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Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of

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Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of

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Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all

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Speaker 1: of these amazing tales are right there on display, just

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Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.

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Speaker 1: Smedley Butler was an American hero, one of the greatest

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Speaker 1: military leaders in its history. Born in eighteen eighty one,

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Speaker 1: he came from a high class family in Philadelphia, then

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Speaker 1: joined the Marines at a young age. From eighteen ninety

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Speaker 1: eight to nineteen thirty one, he served with distinction. Butler

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Speaker 1: foughts on multiple continents, too, always furthering America's interests. He

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Speaker 1: installed new governments in Mexico, Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic,

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Speaker 1: and Honduras. He was awarded multiple medals of honor, and

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Speaker 1: the Marines even incorporated his name into a song. By

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Speaker 1: nineteen thirty three, Butler had retired and consigned himself to

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Speaker 1: furthering the interests of veterans in the United States. He

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Speaker 1: felt the Veterans Administration was poorly run and that the

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Speaker 1: veterans deserved greater compensation for their service. Well. One day,

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Speaker 1: Butler was contacted by a member of the American Legion,

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Speaker 1: a guy named Gerald McGuire. The American Legion is an

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Speaker 1: organization of veterans who advocate for themselves, so Butler was

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Speaker 1: happy to meet with McGuire. But their meeting went differently

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Speaker 1: than Butler expected. McGuire offered him tens of thousands of

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Speaker 1: dollars to recruit more members to the Legion and to

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Speaker 1: give speeches speaking out against the presidency of FDR. Butler

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Speaker 1: was shocked at his proposal and turned it down right away.

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Speaker 1: He didn't believe in speaking out against the president like that.

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Speaker 1: He felt he owed him his loyalty. Butler's goal was

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Speaker 1: to try and work with the government to do right

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Speaker 1: by veterans, not to cause animosity between them. Maguire accepted

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Speaker 1: that the speech wasn't going to happen, and then he

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Speaker 1: spent the next few months traveling in Europe. Butler was

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Speaker 1: surprised to receive postcards from him. It was strange that

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Speaker 1: this man that he barely knew was so adamant about

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Speaker 1: keeping in touch. When McGuire returned from Europe, he reached

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Speaker 1: out again and asked for another meeting with Butler. Butler

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Speaker 1: was either trying to be nice or was genuinely curious

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Speaker 1: why McGuire was so desperate to work with him, so

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Speaker 1: he agreed to the meeting, and this time McGuire laid

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Speaker 1: out his cards on the table. He revealed that he

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Speaker 1: was being funded by an organization of powerful business interests,

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Speaker 1: with members including executives from the likes of JP Morgan,

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Speaker 1: General Motors, Phillips Petroleum, and General Foods. They had sent

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Speaker 1: him to Europe to learn what he could about how

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Speaker 1: the veterans' organizations in those countries were able to influence

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Speaker 1: their governments. But this wasn't simply because these businessmen wanted

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Speaker 1: to help veterans in America. No, they wanted to use

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Speaker 1: those veterans to over throw President Roosevelt. They didn't like

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Speaker 1: Roosevelt's socialist New Deal policies. They felt that he cared

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Speaker 1: too much about the common man and not enough about

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Speaker 1: big business. They believed that the veterans were an untapped

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Speaker 1: private militia who could be used to carry out their desires.

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Speaker 1: During his time in Europe, McGuire learned how veteran militias

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Speaker 1: in France, Germany, and Italy had overthrown their presidents and

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Speaker 1: helped to install right wing and outright fascist leaders. McGuire

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Speaker 1: and his bosses wanted Butler to lead the American Legion

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Speaker 1: in doing the same thing in the United States. Maguire

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Speaker 1: was sure the Butler, who had spent his whole life

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Speaker 1: furthering the cause of a strong America, would help the

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Speaker 1: businessmen in their coup. He couldn't have been more wrong, though. Butler,

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Speaker 1: in fact, harbored immense guilt for what he had already

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Speaker 1: done in the Marine Corps. All those countries that he

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Speaker 1: supposedly helped, he would later write that he actually destroyed

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Speaker 1: their democracies and installed dictators. He even enslaved some of

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Speaker 1: their people to work on American building projects. He said

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Speaker 1: that the American government claimed to be furthering democras in

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Speaker 1: these countries, but it was actually destroying them so that

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Speaker 1: American banks, oil companies, and food companies could profit. Butler

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Speaker 1: was not about to help those same companies instigate yet

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Speaker 1: another fascist coup in the place that he had supposedly

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Speaker 1: spent his life defending. He went to the press first,

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Speaker 1: then Congress, telling them everything but this time he wasn't

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Speaker 1: hailed as a hero. The press was owned by many

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Speaker 1: of the business men he was blowing the whistle on,

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Speaker 1: and they all said that his story was ridiculous. And

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Speaker 1: while Congress investigated and agreed that there had been a plot,

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Speaker 1: they refused to prosecate any of the prominent men involved.

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Speaker 1: Gerald Maguire, by the way, mysteriously died the following year.

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Speaker 1: It took decades before historians started to lend more credence

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Speaker 1: to Butler's story, but even today, the powers that be

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Speaker 1: have an interest in keeping the story hidden. The plotter's

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Speaker 1: descendants remained powerful and influential. Banks like JP Morgan are

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Speaker 1: making more money than ever, and one plotter raised a

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Speaker 1: political dynasty, with both his sons and grandson becoming President

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Speaker 1: of the United States. That banker, Prescott Bush. Coup or not,

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Speaker 1: it's hard to disagree with Butler's ultimate goal. Our soldiers

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Speaker 1: are heroes deserving of honor and support, not ponds in

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Speaker 1: a game of power, especially when that game is played

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Speaker 1: at home. Once upon a time, there was a city

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Speaker 1: split straight down the middle, literally sliced in io by

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Speaker 1: a wall of concrete and barbed wire. On one side,

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Speaker 1: you had state surveillance, brutalist apartment blocks, and the relentless

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Speaker 1: hum of authoritarian control. On the other, a sprawling, chaotic

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Speaker 1: urban jungle where rules and social norms were flaunted, where

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Speaker 1: basic utilities rarely worked, and where anything was possible. I'm talking,

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Speaker 1: of course, about Berlin during the nineteen seven these the

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Speaker 1: city was the epicenter of the Cold War. It stood

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Speaker 1: like a scar across the heart of Europe, divided between

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Speaker 1: the democracy loving West and the Soviet controlled east. When

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Speaker 1: you walked in its streets, you could feel the tension

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Speaker 1: of the whole world pressing in. Armed soldiers manned the

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Speaker 1: wall at all hours, prepared to shoot anyone who tried

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Speaker 1: crossing from east to west. Families that had called the

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Speaker 1: city home for generations were split up, separated not by

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Speaker 1: distance but by ideology and steel. But despite all of that,

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Speaker 1: or maybe because of that, Berlin had a strange allure

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Speaker 1: that you couldn't find anywhere else. There was an honesty

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Speaker 1: to its ugliness, almost like the conflict that normally existed

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Speaker 1: beneath the surface had been made tangible. It had a

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Speaker 1: magnetic energy, and soon West Berlin became a haven for artists, punks, poets,

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Speaker 1: and painters, all crammed into squat houses, chasing meaning and

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Speaker 1: beauty against the backdrop of oppression and tragedy. And that's

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Speaker 1: the kind of place was when Dave arrived. Dave was

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Speaker 1: a music loving thirty year old, soft spoken Englishman with

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Speaker 1: sharp cheekbones and a quiet intensity. He kept mostly to himself,

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Speaker 1: renting a small apartment above a car repair shop and

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Speaker 1: walking the cities for hours by day or by night.

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Speaker 1: He looked like a tourist, but Dave wasn't just passing

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Speaker 1: through like so many creatives. He had come to Berlin

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Speaker 1: looking for inspiration and a place to think. He wound

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Speaker 1: up finding more than he bargained for. Though. When he

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Speaker 1: wasn't out walking, Dave spent his days writing music, sometimes

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Speaker 1: alone in his apartment, sometimes in a grand, eerie recording

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Speaker 1: studio that had once been a Nazi ballroom, now repurposed

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Speaker 1: into a creative sanctuary. The studio sat just five hundred

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Speaker 1: yards from the Berlin Wall, and when Dave looked out

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Speaker 1: its window, he could see the soldiers on the other

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Speaker 1: side working there, walking the streets every day and seeing

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Speaker 1: the impact of a cold war filled Dave with a

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Speaker 1: melancholy and that was a big problem because Dave was

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Speaker 1: right in the middle of a new song and it

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Speaker 1: was meant to be anything but brooding. The music was

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Speaker 1: already finished, and it was powerful, stirring and uplifting in

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Speaker 1: a way that would demand a triumphant story to match.

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Speaker 1: The chords rang like a declaration, but the words would

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Speaker 1: not come. He stared at the blank page for hours,

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Speaker 1: but every time he tried to imagine something hopeful or inspirational,

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Speaker 1: it just struck him as false. Well, one afternoon in

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Speaker 1: mid nineteen seventy seven, Dave just locked himself away in

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Speaker 1: the studio determined that for better or for worse, he

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Speaker 1: was going to finish that song. After crumbling up yet

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Speaker 1: another sheet of paper, he happened to glance out the window.

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Speaker 1: The view was the same as it always had been,

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Speaker 1: but this time something different caught his eye. Across the street,

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Speaker 1: just in front of the wall, he saw a man

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Speaker 1: and a woman locked in a kiss. The guards stood

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Speaker 1: a short distance away, armed and watching, but the lovers

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Speaker 1: didn't care. And that's when it clicked. Dave sat back down,

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Speaker 1: picked up his pen, and started to write. The lyrics

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Speaker 1: that flowed out of him weren't about overthrowing government or

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Speaker 1: storming barricades. Instead, he imagined two lovers, one from East

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Speaker 1: Berlin and one from the West, meeting in secret and

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Speaker 1: spending a single day together. It was hardly a revolution,

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Speaker 1: just the story of two ordinary people living their lives.

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Speaker 1: But after his time in Berlin, Dave thought that that

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Speaker 1: kind of simple humanity carried its own kind of heroism.

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Speaker 1: Once he got started, the words came quickly. The lyrics

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Speaker 1: didn't quite match the triumphant music, but to Dave, that

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Speaker 1: just made it better. It felt honest, like the city

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Speaker 1: he had come to love. He finished his album and

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Speaker 1: left Berlin soon after, but a decade later, in nineteen

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Speaker 1: eighty seven, he came back to play a concert right

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Speaker 1: next to the wall. The Cold War was still very cold,

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Speaker 1: but the city felt different. Thousands gathered in West Berlin, dancing,

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Speaker 1: shouting and singing, and just across the divide, people in

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Speaker 1: East Berlin gathered to listen. They huddled against fences and

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Speaker 1: climbed on the rooftops, straining to hear the music. And

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Speaker 1: when Dave sang that song, the one Born from a

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Speaker 1: Stolen Kiss, it was like all the heartache the city

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Speaker 1: had been feeling was let loose. That night's riots broke

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Speaker 1: out on the eastern half of the city. East berlinners

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Speaker 1: clashed with the police while chanting the Wall must fall.

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Speaker 1: The Soviets moved swiftly to crush the disobedience, arresting over

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Speaker 1: two hundred people, but the spark had been lit. Over

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Speaker 1: the two years that followed, the riots and protests continued

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Speaker 1: to escalate until November of nineteen eighty nine, when the

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Speaker 1: Berlin Wall was finally torn down. The song, of course,

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Speaker 1: did not bring it down on its own, but it

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Speaker 1: did create a crack, one of many that eventually broke through.

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Speaker 1: And in case you're wondering, that song was called Heroes

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Speaker 1: and Dave. Will you know him better as David Bowie.

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Speaker 1: I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet

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Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn

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Speaker 1: more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com.

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Speaker 1: The show was created by me Aaron Manke in partnership

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Speaker 1: with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show

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Speaker 1: called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show,

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Speaker 1: and you can learn all about it over at Theworldoflore

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Speaker 1: dot com. And until next time, stay curious,