01:03:01,800 --> 01:03:04,680
Speaker 1: have and just some from his symptoms that this is

1194
01:03:04,720 --> 01:03:08,760
Speaker 1: like he's stroking out and he is gradually losing his

1195
01:03:08,880 --> 01:03:11,800
Speaker 1: ability to like function as a result of that. And

1196
01:03:11,840 --> 01:03:14,240
Speaker 1: I found a paper on Stalin's last years for the

1197
01:03:14,240 --> 01:03:18,040
Speaker 1: European Journal of Neurology which summarizes the Boss's state in

1198
01:03:18,080 --> 01:03:21,760
Speaker 1: the late forties and early fifties quite well. Quote. After

1199
01:03:21,800 --> 01:03:25,200
Speaker 1: the war, Stalin's natural suspiciousness and fears reached new heights.

1200
01:03:25,400 --> 01:03:28,360
Speaker 1: He admitted to Marshall Georgie Zukov, the commander in chief

1201
01:03:28,360 --> 01:03:30,560
Speaker 1: of the Soviet Armies, to living in fear of his

1202
01:03:30,640 --> 01:03:34,280
Speaker 1: own shadow. Silence terrified him. At a Politburea dinner, he

1203
01:03:34,360 --> 01:03:38,640
Speaker 1: noticed Andre's Danoff sitting silently. Stalin exploded, look at him,

1204
01:03:38,760 --> 01:03:41,200
Speaker 1: sitting there like christ is if nothing was of concern

1205
01:03:41,280 --> 01:03:44,920
Speaker 1: to him. Z Danoff paled with fear. Stalin also complained

1206
01:03:44,960 --> 01:03:48,800
Speaker 1: about Ladislav Gomulka, secretary of the Polish Communist Party. He

1207
01:03:48,920 --> 01:03:51,080
Speaker 1: sits there all the time, looking into my eyes as

1208
01:03:51,080 --> 01:03:53,120
Speaker 1: though we were reaching for something. And why does he

1209
01:03:53,160 --> 01:03:55,080
Speaker 1: bring a note pad and pencil with him? Why does

1210
01:03:55,080 --> 01:03:58,720
Speaker 1: he write down every word? I say, he's just losing

1211
01:03:58,760 --> 01:04:00,400
Speaker 1: his mind. And you know he was.

1212
01:04:00,320 --> 01:04:03,120
Speaker 2: Starting to stroke out when he started just demanding people

1213
01:04:03,160 --> 01:04:06,120
Speaker 2: put their own tomatoes in the pockets and then surprised

1214
01:04:06,160 --> 01:04:08,760
Speaker 2: because he couldn't do it anymore. Yeah, he doesn't have

1215
01:04:08,800 --> 01:04:12,960
Speaker 2: the dexterity. In nineteen fifty one, in front of Politburo

1216
01:04:13,080 --> 01:04:16,800
Speaker 2: members Anastas mccoya and Nikita Krushchyev, whom he did not

1217
01:04:16,840 --> 01:04:20,400
Speaker 2: appear to notice, Stalin exclaimed, I'm finished. I trust no one,

1218
01:04:20,520 --> 01:04:23,840
Speaker 2: not even myself. One of the more lucid things he

1219
01:04:23,920 --> 01:04:27,680
Speaker 2: says in this period. He probably shouldn't have. The last

1220
01:04:27,680 --> 01:04:29,440
Speaker 2: person on earth I would trust if I was just

1221
01:04:29,560 --> 01:04:31,240
Speaker 2: s was also Joseph Stalin.

1222
01:04:32,760 --> 01:04:36,480
Speaker 1: Look, he wasn't wrong all the time. Yeah. So Stalin

1223
01:04:36,520 --> 01:04:39,480
Speaker 1: had demoted Barry, making him resign his post running the

1224
01:04:39,560 --> 01:04:42,439
Speaker 1: NKVD in nineteen forty six, but this was not really

1225
01:04:42,480 --> 01:04:45,480
Speaker 1: a big deal. Barry had retained most of his influence,

1226
01:04:45,520 --> 01:04:48,160
Speaker 1: at least for a while. He's still running this critical

1227
01:04:48,200 --> 01:04:51,480
Speaker 1: bomb project and like it's actually kind of a reasonable thing.

1228
01:04:51,520 --> 01:04:54,400
Speaker 1: To do objectively. Building a nuke is a big job.

1229
01:04:54,440 --> 01:04:56,880
Speaker 1: You probably both of these, you might not do them

1230
01:04:56,920 --> 01:04:59,439
Speaker 1: as well, right, Yeah, you know, we probably need someone

1231
01:04:59,480 --> 01:05:01,840
Speaker 1: else to handle that kind of stuff. You know, I

1232
01:05:02,280 --> 01:05:05,640
Speaker 1: made sure when cool Zone started its nuclear weapons program.

1233
01:05:05,680 --> 01:05:07,800
Speaker 1: I made sure that we took other stuff off of

1234
01:05:07,880 --> 01:05:10,520
Speaker 1: Daniel's plate, you know, just because I want him to.

1235
01:05:10,640 --> 01:05:12,440
Speaker 1: I want him to get that bomb ready for us.

1236
01:05:12,600 --> 01:05:14,240
Speaker 1: It's the only way we're going to win against the

1237
01:05:14,240 --> 01:05:19,840
Speaker 1: pod save guys. What Sophie, We've tried peace with them.

1238
01:05:19,880 --> 01:05:22,400
Speaker 1: It's simply not an option anymore. I mean, this is

1239
01:05:22,480 --> 01:05:25,280
Speaker 1: this is also why I have attached listening devices to

1240
01:05:25,400 --> 01:05:27,600
Speaker 1: all of your animals, so I could then steal your

1241
01:05:27,680 --> 01:05:30,760
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons form my podcast. That's right, that's right. You're

1242
01:05:30,760 --> 01:05:34,960
Speaker 1: really and soon we'll have mutually assured destruction, which is

1243
01:05:35,000 --> 01:05:37,560
Speaker 1: going to take us both to a new level in podcasting.

1244
01:05:37,720 --> 01:05:40,040
Speaker 2: It's the only thing that we could possibly do.

1245
01:05:40,840 --> 01:05:43,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's the logical next step. I should have

1246
01:05:43,040 --> 01:05:45,880
Speaker 1: accept our accept our offer for peace. I feel like

1247
01:05:45,920 --> 01:05:48,880
Speaker 1: we were really fair. Yeah, we were really fair. All

1248
01:05:49,200 --> 01:05:54,840
Speaker 1: we wanted was to deport them to the East City

1249
01:05:54,880 --> 01:05:59,880
Speaker 1: where they all live. Anyway I could do Kazakhstan, you know,

1250
01:06:01,080 --> 01:06:03,760
Speaker 1: so international observers at the time kind of noted that,

1251
01:06:03,920 --> 01:06:07,320
Speaker 1: like it's this could have being taken out of directly

1252
01:06:07,400 --> 01:06:10,720
Speaker 1: leading the NKBD actually might have worked out for Baria

1253
01:06:10,800 --> 01:06:12,840
Speaker 1: in the long term. There was a way in which

1254
01:06:12,840 --> 01:06:14,640
Speaker 1: this could have been a real win for him, because, like,

1255
01:06:15,200 --> 01:06:18,600
Speaker 1: it's dangerous being the secret Police head. Stalin is going

1256
01:06:18,680 --> 01:06:21,400
Speaker 1: to die, and when he does, if you're running the

1257
01:06:21,440 --> 01:06:24,640
Speaker 1: secret Police historically, there's a good chance you're going to

1258
01:06:24,680 --> 01:06:28,080
Speaker 1: get purged, right because you're we've already covered this wave

1259
01:06:28,240 --> 01:06:31,240
Speaker 1: a few times, right, you have so many purges, you

1260
01:06:31,400 --> 01:06:34,439
Speaker 1: purge the purger. Right, This could have, This might have,

1261
01:06:34,560 --> 01:06:36,920
Speaker 1: and it kind of almost does put Barria in a

1262
01:06:37,000 --> 01:06:40,320
Speaker 1: natural position to be Stalin's successor, which seems to be

1263
01:06:40,480 --> 01:06:44,200
Speaker 1: what Barria wanted, right, But the fact that he is

1264
01:06:44,320 --> 01:06:48,160
Speaker 1: kind of obviously positioned as one of the potential successors

1265
01:06:48,560 --> 01:06:52,120
Speaker 1: also puts him in the crosshairs of an increasingly irrational

1266
01:06:52,160 --> 01:06:56,080
Speaker 1: and paranoid Joseph Stalin. Now, as you talked about a

1267
01:06:56,120 --> 01:06:59,680
Speaker 1: little earlier, Stalin doesn't like his doctors, right, and Barria,

1268
01:06:59,800 --> 01:07:03,040
Speaker 1: he's having Barya arrest growing numbers of them. In this

1269
01:07:03,120 --> 01:07:06,480
Speaker 1: period of time, and as he's again he's convinced. This

1270
01:07:06,600 --> 01:07:09,840
Speaker 1: is also married to Stalin's anti Semitism, which gets really

1271
01:07:09,920 --> 01:07:12,480
Speaker 1: unhinged in the fifties, in the early fifties, right, like,

1272
01:07:12,520 --> 01:07:15,200
Speaker 1: he is kind of going off the rails. Some people

1273
01:07:15,240 --> 01:07:18,280
Speaker 1: will say he might have done his version of the

1274
01:07:18,320 --> 01:07:22,120
Speaker 1: Holocaust had he stayed alive long enough. That's really improvable

1275
01:07:22,120 --> 01:07:25,440
Speaker 1: in any way, shape or form. But it's not impossible,

1276
01:07:25,520 --> 01:07:28,439
Speaker 1: right knowing the guy, he certainly is a lot. Part

1277
01:07:28,440 --> 01:07:30,400
Speaker 1: of why he's having a lot of these doctors arrested

1278
01:07:30,400 --> 01:07:32,400
Speaker 1: and even killed is because they're Jewish and he doesn't

1279
01:07:32,400 --> 01:07:35,120
Speaker 1: trust them. Right of course, so mel Gibson's been training

1280
01:07:35,160 --> 01:07:37,800
Speaker 1: his whole life for this role right right, again, he

1281
01:07:38,440 --> 01:07:42,560
Speaker 1: would be a good bick for Stalin now because he

1282
01:07:42,680 --> 01:07:45,480
Speaker 1: distrusts his doctors and has had barrier arresting so many

1283
01:07:45,520 --> 01:07:48,600
Speaker 1: of these guys. Stalin starts taking health advice from a

1284
01:07:48,840 --> 01:07:52,640
Speaker 1: less than trustworthy source, primarily one of his bodyguards who

1285
01:07:52,680 --> 01:07:55,160
Speaker 1: had previously been trained as a veterinarian.

1286
01:07:55,560 --> 01:07:57,960
Speaker 2: Oh fuck yeah, we're getting like the Soviet version.

1287
01:07:59,240 --> 01:08:03,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love this guy, this fucking vet. He's coming

1288
01:08:03,240 --> 01:08:06,000
Speaker 1: in like, well, I know how to fucking remove a

1289
01:08:06,040 --> 01:08:08,880
Speaker 1: ship from a horse's impacted colon. Yeah, I can probably

1290
01:08:08,920 --> 01:08:12,600
Speaker 1: handle your hypertension. And the treatment he gives Stalin for

1291
01:08:12,680 --> 01:08:18,240
Speaker 1: hypertension is boiled water with iodine. I don't think that's

1292
01:08:18,280 --> 01:08:21,200
Speaker 1: what you want to do for your hypertension. You must

1293
01:08:21,240 --> 01:08:29,080
Speaker 1: put the jade egg up your This is by the way,

1294
01:08:29,080 --> 01:08:35,000
Speaker 1: there's a new show on the Regimes. I think it's

1295
01:08:35,080 --> 01:08:38,080
Speaker 1: really solid. I think it's mostly there's a little Stalin.

1296
01:08:38,160 --> 01:08:41,080
Speaker 1: It's mostly seems to be based on Chowchescu. Yeah, but

1297
01:08:41,120 --> 01:08:43,120
Speaker 1: you get a little Hitler, you get a little Stalin,

1298
01:08:44,000 --> 01:08:45,960
Speaker 1: get you get a little bit of Trump obviously in

1299
01:08:46,000 --> 01:08:48,880
Speaker 1: there too. It's good though. It's actually like really I

1300
01:08:48,880 --> 01:08:52,679
Speaker 1: think pretty smart. And the the the obviously Kate Winslet

1301
01:08:52,720 --> 01:08:55,120
Speaker 1: is really good. And also the the male lead I

1302
01:08:55,160 --> 01:08:57,680
Speaker 1: think is is very good. I didn't like him in

1303
01:08:57,680 --> 01:08:59,280
Speaker 1: the first episode, but I've liked him a lot.

1304
01:08:59,360 --> 01:09:01,960
Speaker 2: I just binge watch the whole thing yesterday.

1305
01:09:02,280 --> 01:09:04,360
Speaker 1: I'm still just like three episodes in, but I'm a

1306
01:09:04,360 --> 01:09:07,639
Speaker 1: big fan so far. Anyway. I say this because it's

1307
01:09:07,760 --> 01:09:10,200
Speaker 1: kind of covering a dictator in the same sort of

1308
01:09:10,200 --> 01:09:12,320
Speaker 1: period that Stalin is in, right when they're starting to

1309
01:09:12,360 --> 01:09:15,439
Speaker 1: lose their mind and fall for all this bullshit health stuff.

1310
01:09:15,560 --> 01:09:19,360
Speaker 1: Right in nineteen forty eight, Stalin has Molotov's wife, who

1311
01:09:19,400 --> 01:09:23,919
Speaker 1: is Jewish, arrested for treason. That same year he demotes Barria.

1312
01:09:24,040 --> 01:09:26,759
Speaker 1: And this is really what hits Barria. Right, The nineteen

1313
01:09:26,800 --> 01:09:29,760
Speaker 1: forty six one generally seen as like not actually a

1314
01:09:29,760 --> 01:09:32,400
Speaker 1: loss for Baria. He actually starts to carve away a

1315
01:09:32,439 --> 01:09:35,760
Speaker 1: lot of his power. After forty eight, he is convinced

1316
01:09:35,920 --> 01:09:38,560
Speaker 1: of a obviously of a Jewish conspiracy that involves a

1317
01:09:38,600 --> 01:09:41,559
Speaker 1: lot of these doctors in Moscow, and he has his

1318
01:09:41,600 --> 01:09:44,320
Speaker 1: security services take action against them. And I'm going to

1319
01:09:44,360 --> 01:09:47,600
Speaker 1: quote from an article by Mark Safranski published by ASU's

1320
01:09:47,640 --> 01:09:51,680
Speaker 1: Center for Strategic Communication. Most of the unfortunate doctors who

1321
01:09:51,720 --> 01:09:55,000
Speaker 1: were arrested by the KGB and lavishly tortured had conspicuously

1322
01:09:55,080 --> 01:09:58,679
Speaker 1: Jewish names. They were accused of planning to kill Comrad

1323
01:09:58,720 --> 01:10:02,040
Speaker 1: Stalin and having killed and this was all too reminiscent

1324
01:10:02,120 --> 01:10:04,880
Speaker 1: of the Kirov case that launched the Great Terror. And

1325
01:10:04,960 --> 01:10:07,960
Speaker 1: again because like Zdanov dies, there's this, you know, belief

1326
01:10:08,000 --> 01:10:10,360
Speaker 1: that he had been killed by this like Jewish plot.

1327
01:10:10,720 --> 01:10:12,640
Speaker 1: That's part of the evidence that people say that, like

1328
01:10:13,120 --> 01:10:15,599
Speaker 1: if Stalin had lived longer, things could have gotten real

1329
01:10:15,680 --> 01:10:19,120
Speaker 1: fucking ugly, right because this is this mirrors the situation

1330
01:10:19,200 --> 01:10:22,880
Speaker 1: that leads us to the Great Terror right now, the

1331
01:10:22,960 --> 01:10:26,120
Speaker 1: Doctor's plot in this kind of obsession with anti you know,

1332
01:10:26,240 --> 01:10:29,160
Speaker 1: this Jewish conspiracy that Stalin believes. This is not the

1333
01:10:29,200 --> 01:10:33,320
Speaker 1: only paranoid fantasy panic that he has in his ailing years,

1334
01:10:33,720 --> 01:10:35,479
Speaker 1: and the one that's going to hit Barry of the

1335
01:10:35,479 --> 01:10:38,680
Speaker 1: hardest is the Mingrellian affair. Now this hasn't been a

1336
01:10:38,680 --> 01:10:42,120
Speaker 1: big part of the story because Barria doesn't identify super

1337
01:10:42,160 --> 01:10:45,880
Speaker 1: strongly as a Mingrelian nationalist, right, but we talked about this.

1338
01:10:45,880 --> 01:10:48,799
Speaker 1: This is that like kind of ethnic minority within Georgia

1339
01:10:48,840 --> 01:10:51,960
Speaker 1: that Berry is a part of. Right around the kind

1340
01:10:52,000 --> 01:10:54,639
Speaker 1: of last period of his life, Stalin cooks up this

1341
01:10:54,720 --> 01:10:58,439
Speaker 1: theory about a Mingrelian nationalist ring that is urging a

1342
01:10:58,520 --> 01:11:02,519
Speaker 1: separate ethno state with the backing of quote Western imperialists, which,

1343
01:11:02,640 --> 01:11:05,719
Speaker 1: like obviously the US has plenty of plots to try

1344
01:11:05,720 --> 01:11:09,080
Speaker 1: to take out the Soviet Union during this period. I

1345
01:11:09,120 --> 01:11:11,120
Speaker 1: don't think this is one of them. I've never come

1346
01:11:11,120 --> 01:11:14,200
Speaker 1: into any evidence that we're trying to establish a Mingrelian

1347
01:11:14,320 --> 01:11:14,840
Speaker 1: state in.

1348
01:11:14,840 --> 01:11:18,960
Speaker 2: Georgia, as they say as mcgrellia goes, so goes the

1349
01:11:19,000 --> 01:11:19,880
Speaker 2: Soviet Union.

1350
01:11:20,320 --> 01:11:22,280
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think if you had brought this up to

1351
01:11:22,280 --> 01:11:23,840
Speaker 1: any of the guys running the US, they would have

1352
01:11:23,880 --> 01:11:26,479
Speaker 1: been like, ming, what now, ming the merciless? But is

1353
01:11:26,479 --> 01:11:29,080
Speaker 1: that in Mongolia or something? What are you talking about? Yeah,

1354
01:11:29,200 --> 01:11:30,240
Speaker 1: what are you talking about?

1355
01:11:30,920 --> 01:11:34,519
Speaker 2: Saying it's in Georgia. There's a there's a Ingrellian grill

1356
01:11:34,600 --> 01:11:37,280
Speaker 2: in Atlanta that let's go, oh.

1357
01:11:37,200 --> 01:11:41,120
Speaker 1: Shit, yeah, let's take a ride. So Stalin launches a

1358
01:11:41,200 --> 01:11:45,400
Speaker 1: brutal purge of the Georgian Communist Party, targeting Mingrelian members

1359
01:11:45,439 --> 01:11:48,479
Speaker 1: to be arrested and shot. And because these guys are

1360
01:11:48,520 --> 01:11:50,840
Speaker 1: Mingrelian and Barry is the kind of guy he is,

1361
01:11:50,880 --> 01:11:53,200
Speaker 1: a lot of these are his proteges, right like Stalin

1362
01:11:53,280 --> 01:11:55,160
Speaker 1: is kind of and I don't know that Stalin really

1363
01:11:55,200 --> 01:11:57,960
Speaker 1: believes this is happening. I think it's likelier he is

1364
01:11:57,960 --> 01:12:00,880
Speaker 1: trying to get rid of Barry's support and this is

1365
01:12:00,920 --> 01:12:04,439
Speaker 1: a convenient way to do that. Right now. If you

1366
01:12:04,560 --> 01:12:09,200
Speaker 1: know Laventi, again, his identity isn't huge to him, but

1367
01:12:09,680 --> 01:12:12,680
Speaker 1: this really like does damage again to kind of like

1368
01:12:12,800 --> 01:12:14,559
Speaker 1: a lot of the people that he's going to rely on.

1369
01:12:14,560 --> 01:12:18,000
Speaker 1: Once Stalin is out to help him take power. On

1370
01:12:18,080 --> 01:12:21,280
Speaker 1: the night of February twenty eighth, nineteen fifty three, Stalin

1371
01:12:21,360 --> 01:12:24,639
Speaker 1: holds his normal dinner party at his datcha. As usual,

1372
01:12:24,720 --> 01:12:28,640
Speaker 1: it lasted until almost dawn. While Stalin is usually not

1373
01:12:28,720 --> 01:12:30,559
Speaker 1: a heavy drinker, he's kind of hell. Have a little

1374
01:12:30,560 --> 01:12:33,280
Speaker 1: bit of watered down wine, he'll water down some vodka,

1375
01:12:33,400 --> 01:12:36,400
Speaker 1: you know, and he'll get kind of buzz. He's usually

1376
01:12:36,439 --> 01:12:38,960
Speaker 1: pretty buzzed. He doesn't get hammered. He likes everyone else

1377
01:12:38,960 --> 01:12:41,800
Speaker 1: to get hammered because then he's in control, right, because

1378
01:12:41,800 --> 01:12:45,800
Speaker 1: he's Stalin, you know. But this night it's noted at

1379
01:12:45,880 --> 01:12:48,400
Speaker 1: least and again everyone who was there, none of them

1380
01:12:48,400 --> 01:12:51,880
Speaker 1: are reliable narrators. But also medically, it makes sense that

1381
01:12:51,920 --> 01:12:54,080
Speaker 1: this would have happened. The people who were there say

1382
01:12:54,120 --> 01:12:57,120
Speaker 1: he got fucking hammered tonight that night, right, And that

1383
01:12:57,160 --> 01:13:00,000
Speaker 1: would have because he is a guy with untreated hypertension,

1384
01:13:00,000 --> 01:13:03,519
Speaker 1: and getting drunk when you have untreated hypertension will raise

1385
01:13:03,520 --> 01:13:05,559
Speaker 1: your blood pressure, right, I mean, getting drunk raises your

1386
01:13:05,600 --> 01:13:08,360
Speaker 1: blood pressure, and if you have untreated hypertension, that can

1387
01:13:08,439 --> 01:13:11,840
Speaker 1: cause a stroke, which is what happens. Probably Stalin has

1388
01:13:11,880 --> 01:13:16,440
Speaker 1: a stroke and a fatal intracranial hemorrhage. This is essentially

1389
01:13:16,479 --> 01:13:19,080
Speaker 1: where the movie The Death of Stalin begins, right. I'm

1390
01:13:19,080 --> 01:13:21,600
Speaker 1: gonna guess a lot of people have seen that, And

1391
01:13:21,640 --> 01:13:25,519
Speaker 1: again the specifics, it doesn't really get a lot of them, right,

1392
01:13:25,600 --> 01:13:27,639
Speaker 1: But I think if you watch the movie, the broad

1393
01:13:27,680 --> 01:13:29,760
Speaker 1: strokes of it are close enough for like what most

1394
01:13:29,760 --> 01:13:34,599
Speaker 1: people would actually need to know about how this functioned. Right. Barria,

1395
01:13:35,040 --> 01:13:38,080
Speaker 1: as is depicted in the movie, like everyone else, probably

1396
01:13:38,080 --> 01:13:40,639
Speaker 1: thrilled to see his boss struck down because he had

1397
01:13:40,760 --> 01:13:43,639
Speaker 1: very clearly been on this on the chopping block, right.

1398
01:13:44,400 --> 01:13:46,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was on his way out one horrible way.

1399
01:13:46,800 --> 01:13:49,200
Speaker 2: It's not like Brian's going to get retired to his

1400
01:13:49,320 --> 01:13:51,600
Speaker 2: dacha or something. He was getting He was giving the

1401
01:13:51,640 --> 01:13:56,280
Speaker 2: millimeter based pension plan right right, right now.

1402
01:13:56,760 --> 01:13:58,800
Speaker 1: There was probably would have been a Macarov right nine

1403
01:13:58,800 --> 01:14:02,080
Speaker 1: by eighteen by the time period, as my guess. So

1404
01:14:02,240 --> 01:14:06,519
Speaker 1: there's no obvious successor, and Stalin's inner circle jockeyed for

1405
01:14:06,640 --> 01:14:10,439
Speaker 1: position around him. Khrushchev and Barria are the most capable

1406
01:14:10,479 --> 01:14:13,519
Speaker 1: plotters of the group, and the two initially work together

1407
01:14:13,600 --> 01:14:16,920
Speaker 1: to push out Malankov, but then Krushchev turns around and

1408
01:14:17,000 --> 01:14:20,320
Speaker 1: allies with Malankov against Baria. Right, we don't need to

1409
01:14:20,360 --> 01:14:23,720
Speaker 1: rehash the whole thing, but there's this kind of interregnum

1410
01:14:23,760 --> 01:14:27,080
Speaker 1: period of a few months after Stalin's death. Right, the

1411
01:14:27,080 --> 01:14:29,719
Speaker 1: movie condenses it to a much shorter period of time,

1412
01:14:29,760 --> 01:14:33,040
Speaker 1: but there's a bit of space there, right, And these

1413
01:14:33,040 --> 01:14:35,920
Speaker 1: are busy months, right, Barry is first thing he's going

1414
01:14:36,000 --> 01:14:38,520
Speaker 1: to do is carry out this series of mass releases

1415
01:14:38,560 --> 01:14:40,800
Speaker 1: from prison, right, of all these guys he had had

1416
01:14:40,840 --> 01:14:44,560
Speaker 1: locked up, right, and he pushes a slurry of reforms

1417
01:14:44,640 --> 01:14:48,840
Speaker 1: as well. Shila Fitzpatrick actually credits him primarily with the

1418
01:14:48,880 --> 01:14:52,840
Speaker 1: early reforms that follow Stalin's death, writing, within six weeks

1419
01:14:52,880 --> 01:14:54,840
Speaker 1: as head of the Security Police, he had released the

1420
01:14:54,880 --> 01:14:58,880
Speaker 1: Jewish doctors, investigated Nkole's death and informed the team of

1421
01:14:58,920 --> 01:15:02,519
Speaker 1: Stalin's involvement, forbidden the use of torture and interrogations, transferred

1422
01:15:02,600 --> 01:15:06,280
Speaker 1: much of the MVDS, that's the NKVDS industrial empire to

1423
01:15:06,320 --> 01:15:08,840
Speaker 1: civilian ministries, and set in motion the release of more

1424
01:15:08,880 --> 01:15:10,880
Speaker 1: than a million prisoners from the gulags.

1425
01:15:11,479 --> 01:15:13,240
Speaker 2: I mean this has to be just saving face at

1426
01:15:13,240 --> 01:15:15,720
Speaker 2: the last minute, right, Well, yes, yes, this is not.

1427
01:15:15,960 --> 01:15:18,880
Speaker 2: None of these guys, all of these guys, anyone who

1428
01:15:18,960 --> 01:15:22,360
Speaker 2: has lived in Stalin's inner circle this long, you don't

1429
01:15:22,400 --> 01:15:26,439
Speaker 2: do things for reasons other than survival, right of course not.

1430
01:15:26,800 --> 01:15:28,720
Speaker 2: You know, you wouldn't have lived that long if you

1431
01:15:28,760 --> 01:15:31,439
Speaker 2: were that kind of fella, you know. So again I

1432
01:15:31,479 --> 01:15:33,200
Speaker 2: don't credit this with him doing it out of the

1433
01:15:33,200 --> 01:15:35,200
Speaker 2: goodness of his heart, but it does show like where

1434
01:15:35,240 --> 01:15:37,479
Speaker 2: his mind is of like what I need to do

1435
01:15:37,600 --> 01:15:39,880
Speaker 2: to position myself, which is I need to be the

1436
01:15:39,920 --> 01:15:41,880
Speaker 2: guy who's pushing all of these.

1437
01:15:41,760 --> 01:15:45,000
Speaker 1: Reforms as fast and hard as I possibly can. Now.

1438
01:15:45,280 --> 01:15:48,120
Speaker 1: He also cleans house at the MVD, which is again

1439
01:15:48,200 --> 01:15:50,760
Speaker 1: the successor to you know, it's the NKVD, and he

1440
01:15:50,840 --> 01:15:53,160
Speaker 1: replaces these guys who had been kind of put in

1441
01:15:53,200 --> 01:15:56,240
Speaker 1: to erode his power base with some of his own

1442
01:15:56,280 --> 01:15:59,559
Speaker 1: people who were still remaining. Right. Khrushchev and the other

1443
01:15:59,560 --> 01:16:03,479
Speaker 1: inner members know Barry is dangerous, and they've known him

1444
01:16:03,520 --> 01:16:05,800
Speaker 1: long enough that he is not the guy they want

1445
01:16:05,800 --> 01:16:07,599
Speaker 1: holding their lives in his hands.

1446
01:16:08,080 --> 01:16:10,599
Speaker 2: I think it takes over. I imagine that they all

1447
01:16:10,640 --> 01:16:13,479
Speaker 2: know that they're they're getting the millimeter pension as.

1448
01:16:13,360 --> 01:16:16,360
Speaker 1: Well, right right, that's there. All their assumption is that,

1449
01:16:16,439 --> 01:16:18,200
Speaker 1: like he's going to do another great purge once she's

1450
01:16:18,200 --> 01:16:20,280
Speaker 1: in power, and we're all fucked if we don't. Has

1451
01:16:20,320 --> 01:16:23,360
Speaker 1: no choice. They know too much about him, right, right,

1452
01:16:23,720 --> 01:16:25,560
Speaker 1: and it is it is interesting. We'll talk about this

1453
01:16:25,600 --> 01:16:27,120
Speaker 1: a little bit at the end, but let me get

1454
01:16:27,120 --> 01:16:29,120
Speaker 1: through the rest of this first. So the plot to

1455
01:16:29,200 --> 01:16:32,400
Speaker 1: unseat Barria is delayed for a bit by a rebellion

1456
01:16:32,400 --> 01:16:34,400
Speaker 1: in East Germany that they have to crack down on,

1457
01:16:34,439 --> 01:16:37,000
Speaker 1: but once that calms down after June nineteen fifty three,

1458
01:16:37,240 --> 01:16:41,200
Speaker 1: plans continue anew. And this is where Zukov comes back

1459
01:16:41,240 --> 01:16:43,599
Speaker 1: into it. It's Zukov and one of his men, General

1460
01:16:43,720 --> 01:16:47,479
Speaker 1: Kiril Moskalenko. Since Barry has got this iron grip on

1461
01:16:47,600 --> 01:16:50,840
Speaker 1: the police, right, the military is the only group of

1462
01:16:50,840 --> 01:16:53,320
Speaker 1: guys with guns who you can trust to take him down.

1463
01:16:53,720 --> 01:16:55,600
Speaker 1: So the plotters, you know, again, this is kind of

1464
01:16:55,680 --> 01:16:59,559
Speaker 1: organized around Krushchev and Malenkov, gather ten officers to their

1465
01:16:59,560 --> 01:17:02,400
Speaker 1: banner and in a June twenty sixth meeting at the

1466
01:17:02,520 --> 01:17:05,759
Speaker 1: Presidium ambush Barria at the start of what is supposed

1467
01:17:05,800 --> 01:17:08,599
Speaker 1: to be a polit bureau meeting. Here's how writer Cheryl

1468
01:17:08,680 --> 01:17:13,200
Speaker 1: Roefer describes what happens next. Barria, as usual, arrived just

1469
01:17:13,240 --> 01:17:16,120
Speaker 1: before the meeting was to start, Malankov changed the agenda

1470
01:17:16,160 --> 01:17:19,360
Speaker 1: to focus specifically on Barria's activities. This was a complete

1471
01:17:19,360 --> 01:17:22,839
Speaker 1: surprise to Barria. Malankov laid out Barria's misdeeds and alleged

1472
01:17:22,880 --> 01:17:25,840
Speaker 1: that Barria had been seeking to displace the collective leadership

1473
01:17:25,840 --> 01:17:29,360
Speaker 1: into foment discord among Prosidium members. He then proposed a

1474
01:17:29,400 --> 01:17:32,320
Speaker 1: number of possible remedies, all of which included removing Barria

1475
01:17:32,360 --> 01:17:34,719
Speaker 1: from the posts he held. He invited the other members

1476
01:17:34,760 --> 01:17:37,760
Speaker 1: of the Prosidium to join and enumerating Barria's mistakes, which

1477
01:17:37,800 --> 01:17:41,080
Speaker 1: they did. This put them on record as supporting Barria's removal.

1478
01:17:41,400 --> 01:17:44,280
Speaker 1: As Malenkov summed up the accusations, he pressed the button

1479
01:17:44,320 --> 01:17:46,840
Speaker 1: to alert the military, who marched into the room. He

1480
01:17:46,880 --> 01:17:49,679
Speaker 1: then declared that Barria is so cunning and so dangerous

1481
01:17:49,680 --> 01:17:51,840
Speaker 1: that only the devil knows what he might do now.

1482
01:17:52,160 --> 01:17:55,840
Speaker 1: I therefore proposed that we arrest him immediately. Moscolenko brought

1483
01:17:55,840 --> 01:17:58,920
Speaker 1: out their guns and arrested and searched Barria. So again

1484
01:17:58,960 --> 01:18:01,280
Speaker 1: one of the big differences, it's not Zukov who's there

1485
01:18:01,760 --> 01:18:04,000
Speaker 1: with all the guns showing up in the room to like,

1486
01:18:04,080 --> 01:18:06,559
Speaker 1: it's it's this other guys, who's you know, working with

1487
01:18:06,560 --> 01:18:09,600
Speaker 1: with Zukov. I think probably just because Zukov doesn't know

1488
01:18:09,680 --> 01:18:11,120
Speaker 1: that it's going to work, and it's a little bit

1489
01:18:11,160 --> 01:18:12,880
Speaker 1: too canny a survivor, and I want to put his

1490
01:18:12,920 --> 01:18:15,599
Speaker 1: own neck off right right there, I know which one

1491
01:18:15,640 --> 01:18:15,960
Speaker 1: I like.

1492
01:18:16,040 --> 01:18:19,040
Speaker 2: The envision is Oscar Isaac storming in there with with

1493
01:18:19,120 --> 01:18:19,599
Speaker 2: an ak.

1494
01:18:20,280 --> 01:18:23,719
Speaker 1: It's much better in the movie, right. And everyone's great

1495
01:18:23,760 --> 01:18:28,559
Speaker 1: in that movie. I mean he he is having such

1496
01:18:28,560 --> 01:18:32,320
Speaker 1: a good time, right. I would never have fucking called

1497
01:18:32,360 --> 01:18:36,679
Speaker 1: oh god, what's his name? The guy who plays krush Chef. Yeah,

1498
01:18:36,680 --> 01:18:39,120
Speaker 1: I would never have called Steve Buscemi as krush Chef,

1499
01:18:39,120 --> 01:18:41,759
Speaker 1: but he is an excellent khrush chef. Oh it's crazy,

1500
01:18:41,800 --> 01:18:44,040
Speaker 1: really Yeah. And the guy that got from Olotav I

1501
01:18:44,400 --> 01:18:45,840
Speaker 1: don't even know what his name is, but he was

1502
01:18:45,880 --> 01:18:48,720
Speaker 1: really good to everybody's great in that movie. Barry is

1503
01:18:48,720 --> 01:18:50,840
Speaker 1: not killed on the spot as he is in the movie,

1504
01:18:50,840 --> 01:18:53,880
Speaker 1: but he's arrested and tried on December tenth. He is

1505
01:18:53,920 --> 01:18:57,400
Speaker 1: executed on December twenty third. Now, the common view, and

1506
01:18:57,439 --> 01:18:59,240
Speaker 1: the one put forward in Death of Stalin was that

1507
01:18:59,600 --> 01:19:01,960
Speaker 1: he was the most frightening and evil of the polit

1508
01:19:01,960 --> 01:19:04,479
Speaker 1: Bureau members right, and even his fellow members felt that

1509
01:19:04,479 --> 01:19:07,479
Speaker 1: they had to take action against him. There's a strong

1510
01:19:07,640 --> 01:19:10,080
Speaker 1: argument to be made that the main thing they feared

1511
01:19:10,120 --> 01:19:12,840
Speaker 1: from Barria was that he was a reformer. And this

1512
01:19:12,920 --> 01:19:15,960
Speaker 1: gets inted again some unprovable stuff, But you have to

1513
01:19:16,000 --> 01:19:19,240
Speaker 1: remember Barry is a guy who believes primarily in his

1514
01:19:19,320 --> 01:19:23,200
Speaker 1: own power. He is not ideologically committed to Communism like

1515
01:19:23,200 --> 01:19:24,920
Speaker 1: a lot of these other guys are. He certainly not

1516
01:19:24,960 --> 01:19:27,040
Speaker 1: nearly as much as a guy like Molotov was right,

1517
01:19:27,360 --> 01:19:30,360
Speaker 1: and he has opened for a lot more reform than

1518
01:19:30,479 --> 01:19:32,320
Speaker 1: other members of the polit Bureau. And this is the

1519
01:19:32,439 --> 01:19:36,080
Speaker 1: argument that Amy Knight makes quote. The changes he advocated

1520
01:19:36,120 --> 01:19:38,400
Speaker 1: were so bold and far reaching that, while greeted with

1521
01:19:38,479 --> 01:19:41,640
Speaker 1: relief by the public, they alarmed his colleagues. Ironically, it

1522
01:19:41,680 --> 01:19:45,160
Speaker 1: was Khrushchev, acclaimed later as a courageous de Stalinizer, who

1523
01:19:45,200 --> 01:19:48,040
Speaker 1: was chiefly responsible for putting a halt to Barry's reforms

1524
01:19:48,040 --> 01:19:51,120
Speaker 1: by leading the plot against him. As this biography suggests,

1525
01:19:51,160 --> 01:19:54,880
Speaker 1: Barria's program aimed at undermining the Stalinist's system and therefore

1526
01:19:54,960 --> 01:19:58,320
Speaker 1: might have led to its demise. Khrushchev's policies, while reformist

1527
01:19:58,360 --> 01:20:01,960
Speaker 1: in fact perpetuated Stalinist so Khrushchev eliminated the role of

1528
01:20:02,000 --> 01:20:05,720
Speaker 1: police terror, many would argue the system remained essentially totalitarian,

1529
01:20:05,760 --> 01:20:09,400
Speaker 1: and obviously that's a deeply debatable point. I'm not a historian,

1530
01:20:09,439 --> 01:20:11,559
Speaker 1: but I just wanted to note that there is, you know,

1531
01:20:11,600 --> 01:20:14,200
Speaker 1: that is an argument people will make. I think you

1532
01:20:14,240 --> 01:20:16,160
Speaker 1: could very easily make the argument that it would have

1533
01:20:16,160 --> 01:20:18,000
Speaker 1: been a lot worse if Barria had wound up in

1534
01:20:18,080 --> 01:20:19,559
Speaker 1: charge of the USSR too.

1535
01:20:19,760 --> 01:20:22,559
Speaker 2: I think both things can, Like, like we've said multiple times,

1536
01:20:22,600 --> 01:20:25,479
Speaker 2: both things can one percent be true, because there's a

1537
01:20:25,600 --> 01:20:28,280
Speaker 2: very good chance that there could have been reforms. But

1538
01:20:28,360 --> 01:20:31,360
Speaker 2: I think as great as that chance was, that the

1539
01:20:31,479 --> 01:20:34,639
Speaker 2: chance was much greater that you have experienced some form

1540
01:20:34,680 --> 01:20:36,360
Speaker 2: of great purge first.

1541
01:20:36,920 --> 01:20:42,160
Speaker 1: Right, Right, I think that's a solid point. Now. One

1542
01:20:42,200 --> 01:20:44,600
Speaker 1: thing that I will kind of note here that is

1543
01:20:44,640 --> 01:20:47,840
Speaker 1: interesting is that after they get rid of Barria, there's

1544
01:20:47,920 --> 01:20:51,280
Speaker 1: more purging among the politbureau. Right, Khrushchev is going to

1545
01:20:51,320 --> 01:20:54,160
Speaker 1: do his version of cleaning house, but they stop killing

1546
01:20:54,200 --> 01:20:56,920
Speaker 1: each other. Right. It's almost as if there's this kind

1547
01:20:56,960 --> 01:21:00,280
Speaker 1: of attitude after Barry has gone that like anybody who's

1548
01:21:00,320 --> 01:21:02,599
Speaker 1: lived up to this point, I may have to get

1549
01:21:02,640 --> 01:21:04,840
Speaker 1: them out of power. I may have to like, you know,

1550
01:21:04,880 --> 01:21:07,080
Speaker 1: push him into a country house or something. But like,

1551
01:21:07,520 --> 01:21:09,200
Speaker 1: I don't want to kill any of these guys, Like

1552
01:21:09,240 --> 01:21:11,519
Speaker 1: we're all the only ones who made it. I don't

1553
01:21:11,560 --> 01:21:15,200
Speaker 1: want to like murder these other guys anymore. Let's stop

1554
01:21:15,360 --> 01:21:18,720
Speaker 1: and they do, right, Khrushchev doesn't massacre all of his

1555
01:21:19,160 --> 01:21:22,080
Speaker 1: you know, former polit bureau colleagues. And when Khrushchev gets

1556
01:21:22,080 --> 01:21:24,280
Speaker 1: forced out, he's allowed to live, you.

1557
01:21:24,200 --> 01:21:29,120
Speaker 2: Know, right, right, I wonder honestly, I'm just just curious

1558
01:21:29,680 --> 01:21:33,360
Speaker 2: if Barry would have taken the same turn, because maybe

1559
01:21:33,600 --> 01:21:35,599
Speaker 2: maybe he would have seen the point of all the matters,

1560
01:21:35,640 --> 01:21:39,799
Speaker 2: because again, he's a practical, efficient person, right right, Unfortunately, Yeah,

1561
01:21:39,840 --> 01:21:44,480
Speaker 2: practicality and efficiency devoid of humanity equals just the banality

1562
01:21:44,560 --> 01:21:46,880
Speaker 2: of pure terror and evil, which is what he was.

1563
01:21:46,920 --> 01:21:49,320
Speaker 2: So like, it's it's curious to wonder if he's like, oh,

1564
01:21:49,360 --> 01:21:50,800
Speaker 2: we don't really need to do that anymore. So I

1565
01:21:50,800 --> 01:21:53,120
Speaker 2: don't really I don't really care. That's the same thing

1566
01:21:53,160 --> 01:21:54,920
Speaker 2: of what he was doing in his own personal time.

1567
01:21:55,280 --> 01:21:56,400
Speaker 2: But right right, you know.

1568
01:21:57,320 --> 01:22:00,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, it will never know. I think it is possible

1569
01:22:00,120 --> 01:22:02,680
Speaker 1: that like he's more or less, he's not all that

1570
01:22:02,760 --> 01:22:07,040
Speaker 1: different from Krushchev in terms of like kind of ratcheting

1571
01:22:07,080 --> 01:22:10,160
Speaker 1: down the massacres and stuff. Maybe no way to know.

1572
01:22:10,640 --> 01:22:12,920
Speaker 1: That's certainly not the argument that Night makes.

1573
01:22:12,760 --> 01:22:15,800
Speaker 2: He seems like, to me is a guy that saw

1574
01:22:16,000 --> 01:22:19,680
Speaker 2: violence as just a means to an end. There was

1575
01:22:19,720 --> 01:22:23,400
Speaker 2: no personality or like we said, there's no ideology attached

1576
01:22:23,400 --> 01:22:25,479
Speaker 2: to it. He's like, well, you know, killing people is

1577
01:22:25,560 --> 01:22:29,679
Speaker 2: the most the quickest way to complete my goal, and

1578
01:22:29,800 --> 01:22:32,439
Speaker 2: until it isn't you know, it's not the most sufficient

1579
01:22:32,520 --> 01:22:34,040
Speaker 2: way to do it anymore, so I don't need to

1580
01:22:34,080 --> 01:22:34,639
Speaker 2: do it anymore.

1581
01:22:35,439 --> 01:22:40,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, possibly anyway, Joe, that is the Laventi

1582
01:22:40,680 --> 01:22:44,120
Speaker 1: Barriers story. Hopefully this is helpful. You know, when you

1583
01:22:44,200 --> 01:22:47,960
Speaker 1: become the secret police chief of a country governing roughly

1584
01:22:48,040 --> 01:22:50,120
Speaker 1: one fifth of the world's land mass.

1585
01:22:50,640 --> 01:22:52,479
Speaker 2: We all have to have dreams. I'm glad that I

1586
01:22:53,560 --> 01:22:54,920
Speaker 2: now have some research material.

1587
01:22:55,760 --> 01:22:58,519
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, hopefully I'll get that other half or one

1588
01:22:58,560 --> 01:23:01,240
Speaker 1: fifth of the world's land mass. We can really start

1589
01:23:01,280 --> 01:23:03,720
Speaker 1: making some nukes. I mean, we can make some form

1590
01:23:03,760 --> 01:23:09,919
Speaker 1: of pact non aggression less right right, those always end. Well, anyway,

1591
01:23:10,240 --> 01:23:12,280
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go hang out with my friend who's helping

1592
01:23:12,320 --> 01:23:15,559
Speaker 1: me organize this plan. He's really quiet but very organized.

1593
01:23:15,560 --> 01:23:17,080
Speaker 1: I think things are going to go great with him.

1594
01:23:17,160 --> 01:23:19,400
Speaker 1: Seems like a good guy to have in this situation.

1595
01:23:19,479 --> 01:23:24,000
Speaker 1: Where's tiny glasses, Georgia, We're real, smallest glasses you've ever

1596
01:23:24,000 --> 01:23:32,679
Speaker 1: seen in your life. Anyway, We're done. Goodbye, Well, actually

1597
01:23:32,680 --> 01:23:35,840
Speaker 1: not goodbye, Joe, you got any pluggables to plug? I'm

1598
01:23:35,840 --> 01:23:38,120
Speaker 1: the host of the Lines of by Donkeys podcast. We

1599
01:23:38,160 --> 01:23:41,920
Speaker 1: talked about military history, disasters, horrible things and kind of

1600
01:23:41,920 --> 01:23:44,760
Speaker 1: similar to this, and we've talked about a lot of

1601
01:23:44,760 --> 01:23:48,080
Speaker 1: topics that are vaguely connected to Baria and the Soviet

1602
01:23:48,120 --> 01:23:50,280
Speaker 1: Union during World War Two, like the Battle of Curse,

1603
01:23:50,400 --> 01:23:54,000
Speaker 1: the Battle of Stalingrad, the Winter War, things like that.

1604
01:23:54,360 --> 01:23:57,439
Speaker 1: I also write military science fiction, and you can find

1605
01:23:57,720 --> 01:24:01,600
Speaker 1: my newest series, The Undying Legion wherever it is you

1606
01:24:01,760 --> 01:24:07,240
Speaker 1: cop your books at h Yeah, check that stuff out.

1607
01:24:07,960 --> 01:24:14,799
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, I don't know. Don't deport people

1608
01:24:15,439 --> 01:24:21,120
Speaker 1: if you can avoid it. Behind the Bastards is a

1609
01:24:21,160 --> 01:24:24,559
Speaker 1: production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media,

1610
01:24:24,680 --> 01:24:28,519
Speaker 1: visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out

1611
01:24:28,560 --> 01:24:31,559
Speaker 1: on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get

1612
01:24:31,560 --> 01:24:32,680
Speaker 1: your podcasts,