Speaker 1: Also media here, everyone, Robert Evans here, and before we
Speaker 1: get to the episode, obviously a lot of people in
Speaker 1: Gaza need a lot of different help. But we've been
Speaker 1: connected to the Algazawi family by a friend of ours
Speaker 1: who's doing aid work there. Right now. They are trying
Speaker 1: to get fourteen members of their family out of Gaza
Speaker 1: before you know, things get any worse for them, and
Speaker 1: they're raising money to do so on go fund Me.
Speaker 1: If you google help al Gazawe family escape Gaza go
Speaker 1: fund Me, you can find it. Algazawie is spelled a
Speaker 1: l g h a zz a w I. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: trying to help them, you know, get to a safer place,
Speaker 1: So please consider donating if you can. Ah, boy, howdy.
Speaker 1: You know what I love more than anything is a nice,
Speaker 1: good piece and new Hitler news. You know, for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: we don't get a lot of that anymore. Baffling as
Speaker 1: to why, but I just came across the story's not new,
Speaker 1: but it's hit social media the way these things apparently
Speaker 1: sometimes do when people realize there's engagement to be gotten.
Speaker 1: And the title of this New York Post article, Joe Kassebian,
Speaker 1: our guest host of the Lions by Doggies podcast co
Speaker 1: host and Sophie, my producer. The headline of this article
Speaker 1: is Adolf Hitler's last living relative convicted of pedophilia. Now,
Speaker 1: and that we get a picture of like a man
Speaker 1: who looks to be in his sixties, with like a
Speaker 1: bald head that's entirely a tattoo, very yellow teeth and look, folks,
Speaker 1: no one would love it more than me. If there
Speaker 1: was there was some new Hitler gossip that made the
Speaker 1: family look bad. There's no fresh Hitler article, some fresh hitlerisms.
Speaker 1: The first the first line of the article is a
Speaker 1: man claiming to be Adolf Hitler's last living relative has
Speaker 1: been convicted of pedophilia. And this guy is a creep
Speaker 1: and his last name is apparently Hitler. But there's other
Speaker 1: there's other Hitler's. He has other living relatives, right like
Speaker 1: this guy. Even if this guy is related to Hitler,
Speaker 1: which I have not done the work to confirm, he's
Speaker 1: not the last Hitler. I mean, I wish he's gonna do.
Speaker 2: You know, when you're convicted, When when you're convicted or
Speaker 2: charge of pedophilia, you gotta take some of the heat off,
Speaker 2: Like man, anybody googles my name, They're just gonna go
Speaker 2: with pedophilia, pedophilia. How can I possibly beat that as
Speaker 2: a headline? I know, I'm a Hitler.
Speaker 1: He is the one guy who could mitigate being convicted
Speaker 1: of pedophilia. Is like, okay, this is bad, but compared
Speaker 1: to my uncle Hitler, well, let's say, you know, like
Speaker 1: it always reminds me that, you know, Willie Hitler, Hitler's
Speaker 1: nephew retired to Upstate New York after serving in the
Speaker 1: US Navy in World War Two and then died and
Speaker 1: kept to see he changed his last name to I
Speaker 1: think is Stuart Hustin or something like that. You would
Speaker 1: want to, you know, if you're not a Hitler.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And one of his neighbors said, you know what,
Speaker 2: like because all it once it came out who he was.
Speaker 2: Like then the local news is interviewing all his neighbors,
Speaker 2: and one of my favorite lines I think I've ever
Speaker 2: read in any local news piece is his neighbors like,
Speaker 2: you know what, now that you mentioned it, he did
Speaker 2: kind of look like Hitler. He did kind of have
Speaker 2: a Hitler vibe doing Yeah, there's Hilary.
Speaker 1: There's another story that's a bit more accurate than this,
Speaker 1: which is that all of Hitler's last living relatives agreed
Speaker 1: independently not to have kids. Not entirely true. There are
Speaker 1: a number of Hitler relatives who are like, probably shouldn't
Speaker 1: make any more of this, probably had enough of the Hitler's.
Speaker 2: All the Hitler's gathering around this circle, putting their hands
Speaker 2: in and say backshots on.
Speaker 1: Three it is. You know, I do actually kind of
Speaker 1: feel like maybe it's worse to be like as a Hitler,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to have any kids because you're kind
Speaker 1: of leaning into his weird attitudes about genetics, because yeah,
Speaker 1: Hitler wasn't Hitler. Wasn't Hitler because of his his genes.
Speaker 1: He was Hitler because of his Hitler.
Speaker 2: That reminds me of So I can actually talk about
Speaker 2: this now because they never made me sign an NDA,
Speaker 2: but the History Channel interviewed me to possibly host a
Speaker 2: show about Hitler a couple months ago, and man, I
Speaker 2: wanted the jobs story, god damn much, and for some
Speaker 2: reason it involved me repelling down rock walls and stuff.
Speaker 2: I'm not entirely sure why, but they'll share.
Speaker 1: How did you really report on Hitler.
Speaker 2: Specifically Hitler's DNA, Like I didn't give a single flying
Speaker 2: fuck because the topic is so stupid. But I'm like,
Speaker 2: you're telling me I get to be on the History Channel,
Speaker 2: repelled on rock walls and it's about dumb shit about
Speaker 2: Hitler's DNA.
Speaker 1: Just sign me.
Speaker 2: This is like if you told eight year old to
Speaker 2: be to get to do this, you'd be fucking ecstatic.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Wow, that was a long descent. Speaking of long descents,
Speaker 1: let's talk about the last ten years of Hitler's life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's good ways you could do that. You know, Joe,
Speaker 1: everybody he loves talking Hitler. Not everybody loves talking Hitler,
Speaker 1: but enough people do that. It's a pretty reliable source
Speaker 1: of content for a number of people.
Speaker 2: And never in this shows for people who do a
Speaker 2: job like me and you, is a never ending font
Speaker 2: of content.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he really has done the podcasters and History Channel
Speaker 1: documentary producers of the world a solid Speaking of things,
Speaker 1: people love to talk about World War Two. Now, I
Speaker 1: don't think it's controversial to say most people who have
Speaker 1: a favorite war that war's World War Two, right, And
Speaker 1: people love talking World War Two for the same reason
Speaker 1: that Warhammer forty thousand is now the most profitable export
Speaker 1: in British history. It's got a little bit of everything, right.
Speaker 1: And if the experience you're looking for in a war
Speaker 1: is an almost Michael Scott like story of executive incompetence
Speaker 1: leading to disaster and unbelievable awkwardness, well the Big Dub
Speaker 1: Dub does has that one in spades. Brother. And this
Speaker 1: brings me back to the story of Joe of Stalin
Speaker 1: and his buddies, which now includes Lavnti Barria as an
Speaker 1: integral member and at this point pretty experienced ethnic cleanser.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: He's good at deportations. He's done a lot of practice. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's up there, right, top ten percent of deporters in
Speaker 1: the world at this moment, right, almost unquestionably. And you know,
Speaker 1: nineteen forty, nineteen forty one, prior to Operation Barbarassa, everybody
Speaker 1: in Stalin's inner circle, almost everybody. We'll talk about malatav
Speaker 1: In a second, but most of the people in Stalin's
Speaker 1: inner circle, including Stalin, no, some kind of conflict is
Speaker 1: coming with the Nazis, right Stalin though, And again when
Speaker 1: people say that and that's accurate, they often mean that
Speaker 1: to be like, everyone knew that a war like World
Speaker 1: War II was for Russia was coming and they did not. Right,
Speaker 1: Stalin would not have made a lot of the choices
Speaker 1: he made if he felt like the World War Two
Speaker 1: that Russia got was right in the office, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he'd probably be a little bit less pergy, a little
Speaker 1: less pergy, a little more, have some kind of effective
Speaker 1: defenses set up for the Wehrmacht, you know, e a
Speaker 1: little less keep his entire air force grounded so it
Speaker 1: gets blown up on the tarmacx E. You know, couple
Speaker 1: of things he might have done.
Speaker 2: Kills so many pilots they can't even fucking fly effectively.
Speaker 1: Some changes would have been made. Right. And when I
Speaker 1: say that, like Stalin doesn't know the war that's coming
Speaker 1: is coming, it's part of what I'm saying is because
Speaker 1: Stalin is certain a conflicts coming, but he thinks they've
Speaker 1: got years before anything happens. Right, he thinks they've got
Speaker 1: we've got enough time to rebuild the Red Army from
Speaker 1: the purges, and not just to do that, but when
Speaker 1: the USSR moves west to take eastern Poland, to take
Speaker 1: all these like Baltic states, right, Stalin has his troops
Speaker 1: disassemble the fortifications on their western border. Right because he
Speaker 1: wants to move those up, right. He doesn't want there
Speaker 1: to not be fortifications. But he's like, well, we'll take
Speaker 1: these apart and we'll rebuild a defensive line closer to
Speaker 1: the new border right with the West. We just move
Speaker 1: forward a lot. But there's like an awkward period in
Speaker 1: between taking apart the fortifications that had existed and getting
Speaker 1: the new ones up. And they're not going to have
Speaker 1: that new set of fortifications up by July of nineteen
Speaker 1: forty one, when the Nazis unleash Operation Barbarossa, which is
Speaker 1: still the largest military operation in the history of mankind
Speaker 1: hopefully always will be. I want to see it get beat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: always going to put star like that. Yeah, you don't
Speaker 1: attempt anybody into beating the Guinness Book of World Records
Speaker 1: like the execution Now you get to close it up.
Speaker 1: Oh god, I would love to see the Guinness Book
Speaker 1: of World Records entry for that though, just based on
Speaker 1: the executioner one. Yeah. While Stalin is convinced that there's
Speaker 1: going to be a fight and Hitler's obviously got one plan,
Speaker 1: there's this awkward innerstittle period in late nineteen forty where
Speaker 1: Molotov as the USSR's foreign policy guy and is the
Speaker 1: dumbest guy who's close to Stalin. I don't know if
Speaker 1: that's generally agreed by historians myriad having read a couple
Speaker 1: books about these guys. Molotov was kind of the dipshit
Speaker 1: of the crew, right.
Speaker 2: He doesn't seem like the sharpest sickle of the hammer.
Speaker 2: You know, he is not the best of them, right,
Speaker 2: And Molotov is kind of notably the guy who is
Speaker 2: most convinced that, like we actually might be able to
Speaker 2: ally with the Nazis to fight the British. You know,
Speaker 2: he has kind of a fantasy that this might be possible.
Speaker 2: And he has this fantasy because Joaquing von Ribbentrop, who's
Speaker 2: his opposite I mean again.
Speaker 1: It's the Molotov Ribbon Tromp packed, right. People are aware
Speaker 1: of this, Yeah, Joaquim von ribin Tropp, his opposite number
Speaker 1: in Germany, has kind of like incepted this idea that like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know what, I know, our bosses don't get along,
Speaker 1: but like I feel like Hitler might let the USSR
Speaker 1: in the tripartheid pack. You could be member number four.
Speaker 1: You could be on a team with heavy hitters like
Speaker 1: Italy come on Italy.
Speaker 2: You know notable military mass friends Benito Mussolini.
Speaker 1: You know who always pulls their weight in twentieth century war.
Speaker 1: The Italians, guys, don't worry. They can't possibly switch sides
Speaker 1: on us again. It is very funny. Italy is like
Speaker 1: the case study of a country this amazing period of
Speaker 1: like utter military dominance and then just never gets their
Speaker 1: shit together again for a thousand years. I'm being a
Speaker 1: little unfair to a couple of the city states, but
Speaker 1: it's for the purposes of comedy. I don't think. I
Speaker 1: don't think anyone really thinks there was ever a serious
Speaker 1: possibility of like the USSR and the Nazis allying against
Speaker 1: the British in a realistic way, right, But Molotov thinks
Speaker 1: it might be possible for a while now again he's
Speaker 1: not fully convinced of this, and Ribin Trop it's kind
Speaker 1: of a back and forth with trying to like keep
Speaker 1: Molotov on board with the idea, and Ribin Trap, who's
Speaker 1: also a little bit of a dipshit nearly has a
Speaker 1: panic attack because, like Molotov is in Berlin, they're they're
Speaker 1: talking all this through and the British launch an air
Speaker 1: raid and you know, Rippentrop is like, don't worry Molotov,
Speaker 1: the Brits are already beat And in a rare moment
Speaker 1: of lucidity, Molotov asks, well, then who is dropping the
Speaker 1: bombs on us? If you've got the British on the ropes,
Speaker 1: who is bombing your capital? Which, to be fair to Molotov,
Speaker 1: that's not a bad question in the moment to ask
Speaker 1: that'll buff out. It's a little buff out of Berlin.
Speaker 2: I have the last gasp from a dying empire carpet
Speaker 2: bombing the capitol. It's war, right, Your.
Speaker 1: Capital is gonna get a little completely destroyed in a
Speaker 1: way that very few cities in history have ever been destroyed.
Speaker 1: But hey, it comes with sixties. It's going to be great.
Speaker 1: It's great for real estate prices, ask Roterdom. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Roderdam's gonna eventually be doing very well. So this does
Speaker 1: not deal directly with Barriya, but I found it pass
Speaker 1: and Sheila Fitzpatrick's book on Stalin's team that I enjoyed
Speaker 1: too much not to share. Malatav had a meeting with
Speaker 1: Hitler too, and observed with interest that he was trying
Speaker 1: to do propaganda on him. Evidently he was very one sided,
Speaker 1: an extreme nationalist as Chauvins, who is blinded by his ideas,
Speaker 1: which is not a bad description of Hitler. I just
Speaker 1: find the Hitler's doing propaganda on me. Imagine that from Hitler.
Speaker 1: You think this guy shouldn't have propaganda me. I don't know.
Speaker 2: He seems like such an honest customer. Every other time.
Speaker 1: Propaganda from a Hitler. No. So, Barry's actual role in
Speaker 1: this period pretty obvious. As the USSR spymaster, he is
Speaker 1: responsible for ferrying beams of information to Stalin that make
Speaker 1: it very clear the Germans are about to invade. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of data on this, right, They had no
Speaker 1: good realon and Barria, I mean not to his credit
Speaker 1: because of what he's about to do is not handle
Speaker 1: this the best way he can. But Barria has plenty
Speaker 1: of info to be like, well, yeah, obviously they're about
Speaker 1: to fucking invade, right, Like they have three million men
Speaker 1: masked on the border. This is not the hardest thing
Speaker 1: to figure out.
Speaker 2: They're just camping. You know how the Germans love fresh air.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I he love tens. He loves the ground. It's
Speaker 1: very nice. My German accent terrible anyway. So this is
Speaker 1: a dangerous position to be in because Stalin has already
Speaker 1: made up his mind that the Germans are not going
Speaker 1: to invade right yet. You know, so, Bary it you
Speaker 1: can't just go to Stalin and be like, you're wrong,
Speaker 1: they're obviously about to invade, because telling Stalin he's wrong
Speaker 1: is a great way to wind up not alive anymore,
Speaker 1: you know. So Mary has got to thread the needle
Speaker 1: of he has to warn Stalin because when they do invade,
Speaker 1: you don't want Stalin to be like, where was the
Speaker 1: fucking evidence of this, right? Why didn't you? You also
Speaker 1: have to set it up in a way that you're
Speaker 1: not saying I told you so, because he'll just kill
Speaker 1: you right this. This is a tough to be fair
Speaker 1: to bury you. That's a hard position to be in.
Speaker 1: You know, there's no inforgen.
Speaker 2: Waiting inline to be the one that finally gets to
Speaker 2: kill Barria, like, oh please let him fuck up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they've got like a ton teene going now. In
Speaker 1: a memo written just days before the invasion, Barria laid
Speaker 1: out a huge number of warning signs that one was imminent,
Speaker 1: before concluding with forced cheer that since Stalin had figured
Speaker 1: out nothing was going to happen. It was all probably fine.
Speaker 1: It is kind of a masterclass and ass covering. But
Speaker 1: part of protecting his own ass was that Barria had
Speaker 1: to attack the military officers who were trying to warn
Speaker 1: Stalin and the intelligence officers who were trying to provide warnings.
Speaker 1: Right And in his book, Sangster writes, quote, Barria also
Speaker 1: knew the facts and was worried about an attack in
Speaker 1: the Caucasus oil fields. It amounted to a curious problem
Speaker 1: because such was the fear of Stalin that no one
Speaker 1: wanted to disagree with him or even suggest he was
Speaker 1: wrong or upset him. Barria went so far as to
Speaker 1: accuse the head of military intelligence of being a liar,
Speaker 1: even though his own information backed those observations. Now, I
Speaker 1: think the funniest maybe example of how deranged things get
Speaker 1: is that, like obviously Germany had a lot of communists
Speaker 1: before the Nazis win, a lot of those communists just
Speaker 1: kind of sink back into the woodwork, the ones who
Speaker 1: are not prominent enough that they're going to get purged
Speaker 1: or at least not going to spend too long in
Speaker 1: a camp. Right, A lot of guys get put in
Speaker 1: a you know what are called wild concentration camps for
Speaker 1: a while and they have a bad time, but they
Speaker 1: eventually get out and an east number of these guys
Speaker 1: get drafted into the Wehrmont later, right, and some of
Speaker 1: these significant number I think of these guys in the
Speaker 1: lead up to Operation Barbarosa are like, well, I don't
Speaker 1: want to invade Russia. I am still a communist, and
Speaker 1: they sneak across the border to try and warn the Russians, right,
Speaker 1: to try to warn Comrade Stalin, like, hey, guys, the
Speaker 1: fascists are coming, right, assuming.
Speaker 2: The immediately seriously and nothing bad happens to these loyal
Speaker 2: German communists.
Speaker 1: They are treated as spies. That's what you get for
Speaker 1: trying to stop Operation Barbarossa Damn. On June twenty second,
Speaker 1: nineteen forty one, some three million Germans, complete with a
Speaker 1: lot of tanks and trucks but even more horses, cross
Speaker 1: the Soviet border and start committing war crimes like there
Speaker 1: was a shortage at the war crime store, which is
Speaker 1: just a TJ Max. In the first few days, the
Speaker 1: Wehrmacht encountered minimal resistance and Soviet losses were nightmarishly like
Speaker 1: high enough. Basically pretty much any other country in the
Speaker 1: history of the world would have collapsed from the kind
Speaker 1: of casualties the Soviets are taking in these early days
Speaker 1: of barbarosso right, like they are using the entire modern
Speaker 1: day active duty strength of the US Army, and some
Speaker 1: of these engagements in terms of like captured, right primarily.
Speaker 2: The only time you ever read about casualty numbers quite
Speaker 2: like this is reading about like, I don't know, any
Speaker 2: war involving China.
Speaker 1: Right right, right, yeah, like the the the War over
Speaker 1: the Heavenly Kingdom, the Hong Kong or Taipei Rebellion Kingdom,
Speaker 1: which a series of about kingdom.
Speaker 2: Right, thanks for that, layup, Robert, Yeah, these are unthinkable.
Speaker 1: Like again, the entire US would collapse if we had
Speaker 1: losses like this. It's impossible to really comprad what casualties
Speaker 1: that we suffer today.
Speaker 2: Oh the entire population of Cleveland.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, we lost to Portland out there, sorry, guys.
Speaker 1: Most of San Francisco just got captured. So Barria had
Speaker 1: given out orders, you know kind of because again there
Speaker 1: the ver not just not the Wehrmacht, but the Luftwaffa
Speaker 1: is doing like some cross border air reconnaissance and stuff
Speaker 1: in the days leading up to this, right, and on
Speaker 1: the day of the attack, right, Obviously, planes are heading
Speaker 1: in a lot of areas ahead of the ground troops.
Speaker 1: They're doing attacks, they're bombing airfields. And because it's it's
Speaker 1: unclear initially is this an invasion, is there some sort
Speaker 1: of fuck up? I mean, it's pretty clear to people
Speaker 1: who are not blinkered by, you know, not wanting to
Speaker 1: anger Stalin what's happening. But Barria, acting on Stalin's orders,
Speaker 1: orders that Soviet troops not fire on these planes that
Speaker 1: have crossed in the Soviet air space because like Stalin
Speaker 1: doesn't want to provoke a fight, right, little laid on
Speaker 1: the draw there, j Stall. Maybe they're just lost, Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe they're just lost and bombing our airfields mistakenly. Maybe
Speaker 1: they think they're their own airfields and they just need
Speaker 1: to get rid of some planes. It happens after his
Speaker 1: fallen execution, Barry was denounced as a trader in Soviet
Speaker 1: history books for this. But this is not really fair.
Speaker 1: This is the only time I'll say this. That's not
Speaker 1: really fair to bury you. As Sangster points out, Barria
Speaker 1: had in fact Warren Stalin on June twelfth, writing that
Speaker 1: in a few instances they the German aircraft had penetrated
Speaker 1: sixty miles or more in the direction of military installations
Speaker 1: and large troop concentrations. Stalin appeared paralyzed and decided not
Speaker 1: to blink in case it provoked the Germans really bad call.
Speaker 1: I think we can all agree here.
Speaker 2: Don't look, I understand that they're bombing us. Maybe it's
Speaker 2: some misunderstanding that only exists in the warped brain of
Speaker 2: pre stroke Stalin.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, hope, maybe pre stroke Stalin. We don't know
Speaker 1: when that first one hit, right, He may throwing a
Speaker 1: blood clot at this point. Yeah, he in a couple
Speaker 1: of clots.
Speaker 2: So what they say about j stall really clatty.
Speaker 1: Really claudi fella. Now, depending on who you ask after
Speaker 1: the invasion, like in the immediate aftermath of the invasion,
Speaker 1: Stalin either has this panic attack or just a mental collapse,
Speaker 1: or he executes a complex face saving plan based on
Speaker 1: Russian history, And the truth is probably kind of all
Speaker 1: of the above. Right, we do know that he is panicked,
Speaker 1: and not hard to see why. If three million Germans
Speaker 1: invaded me, I would probably be a little worried.
Speaker 2: Right, you normally you have to pay for that kind
Speaker 2: of treatment. No, I had three invade me at a
Speaker 2: hostel once, and it was a real problem until I
Speaker 2: found out they had mally. Then things got a lot better,
Speaker 2: but it was rough for a little while. Let me
Speaker 2: tell you now, we know Stalin was furious for once
Speaker 2: it himself. Right, he has this line where he's like,
Speaker 2: we including himself in this like foolishly squandered Lenin's great inheritance.
Speaker 1: Right, there's like this moment where he's like he can't deny, like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is a real this is a real fuck up
Speaker 1: on my part.
Speaker 2: This could have gone a lot better, Guys, I kind
Speaker 2: of dropped the ball on this one, you know.
Speaker 1: What, I've fucked up a bit here. And he immediately
Speaker 1: flees the Kremlin for his country house, where he locks
Speaker 1: himself away for the rest of the government for I
Speaker 1: think like a week, and you have to presume he
Speaker 1: gets the kind of drunk that no one else has
Speaker 1: ever gotten. Right, this is probably a unique level of
Speaker 1: fucked up, Like this is a Sherman invasion.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's uh, you know, the doctor Manhattan floating
Speaker 2: on the Moon's surface level of enlightened drunk.
Speaker 1: Now, the people who will say like he was also
Speaker 1: kind of doing he was he was he was in
Speaker 1: his reaction to the invasion directly sort of sign posting
Speaker 1: some stuff from Russian history will point out that like
Speaker 1: even the Terrible who is the ruler of Usia from
Speaker 1: like fifteen forty seven to fifteen eighty four, had fucked
Speaker 1: up in a pretty huge and obvious public way himself,
Speaker 1: and when he did in the wake of it, he
Speaker 1: like fled to hide alone so that his nobles could
Speaker 1: come and find him and beg him to come back right.
Speaker 1: And this is sort of like he felt like there
Speaker 1: was this need for him to be like, I made
Speaker 1: a mistake and them to say, we still want you
Speaker 1: to run things right. I don't sure. I'm not enough
Speaker 1: of an expert on like why that was necessary. But
Speaker 1: people will argue that by sort of fleeing to his
Speaker 1: datcha like this, Stalin was doing the same thing. And
Speaker 1: I don't see why that wouldn't be part of his calculus, right.
Speaker 2: It makes more sense than a man like Stalin to
Speaker 2: have like a complete emotional breakdown. Sure, he's not really
Speaker 2: a man that felt emotions.
Speaker 1: Right and I don't see why it can't be both,
Speaker 1: why he can't be Like, I'm really fucked up, and
Speaker 1: maybe this is the end for me, but also maybe
Speaker 1: my best chance is to like do this thing that
Speaker 1: there's already kind of like a precedent for in history, right,
Speaker 1: A little bit, a little bit, a little bit from Colin,
Speaker 1: a lot from a lot from Vodka. Now, you know,
Speaker 1: in Ivan the Terrible's case, the nobles are I'm guessing
Speaker 1: they were his boyers. I think that's the term you
Speaker 1: know for it. In Stalin's case, the nobles that have
Speaker 1: to come and like ask him to retake the reins
Speaker 1: of power are his circle of buddies. And this is
Speaker 1: going to include our boy Barria. And so they all
Speaker 1: show up at the Datcha, and Barria, before they show
Speaker 1: up at the Datcha to go pick Stalin up off
Speaker 1: of his sick puddle in the floor, Barry is like,
Speaker 1: we should form a new organization, the State Defense Committee,
Speaker 1: to organize the war effort. And what'll really makes Stalin,
Speaker 1: what'll really pick him up, like perk him up, is
Speaker 1: if we make him the head of this thing before
Speaker 1: we come and get him right. Come on again, in charge,
Speaker 1: Come on, buddy, one thing you got to give him.
Speaker 1: You know, not every bastard is the best at something
Speaker 1: I've ever heard of. He might be the best ass
Speaker 1: kisser I've ever heard of. You know, he's tongue deep
Speaker 1: in the Yeah, you're right, You're right, he is. He
Speaker 1: has passed the colon. He's like the Geene Simmons up
Speaker 1: and there he is.
Speaker 2: Feasting like he's at a golden corral of ass, which
Speaker 2: is just.
Speaker 1: A golden corral. So Barry and everybody else they all
Speaker 1: travel to Stalin's Datcha to a share him. Hey, buddy,
Speaker 1: we still love you, right, we still want you to
Speaker 1: be our czar effectively, right, And Barry is like, and look, man,
Speaker 1: we made this whole new committee. You're in charge of it.
Speaker 1: Don't you want to come back and maybe we all
Speaker 1: do a World War two together? And Stalin he kind
Speaker 1: of like looks down at the floor, and he looks
Speaker 1: up at his buds and like the music, the heartwarming
Speaker 1: music starts to play and he's like, yeah, let's do
Speaker 1: a World War two. And then everybody hugs. You know,
Speaker 1: I it was three days from retirement. I do kind
Speaker 1: of want a World War II. Stalin's Inner Circle movie,
Speaker 1: but starring the main two characters from the Lethal Weapon franchise.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, yeah, I mean to be fair, Mel
Speaker 2: Gibson is anti Semitic enough to play Joseph Stalin.
Speaker 1: Honestly, he could be either of them, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So the reality is that everybody gets back to work,
Speaker 1: you know, in relatively short order, but not in a
Speaker 1: way that is initially effective or efficient. Again, these guys
Speaker 1: have a lot of skills, right, They're not bad at
Speaker 1: everything that they do. Barria is the stuff we've talked
Speaker 1: about him doing in terms of organizing these deportations and
Speaker 1: mass executions. They're bad things to do, but he does
Speaker 1: them competently. None of them really know how to wage
Speaker 1: the largest war in the history of human experience, right,
Speaker 1: which just quite a task. Yeah, you got you gotta
Speaker 1: figure you gotta pick up the ropes as you go along. Right,
Speaker 1: we can't all be George S. Patton, the reincarnation of Hannibal.
Speaker 1: What a beautiful maniac. We'll talk about him one of
Speaker 1: these days. He's got an episode or two. Real bastard,
Speaker 1: right about the one, Garren, but wrong about everything else. True.
Speaker 1: So Stalin's first instinct, because things are going very badly
Speaker 1: for the USSR is to try and sue for peace.
Speaker 1: He has a lot of territory, and he's like, if
Speaker 1: Hitler just wants land, I'll give him some fucking land.
Speaker 1: Can we work this out right, I've got a lot
Speaker 1: of Retsia. I can afford the burn. You know, you
Speaker 1: want some Baltics, you want the Baltics, you want some
Speaker 1: of Ukraine. Take it. I didn't even want it. Zukov
Speaker 1: visits shortly after the invasion, being one of the few
Speaker 1: guys who's in the military incompetent that's left alive, and
Speaker 1: he meets with Barria and Stalin and it's again, you know,
Speaker 1: any report you have from inside the inner circle in
Speaker 1: this period is imperfect. I trust Zukov more than most
Speaker 1: of these guys, not that he doesn't have some face
Speaker 1: saving to do, but I trust him more than most
Speaker 1: of them. And he claims that when he meets with
Speaker 1: these guys, they are both like in panic mode and
Speaker 1: convinced that victory is impossible right the doom, saying Berry
Speaker 1: and Stalin are both so like black pilled on their
Speaker 1: chances that at one point Zukov has to ask, Comrade Stalin,
Speaker 1: do I have permission to do my job. Right, You
Speaker 1: are clearly panicking too much to handle anything, right now?
Speaker 1: Can I go do a war? Right? Silence descends upon
Speaker 1: the room after this, and just a few months later,
Speaker 1: this would have ended with Zukov shot in a ditch, right,
Speaker 1: but Baria. All that happens in this case is barry.
Speaker 1: It just kind of gives this limp warning that, like, well,
Speaker 1: the opinion of the party is important, the party being Stalin,
Speaker 1: and Zu guy's like, I fuck about that right now? Man, Like,
Speaker 1: do you want to win this fucker or not? You know,
Speaker 1: there's not going to be a party in a three weeks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So obviously this is not a military history podcast. There's
Speaker 1: plenty of places where you can go to read about
Speaker 1: how the situation in the East gets turned around. Well
Speaker 1: it's not the East to Stalin, it's largely the west,
Speaker 1: but you get you know what I'm saying. While millions
Speaker 1: upon millions of people are dying fighting the Nazis, life
Speaker 1: gets a lot better for Burrio. World War two is
Speaker 1: really good for him because of all of the people
Speaker 1: close to Stalin, he's one of the guys who's kind
Speaker 1: of most useful in this situation, right, because he's a
Speaker 1: logistics guy, you know, and prior to the outbreak of war,
Speaker 1: the security agencies had already been fairly centralized, and once
Speaker 1: the war really kicks, everything gets centralized within the NKVD,
Speaker 1: which makes him unequivocally the most powerful security chief in
Speaker 1: the history of like almost any country, there's not a
Speaker 1: whole lot of competition, and.
Speaker 2: There's even elements during World War Two where the NKVD
Speaker 2: has its own military formations and Baria patently refuses to
Speaker 2: allow the Red Army to command them, and he has
Speaker 2: the power to do so.
Speaker 1: He sure does, and he's not going to be great
Speaker 1: at that part. But what he is good at he
Speaker 1: is kind of one of the guys who's in charge
Speaker 1: of this very famous effort to basically disassemble all of
Speaker 1: these Soviet heavy factories that are producing war material and
Speaker 1: move them east right so they can get reset up.
Speaker 1: And he's because he's so good at logistics. He's one
Speaker 1: of the guys organizing this in a big way, right,
Speaker 1: And he's from at least what I've read, seems to
Speaker 1: have been competent in this kind of stuff. He does
Speaker 1: a lot of in addition to running security, a lot
Speaker 1: of because a lot of like what the NKVD armed
Speaker 1: units are doing is ensuring that like supplies get places right,
Speaker 1: because obviously you need soldiers doing that to some extent,
Speaker 1: and I don't think he's incompetent at this now. In
Speaker 1: addition to all of the practical shit that he's doing,
Speaker 1: Barrya finds time to get up to some hideously evil
Speaker 1: bullshit as well. The vulgar regions. Of course he does.
Speaker 1: This is our boy barrier we're talking about here.
Speaker 2: You know, he's not going to shelve his hobbies during
Speaker 2: a whole world he's surrounded by death. This is what
Speaker 2: he was built for.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, this is what he was built for, just
Speaker 1: like our audience was built to be advertised too. So
Speaker 1: take out your credit card, marry it to me. I'll
Speaker 1: buy some stuff for you or for me, you know,
Speaker 1: for some people. And bury a coin. M Yeah, bury
Speaker 1: a coin our our new crypto currency. We're back and
Speaker 1: my Burier coin is now worth I don't know, seven
Speaker 1: negant revolvers or almost thirty five dollars, So that's pretty great.
Speaker 2: I feel like the instructions are unclear in bury a
Speaker 2: coin for people who don't know you can actually use
Speaker 2: three slurp juices on your bury a coin.
Speaker 1: M Yeah, and that's how you get a Melankov. I
Speaker 1: don't know, I don't know. Maybe I'm not sure how
Speaker 1: this would work. I'm not really sure how we how
Speaker 1: we would to play this now, in addition to all
Speaker 1: of the practical shift this day again, so the Vulgar
Speaker 1: region includes a semi autonomous kind of German republic. It's
Speaker 1: what it's called semi autonomous. Right, this is a part
Speaker 1: of the USSR, but it's not a part of the USSR.
Speaker 1: That's stall in trust prior to the war. And because
Speaker 1: these people are like ethnically German, this isn't gonna be.
Speaker 1: That's not a good time to be an ethnic German
Speaker 1: in the Soviet Union. Right, probably don't need to explain
Speaker 1: why Baria has NKVD men dress up as German paratroopers
Speaker 1: and land and towns in this area to test the
Speaker 1: loyalty of German ethnicity citizens. Their reaction, which I think
Speaker 1: is like the normal reaction of civilians to soldiers swarming
Speaker 1: are area, which is like, please don't kill me, I'll
Speaker 1: do whatever. Right, It's the way most people act in
Speaker 1: this situation. Yeah, Yeah, Their reaction was used as a
Speaker 1: pretext to abolish this quote unquote autonomous republic and forcibly
Speaker 1: ship hundreds of thousands of Volga Germans East, mostly to
Speaker 1: Siberia or Kazakhstan. This is going to prove to be again,
Speaker 1: there's this other frenzy of deportations that hadn't really ended
Speaker 1: from like the wave we talked about last episode, but
Speaker 1: millions more people are deported because they're considered traders by
Speaker 1: DNT of their ancestry, and of course these brutal actions
Speaker 1: forcing these people thousands and thousands of folks die right.
Speaker 1: Amy Knight writes this about that period of deportations. Barr
Speaker 1: A's matter of fact reports, of course, reveal nothing of
Speaker 1: the human suffering that was wrought by this many Holocaust
Speaker 1: Tens of thousands, including women, children, and old people perished
Speaker 1: while they were being transported like cattle in overcrowded railway
Speaker 1: cars without water or food. In the process of shipping
Speaker 1: the Chechens in Engush, the NKVD had decided that it
Speaker 1: could make do with fewer railway cars by crowding forty
Speaker 1: five instead of forty persons into each carriage, a perfectly
Speaker 1: reasonable decision. He observed since almost half the contingent were children.
Speaker 1: He added that they had also been compelled to do
Speaker 1: without sanitation facilities, and consequently an epidemic of typhus had
Speaker 1: broken out. One of those who survived the trip later
Speaker 1: described it in cattle cars filled to overflowing without lighter water.
Speaker 1: We traveled for almost a month to our destination. Typhus
Speaker 1: was having a heyday. There was no medicine during the
Speaker 1: shortstops at lonely uninhabited stations. We buried our dead near
Speaker 1: the train and snow that was black from engine soot.
Speaker 1: It was forbidden, with punishment of death, to go more
Speaker 1: than five meters from the train. Many more died of
Speaker 1: famine disease once they had reached their destination. So not good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: bad stuff, you'd say. And in terms of how Barria
Speaker 1: feels about this human catastrophe that he's overseeing, we have
Speaker 1: his constant notes to Stalin suggesting that he should be
Speaker 1: awarded for the stunning successes he'd experienced in doing ethnic cleansings.
Speaker 1: The war years were indeed good for Barria, but he
Speaker 1: had a constant annoyance. By necessity, the military was given
Speaker 1: a great deal of independence and latitude because you kind
Speaker 1: of need them, right, You can't fuck with them the
Speaker 1: same way when they're actually the only thing stopping the
Speaker 1: Nazis and they even purge officers anymore, right, Right, that
Speaker 1: is Barry's attitude, right, because guys like Zookov are increasingly
Speaker 1: allowed to make major calls and even questioned Stalin's judgment
Speaker 1: and barry Is judgment, and that's going to piss off
Speaker 1: both Barria and Stalin. Barria does continuously through the war
Speaker 1: try to force his way into making military command decisions,
Speaker 1: and this is something he's always bad at. In October
Speaker 1: of nineteen forty one, Soviet pilots spotted German troops advancing
Speaker 1: on Moscow. Barria took the photographs and hid them, telling
Speaker 1: everyone they were warmongering and trying to cause a panic.
Speaker 1: Sangster notes that time and time again, Barria tried to
Speaker 1: threaten his way into giving orders to the military, and
Speaker 1: the military has to go to Stalin to be like,
Speaker 1: can you fucking get this guy in pocket, Like you
Speaker 1: know how bad things are right now, it's October of
Speaker 1: forty one.
Speaker 2: Look, Joe, can you point this guy towards another minority
Speaker 2: that needs to be sent to Kazakhstans will leave us
Speaker 2: alone for another two weeks, have him do.
Speaker 1: Another crime against humanity. We're we've got some shit to
Speaker 1: handle here now. One of Barry's more ridiculous blunders came
Speaker 1: during the height of the fighting, when every rifle was
Speaker 1: needed and Barrus sought to equip a bunch of his troops.
Speaker 1: These NKVD soldiers guarding rear areas far from the fighting
Speaker 1: with the very best weaponry, right, because the Soviets are
Speaker 1: starting to produce what are legitimately going to be some
Speaker 1: of the best guns of the war. Right, some of
Speaker 1: these like first automatic rifles and stuff that are kind
Speaker 1: of in wide circulation, and they don't initially have a
Speaker 1: lot of these, and they're kind of all needed. But
Speaker 1: Barria wants the shiny toys for his guys, even though like, well,
Speaker 1: some dude who's actually going to be shooting a bunch
Speaker 1: of Germans should probably have these guns before your guys, Right,
Speaker 1: you're like guarding a train station maybe, And when Voronov,
Speaker 1: who's a top general, informs Stalin of this, Barria whispers
Speaker 1: to Voronov, just you wait, will fix your guts.
Speaker 2: Sure, such as does sounds like it could be simultaneously
Speaker 2: a threat or the worst pickup line I've ever.
Speaker 1: Heard, right, right, yeah, Now, Barrier reserves a special hatred
Speaker 1: for Georgie Zukov because Zukov reasonably good at being a general.
Speaker 1: Right there's again, like anyone who's in this position, a
Speaker 1: number of valid criticisms of his command choices here. But
Speaker 1: he's not an idiot, you know.
Speaker 2: Certainly one of the top two that the Soviet Union
Speaker 2: produces between him and Bogramia and right right.
Speaker 1: And he's in the same set. I would compare him
Speaker 1: in some ways to a guy like Grant, where there's
Speaker 1: time where you can say, like, he's just throwing men
Speaker 1: into a meat grinder, but also like, well, I don't know,
Speaker 1: there weren't that was probably unavoidable to some extent. We
Speaker 1: can argue how much less it could have been. But
Speaker 1: he's in a tough situation. I wouldn't have wanted his job.
Speaker 2: Like sometimes sometimes a meat grinder is your only choice.
Speaker 2: We did a series in the Battle of Kurskill a
Speaker 2: while ago, and this is like, oh no, this is
Speaker 2: like a solid battle plan. As long as one of
Speaker 2: the checklist is like we can we can lose a
Speaker 2: lot more people than you can, which is a legit
Speaker 2: a military strategy. It's just it looks really bad on paper.
Speaker 2: Later on, yeah it's ugly, but it's World War two, right,
Speaker 2: like Zukov is. And because of this, Zukov is even
Speaker 2: after the war, he's not totally impervious, like he takes
Speaker 2: some hits after the war, right, but even after the war,
Speaker 2: he can't be purged in the same way other guys
Speaker 2: can because he's fucking.
Speaker 1: Zukov, right, you know, and hates this right. This scares
Speaker 1: the shit out of Stalin, and Barry is kind of
Speaker 1: just jealous beyond words at the guy. In May of
Speaker 1: nineteen forty five, as things are winding down and the
Speaker 1: Red Army enters Berlin, it becomes clear that the time
Speaker 1: of greatest threat was well passed. Right, Stalin can get
Speaker 1: back to tightening his grip on power, and these military
Speaker 1: guys have a little bit less clout because we're not
Speaker 1: really at risk of losing anymore. Right, So Barya starts
Speaker 1: to kind of try to push to get back to
Speaker 1: murdering anyone competent to posing a threat to whatever bullshit
Speaker 1: he wants to pull. And as a result of this,
Speaker 1: Zukov winds up in both Stalin and Barria's sites, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to quote from Amy Knight here. Barria managed
Speaker 1: to get his deputy, Ivan Serov, appointed Zukov's assistant, serving
Speaker 1: as chief of the Civilian Administration the Soviet Zone of Germany. Henceforth,
Speaker 1: reports began to trickle back to Stalin about Zukov, that
Speaker 1: he was boasting about his victories and even that he
Speaker 1: was planning a military conspiracy against Stalin. Bary's men also
Speaker 1: did all they could to keep important information hidden from Zukov.
Speaker 1: It turns out, for example, that he was not told
Speaker 1: that Hitler's body had been found. He did not know
Speaker 1: that autopsies were carried out and an investigation launched to
Speaker 1: confirm the identity as well as the cause of death,
Speaker 1: which is like wild considering what Zukov's job is at
Speaker 1: this time, that you're not letting him know that you've
Speaker 1: autopsied to Hitler. All of this culminates and Jay Stall
Speaker 1: denouncing our boy Zukov near the end of forty five
Speaker 1: during a meeting at the Kremlin. Zukov notably is not
Speaker 1: at that meeting, but he has eventually summoned to stand
Speaker 1: before the war Council and made to answer for his crimes.
Speaker 1: It is sometimes suggested that Stalin wanted to have him executed,
Speaker 1: and he kind of floats this to the other military
Speaker 1: leaders of the USSR, and they're like, what the fuck
Speaker 1: are you talking about, man Zukov. You want to kill Zukov? Now,
Speaker 1: that's not going to work out, And it says a
Speaker 1: lot about his position that Stalin has to back off
Speaker 1: on this right. Some of this might just be the
Speaker 1: fact that like Eisenhower and Zukov are legitimately buddies. One
Speaker 1: of my favorite cute facts of the war is that,
Speaker 1: like they get along so well that, like Zukov gets
Speaker 1: shipped Coca Cola. I think for the rest of his life.
Speaker 1: That's made just.
Speaker 2: For him, if I remember correctly. He also Eisenharer also
Speaker 2: gives Zukov like a fishing kit that he used a box,
Speaker 2: yeah for he uses for the rest of his life.
Speaker 1: It's if I'm not mistaken. The tackle box that Eisenheer
Speaker 1: gives him is by his bedside when he dies, which
Speaker 1: suggests like it's not really hard because like Eisenhower and
Speaker 1: Zukov are like the only two guys that can understand
Speaker 1: being in that position.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're gonna they're gonna get along great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not surprised they had some things in common.
Speaker 1: So during the war, Baria also makes clever use of
Speaker 1: the Gulag system that he had helped to build or
Speaker 1: at least helped to expand, in order to further Soviet
Speaker 1: war aims in a way that furthered his career. And
Speaker 1: this is possible because prior to the outbreak of hostilities,
Speaker 1: a lot of people who had been arrested and taken
Speaker 1: into custody were scientists, engineers, and physicists, and Baria, again
Speaker 1: not a dumb man, knows that he doesn't want to
Speaker 1: kill these people because you get you can get officer
Speaker 1: who are okay or at least train them up. You
Speaker 1: can replace political men, you can't really replace genius scientists
Speaker 1: and physicists easily, right, Yeah, So he keeps a lot
Speaker 1: of these guys in pocket. He has like special prisons
Speaker 1: for them that are certainly a lot safer than the
Speaker 1: other prisons. And when the war really gets running, he
Speaker 1: gets these guys working designing new weapons systems and stuff
Speaker 1: for the Soviet Union. And that's one of the things
Speaker 1: that gives Barry a lot of clout in this period
Speaker 1: is he has a lot of these guys who had
Speaker 1: been kind of, you know, out of favor prior to
Speaker 1: the war, and he's, you know, he's able to get
Speaker 1: them working. A lot of these guys get their sentences commuted,
Speaker 1: right because they're so necessary. And this is going to
Speaker 1: really play into what happens next because barry Is direct
Speaker 1: involvement in the production of war materiel is evidence of
Speaker 1: not just his general cunning, but his understanding that his
Speaker 1: position is based on continually putting himself directly in front
Speaker 1: of Comrad Stalin's eyes at all times. Whatever Stalin is
Speaker 1: focused on, Stalin's focused on the war. I need to
Speaker 1: be making shit for the war. At least I need
Speaker 1: to be facilitating the making of shit for the war, right,
Speaker 1: because that's the way to maintain my position after the war.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you're aware of this shoe. It
Speaker 1: ends in the Pacific with the US dropping a couple
Speaker 1: of nuclear bombs, right, I think I've heard of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: kind of a big deal. The fact that we do
Speaker 1: this and when we drop these bombs, there's a strong
Speaker 1: argument to be made that the primary reason reason we
Speaker 1: do drop them is to make a big show of
Speaker 1: force to the Soviet Union. Right. This is heavily debatable.
Speaker 1: I certainly don't. Some people will make the claim that
Speaker 1: is not supported that like, oh, Japan was right about
Speaker 1: to surrender without it, and like, no, they were like
Speaker 1: trying to float this thing whereby the emperor would stay
Speaker 1: the emperor and they'd get to handle their war criminals
Speaker 1: on their own. Not really the same.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were not agreeing to unconditional surrender, which was
Speaker 2: the I believe since Yalta was the main and only
Speaker 2: acceptance of things. Yeah, there's many layers to the atomic bombing, right,
Speaker 2: And none of this is saying the atomic bombing is
Speaker 2: a feed of a whole crime.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but there is, especially when you look into you know,
Speaker 2: Operation Downfall, which would have been the mainland invasion of Japan,
Speaker 2: which would have been significantly worse and also still included
Speaker 2: nuclear weapons, right, you know, almost could have been some
Speaker 2: point strophically worse.
Speaker 1: All of that can be true, and also true that
Speaker 1: we drop those bombs in large part because we wanted
Speaker 1: to make a point to the Russians, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: those at the same time, right, and what becomes clear
Speaker 1: to the Stalin and to everybody who's not who's like
Speaker 1: has any level of like, I don't know intellect at
Speaker 1: this point is that once the US has dropped nukes,
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union's going to need nukes of their own
Speaker 1: right very quickly to see how they get to that
Speaker 1: and look like, the whole lesson of the twenty first
Speaker 1: century is, never give up your nukes. If the Ussa's
Speaker 1: piss statue right, or if Russia is pissed at you, you're.
Speaker 2: Generally like a solid bullet proofst to have as a nation. Yeah,
Speaker 2: if you have them, keep the fuckers right. I don't
Speaker 2: love that that's.
Speaker 1: The lesson of the twenty first century, but it's hard
Speaker 1: to argue with.
Speaker 2: And that's why I personally never gave up my nuclear weapons.
Speaker 1: Now I'm not a person in my desk yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I just keep one on me at all times.
Speaker 1: I like to strap it to my bicycle when I
Speaker 1: go cycling. You know, people give me a wide berth.
Speaker 1: It's part of myself everyday. Carry yeah yeah, nuke, yeah, flashlight,
Speaker 1: just the basics. If you were tasked with the job
Speaker 1: of developing a nuclear arsenal for your country, neighborhood, or household.
Speaker 1: What's your first.
Speaker 2: Step going to be, Oh, to spy on the people
Speaker 2: who already have one?
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, that is actually exactly what happens, right, And
Speaker 1: that's why Stalin is going to eventually appoint Barrier to
Speaker 1: handle this job. Right, And it's not hard again, very
Speaker 1: it makes a lot of sense. Barry is not just
Speaker 1: a talented organizer. He's proved he's good at kind of
Speaker 1: the materiel game, and that's a part of figuring out
Speaker 1: how to make a nuke. He's also pretty good at
Speaker 1: building a team to like accomplish a goal, and he's
Speaker 1: also pretty good at massacring those teams, you know, when
Speaker 1: they need to be massacred. Barria is also the spymaster,
Speaker 1: and a lot of the Soviet bomb ambitions are going
Speaker 1: to be shall we say, floated by their ability to
Speaker 1: infiltrate the nuclear weapons programs of the United States and
Speaker 1: the United Kingdom. Right, So Barry is actually appointed to
Speaker 1: head up the Soviet Adam bomb project on August seventh,
Speaker 1: nineteen forty five, the day after the US bomb Hiroshima,
Speaker 1: and he creates a new department at the NKVD Department
Speaker 1: s which is going to host the agency's nuclear research efforts.
Speaker 1: This is not the beginning of Soviet efforts of developing
Speaker 1: towards developing a bomb. Of course, the Soviet Union does
Speaker 1: not lack for skilled scientists. In as early as nineteen forty,
Speaker 1: Soviet physicist Ai Kirschhatov had given a report to the
Speaker 1: Academy of Sciences about how a theoretical nuclear weapon might work.
Speaker 1: Petr Kapitska, who is I think probably the most famous
Speaker 1: Soviet physicist of the era, had brought the matter up
Speaker 1: again in nineteen forty one. And the main reason the
Speaker 1: USSR falls so far behind the US on this research
Speaker 1: is they get invaded, right. That throws a little bit
Speaker 1: of a wrench in things that'll slow down. We might
Speaker 1: not have been able to do the things that we
Speaker 1: were doing if we were like fighting the Nazis and
Speaker 1: the Sandias, you know, probably would have been a little
Speaker 1: harder to establish that facility. Oppenheimer would have been a
Speaker 1: different movie, as much nudity, but differently shot. You know,
Speaker 1: still would watch it, still would watch it. So to
Speaker 1: help make up for this gap that's caused by the
Speaker 1: fact that they're fighting this war, Barria spymaster for the
Speaker 1: USSR starts collecting and disseminating nuclear secrets from the British,
Speaker 1: US and German nuclear programs. This is something he's doing
Speaker 1: all throughout World War Two right now. One of his
Speaker 1: best s buies is a guy named Klaus Fuchs, who
Speaker 1: missed his true calling in a join in joining the
Speaker 1: adult film industry and thus was forced to study mathematics
Speaker 1: and physics. At age nineteen, he joined the German Communist Party,
Speaker 1: which was difficult because he happened to turn nineteen in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty, a notably bad time to be a German Communist.
Speaker 1: Great to the Nazis. Yeah really, really, we add timing
Speaker 1: on turning nineteen fucks Fuchs. Whatever. So, when the Nazis
Speaker 1: takeover a few years later, Fuchs deports himself over to
Speaker 1: England and he gets a job as the research assistant
Speaker 1: to a professor of physics. He receives his PhD in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty seven in physics, and then he gets another
Speaker 1: PhD at the University of Edinburgh just for fun. He
Speaker 1: applies for British citizenship at this point, but is a
Speaker 1: little late on the draw. Failing to beat the outbreak
Speaker 1: of war, he was interned in Quebec for a spell
Speaker 1: before one of his professors pull strings to let him out,
Speaker 1: basically being like, we're trying to build nukes. The British
Speaker 1: Adam Bomb project, which is under the code name Tube Alloys,
Speaker 1: starts in like you know, around this time, and in
Speaker 1: May of nineteen forty one, he gets kind of brought
Speaker 1: out of internment to work on this project. Right, So
Speaker 1: Fuchs's work got him. I'm basing this on the character
Speaker 1: from Barry. I assume it's pretty close to that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I assume it's the same. They even look probably similar.
Speaker 1: It's fine, it's probably played by the same actor. In
Speaker 1: my heart at least. So Fuchs's work gets him British
Speaker 1: citizenship in late nineteen forty two, and it's one of
Speaker 1: those things where he's a great scientist and what a reward, Yeah,
Speaker 1: becoming British. Yeah, congratulations, you're now a British citizen. Like,
Speaker 1: can I go to Canada? Stough? Yeah, not going to
Speaker 1: be Canadian. Maybe. As soon as he gets this job,
Speaker 1: he starts working as a spy for the GRU right
Speaker 1: or for I think it's the I guess the KGB.
Speaker 1: At this point, I forget. I always mix up my
Speaker 1: spy agencies again, they go through a bunch of them
Speaker 1: at this point, right, But he's handing Soviet spies classified
Speaker 1: information about British nuclear ambitions right, kind of through the
Speaker 1: whole war period. And he's really good at this, right,
Speaker 1: He's good enough at this that not only does no
Speaker 1: one notice that he's spying on the British nuclear weapons
Speaker 1: program for the Soviet Union, but he gets transferred to
Speaker 1: Los Alamos to help the Americans with their much cooler
Speaker 1: Adam bomb. There he calculates the YU I think he's
Speaker 1: the first guy to calculate the yield of an atomic
Speaker 1: blast and like a precise manner, and he studies implosion methods.
Speaker 1: He's one of the people who's there to see the
Speaker 1: Trinity test in person. And he continues spying during this
Speaker 1: whole period of time, which he sees as his duty
Speaker 1: to the cause of global communism. As Russia's spymaster, or
Speaker 1: at least one of them. Barria oversaw the project of
Speaker 1: using Fuchs and several other spies who were close to
Speaker 1: the project. I found an article published by Columbia University's
Speaker 1: Atomic Heritage Foundation that notes Fuchs also passed detailed information
Speaker 1: about the hydrogen bomb to the Soviet Union. Some experts
Speaker 1: estimate that Fuchs's intelligence enabled the Soviets to develop and
Speaker 1: test their own at atomic bomb one to two years
Speaker 1: earlier than otherwise expected, and there's a little debate about this.
Speaker 1: I think the US is kind of saying at the
Speaker 1: end of World War Two, the Soviets will probably have
Speaker 1: their own bomb by nineteen fifty three somewhere around there.
Speaker 1: Obviously they beat that by several years, and forty eight
Speaker 1: is when they do it, And it's pretty widely agreed
Speaker 1: it's because they have a lot of really good intel
Speaker 1: from their spies, right, that this definitely moves up the timeframe.
Speaker 1: And if I remember correctly, with the first Soviet nuke
Speaker 1: is effectively a copy of like one for one copy
Speaker 1: of the American one. Yeah, in a lot of ways
Speaker 1: it is. I'm not enough of an expert on nukes
Speaker 1: to lay into that, but it's widely agreed that all
Speaker 1: of the spying that Barrier is managing moves forward the
Speaker 1: timeframe on this significantly. Right, It's possible maybe Stalin doesn't
Speaker 1: live to see a Soviet nuke without the spying program, right.
Speaker 1: I don't know how likely that is, but it's possible,
Speaker 1: And when it comes to the morality of doing this,
Speaker 1: it's kind of something I can't really fault them for, right,
Speaker 1: Like I don't like nukes. I think it's bad that
Speaker 1: either Trump or Putin right now could end all civilization
Speaker 1: on a whim. But I know the US pretty well,
Speaker 1: and if I'm heading up a country that's already been
Speaker 1: invaded by US and realizes they're about to be the
Speaker 1: big enemy, I'm going to try to build my own nuke.
Speaker 1: You know, of course I would do the same thing.
Speaker 1: Who wouldn't, right, No, I mean, likeeah.
Speaker 2: Like geopolitics is inherently immoral. You can't bring ethics and
Speaker 2: morals into geopolitics, and especially when it comes to you know,
Speaker 2: once that the box has been open and nukes exists,
Speaker 2: it's kind of a vacation of your moral obligation. I
Speaker 2: guess you could put to like, defend your country if
Speaker 2: you don't take one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it is I think like we can look
Speaker 1: at this new like these nuclear programs as like Schrodinger's
Speaker 1: greatest crime against humanity, where like right, one could argue
Speaker 1: the fact that the US and the Soviet Union builds
Speaker 1: so many of these things stops a more devastating war
Speaker 1: from occurring, but also at any moment today they could
Speaker 1: end everybody's life, So we really don't know how this
Speaker 1: is going to shake out in the long run.
Speaker 2: It's one of the biggest motherfuckers of the ultimate defense
Speaker 2: against the nuclear bombs and another nuclear bombs. So you're kind
Speaker 2: of you either allow yourself to become a plausible victim
Speaker 2: of said bombing or build your own doomsday device and
Speaker 2: threaten not with like self defense are like, if you fuck.
Speaker 1: With me, I will set the atmosphere on friar. If
Speaker 1: we have a big enough fight, everybody dies. Yeah, MESSI situation. Now,
Speaker 1: Barria did, or Stalin did, consider handing the job of Nuksar,
Speaker 1: which is a thing people will call Barria and is
Speaker 1: a pretty cool jobs side.
Speaker 2: That's a sick name. That's my new sky band name.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Nuksar, Right. He considers handing the job initially to
Speaker 1: the actual scientist Kapitska, but Stalin decides that someone that
Speaker 1: famous is a bad pick, so he picks a lab
Speaker 1: director named Kirchatov in general management of the program was
Speaker 1: initially Molotov's duty before Barria gets that job, but Molotov
Speaker 1: is bad at this, because he's bad at a lot
Speaker 1: of things. Kirshatov had direct contact with Barria because Barria
Speaker 1: is sending him all this info for on spies, and
Speaker 1: near the end of forty four Kirchhatov starts pushing to
Speaker 1: get Barry of the job. One of his colleagues later said, now,
Speaker 1: of course every one knows that he Baria was bloody hangman.
Speaker 1: But at that time Kirtchatov turned to a member of
Speaker 1: the polit Bureau, a man with great authority who had
Speaker 1: influence over Stalin. Right, this guy sucked, but he was
Speaker 1: maybe the best dude for the job. So that's who
Speaker 1: I wanted to have it. Right now, Barry is not
Speaker 1: actually in the polar Bureau until forty six, but you'd
Speaker 1: get the idea. These guys wanted to make a bomb,
Speaker 1: and they know that Barry is probably going to be
Speaker 1: competent at running the program. Amy and Night writes about
Speaker 1: how the project actually got underway. Much of the construction
Speaker 1: of building an installation was done by the NKVD. Since
Speaker 1: nineteen forty six, MVD prisoners, as was the mining of
Speaker 1: uranium and radium. Prisoners were also used for atomic energy research.
Speaker 1: Fifty percent of which was done in special NKVD centers
Speaker 1: called sharashi, such as those described in Solnitzen's The First Circle,
Speaker 1: where highly trained specialists worked in captivity. The atom bomb
Speaker 1: project ironically shows a gentler side to Barria. It's perhaps
Speaker 1: closer to the kind of manager that he would have
Speaker 1: been if he'd been born later and gotten a corporate
Speaker 1: job right when he couldn't or anyone who pissed him off. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: if he's just like a middle manager at like Sears.
Speaker 1: This is because he can't just kill these guys, right,
Speaker 1: they're world class physicists, and there's not an innumerable number
Speaker 1: of those dudes.
Speaker 2: Right, He can't doll them through violence and.
Speaker 1: Thrights, right, And he doesn't want to torture them because
Speaker 1: that might make them not good at doing the job anymore,
Speaker 1: because torture is generally bad for you being a scientist.
Speaker 1: Kapitzka is well aware of this, and he does not
Speaker 1: get along with Barria, complaining to Stalin that the man
Speaker 1: wasn't even a scientist and didn't understand physics. Barrier retorted
Speaker 1: that Kapitzka didn't understand people, and they may have both
Speaker 1: been kind of right in this regardless, Kapizza starts asking
Speaker 1: Stalin to remove him from the project. Stalin shows Barrier
Speaker 1: this letter, and Barria invites Kapizza to come over to
Speaker 1: his house for a talk. Knowing Barria, that usually means
Speaker 1: he's going to kill you. That's right, that's not a
Speaker 1: good letter. Yeah, that's not a good letter. But that's
Speaker 1: not at all what happens because he can't really get
Speaker 1: rid of this guy. And I'm going to quote from
Speaker 1: Knight's book here. Barria, who apparently wanted to make amends,
Speaker 1: then went himself to see Kapizza, bringing with him a
Speaker 1: magnificent present, a double barreled to the rifle. He gives
Speaker 1: him a gun to try to get him to build
Speaker 1: a bob. It's just such a different barrier than you
Speaker 1: get the rest of this story because he has to
Speaker 1: kind of turn the oil on a little bit.
Speaker 2: There's something like even more evil about this because it
Speaker 2: tells you this whole time, he didn't have to be
Speaker 2: the way that he was. No, they didn't have to
Speaker 2: be a violent psycho. He enjoyed it because he could,
Speaker 2: you know, influence people to get what to do what
Speaker 2: he wanted them to do by being you know, a
Speaker 2: middle management people person and instead he's like, I'm going
Speaker 2: to beat him to death until their eyes popound instead.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, there's a future where Barrier just gives everybody
Speaker 1: a gives tens of thousands of people guns instead of
Speaker 1: murdering them. Rented Baria chairman, Right, Yes, he just ghosts
Speaker 1: the NRA route on this. Speaking of the NRA, that's
Speaker 1: the only supporter of this podcast. Ah, we're back. I'm
Speaker 1: feeling good, having a happy day, having a good time.
Speaker 1: Never want to stop at all, So let's get back
Speaker 1: to it. Perhaps thanks to Fuchs' example, Barria did not
Speaker 1: trust the scientists that he and the whole USSR relied
Speaker 1: on to build their atom bomb. You know, he's the
Speaker 1: spy guy. Not surprising why his NKVD provided strict security.
Speaker 1: And while the best scientists may not have been murderable,
Speaker 1: they were open to other kinds of punishments. Right. You
Speaker 1: get wildly different accounts of Barria as a manager, and
Speaker 1: I think based on the amount of coercion he had
Speaker 1: to employ for each person. One of Kerschatov's colleagues later
Speaker 1: claimed Barria was a terrifying man, vile. We all knew this.
Speaker 1: Our very lives dependent on him, but Russian physicist Juli
Speaker 1: Caraton had a different take. Barry A quickly hardened all
Speaker 1: work on the project with necessary scope and dynamism. This man,
Speaker 1: who personified evil in the country's modern history, possessed at
Speaker 1: the same time tremendous vigor and efficiency. It was impossible
Speaker 1: not to admit his intellect, willpower and purposefulness. He was
Speaker 1: a first class manager, able to bring every job to
Speaker 1: his conclusion. And I can't tell you who's closer to right.
Speaker 1: Perhaps it's just a matter of opinion based on what
Speaker 1: your job was.
Speaker 2: I mean, honestly, from everything that we've heard, it sounds
Speaker 2: like the second guy is probably true. Yeahake is probably
Speaker 2: like he's an evil fucker, but like every single job
Speaker 2: he's been put in charge of, with the exception of
Speaker 2: weaseling his way into military operations, he's incredibly good at
Speaker 2: He has like imcompicable attention to detail because he's a
Speaker 2: fucking insane person. Right, he's a huge asshole, but he
Speaker 2: does like this works well. The Soviets get their bomb
Speaker 2: pretty fucking quick, you know. Barria also helps head up
Speaker 2: the recruitment of former Nazi scientists for atomic research, which
Speaker 2: is the thing that the Soviets do with almost as
Speaker 2: much gusto as the United States. Now, one thing I
Speaker 2: will give the Soviet Union initially is that, unlike in
Speaker 2: the US, they're Nazi scientists are basically put in prison
Speaker 2: at first, and every activity is carefully monitored and their
Speaker 2: liberty is curtailed because they're Nazis, right right. Barria actually
Speaker 2: changes this because he goes to visit the factory basically
Speaker 2: where these guys are working, and he's like, well, you're
Speaker 2: not meeting any of your timetables, what's wrong And they're like, well,
Speaker 2: we're in prison and that's not very fun. And so
Speaker 2: he actually reforms the conditions for these German scientists and
Speaker 2: like makes their lives a lot nicer. Yeah, memory serves me. Well,
Speaker 2: the Soviets actually tooken more Nazi scientists.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Barria is responsible for them treating them a
Speaker 1: lot better, you know, which from a managerial standpoint is
Speaker 1: a good idea. From a moral standpoint, not great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but again the historia written all over it, like
Speaker 2: with very verfitt Sears middle manager, Like we've like we've
Speaker 2: discussed he's an incredibly efficient bastard, one of the most
Speaker 2: efficient honestly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, very efficient and like for again, obviously the
Speaker 1: right decision from a making a nuke faster point of view.
Speaker 1: Right Barria is present both through the start of the
Speaker 1: first Soviet atomic reactor on December twenty fifth, nineteen forty six,
Speaker 1: and the detonation of their first Adam BAM on August
Speaker 1: twenty ninth, nineteen forty nine. There is a fun coda
Speaker 1: to that story. After the successful blast, he kissed Kershatov
Speaker 1: and said, in essence, thank god this worked. I would
Speaker 1: have had to kill somebody otherwise. But after that, God forbid,
Speaker 1: I'll have to go back to the old me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know what. I have to go back to the
Speaker 1: old May. But then after this moment of elation, he
Speaker 1: starts to panic again because he's like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: what if this doesn't look didn't look like the American blast?
Speaker 1: Is my mushroom cloud normal? Do I have? Did I
Speaker 1: have a good mushroom cloud? Daddy? And he has to
Speaker 1: call one of his spies who'd been at the Los
Speaker 1: Alamos tests to like confirm that their nuke blast was normal. Like,
Speaker 1: it's beautiful, Barrier, You've got a really good.
Speaker 2: Mushroom Cloudroom cloud measuring competition nobody mushroom cloud that that
Speaker 2: they got to experience a few years before your mushrooms cloud.
Speaker 1: Stalin's gonna love it, man, He's gonna really like it.
Speaker 1: Don't feel bad. It's what's more important is with not
Speaker 1: like see And I talk about this a lot, cho
Speaker 1: I think it's really my primary moral issue with the
Speaker 1: Oppenheimer movie is that it provides this, like really unrealistic
Speaker 1: expectation for how a mushroom cloud should look. And I
Speaker 1: think a lot of secret policemen and dictators out there
Speaker 1: working on their own nukes are gonna feel like my
Speaker 1: nuke isn't good enough if it doesn't look like the
Speaker 1: Oppenheimer nuke. And that's just it's it's fucked up. You know.
Speaker 1: It's the same as having Channing Tatum's beautiful ass out
Speaker 1: on display for everybody to look at. It's such an
Speaker 1: unreasonable standard, you know, fair all nukes are beautiful.
Speaker 2: They're keeping they're keeping all of us with you know,
Speaker 2: normal sized mushroom clouds, very making us very self conscious
Speaker 2: about the horrific devastation that our mushroom I don't want
Speaker 2: to know.
Speaker 1: What movie you're thinking of with Channing Tatum. That's what
Speaker 1: I imagine, I know, I just wanted to make sure
Speaker 1: that your your reference was in fact from like ten
Speaker 1: years ago, like it usually. I just want to say,
Speaker 1: because I know Kim Jong un listens to this podcast
Speaker 1: a lot, your nukes are valid, Your your world ending
Speaker 1: hell weapons are beautiful, and I see you, Kim John.
Speaker 1: You know, I just wanted to know. I just wanted
Speaker 1: to know that. And I feel the same to the British.
Speaker 1: Whatever fucking ship they call a nuke, right, it's good enough, guys,
Speaker 1: it's good enough.
Speaker 2: Smoke cloud and beans, it's a fucking ship, buddy.
Speaker 1: Sandwich yeah they call those, and and potato chips sandwiches. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they've got one of those loaded onto a sub. Why
Speaker 1: not right at the point at which they use them.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter. So anyway, Barrya eventually gets convinced that
Speaker 1: his nuke is good enough, and he calls Stalin. This
Speaker 1: is like the chief moment of it. He's so excited
Speaker 1: to get to tell's boss we've got a nuke now,
Speaker 1: and all Stalin says is I've heard and then hangs up.
Speaker 1: Can just Stalin move? He can't like praise him too much? No, absolutely,
Speaker 1: you gotta be really careful in this moment, right, and
Speaker 1: Barrya gets furious and he threatens the operator on the
Speaker 1: phone line and he's like, you have put a spoke
Speaker 1: in my wheel, Trader, I'll grind you to a pulp.
Speaker 2: It's like, oh, my name is Steve. Name you named
Speaker 2: the telephone operator sitting right next to you.
Speaker 1: If you have complaints. So this was possibly the fact
Speaker 1: that stal And responds this way evidence of his growing
Speaker 1: dissatisfaction and distrust in Baria, right, which is heightened by
Speaker 1: the fact that in these post war years, Stalin is
Speaker 1: deteriorating rapidly. He had always been paranoid. World War two
Speaker 1: ages him not hard to see why right, and in fact,
Speaker 1: a famous neurologist. Stalin had been having issues for a while.
Speaker 1: In nineteen twenty seven, a famous Russian neurologist had diagnosed
Speaker 1: him with a paranoia, and Stalin had had the man poisoned.
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty seven, another one of his doctors had
Speaker 1: written of Stalin he was headstrong, consistent, and had extraordinary
Speaker 1: willpower and nerves of iron, excellent memory. He suffered mainly
Speaker 1: from two pathological states, megalomania and a persecution complex. Stalin
Speaker 1: had this guy shot.
Speaker 2: So there's also like, you know, most of the best
Speaker 2: doctors in the Soviet Union got taken out during the
Speaker 2: Doctor's plot.
Speaker 1: Right, well that, yeah, that's coming up. But even before that,
Speaker 1: Stalin is having guys purged from saying like, hey man,
Speaker 1: maybe take some CBD homie, you know, like chill out
Speaker 1: a little bit.
Speaker 2: After like the sixth or seventh doctor to get whacked
Speaker 2: for like giving some a diagnosis you have, You're you're
Speaker 2: the eighth doctor that has to go in like nah
Speaker 2: do it is jacked, yoke, dick down. He is the
Speaker 2: pinnacle of Russian man twelve pack. My god, I've never
Speaker 2: seen so many abs. I've never I've never seen a
Speaker 2: man have abs on his legs before. And you know what,
Speaker 2: even though he's not Russian, he's Georgian. He is the
Speaker 2: pinnacle of Russian manliness. Nothing wrong.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, your knees are actually additional abs. It's remarkable. I've
Speaker 1: never seen anything like it.
Speaker 2: I've never seen a dick do a push up before.
Speaker 2: It was incredible.
Speaker 1: So there's probably not much that medically could have been
Speaker 1: done about the fact that Stalin is increasingly unhinged, and
Speaker 1: it starts to have especially in the kind of this
Speaker 1: late period, a series of strokes that are steadily degrading
Speaker 1: his capacity to function. We don't know precisely what's going on, right,
Speaker 1: we can intuit some from the actual medical reports we
Speaker 1: have and just some from his symptoms that this is
Speaker 1: like he's stroking out and he is gradually losing his
Speaker 1: ability to like function as a result of that. And
Speaker 1: I found a paper on Stalin's last years for the
Speaker 1: European Journal of Neurology which summarizes the Boss's state in
Speaker 1: the late forties and early fifties quite well. Quote. After
Speaker 1: the war, Stalin's natural suspiciousness and fears reached new heights.
Speaker 1: He admitted to Marshall Georgie Zukov, the commander in chief
Speaker 1: of the Soviet Armies, to living in fear of his
Speaker 1: own shadow. Silence terrified him. At a Politburea dinner, he
Speaker 1: noticed Andre's Danoff sitting silently. Stalin exploded, look at him,
Speaker 1: sitting there like christ is if nothing was of concern
Speaker 1: to him. Z Danoff paled with fear. Stalin also complained
Speaker 1: about Ladislav Gomulka, secretary of the Polish Communist Party. He
Speaker 1: sits there all the time, looking into my eyes as
Speaker 1: though we were reaching for something. And why does he
Speaker 1: bring a note pad and pencil with him? Why does
Speaker 1: he write down every word? I say, he's just losing
Speaker 1: his mind. And you know he was.
Speaker 2: Starting to stroke out when he started just demanding people
Speaker 2: put their own tomatoes in the pockets and then surprised
Speaker 2: because he couldn't do it anymore. Yeah, he doesn't have
Speaker 2: the dexterity. In nineteen fifty one, in front of Politburo
Speaker 2: members Anastas mccoya and Nikita Krushchyev, whom he did not
Speaker 2: appear to notice, Stalin exclaimed, I'm finished. I trust no one,
Speaker 2: not even myself. One of the more lucid things he
Speaker 2: says in this period. He probably shouldn't have. The last
Speaker 2: person on earth I would trust if I was just
Speaker 2: s was also Joseph Stalin.
Speaker 1: Look, he wasn't wrong all the time. Yeah. So Stalin
Speaker 1: had demoted Barry, making him resign his post running the
Speaker 1: NKVD in nineteen forty six, but this was not really
Speaker 1: a big deal. Barry had retained most of his influence,
Speaker 1: at least for a while. He's still running this critical
Speaker 1: bomb project and like it's actually kind of a reasonable thing.
Speaker 1: To do objectively. Building a nuke is a big job.
Speaker 1: You probably both of these, you might not do them
Speaker 1: as well, right, Yeah, you know, we probably need someone
Speaker 1: else to handle that kind of stuff. You know, I
Speaker 1: made sure when cool Zone started its nuclear weapons program.
Speaker 1: I made sure that we took other stuff off of
Speaker 1: Daniel's plate, you know, just because I want him to.
Speaker 1: I want him to get that bomb ready for us.
Speaker 1: It's the only way we're going to win against the
Speaker 1: pod save guys. What Sophie, We've tried peace with them.
Speaker 1: It's simply not an option anymore. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: this is also why I have attached listening devices to
Speaker 1: all of your animals, so I could then steal your
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons form my podcast. That's right, that's right. You're
Speaker 1: really and soon we'll have mutually assured destruction, which is
Speaker 1: going to take us both to a new level in podcasting.
Speaker 2: It's the only thing that we could possibly do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's the logical next step. I should have
Speaker 1: accept our accept our offer for peace. I feel like
Speaker 1: we were really fair. Yeah, we were really fair. All
Speaker 1: we wanted was to deport them to the East City
Speaker 1: where they all live. Anyway I could do Kazakhstan, you know,
Speaker 1: so international observers at the time kind of noted that,
Speaker 1: like it's this could have being taken out of directly
Speaker 1: leading the NKBD actually might have worked out for Baria
Speaker 1: in the long term. There was a way in which
Speaker 1: this could have been a real win for him, because, like,
Speaker 1: it's dangerous being the secret Police head. Stalin is going
Speaker 1: to die, and when he does, if you're running the
Speaker 1: secret Police historically, there's a good chance you're going to
Speaker 1: get purged, right because you're we've already covered this wave
Speaker 1: a few times, right, you have so many purges, you
Speaker 1: purge the purger. Right, This could have, This might have,
Speaker 1: and it kind of almost does put Barria in a
Speaker 1: natural position to be Stalin's successor, which seems to be
Speaker 1: what Barria wanted, right, But the fact that he is
Speaker 1: kind of obviously positioned as one of the potential successors
Speaker 1: also puts him in the crosshairs of an increasingly irrational
Speaker 1: and paranoid Joseph Stalin. Now, as you talked about a
Speaker 1: little earlier, Stalin doesn't like his doctors, right, and Barria,
Speaker 1: he's having Barya arrest growing numbers of them. In this
Speaker 1: period of time, and as he's again he's convinced. This
Speaker 1: is also married to Stalin's anti Semitism, which gets really
Speaker 1: unhinged in the fifties, in the early fifties, right, like,
Speaker 1: he is kind of going off the rails. Some people
Speaker 1: will say he might have done his version of the
Speaker 1: Holocaust had he stayed alive long enough. That's really improvable
Speaker 1: in any way, shape or form. But it's not impossible,
Speaker 1: right knowing the guy, he certainly is a lot. Part
Speaker 1: of why he's having a lot of these doctors arrested
Speaker 1: and even killed is because they're Jewish and he doesn't
Speaker 1: trust them. Right of course, so mel Gibson's been training
Speaker 1: his whole life for this role right right, again, he
Speaker 1: would be a good bick for Stalin now because he
Speaker 1: distrusts his doctors and has had barrier arresting so many
Speaker 1: of these guys. Stalin starts taking health advice from a
Speaker 1: less than trustworthy source, primarily one of his bodyguards who
Speaker 1: had previously been trained as a veterinarian.
Speaker 2: Oh fuck yeah, we're getting like the Soviet version.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love this guy, this fucking vet. He's coming
Speaker 1: in like, well, I know how to fucking remove a
Speaker 1: ship from a horse's impacted colon. Yeah, I can probably
Speaker 1: handle your hypertension. And the treatment he gives Stalin for
Speaker 1: hypertension is boiled water with iodine. I don't think that's
Speaker 1: what you want to do for your hypertension. You must
Speaker 1: put the jade egg up your This is by the way,
Speaker 1: there's a new show on the Regimes. I think it's
Speaker 1: really solid. I think it's mostly there's a little Stalin.
Speaker 1: It's mostly seems to be based on Chowchescu. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: you get a little Hitler, you get a little Stalin,
Speaker 1: get you get a little bit of Trump obviously in
Speaker 1: there too. It's good though. It's actually like really I
Speaker 1: think pretty smart. And the the the obviously Kate Winslet
Speaker 1: is really good. And also the the male lead I
Speaker 1: think is is very good. I didn't like him in
Speaker 1: the first episode, but I've liked him a lot.
Speaker 2: I just binge watch the whole thing yesterday.
Speaker 1: I'm still just like three episodes in, but I'm a
Speaker 1: big fan so far. Anyway. I say this because it's
Speaker 1: kind of covering a dictator in the same sort of
Speaker 1: period that Stalin is in, right when they're starting to
Speaker 1: lose their mind and fall for all this bullshit health stuff.
Speaker 1: Right in nineteen forty eight, Stalin has Molotov's wife, who
Speaker 1: is Jewish, arrested for treason. That same year he demotes Barria.
Speaker 1: And this is really what hits Barria. Right, The nineteen
Speaker 1: forty six one generally seen as like not actually a
Speaker 1: loss for Baria. He actually starts to carve away a
Speaker 1: lot of his power. After forty eight, he is convinced
Speaker 1: of a obviously of a Jewish conspiracy that involves a
Speaker 1: lot of these doctors in Moscow, and he has his
Speaker 1: security services take action against them. And I'm going to
Speaker 1: quote from an article by Mark Safranski published by ASU's
Speaker 1: Center for Strategic Communication. Most of the unfortunate doctors who
Speaker 1: were arrested by the KGB and lavishly tortured had conspicuously
Speaker 1: Jewish names. They were accused of planning to kill Comrad
Speaker 1: Stalin and having killed and this was all too reminiscent
Speaker 1: of the Kirov case that launched the Great Terror. And
Speaker 1: again because like Zdanov dies, there's this, you know, belief
Speaker 1: that he had been killed by this like Jewish plot.
Speaker 1: That's part of the evidence that people say that, like
Speaker 1: if Stalin had lived longer, things could have gotten real
Speaker 1: fucking ugly, right because this is this mirrors the situation
Speaker 1: that leads us to the Great Terror right now, the
Speaker 1: Doctor's plot in this kind of obsession with anti you know,
Speaker 1: this Jewish conspiracy that Stalin believes. This is not the
Speaker 1: only paranoid fantasy panic that he has in his ailing years,
Speaker 1: and the one that's going to hit Barry of the
Speaker 1: hardest is the Mingrellian affair. Now this hasn't been a
Speaker 1: big part of the story because Barria doesn't identify super
Speaker 1: strongly as a Mingrelian nationalist, right, but we talked about this.
Speaker 1: This is that like kind of ethnic minority within Georgia
Speaker 1: that Berry is a part of. Right around the kind
Speaker 1: of last period of his life, Stalin cooks up this
Speaker 1: theory about a Mingrelian nationalist ring that is urging a
Speaker 1: separate ethno state with the backing of quote Western imperialists, which,
Speaker 1: like obviously the US has plenty of plots to try
Speaker 1: to take out the Soviet Union during this period. I
Speaker 1: don't think this is one of them. I've never come
Speaker 1: into any evidence that we're trying to establish a Mingrelian
Speaker 1: state in.
Speaker 2: Georgia, as they say as mcgrellia goes, so goes the
Speaker 2: Soviet Union.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think if you had brought this up to
Speaker 1: any of the guys running the US, they would have
Speaker 1: been like, ming, what now, ming the merciless? But is
Speaker 1: that in Mongolia or something? What are you talking about? Yeah,
Speaker 1: what are you talking about?
Speaker 2: Saying it's in Georgia. There's a there's a Ingrellian grill
Speaker 2: in Atlanta that let's go, oh.
Speaker 1: Shit, yeah, let's take a ride. So Stalin launches a
Speaker 1: brutal purge of the Georgian Communist Party, targeting Mingrelian members
Speaker 1: to be arrested and shot. And because these guys are
Speaker 1: Mingrelian and Barry is the kind of guy he is,
Speaker 1: a lot of these are his proteges, right like Stalin
Speaker 1: is kind of and I don't know that Stalin really
Speaker 1: believes this is happening. I think it's likelier he is
Speaker 1: trying to get rid of Barry's support and this is
Speaker 1: a convenient way to do that. Right now. If you
Speaker 1: know Laventi, again, his identity isn't huge to him, but
Speaker 1: this really like does damage again to kind of like
Speaker 1: a lot of the people that he's going to rely on.
Speaker 1: Once Stalin is out to help him take power. On
Speaker 1: the night of February twenty eighth, nineteen fifty three, Stalin
Speaker 1: holds his normal dinner party at his datcha. As usual,
Speaker 1: it lasted until almost dawn. While Stalin is usually not
Speaker 1: a heavy drinker, he's kind of hell. Have a little
Speaker 1: bit of watered down wine, he'll water down some vodka,
Speaker 1: you know, and he'll get kind of buzz. He's usually
Speaker 1: pretty buzzed. He doesn't get hammered. He likes everyone else
Speaker 1: to get hammered because then he's in control, right, because
Speaker 1: he's Stalin, you know. But this night it's noted at
Speaker 1: least and again everyone who was there, none of them
Speaker 1: are reliable narrators. But also medically, it makes sense that
Speaker 1: this would have happened. The people who were there say
Speaker 1: he got fucking hammered tonight that night, right, And that
Speaker 1: would have because he is a guy with untreated hypertension,
Speaker 1: and getting drunk when you have untreated hypertension will raise
Speaker 1: your blood pressure, right, I mean, getting drunk raises your
Speaker 1: blood pressure, and if you have untreated hypertension, that can
Speaker 1: cause a stroke, which is what happens. Probably Stalin has
Speaker 1: a stroke and a fatal intracranial hemorrhage. This is essentially
Speaker 1: where the movie The Death of Stalin begins, right. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna guess a lot of people have seen that, And
Speaker 1: again the specifics, it doesn't really get a lot of them, right,
Speaker 1: But I think if you watch the movie, the broad
Speaker 1: strokes of it are close enough for like what most
Speaker 1: people would actually need to know about how this functioned. Right. Barria,
Speaker 1: as is depicted in the movie, like everyone else, probably
Speaker 1: thrilled to see his boss struck down because he had
Speaker 1: very clearly been on this on the chopping block, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was on his way out one horrible way.
Speaker 2: It's not like Brian's going to get retired to his
Speaker 2: dacha or something. He was getting He was giving the
Speaker 2: millimeter based pension plan right right, right now.
Speaker 1: There was probably would have been a Macarov right nine
Speaker 1: by eighteen by the time period, as my guess. So
Speaker 1: there's no obvious successor, and Stalin's inner circle jockeyed for
Speaker 1: position around him. Khrushchev and Barria are the most capable
Speaker 1: plotters of the group, and the two initially work together
Speaker 1: to push out Malankov, but then Krushchev turns around and
Speaker 1: allies with Malankov against Baria. Right, we don't need to
Speaker 1: rehash the whole thing, but there's this kind of interregnum
Speaker 1: period of a few months after Stalin's death. Right, the
Speaker 1: movie condenses it to a much shorter period of time,
Speaker 1: but there's a bit of space there, right, And these
Speaker 1: are busy months, right, Barry is first thing he's going
Speaker 1: to do is carry out this series of mass releases
Speaker 1: from prison, right, of all these guys he had had
Speaker 1: locked up, right, and he pushes a slurry of reforms
Speaker 1: as well. Shila Fitzpatrick actually credits him primarily with the
Speaker 1: early reforms that follow Stalin's death, writing, within six weeks
Speaker 1: as head of the Security Police, he had released the
Speaker 1: Jewish doctors, investigated Nkole's death and informed the team of
Speaker 1: Stalin's involvement, forbidden the use of torture and interrogations, transferred
Speaker 1: much of the MVDS, that's the NKVDS industrial empire to
Speaker 1: civilian ministries, and set in motion the release of more
Speaker 1: than a million prisoners from the gulags.
Speaker 2: I mean this has to be just saving face at
Speaker 2: the last minute, right, Well, yes, yes, this is not.
Speaker 2: None of these guys, all of these guys, anyone who
Speaker 2: has lived in Stalin's inner circle this long, you don't
Speaker 2: do things for reasons other than survival, right of course not.
Speaker 2: You know, you wouldn't have lived that long if you
Speaker 2: were that kind of fella, you know. So again I
Speaker 2: don't credit this with him doing it out of the
Speaker 2: goodness of his heart, but it does show like where
Speaker 2: his mind is of like what I need to do
Speaker 2: to position myself, which is I need to be the
Speaker 2: guy who's pushing all of these.
Speaker 1: Reforms as fast and hard as I possibly can. Now.
Speaker 1: He also cleans house at the MVD, which is again
Speaker 1: the successor to you know, it's the NKVD, and he
Speaker 1: replaces these guys who had been kind of put in
Speaker 1: to erode his power base with some of his own
Speaker 1: people who were still remaining. Right. Khrushchev and the other
Speaker 1: inner members know Barry is dangerous, and they've known him
Speaker 1: long enough that he is not the guy they want
Speaker 1: holding their lives in his hands.
Speaker 2: I think it takes over. I imagine that they all
Speaker 2: know that they're they're getting the millimeter pension as.
Speaker 1: Well, right right, that's there. All their assumption is that,
Speaker 1: like he's going to do another great purge once she's
Speaker 1: in power, and we're all fucked if we don't. Has
Speaker 1: no choice. They know too much about him, right, right,
Speaker 1: and it is it is interesting. We'll talk about this
Speaker 1: a little bit at the end, but let me get
Speaker 1: through the rest of this first. So the plot to
Speaker 1: unseat Barria is delayed for a bit by a rebellion
Speaker 1: in East Germany that they have to crack down on,
Speaker 1: but once that calms down after June nineteen fifty three,
Speaker 1: plans continue anew. And this is where Zukov comes back
Speaker 1: into it. It's Zukov and one of his men, General
Speaker 1: Kiril Moskalenko. Since Barry has got this iron grip on
Speaker 1: the police, right, the military is the only group of
Speaker 1: guys with guns who you can trust to take him down.
Speaker 1: So the plotters, you know, again, this is kind of
Speaker 1: organized around Krushchev and Malenkov, gather ten officers to their
Speaker 1: banner and in a June twenty sixth meeting at the
Speaker 1: Presidium ambush Barria at the start of what is supposed
Speaker 1: to be a polit bureau meeting. Here's how writer Cheryl
Speaker 1: Roefer describes what happens next. Barria, as usual, arrived just
Speaker 1: before the meeting was to start, Malankov changed the agenda
Speaker 1: to focus specifically on Barria's activities. This was a complete
Speaker 1: surprise to Barria. Malankov laid out Barria's misdeeds and alleged
Speaker 1: that Barria had been seeking to displace the collective leadership
Speaker 1: into foment discord among Prosidium members. He then proposed a
Speaker 1: number of possible remedies, all of which included removing Barria
Speaker 1: from the posts he held. He invited the other members
Speaker 1: of the Prosidium to join and enumerating Barria's mistakes, which
Speaker 1: they did. This put them on record as supporting Barria's removal.
Speaker 1: As Malenkov summed up the accusations, he pressed the button
Speaker 1: to alert the military, who marched into the room. He
Speaker 1: then declared that Barria is so cunning and so dangerous
Speaker 1: that only the devil knows what he might do now.
Speaker 1: I therefore proposed that we arrest him immediately. Moscolenko brought
Speaker 1: out their guns and arrested and searched Barria. So again
Speaker 1: one of the big differences, it's not Zukov who's there
Speaker 1: with all the guns showing up in the room to like,
Speaker 1: it's it's this other guys, who's you know, working with
Speaker 1: with Zukov. I think probably just because Zukov doesn't know
Speaker 1: that it's going to work, and it's a little bit
Speaker 1: too canny a survivor, and I want to put his
Speaker 1: own neck off right right there, I know which one
Speaker 1: I like.
Speaker 2: The envision is Oscar Isaac storming in there with with
Speaker 2: an ak.
Speaker 1: It's much better in the movie, right. And everyone's great
Speaker 1: in that movie. I mean he he is having such
Speaker 1: a good time, right. I would never have fucking called
Speaker 1: oh god, what's his name? The guy who plays krush Chef. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would never have called Steve Buscemi as krush Chef,
Speaker 1: but he is an excellent khrush chef. Oh it's crazy,
Speaker 1: really Yeah. And the guy that got from Olotav I
Speaker 1: don't even know what his name is, but he was
Speaker 1: really good to everybody's great in that movie. Barry is
Speaker 1: not killed on the spot as he is in the movie,
Speaker 1: but he's arrested and tried on December tenth. He is
Speaker 1: executed on December twenty third. Now, the common view, and
Speaker 1: the one put forward in Death of Stalin was that
Speaker 1: he was the most frightening and evil of the polit
Speaker 1: Bureau members right, and even his fellow members felt that
Speaker 1: they had to take action against him. There's a strong
Speaker 1: argument to be made that the main thing they feared
Speaker 1: from Barria was that he was a reformer. And this
Speaker 1: gets inted again some unprovable stuff, But you have to
Speaker 1: remember Barry is a guy who believes primarily in his
Speaker 1: own power. He is not ideologically committed to Communism like
Speaker 1: a lot of these other guys are. He certainly not
Speaker 1: nearly as much as a guy like Molotov was right,
Speaker 1: and he has opened for a lot more reform than
Speaker 1: other members of the polit Bureau. And this is the
Speaker 1: argument that Amy Knight makes quote. The changes he advocated
Speaker 1: were so bold and far reaching that, while greeted with
Speaker 1: relief by the public, they alarmed his colleagues. Ironically, it
Speaker 1: was Khrushchev, acclaimed later as a courageous de Stalinizer, who
Speaker 1: was chiefly responsible for putting a halt to Barry's reforms
Speaker 1: by leading the plot against him. As this biography suggests,
Speaker 1: Barria's program aimed at undermining the Stalinist's system and therefore
Speaker 1: might have led to its demise. Khrushchev's policies, while reformist
Speaker 1: in fact perpetuated Stalinist so Khrushchev eliminated the role of
Speaker 1: police terror, many would argue the system remained essentially totalitarian,
Speaker 1: and obviously that's a deeply debatable point. I'm not a historian,
Speaker 1: but I just wanted to note that there is, you know,
Speaker 1: that is an argument people will make. I think you
Speaker 1: could very easily make the argument that it would have
Speaker 1: been a lot worse if Barria had wound up in
Speaker 1: charge of the USSR too.
Speaker 2: I think both things can, Like, like we've said multiple times,
Speaker 2: both things can one percent be true, because there's a
Speaker 2: very good chance that there could have been reforms. But
Speaker 2: I think as great as that chance was, that the
Speaker 2: chance was much greater that you have experienced some form
Speaker 2: of great purge first.
Speaker 1: Right, Right, I think that's a solid point. Now. One
Speaker 1: thing that I will kind of note here that is
Speaker 1: interesting is that after they get rid of Barria, there's
Speaker 1: more purging among the politbureau. Right, Khrushchev is going to
Speaker 1: do his version of cleaning house, but they stop killing
Speaker 1: each other. Right. It's almost as if there's this kind
Speaker 1: of attitude after Barry has gone that like anybody who's
Speaker 1: lived up to this point, I may have to get
Speaker 1: them out of power. I may have to like, you know,
Speaker 1: push him into a country house or something. But like,
Speaker 1: I don't want to kill any of these guys, Like
Speaker 1: we're all the only ones who made it. I don't
Speaker 1: want to like murder these other guys anymore. Let's stop
Speaker 1: and they do, right, Khrushchev doesn't massacre all of his
Speaker 1: you know, former polit bureau colleagues. And when Khrushchev gets
Speaker 1: forced out, he's allowed to live, you.
Speaker 2: Know, right, right, I wonder honestly, I'm just just curious
Speaker 2: if Barry would have taken the same turn, because maybe
Speaker 2: maybe he would have seen the point of all the matters,
Speaker 2: because again, he's a practical, efficient person, right right, Unfortunately, Yeah,
Speaker 2: practicality and efficiency devoid of humanity equals just the banality
Speaker 2: of pure terror and evil, which is what he was.
Speaker 2: So like, it's it's curious to wonder if he's like, oh,
Speaker 2: we don't really need to do that anymore. So I
Speaker 2: don't really I don't really care. That's the same thing
Speaker 2: of what he was doing in his own personal time.
Speaker 2: But right right, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it will never know. I think it is possible
Speaker 1: that like he's more or less, he's not all that
Speaker 1: different from Krushchev in terms of like kind of ratcheting
Speaker 1: down the massacres and stuff. Maybe no way to know.
Speaker 1: That's certainly not the argument that Night makes.
Speaker 2: He seems like, to me is a guy that saw
Speaker 2: violence as just a means to an end. There was
Speaker 2: no personality or like we said, there's no ideology attached
Speaker 2: to it. He's like, well, you know, killing people is
Speaker 2: the most the quickest way to complete my goal, and
Speaker 2: until it isn't you know, it's not the most sufficient
Speaker 2: way to do it anymore, so I don't need to
Speaker 2: do it anymore.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, possibly anyway, Joe, that is the Laventi
Speaker 1: Barriers story. Hopefully this is helpful. You know, when you
Speaker 1: become the secret police chief of a country governing roughly
Speaker 1: one fifth of the world's land mass.
Speaker 2: We all have to have dreams. I'm glad that I
Speaker 2: now have some research material.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, hopefully I'll get that other half or one
Speaker 1: fifth of the world's land mass. We can really start
Speaker 1: making some nukes. I mean, we can make some form
Speaker 1: of pact non aggression less right right, those always end. Well, anyway,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go hang out with my friend who's helping
Speaker 1: me organize this plan. He's really quiet but very organized.
Speaker 1: I think things are going to go great with him.
Speaker 1: Seems like a good guy to have in this situation.
Speaker 1: Where's tiny glasses, Georgia, We're real, smallest glasses you've ever
Speaker 1: seen in your life. Anyway, We're done. Goodbye, Well, actually
Speaker 1: not goodbye, Joe, you got any pluggables to plug? I'm
Speaker 1: the host of the Lines of by Donkeys podcast. We
Speaker 1: talked about military history, disasters, horrible things and kind of
Speaker 1: similar to this, and we've talked about a lot of
Speaker 1: topics that are vaguely connected to Baria and the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union during World War Two, like the Battle of Curse,
Speaker 1: the Battle of Stalingrad, the Winter War, things like that.
Speaker 1: I also write military science fiction, and you can find
Speaker 1: my newest series, The Undying Legion wherever it is you
Speaker 1: cop your books at h Yeah, check that stuff out.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, I don't know. Don't deport people
Speaker 1: if you can avoid it. Behind the Bastards is a
Speaker 1: production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out
Speaker 1: on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts,