Speaker 1: Hello, America and the rest of the world. I'm Robert Evans,
Speaker 1: and this is yet another terrible introduction for the podcast
Speaker 1: that exists that you're listening to. And it's called Behind
Speaker 1: the Bastards and About Bad People. And that's the introduction, Sophie,
Speaker 1: do you think that's a keeper? I mean, honestly better
Speaker 1: than some of the ones you've done the last couple
Speaker 1: of weeks, Like, well, I'll have to I'll have to
Speaker 1: correct that and make it worse in the episode, he
Speaker 1: just goes hitl oh my god. Well, you know my
Speaker 1: guest today who you're hearing from is Teresa Lee. Teresa,
Speaker 1: what's up? How's it going? But you're not I can
Speaker 1: see you, and I am not. I'm in the East Coast,
Speaker 1: which is terrible. Um, and it knows it in general.
Speaker 1: You just hate the East Coast. Yeah, I mean the
Speaker 1: West Coast, like the Yeah, exactly, We're we're we're all
Speaker 1: West Coast elites on this podcast. Yes, elite, the three
Speaker 1: how do they do the hacks or hacks? Are elite?
Speaker 1: L No seven three three whatever? Don't at me? Okay,
Speaker 1: not Teresa. You and I worked together, we did a
Speaker 1: number of years at a website called Cracked where we
Speaker 1: were we were East or West Coast elites together. Um
Speaker 1: and uh and now uh. You have a podcast called
Speaker 1: you Can Tell Me Anything, which I've guessed it on once. Um,
Speaker 1: is there anything else you'd like to announce right now?
Speaker 1: You also are professionally funny, um, which I think is
Speaker 1: a cute dog named woo Shoe whose friends with it.
Speaker 1: She has an adorable dog. I do have a dog. Um. Sure.
Speaker 1: I besides being uh, professionally funny, I'm not never funny
Speaker 1: if you're not paying me. By the way, but UM,
Speaker 1: I have a short film, so yeah, if you guys
Speaker 1: want check outs called I Think She Likes you It.
Speaker 1: It came out like about a month ago, but you
Speaker 1: know it's still out there and you can never spread
Speaker 1: the word too much considering we have no marketing money.
Speaker 1: But it's on YouTube, YouTube dot com slash. I think
Speaker 1: she likes you. Well, we're going to I'm gonna ask
Speaker 1: my listeners right now to do guerilla marketing for your show.
Speaker 1: Go spray paint an m T a station, UM, burned
Speaker 1: down house. Do you have some problem with me urging
Speaker 1: people to do commit crimes on your behind? Teresa? Is
Speaker 1: that something you don't like please uh please do not
Speaker 1: commit crimes on my behalf. Not commit crimes on anyone's behalf.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, just stay in school. Cool, Teresa
Speaker 1: saying that to be polite. This podcast is very pro crime. Okay,
Speaker 1: get out there, break some laws, break some random laws.
Speaker 1: Go jaywalking. It's a good time. It's safe. Yeah, blind,
Speaker 1: definitely do that. Yes, yeah, that's that's the competitive version
Speaker 1: of jaywalking. Competitive. Yeah. Yeah, the judge, the judges, the
Speaker 1: e R doctor who sees you. Um, Teresa, have you
Speaker 1: ever heard of Basil Zaharov? I don't think so. It
Speaker 1: the last name again h A R O F F. No,
Speaker 1: that was me bying time to try to think of
Speaker 1: an answer. But no, I'm going to just go with no.
Speaker 1: And you know what if that sounds like that's okay,
Speaker 1: it's not im did. I had never heard of this
Speaker 1: guy until I started researching until like right before I
Speaker 1: started researching him. Um, he's a fascinating figure. Um. He
Speaker 1: has more nicknames than I think almost any historical figure
Speaker 1: I've ever studied. Um. He was called the Merchant of Death,
Speaker 1: the Armament's King, the mystery Man of Europe, a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of her those through. The Mystery Man of Europe
Speaker 1: really just doesn't hold up to the others. It's just
Speaker 1: that sounds like like a drafts nickname. Yeah, like it
Speaker 1: was in somebody's like Google. Uh, like like like like
Speaker 1: a saved email. They're just like it sounds like when
Speaker 1: you text your friends to be like what do you
Speaker 1: think and they're like no, yeah, Well he didn't choose
Speaker 1: his nicknames, but he didn't choose his career. Um, and
Speaker 1: the things he did in his life are wive. So
Speaker 1: this guy was the the inspiration behind one of James
Speaker 1: Bond's early villains, the Head of Specter, So like one
Speaker 1: of the first Bond villains, Like it was directly inspired
Speaker 1: by this guy, and he was basically a Bond villain. Um,
Speaker 1: this is going to be a different episode than a
Speaker 1: lot because a lot of what I'm gonna tell you
Speaker 1: today are lies because there are so this guy told
Speaker 1: so many lies about his background that nobody knows for
Speaker 1: certain a lot of things. Um. The dude we're talking
Speaker 1: about today, UM is, in short, the guy who invented
Speaker 1: the international arms industry. Um. Yeah, so he this is
Speaker 1: like the guy who figured out like selling guns to
Speaker 1: multiple like different countries as like an international business. He's
Speaker 1: like one of the very first, like there were a
Speaker 1: couple of other people at the same time, but like
Speaker 1: he's the he's the brilliant mind behind the arms industry.
Speaker 1: You could call him like the father of the military
Speaker 1: industrial complex. So that's our dude today. Are you a
Speaker 1: fan of the international arms trade? Teresa? Um? You know,
Speaker 1: I'm usually fan of international things, but in this case
Speaker 1: I have to say hard no. So your podcast is
Speaker 1: not currently sponsored by Raytheon. Um. You know, I I
Speaker 1: haven't checked, but I'm going to guess no, um that
Speaker 1: I don't think we're sponsored by a mass weapons a distributor,
Speaker 1: but you know, I guess we can still. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know. If you're listening ray theon opportunity here
Speaker 1: you could you could reach a lot of drones, a
Speaker 1: small group of body slash therapy fans who might be
Speaker 1: interest in buying mass weapons of mass destruction. I mean,
Speaker 1: I I happen to know, Teresa, that your podcasts have
Speaker 1: a lot of fans who are the potentates of small
Speaker 1: Eastern European nations. So yeah, that's a there there might
Speaker 1: be some sales in there. Um yeah, so uh Prince
Speaker 1: Zacharias Basilius Zacharov was born in a small town in Anatolia,
Speaker 1: which is like Turkey, on October six. There are very few.
Speaker 1: Yeah he's there, you go, that's two in a row
Speaker 1: they love. Yeah, we got um. So there aren't a
Speaker 1: whole lot of set facts about his early life. Um.
Speaker 1: But I called him a prince at the start, and
Speaker 1: he absolutely was not a prince. We know for a
Speaker 1: fact that he was in no way a prince. But
Speaker 1: he would lie about being a prince's entire life, not
Speaker 1: even by marriage, not not even by marriage. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: His parents were Greeks um, and they'd spent most of
Speaker 1: the mid eighteen forties fleeing political instability as Greece fought
Speaker 1: for its independence from the Ottoman Empire. Um. Since they
Speaker 1: were living in the Ottoman Empire for most of their lives,
Speaker 1: identifying as Greek was not an entirely safe move. So
Speaker 1: they changed the family last name from Zachariah DCS to
Speaker 1: Zacharov um so that they could pretend to be Russians. Um.
Speaker 1: So from an early age, his parents are like, tell everybody,
Speaker 1: we're fucking Russian. Don't let him know where Greek? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's cool. Um. Hidden as Russians, the Zakarov's wound
Speaker 1: up living in a town named Mugla in the Anatolian Peninsula. Um.
Speaker 1: Today we would call it Turkey, but they didn't. Then.
Speaker 1: Zacharias was named after his grandfather, and he lived in
Speaker 1: Mugla until he was three, when his family decided Constantinople
Speaker 1: was a safe enough city to move to. Um. All
Speaker 1: of this part is probably pretty accurate, but Zacharov would
Speaker 1: spend the rest of his life trying to obscure even
Speaker 1: these very basic details of his upbringing. As an old man,
Speaker 1: he told a teenage girl that he wanted to fuck
Speaker 1: this quote. Also he yeah, he's that guy. Okay. Um.
Speaker 1: Quote my father was Russian. It's one of these episodes. Okay, cool.
Speaker 1: Well he's I mean, he's a rich old arms dealer.
Speaker 1: Of course he's gonna try to have sex with children. Uh. Um.
Speaker 1: Quote my father was Russian and my mother was Greek,
Speaker 1: of the Byzantine family of des Brassinos Um. In another
Speaker 1: interview published around the same time, though, he told a journalist,
Speaker 1: I was born in Anatolia. My father was a Polish origin,
Speaker 1: my mother was French with a Levantine Strain. So everyone
Speaker 1: who talked him, he would tell a different story about
Speaker 1: where his parents came from, what his his upbringing was. Um,
Speaker 1: he was just like one of those people who lied
Speaker 1: habitually about every single aspect of their lives. I feel like,
Speaker 1: what that A lot of times you think, oh, there
Speaker 1: must be some massive secret, but in general, is just
Speaker 1: because the truth is so boring or so uninteresting that
Speaker 1: they're just trying to obscure it. Yeah, you know, I
Speaker 1: think it, And I think it often starts with people
Speaker 1: who just like because the truth is so boring and
Speaker 1: they don't want to be boring. Um, but some of
Speaker 1: those people wind up living very interesting lives. And I
Speaker 1: guess if you, if you have this combination of lying
Speaker 1: about everything, uh and having an interesting life, that's what
Speaker 1: it takes to be an international man of mystery. I
Speaker 1: can see that. Yeah. And also, which is what I
Speaker 1: lied about my upbringing? Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I've I've followed this blueprint in my entire life. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, like none of you even know I'm Canadian.
Speaker 1: I kept that, Yeah, I've I've never even seen your face.
Speaker 1: It's a I don't know what you look like. No,
Speaker 1: I always wear a mask. It's one of those president masks. Um.
Speaker 1: So those zak are off would later claim we've grown
Speaker 1: up poor. Uh, he did not. That was another lie.
Speaker 1: His family was comfortably middle class and he attended very
Speaker 1: good schools. His mother was blind and after school she
Speaker 1: made her son repeat all of his lessons for that
Speaker 1: day to her, which he claimed is how he sharpened
Speaker 1: his memory. Um. His dad was in the business of
Speaker 1: importing something called attar of roses, which I think is
Speaker 1: basically a fancy rose into essential oil. He had to
Speaker 1: boil like two or fifty pounds of rose pedals to
Speaker 1: get a single ounce of the liquid, so it was
Speaker 1: very valuable. Um. He traveled a lot for work, and
Speaker 1: his family traveled with him. One of Zaharov's sisters was
Speaker 1: born in England at the time. Abroad gave him an
Speaker 1: early experience with foreign languages and cultures. So he again
Speaker 1: lies about the number of languages he can speak the
Speaker 1: rest of his life and says it's like fourteen or
Speaker 1: something ridiculous. But he was a polyglot um, and he
Speaker 1: gets experienced around the world from a young age. So
Speaker 1: there are rumors that when Zaharov was young a wealthy
Speaker 1: family offered to pay his tuition to an English school
Speaker 1: in the capital. Um. These rumors usually end with allegations
Speaker 1: of that wealthy family's Masonic connections, because this guy shows
Speaker 1: up in a lot of conspiracy theories. You'll find him
Speaker 1: in a lot of anti Semitic conspiracy theories. Even he
Speaker 1: was not Jewish, um, because a lot of people are
Speaker 1: convinced he was Jewish because he was an arms dealer
Speaker 1: that spoilers helped lead the world into World World War One.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's a fun one. Yeah, it sounds like
Speaker 1: these other people have to work through their issues. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're any kind of important and any
Speaker 1: kind of shady, racists will decide that you must secretly
Speaker 1: be Jewish. Um. Yeah, it is cool. That's exactly what
Speaker 1: it is, Teresa. It's it's cool. Um. So yeah, the
Speaker 1: there's rumors that like, yeah, this wealthy Masonic family paid
Speaker 1: for him to go to a fancy school for shady reasons.
Speaker 1: The reality is that he probably had attended this English
Speaker 1: school in Constantinople for free because all of the English
Speaker 1: schools in the city were run by churches, um, And
Speaker 1: people didn't like the churches because they were Muslim and
Speaker 1: not Christian um, and so the churches were always empty
Speaker 1: and would give free schooling to people just to keep
Speaker 1: it full. So that's probably how he was able to
Speaker 1: go to a good school. So um Zaharrof nursed an
Speaker 1: early love of England, regarding it from the beginning as
Speaker 1: the one nation that could help him establish the kind
Speaker 1: of career that he wanted to have. One version of
Speaker 1: his background suggests that as an adolescent, he made his
Speaker 1: way over to England and attended a mid level British
Speaker 1: boarding school. Um. He claimed the other boys made fun
Speaker 1: of him for his foreign sounding name, and so he
Speaker 1: adopted his middle name, Basil as his new first name.
Speaker 1: He also says that he learned how to box so
Speaker 1: he could punch anyone who made fun of him. Um,
Speaker 1: so that's yeah, it's like a healthy way to cope
Speaker 1: with anger. Yeah, I mean, people make fun of you,
Speaker 1: you learn how to punch. That's uh healthy, Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the word for it. Phillips write this guy's life, Now,
Speaker 1: I think it was an inspiration for time. Yeah, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this is actually this is like the opposite
Speaker 1: of that story. So I'm totally disputing. Yeah, so there
Speaker 1: are some reasons to believe this version of the story, Um,
Speaker 1: because he did know a lot about English culture, and
Speaker 1: like knew a lot about boarding school culture in England.
Speaker 1: But like people who later like looked through the records
Speaker 1: of all of those schools, Uh, there's like no evidence
Speaker 1: that he actually attended any of them. Um. The other
Speaker 1: more legendary version of this guy's life story is that
Speaker 1: when he was an adolescent, his family fell on hard
Speaker 1: times and he was forced to take to the streets
Speaker 1: of Constantinople to hustle his way to get enough money
Speaker 1: to pay for an education. Um. These rumors will claim
Speaker 1: that he worked as a brothel tout was the term
Speaker 1: at the time. You know what a brothel tout is,
Speaker 1: I can guess. Is it a guy who goes Is
Speaker 1: it like a person who barks people into a brothel, like, hey,
Speaker 1: we got we got we got sex tonight, come on
Speaker 1: in you know where sex like that? Yeah? Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know that's exactly what it is. Yeah, do that.
Speaker 1: You know a lot about brothels? Yeah, they have people,
Speaker 1: that's what if? That's so sad? Barking into comedy shows
Speaker 1: is like the worst thing, and then to do it
Speaker 1: for a brothel sounds just like do they need that?
Speaker 1: I feel like people like sex, right, yeah, but they
Speaker 1: don't always know where the sex true true, and they
Speaker 1: don't know what time, at what time the doors open
Speaker 1: for the sex. You don't want to, you know, for
Speaker 1: you know, that was not meant to be pun but
Speaker 1: that now it is okay, No, but it was okay. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So he's a brothel town and like you'll find a
Speaker 1: lot of like kind of poorly written and poorly researched
Speaker 1: articles about him that will claim he got to start
Speaker 1: as a pimp and it's just because people haven't heard
Speaker 1: of a brothel town. Like it was way lower level
Speaker 1: than a pimp. Like he was not getting a cut
Speaker 1: of these girls money. He was getting paid to basically
Speaker 1: stand on the street and shout out the prices of
Speaker 1: different women in the brothel. Um, you can bug this, Yeah,
Speaker 1: a dollar to I don't know, I don't know what
Speaker 1: brothel prices were like in Constant, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: mean that was a lot of money back then. Sure,
Speaker 1: hard working person not to be able to afford a
Speaker 1: bravl um. So yeah, it was the kind of job
Speaker 1: that probably would have made a lot of sense for
Speaker 1: someone like Basil um because he was very cultured. Um.
Speaker 1: He spoke a lot of languages. He was very charming,
Speaker 1: tall and handsome. He's the kind of person you would
Speaker 1: want to be doing that job. Um. He was good
Speaker 1: at talking people into things. Um. He worked as a
Speaker 1: money changer too, and as a tourist guide. But he
Speaker 1: didn't find his first true calling until he got involved
Speaker 1: in the noble profession of firefighting. Now that sounds like
Speaker 1: it's normally a great thing to do, right, Working as
Speaker 1: a firefighter one of the one of the most noble
Speaker 1: professions you can embark upon. Um. That was not his
Speaker 1: job in the fire department. His job was starting fires. Um.
Speaker 1: So in this period of time, the Constantinople Fire Brigade
Speaker 1: UM was basically a mafia and in order to make money,
Speaker 1: they would burned down the houses of rich people and
Speaker 1: then basically solicit bribes to go get their valuables out.
Speaker 1: So they'd be like, oh, your house is on fire,
Speaker 1: that's a shame. Be good if somebody win in there
Speaker 1: and rescued your nice ship and get paid. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: pretty cool. That's dark where firefighters not provided, Like were
Speaker 1: these bribes away? Like like you bribe police. But it's
Speaker 1: not it's still a shady or we're firefighters the type
Speaker 1: like private industry where you have to pay them to
Speaker 1: come there. These were industry. Yeah, this would happen again,
Speaker 1: that's what you don't do that. That's the thing that's
Speaker 1: that with all the fires that were going on in California,
Speaker 1: like rich people hired fire firefighters. So this is like
Speaker 1: there's a long history of this. Like Marcus Licinius Crassus,
Speaker 1: who was a Roman and one of the like considered
Speaker 1: to be like the one of the wealthiest men in
Speaker 1: the ancient world um made a lot of his fortune
Speaker 1: by operating the fire department in ancient Rome, which was
Speaker 1: a private enterprise, and charging people while their houses were
Speaker 1: on fire to put the fires out. Um. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: like this is like like fire like running firefighting like
Speaker 1: companies was like a thing that you would do if
Speaker 1: you were a real piece of ship for a very
Speaker 1: long time because like the governments didn't do funk All. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's awesome. But his job, so Basil was not putting
Speaker 1: out fires. He would start them, um, which is like
Speaker 1: the easiest part of that gig. Really, Like I think
Speaker 1: I would have been very good at this job. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In eighteen sixty five, a major fire tour through Constantinople,
Speaker 1: destroying eight thousand homes, twenty mosques, five churches, and numerous businesses.
Speaker 1: Roughly a quarter of the city was burned down, twenty
Speaker 1: people were rendered homeless, and an unknown number were killed.
Speaker 1: The Ottoman government responded with a vicious crackdown, arresting and
Speaker 1: trying and hanging numerous perpetrators. It is impossible to know
Speaker 1: of Zaharov had anything to do with this, but his
Speaker 1: friends on the Iyer Brigade later noted that he fled
Speaker 1: the city immediately afterwards and stayed away for five full years. Um. Maybe.
Speaker 1: So here's the thing. There's again, as I said, there's
Speaker 1: different versions of all of this, and it's entirely possible
Speaker 1: that he fled the city because he committed a totally
Speaker 1: different series of crimes. M because he was, yeah, always criming, um,
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna read you to you about what those
Speaker 1: crimes were. In this quote from the book Man of Arms,
Speaker 1: which is a biography of Zaharov in his late teens,
Speaker 1: that is generally accepted, a maternal uncle, Sebastopolis offered him
Speaker 1: a job in his cloth business and the busy Galada
Speaker 1: district by the port. The merchant was delighted with his
Speaker 1: astute and aspiring relation, and for two or three years
Speaker 1: everything went well. Then suddenly and mysteriously, the young man vanished,
Speaker 1: and for several years all trace of his career vanished
Speaker 1: with him, conveniently creating one of those vacuums in his
Speaker 1: life which legends so avidly filled. One tale had it
Speaker 1: that he absconded with his uncle's cash, was caught and
Speaker 1: sent to a prison, from which he made his escape.
Speaker 1: It was even hinted that he taken the life of
Speaker 1: a warder of a guard in this bid. The least
Speaker 1: sensational view was that he had committed some misdemeanor but
Speaker 1: had managed to flee abroad with the proceeds to embark
Speaker 1: on a new career under another name. So either he
Speaker 1: got in trouble for burning down a quarter of the
Speaker 1: city and had to flee um or he stole all
Speaker 1: of his uncle's money and had to flee. And it's
Speaker 1: also possible that he went to jail for stealing his
Speaker 1: uncle's money and then murdered a cop and had to flee.
Speaker 1: All of those things are possible. We don't know which
Speaker 1: is true, if it or any of them, it might
Speaker 1: have been something totally different. That's the fresh dri anything
Speaker 1: about writing about this guy. Um yeah, it's like really
Speaker 1: impossible to know what actually happened. And Basil himself only
Speaker 1: deepened the mystery by saying ship like this to interviewers
Speaker 1: later in life. Quote, I have been lucky all my life.
Speaker 1: If I hadn't been, I should have been murdered long
Speaker 1: ago or else serving a life sentence in some prison. Um.
Speaker 1: So he would drop little lines like that just to
Speaker 1: keep the mystery alive. Um. So, there's some buried bodies
Speaker 1: in his past that have not been found. There were,
Speaker 1: There are a lot of buried bodies in his past
Speaker 1: that everybody saw, because that's kind of the benefit of
Speaker 1: being an arms dealer is you can get a lot
Speaker 1: of people buried and you're just doing your job. So yeah,
Speaker 1: he's just boosting those Q four numbers, you know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah four numbers for me is all her jokes, Robert,
Speaker 1: aren't you a Funnies three? And I think it's because
Speaker 1: he's on a screen, so then I feel more compulsion
Speaker 1: to say things. But then they feel more Um, what's
Speaker 1: the call non sequitur, so I will. And then Sophie
Speaker 1: across from me, so she's laughing at me, but I
Speaker 1: am paying. I'm paying wrapped attention. You're paying very close attend.
Speaker 1: So he lied, okay, And I don't know everything he
Speaker 1: ever said is a lie, and we don't know what
Speaker 1: he did. These are the different stories. He may have
Speaker 1: been a prostitute barker and then an arsonist who fled
Speaker 1: the country. He may have stolen all of his uncle's money,
Speaker 1: might have murdered a cop. Who knows. By the early
Speaker 1: eighteen seventies, though, we know that Zaharov had made it
Speaker 1: to Great Britain, and we know this to a point
Speaker 1: of certainty because he almost immediately got arrested in a
Speaker 1: massive legal troubical over there, and there are thankfully court records.
Speaker 1: So this is the ship we absolutely know happened. During
Speaker 1: his travels to England, he met a young woman named
Speaker 1: Emily Burrows, who was the daughter of a Bristol based businessman.
Speaker 1: And depending on which version of history you believe, Basil
Speaker 1: was either living off money stolen from his uncle or
Speaker 1: living there off money given to him for commodity speculation
Speaker 1: by a number of businesses. Back in Constantinople. Either way,
Speaker 1: when he meets this woman, Emily, he succeeds in passing
Speaker 1: himself off as a very wealthy foreign man, which he
Speaker 1: was not. Um but he was charming, and he had
Speaker 1: a nice suit, and no one had the Internet, so
Speaker 1: he was able to get away with yeah, these lies.
Speaker 1: Emily falls in love with Basil. He proposed to her,
Speaker 1: and in short order the couple were married in Paris.
Speaker 1: They quickly returned back to England to repeat the marriage
Speaker 1: ceremony in front of her family. Years later, Emily's niece,
Speaker 1: Henriette recalled that this second ceremony was quote planned in
Speaker 1: a great rush. My aunt seemed agitated about something. She
Speaker 1: wanted to wait a little longer, but Basilius was pressing
Speaker 1: her to marry him. So. Anthony Alfrey, one of Basil's biographers,
Speaker 1: suspects that she might have been nervous because she hadn't
Speaker 1: told her parents about the first marriage that they had
Speaker 1: had in Paris. But it's also possible that she'd started
Speaker 1: to suspect that her new bow might be a con artist,
Speaker 1: because he absolutely was. On the marriage register, he listed
Speaker 1: his name as Zacharias Gortzakov, which was a reference to
Speaker 1: Prince Michael Gortzakov of Russia. So he was claiming to
Speaker 1: be a Russian prince to this woman. That's why he's yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: He claimed that his dad, a Rose oil salesman, was
Speaker 1: a high ranking Russian general. Um, and Basil himself claimed
Speaker 1: to be a general. And it's entirely possible that Emily
Speaker 1: didn't even know of that her new husband had like
Speaker 1: grown up in Constantinople and believed him to be a
Speaker 1: full blooded member of the Russian nobility. For his part,
Speaker 1: Basil's interest in Emily probably he had less to do
Speaker 1: with love than real estate. She was four years older
Speaker 1: than him, and her wealthy father was somewhat desperate to
Speaker 1: marry her off, so he'd set her up in a
Speaker 1: fashionable apartment right off of Belgrave Square in Bristol. Now.
Speaker 1: Basil was very much taken with her high class home,
Speaker 1: and he wanted to live there himself. Unfortunately, once the
Speaker 1: two were wed, Emily's father started pushing for them to
Speaker 1: move back to the family home in the country. Basil
Speaker 1: resisted this because he was marrying this woman for her
Speaker 1: nice apartment. Yeah so um yeah. For a little while
Speaker 1: they lived very well together in that nice apartment. Um,
Speaker 1: but that was not to last very long. And in
Speaker 1: a little bit, Teresa, I'm gonna tell you what happened next,
Speaker 1: how Zaharov got arrested, and how his first time in
Speaker 1: court went. But first, you know who won't lie to
Speaker 1: women and claim to be a Russian prince? Who Raytheon? No,
Speaker 1: they will make a missile that's nothing but vibes to
Speaker 1: assassinate people in Afghanistan and Yemen. But they will not
Speaker 1: pretend to be a Russian prince to romance British woman.
Speaker 1: I mean they would if they could. But Raytheon is
Speaker 1: notoriously bad at faking a Russian accent. That's one thing
Speaker 1: everyone knows. So we're off two ads. Uh, there, here
Speaker 1: we go, We're back. The podcast returns. The ads are done,
Speaker 1: so um, I'm gonna read another quote from the Bookman
Speaker 1: at Arms about the early days of Basil's ill fated
Speaker 1: marriage to miss Emily. Um quote In Hill Street, they
Speaker 1: remained the bogus boyer ms Greenslade recalled who is this
Speaker 1: woman's like niece? Years later, accompanying himself on the piano
Speaker 1: and entertaining his wife and her niece with talk of
Speaker 1: life on the steps and the gay goings on in
Speaker 1: the court of St. Petersburg. The idol lasted little more
Speaker 1: than a month, then sending trouble, perhaps a lit by
Speaker 1: news from Constantinople, Zaharov uh persuaded his wife that it
Speaker 1: was imperative they leave the country. He gave the impression
Speaker 1: that he was engaged in important diplomatic missions for the
Speaker 1: Russian government and had acquired enemies who are vetted by
Speaker 1: the police. Were on his tail, accompanied always by the
Speaker 1: woman relating the story this woman's niece. They moved to Brussels,
Speaker 1: where they were royally treated. But unfortunately for Zaharov and
Speaker 1: his new bride, the news of a wedding between this
Speaker 1: Russian prince and the high society englishwoman had made international news,
Speaker 1: and businessmen in Constantinople who sent him over to England
Speaker 1: to make investments were really pissed to see this guy
Speaker 1: that they knew was a Greek businessman living the high
Speaker 1: life in England pretending to be a Russian prince. These
Speaker 1: people he stole from basically see him in the paper
Speaker 1: and are like, that's not a fucking Russian prince. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So these businessmen had sent Zaharov over to England with
Speaker 1: about seven thousand pounds and merchandise and securities, which was
Speaker 1: somewhere in the ballpark of one and a half million
Speaker 1: U S dollars. Yeah, so he stole steals a lot
Speaker 1: from these people. Um. They immediately sent a representative over
Speaker 1: to London to file charges, which is why Zaharov had
Speaker 1: felt the need to flee Britain in the first place.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately for him, England and Belgium had just signed one
Speaker 1: of the world's first extradition treaties, and Prince Zaharov quickly
Speaker 1: became the very first person arrested and extradite it under it.
Speaker 1: So that's cool, Yeah, breaking new ground now. The new Princess,
Speaker 1: his new wife, was not happy with this, but Zaharov
Speaker 1: assured her it was all a terrible misunderstanding, just a
Speaker 1: case of mistake and identity, and promised he would take
Speaker 1: care of it very quickly if only her wealthy father
Speaker 1: would help him with some of the legal bills in
Speaker 1: the short term while he put matters to write and
Speaker 1: got in touch with his royal family members back in Russia.
Speaker 1: In December, he went to court charged with stealing twenty
Speaker 1: cases of gum and a hundred and nine bags of
Speaker 1: gall along with the theft of seven Yeah, that's not
Speaker 1: what I expected. And yeah he stole like these were
Speaker 1: like products they sent over as like samples that he
Speaker 1: took with him and just sold in England, along with
Speaker 1: seven thousand pounds worth of securities. Upon arrest, he had
Speaker 1: been found with the securities in the form of twenty
Speaker 1: four Turkish bonds and a loaded revolver. The court asked
Speaker 1: Basil if he was often in the habit of traveling
Speaker 1: with thousands of dollars of other people's money and a
Speaker 1: loaded gun. He assured them that he had been traveling
Speaker 1: with a revolver regularly since the age of seven, which
Speaker 1: is a weird thing to brag to a court about
Speaker 1: money and guns. Yeah, I don't, don't worry. I've had
Speaker 1: a gun since I was a child, so you don't
Speaker 1: have to worry. No, No, I got a gun when
Speaker 1: I was a baby. It's fine, Yeah, don't don't. Don't
Speaker 1: freak out. Um, And there's a court artist depiction of
Speaker 1: him giving his deposition and it's pretty fucking great. Um.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have Sophie show it to you now so
Speaker 1: you can get a look at how the court artists
Speaker 1: thought of this guy. Okay, let's see it. It looks
Speaker 1: like he was like in a therapist office. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean he's it's weird. Yeah, that waste is very thin.
Speaker 1: His mustache and like beard or like pointed and like
Speaker 1: very vibe. Yeah. Kind of like a cross between Captain
Speaker 1: Hook and a New Yorker caricature of a fancy British person.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. So uh. There are again two stories as
Speaker 1: to hold how this whole court case was resolved. Zaharov
Speaker 1: would go to his grave claiming that he settled the
Speaker 1: matter in court when he found a lost letter from
Speaker 1: his uncle, the head of the firm that had hired him,
Speaker 1: stating that he should take the bond money as payment
Speaker 1: for his travel expenses and services rendered. Um and it
Speaker 1: does seem to be true that the aggrieved party who
Speaker 1: sued him was his uncle, but the rest of the
Speaker 1: story is probably a lie. Court records note that Prince
Speaker 1: Zaharov was declared guilty of embezzlement, but only sentenced to
Speaker 1: pay about a hundred pounds and fines. This is likely
Speaker 1: because he agreed to pay restitution to the people he
Speaker 1: had robbed, or rather he got his new wife to
Speaker 1: pay back the people he had stolen from. His biographer
Speaker 1: notes quote. All that is clear is that Zaharov had
Speaker 1: made a promise of at least partial rested Usian and
Speaker 1: there is little doubt parental indulgence so recently overtaxed of
Speaker 1: its probable source. Miss Zacharov, the late Princess Gortzakov knee Burrow.
Speaker 1: So like his his his wife, who was pretending like
Speaker 1: using the name Gortzakov, which was the fake name that
Speaker 1: this guy used. Um, this in her husband's legal expenses.
Speaker 1: According to her niece, swallowed up her aunt's money. UM.
Speaker 1: So basically he has her pay the payback the people
Speaker 1: he stole from, so he gets to keep the money. Um.
Speaker 1: And then as soon as he's released from jail, he
Speaker 1: flees England and abandons his wife. Uh and also abandoned
Speaker 1: the contents. Well yeah, I mean, you're not really a
Speaker 1: grifter if you don't abandon at least one wife. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's crazy that she I feel like she almost got
Speaker 1: out of it before that, or you said she had
Speaker 1: doubts before the second marriage. Yeah, it seems like that
Speaker 1: that she was starting to realize this guy was shady
Speaker 1: and then it's almost she had to just keep going
Speaker 1: because it's like, well, at this point, I wanted to
Speaker 1: see it through. The sunk cost fallacy is a like
Speaker 1: the romance. It makes fools of us all. So. Um, Now, obviously, today,
Speaker 1: if you've got a grifter who gets in trouble in
Speaker 1: one country and caught in a grift and tried in court,
Speaker 1: you're gonna flee to Mexico. That's just where you're gonna
Speaker 1: go if you're a grifter in the modern era. But
Speaker 1: Mexico was not the place for grifters in the late
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds, and so instead Prince Zaharov left for the
Speaker 1: United States, which was the Mexico of the eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: um in terms of being a place for grifters to
Speaker 1: go and absolutely be able to get away with anything.
Speaker 1: So yeah, he gets on a boat fox off to
Speaker 1: North America. He never divorced Emily. He basically just abandoned
Speaker 1: her to her family after taking all of their money.
Speaker 1: Um so, uh, yeah, that's that's cool. Well sorry, I
Speaker 1: should say he went to Cyprus, Like yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: cool stuff. Um so yeah, like it's very complicated. This
Speaker 1: guy is like the the mo the movements. This guy
Speaker 1: goes through. But after like some time in North America,
Speaker 1: he goes to Cyphrus, this tiny Grecian island, and he
Speaker 1: found a business. And he starts a series of small enterprises,
Speaker 1: operating a gradually expanding number of shops and importing exotic
Speaker 1: food stuffs. Um And as his finances gradually improved, he
Speaker 1: started going back and forth to England again. Um and
Speaker 1: he never met with his wife um like like he
Speaker 1: like would hide from her every time he was back
Speaker 1: in England on business. Um. By the early eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: he took on a few small jobs selling rifles to
Speaker 1: the government um and like he didn't like at this
Speaker 1: point really like take up arms dealing as a major trade,
Speaker 1: but it was certainly something he was willing to do
Speaker 1: a little bit of. Um. He sold Linen's too. He
Speaker 1: catered barracks is for the British Army. His company laid
Speaker 1: down telegraph poles and train tracks. He got involved with
Speaker 1: shipping and was constantly investing in different markets during his
Speaker 1: trips to London. He lived pretty well off of this,
Speaker 1: but his businesses were constantly in one sort of debt
Speaker 1: or another, and his profits were already always in the
Speaker 1: process of being reinvested into a new enterprise, he hatched
Speaker 1: a scheme to get the British government to let him
Speaker 1: run the development of Cypherus, which they controlled thanks to
Speaker 1: a shaky treaty deal with Russia and the Ottoman Empire
Speaker 1: government let him develop this island he was trying to.
Speaker 1: He was trying to he failed out. Um. So England
Speaker 1: was kind of like in control of Cypherus due to
Speaker 1: these like weird series of political events, and he was
Speaker 1: trying to get them to like develop the island and
Speaker 1: let him run it. Um. But that didn't end up working. Um.
Speaker 1: Neither did a series of like business ventures in Alexandria
Speaker 1: and then France and then back to the Mediterranean coast. Um.
Speaker 1: And trying to keep track of all his businesses and
Speaker 1: plots in this period is like impossible. Um, there's just
Speaker 1: so much ship going on and like so much doubt
Speaker 1: about it. What matters is that he was a serial entrepreneur.
Speaker 1: He's one of these guys that always has an angle,
Speaker 1: always has a business he's trying, always has an investment
Speaker 1: going on. Um. And yeah, he was successful enough at
Speaker 1: this that he was able to dress well and live
Speaker 1: come doably and put on the image of being wealthy,
Speaker 1: but he was also always on the edge of disaster
Speaker 1: and always had most of his assets invested into the
Speaker 1: next big thing. Um have you seen Uncut Gems? No,
Speaker 1: this reminds me of that movie. Yeah, he's just constantly
Speaker 1: Adam sand there's characters like constantly just like getting in
Speaker 1: higher stakes gambling debt and he'll like finally get it
Speaker 1: back to pay someone, but instead of paying it back,
Speaker 1: he's like, I'm gonna gamble this on this new game
Speaker 1: and then I'll make even more and you we'll both
Speaker 1: get paid. And he's just doing it more and more,
Speaker 1: and then at the end, well, I won't give it away,
Speaker 1: but you know, gambling, you can you can assume that
Speaker 1: it's how gambling happens, what happens when Yeah, generally this
Speaker 1: is kind of that story. But for him, when he
Speaker 1: gambles too much, it helps start World War One. Um,
Speaker 1: so a little bit more high stakes. Wow, Okay, so
Speaker 1: we're going there. Okay, cool, Yeah, that's where this ship goes.
Speaker 1: Um So, Basil built a reputation as a man of scandal,
Speaker 1: and he left behind a constant stream of sobbing women
Speaker 1: and outraged families. Um, I'm gonna read you now a
Speaker 1: letter that he sent while he was in a hotel
Speaker 1: in Paris to one of his business partners. And this
Speaker 1: letter kind of gives you some insight into the way
Speaker 1: he conducted his relationships. Um. And he's talking in this
Speaker 1: about like two women he met at the hotel and
Speaker 1: and slept with. Quote, Uh, Miss Jehren, whom I was
Speaker 1: fool enough to poke a few times immediately after my
Speaker 1: arrival at the hotel, had her knife in me and
Speaker 1: Miss mccraith from my giving her up with the ladder.
Speaker 1: You appear to be under the impression that Miss mccraith
Speaker 1: was divorced and I might marry her. You were wrong.
Speaker 1: I would not do so if she had millions. I
Speaker 1: poked her because it was my caprice. I poke her still,
Speaker 1: and when I want to change, I shall give her up.
Speaker 1: I'm under no obligations to her family, as she cost
Speaker 1: me what an average whore would do, and I pay
Speaker 1: her in one way or another. And I have no
Speaker 1: doubt that if another man chose to court her and
Speaker 1: pay for it, he could have her if he paid
Speaker 1: more than me, and she would turn me up. This
Speaker 1: is the guy way this guy talks about, Oh my god, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's pretty gross. So shortly after yeah, I didn't even
Speaker 1: realize that I don't know people. It just seems very
Speaker 1: current to be like a poked her. Yeah, it's weird
Speaker 1: to hear in like an eight you expect people to
Speaker 1: be like, I don't know, what's a fancy way to
Speaker 1: say fuck, I lay with you know, stooped. It's not
Speaker 1: fancy at all. So shortly after writing this, Zaharov fell ill.
Speaker 1: He was diagnosed with anemia, and it's impossible to know
Speaker 1: what ailment he actually had because eighteen seventies medicine was
Speaker 1: basically drunk guessing. His description of his doctor's orders for
Speaker 1: how to treat this ailment as entertaining, though quote I
Speaker 1: am to avoid the least excitement, to take gentle exercise
Speaker 1: and avoid all stairs. And if I want to kill myself,
Speaker 1: I am to have a woman. This last is strictly enforced.
Speaker 1: I am to give up women altogether, and in fact
Speaker 1: avoid them so as to not get excited. His doctor
Speaker 1: says he's got to stop sucking after you. So it's
Speaker 1: a dick disease. He probably go on STD because they
Speaker 1: were like and they said he can't. He can't get excited,
Speaker 1: not because of the heart, but because of his dick.
Speaker 1: Because so maybe his burns and he when it gets
Speaker 1: hard it hurts, might have gotten some of that chlamydias.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Poke disease. Yeah, he was poking too much,
Speaker 1: and his doctor said he had to stop it with
Speaker 1: the poke in. So whatever illness actually affected him, Basil
Speaker 1: Zaharov eventually recovered and continued his unsuccessful bouncing around the
Speaker 1: Mediterranean in search of a big score. By eighteen eighty four,
Speaker 1: he'd given up on this quest and decided to take
Speaker 1: leave of the continent for good and try his luck
Speaker 1: in the United States of America. Um, and I'm not
Speaker 1: going to kill myself by giving you an itemized list
Speaker 1: of every con and legitimate business that he dipped his
Speaker 1: fingers into. The Smithsonian magazine gives a pretty good overview
Speaker 1: of Basil's time in the United States. Quote it appears
Speaker 1: that he was the Count Zaharov who in Utah in
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty four claimed to be in possession of four
Speaker 1: black diamonds that played a celebrated part in Turko Russian War,
Speaker 1: and who a year later caused a small scandal in
Speaker 1: Missouri by associating it with the notorious Madam Pearl Clifford,
Speaker 1: one of the most beautiful soiled doves ever known in St.
Speaker 1: Louis were working as a superintendent of a local railway
Speaker 1: sleeping car company. He was certainly the Count Zaharov who
Speaker 1: hastily promoting himself to the imminence of Prince Zacharias Basilia
Speaker 1: Saharov married the New York heiress Genie Billings for her
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty thousand dollars and her expectations later in
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty five. So he bounces around like sells like
Speaker 1: like gets involved in some sort of scheme pretending that
Speaker 1: he has like these historic diamonds. Um, like runs a
Speaker 1: railway sleeping car company at some point. Like he's just
Speaker 1: constantly involved in these like weird little get rich quick schemes. Um.
Speaker 1: And then he marries this New York heiress uh and
Speaker 1: steals her money. UM. So yeah, um, he definitely has
Speaker 1: a pattern. UM. And I found a like a quote
Speaker 1: from the Maha Daily b Um like an article at
Speaker 1: the time, like written about him at the time that
Speaker 1: describes his modus operandi during this period. Quote, he maintained
Speaker 1: a high social position by means of letters from prominent
Speaker 1: society people which purported to be genuine, and had a
Speaker 1: library full of documents which he claimed were written to
Speaker 1: him by European dignitaries. He claimed to be a nephew
Speaker 1: of Prince Gortchakov, and told a remarkable story of his
Speaker 1: banishment by the Tsar. At one point, he created a
Speaker 1: considerable commotion among the set here in which he moved
Speaker 1: by threatening to go abroad and fight a duel with
Speaker 1: a Prussian prince who dared to insult his mother. So
Speaker 1: it's the same kind of lie, Like I mean, there's
Speaker 1: no Internet, so you just go over to America and
Speaker 1: just try a new set of lies on a new
Speaker 1: set of people. So that's pretty cool. Yeah, it's almost
Speaker 1: like the bigger the lie, the less like he thinks, like,
Speaker 1: the less likely. It's like you think, like, oh, someone
Speaker 1: wouldn't lie about something that big, Like you could easily
Speaker 1: find out if he was a prince so capitalized, so
Speaker 1: let's not look and do it at all. Yeah, exactly, Like, well,
Speaker 1: if he was a prince, we would know that. If
Speaker 1: he wasn't really a prince, it would be someone was saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: I do feel like in that period of time in America,
Speaker 1: if you had an accent that was vaguely European, most
Speaker 1: people would believe that you were royalty as long as
Speaker 1: long as you wore a suit. I think even like
Speaker 1: when I studied abroad with in college, it was like
Speaker 1: the girls weren't crazy for accents. It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: just have an accent. You could still be a bad,
Speaker 1: bad person. The Gauls still be mean to you, but
Speaker 1: they're like, no, the European accent, they're perfect and you know,
Speaker 1: can do no wrong better than American man. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you can get away with anything if you
Speaker 1: have the right kind of British acts. If you have
Speaker 1: the wrong kind of British accent, you can't get away
Speaker 1: with anything. Um real crapshoot being English. So um yeah.
Speaker 1: Basil's scamming in America worked out well for a while,
Speaker 1: but as always, he was eventually found out. Uh. This
Speaker 1: time it was by a Philadelphia businessman who happened across
Speaker 1: another newspaper article announcing his marriage in New York. Like
Speaker 1: that this woman in New York was getting married to
Speaker 1: this Russian prince. Um. So this wedding between in the
Speaker 1: Russian prince and a wealthy socialite was once again big news. Uh.
Speaker 1: And unfortunately for Basil. The businessman who came across this
Speaker 1: was originally from Bristol and was like, didn't I read
Speaker 1: a news article about a Russian prince marrying a rich
Speaker 1: woman and then that guy got arrested for like stealing
Speaker 1: a shipload of money. Um. So this guy reaches out
Speaker 1: to Basil's first wife over in England and her family
Speaker 1: starts an international manhunt to arrest this bigamist um. And yeah,
Speaker 1: so Basil has to flee the United States for again.
Speaker 1: So he's now fled two countries um for marrying rich
Speaker 1: woman and stealing their money while pretending to be a
Speaker 1: Russian prince. Um. But he got out just ahead of
Speaker 1: the authorities. He managed to make it back to Europe
Speaker 1: as the law was closing in on him. Um. He
Speaker 1: left behind his wife and a pile of debts once again,
Speaker 1: and by eighty five he was back in the Balkans
Speaker 1: working for an old employer of his named Thorsten nordon Felt.
Speaker 1: Now norton Felt ran a sizeable arms company. He was
Speaker 1: a weapons manufacturer and he was one of a number
Speaker 1: of up and coming business is that we're selling ever
Speaker 1: deadlier guns to the armies of Europe. Norton Felt had
Speaker 1: employed Basil as a salesman briefly back in eighteen seventy seven,
Speaker 1: but the two had fallen out of touch over the years,
Speaker 1: as Basil had fucked and scammed his way across multiple continents.
Speaker 1: But now that Zaharov was back and looking for work,
Speaker 1: Norton felt arms seemed as good a place to make
Speaker 1: money as any And it's here we should talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about the global armaments industry. Um, it didn't
Speaker 1: really exist for most of history. Early firearms were like
Speaker 1: artisanal tools. Each one was made by hand by like
Speaker 1: an artisan um and so like you couldn't really have
Speaker 1: gigantic gun companies in the same way you do now
Speaker 1: because you needed like some some dude like manufacturing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it wasn't really possible with like early arms. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: some firearms makers were like larger and more successful and
Speaker 1: like hired a lot of these artisans. But like international
Speaker 1: arms conglomerates the way we know them did not exist
Speaker 1: at the time, which is a shame because it means
Speaker 1: that the good people of the late eighteen hundreds couldn't
Speaker 1: enjoy the fine products that the Raytheon Corporation makes. Like
Speaker 1: that knife missile I told you about. I bet there's
Speaker 1: a thousand things you could use a knife missile for.
Speaker 1: To reason weapons person, you know, I like to get
Speaker 1: my weapons at the farmer's market. I just think I
Speaker 1: like to look someone in the eyes when I'm buying
Speaker 1: a killing machine. You know, I want to be like,
Speaker 1: I want to know the hands, you know, I want
Speaker 1: to touch the hands that that made it. I like
Speaker 1: twine guns, you know that makes sense. Farm to table drones, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like I see me where these drones free range. I
Speaker 1: want my drones to be played classical music while they're
Speaker 1: being made. I I only local bullets. I am not
Speaker 1: going to like yeah, I'm not. I don't want to
Speaker 1: murder the environment, just these random people I've decided to
Speaker 1: my enemies. Yeah, well, if you and joy artisanal killing machines,
Speaker 1: then will enjoy the fine products and services that support
Speaker 1: this podcast. We're back so talking about the arms industry
Speaker 1: in the late eighteen hundreds. I'm going to read a
Speaker 1: quote from Smithsonian magazine kind of laying out the state
Speaker 1: of the industry at the time. It was not then
Speaker 1: a huge industry. Best known was perhaps Alfred Krupp, the
Speaker 1: cannon maker of sen at Ten. He inherited a modest
Speaker 1: iron foundry from the old Frederick Krupp, who had started
Speaker 1: in in eighteen three. At fourteen, Alfred went into the
Speaker 1: business and slowly took over its direction. Cannon were made
Speaker 1: of copper. Alfred perfected a solid, crucible steel block from
Speaker 1: which he made cannon, but he had not yet perfected
Speaker 1: any projectile capable of penetrating the transigent mentality of military bureaucrats.
Speaker 1: Cannon were made of copper had always been it must
Speaker 1: always be hair. Krupp learned from the start that the
Speaker 1: way to sell cannon to the Prussian king was to
Speaker 1: sell them also to Prussia's neighbors and enemies. He made
Speaker 1: his first sales to Egypt, then to Austria. When the
Speaker 1: Austria Prussian War began, both armies fired crups cannonballs at
Speaker 1: each other, and his guns would have been working in
Speaker 1: both armies in the Franco Prussian War, but for Napoleon
Speaker 1: the Third's refusal to buy them crups cannon made bismarck
Speaker 1: swift victory possible. Um So this is like the first
Speaker 1: big armed manufacturers Krupp Um, and by the mid eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: like the industry was starting to grow. In part because
Speaker 1: of Krupp, Modern firearms made by companies like Winchester and
Speaker 1: Martini had also started to sweep into the world's wars. Yeah, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: Barrier company. See shot. Shoot the houses right by the
Speaker 1: Winchester mystery house. Shout out to San Jose is right
Speaker 1: by women, Shout out to San Jose. And if if
Speaker 1: you're in California and you're going to kill people, make
Speaker 1: sure it's with a Winchester rifle. No, no, no, don't
Speaker 1: don't listen to that. Just don't kill people. Cool, But
Speaker 1: if you do kill local Roberts As a Texan, I
Speaker 1: use Raytheon because it's made outside a plane, Oh Texas.
Speaker 1: So I know that if I'm gonna drone strike somebody,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna drone strike them with a drone made right
Speaker 1: down the road by the same artisans that I meet
Speaker 1: in line at the Trader Joe's before they go build
Speaker 1: missile guidance systems. That's good, you know, It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: keep keep killing local. That's what we want in our community. Yeah,
Speaker 1: kill lot, wan't no, this is too dark a line effect.
Speaker 1: Um So, yeah, like the the American Civil War had
Speaker 1: been impacked on the growth of the arms industry at
Speaker 1: this time because like we start to make like you
Speaker 1: start to see mass produced weapons that are like way
Speaker 1: deadlier than guns had ever been before, and suddenly all
Speaker 1: these these nations in Europe start wanting to buy them.
Speaker 1: Um there's fighting in between Greece and Russia and Serbia
Speaker 1: and Turkey and the Balkans, and like this spreads the
Speaker 1: development of new cannons and new firearms and spreads their
Speaker 1: adoption by the armies of Europe. Um so yeah, uh,
Speaker 1: this is kind of the state of the industry in
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty five when Basil gets involved in it. So
Speaker 1: like it is starting to explode, but you're still at
Speaker 1: this point where like the idea of massive international arms
Speaker 1: companies is kind of weird and new. Um and Zaharov
Speaker 1: was initially commissioned to act as the Norton Felt Arms
Speaker 1: corporate representative for the Balkans. He received five pounds a
Speaker 1: weekend salary plus commissions. Basil being an entrepreneur, and it
Speaker 1: instantly realized that selling a handful of guns at a
Speaker 1: time to a single country was not going to earn
Speaker 1: him the kind of money he desired to make, so,
Speaker 1: taking a leaf out of Krup's book, he decides that
Speaker 1: he should start selling guns by triggering arms races. That like,
Speaker 1: this is the way to make fucking money. If you're
Speaker 1: gonna if you want to sell a lot of guns,
Speaker 1: you make an arms race. Um. Norton Felt was not
Speaker 1: a large manufacturer, but they traded in some very novel
Speaker 1: weapons systems, including a brand new submarine that had just
Speaker 1: been invented. Now, submarines were really new at the time,
Speaker 1: and they weren't very well understood, and they usually killed
Speaker 1: the people inside of them. You wouldn't want to be
Speaker 1: a submarine person in this time. Um. But there were
Speaker 1: also like this, the new sexy weapons system like uh
Speaker 1: so they represented a huge opportunity because like, no one
Speaker 1: really had them yet. Um. And here's how the biography
Speaker 1: Man of Arms describes what basiled it. Next quote. Many
Speaker 1: years later, zaharof Re counted his part in opening up
Speaker 1: this market. I sold a submarine to the Greeks, and
Speaker 1: then he added with a conventional chuckle, and went to
Speaker 1: the Turks and sold them a couple Russia presented the
Speaker 1: next obvious target. From a less reliable source, we learned
Speaker 1: that Zaharov, with bland impudence, expounded the situation as he
Speaker 1: saw it to the navy minister in St. Petersburg. My
Speaker 1: firm is the agent of no one power. The Turks
Speaker 1: have brought two submarines from my firm. In the event
Speaker 1: of war, the Turkish navy can, thanks to these submarines,
Speaker 1: minister ships in the Black Sea and strike you where
Speaker 1: you least expect them. What the Turks possess you two
Speaker 1: can have in greater numbers if you wish. I proposed
Speaker 1: that while two submarines are sufficient for the local needs
Speaker 1: of a small power like Turkey, four should be necessary
Speaker 1: for your own great security. Is a great power. Legend
Speaker 1: relates that Russia fell for this logic that was, this
Speaker 1: would have made a total of seven submarines, which is
Speaker 1: a lot of money for him. So he sparks like
Speaker 1: a minor submarine arms race between three countries. He's like
Speaker 1: a high school girl. That's like trying to start drama
Speaker 1: where you go up to like one two best friends.
Speaker 1: You're like, oh, I heard so and so I heard
Speaker 1: Becky's you know, say that she didn't like you, and
Speaker 1: then they're like, Becky's a bit and then you go
Speaker 1: to Becky and you're like, I heard Kelsey while and
Speaker 1: now they're like fighting, but they weren't if it wasn't
Speaker 1: for him. I mean, that makes me think that teenage
Speaker 1: girls would actually be incredible arms dealers. I think teenage
Speaker 1: girls would make excellent UM intelligence officers because all of
Speaker 1: the CIA and intelligence companies, companies, you know, organizations do
Speaker 1: is they're just gossiping. That's all they're doing. They're meeting up,
Speaker 1: just exchange secrets and make little alliances, and we should
Speaker 1: use teenage Well no, let's never mind. I take that back.
Speaker 1: Let's not use teenage girls for anything. But let's harness
Speaker 1: He does listen to this podcast a lot, so maybe
Speaker 1: they'll take you up on that. Yeah, harnessing teenage girls
Speaker 1: and teenage crops. Not literally, not so. The submarines that
Speaker 1: Zaharov sold were notoriously shitty and basically death traps um
Speaker 1: and they were they were renowned as being death traps
Speaker 1: by the standards of late eighteen hundred submarines. So like
Speaker 1: in the era where all submarines are death traps, everyone's like,
Speaker 1: but don't get in those fucking submarines because they're terrible.
Speaker 1: Um but he makes a lot of money selling them.
Speaker 1: Um So. Uh. This, this fact that he sold seven
Speaker 1: submarines and got a cut of the commissions obviously generated
Speaker 1: him a tidy prophet and turned him instantly into one
Speaker 1: of the most influmential minds within the Norton Felt Arms company.
Speaker 1: Zaharov basically coined this codified his strategy of selling arms
Speaker 1: to one country to panic another, to then panic another
Speaker 1: so we could sell arms to them all. Uh. He
Speaker 1: came to like basically turned this into like he called
Speaker 1: it the system Zahara off. So he like he like
Speaker 1: names this thing he did to spark arms right, No,
Speaker 1: like system with an ether, like the zach a masterpiece. No,
Speaker 1: it's he is kind of naming it like a masterpiece.
Speaker 1: He's like when he goes into court meetings, he's like,
Speaker 1: the thing you gotta do is sparking arms race. That's
Speaker 1: how you fucking make bank with this ship. And like,
Speaker 1: I'm the guy who invented even though he's kind of
Speaker 1: stealing that from Krupp because he's, you know, a scammer.
Speaker 1: Um So, having cornered the Mediterranean submarine market, Zaharov next
Speaker 1: set his sights in a more ambitious goal, the European
Speaker 1: machine gun industry. Here In Maxim, the American arms maker
Speaker 1: who invented the Babe Ruth of weaponry meant to kill
Speaker 1: large numbers of European teenagers, had just arrived on the continent.
Speaker 1: Maxim was demonstrating his new quick firing Maxim gun, which
Speaker 1: worried Norton Felt since their own quick firing gun was
Speaker 1: really shitty. Zaharov knew at once that Maxim single barreled
Speaker 1: machine gun was way better than the one that Norton
Speaker 1: Felt made, and in the tradition of all gray businessman,
Speaker 1: he decided that if you can't beat them, join them.
Speaker 1: No one is certain how Basil convinced Hiram Maxim to
Speaker 1: merge his company with Norton Felt Um, but H. G.
Speaker 1: Wells wrote out one of the explanations of this. So
Speaker 1: this is H. G. Wells talking about how Zaharov achieved
Speaker 1: this coup quote. Maxim exhibited his gun in Vienna. When
Speaker 1: he fired his gun at a target and demonstrated its powers,
Speaker 1: Zaharov was busy explaining to expert observers that the whole
Speaker 1: thing was an exhibition of skill, that only Maxim could
Speaker 1: fire the gun, it would take years to train men
Speaker 1: to use it, that these new machines were delicate and
Speaker 1: difficult to make and could not be produced in quantities,
Speaker 1: and so forth. Maxim, after tracing the initials of the
Speaker 1: Emperor upon a target, prepared to receive orders, they were
Speaker 1: not forthcoming. He learned that Norton felt was simple and strong.
Speaker 1: This gun of his was a scientific instrument, unfit for
Speaker 1: soldierly hands. His demonstration went for nothing. What had happened?
Speaker 1: He realized he was visa v with a salesman, a
Speaker 1: very formidable salesman. In the end, he amalgamated with a salesman.
Speaker 1: So Zaharov is like, I can't beat this guy's guns.
Speaker 1: We'll light everyone about him until he realizes he's basically
Speaker 1: just gotta work with me, otherwise he's not going to
Speaker 1: succeed in selling any guns. That's such a classic manipulation move,
Speaker 1: because he's like, that gun sucks, don't buy that gun.
Speaker 1: And then once they join, he's like, now I have
Speaker 1: your gun, and now he's like it's good again. Now
Speaker 1: we're selling it. So no, this is the best, guys,
Speaker 1: super easy to use. You can kill so many teenagers
Speaker 1: with this gun. You want to kill teenage British people.
Speaker 1: This is the gun, so stop the killed so many
Speaker 1: teenage British people. This is World War One, Sophie. Yes,
Speaker 1: but but don't say if you want to I mean
Speaker 1: the domestic. If you want to kill the most European
Speaker 1: conscript soldiers possible, you want a Maxim machine gun. And
Speaker 1: they do sponsor this podcast. Jesus. So this happened in
Speaker 1: six and over the next couple of years, Norton Felt
Speaker 1: himself increasingly bowed out of the company he'd found, did
Speaker 1: while Basil Zaharov took control of much of the enterprise.
Speaker 1: And it's hard to overstate what a big deal this is.
Speaker 1: So Maxim Norton Felt Arms quickly becomes maxim Um like
Speaker 1: like it's just known by the name Maximum because their
Speaker 1: gun is like the is like the defining weapon of
Speaker 1: the age. Um and Maxim under Zaharov becomes one of
Speaker 1: the very very first massive international gun companies uh international
Speaker 1: arms companies, and they sold a huge variety of weapons
Speaker 1: to parties in multiple hemispheres. The additional reach the merger
Speaker 1: gave Zaharof meant it was even easier for him to
Speaker 1: spark arms races all over the world. And I'm gonna
Speaker 1: quote from the Smithsonian again here. The next step was
Speaker 1: a condembination with Vickers, Thomas Vickers, the second largest English
Speaker 1: manufacturer of arms. Maxim became a member of the Vickers
Speaker 1: board of directors. Zaharov's name did not figure into the
Speaker 1: organization at all, but he and Maxim and some proportion
Speaker 1: unknown to history, got for their company from Victors one
Speaker 1: point three million pounds over six and a half million dollars,
Speaker 1: partly in cash and partly in stock. For the Vickers company,
Speaker 1: Zaharrof became a substantial stockholder and Vickers and would one
Speaker 1: day be the largest of all. He also became the
Speaker 1: chief salesman of Vickars, which, unlike Krup and Schneider, had
Speaker 1: remained up to this point, out of the international market.
Speaker 1: But Zaharov showed the way in this bountiful field, and
Speaker 1: therefore he got moving about Europe with a card announcing
Speaker 1: himself as the delegate of Thomas Vickers and Sons. So
Speaker 1: the period from eighteen seventy seven to nineteen fourteen, when
Speaker 1: he's the chief representative of like the big one of
Speaker 1: the probably the biggest arms company in the world. Was
Speaker 1: also the period where the world went through the most
Speaker 1: significant arms build up that has ever happened. New technologies
Speaker 1: were being constantly invented and refined, and every nation in
Speaker 1: Europe was like worried about fighting every other nation in Europe.
Speaker 1: So they all were buying up piles of Maxim guns
Speaker 1: and Krupp cannons and like all of the weaponry they
Speaker 1: could possibly get. And Zaharov himself drove this trend. In
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety his Vickers Guns became the sole supplier of
Speaker 1: naval weaponry for the British Empire. Uh they bought a
Speaker 1: controlling interest in beard More shipbuilding firm in Glasgow, which
Speaker 1: gave the Gigantic arms concern. Zaharov managed a cut of
Speaker 1: the fortune that Britain spent building up her navy. Now,
Speaker 1: Britain's naval build up was driven largely by Kaiser Wilhelm's
Speaker 1: obsessive need to grow the German navy, which was steadily
Speaker 1: encouraged by Krupp. So like the German Arms Company, Krupp
Speaker 1: is telling the leader of Germany, like, you got to
Speaker 1: build more ships, and Basil's being like, hey, the Germans
Speaker 1: are building more ships. We gotta build more ships, and
Speaker 1: it just so happens that I get a cut of
Speaker 1: every ship built. So both corporations profited massively from this
Speaker 1: naval build up, which also ratcheted up tensions between Imperial
Speaker 1: Germany and Great Britain the world before where planes invented here?
Speaker 1: Or is this all of your boat? Like? Okay, so
Speaker 1: he because I'm just imagining, like because when you say
Speaker 1: like he went to this country and said this, I
Speaker 1: went to this country, I'm imagining like him getting on
Speaker 1: a boat, taking a long time to get there, and
Speaker 1: then being like, here's some gossip by this thing, and
Speaker 1: then like getting back on It's it's very slow. It's
Speaker 1: very slow. He's not taking plane. There are planes in
Speaker 1: this period and he a little later we'll talk about
Speaker 1: how he started convincing countries to buy air forces. How
Speaker 1: does a submarine like once it's bought, like, does someone
Speaker 1: drive it over to Germany? I think they were probably
Speaker 1: built in the Mediterranean and then just like sailed over
Speaker 1: to where they were going. Amazon delivery your U boats
Speaker 1: are here, Yeah, I mean Amazon will get a U
Speaker 1: boat to you way faster. I mean, they've gotten so
Speaker 1: much better at delivering submarines. Um so um, yeah do
Speaker 1: do do Yeah. Both Krupp and Uh and Uh Maxim
Speaker 1: or Yeah profited massively from the naval build up that
Speaker 1: just you know, also ratcheted up tensions in Europe and
Speaker 1: got both countries closer to fighting each other. Um and
Speaker 1: Zahrov continued to sell arms to both sides of conflicts
Speaker 1: and wars all over the world, using the cynical tactics
Speaker 1: of the system he had designed to ensure ever growing
Speaker 1: profits while the world lurched closer and closer to cataclysm.
Speaker 1: I found a really interesting book called Men of Wealth
Speaker 1: by a guy named John Flynn, that is a good
Speaker 1: job of ill straining how this web came together. Quote
Speaker 1: Evince favored them the Spanish American War, the Chinese American War,
Speaker 1: the English Bower War, in which the Tommy's armed with
Speaker 1: Vickers rifles were scientifically mowed down with Maxims machine gun
Speaker 1: or quick filing in cannon supplied to the Bowers by
Speaker 1: Mr Zakharov of Vickers. But the greatest opportunity was the
Speaker 1: Russo Japanese War, when it ended all of Europe's war
Speaker 1: ministries awoke. The war had been a great proving ground
Speaker 1: for guns and ships, a laboratory for militarists. Above all,
Speaker 1: Russia had to start at the bottom and completely rebuilt
Speaker 1: her shattered armies. The Czar provided over six d and
Speaker 1: twenty million dollars for rearming. All the armament makers in
Speaker 1: the world flocked to St. Petersburg. Zaharof representing Vickers, arrived
Speaker 1: first on scene. So like, he's the official arms manufacturer
Speaker 1: of the British army and he's selling guns to the
Speaker 1: Bowers who were murdering British soldiers. Um. And then he
Speaker 1: sells a bunch of weapons to the Japanese, who then
Speaker 1: beat the Russians in a very surprising war. And the
Speaker 1: fact that Japan, this like third rate power in the
Speaker 1: eyes of Europeans, beats Russia in this war leads to
Speaker 1: all these nations buying in more guns because they're like, oh, ship,
Speaker 1: Japan can do that stuff to Russia, they might be
Speaker 1: able to do it to us. We gotta buy more weapons,
Speaker 1: and the Russians are like, we need to buy way
Speaker 1: more fucking weapons. So like, he's very successful in getting
Speaker 1: everybody to continue buying way the funk more guns. Um.
Speaker 1: And what Basil Zaharov did in St. Petersburg would establish
Speaker 1: him as the greatest arms dealer of his era and
Speaker 1: perhaps of all time. It would also help make the
Speaker 1: horrible blood letting of the First World War completely inevitable.
Speaker 1: But that story, Teresa, we're gonna have to talk about
Speaker 1: in part two. How are you feeling so far? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, like, you know, I I know how, I
Speaker 1: know part of how it ends because I know I
Speaker 1: know we're getting up to the war, so so I'm
Speaker 1: just like I want to put those dots together. Can't wait. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is good. It's a good time. We're at the
Speaker 1: part right now where um, I don't know, he's helped
Speaker 1: spark a couple of wars, but um, not nearly as
Speaker 1: much as he's gonna do. Um. But for now, it's
Speaker 1: time for all of you to go off and try
Speaker 1: to provoke your own wars. In he means it's time
Speaker 1: to plug your plugables. Teresa, Yeah, it is time to
Speaker 1: plug your plug doubles. Oh my plugables. I was like,
Speaker 1: wait what sorry? I thought this was like I thought
Speaker 1: you were doing a sponsored ad for Glade plugables. Um, no,
Speaker 1: my plugables. Oh well, you know you can listen to
Speaker 1: my podcast. You can tell me anything where comedians like Robert,
Speaker 1: who's been on before, um confess something they've never told
Speaker 1: anyone before. I guess if this this guy Basil was
Speaker 1: on and be all lies, but generally speaking, people tell truths.
Speaker 1: And then we talked it's fun. You know what else
Speaker 1: is fun? Teresa? What the fine products produced by great
Speaker 1: companies like Raytheon. What what Robert means to say to tables? What? Okay?
Speaker 1: What Robert means the say is that he's doing a
Speaker 1: live show with Billy Wayne Davis in Los Angeles on
Speaker 1: March three at Dannisy Typewriter. You should get tickets and
Speaker 1: we will be saving selling our teas and a arms there.
Speaker 1: We will not be doing anything of that nature. You
Speaker 1: can follow Robert on Twitter. I'm saying you can follow
Speaker 1: our podcast at at Bastard's pod on Twitter, Instagram, and
Speaker 1: if your grease or turkey and you want to buy
Speaker 1: some submarines, will have a couple of we're listening Chris
Speaker 1: and it