History of Everything VS History of Everything
01:35:57 Share

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. ♪

Bored with your boring cardio? Stop pedaling that snooze cycle to Nowheresville and try some cardio that's actually fun. Supernatural Fitness, available on MetaQuest. Isn't that right, Jane Fonda? Cardio will never be boring again. Sweat to the beat of thousands of chart-topping songs inside stunning virtual landscapes. Bet your stationary bike can't do that. Visit GetSupernatural.com and join the next fitness revolution. Supernatural VR Fitness, only on MetaQuest. Wait a team for team.

Hello everyone, Stakuyi here of the History of Everything podcast, and I am joined by... The History of Everything. This is really weird. Okay, case in point, before we actually jump into this, there's actually been quite a lot of confusion that has happened with this. So, sorry, in the first place, so you're History of Everything, you're Ho, I am Ho's. What is your actual name again? Chris. Chris. Chris? Yes. Stephen. Ho?

Ho hoes. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the confusing thing that has messed up with a lot of the Internet. It's been really funny. How many people have messaged you thinking that you are me? Because I keep on getting notifications of different ones that say, wait, you're not Australian. What the hell?

So the funniest thing that actually happened from this, because I've gotten it quite a lot, particularly because I made the channel. And when I made the channel like a year and a half ago, I had an interview that I did back when I ran a Facebook history page of me in a Ukrainian pilot. It's no longer there now. I've actually rejigged it all with the current logos and everything's pre-uploaded now. But it was there just as a placeholder. And then I went, all right, I'll go back and do that. And then my job took over. And so I never really did. And then

a year and a half later, I'm like, stuff it. I'm just going to put a video out. So I made a video. And then like a week later, everyone's going, I thought you already had a podcast. I'm like, what are you up about? I don't have a podcast. When did you start the YouTube channel? Like when?

I looked at the dates. The channel itself was made about a year before yours went up, but your podcast was on Spotify, wasn't it? So it was on Spotify. And what I did was I was told my wife and I had this whole conversation here because we started with the podcast because I got started on TikTok. That's what I did for short content. I started with dumb events in history, badasses in history, and I would just break down a complex topic in under 60 seconds. And that's how I would explain it. People wanted long form content. A lot of ADHD.

Basically, a lot of ADHD and autism. That's pretty much the sum of it. But I would go and explain these things and people would go, hey, this sounds really interesting. Can you do a long form one? Can you explain it? And I'm like, well, I didn't feel comfortable being on camera. It sounds weird. I can hold a phone like this and do it. But being in this kind of setup with an actual proper camera and like microphone and all this, I didn't like that really at first. I never knew it. Yeah, I hate it. So I went and started my podcast, the History of Everything podcast.

A couple months into that, when we had started, my wife said, hey, you need it. We need to do this YouTube channel so we can upload stuff and get that whole thing going. And we're like, oh, awesome. I chose the name. Oh, because I thought it was hilarious. So I could say, what are my hoes? And because history of everything, but guess I gave you my hoes that they thought it was great. So we look this up on YouTube and we see, wait, there is already a history of everything.

But hold on. There's not a single video uploaded to this channel. Someone just created an account and then didn't do anything with it, I guess. So we started making videos. And then lo and behold, I think it was like four months after that, six months after we go and look onto it. And it's like, oh, all of a sudden there's videos being posted. What the hell is going on? Yeah.

It's just a really weird coincidence that it happened at the same time because theoretically, I could have almost had it created before you did. And yet we did this at like almost the same kind of time frame. The funniest thing is as you were starting the TikTok, I had a Facebook page with the same name.

focused on text history. It doesn't exist anymore because I scrubbed my socials basically once once the YouTube channel got over about 50k subs. I'm like, all right, I've got two young kids. I'm completely scrubbing my socials because I really want their privacy to be kept. So I don't really have social media outside of my channel anymore and a private account somewhere on one or two other platforms. But it's really funny that it's just two complete paths and all of a sudden it's all together.

And I don't understand it. So all the confusing questions that people had, like, wait, hold on, you're not Australian. And I know I know I had people that got angry with me that my content was not on Patreon because they went to your Patreon and subscribe to it. They were like, what the hell is this? This is not what I signed up for. And I got messages angry with me about it. I didn't know what was going on.

See, I've never had that come up. The funniest one that came up that I was, I should mention before, but after I got back from Ukraine, uh, Lazerbeak and I both put out a video from our trip to Ukraine. Mine was the more serious. I wanted, I basically wanted to make people do feelies, uh, in the more depressing way. He used his typical, you know, make people laugh and they will listen and then got into the serious stuff. Um, and at one point he makes a crack in the video because we went to Chernobyl and we're feeding the fish in front of the reactor.

and the reactor runoff. And then he puts on screen history of everything can't hold up a thin camera completely because it was shaking around in it because we're sitting on an old Ricky Serpia bridge. And the comments under it was noted, don't let sticky hold a camera. And I'm like, wait, what? And then I remember, oh yeah. Yeah.

To be fair, I am a naturally very jittery person. You probably even see this in the first place. My hands shake a lot. I don't know what it is in the first place, whether it's adrenaline or anything else, but I get very wired and I do shake. It happens a lot. Helpful in other things I do, but not in actually holding a camera because for anyone who's seen the stuff that I do for short content, I get comments about my camera quality when I'm holding it because it's just like this while I'm doing things.

Oh, I'm like that because I build scale models and I do it all the time. That's why I have this thing on my desk. It helps. Oh, oh, oh. I'm a Scotch person.

Ah, Kentucky bourbon. Yes. See, we're different. Scotch whiskey, bourbon, yang, Australian, geopolitics, randomly rants about boats. See, it's different. I saw that. So when I saw that you were posting videos specifically that were addressing a lot of the stuff with Russian Navy, and that was the big one that I saw from the beginning. And those seem to be the popular videos was the ones that focused on just how broken the Russian Navy is.

I thought those were hilarious. Do you have a particular moment that is specifically broken that you want to share with people, though? Because in my case, I would have to say that mine is when they decided to create a round ship. The personal. Oh, the pop ups. Yep.

Yep. The thing that had no balance whatsoever. It was specifically designed that it could be able, that it should have been able to go up a river, not completely ignoring the fact that because of how shallow it was, that it meant that the whole thing would rock to the point that there was no steady aim whatsoever. So you're referring to the two military ones they built? Yes. The early stages of, not dreadnoughts here, but when they actually created warships that were specifically...

So there's a third pop-off and it's my favorite. It's the Royal Yacht pop-off. Explain. So the Tsars thought, all right, we need a new yacht because of course we do, because the country is completely poor. We've just gotten absolutely murderized by the Japanese. Things are not going well for us. So what we need to do is build a Royal Yacht.

As you naturally do. Yes. Yeah, of course. We want a palace yacht, though. We want a big yacht. So they go, all right, look at these pop-ups. They're really round. So we could build a palace on a boat.

But we don't have any dockyards that can build it that are wide enough because of how big we want it. So they got the UK to build it for them. And the UK dockyards looked at the order and went, yeah, all right, we'll do it. And then they did it. But as I was sailing to, from, I think it was, they left from Cornwall, maybe. Don't quote me on that. It might be Cornwall. It was in the south of England. They sailed south to the Med and then through the Mediterranean into the Black Sea because they wanted to base it in the Black Sea for their summer cruises, basically, because it's the nicest part of

russia in the world the russian empire in the winter at the time yeah so it's the only kind of thing that wouldn't freeze over yeah yeah the the only issue with that is it's a giant circular looking ship so when it sails up over a wave and spacks back down it's a giant spitting top like a coin so it took a wave it hit a wave it came back down and the whole sun cracking because of this amount of stress that was put upon it

I'll send it in the Discord chat. It's amazing. Send it over. I got to pull this thing up here so that people can get an image of it. The early ship technology and how people treated things is so incredibly dumb. I mean, I've covered stuff with like the Gustavus like

I've covered all different kinds of things with like the why am I drawing a blank? I've covered like with the Vasa. I have covered early ship technology. They didn't even have cannons on wheels. They thought that we needed to keep it steady. So they bolted them to the decks in the first place, which you know what then happens when you fire a cannon.

It rips the deck up. It doesn't go up. It rips the deck apart. Here we got some fun photos of the Lavadia. Sorry, it was built in the 1880s and they used it. It was before they got murdered by the Japanese. All right, hold on. I'm going to pull this thing up. The Scots built this beautiful thing. Oh, that's a better photo. The last one I just sent you is the best photo of it. It is horrific. That doesn't... Okay, can I be blunt with you on this? This doesn't look like a ship.

It looks like a boathouse. And by that, I mean something that you would see that is already on the bank of a river that has been turned into a restaurant. You know what I'm talking about when I describe that here. It's a boathouse that is, they made it look like a boat, but it's really just a house. It belongs in Dubai. But it's, the best bit is it's 71 meters long, right? The submerged hull, but it's 79 meters overall. And then it's 50 meters wide.

It's as wide as a football field. Oh. In terms of length and width, it's about the same as an NFL field, roughly. That is ridiculous.

And so, of course, the moment that a wave hits it, the stress that that then puts as it spins around, considering we're not talking about just something that's flat on the top. It's going to have all the varying different stuff with smokestacks. It's going to have all the varying materials on it. The force of that as the weight is pulled out to either side is going to crack it right down the middle. The thing is, they got this in the 1880s and it kept doing this nonstop.

So they used it as a yacht, like you said, but as a houseboat in the docks for a family to visit. They never actually took it out to sea except for once. It was a literal royal houseboat tied up to the dock. That is that's the equivalent of, again, when you go out to a dock restaurant and you're just like, oh, yes, we're on the beach. But no, you're on a floating platform that's tied to the base that you can eat at a chair to pay thirty dollars for a sandwich.

Alexander III thought it was so crap he gave the order that the engines get taken out and they were used to be cruisers. And it just floated around the harbor as a house. I would hope so. That's all it was good for. It was a floating platform because the moment anything would happen, it would be gone.

Yeah, pretty much. It's horrific. I think it was used to store some weapons and then eventually the, I think it was the Soviet scrapped it, but it may have been, it may have been the Russian Empire. I don't remember how long it lasted for. I think it really depends because-

After because after the Russo-Japanese War, they had to completely rebuild the Navy. So it may have been after that, because theoretically, I'd have to look it up to know. But I know that they repurposed engines from old ships and other material that they had to scrap in order to try and rebuild the Navy that got wrecked out on the Pacific. So theoretically, if they were trying to use it to build cruisers, that could be from that.

Well, but the thing is, I know the engines got out of it a lot longer before it got destroyed. I know they used it as a houseboat for quite a while. And then they used it as an arm store or something, because of course they did. But it basically just popped around the Black Sea ports for a while. And it's just ridiculous. All right, hold on. We're going to verify this. What is the name of the thing in the first place? Lavardia, I think. I have these photos saved somewhere. Yeah, Lavardia.

Hey, I'm Ryan Reynolds. Recently, I asked Mint Mobile's legal team if big wireless companies are allowed to raise prices due to inflation. They said yes. And then when I asked if raising prices technically violates those onerous two-year contracts, they said, what the f*** are you talking about, you insane Hollywood a**hole?

So to recap, we're cutting the price of Mint Unlimited from $30 a month to just $15 a month. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. $45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes per details.

Bored with your boring cardio? Stop pedaling that snooze cycle to Nowheresville and try some cardio that's actually fun. Supernatural Fitness, available on MetaQuest. Isn't that right, Jane Fonda? Cardio will never be boring again. Sweat to the beat of thousands of chart-topping songs inside stunning virtual landscapes. Bet your stationary bike can't do that. Visit GetSupernatural.com and join the next fitness revolution. Supernatural VR Fitness, only on MetaQuest. Wait a team for team.

Russian yachts, Lavadia. Okay. All right. They named it after a palace in Crimea. No, which is also called Lavadia.

So it was moored in Nikolaev and halt and halt and stripped of all of her former luxuries. The engines were removed and used on Russian cruisers. The rusty Hulk saw some use during World War One and was finally decommissioned in 1926. So it was after potentially the it was because if it was used during World War One. Hold on. Hold on. I got to go down to this thing in the first place so I can see specifically when this happened.

According to the New York Times, on December 10th, the Russians dispatched 83 men to assist repairs at Lavadia while still entertaining plans to build a 12,000 ton Lavadia style armed ironclad.

Oh, yeah, no, this was the practice to build the really giant one that they wanted to build afterwards. Oh, my God. Okay. So, yes, on March 31st or on 13th, the Russian Empire was shaken by the murder of Alexander II. Let's see, 1883, it was renamed. Okay, here we go.

plans to convert her to a troop ship. So at first they were still going to use this thing, but they were going to use it as a freaking transport vessel, which I can only imagine how that would have felt for the soldiers being transported across it. But by the end of the decade, her engines had been removed. OK, so that was the 1890s. It was before the Russo-Japanese War and installed on the Minin, General Admiral and Duke of Edinburgh. The Hulk was used as a floating barracks and a warehouse after that.

Okay, and then finally it was struck off the Soviet Navy. I found a photo of it as a warehouse. You found a photo of it as a warehouse? I'll send it to the Discord. Yeah, it's being used as a warehouse. There's a torpedo boat next to it. You can see! Okay, hold on. I need to open this up like a browser so that it's like easier for me to see on this. Hold on. I gotta open this up and zoom this in so that people on here can actually see it properly in comparison to what I have.

So from the top of this, you can you just as we said, it turned into a barracks and you can see where they stripped out basically every single thing off of it and then just added a roof with a secondary layer where I'm assuming that the attic to store everything in. Yeah.

The best part was the engines were used later in a ship called the Duke of Edinburgh. It was named after the Duke of Edinburgh, who was the husband of Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna. Oh, my God. They actually had careers afterwards.

That is that is hilarious and so stupid in so many ways. See, this is why I love dumb events in history. That's what got started for me on on everything is I just started talking about different kinds of dumb events. So off the top of your head, have you heard of an event? And I always tell the story. So for anyone who's heard this before, I apologize, but it's my favorite one. So get over it. Have you heard of the the Dublin Whiskey Fire?

Yes. So you already know the story. It's up there with the Boston molasses tsunami for these silly events. Yeah, well, agreed. But the molasses flood, I would argue, was more tragic than stupid because it was because it was the sheer incompetence of lack of maintenance and complete uncare when it came to safety that led to the Boston molasses flood where innocent people died as a result.

The Dublin whiskey fire was not the fire or the explosions. It was 13 people dying of alcohol poisoning because they thought, hey, free booze, and then continued to drink it up until they died. Mind you, when people wonder when this is taking place, this is in the late 1800s. So this is occurring at a point in which the streets of Dublin...

Ireland has not been modernized. It is covered in animals going through the street and feces. So as the whiskey is flowing through in a literal flaming river down through the street, there's shit on those streets and people are taking tins, caps, everything that you can imagine. And they are taking it and drinking it right there. Theoretically, though, it's flaming whiskey.

So how much sabotaging is going on here? You know, it's a great question. That is a great question. To what degree would it actually qualify? I wonder. It's not something I'm willing to test personally. Oh, I'm not testing it. No, no. Someone else can do that. No, no. Theoretically, if it was absent, maybe because then it would be even stronger. But then absence would have its own cursed history when it came to things. Oh, I can't drink absinthe anymore.

Not after uni. Do you remember what happened with Absinthe, specifically in Europe, and why it got banned? No, honestly. And I probably shouldn't, considering how much of it I used to drink. Okay. So, funny story on this. Another dumb event in history. You know how there's a whole thing when it comes to prohibition and specifically people trying to put blame on substances or other things for their own poor decisions and what it is that they do? Yeah.

Absinthe fell into this kind of trap that people would associate with other kinds of behaviors, where due to how incredibly strong it was and relatively cheap, it was a very popular drink for people to take, particularly in a medicinal form, if you will. Well, there was a murder.

People were already as part of varying different prohibition slash proto feminist movements were against absinthe and other kinds of alcoholic substances. But absinthe got particularly bad attention after a famous murder case occurred in which a drunkard of a husband went and murdered his wife in a drunken rage, followed by, I think also he killed one of his kids. It might have just been his wife or his kids. I'll need to pull up the exact story of what happened with it.

But in court, when all this went down, his defense was that he had no control over himself because he had been he had been cursed by the disease of absent because it was believed that since absent has slight hallucinogenic properties like more than just regular alcohol, that absent actually makes one more violent than

And crazy than if you just drink the same amount of alcohol percentage in whiskey or something else. Like absinthe will actually make you hallucinate and will give you a absinthe disease.

So can I use that as an excuse to get unbanned for the uni res at the Sunshine Coast for when I drank a bunch of absinthe and rode a shopping trolley into their pool while having a Gladius out screaming Ave Caesar in a Toga? If it was the 1800s, yes. I could also probably use that as an excuse for my wife when I peed in the towel warmer. But that wasn't absinthe that I was drinking in that night. Just say it was absinthe. Just say it was absinthe.

For anyone who watched the unsubscribed podcast episode, we've already explained that story here. What happened? I actually was wearing a whole small skull. I did that too. That was all of it. Hold on. I'm going to pull this thing up here just so I can just so I can go off this here in the first place. Absent murder case. Let's see. Where is it?

Yes. Jean Lefray. Yeah, there it was. Okay. So Jean Lefray was a French peasant and laborer living in Camungi, Switzerland. Here he lived with his pregnant wife and two children aged four and two in the second floor of an old farmhouse. His

his parents and brother lived on the first floor. Lanfray had served three years with the Chassez Albins, the French mountain infantry. Some claim that his time in the military is why he was so prone to raising his voice and drinking so much. It wasn't unusual for him to yell at his wife, but nobody else in his village thought much of it. There was certainly no reason for them to believe it would lead to a murder. However, Jean Lafray did have a reputation for being quite an alcoholic. Some days he was known to put up words of fear

five liters of wine away in addition to whatever else he could get a hold of. Five liters. He would often go on benders at the local bars getting in arguments with strangers and embarrassing himself. If he was cut off, it wouldn't be uncommon for him to have fits of rage if he couldn't get enough to drink. So...

In 1905, on one morning, Jean Lafray, who told his wife to wax his boots since he'd be gathering mushrooms the next day. His father and brother all made their way to a cafe for a drink before they began their work day. Throughout the day, he would go on to drink a massive amount of alcohol during his lunch break into the cafe once the day's work had been finished. You know, as you naturally do when you're going out to work is to just drink. Once home, he didn't stop here. Lafray continued to drink a strong homemade brandy until he saw that his boots were

were unwaxed. Dun, dun, dun! So, an argument ensued between him and his wife, wildly drunk from an entire day's worth of drinking, and he stormed off in the next room. When he returned, he returned holding a rifle, shot his wife, and then proceeded to shoot his two children.

In the commotion, John's father had to run to get the police who hurried to the farmhouse. He then tried to turn the rifle on himself, but he only managed to shoot himself through the jaw afterwards. He was arrested by the police and then treated in nearby infirmary for being imprisoned before being imprisoned.

His lawyers, and this is what happened in the court case afterwards, maintained that he was not responsible for the murders because of his drunken state. And a prominent Swiss psychiatrist explained that this was a case of absent madness. Yeah. Nevertheless, the prosecution won and John Lafray was sentenced to 30 years in prison on four counts of murder. But he would not serve that sentence because three days later into that, he just ended up offing himself.

As you know, he deserved after everything. Yeah, honestly, a bit kind, but you know. But that case created so much drama around Absinthe and it popularized the idea of Absinthe having hallucinogenic properties and making people violent inherently. It didn't matter that he had drank like five liters of wine. It did not matter that he downed an entire keg of homemade brandy that day.

It was the absinthe that he had that that particular substance made him go and murder his entire family. And as a result, pretty shortly after, as this and other cases were popping up, absinthe was banned. I'm trying to figure out what his stomach lining was made of. Whatever it was, he probably would have died by age 45, cirrhosis or something. That's assuming he has a liver. Assuming, yeah. I think it's just dust at that point.

Yeah.

I would say that's pretty wild, but, you know, I've seen some pretty wild stories come out of Russia that are just alcohol semi-related or alcohol related. And to be honest, I don't think I was sober a single day when I was actually there for a couple of weeks back in the early, mid 2010s. So I get it. Have you seen demographic data that has come out of Russia in here about what ended up happening with alcohol, like alcoholism and specifically how the average life expectancy has gone down?

because of alcohol consumption. It's horrific. It's absolutely horrific and I completely believe it. And the fun part is a lot of the demographic data, which is recently they've done the thing with the census again, where they're refusing to publish census data. Fun fact, the Soviets did that too in the 30s after a certain event. I don't know what that is. What event could it have been? Camera, camera.

Camera. Yes. An event, a starvation event that is also known as the G word that I won't say because I don't want to get you demonetized. Yeah. Considering that I just talked about all this time in here with the Swiss family murder case, who knows exactly what's going to happen with this? Because even then, this episode, I have this on YouTube. I'm still going to post it to YouTube as it is, but I will be taking the audio for this primarily going up on the podcast episode.

Still, it's nice for people who are watching this to be able to see and actually put faces to, you know, the varying names that we have here. See, we're different. He's brunette. I'm blonde. We're different. It's not that confusing. His hair swoops to that side. Mine swoops to this side. Exactly. I watch cricket. You're American, so you probably don't. See, it's different. No, I don't watch sports. I dress up in armor and hit people.

So yeah, that's a sport. That counts. Yeah. So this helmet, you can see behind me right here. This is a Boohert helmet. So it's the... Do you know the different levels of what happens with LARP and Boohert and everything else? Not really. I mean, I have a LARP sword here that I got for fun, which is... It's Erlandil. Yes. Yes. It's very good stuff. Because I'm a massive Tolkien nut.

Well, that's good. Yeah. So we have some things in common, but we are we are different. We promise. Yes. So I have a set of aluminum chain mail that is down here. So obviously not real. Only weighs about 12 pounds. I have a real suit of chain mail that weighs about 25 pounds because that one's steel. And then this one, what they do with this is they go, OK, let's take medieval combat and then turn it into an actual sport.

But because we want people to survive, we're going to make the armor extra thick. So it's much heavier. This helmet weighs like 25 or 30 pounds. The full kit of these board outfits typically weigh about 90 pounds. Like they are heavier than what things would normally be for a suit of armor. And it's just because even though you're using blunted weapons, they want to make sure that no one dies. I'm just doing this.

I was doing squats at the gym last night on the Smith machine and I was using about that weight. It's not a little bit of weight, especially after a while. It builds up very quickly. Oh, it does. Especially when you're in a ring with three guys who are also wearing the same amount of weight and you are punching, smacking and kicking each other. See, this is why when I eventually do actually finish an outfit for the...

society around here of Eastern European history people who all dress up at the red fairs that happen like 10 feet that way. I'm going as a Cossack, an early Cossack, because I can wear my Vyshovanka and light pants and I don't have to wear armor. It's nice. Yeah, that would be nice. That would be nice. I made a horrible mistake of wearing a full lancenect kit out to a event here in May where it was 90 degrees outside

And I was in double layered cloth, very frilly with a full plate of a steel breastplate, gorget and pauldrons and everything. I was in a full kit and it was it was awful. That event also got destroyed by a tornado. So that was a completely different thing as well.

So you were role playing Emperor Barbarossa as he dived into the river. Oh, I might as well have been. The storms were so bad during the event. For anyone who is familiar with The Reckoning, it's a great LARP. It's a great fantasy LARP. It's really cool. But simultaneously, the event was a four day event that got canceled after a day and a half because so much rain came down and tornadoes that it destroyed everything. And we had to get the hell out.

So we were trudging through mud in full armor. I felt like a knight at the Battle of Agincourt. Yeah, Agincourt. I was thinking that as well. You had Agincourt? Yeah, because 50 pounds worth of armor on top of my own weight in rain boots as I am being sucked through mud as I'm trying to get up a hill.

But you have an appreciation now for just how miserable that battle was for the French. Oh, absolutely. For anyone who's not familiar for what ended up happening with Agincourt and why it is really stupid. So the French outnumbered the English like two to one from the very get go. The English army was like made up of 70 to 80 percent.

Archers typically belong. But that's what you typically have. And they were exhausted, but in a pretty decent ish defensive position. They set themselves up, built up slight fortifications in order to protect themselves. And the French thinking, well, we heavily outnumber the enemy. It's not going to be a problem. They went and charged after a rain had already happened the previous day with their cavalry.

So the cavalry arm and French cavalry, heavily armored French cavalry charging up. If I recall, it was a light hill. Like it wasn't a steep one, but it was a light ditch and a light hill. Yeah.

charging up this thing, their horse, while the knights are completely protected and are not being harmed at all by the longbowmen that are firing them in mass volleys, when you have several thousand archers firing at you at the same time with very heavy war bows, these were killing the horses out from under the knights who were falling and getting trampled over after drowning. Yeah. And then drowning because they would fall into literal marsh at that point.

and not be able to get back up again. Because once they were in, horse steps on your back. Yes, maybe it doesn't kill you in the armor, but it presses your body down into the mud. You suffocate to death. That would happen. So as this is going on, the few knights that make it up to the top end up getting just dragged off their horses that are exhausted by that point and killed, and the remaining knights turn around. So the French, in their infinite wisdom, decided, well, if the horse is not able to make it up...

We'll simply send the men on foot. We outnumber them. It's fine. And then they go and they're heavily armored knights in like 50 to 100 pounds worth of armor each are now marching up a light hill in mud.

slowly while continuously getting pelted with arrows. And yes, these arrows, they're not going to destroy the helmet. They're not going to get through the breastplate. They're not going to be able to penetrate the armor. But every single time there is a joint or something else, there's gaps are going to be found. Yeah. The few nights that end up making it to the top are so exhausted. They just get eviscerated. It's like almost the entirety of French nobility that gets wiped out at that point.

in a single afternoon. See, the thing about Ashkel with the English, like there's not a large amount of men at arms, but they were really highly trained men at arms because they'd been on campaign for months. They were all veterans. They knew exactly what they were doing. And they just sort of were sitting there going, all right, here we go. And then by the time they get there, like I said, they're exhausted. So it's just bonk. And then they just fall over and die. It's really interesting because if Henry IV had actually survived

for a long time after that, Agincourt actually won him

the throne of France. He was set to inherit it when the French king died. And had he lived, he would have. Yeah. Which is just wild to think about. Yeah. There would have been a real time. Of course he died of something. I forget what he died of. Some medieval disease looking thing that you wouldn't die from today. I think it wasn't just that. Like he had a disease. Like he had some kind of actual disease. But then on top of that, he was, there was some kind of genetic issue that specifically he had as well. Yeah.

What was it? But he probably would have lived if it was today. He most definitely would have lived. I mean, yeah, he would. Hold on. It was... But it would have been interesting because at that point as well, Scotland's only real defence against British invasion is France. Oh, English invasion is France. So you could have like had this super united Ancien Empire kingdom, which would have just been, it would have rivaled the Holy Roman Empire, which would have been completely wild. Yep.

OK, here it is. Yeah, he shot himself to death. There you go. It was dysentery. Died of dysentery. Or a good trail. Yeah. So so the the most likely answer is that he shot himself to death from dysentery. But also, it seems to have degenerated quite quickly, as he may have also been potentially sick with smallpox, a bacterial infection or even leprosy. There is he had something and he contracted a serious illness at some point between May and June.

Yes. He also may have been suffering from moving in full armor constantly on campaign if heat stroke and led to a relapse of a previous illness. Yeah, that's what it was. And I forgot it wasn't him that had the genetic issue. It was his son, if I recall correctly. Yeah, he died young, too. Yeah, young enough to save the problems. It was Henry VI, wasn't it? Yeah, Henry VI. That was the guy that I'm thinking of here.

One of my best friends, actually, she's English and she's been like poking me going, do you think I'd have you the sixth? It's absolutely hilarious, which is how wrong everything goes for him. I'm like, yeah, I'll get around to it.

Let's see here. However, in August of 1453, Henry received the bad news his army had been routed at the decisive battle of Castillon. Shortly thereafter, he had a mental breakdown and became unresponsive to everything that was going around him for more than a year. At age of 31, he, quote, fell by a sudden and accidental fright into such a weak state of health that for a whole year and a half, he had neither sense nor reason capable of carrying on the government and neither physician nor medicine could cure that infirmity. He was, quote, smothered

smitten with a frenzy and his wit was reason smitten with a frenzy frenzy and his wit and reason withdrawn he even failed to respond when his son was born six months into the illness oh god I feel so terrible about that

That reminds me of a Byzantine Empire in the 530s. There was this single tiny vassal in the Gassidids and every time he sent the Byzantine Emperor a letter, the Byzantine Emperor got caught crying and huddling in a corner in the fetal position because he was so scared of him. I don't remember which one it was, but a medieval historian told me about it once and I lost my mind.

But I remember it was a Gassanid ruler and a Byzantine emperor. And the Gassanids, from a perspective, it's like Rhode Island making the president of the United States go into the fetal position and cry. It was really funny. How have I not heard of it? I need to look that up. You said it's in the 530s? About that. It's about 80 years before the Islamic conquest. Okay. Got it. Yeah. So then that would actually be around like the base of the mid 500s there in the first period to mid. That's about 532 maybe?

Theoretically, because if I recall correctly, didn't the Islamic conquest come out in 610? Was that when that was? Or no, it was 630. It wasn't at 630 is when that happened. Didn't they start to get their base around the 610s? Yeah, and then they exploded out in 630. Something like that. That is not my strongest suit. My big strong suit with history sort of starts at about 1514.

And then you go onwards from there. Or 1476, really. Yep. OK. Yep. It was 632 because the Islamic unification of like the region that is today Saudi Arabia, that took place from like the 620s to 632. And then 632 onwards was the Muslim expansion. So, yeah, that would mean that that probably happened if it was 80 years prior or 100 years prior, anywhere between 530 to 550 something.

I know it was just before Charlemagne and Charles the Hammer and as the Moravians were, you know, starting to get power in Francia. I know that much. That would be like 200 years later then. No, no, no. The Moravians are about 530 because you get the Carolingians a couple of years later. Hold on. That was in the late 600s, wasn't it?

Yeah, but he's at the end of the Moravian dynasty. This is right at the start of the Moravian. Oh, you're talking about the start. Oh, I'm sorry. Start of the Moravians. I thought you said, oh, it was right around the time of Charlemagne. And yeah, Martel was literally that whole thing happened in like the early 700s is when that took place. So that's why I was confused. Martel's great.

Yeah, Martell's great. Now, this is the start of the Moravians, which come before the Araligians. They have a cool banner. No one really remembers the Moravians, but they look kind of cool. Nope. Stupid, stupid, bloody...

succession laws, but in hindsight, but you know, don't judge me for it. To be fair, a lot of the early succession laws when talking about medieval Europe and other places were really dumb, at least in terms of centralizing and actually keeping authority because it was a mixture between, hey, let's do this because it's fair or hey, let's do this because we totally believe that if we give these brothers who barely know each other because they weren't raised together as actual friends the same amount of land, then they won't try to kill each other in order to be able to take it.

Yeah, as someone who does quite enjoy a bit of CK3, but now that I can't tell you the amount of times I've murdered my siblings, because that's like,

I want that back. You're dead now. I'm throwing you out of a building. Well, it would always piss me off when it's like, okay, I want control of this one specific. I wish that... I don't mind Gavelkind. I understand it. But I wish that I could have arranged it so that I could have chosen which duchies go to what so that I could arrange it so that that way it doesn't fall into some stupid thing where somehow they own like multiple different entities within each other at the same point when...

And also the duchy that I want to control, I don't get. It goes to the other one. It's no longer. I don't want to play Swiss cheese simulator. Let me play as a lackey and not own half a hungry. It's my crown.

Exactly. Exactly. God dang, I love Crusader Kings. For anyone who hasn't played the games, they are amazing. And I actually work with Paradox for a lot of things because I have a gaming channel and I got a history channel that I do this. And for the gaming one, I use Paradox titles for telling history stories. And I make short content at different times for the Crusader Kings page. So I was out there in Sweden about a month and a half ago with them for the latest DLC. And even then...

I actually just got given access to the next one they're working on with it. So I'm going to be messing with that in order to be able to make some little videos out of. So I'm going to get to that point with them with Opsline because I've got way too many hours in that bloody game. See, that's primarily what I end up using for storytelling.

I'm really excited for the Austrian DLC, just because I think Austria is one of those places that does not get looked at enough in World War II, because they're Nazi, but not really Nazi, but kind of Nazi, but sort of Nazi, but not really in the lead up to it. And then Hitler purges them because they're not Nazi enough. It's a whole thing. It is fascinating. Well, not to mention they had multiple attempts at takeovers. So the Nazis tried to take over Austria multiple times. Italy wanted to take over Austria. Yeah.

And that was the whole thing is that people don't really understand this when looking at a lot of things with history. And this is why I love telling alternate history for how things could have worked, because people think that some stuff is just set in stone and it had to go precisely one way. And no, it didn't. If certain factors had not happened, things would not have worked out in the ways that they did because the way the politics works.

In the case of, we think of the Axis powers, Italy and Germany, best of buddies, best of friends. No. God, no. Mussolini for years.

hated Hitler, absolutely did, did not want anything to do with him. He saw him as a huge rival, especially to his dream of creating a new Rome is what he wanted, because, you know, it's Mussolini and that's the whole thing. He's a psycho, but yeah. And the whole point that that linchpin, like the linchpin of his strategy and plan to stop Germany, because Mussolini had a whole plan to stop Germany, was to protect and then potentially take over Austria.

But from there, that would have been something that would have stopped the Germans because they wouldn't have got access to any of that manpower. They wouldn't have got access to the Austrian gold reserves. They wouldn't have gotten that strong defensive position that could have threatened Mussolini's north. He wanted Austria to serve as a buffer zone between the two of them and be able to limit any of that. So there was a whole plan with the Strasse front, as I'm sure you've seen, where Italy was in negotiations with the Allies to

to stick with France and Britain and stop Germany. And after the whole thing went down with Ethiopia. That's why the L3 tank exists. It's designed to go up hills. It's not designed to fight an African war. No. The little L3 tank, it's a hill thing. This book here is actually incredible. It's 100% a tax write-off because it's the most expensive damn book I've ever bought. But it's about Soviet economic aid to Germany.

And it's... The reason I bought it is because it's got a hundred pages of just tables and graphs explaining every minute detail of what the Soviets gave to the Germans. And if you read this and you have a look at it, I'll send you an e-book copy. I have an e-book copy as well. And when you read through this and you read through the sources and you actually examine what they're going through, you realise...

Along with, you know, a few other books like Ian Kershaw's The Nazi Dictatorship, fantastic book. Burleigh Whitman's Racial State, also another book.

You realize that Germany was a giant Ponzi scheme and it was about to detonate. And Hitler had a choice. It was either ally with the Soviet Union. And mind you, the Soviets were in charge of that alliance. The Soviets were the ones that dominated those trade deals. And they're the ones that control that alliance. It wasn't a case of Germany being the dominant party in the Molshev-Ribbentrop pact. No, no, no. The Soviets held Germany over a barrel with that, giving them what they want. A barrel of oil.

Yeah, oil, rubber, chromium, tungsten. The Germans even gave them a heavy cruiser just to get extra tungsten and chromium. It's yeah, it's huge. But you realize that Germany had to, but it had to take Austria and then the Austrian gold ran out. The Austrian reserves ran out. Then it had to take Czechoslovakia. It had to do it. And then if it didn't keep expanding, it was going to explode on itself. And it's true. Had the Germans not started World War Two,

I think it was, it might have been Kershaw, but it might have been a different historian. He sort of did the math on it and he said, you probably have a Germany that's going to explode in about 43, 44 and just go into a massive recession, 1920s, 1930s America style, because it just can't afford to sustain itself anymore. Yeah, it's just dying. I mean, the whole way that it realized itself in the first place was through IOUs. That was the meeple business. The meeple business were IOUs. That's all they pretty much could do.

That's why you keep them going as long as possible in way four, because you never have to worry about them. See, but that's the crazy thing. That's why, and this is a side note, since we're talking about this, I'm so incredibly excited for the DLC because it adds that mechanic in. Did you watch, they released a video on it yesterday, I think, for the new mechanics that they're introducing to Germany. Yeah.

And yeah, it introduces the Ponzi scheme idea where they can get some really powerful economic bonuses. But the longer it goes on without conquest or without things occurring, the more that it contracts and get shaky and unsteady until eventually it could just implode. And I love that because it actually lends credence to the strategies of if you're

you go and guarantee and protect Czechoslovakia. If you go and preempt the Anschluss, if you go and do these things, because it means that they can never get access to this gold, which in the base game is good because they don't get the factories and they don't get the population. But ultimately, it's still Germany. It's still overpowered. They can do pretty much whatever it is that they want still, just with less population and industry. You're able to hold it and it's easier to hold against them if you preempt it. But it's not

the end of the world for them now though and now you can actually show and tell that story of what would happen if i do love that because i mean it's all hindsight of course like we can sit here now we could turn around and go we should have absolutely gone in completely hard in 1936 when the rhine land was remilitarized with hindsight we can turn around and go we should have just gone straight in and marched all the way to berlin because we would have

We absolutely would have been able to as Western allies. If in 1936 we'd have marched in, that was it. Potentially, maybe, but it's a huge risk. Have you seen... There's another YouTube channel on here, Call Me Ezekiel. Have you seen anything from him? Maybe. He did a great series on the period of rearmament and appeasement, which normally people give Neville Chamberlain a lot of shit and...

In many cases, he rightfully deserves it for his wishful thinking. But the reason that Neville Chamberlain pursued the path of appeasement was not because, oh, he thought that Hitler would be super best buddies and kind forever and never do anything again. Obviously, hope that it would. The whole purpose of appeasement was to buy time, because if you actually look at the state of the Commonwealth militaries.

They were nowhere prepared. The UK in 1936, at the time that the remilitarization happened,

was completely mothballed. It took a rapid series of efforts all the way up going into 1939, like the beginning of it, before it was anywhere even close to any kind of prepared state to be able to fight. The French were in an even worse position. And theoretically, if they had marched, it wasn't just the state of their army. Politically, if they had done so, they could have imploded into civil war because of the amount of potential communist uprisings that were set to occur.

They could have, but we do know in hindsight, and again, it's all hindsight. We know Hitler had specific orders that if the French react, back down straight away. But again...

hindsight. Yes. We don't know that. They didn't know that at the time. I've got a book somewhere buried in a box that's writing about merchant navies in the 30s. It's written in 35. It's a really interesting book. I don't remember where I got it. I think my wife put it for me. And it's explaining the German merchant navy and its rebuilding. And they're like, it's such a positive. Oh, look at this. He's so good at building up an economy. And you're reading it. You're like, oh, buddy, you just you don't know.

You don't know that this is a mountainous Ponzi scheme and it could all come crashing down on you. It's like you read it and you're like, I know why you think that, but I know it's not right. God, because on the surface, he did. Here's the thing you actually say. He did fix the economy from what things had happened before. But the thing is, it's like

He fixed the economy in such a way that it was not set up to be a healthy economy. He fixed it to a point that it was set to one thing and one thing only. And that was conquer. So it was healthy for like what would happen if you took a man that was dying and injected him with a shit ton of cocaine and just adrenaline. And then at that point, like it's ready to go. It's going to work. It's going to drive. It's going to do amazing.

but it's got to keep getting supplied or it's going to crash. The stupidest thing, though, is that in the 30s when he took over, the German economy was actually starting to flourish. It was. It was getting a lot better. Yeah, because of the policies of Weimar were actually getting pretty good. And then Hindenburg comes in and, well,

It's Hindenburg. He's not actually a good president for all the Kaiser booze out there. I'm sorry to tell you, Hindenburg was not a good president of the Weimar Republic because he just wanted the monarchy back. And then Hitler comes in and it's just like, okay, screw everything. We're going to war. Cocaine time. Excuse you. It's called Panzer chocolate. Oh, yes. Panzer chocolate. Sorry. Sorry. I have to get my drugs correct. Also, methamphetamine, not cocaine. Okay.

So, um, have you, there's another thing that people don't really consider. And this is what I tell alternate history stories using Hoi4 on the Stakoyi gaming page that I, I specifically have to use console commands to make certain things happen because there are certain triggers that will happen, but theoretically they should happen if other things take place. Like, are you familiar with the Oster conspiracy? Uh, maybe.

So the Auster conspiracy was the planned overthrow of Adolf Hitler by a series of his generals and advisors and people in the general plan. Yeah, it's a general plan. Yeah, I know. So it was like he was the head of the outfit and.

The plan was is that they predicted that he was going to destroy Germany by sending it into a war before it was ready and that his plans were going to lead to destruction because they did not believe that they would be able to take on the entire allied powers by themselves, that they wouldn't be able to do this or with Italy for that matter. They thought it was suicide. So the plan was is that they wanted Czechoslovakia to say no to

and resist things at the Sudetenland crisis. I love that event. And then as soon as German troops started to march, they were going to overthrow the government. They had a whole bunch of military forces put together. They had a series of generals behind them. They had assassins ready to go to be able to storm Berlin and do it.

And they warned. Oster sent so many messages to the allies, to Chamberlain, to tell him, please, please, please do not give in to demands. We are begging you. This is our plan. This is what we are going to do. He detailed the whole thing. He told Chamberlain what he was going to do. Please don't give Hitler what he wants. What does Chamberlain do? He doesn't believe it. He thinks that the whole thing is fake and that it's going to be like it's not real.

And then he gets Hitler what he wants. He does this because he would rather trust in his delaying tactics to rearm versus relying on this potential conspiracy that is about to break out.

So people think that that is the end of it, that that was the last moment for when Hitler could have potentially been overthrown. No, the Austro conspiracy continued after that. A number of the conspirators ended up leaving, didn't actually join in afterwards because they saw that as their greatest moment. But more continued with it. And they even got more generals on board because when Hitler launched his plan to overthrow

actually attack, like launch World War II. After the invasion of Poland, the plan was, okay, now we're going to hunker down and we're going to wait. We are not going to move west because if we move west, we will be attacking both UK and France by herself. Italy is not in the war yet and would not actually join the war until they started making incursions into France proper and making serious ground. So Germany was completely on its own. So the plan was...

They gave the war plans and invasion plans to the allies. They had access to all the plans of what was going to happen. And they kept on saying it. They kept on giving it over and over and over again. And they did this like half a dozen different times. This is the date of the planned invasion. This is what's going to go down. This is how many men we're going to have. It's going to happen just like this. Everything. Guess what happens? They at first do, but the plans keep getting delayed.

And they get delayed again and then again and again. And every time the plan gets delayed, they send another letter with the new information on where it's going to happen. And it gets to the point of like the boy who cried wolf that the allied intelligence services straight up don't believe it and think that it's just a tactic by the Germans to lull them into a false sense of security and trick them that it's going to happen at a different point.

So then on the day of the invasion, when the German forces are sending their blitzkrieg through the like through the forest, it catches them completely by surprise when they had the plan literally in their hands of what was going to happen. Mm hmm.

And you can understand, you can understand why they don't exactly trust him. Again, it's all hindsight, but yeah, I know it is. You're right. It would have been a better world, but the plan was that when that happens by giving them, the idea was, is that Hitler was seen as the guy who saved Germany. He was seen as the guy who was the great father who was going to lead them to glory, that they needed to break that image. So they gave the plans in the hope that the invasion would at first fail and proceed slowly. And then like he,

Oster would actually write how tragic it was, how sad he was that tens of thousands of German lives were going to die. But in the process of killing 10,000, he was going to save millions. He actually wrote about that like that was his plan. And no, no, no, it didn't work because the plan actually succeeded. The generals who were going to side with him and overthrow Hitler instead started to think, wait, actually.

maybe this guy is good. Maybe we actually can win. And most of them just abandoned the plot and just remained loyal. Yeah. Yeah. We could have had a better world. Yeah. There's so many good events in which it could have happened. Because the thing is, it's hard.

Had the invasion failed, had Hitler... Because Hitler's cult of personality really, really gets pressed in, as you'd be aware, after the fall of France. Because that's the moment that Hitler is... He is the father of the fatherland, so to speak. He is the daddy of Germany. He's at his apex. Yeah, he's at his apex. It's not until, I want to say... I want to say probably...

Kursk but also El Alamein and the fall of Sicily that people start to sort of stop and think and go hang on hang on this isn't going as well as I thought it was um and then obviously Normandy happens and then people just go ah fuck um and that's the moment where a lot of the generals go hell crap maybe we shouldn't have uh shouldn't have kept up with this guy maybe we uh maybe we should have and then he survives because he

The briefcase was on the wrong side of a freaking table leg and at the wolf's lair. It's just one of those little moments. I mean, if he'd have died, there's not really anyone who could have taken over from him either. And I believe there was a point, too, where the British turned around and went, if we kill him, we'll just make him a martyr at this point. So there's no point. Yeah. If I recall correctly, wasn't it Goebbels who was going to take over? Yeah.

Gerbils took over at the end, but there wasn't really anyone who was heading for it. You had five contenders. You had Himmler, Gerbils, Bormann, who wasn't really a contender but positioned himself. Himmler with the backing of the SS, which would have been absolutely murder to try to fight the Wehrmacht, which would have been funny in hindsight. And then there was, you had the Wehrmacht itself.

And it wasn't until 45 where Germany was getting conquered that you have this other person come in. And that's where Hitler decides that he wants Dönitz to take control because he splits the role of Fuhrer. Remember right at the end of the war, he splits it. So there's never another Hitler, weirdly enough. And you've got the head of the military and the head of the state as well. And that's sort of Goebbels and Dönitz, but everyone's turning around and going, all right, we're going to listen to Dönitz because he's not psycho. And then Goebbels, you know,

Takes happy pills and forces his children to take them too. Yeah. Just a YouTube friendly word. Yeah. Goebbels got what he deserved. His children didn't. No, there's so much. There's so much crap associated with a lot of figures, especially from the higher end. Oh, dear God. It's weird going to Berlin and just going like, I have seen this place. I've seen this place. I've seen this place. I was there three weeks ago. So, yeah, I actually put a photo of my private Instagram.

I took a photo of the Reichstag and I went, hey, it's that building from Call of Duty. So you know how in front of the Reichstag they have the before and after image. So they have the scene of like pre-World War II, post-World War II that just shows it side by side of the exact same spot. And you're like, oh man, dude, I remember this from World at War.

Like, I remember what was it? Nikolai, I think, is the character that you play in that from the Soviet side where you're you're wounded and you're dragging your body up to plant the flag at the point of the Reichstag where the defenders of last minute.

My favorite part about that bit of Berlin, though, is you just sort of stand there and you look over. This is one old building just standing completely. It's like, why are you there? And then you walk over and you're like, oh, it's the Swiss embassy. Why is it here? And then you look into it and you realize the Swiss embassy in Berlin is where it is because the Swiss refused to build two. So the wall runs through the embassy and there's a door on the east and west side.

So that when the Berlin Wall was there, the Swiss could get out of each end of their embassy. So they only had to have one built on the wall rather than build a second one.

I love history because Switzerland can do whatever the hell it wants and all you can go to hell otherwise. I do. I do. I do like that whole thing that they had with aggressive neutrality that a lot of people don't realize the Swiss, technically speaking, did fight in World War Two. They didn't join World War Two, but they fought everyone because when American bombers went over Switzerland to get into Germany, they got shot at.

by the swiss like the swiss set their fighters up there and started chasing them down to shoot them i remember there's one story of a american bubble wing that goes over switzerland that a german fighter wing goes over to a deceptive and the swiss are like who do we shoot and then the commander walks along goes germans americans shoot them all and they did they shot all of them it's like what else could you do in this it's really the only way that they could have maintained their neutrality as it was yeah

And it worked. I mean, Hitler really did not like the Swiss. No, no, that's where, what was it? Operation Tannerbaum? Was that what it was called? I mean, he would have eventually gone for the Swiss if he could have, but it just wasn't really worth it.

So what's the point? It's like taking the Vatican out. So what's the point? To be fair, he also needed a lifeline, which Switzerland and Spain were because that way trade could still happen illegally, of course, but it would still happen with a degree of moral grayness that would allow them to be able to circumvent the blockades and everything else.

I love Franco's filibustering to get out of going into the war. Rocks up three hours late to the meeting, talks for 10 minutes. Hitler goes, okay, so we need you to join the war to take Gibraltar. And Franco's like, okay, but I'll do it. But you have to give me Algeria, Tunisia, Libya. I want all of West Africa. I want this part of France. And Hitler's like,

to Gibraltar? He's like, yes, no, and I'll only join the war if I get this, this, this, and this. And then afterwards Hitler's quoted as something that's like saying is, if I never have to see that man again, it'll be too soon. Frankl didn't want to join the war. He didn't want to. No.

Because it would have been destroyed. Spain was already on a knife's edge. See, I've done that as an alternate history here. Because again, with Hoi 4, which obviously being a video game, you can cheese it. You can do all the varying things to make yourself recover, etc. But realistically speaking, what people don't really understand when they think like, oh, if Spain joined the Axis and then managed to take over the stuff for the Mediterranean, this would have completely flipped the tides. It's like, no, because Spain itself was destroyed.

I don't even call it a glass cannon because there was no cannons. The cannons had already been spent and broken over the course of the war. They were bankrupt. 600,000 men died over the course already of the of the Civil War, ruined basically all the infrastructure in the first place. They weren't just bankrupt. All their gold reserve that they had in the first place had already been stolen by the Soviets. So that was gone. Yes. And then when it came time for, you know, the conflict started.

Spain, the only way it was even able to survive is that it would trade and sell its goods like foodstuffs and other things. The only way it was able to get anything was by trade with the United States and the Allies. So if they went to war, they would have lost all that. And it's not like Germany was producing copious amounts of foodstuffs to be able to supply the Spanish population. That wouldn't have happened. They would have been there for like a year or two and most for financially collapsing.

Yeah, it would not have lasted that long. And then it would have taken probably... See, the thing is, there's still those other people in Spain, too, that, you know, don't really like Franco. And they would have had a lot more friends should things not go too well for Franco's government in the war. So Spain's going to be a basket case for the Germans that they have to then garrison. And also, have you looked at Gibraltar?

Like, try and take that. Just try and take Gibraltar. It will not end well for you. The Spanish tried for like eight years at one point. No. And it just never went well. And it was strongly reinforced in preparation for someone trying to take it. The only real way that you could have done it is specifically through a concentrated...

potential bombing if you're going to take it by storm it's got to be a concentrated bombing campaign to take out the fences before dropping people in and i mean that what's going to have to happen is you're going to need to send up teams of commandos to disable the defenses before actually moving it but in that that's the only option you're going to have and then from there you're going to have to drop paratroopers you'll need to accept the fact you're going to lose probably 20 to 30 000 men taking that rock too and can you sell that to your people

it's like oh we lost 30 000 men taking an area the size of a suburb like not even the size of the map but probably half the size of the royal suburbs in madrid it's it's not going well it's not really not going well no it's not going to and even then from the side you're immediately exposed operation depending upon the time place in which they actually do join in if it's 1941

Maybe, but even then, it's still very risky considering everything that has happened by 1942 heading into 43 Operation Torch. Like, well, yeah, you're then going to have to. So you took one side of the Mediterranean. Congratulations. Here comes the American Navy.

Yes. You're not going to be able to do shit. Yeah. Now you have to deal with the American Navy from the West and the American soldiers from there. The British are coming from the East and I'll look instead of Sicily. Let's look at the weakest underbelly of Europe, Spain. And at that point, do you really think if Britain turns around to Portugal and goes, Portugal goes, hey,

Hey, you want to get in? They're going to say no? Yeah. Because Portugal was already giving the Azores to the Allies as a refueling stop. Portugal and England are the oldest aligned countries in human history. Yes. That alliance has been going on since 1300. Yep. So it's not going well for Franco. And if Spain joins the war, it's not just another Italy.

It's that corpse you mentioned propped up full of cocaine and then smacked on the head a few times with a hammer and gone, this is your ally. Friend. Precious friend. Oh my God.

It's a lot of things like this to make me so excited when the DLC eventually comes out, being able to explore so many more alternate what ifs for things. Because I've had to explain like the way that I do stuff for alternate history is I don't just do what if X happened, then that means X because that's stupid. That doesn't work. That doesn't work with history. In order for something to happen, there has to be a series of events that take place in order for that to happen again.

in the first place. Yeah. So that's why I explained in order for Spain to be able to join the war, this means that the Spanish Civil War has to either not occur like the coup has to succeed or the Spanish Civil War ends so much earlier. So instead of two, almost three years, really, because it was like what? Two years.

two years and 10 months, nine months, I think is how long it was. Something like that. Yeah. And it's not really a pause, start, pause, start war. It's pretty brutal the whole time. Oh, whole time. So if it lasted a year and a half, still a long time, but a year and a half, half the time of what it did in our own timeline, that is potentially half the number of casualties, half the amount of things that destroyed, half the amount of everything, which means you're talking about

a much more likely scenario where one can join. But then that means, okay, well, if that civil war ends early, then what does that mean that happened with the Germans and the Italians? Because the Italians sent millions of rounds of ammunition into the conflict in the first place. They sent thousands of men. They sent, what was it? They sent, um, it was quite a bit. I know the Germans sent a load of Stukas and 109s as well. Um,

There was a bunch of tanks, there were Panzer divisions basically worth of tanks sent. It was a lot. And at that point as well, they wouldn't really have as much of a holdover of Franco as well because he also played the game at that point. Is Franco even in charge? Because the only reason Franco's in charge is because he's the only one that's left. Yeah. Oh, do you remember what happened to the initial leader that Snatchless Spain had?

Do you want to tell the story? Yes, it's a dumb events in history. Here, I tell the story so people can hear what this how stupid this whole thing is.

What was his name? I can't remember his name. It was so dumb, but whatever it was, he was sitting over on the, I believe it was the Canary Islands. And he's sitting over there going, all right, I'm going to go back to spade and lead the rebellion. But first, I need to put all my gold in the play. It was Jose. But sir, you've got too much gold in your play. Jose Sanjur. Don't worry, we'll take off. Sanjur. Sanjur. Sanjur. That's what it is. Yeah.

So he stuffs his plane with so much gold and wealth that as it takes off, it just, you know, it doesn't really, it's not conducive to altitude. And it does not get very far off the end of the runway. And then he dies. And then Franco is pretty much the only one that is left and he takes over. And that's how you get Franco of Spain.

It's just it's hilarious. The worst part is, though, he didn't have to do that in the first place because he could have taken his stuff, but only if he waited just a little bit longer so that he could have had a larger plane available. But he insisted, no, I'm not only going to leave now, I'm going to show up in style landing my own plane because he wanted to show up as a hero by himself.

Yeah, big strong man. And instead he just dies because he overloads the plane. You know, that's not, there's actually, there's a really funny instance of that happening again 30 years later in the Soviet Union. There was, wait, hold on. When you say 30 years later, is this when they were having- 30, 40 years.

Because I know there was a whole... Wait, no. 34... Oh, okay. So this is not the incident I'm thinking. I thought you were talking about the development of the ISs. Like the class of planes. They had a whole discussion there with Anamarky of how they had been... How they developed this and all the really bad crashes they had in the beginning that killed off a lot of crews because the guy straight up... For anyone who hasn't heard that episode, go back and check it out. But for context of this, they...

The Soviets had a plane that when this was designed, it was designed by a guy who didn't actually know how to design planes. And so when they made the propeller like long, they had really big propellers in order to help aid the production of the production, the like the plane to fly. And it was so long and the body so short, like off the ground that the propeller hit the ground. It was so they just cut off the propellers of the propeller.

He's been sending me photos of, look what I found lately, and it's rocket-assisted takeoff biplanes. Oh. That's so amazing. The incident I'm thinking of is when the Russians lost the entire Pacific Fleet Admiral staff in a single crash.

Wait, what? So I think it was the 70s. It may have been later. But they're in Leningrad, St. Petersburg, for a little communist red powwow, a little red party, if you will. And as they're flying back, they're like, okay, so we live in Vladivostok. There is absolutely nothing in Vladivostok in the realms of

well, you know, fine caviar and wine and cheeses. And also there's not enough printer paper in Vladivostok. So they get their plane, all the admirals get on board and they stuff it full of as much champagne as possible. And then they go, all right, we need literally just tons of printer paper.

because it's the easiest way to get there and we can't really get it there so they do it and they overload the plane so much that the printer paper goes free as on takeoff and the plane just goes and smack straight to the ground and the whole admiral staff of the pacific fleet is just gone except for one guy and because the soviets are trying to save face that one guy who's still in the east is just not just goes you're in charge now and he goes what

i am and then it continues and it's quickly swept under the rug it's like when the the soviet hockey team all gets killed in the plane crash and vasily stalin pretends it never happened oh see i i love soviet history i do because it's there's so much authoritarian shit that happens through it yeah in like

it's a dark way like yes it's dark it's terrible when this stuff happens but it's so comedic just how stupid it first off the way that it happened in the first place is stupid completely preventable 90 of the time and then on top of that the response to it is to either just completely sweep it under the rug or blame something that has absolutely no bearing on the situation whatsoever yeah it's it's still going on today like um

And I felt bad at laughing all of this stuff because, you know, it's a lot of pain, a lot of suffering until I actually spoke to a bunch of Ukrainian soldiers in Ukraine and they go, no, this shit's funny. They will laugh as much as you will and they will laugh more than you will. Like one of them was telling us the story about the Russian positions in Chernobyl when we were there. And as we were walking through one of the schools, should have definitely worn a cask mask for that. Oops, forgot to do that. My lungs will love me in 20 years.

He was going, so this is where the Russian positions were. And when we went up there, we were holding Geiger counters. We won. He was talking about himself. And he's like, they were going off. And I'm like, okay. And he's like, yeah, they're probably soup now. But it's okay. We like soup. And then he just starts laughing. And I'm like, yay. They went into Chernobyl without actually checking.

Where the radiation still was. It's better than that because they were using maps from 1982 when they went into Chernobyl. What year did Chernobyl happen, mate? What year was it? My God. It was 86. So the Russians invaded Chernobyl, not using maps from when the disaster happened and completely changed everything. Yeah. Yeah. And they took souvenirs. They took a lot of souvenirs too when they left.

We got told that one of them went into the hospital and that the fireman's jackets had been disturbed and some were missing, which is disturbing. Because if you know what happened to the Chernobyl firefighters, you know, you don't you don't want to touch their clothing. You really do not want to touch the Chernobyl firefighters. Yeah, they were the ones who went in in the first place in order to be able to try to stop. They basically sacrificed themselves in order to be able to stop everything.

Which obviously didn't work, because mind you, they didn't really know. But yeah, they got turned into soup by the radiation. And they're like fireman's jackets. If you watch the HBO series, you see all the nurses throwing them on the ground in that pile. That pile has been disturbed. And they said there's a jacket or two that looks like it's pissing. So whatever Russian soldier decided, I'm going to take a fireman's jacket from the Soviet Union. He's now soup. He is soup.

But Chernobyl, it's the darkness and the comedy of it. If you don't laugh, you'll cry. And that's just like some conscript who's just been sent into that as well. That's not that's not even a train. These are the professionals. These are the professionals. This is back at the start of the war. This is the professional army. Right. Because when they initially stormed the airfields and sent them into Chernobyl, it was special forces. It wasn't even just professional. It was special forces, wasn't it?

Yeah, it was. It was the special guys. They're still there, by the way, in the north of Chernobyl. Like where we were, because I've put some photos up for it. I'll put a photo in the chat. I'll save it and send it to you so you can throw it up on screen. But where we were was roughly about two or three kilometres from the Russian front. So we had to be on the lookout for drones and we had to walk on paths that were well lit and where the soldiers told us to walk because there's mines everywhere. But they're still sort of there.

except they sort of go into the city and then like then they leave again and then they go in and then they leave and it's basically two massive armies really heavily armed playing stalker but real life except one of them does not appreciate how dangerous it is and the other one is of the opinion to quote the soldier I met who's a dead ringer for Captain Price actually he turned around to me and he said something along the lines of I'm old I get cancer I get cancer I don't care

It's just how they are. Oh, god dang. God dang. I don't know. Yeah. That's just how it is. It's just how it is. It's just how it is. Like, one of the soldiers I was with, he's my age, he's in his mid-twenties, and he picks up a book and goes, oh, Ukrainian poetry. I'd keep this and read it later. And I'm like, that's been sitting there since 1986. It's covered in dust.

And he's like, yeah, I clean it off. It's fine. They just don't care. No, honestly, I asked if I wanted to take souvenirs. And I'm like, I think it might be a little awkward if I show up with a dust covered book from Chernobyl at Berlin Airport a couple of days. Yeah, no, the amount of trouble that one would potentially get in trying to fly that stuff out. Like you would probably do it that way. Whatever it is that you wanted in Ukraine proper itself. No one's going to be able to do anything. You try to leave, though. There's going to be questions.

I could have gotten through Poland, I reckon, with it. I could have gotten through Germany with it because I hitchhiked over the German border. There's no way I got out of Berlin, let alone into Australia with it. I'll tell you this right now, the more time leaving Berlin, how anal they are. I thought Heathrow Airport was bad. Berlin? Holy crap. They look in every, everywhere. They open every bit of your bag. They look at everything and you're like, well, looking at you, like looking at individualized and looking at you.

And when I say that, it sounds like I'm doing a bit right now. No, they actually would do this. My wife's makeup bag with all of her little containers, each one, which is most certainly under 100 milliliters. Oh, I am. When I was there.

I got these patches, right? So I have my press patch for my Kepler vest, but I got these patches. So I wore an Australian flag, so it was very obvious who I was. But I got given these when I was there, the UPA and the Ukrainian flag patches. This one's a little spicy, you know, it's history. But the Germans were looking at me going, where you get this? And I went, Ukraine. And they're like...

viva you in ukraine and i'm like i i was just i was just there just doing journalism stuff and youtubey things and they're like okay proof and i had to show them my press pass i had to show them my my ukraine army gave me a press pass and with the defense bit and i had to show it to them and then they verified it um by having someone read it and i'm like thank you can i go and get on the plane now they're like

Yeah, that's fine. Have fun. Did you enjoy Germany? I'm like, yes, it was lovely. Thank you. It was just like a total switch. It was from who's the fuck are you to oh, hi, hello, within like five minutes. And I'm like, OK, this is a very German experience right now. Yeah, the moment you can somehow magically make it through bureaucracy, you're set.

Yeah, yeah. And it doesn't doesn't hurt that I know a little bit of German, too. So they kind of like that. They're like, oh, you're trying to speak German. That's nice. I'm like, yes. Can you let me go now? I have a flight to Australia tomorrow from Heathrow. Please let me leave Germany. Oh, dear God. Dear God. Let's see. At this point, it's been like an hour and 20 minutes. This is actually pretty good length for everything that we've normally done. Is there anything else that we possibly want to say or cover or do before it is that we go ahead and end things here?

Oh, I meant to mention before, have you you've heard of the Byzantine murder whale, right? When you say the murder whale, what do you mean? Hold on. Are you talking about their their four tier like level of ship that they had?

No, no, no. The actual whale that murdered Byzantines. No. Porphyrios. No, I haven't. Porphyrio, not Porphyrio. Yeah, so I made a little quick video on it when I was... I went through this little phase a couple of months ago when I got back from Ukraine where I was really bored and I started looking up random animals from history that made me laugh. Obviously, I come with the sacred Roman chickens because it's the sacred Roman chickens. Come on, they're so funny. Yeah.

we're totally gonna be fine no bad omen here immediately dies if you can't give me an omen for food baby you're thirsty get in the water um no there was this whale he was like a we think it was a killer whale but they described it as a giant purple whale that just randomly for 50 years started terrorizing merchant ships in front of constantinople just randomly would come up and sink them and then swim away

I have not heard of this. I feel like I need to go look into this because that sounds like a great short video.

There's two different tales for him. So there's the actual tales, which we get from Procopius and such. And then there's a 1930s novella romance novel set in the Byzantine Empire where Justinian's wife is having an affair with Belisarius. Of course. That's where most of it, yeah. Of course. You know those Facebook posts you see where it's like, oh my God, you won't believe this happened. They always take the info from the Justinian book. But if you look at the Procopius one, the actual history is so much funnier.

because we don't know if it's this whale or not it's just like well but for 50 years randomly a merchant ship will just sail around constantinople and they just explode because the whale will beat the crap out of them to the point where the byzantine empire changed its whole trade routes to get this whale away from them just out of the territory

And then one day the whale decides, I'm going to go kill some dolphins. So it starts chasing them and beating these dolphins to death. And then it just beaches itself. And the people go, that's it. They run over to the beach with knives and just start hacking the whale to bits and eating it. And you're like, what the? What is this? It's brutal. It's so Byzantine. I don't even know how to respond to this. Murder fish.

I made a very short, I made like a 15 minute video on it. I just called it the murder fish the whole time. And it's so, it's just fitting. It's so funny. Like it would just randomly just start attacking ships. And like the fact it had to make the most powerful empire in the world at that point, turn its ships away and change trade from Constantinople is just the funniest thing. Oh, dear God.

I think that that might be a perfect note to end things here on. It's beautiful. Well, my friends, for all of those of you who've joined us here today, whether you're watching this on YouTube or whether you're listening to this on Spotify, Apple or anything else. Thank you. Thank you for doing so. If you want to add free episodes of the podcast, make sure to check things out on Patreon, which I have linked down description. And it is actually listed now under there. I've changed this. Let you know this. I'm.

I've changed the name from the History of Everything podcast on Patreon to just Stakuyi and the History of Everything so that that way there's no more confusion. And I hopefully stop getting very angry messages about different things. Yes. Sub to his Patreon for his stuff, mine to mine. They are different. Or you can just sub to both of us because that's just nice. That's just nice. If you want insane Russian naval history, among other things, and...

beached whale stories, then make sure to go and check out the history of everything, which I will also have linked down in the description below. Besides all that, my friends, thank you all so much for joining me here today. And anything you want to say here at the end? Go Byzantine murder fish and thank you for having me. Goodbye, everyone. Okay.