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want to welcome everyone back to the peaking on show. Aaron,
what's going on?
Speaker 2: Man? How's it going man? Thanks for having me back.
Speaker 1: Of course, of course I don't. I can't remember who
shared this article with me. I reached out to a
friend of Mike, did you No, it wasn't me, But yeah,
I finally got a chance to got around to reading
it yesterday, and I was like, oh, this is wild.
This is this is an insane story put out by
an article that's you know, the Hoover Institution, which is,
you know, we think normy land, we think, you know,
just like Beltway kind of thing. But it's just nuts man.
So asked you to come on and read it. What'd
you think when you read it?
Speaker 2: You know, I don't know as much as I should
about the interwar period, but from this article I went
into a rabbit hole about just how utterly insane and
chaotic the entirety of Europe was from nineteen nineteen to
nineteen thirty nine. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was a buddy that I reached out to
yesterday for a little help on this in a little
background that he just told me. He's like, I think
the word the phrase he used was shit show. Oh yeah,
it was just a shit show.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean yeah, a perfect storm of what do
you need? What are the what are the best ingredients
for mass scale violence, but you know, not not technically
a war.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, I'm gonna start reading this, and I mean,
there's gonna be plenty of places to take breaks in
this because it's just it's wild. I'm happy that the
people listening to this are going to hear this, because
these aren't the kind of stories you normally hear. You know,
you normally hear this straight kind of politics, oh policy,
and then it's like, oh, oh, what the what the
hell is this? All right, so it's it's titled Shooting
the Volsheviks amid the Ruins of the Great War, and
American camera crew filmed a shocking site. The role of
Celuloyd has taken a strange trip through history by bertrand
m Patignon. All Right, here we go. In the late
afternoon of May twenty sixth, nineteen nineteen, in a field
about thirty miles outside of Riga. Outside Riga, Latvia, a
squad of nine German riflemen executed eighteen Latvian Bolsheviks. The
prisoners were shot in groups of three, each victim receiving
one bullet to the chest and two to the head
before toppling backwards into a freshly dug Grave, quoting it
was German efficiency at its best, wrote US Army Captain HAWL. Foreman,
an American relief worker who witnessed the execution. What kind
of relief worker? What kind of relief worker? Says that?
And I mean I think relief workers were a lot
more based back then.
Speaker 2: You there, Sorry, yeah, just a passive observer, probably non ideological.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, all right. Captain Foreman was one of
a dozen Americans whose presence on the scene may have
influenced the operations of the firing squad that day. If so,
this was because one of their number, Lieutenant Frank Johnson,
happened to be a newsreel cameraman. His camera recorded the
scene for the ages, the reading of the death sentence,
the removal of the prisoner's boots, and the business like
procedure of the German soldiers. In its day, johnson celluloid
was one of the most sensational film sequences ever shot.
Even today, after decades of atrocities recorded on film and tape,
the choreograph dispatch that the eighteen Bolsheviks is a spellbinder.
That piece of film is today housed at the Hoover
Archives as part of the Hermann Axelbank Motion Picture Film Collection.
The irony is that at its first showing in New
York in nineteen twenty, Johnson's film sequence was associated with
the name of Herbert Hoover. After the Armistice of November eleventh,
nineteen eighteen, my birthday, not year, Hoover had joined President
Woodrow Wilson and the other US diplomats serving in Paris
with the American mission to negotiate the peace. Among Hoover's
several roles, as head of the American Relief Administration, at
that time a US government agency, he had the enormous
job of coordinating American food delivery throughout Central and Southeastern
Europe and the Near East. The delivery of food was
complicated by the persistence of military hostilities in the scramble
for territory that once belonged to the German, Russian, Austrian
and Ottoman empires. Yes, like you said, ah a shit show.
Speaker 2: You now have one hundred new countries.
Speaker 1: In its day, this was one of the most sensational
film sequences ever shot. A chief concern of the Allied
diplomats in Paris was that Bolshevism would fill a vacuum
left by the withdrawal of the German military from the
Baltic region. The Allies thus arranged for surrendered German troops
to remain in place and help prevent the Russian Bolshevik
infection from spreading. In the words of the official ar
A history written shortly afterwards, Bolshevism was the supreme peril,
not Germany. Bolshevism was still uncontrolled and threatened the world. Germany,
though still a danger, was beaten and could be controlled
at whatever cost. It must be seen that Bolshevism did
not break through these barrier states.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it wasn't just the Allies interest, that
was also the German interest. What I gathered from my
research was that, you know, these free corps were primarily
motivated by anti Bolshevism, but when you start getting into
the context of the Baltic states, there was still this
national sentiment that Germany still needs to be in a
position of influence for that region. Because remember during that time,
this is before all the Germans got summarily executed or
marched out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, moving on turmoil in the Baltics. Latvia
became the key battleground of this contest. In the spring
of nineteen nineteen. Latvia had belonged to the Russian Empire
until it fell to German invaders after the Bolshevik Revolution
of nineteen seventeen. Then came a brief period of independence
in the wake of the German surrender in November nineteen eighteen,
followed in January nineteen nineteen by the establishment of a
Soviet government in Riga, the capital, whose residents were subject
to a furious Red terror. There proved to be no
shortage of German soldiers on the scene to help stem
the Red tide. They included a Free Corps unit that
had been stationed in Riga until the Red advance. New
volunteers recruited from Germany by means of vague promises of
land in the Baltic and remnants of the German eighth Army.
These units came together as the Iron Division under the
command of General Rudeger von der Goltz. This force was
supplemented by the Baltisch Landesfeher, a formation dominated by Baltic Germans.
The Germans were successful in their efforts to drive out
the Red Forces, yet in the process they chased the
Latvian Provisional Government from its seat in the port city
of Libau today Leapaya Leopaja in the Baltic and after
Riga fell to the Iron Division on May twenty third,
nineteen nineteen, the city became the scene of a white
terror that rivaled its predecessor in savagery.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I guess for a short time that Free Corps
actually affected a coup of the Latvian government. It didn't
last long, but I mean, for all intents and purposes,
they had control of the Latvian state for a couple months.
It sounds like it is crazy to think about.
Speaker 1: At whatever cost it must be seeing the Bolshevism did
not break through these barrier states. Hoover's American relief workers,
demobilized officers who had served with the American Expeditionary Force
were poised to enter the scene on the heels of
anti Bolshevik forces and help restore a semblance of normal life.
These Americans were scandalized by the behavior and attitudes of
the German soldiers, who were quick to say that while
they might have lost the war on the Western Front,
they had won the war in the east. Yeah. The
objective of the German forces, the Americans concluded, was the
establishment of German supremacy in the Baltic the gateway to Russia.
What would have what would have been if they would
have allowed.
Speaker 2: That, Well, we might have been able to avoid a
major World war.
Speaker 1: Later, after their Baltic adventure had come to an end
and they had been forced to return to Germany empty handed,
these German freebooters would claim that they had been stabbed
in the back by the Weimar government. For the time being, however,
they were doing a considerable amount of shooting in the
head and chest. The victims numbered in the thousands, with
the heaviest toll in Riga. The Germans classified their prey
as Bolsheviks, but while this label was no doubt accurate
in some cases, as often as not it was applied
indiscriminately to target uncooperative Lotvians.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, what I also like learned was that in
nineteen nineteen Latvian nationalists rose up and their goal was
to orient Latvia to be more of a agricultural economy
and more of a like a yeah, like an agricultural nation.
And at first they accepted help from the German Free
Corps because they also didn't like the Bolsheviks. But later on,
after that after the coup, those nationalists ended up turning
turning their guns on the Bolsheviks. At the same time
that the Allies were pressuring the Weimar government to wrangle
wrangle all the free corps.
Speaker 1: Theater of the macabre. The Americans gained admissions to the
execution near Riga on May twenty six for the price
of a pack of cigarettes.
Speaker 2: Yep, nothing's changed, at least.
Speaker 1: That is a story cameraman Lieutenant Johnson. Other testimony supports
his statement that the German officer in charge obliged the
Americans by moving up the time of the execution so
as to catch the afternoon light. That is, macab.
Speaker 2: Yep, gonna get some good cinematography.
Speaker 1: The Latvian soldiers went to their death stress in their
military uniforms, minus their boots, because at the time shoes
were as coveted as cigarettes. It is unclear whether the
prisoners understood before the death sentence was read out that
they were to be shot. Johnson observed that none of
them ever had seen a motion picture camera before, and
they stared at us, uncertain and bewildered as to whether
we had brought a new form of sudden death or not.
I have a picture here. I'll just describe it for
those listening, says three barefoot men, face and improvised firing
squad and lot Yatten, May nineteen nineteen, moments before shots
to death and toppling into their grave. The stunning footage
recorded by the American newsreel cameramen accompanying a German occupation force,
was to make an appearance in twentieth century politics, history,
and in a grotesque way, entertainment. One of the doomed
men in Johnson's film, however, appears undaunted by the proceedings.
Ordered to lie in his stomach like his comrades, he
none less lifts his head and laughs at the camera.
His laughter seems to be an act of defiance, or
perhaps he had lost his grip in the face of
looming death. In fact, this particular prisoner literally dies laughing,
as Captain Menard Hamilton noted in his description of the execution.
When all was ready, the officer called the name of
the first detail. The men named immediately jumped to their
feet and ran to the hole, took a look at
their grave, turned faced a firing squad, and stood to attention.
No bandages over their eyes, nothing, They just trotted into
place like boys lining up for a Virginia reel, and
the first one, Ashley, looked as executioners in the eye,
threw back his head and laughed, hmmm.
Speaker 2: Sh man, Yeah, well, foreshadowing.
Speaker 1: A striking detail visible on the screen, but unmentioned that
eyewitness accounts as the performance of several of the victim's hats, which,
at the moment the bullets hit their mark, are launched
several feet skywards before descending into the open grave after
their owners.
Speaker 2: This.
Speaker 1: Yeah, This, as well as the laughing Bolsheviks hysteria literally
on the edge of the grave, gives a sequence to
feel of slapstick, an impression enhanced by the unnaturally fast
speed of the thirty five millimeter film. Such thoughts may
have run through the mind of the cameraman, who, as
the head of a film production company in New York City,
had some theatrical experience. I've taken lots of executions, Captain Hamilton,
once the performance was over, but they have always got
up and walked away afterward. Yet Johnson's final shot, a
look down at the tangle of victims in their mass grave,
leaves no doubt that these Latvian extras would be unavailable
for any future performance. There proved to be no shortage
of German soldiers on the scene to help stem the
red tide. The US Army officers who arrived to administer
the delivery of food relief sounded the alarm to their
superiors in Paris about what Johnson called the ruthless advances
of the hun In order to clinch their case, they
rushed Johnson's execution film to the peace conference, where it
was screened for the assembled diplomats. By several accounts, the
scenes of the German firing squad in action helped persuade
the peacemakers to order the immediate withdrawal of the German
troops from the Baltic Yep.
Speaker 2: There you go, stabbed in the back.
Speaker 1: Yep. Picture here of Herbert Hoover, It says Herbert Hoover
is shown in his Paris office in nineteen nineteen, coordinated
heroic food deliveries to ravage Europe during the during and
after the Great War. Later, he followed up by leading
efforts to feed the lands convulsed by the Russian Revolution
in Civil War. His work for Hungary relief made Hoover
widely popular both in Europe and the United States, and
led to a proposal for a documentary film showcase to
showcase American benevolence and perhaps burnish Hoover's political prospects. The
Latvian firing squad sequence would play an unanticipated role in
that movie. And I will remind everybody that this was
written by This is on the Hoover Institute's website, So
that's right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he did nothing wrong.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Ever, Johnson, a motion picture man with a flair
for self promotion, later boasted in a story he wrote
for the Hearst Newspapers that, thanks to its Paris screening,
his Latvia and Horror film had proved to be a
deciding factor in the deliberations of the greatest legislationslative body
of modern times. Never was a more amazing motion picture
performance given, nor will such a one ever be possible again.
In Johnson's telling, President Wilson, watching in disbelief as the
Latvian soldiers are laid low, turns white with revulsion. Rising
to his fees feet. He voices outrage at the manifestation
of German brutality and gratitudes to the Americans who captured
it on film. Quote the gentlemen of motion pictures have
rendered a service to humanity.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, that's the best propaganda you could possibly
add for any future use if Germany, you know, gets
froggy again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean. And also it's you. It's your motivation
for everything that you're going, you're getting ready to do.
Speaker 2: Mm hm.
Speaker 1: It's just one of those things you can show people.
It's like, we should cut their rations down to four
hundred calories a day. Look at these animals. The Paris
Peace Conference was only the first noteworthy performance of Johnson's
notorious film sequence. The following year, it came to the
big screen as part of the documentary film Starvation, a
nearly two hour compilation of footage shot by a variety
of American newsreel cameramen accompanying American relief officials throughout Central
and Eastern Europe in those chaotic months after the Armistice.
Starvation was at to premiere at the Manhattan Opera House
on January ninth, nineteen twenty, and then be distributed to
theaters across the country. The impresario behind the film was
AR publicity chief George Barr Baker, a former magazine editor
and longtime associate of Herbert Hoovers, who had arranged to
send the motion picturemen into the field alongside the American
relief workers starvation as the uplifting story of America's postwar
benevolence would feature images of American relationship, steaming and support
on the Baltic and Black seas, long lines of emaciated
children and adults waiting to receive their food, children being
fed in soup kitchens, and the obligatory scenes of the
worst case children suffering from severe hunger and hunger related disease.
My reading of Blockade by Anna Eisenminger, a diary of
a middle class Austrian housewife, is uh yeah, everyone should
read that or go listen to my reading of it,
and you'll that help. It goes alongside this.
Speaker 2: I mean, how selective were our relief do you do
you know anything about that? Like how selective we were
as far as what countries or what areas or what
ethnicities we prioritized or deprioritized.
Speaker 1: Well, it definitely seems like Vienna was targeted and Austria
was targeted specifically, you know the because when you think
about it, when you think about Wymar Okay, there were
a lot there was. It was horrific, but it seems
like food was available. The problem was people just couldn't
buy it, so they had to do whatever they could do.
Austria seemed to be a different story. Austria seemed to
be and please somebody can somebody is going to correct
me on this about how horrible it was in Germany
and the big cities, But most of my reading is
what was happening in Austria at the time, and it
seemed like they they were specifically targeted to starve.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so all right.
Speaker 1: None of the doom men who had seen has seen
and stared at None of the doom men had seen
a motion picture camera before, and they stared at us
uncertainly well as to whether, okay, they're just repeating from
the last last section. Starvation subtitle was the camera drama
of a Hungry World. Yet the film's true villain was Bolshevism,
which Baker identified as the twin brother of Starvation. This
is sounding good. Thus, among the heartwarming images of American relief,
room was found for Johnson's Latvia execution sequence, as well
as well as a chilling episode captured on film by
one of Baker's team of cameramen in the Russian city
of Peskov, where a white Russian Army general arranged for
the public hanging of three Bolshevik spies for the camera.
The fact that alleged Bolsheviks were on the receiving end
of this violence and not its perpetrators could easily be accommodated.
The implicit message of starvation was that whatever the Bolshevik
element is allowed to gain, that wherever the Bolshevik element
is allowed to again a foothold, atrocity begets atrocity.
Speaker 2: As Baker wrote, you know, it seems like naive, wishful
thinking that the audience watching that would come to that conclusion.
Speaker 1: I mean, especially when you consider that so many of them,
even in the United States, were already being especially if
you're in cities or already being fed Bolshevik propaganda.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like you know where this film is being shown.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The fact that alleged Bolsheviks were on the receiving
end of the violence and not as perpetrators, could easily
be accommodated. The implicit message of starvation, atrocity begins to trocity, YadA, YadA.
As Baker wrote to Hoover two weeks before the film's premiere.
The definite value of the picture is that it is
the first anti Bolshevik document possessing any potent strength with
the masses. No normal mother who sees it would be
likely to tolerate talk of direct action in her home.
Speaker 2: That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
Speaker 1: There is a picture here. It says, weeks after the
Armistice of nineteen eighteen, President Widrow Wilson arrives in Paris,
where French President Raymond I think it's point care escorts
him past cheering thongs. The victorious Allies then set to
work crafting the peace treaty at Versai. Wilson viewed the
lot via execution sequence while in Paris. According to the
American who shot the film, Wilson was appauled. He condemned
German militarism. YadA, YadA, YadA.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Not even the President of the United States receive
the intended message. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it just goes and it just goes to show
that who can be propaganda? These are just you know,
these are men. And I mean I think of Trump today,
I mean who buys Trump? Who buys propaganda easier than Trump?
Speaker 2: Does?
Speaker 1: I mean think about it, really think about it.
Speaker 2: A man, a man motivated entirely by gut feeling.
Speaker 1: George H. Nash, who as Herbert Hoover's biographer, had tracked
Baker's public relations activities and his close association with Hoover,
considers it likely that this was, in effect a Hoover
campaign film, designed by Baker to advance Hoover's presidential prospects
in nineteen twenty. Hoover, who had recently returned from Paris
to Washington, was a rising political star. There was much
speculation that he would become a presidential candidate in nineteen twenty,
and even though he was serving in Woodrow Wilson's Democratic administration,
both major political parties were taking him seriously as a
potential candidate. None of this was lost on Baker, who
figured that Hoover's endorsement of Starvation would be a win win,
serving to promote a film that would publicize Hoover's post
war statesmanship and humanitarianism. On December thirtieth, nineteen nineteen, Baker
cabled Hoover to ask that he allow his name to
appear prominently in the announcement for the film. Although Hoover
himself made only two brief appearances on the screen. They
actually have a picture here of that announcement, the handbill
announcing the film the Camera Drama of Hungry World, and
there's a picture. Who is a Herman Axelbank hmm was
an avid chronicler of the end of Imperial Russia and
the dawn of the Soviet Union film enthusiasts. Launched his
career as an office boy for Goldwind Pictures. Axelbanks sent
camera crews to Russia to film Lenin, Trotzky and key
moments of the post revolutionary ear and collected older footage
of the war and the romanovs Zarz to Lenin nineteen
thirty seven, assembled much of that footage, including the Latvia
execution sequence, into what became Axelbank's only serious documentary project.
Axelbank's impressive collection resides in the Hoover Archives.
Speaker 2: So he used the same that that same footage in
a chronicle of the rise of the Soviet Union. Mm hmm.
Metro Goldwyn Mayer, uhh yeah.
Speaker 1: It's it's amazing how the footage like this, because of
how it's portrayed. I haven't seen the footage. I'm sure
if we search we can find it how it could
be used in so many different ways for so many
different levels of prop Again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I watch it and I think good,
But you know, anybody else could watch it and think
that's terrible and it's all ideological. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Edgar Rickard, another Hoover confidante associated with American food relief,
was skeptical warned that Baker's film, far from giving a
boost to Hoover in the ar, might well boomerang. As
Rickard reason, one picture of children feeding, of children's feeding
is just like another, no matter in what country it
may have been taken. And the only films which have
come over, particularly Lieutenant Johnson's film, are so filled up
with Bolshevist outrages and atrocities of the Germans that we
could not possibly stand for them. Rickard was also sensitive
to the mood of the American people in an election year.
From now until November of next year, the entire country
will be completely swamped in a presidential election, he observed,
which meant that the American public was turning inward, especially
at a deepening economic recession, quoting, the whole country is
absolutely and thoroughly sick of the European war and has
settled down to a definite fight on domestic problems which
are very serious.
Speaker 2: Sounds familiar.
Speaker 1: If it meant if it meant to be uplifting, Starvation
clearly failed. The film left one cold with an unameliorated
terror when reviewer wrote, Baker won the argument and Hoover's
name appeared in large print on the opening night announcement
for Starvation. The premiere on January ninth, nineteen twenty was
preceded by an aggressive publicity campaign carefully coordinated by Baker.
His preparations paid off, as the chief movie review outlets
of the day all came through in the way he
had hoped. Variety praised the film as a record of
America's work of humanity and also a stirring object lesson
why America should not permit the radical element to obtain
a whole and overthrow any of the president president governmental institutions.
According to Photoplay, the picture is calculated to make you
want to help feed the starving nations. It very likely will.
Moving Picture World applauded the film for bringing to vivid
life the story of how America erected a bulwark of
food to stem the tide of the Bolsheviki.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's a it's very reminiscent to where
we were, I don't know, five years ago, you know,
like them trying to lay the rhetorical groundwork as to
why we can't let why we can't let this this
new generation radicalize. You know, we need to give them,
we need we need we need to give them gibbs,
we need to give them, you know. Except it wasn't
even like that. It is like they wanted to give.
They wanted to give us, like people like us, young
white males or whatever. You want to identify yourself as
everything that we didn't ask for in the hopes that
we wouldn't radicalize.
Speaker 1: What's interesting is, I don't know if you saw the
numbers recently, but the I think it's among young evangelicals,
less than fifty percent support the state of Israel.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I did see that. That's trending in the right direction.
I've also seen things about the type of person that
is going to seminary right now is very conservative, very traditionalist,
overwhelmingly so something like eighty plus percent of seminarians within
the last ten years. So I hate them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One in four Catholic churches is going to be LTM
in like ten years.
Speaker 2: Yep. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: These and similar reviews may have cheered Baker, but he
knew better because he had been at Starvation's premiere and
had seen for himself the depressing effect the film had
produced on its audience. People were shocked by what they
saw on the screen, but not in the way Baker
and the filmmakers have had intended. So what do you
do if they are looking at it one way? You
go their way to turn in their direction.
Speaker 2: The reviewer for The New.
Speaker 1: York Times, echoing a complaint of many others in attendance,
noted that while the many scenes of American mercy were heartwarming,
the film unhappily and irreverently dragged in ghastly executions of
Bolsheviki by German firing squads and even more excruciating hangings
of Bolsheviki for some unnamed crimes by some unnamed enemy.
Such scenes left one cold with an unameliorated terror.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, I mean a miscalculation.
Speaker 1: Well think about it. I mean, how how would you
know what was going on in Russia?
Speaker 2: Yeah? No, I mean motion picture films like the newsreels
before a movie were pretty much how people got information
aside from the radio, you know, how they how they
got visual news.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I mean there weren't who who was traveling
there to see what was Yeah yeah. Baker recognized that
the Times review was correct, and that he and the film,
his film, the film producers had miscalculated. Concerned about having
associated Hoover's name with what was shaping up to be
a serious flop, Baker could take comfort in one sentence
in the Time review. Times Review, these photographed through the
assistance of Herbert Hoover, give no internal evidence of having
passed under his eye. In their final form, more consolation
came in the form of varieties only reservation about the
film as a picture. It may be propaganda for the
coming boom to secure the presidential nomination for Herbert Hoover,
but there is so little of Hoover in the picture
that it is propaganda for him. If it is propaganda
for him, it is of the most subtle sol Ah.
Speaker 2: Just everything up to the damage control was completely incompetent.
But the damage control just seems so good.
Speaker 1: There's a picture here, and it says in an inspired
bit of editing for Czar to lenin the laughing Bolshevik,
the condemned prisoner who faced death with bizarre levity, is
among the last group of three to be shot, enabling
the editor Max Eastman to heighten the tension. As each
tree is executed. The red soldier is still laughing Eastman
in tones as the prisoner, taunting his executioners, makes his exit.
The distance between Hoover and starvation in the public mind
was just about the only good news that Baker could
report in his letter to Hoover of January thirteenth, four
days and eight performances after the premiere. By then, the
film had been recut and shortened, and it's run in
New York's schedule to end within a few days. I
said that I would not get you into trouble a
chase in, Baker wrote to Hoover. I have not done so.
The enclosed clippings indicate that the public is not led
to believe that you have any interest in the film,
only that your name was in big block letters.
Speaker 2: Would this I mean, in your opinion, would you consider
this to be mematic? I know it's a micro scale,
but it has a memetic quality to it.
Speaker 1: As much as you can in a print medium, as
much as you can with newspapers and you know, and
you know, let's face it, I mean, back in those
days even normal people write the newspapers, regular everyday people.
The question is is how yeah, how quickly you can
swing and turn the narrative on its time? Apparently, you know,
the movies put out with a narrative in mind. If
they don't pick up on that narrative, well, what do
you do? You have to figure and if the if
people don't pick up on that narrative and they have
the opposite narrative and the opposite narrative is horror, or
what do you do? Well, obviously you're going to have
to either pull it, hope people forget about it, or
you apparently you're what's going to happen is what ends
up happening is is this footage is used on multiple
occasions for multiple purposes.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm, yeah, that's.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, that's the mimetic part of it is that
you can, wow.
Speaker 2: Can adapt it, infinitely adaptable.
Speaker 1: The footage lives on Starvation never made it beyond New
York City. It didn't have to, It didn't have to.
Speaker 2: All.
Speaker 1: It just has to take it just has to take
root in New York City, especially considering that's where most
of the people financing the Bolsheviks lived.
Speaker 2: What an unfortunate premare location.
Speaker 1: Startvation never made it beyond New York City. No print
of the film survives, although Johnson's execution sequence was salvaged
and eventually landed in the Hoover Archives. It may not
be the first execution ever captured on film, but it
may well be the oldest surviving such footage. It has
appeared in numerous documentary films about World War One and
the Russian Revolution over the years, often improperly identified as
visual evidence of white slaughtering reds during the Russian Civil War.
In you whatever you need it to be, I mean, seriously, uh,
there is no doubt duing large part to Max Eastman,
the socialist writer and former associate of Leon Trotsky, who,
in editing the nineteen thirty seven documentary from film Zar
to Lenin, identified the executioners as soldiers of the white
Russian Army under Admiral Alexander Koltchek.
Speaker 2: Totally accidental.
Speaker 1: Eastman also tried to heighten the drama of the sequence
by manipulating the images instead of taking his place, Instead
of taking his place among the first trio of victims.
The laughing Bolshevik, after nine of his comrades have been
shot dead, is shown looking up from the ground and
cackling in what is meant to be a spine tingling
cutaway shot. Thanks to the editor's handiwork, the laughing Bolshevik
exits last, taunting his executioners to the end, as narrator
Eastman in tones the red Soldier is still laughing. Thank you,
mister Eastman.
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean brilliant. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Baker, together with Rickard, would help get Herbert Hoover elected
to the White House in nineteen twenty eight. By then,
he had recovered from the considerable financial loss he took
as a result of starvation, a total of nearly eleven
thousand dollars. He never recovered his enthusiasm for movie man,
as he wrote a New York State Tax Auditor a
few years after his cinematic debacle, my advice to a
young man about to risk money and a motion picture
is no.
Speaker 2: And that's it.
Speaker 1: Short, short little article that I cannot remember who shared
with me. But when I read it, I was like, oh,
this has everything in it. This is I mean, this
is what the two thousand words less than two thousand words,
and there's so much in it. You have history, you
have you have not only history, but you have a
look at how propaganda was being used at the time,
a look into just how fucked up you know, the
uh the midwar years were, how just who knew and
when you when you're at the mercy of filmmakers and
newspapermen and propagandists, and you can't do you know how
people put stuff on Twitter all the time and like
within what you can within fifteen minutes, somebody could be debunking.
It's'd be like, yeah, this is no sorry, nice tribe,
but no, yeah, this is this is literally makes it
halfway around the world before the truth comes out.
Speaker 2: It's it's a good contrast too. I mean, you see
the ideological battle playing out in Europe with executions and
just mass violence, chaos, and then you see the ideological
battle in the United States, which was was untouched by
the war, playing out in much more subtle, much more
I guess, cerebral ways. Well.
Speaker 1: I think in many ways this can play as a
propaganda piece at home too, because you know a lot
of a lot of men did not come back from Europe,
and by showing something like this and just showing the
brutality of everything that went on there and starvation, things
like that, you can actually sell to widows and to
orphans that you know they died for something. Yeah, yep, yeah,
as terrible as the you know, this one piece of
film is you know you that can be a selling
point too. Look, we know these are the people we
were dealing with, These are the people we went over there.
This is part of the remnant that's left over. And
also think about it. It's the perfect it's the perfect setting.
This setting the stage where what comes, you know, twenty
years later.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as far as you know, we know now that
the German Free Corps for the most part were motivated
by national sympathies and then a lot of them eventually
ended up in the in the in the German high command,
if not you know, just the Nazi Party in general.
So I mean, it couldn't have worked out better for
those particular film producers.
Speaker 1: Well, another thing that's interesting is a book that a
buddy of mine referred me to about this was about
the inter war years.
Speaker 2: Is how so many like it.
Speaker 1: There are people in the Free Corps who were former communists,
and they were like going back and forth. They were ideology.
It it seems like ideology was only useful to some
in that they were going to have power and they
were going to be able to control.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and each Free Corps seemed like its own little incubator.
Like reading up on it, you know, there were multiple
Free corps. They had multiple different you know, they were
in different places, they were fighting different different enemies, but
each one was you know, you had like some monarchist
leaning ones, you had some obviously some nationalist ones, some
more motivated mostly by just anti Bolshevism. Each one was
like its own little incubator. It was pretty wild. Yeah, and.
Speaker 1: It really did seem like it was like, how was
nationalism going to win? Was Bolshevism gonna win? You know,
which would be globalism was going to win? Was you
know the I mean beyond nationalism, you know, caring for
your own people like an ethno, like more of an
ethno kind of you know and more of an ethno
kind of looking for the word I can't, but you
know what I'm talking about. M Yeah, So when you
have you know, that's why people people are like, well,
why did they call themselves socialists, so well, obviously they
were socialists, they were national socialists, they were leftists because
they called themselves socialists. People were calling themselves all sorts
of shit back then. Yeah, it was just what was
you know, I think I think Thomas has said basically,
if you didn't call yourself a socialist in the twenties
and you were a revolutionary group, no one was taking
you seriously.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems like, okay, what is the next sentence
out of their mouth after they described themselves as socialists?
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh yeah, we can get and go down that
rabbit hole. And Thomas and I have gone downe that
rabbit hole times of you know, people are like, oh, well,
you know, and what it always once? You like explain
that to people or show you know, like in nineteen
thirty eight, what you know what Adolph said that socialism
was how he described it. And you're like, okay, so
what do you disagree with here? Well, that's not what
he that's not what he meant, that's not what I
asked you. Yeah, taking these words on their face, what
do you disagree with here? And what I can tell
you is there are a lot of people who will
not answer that question.
Speaker 2: Well, it's exactly the same as showing them a speech
by Vladimir Putin when he explains, you know, his motivations
for why he does, why he's doing what he's doing
right now. I mean, show me something that you disagree with, Like,
what is he saying that is unreasonable if you're capable
of empathizing with Russia's position, which you should empathize with
all countries' positions. What is he saying that paints him
as this man, man, lunatic, all bent on rolling over Europe.
And uh, they won't even look at those speeches. Well
you can't trust anything because he's crazy. Well, okay, you're
just not a serious person.
Speaker 1: If we had if we had given or if it
just came down to it through a series of treaties
or any kind of strife, if the northern half of
Washington State had been surrendered to Canada or Canada took
it or something, and it's all Americans living there, but
they're living in part of Canada now, and Canada started
killing them like targeted bombings and things like that, And
there was a president who was like, well those are
our people, and you know there, we do have interests
up there. We we like the Seattle area, and we're
going to We're going to take it, you know, we
think we think it would be beneficial for us to
have it. And we went in there and we invaded
it to stop the killing and also take back what
was ours. What's the problem there?
Speaker 2: There's there's story, There's about one hundred other things you
could add in there to make your point, you know,
even even more crystal clear than than the Russia Ukraine analogy.
But people just refuse to refuse to empathize because putin
bad Pootler bad. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, we really have gotten to the point where, Yeah,
I've I say this a lot, and I'm sure people
are sick of hearing me say it is I think
one of the biggest problems that we have, and I
think we may be getting back to this, but is
the average person, and especially the average male, has never
been punched. It has never been punched in the mouth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yep. I think we need to take a look
at maybe re examining what the word free speech means. Yeah.
I know, we spent the last like fifteen years on
a free speech propaganda kick, and now that we have it,
I think it's time to move on to the next step. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, honestly, the worst part of this post
war consensus is is that there's really only one country
in the world that's allowed to take land.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well that's the whole history of the fucking world.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Is you your neighbor has something that you want and
if you're stronger than them, you take it.
Speaker 2: Are people going to die? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Okay, that's this is our fucking history. This is who
we are, This is who we still are. We just
suppressed it and you can't, you know, and if you're like, well,
fuck you. You know, it's like, I mean, I don't
particularly like what's going on with bomb and the Huthis
and everything, because I know the only reason they're bombing
the Huthis is for Israel, and I consider Israel to
be our ultimate enemy, you know, the zion Zionism Is
is the number one enemy. Yeah, but I mean I
understand why they're doing it. Oh yeah, I may I
might do it too if I was president.
Speaker 2: The fuck knows. Well. I mean, it wasn't until fairly
recently where I kind of realized. I realized probably through
uh actually, I think it was through one of your
episodes that one of the primary motivating factors as to
why we support Israel with all this money and arms
and just propaganda is uh that if we don't, then
they'll start a nuclear war. So we better pay up
or they're going to get antsy and then they're going
to start launching nukes. Yeah, I mean that that that
is quite a relationship dynamic.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean in the in the post war era,
you have a bunch of countries that have nukes, and
they have treaties and they have inspections.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: There's one country that's not allowed, that has nukes that
we're not even sure how many it is, and they
don't have to sign any treaties and they threaten to
use them all the time. Why do why do we
put up with cutter?
Speaker 2: It just it just doesn't bode well when any country,
any any nuclear country doesn't have a no first strike policy.
I know that that's bullshit, but it just, you know,
at least have the decency to lie about it, like, sure,
we're not gonna we have a no first strike policy. Okay,
at least we know that you're you know, somewhat sane,
somewhat in line with the First World I mean, we
know it's bullshit, but come on, make us feel good.
Speaker 1: India and Pakistan hate each other. India and Pakistan have nukes, yes,
and I have to assume that we control both of
them because the fact that they haven't, that they haven't
blown each other off the map yet, it makes no sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, god, that would be amazing.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, India's once you start going down the
India rabbit hole, you're just like, we can they just
stay there? I mean just that I don't want one
to leave like one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't care.
Speaker 1: They're gonna cure cancer. Let them sell it to us.
They don't have to come here.
Speaker 2: Oh it's that what is his name, Giant something, Giant
Bandari yep, watching his watching his speech at the Property
and Freedom.
Speaker 1: Uh uh, that's brutal, man, It's brutal.
Speaker 2: And just just having it all laid out to you
as to why exactly they are completely incompatible it is jarring.
And then going out into the world and like seeing them.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I've said this over and over again.
I'm sure people are sick of it. The one thing
that he said in that episode that not everybody picked
up on, but the people who did pick up on them.
It shook them. He said, the Americans haven't met the
average Indian yet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yep, I.
Speaker 1: Mean that should shake you to your core. And anyone.
Speaker 2: Well, my brother went to India with a mission and
I forget I don't know what what area he was in,
but he ended up he stayed. He was there a
couple of weeks, was absolutely horrified at the conditions. But
he ended up having to get basically metavaced to the
to the closest embassy because he got dangy fever and
like almost died, like he they had to. It took
him like three days to get to the hospital in
Hawaii to finally get the treatment that he needs, and
he was like on death's doorstep.
Speaker 1: And the worst part of it is if somebody here
in the United States falls ill, even if you don't
know them, you're doing everything that you possibly can to
help them.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm yeah yep.
Speaker 1: And there the attitude there is, well, if he dies.
Speaker 2: He dies, yeah, somebody clean him up. Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, one's going to have a sense of urgency that.
Speaker 2: Life is cheap. It's like that in most of those kinds,
his life is cheap, you know. That's that's like the
whole bug man thing. They're just bugman. That's how they
think about themselves.
Speaker 1: Oh man, that's just it's fucking brutal man.
Speaker 2: I think we need infinity of them.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, well, I mean there's so much better workers.
Speaker 2: Than you and I. Yeah, yep. They make the line
go up, let him in.
Speaker 1: You know, I think back to my days and you know,
working working, when I worked a regular job and all
of the promotions that I turned down because I was
just like, I'm just happy where I am. I was like,
I don't want any more. Happy with the money I'm making,
I don't want any more responsibility. I don't want to
be on call twenty four to seven stuff like that.
Speaker 2: I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't want that. And because we don't do that,
they may import somebody who will.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, Like what I see happening. Is this aversion
to you know, the Protestant work ethic, Like that's for suckers.
You know, we're Americans. We don't we shouldn't have to
work like fifty sixty hour weeks. And they're absolutely correct.
On a forty hour work week, on a regular job,
you should be able to in a functioning country and
a society that actually gives a shit about its people.
They should be taken care of on a forty hour
work week. You should that should be like the baseline.
You know, let's say a two or three bedroom ranch.
You should be able to do that, a decent car.
It's when you but it's it's when you get into
that fifty sixty hour work weeks of actually doing work,
actually being productive, you know, actually actually I don't know,
directing production, take and and being accountable. That's when you
should be able to be compensated more than say the
two or three better maratche and uh, I don't know.
Like a lot of people that I like, they don't
I don't know what they think about that. It's like
it's for stuckers. And that's that's an Indian attitude. Did
I lose you?
Speaker 1: Rams? I was muted. Ramaswani would say, oh, they'll come
here and they'll work eighty hours a week. First of all,
no one is fucking working. I mean, the amount of
people that are working eighty hours a week is please stop.
But yeah, I mean it's oh, well, because Americans don't
want we shouldn't have to, man, you know, It's like
there was a fucking time before you know, infinity printing
money that you know. I remember reading these stories about
how like black families in Detroit and like nineteen fifty eight,
nineteen fifty nine, the dad was working at like Ford
or Dodge or somewhere like that. It was he owned
the house, he had a car, his family, and they
were doing perfectly fine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: They could do that.
Speaker 2: We could do that. That's the baseline.
Speaker 1: But it's like, okay, so what what happened between now?
Between then and now.
Speaker 2: On who you talk to? Yeah, I mean back when
I was a libertarian, I would have said, well, it's
the money, and to a certain degree it is, but
it's the culture.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's definitely the money, but it's also the culture.
It's all. And I'm not even I'm not talking. I
just used I just use a black family just to
show that that's that was the baseline. It was like,
you know, a black family who had just hadn't moved
from their family, hadn't moved from the South, hadn't had
been in the South, and hadn't been in the North
very long, could do that. But white families, American families
heritage American families. Why can't they do that anymore?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yep, yeah, I mean I grew I was always
taught that when you're at work, you work. I mean,
have fun, bullshit, make friends, whatever, But like you're there
to produce. So you have a baseline of forty hours
a week to produce. That should be able to get you,
you know, that two or three bedroom ranch with a
decent car, and you know, maybe date night on Friday
and have a couple of kids, and you know, when
you start getting into that fifty sixty hour work week,
upper management, lower director level, then you can get like
the four or five bedroom colonial on the cul de Sac,
you know, with the with the Chevy suburban and have
three or four kids. Like that should be the baseline
for that. It's just I don't know, call me crazy.
Maybe I'm just a maybe I'm a work cock. I
don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know. You just know when you talk about
stuff like that, people just went, oh, you're just a commie.
You want you want everything handed to you. No forty hours,
I fucking go home.
Speaker 2: I will admit that, Like, yeah, I I am probably
a workaholic. I enjoy my job. I enjoy the people
I enjoy seeing the fruits of my efforts. Owner.
Speaker 1: You also have not an ownership steak, but you have
a sharing steak, So that's that's.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a little oh no, it's I I have
a I mean I have an ownership stake too, and yeah,
you know that's that's like also my retirement, so I
am heavily motivated to you know, maybe spend a couple
more hours a week than than a wage guy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, tell everybody where they can find you.
Speaker 2: You can find me on dot com at bt w
A underscore returns.
Speaker 1: Cool and Timeline Earth every week.
Speaker 2: Right, every single week, without fail.
Speaker 1: And if people want to get in touch with you
in d ms, they do they have to know, uh,
they have to know the code word right.
Speaker 2: Ask around. You'll find out people will be more than
call you. The password.
Speaker 1: Was that it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's it. Now feel free to DM me. You know,
my whole shtick is that I I know that I'm retarded.
I'm not I'm not an intellectual. I don't have time
to read books. So I come on Peach Show and
I end up learning more more with you in this
last hour than I have, you know, in the in
the last year trying to learn things on my own. Well,
there are many such cases like.
Speaker 1: Me, well, yeah, yeah, that's what that's what we're trying
to do here. People ask me all the time. They're like,
if you go to talk about a subject, why don't
you have an expert on? I was like why It's like, yeah,
I mean I can't have experts on. Sure they'll come
on this show, but it's like, how do you have
a discussion with an expert? How do you how do
you flesh out new ideas? What if like if you
were to the expert knows what he knows, and if
you want to be like, oh you know, well this
is what I see in it, and do you see
this in it? Ninety nine percent of the time the
persons can be like I don't see that.
Speaker 2: All right, let's wrap it up, all right, man, have
a good night. Thanks man. H