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[Assistant] And went back to take the tally. We had wiped out the patrol.


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[Assistant] Except for our two prisoners. The deserters had told the truth. There had been 30 of them heavily armed, but now 28 of them were dead. There were sporadic shots up ahead, but nothing to get excited about. I returned to the road,


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[Assistant] Then moved up to where I had posted my guard over the two POWs. They were all dead.


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[Assistant] The men from the mortar crews had opened up on them with small arms.


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[Assistant] I saw bloody red. I swung in the direction of the mortars and aimed my rifle from the hip. One of their sergeants popped up. I'm sorry, Herbert. We didn't know


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[Assistant] He dropped his carbine and raised his hands. We didn't know. He apologized. No one told us.


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[Assistant] So, if you didn't quite catch that, the mortar company did not know that there was friendlies around there.


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[Assistant] And he had actually, they had captured these prisoners and he'd left a guard with them and the mortar team killed them all. Both the captured enemy people and the, and the guards.


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[Assistant] So, and there you go, I mean, that's uh, that's uh, extreme ownership, right?


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[Assistant] Fast forward a little bit, we had received two replacements, one was named


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[Assistant] A lieutenant named Manning, the other a sergeant was killed by a single artillery round which dropped into our positions that morning. No one in the unit except the CO had even heard his name.


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[Assistant] Life was that dumb. War was stupid. If there was a god, then he was stupid.


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[Assistant] There was neither rhyme nor reason to that man's death, and he meant no more than us than a chunk of clay when we passed him on the way out.


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[Assistant] Now, I mentioned like, for a split second that Fox Company was heading up to this hill, 868.


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[Assistant] And now these guys, they didn't get there. Fox Company didn't get it done, they took massive casualties, and now...


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[Assistant] Easy companies heading up there and they get pinned down in this one particular spot and


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[Assistant] Well here they are, Manning caught up with me. What's happening? He asked excitedly.


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[Assistant] I was in a crater, my back against the wall. There was no sense in doing anything until the mortars let up.


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[Assistant] The machine gun ripped off a volley and he dropped back into my lap, two rounds through the mouth. In one cheek, through the tongue, smashing some teak, some teeth, and out on the other cheek. He was okay considering what it could have been. My s- the CO was next. He moved into the position with his radio. With his radio man. What do you have up there Herb? He asked.


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[Assistant] Mainly the machine gun, sir. We'll get it after it gets dark.


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[Assistant] That's not good enough, he said. The regimental CEO is watching through the glasses. He wants it now.


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[Assistant] Came in to turn to look at us. Then let that fucker come up and take it, he said.


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[Assistant] Come on sir, I interrupted. Fox Company's been up here for weeks without moving. All we need is a few more hours.


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[Assistant] The 23rd is moving, is moving up, the old man said. We've gotta have that hill today.


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[Assistant] I rolled over on my gut and gave Cayme and the signal to get ready.


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[Assistant] In the next four hours, 61 of us rounded that junction, 11 of us made it two thirds of the way to the top along the final bar.


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[Assistant] So night found 11 of us almost at the top and the rest of us either cut their ribbons or unable to move.


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[Assistant] We still had radio contact with the CO and he wanted to know if we could hold out. We're not backing up. I replied. Hang in there Herb. I've got a 57 coming up. Hang in there. He was referring to a 57 caliber, a 57mm recoilless rifle.


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[Assistant] It could take out the machine gun alright, but it would have to be a direct hit. Every half hour or so for the remainder of the night he called to check on how we were making out.


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[Assistant] Just before daylight, he joined us with the 57. And before we could stop him, he was through us and made a one-man attack on the position. And he almost had it.


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[Assistant] We gave him as much covering fire as we could, but just short of the position he went down, pulling the trigger of the 57. The round plowed into the sandbags right of the opening, two feet off.


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[Assistant] From North Dakota, took two rounds through the chest.


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[Assistant] He never even asked to be evacuated. He apologized for being a problem. I could have hugged him.


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[Assistant] The platoon from Fox Company moved up to us. The lieutenant in charge wanted to talk until it was time for the assault, so I listened.


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[Assistant] Pickens and Dubois flashed through my mind, he didn't intend to make it, but if he didn't, someone else would have to. That someone was me, with Kamien and the six we had left, and against a machine gunner with the determination and guts that that bastard had, we weren't going to make it.


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[Assistant] So when the lieutenant moved his men out toward the peak, I had my last troop stand.


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[Assistant] Stand ready to reinforce if necessary. As he stepped out to follow his platoon.


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[Assistant] I cracked him with the butt of Jordan's carbine and raced out through his troops. The gunner above...


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[Assistant] Open fire and rake the hill, splattering dust and mud all around-round us. Men began to fall back. I grabbed them and pushed them back up the hill. Get that motherfucker I shouted. Get him!


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[Assistant] One of Fox Company's men shouted, okay, big deal, let's get him. And then raced me.


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[Assistant] Camion was leading our own six up the ridge. Men started tossing grenades from both sides. And in the confusion, one blew the gun away, and we had the hill.


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[Assistant] And was captured down by the brook by a Chinese patrol. Nelson was dead. The CEO, our top notch black test case.


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[Assistant] Manning. Everyone in my platoon was either dead or wounded except Cameon and myself.


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[Assistant] Word came up that we would be relieved. Came in and said it was about time.


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[Assistant] Then he rolled over the body of one of our troops who had bought the farm the night before and a grenade exploded.


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[Assistant] This war was getting to be a real pain in the ass. We sat there, him wounded, now, and only me, in one piece, waiting for our relief.


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[Assistant] When the relief showed up, Roy could still walk. We moved back down the ridgeline together.


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[Assistant] One of the relief asked him who we were, and he replied, easy company, 38th infantry.


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[Assistant] At the west end of the valley, we caught up with those few troops from our company that hadn't been committed. And that had been moved back by the battalion CO.


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[Assistant] Maggie Higgins was interviewing them. The battalion CO introduced me to her. She asked me to wait a moment while she conduct, while she concluded talking with someone else. She turned her head and I walked off. I wasn't about to wait for anyone ever again. Maggie's loss. I said to myself,


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[Assistant] Turning back toward the Kansas line, I joined the remnants of what had been easy company, moving back up the hill out of the valley and away from hill 868.


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[Assistant] And he kind of reflects on it a little bit, he says, I was getting to know men. Types were predictable.


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[Assistant] And the world is becoming less complicated. There were men and there were fakes. A man either was or he wasn't. And the rest was all play acting. I was 21 and I was already an old man.


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[Assistant] I had to shake it or I'd become a bonafide pain in the ass, so I started to listen more than I talked. And was somewhat reserved with the men.


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[Assistant] The war felt different. There was no apprehension, no excitement. Everything seemed routine and easy. I was going to make it unless a stray round hellbat had my name on it, and that was damned unlikely.


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[Assistant] I had become a survivor. Some men lived and some men died. I would live.


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[Assistant] There was more than just war for me, but for now I was still in Korea. We were on the line.


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[Assistant] And across the valley lay the next major objective. I was ordered to report to battalion headquarters for briefing.


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[Assistant] So you get done with an operation where every, you lose everybody, is either dead or wounded.


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[Assistant] And you achieve your objective and you get back to the next objective.


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[Assistant] He does a little stint, and I'm gonna skip past this part, but he does a little stint with, as a Marine Corps liaison, and does an assault with the Marines, and loses nine of the Marines that he's with. And then after that, he goes back to Easy Company again.


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[Assistant] We returned to the same positions we'd been pulled off of. This is back with Easy Company. And rain began to fall. I had been in Korea one year. Most men were rotating stateside within nine months, but I was still AWOL. With no records, I might be here forever. It was okay with me. I knew the country. I knew the war. And I was well on my way to knowing myself.


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[Assistant] Or else I'd go stateside with a million dollar shot. Either way, I'd be thankful. I'd never again waste a moment of life.


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[Assistant] I felt terrific. Screw rotation. Life was my oyster. Korea was my pearl.


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[Assistant] Going back out on another patrol. We crossed the road and started up a hill.


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[Assistant] We picked our way carefully, silently, I stopped once and glanced back, I felt damn good, I felt proud, I felt American, god damn it, we were the best. Just off the peak, they had a major gun position.


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[Assistant] I motioned for the two scouts to cover me, then just as I was about to start forward to take them, someone triggered a booby trap.


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[Assistant] Both crew members made a break for their bunker and I had to drop them. So much for surprise. We still had shock action.


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[Assistant] And we were at the top in their positions.


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[Assistant] We could hold it as long, we could hold it long enough for George Company to reinforce.


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[Assistant] Then nobody was going to take it back. So I had to skip some stuff because it's a pretty detailed explanation of what's going on. But basically they were kind of heading up this, this into this position and they almost get fully into position. They get close enough to where


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[Assistant] They're gonna be able to actually capture the people that are in that gun without any, without giving themselves away. But somebody, you can hear somebody hits a booby trap.


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[Assistant] And they capture this freaking hill. And this hill didn't really go too much into it, but it's a very prominent terrain feature. And so it's like surprising that they get there.


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[Assistant] Uh, and, and, and he says at the end there, we could hold the, the hill long enough for George Company to reinforce. And once George Company was there, they would have the hill known to be able to take it from them. But George Company never showed. By late afternoon,


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[Assistant] There were six of us still alive and we could hardly see over the dead around us. Every time I called battalion, I got word that George Company was almost to us. Hang on. Randolph was reloading magazines into the BAR. They're not coming, Sarge. We're almost out of ammo.


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[Assistant] Get the old man on the horn. I'd give it one more try. He wasn't available, according to the radio man. I glanced back down the trail. We'd come up so skillfully, so easily, so damn sure of ourselves. The Chinese must find it unbelievable that we hadn't reinforced yet. They didn't know we were down to six, almost out of ammo.


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[Assistant] If we made a break now and ran like hell, we might be able to make it before they would close in on us. I sent one final message. Tell the old man we're pulling out.


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[Assistant] Then without waiting for a Roger or any other bullshit like I'd been getting all day, I gave the word to saddle up. They stared at me in disbelief. What about George Company?


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[Assistant] There isn't any George Company, now god damn it, pack up and get ready to move.


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[Assistant] At a dud run, down the trail, nobody stops until he crosses the road. Then hold up and provide cover for the rest of us. Ready?


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[Assistant] I destroyed the Maxim and picked up our own LMG. I began to tick off names. Keith, go. Nick, go. Daniels, go. Thompson, go. I turned to Randolph, go. And we were halfway down the hill before they caught on.


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[Assistant] That it wasn't a diversion or another tactic, but that we were bugging out.


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[Assistant] I took a round through the fleshy part of my calf. Randolph took one through the chest and a second through the head. He was dead before he hit the ground.


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[Assistant] Everyone else made it across the road without a scratch, then held up and covered for me while I got Randolph's body out. I was puffing like a winded horse.


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[Assistant] They would have to be crazy to ever trust me again. Thompson patted me on the shoulder. You ain't George company, Sarge.


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[Assistant] But it wasn't George Company either. They had never been alerted for standby.


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[Assistant] No one had believed we could ever make it to the top. And then when we did, they didn't think we could ever hold out all day.


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[Assistant] The new S2 at the battalion tried to explain to me that George Company would get the hill back tomorrow.


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[Assistant] And he was green, so he really believed it. It wasn't even worth explaining. I had been dealing with assholes like him on and off for almost a year now. I went over to the aid station and had them tend to my wound. The regimental CO had me back to the rear again the same night and apologized.


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[Assistant] No one had notified him that we'd made it to the top. He was sorry about my troops.


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[Assistant] I tried to explain what was really on that hill, that neither George Company nor the entire battalion was going to take it now. We had blown our chance. You're just hurt, Herbert. You'll see.


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[Assistant] And we saw. George company was chopped to pieces.


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[Assistant] The battalion failed. The 38th regiment failed.


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[Assistant] And it would have gone unnamed and unremembered except for one commander who had not believed in his troops.


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[Assistant] A couple of days later, halfway up another hill, I was ordered to turn my platoon over to my assistant and report back to company headquarters, where I was provided with a jeep to regiment, bypassing Italian, another jeep to division, and on to Seoul, 8th Army headquarters.


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[Assistant] So you can see he gets this, you know, this is a, uh, provided with these jeeps back to battalion, back to regiment, back to division, and then all the way back to Seoul where the eighth army headquarters is.


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[Assistant] This is what happens. We wield into soul and into the compound.


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[Assistant] Everyone was in class A's except myself and the Jeep driver. I had never been this far to the rear in my life, not even in the states.


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[Assistant] The MP at the Gates checked our identification, then stood back and saluted. What the hell gave him the idea of us?


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[Assistant] Then turn to the driver, are you staying? I asked, uh, uh-huh Sarge. Uh-huh Sarge, gotta get back. Save you time then.


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[Assistant] I jumped out of the jeep and lit next to the corporal. Take your bag, Sarge. Don't have any, son.


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[Assistant] I was 21, I turned back to the Jeep driver, thanks. It's an honor, Sarge.


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[Assistant] He saluted me, offhandedly, spun the jeep around in a cloud of dust and roared back through the gate.


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[Assistant] He disappeared up the road in a second. Later in the afternoon, after a good bath and washing some of the filth out of my fatigues, I sought out the NCO club. It wasn't open yet. So I went back to my room, took another bath and fell asleep.


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[Assistant] I had a terrible dream. It was one which would reoccur for years.


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[Assistant] I was charging a machine gun nest. Not a bunker, but one in a hole. Like the one at Kun Mun Gao.


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[Assistant] Then, with bayonet fixed, out of ammo, right on the edge, the earth gave way beneath my feet and I was going backwards, my guts unguarded, my rifle flung up in an attempt to regain my balance. But I was going over backwards. And I woke up in a sweat.


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[Assistant] I got a hold of myself in a second, saw where I was, and lay down and went back to sleep to be awakened next by light footsteps at my door.


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[Assistant] It was a young lieutenant. Everything satisfactory, Sergeant? He asked cheerfully. Great sir, but why all the service? What the hell is it all about?


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[Assistant] It was just what he needed to trigger him off. The UN command had decided to send two outstanding soldiers from the command on a goodwill tour of Europe stateside. God knows where else. Our best, he said.


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[Assistant] Another Soldier of the Month contest, I thought. I remembered the MP at the gate in the Class A's and glanced at myself in the mirror. I was ragged assed and tired.


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[Assistant] I didn't have a chance, and I didn't much give a damn. I was beyond that.


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[Assistant] I rushed the lieutenant out, took another bath, dressed, slung my BAR, and closed the door behind me.


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[Assistant] All I had to do was hitch another ride north and I'd be back to easy company within two days. The corporal was still at the gate. Where are you headed? Sarge, he asked. Home, man. Home? Back to my outfit.


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[Assistant] But Sarge, hey man, do I look like Soldier of the Month material I asked?


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[Assistant] He shook his head in the nicest way any human being ever had before or since.


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[Assistant] Uh-uh, Sarge. You look like the toughest mother that's over here. And our most decorated soldier.


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[Assistant] Is a good place to stop for this particular book. For this, pretty much where, you know, there's an epilogue that you should read. Uhm, but the story ends there for this book. But, this is the end of the book, but it's not the end of the story. And...


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[Assistant] Mayhem in Vietnam, where we're gonna learn a lot about leadership, a lot about life, a lot about human nature.


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[Assistant] It's like time and time and time and time again. Like, how many, nine lives for a cat. What's he on? I think he's on 17.


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[Assistant] You see your brothers go off to war. You see them coming home telling stories about what's going on. Just embedded in your head. Is there, right, there's like embedded, uhm, desire to be in war for many young men.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right. And I can't say everybody, I don't wanna make that statement, I can't talk about females because I don't, I didn't interact with females as much, but like, when you're in a single platoon,


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[Assistant] You're with a lot of guys that what they wanted to do growing up was go to war. Myself included. Like, that's what you grow up with.


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[Assistant] So there's gotta be some kind of instinctual thing.


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[Assistant] You know what else is crazy? So he's there for a year. Yeah.


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[Assistant] So, so here's a guy that's going 365 days.


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[Assistant] Of front line. Someone else shows up and they're dead in an hour.


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[Assistant] Is, when he gets told, hey go burn down that village.


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[Assistant] Now think about this. He says, I'm not doing it. And the other guy's, alright, I'll do it.


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[Assistant] So the other guy goes out to burn down the village, and he gets shot in the chest and killed.


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[Assistant] And now, you can see Cap, uh, Captain West is like, hey now do you want to go burn down the village?


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[Assistant] So that's, that shows what his character is like. And again, the idea of this character and the reason I talk about it a lot is when you see, when we get to what happens in Vietnam,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's a lot of, you know, his character, you have to try and understand his character because of accusations that are being made in all different directions. It's, yeaah.


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[Assistant] Yeah, and it's weird too, like, any one of these...


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[Assistant] Actions that he did is so far off the charts of what, what's expected. To like a normal award writing above and beyond. With complete disregard for his own safety, like all those things. That's what he's got going on.


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[Assistant] I think pretty much people know what we have. Hey, check this out. If you want some of this stuff, which you should.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because you don't want to miss it, if you don't want to miss Kriller, you don't want to miss Joint Warfare, you don't want to miss, you know what, like, you don't want to run low on whatever.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you go to JockoFuel.com and you subscribe, then shipping is free, which is cool.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What else? So we got, joint warfare, cruel, loyal, discipline, discipline, go, malk. What else? Anything else? Warrior Kid Malk. Warrior Kid Malk.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I need more of those shirts, by the way. And more of these shirts, by the way.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If everything ever goes like crazy in this country or in the world, you will see me, like, let's say revolution, war, civil war, whatever, whatever, whatever mayhem, I'll be flying this flag. That's what you'll know.


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[Assistant] Good job. Did you see it or did I see it and told you about it? Yeah, I told you about it. Yeah, that's a mystery. I was gonna blame you. You should have tracked his name, but you didn't.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you just listen to three hours and you haven't subscribed yet, that's your choice. But if you wanna...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We also have some other podcasts. We have Jocko unraveling new episodes now. Daryl Cooper from Marder Maid.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We have the grounded podcast, we have new warrior kid podcasts!


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[Assistant] Podcast, which is some amplifying information, some behind the scenes, kind of?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, you pretty much have to pay when it's $8.18 a month. Bunch of reasons why we're doing it. We're doing it because we don't want to actually have somebody injecting, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There you go, you can pay. And if you can't afford it, look, we're not trying to hold back information.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you can't afford it, no problem, no factor. If you can't afford the $8.18 a month, email assistance at jocounderground.com. And, uh, we also have a YouTube channel.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Also check out Origin USA. They're putting up stuff if you want to know the story that's happening up there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And there's zero explosions in their stuff. Whereas, and there's a very limited number of explosions on long videos that Echo Charles makes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He is, uses some discretion when he makes his videos.


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[Assistant] The thing is though is people, like people were so stoked on that, on that album and gave such good feedback.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Proof. Literally motivation will not get that done. It's only discipline. Maybe I need to make a, maybe I need to make a psychological warfare track of what to do when you don't feel like making a psychological warfare second album.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Check Flipside Canvas. FlipsideCanvas.com. Dakota Meyer. My brother. Who's making cool stuff to hang on your wall. Got a bunch of books. Got a novel coming out. Maybe it's a novel. We're not really sure what it is. But I wrote something that's not a leadership book and it's not a kids book. It's a story. We'll say that for now.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The book is called Final Spin. You can pre-order it right now and you can get that first the dish. Leadership strategy and tactics, field manual. The code, the evaluation, the protocols. Discipline equals freedom, field manual. The way the warrior kid for field manual. Oh, I just tapped out my mic right there. Sorry about that, Echo Charlie. We'll have to fix that in post.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Way the Warrior Kid 123, Mike and the Dragons, About Face by Hackworth, Extreme Ownership, Dichotomy and Leadership, Echelon Front, Leadership Consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. Go to echelonfront.com.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you need help inside your organization, we do live training all the time and we have courses online available EF online.com. If you want to check that out, we have some live events that we're doing called the muster, the muster


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Go to extremeownership.com if you want to come to the muster. We also have EF Battlefield coming up. We've sold one out. And so now we're gonna see if we're gonna do one more. If you want to


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Learn lessons from the Battle of Gettysburg if you want to walk the, if you want to walk the battlefield.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, and see where General Lee and Longstreet and AP Hill and General Meade and, and, and Colonel Joshua Chamberlain.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You c-come to that spot on Little Round Top where Joshua Chamberlain and the 20th Maine


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[Assistant] Talking about bayonet charge down the hill, you can, you can go there and you will feel it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So go to echelonfront.com slash events if you want to come to that. We already sold out the first part. It's only like 35 people.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, it's two days. You, me, 35 of you, 35 of us, 36 of us, whatever. So, come and check that out. If you want to help service members, if you want to help active duty and retired service members, if you want to help their families, if you want to help Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's Mom.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She's got a charity organization, Mama Lee. And if you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to americasmightywarriors.org.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or you need more of Echo's uncoupled inquires. Inquiries. You can find us on the interwebs, on Twitter, on Instagram.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Nah. Wuh. Wuh. Ah! Echoes at Echo Charles, I am at Jocko Willink, and thanks to all the people out there in uniform.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Maintaining our proud, our proud traditions of military service as you also protect our way of life and to our police and law enforcement and firefighters and paramedics and EMTs and dispatchers and correctional officers and border patrol and secret service and all first responders, thank you for protecting us as well.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And until next time, this is Echo and Jaco.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] About extreme, extreme ownership, and this might be splitting hairs, but in the spirit of understanding. So, let's say, whatever, you come to me, uhm, and, or whatever, I'm taking ownership of a mistake that happened, right? What if I do, I am, like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm not blaming you, but I am defensive. I am whatever. I am all that, but I actually do at the end of the lecture or whatever. Uhm, I do wanna.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Why am I lecturing you? I don't know. Like a, like a, you know, I messed up the project.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeaah, yeaah, like, or, or, let's say we straight up didn't. It failed. It failed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, so that's you taking ownership, right? Extremely, you know, and you're like, okay, so what if instead of that,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeaah, yeaah. And then let's say, after you lecture me, you think in your head, you know what, this is my fault.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, I guess if I, if I learned anything from you right now and in the past, it is that you do, if you're gonna take ownership extremely, if you're gonna demonstrate that practice, there's two parts of it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The way you come at the person or whatever, you let them know that it's your fault kind of thing. And then the second part is you, for real, it is your fault in your mind. It is. It is your responsibility to take action to fix those problems.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, so without that second recovery part, I'm talking about the interaction between the two people.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That alone. Not that subsequent actions that you're gonna take to solve the problem. I'm not talking about that because you're gonna do that anyway. Yeaah. But that second verbal part, interaction part, without that, that technically does not fit, does not fulfill the formula of extreme ownership.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, it seemed like when he was like, I also had guys who were quite calm, disciplined, whatever. It just seemed like this eight ball phenomenon was the opposite of that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right? That's not normal. I understand. Yes, fully.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You don't really think of discipline associated with cheerful.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Thousand times you know when it's 20 yards, you know, oh you don't have to exaggerate to me because I know but you know I can't


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Exactly right, but when you're in the situation, yeaah, you can tell me. I've never been mortared before, I know, surprising, but I haven't. If you were like, hey yeaah, we got mortared, and it was crazy, it was 20 yards away, I'd be like, I know how far 20, I know how far 20, that's not that close, that's like, I'd be alright. Oh yeaah. Whatever. That's like half of a 40 yard dash, like bruh, that's kinda far.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's what I was gonna ask, like, is that a thing? Cause like, you know, when you first encounter gunfire, even if it's like, you know,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It can startle you if you don't hear that all the time. It's so loud.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'll be like this at the gun range. Bear with me. I know. So at the gun range, you know when you first go in, you start hearing the


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The boom and then, you know, you got a little jump, you know, but after a while you go a few times or whatever. It's like you don't jump at all. But then let's say you take your friend and it's his first time or something like that. First time, long time, whatever. Then you see him jump. And then is that a thing? Like, ah, you jump. You're kind of a, you know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, it makes sense. And again, yeah, I, you know, I haven't shot in a ton in the SEAL teams, but when I go to the, the range, it's the same thing on a different scale where, yeah, when you first go in, you're like boom. Or when like you're about to shoot and you hear the guy next, you shoot, you're like, oh shit, you know, did my gun go off or whatever. It's like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is not very reassuring, bro. You know, I just hear. And then, but then after a while, it doesn't affect you. I figure that's natural, regardless of the environment, you know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, kicker. Kicker. Kicker, uh, wedge breaker, something. Well, that can be kind of versatile. Uhm, yeah, you're right, specialty. Bro, there was this guy, actually he was a wide receiver, but.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What the heck was his name? He played at U8 trade, and he was just, well, he was a wide receiver, for sure, and he did some things or whatever, but it was marginal compared to what his specialty was, was blocking field goals and puns. He was on the outside, cause he could run real fast.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, he, he has the instinct. He was just so, yeah, the instinct and his speed. He was the fastest guy on the team. So the way he could just get by guys.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, but I mean, the scenario is a little bit different because it's not like, they're like, hey, we need to call the rebounder. You know, that's what I mean, I was just playing, right? You see what I'm saying? But this guy, hey, they're about to kick a field goal, a freaking, what the heck was his name, Matt? Oh man, they're gonna be mad at me for not remembering that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So there was time they got to the point where they would stack that side wherever he was. Which is dangerous to do because you open up the other side for other guys.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Bro, it's that important. That's how good, that's how good the specialized, uhm, skill he had developed, you know?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right, and you're saying that's because there are certain things that are, when you say you said implied, right, but there's certain things that are just, this is what we're starting at.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeaah, kinda like if you lost your temper on somebody. It'd be like...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, and yeah, and that's the kind of the assumption for us outsiders, where...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, we think of, okay, they got, you know, they got this many guys on their side, and we got this many guys, but we got this, and we got that, like, we have these tanks, and we got that, you know, it's like, kind of nuts against nuts kind of a thing, but you consider, no, no, no, there's, there's, like, we need food, we need to get across that river, all this stuff that's kind of like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, they, they, they, uh, they come up on the beach, and you know, everyone, guys are jumping in the water, whatever. Uhm, and then a couple guys, they just drowned.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like, it's like, you know when you see that opening shot and you consider it in real life or whatever, it's kinda like, okay, what are we about to get into? This is gonna be scary. Machine guns, uhm, you know, tricking Germans, bombs, all this stuff, right? But then, oh, wait a second, what about the actual water we have to go through? Like, that's gonna kill some of us.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This might seem like a weird question, or maybe a- What's a century?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So what if you guys are out on a mission, and it's like a two day mission, whatever, and then it's like, okay, someone's got a stand watch, and it's Jocko, and you're a Navy SEAL straight up. Are you the sentry for that night kind of a thing?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, but he was a guard in a specific capacity. So there you go.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, part of this, when you know, when we hear these, uh, accounts, and go over these field manuals, and learn these lessons from the past from books, whatever. It is important to even just remember to pay attention to the lessons, cause you can get caught up in the story, man. You can. Like, I was kinda concerned about those guys.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So yes, we're staying capable, for sure. We're reading, you know, listening, all that stuff. We are.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Nonetheless, we gotta keep ourselves healthy and capable, alright? That's important, I think.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So yeaah, so when you're on this path, you might need some supplementation. It helps.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, big time. Keep your immunity up. Keep your functionality up. Keep your strength up. Keep your endurance up. Keep your cognitive attitude up. Up, yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then the other scenario, you're at a health capability level five. You got, let's say, two kids, depending on you. You got, let's say, maybe an employee, depending on you. Maybe has, I don't know, some, someone else depending on you. You want to be level five, you want to be level ten.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right, but that's, but that's not the point that I'm making. The point I'm making is some of us were just like, I'm fine with my number five.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're not doing nobody no favors by being at number five. No. At level ten, you are doing a lot of people some


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And not getting back onto the path is doing no good for nobody.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Let's get some supplementation. As far as supplementation goes, Jocko has a supplementation, Jocko Fuel. It's called Jocko Fuel. Jocko Fuel.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Get it. Yep, very reliable, very high quality stuff. This will keep you on the path that this will help you straight up. So the first thing we will go into is discipline.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Nope, not anymore. It's a big deal. Now, when you drink an energy drink now, it's good for you. You're better off.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, easy money. Yeah, you, you pay an additional cost for drinking an energy drink in a traditional sense.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, you put that in the shot so you like hit it and you can chomp up the dark chocolate in there. I'm telling cause those gourmet, those dessert shots or whatever? Yeah, I heard that. You can get a little tray of them or whatever and it's like, yeah, one's like a little cup of brownie or something. They're just small, right? Just like you're saying?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I'm telling you, stay on this thing. We got joint warfare mixed with a super krill oil. Don't gotta worry about that anymore.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeaah, those days are gone too. Good to go. Good to go. Also, vitamin D3, keep your immunity up, which is an important thing. Maybe you don't think about it every single day, but when you start to get... sick.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, I was getting back into Malk Malk is the true protein in the sense, or in the replacement of a dessert, in the form of a dessert.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Let's face it, so we got American maids, denim, boots, jeans, uh, jiu-jitsu giis. Now we're starting to go into the fashion stuff, cause durable goods is like boots, pants.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Legit. What's interesting is like, that's the feeling you get whether you're running or not. You see somebody representing in the wild. Let's face it, that's it. That's the feeling you get.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you want to represent, yeaah, you can. Uh, again, JockoStore.com. We got Discipline Equals Freedom. We got Good. We got Hats. We got Hoodies. We got Rashguards on there. We have a subscription situation. Free shipping on this one too, by the way. Little bit different kind of designs. More interesting. Here's the thing. Wait, t-shirt designs? Yeaah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's called the Shirt Locker. Subscribe. Yeaah. I like the name too. Here's the thing about the Shirt Locker, because people are saying, hey, like, can I get that one design? That was like two months ago. It's a good design for sure. We can't. That was like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you have the membership, you'll get the design for that month, and then it's sorta gone. So I'm just saying, hey, I know, I know, you want the past one, but hey, the future one's gonna be good too.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So don't get yourself in a situation where you're emailing or on Twitter or whatever saying, hey, can I get that design? Just sign up now and you'll get that design.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's true. Also, Psychological Warfare is an album with tracks of Jocko getting us through our moments of weakness. Seems repetitive when I say it, but it doesn't, it kind of like undervalues really what it is. I'm telling you. So some people listen to music when they work out. Some listen to podcasts. Good. All good moves.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What? Extreme ownership? It's bewildering. Okay, alright. We'll see, we'll see.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's some people that called the 20th century the century of genocide.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, you look all throughout history and there's no shortage of mass killing of human beings by other human beings.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In fact, if you go all the way back, back to like our tribe all times, warfare by genocide was pretty typical. You had nomadic tribes, they didn't have prisons, they didn't have jails, they didn't have POW camps or anything like that. If you conquered another tribe,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Their men were gonna be a problem and you didn't have anywhere to keep them and so the standard operating procedure was you just took them out, took the women that were willing to sort of


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I guess get over it, back to your tribe with you, back, raise the children as your own.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, almost like social mammals, you know, like lions. You know, somebody comes in, kills the male lion and now takes over the pride. Uhm, as time developed, you started to get...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A sort of systematic civilized level of mass killing at scale that had never been possible in tribal times that you could only really


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You could only manage with the same sort of administration and organization that allowed you to do things like build pyramids and all the great wonders of civilization, right? And when you get up to the modern times, you get something that's even a little bit more


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, a little bit different than that. If we think back to say the Romans and what they did to Carthage, Carthage had been giving Rome problems.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hannibal had been rampaging around the Italian peninsula, defeating their armies. And when they finally got the drop on the Carthaginians, they said, salt the earth. We're not dealing with this anymore. Eliminate that threat for good. And they did.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When Caesar went up to Gaul, you know, Rome had been sacked by Gaul before. It was a traumatic event in Roman history. And so when Caesar went up there and ended that threat thoroughly, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You could think of it in a similar way. It was attached to conquest. And that's what you kind of saw throughout history.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When you get up to the 20th century, you see something in a way that's different and much darker, I think, which is you have established, firmly established states annihilating internal, uh, internal enemies according to the state.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're not going in and eliminating a threat that exists over the horizon, making sure that it never returns. You know, you're going into a prison where everybody's kept in a cell and one by one these unarmed people, you're simply murdering all of these people over whom you have complete power.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When you think of what happened to the Armenians, when you think of what happened to the Ukrainians under Stalin, to the Jews under Hitler, these are the kinds of things you see. This is a disarmed captive population that is not a threat. And


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's no way out. And that's really the key characteristic of these events is if you go to those people.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you saw this, you saw this with the Jews in Germany, you saw this with the Ukrainians, you saw this with the Armenians absolutely at the beginning of the First World War, is a huge part of the population, including the leadership, is really actively asking the question, what can we do?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What can we do? Like, what is it? It's the beginning of the first world war, the Armenians were flying Turkish flags.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because they knew, they had a history with the Turks, they'd had problems before. 20 years back, we'll talk about in a second, 300,000 or so of them got massacred.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they knew in the first world war, the tension was going to be high and the stress was going to be high. So what can we do to show our loyalty to the empire, to show that we're down for the cause? And the answer is there's nothing you can do. There's nothing you can do.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're all going to be wiped out and there's nothing you can do. And it's the ultimate horror movie to have your state turn on you like that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, and uhm, it's interesting that you say that the Armenian genocide isn't that well known, which is very, very true.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because it really is kind of the archetypal act of genocide in the 20th century. It was really like the first one.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And complete and systematic and intentional genocides that we have any record of.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That erasure of genocide is something that you also see throughout history. I mean, how many countless peoples?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Have been genocided throughout history that we don't even know their names.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We'll never know their names. And maybe we even celebrate the history of the people who did it as a glorious civilization and we will never know the names of the countless people that they completely wiped out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We don't like to mention, uh, or talk about or admit, but the fact is that


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, more often than not, if you look historically speaking, genocide tends to work.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Not only are a lot of genocides physically successful, uh, but more often than we would really prefer, the one that does it ends up getting away with it. And getting, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Getting the message put out to the rest of the world and people in the future.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Who, who might think of doing something similar, that this is an option. In fact, when Adolf Hitler was contemplating his final solution for the Jewish question in Eastern Europe, he asked his commanding generals, uh, who today remembers the Armenians. Because the truth was nobody did.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, Hitler's life was saved by a Jewish soldier. Uhm, he, he received his iron cross from a Jewish, uh, superior officer.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, uh, I mentioned that it is really the archetypal genocide of the 20th century. And I don't just say that because of the methods that were used. In fact, the methods that were used in a way were kind of anachronistic and unique to the Turkish Empire.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was archetypal of the 20th century genocides, uh, because of what you just asked, because of the specific relationship between


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's a strange thing to study when you get up to the late period in the 20th century because, you know, like if you ever asked yourself, like, what would it have been like?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If like the Golden Horde, right, or the Mongols or something, had just, they had managed to establish themselves somewhere.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, on the, on the outskirts of Europe, and they lasted, and you get all the way up to the 20th century, and they're still there, and they have an advanced civilization now. You know, the Genghis Khan's, like, descendants, like, they now have control, they have a big battle fleet, you know, they've got modern weaponry, I mean, it's a big, glorious civilization, Constantinople,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, when the first world war kicked off, you're talking about one of the most sophisticated, glorious cities in the world. And uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Ottoman Empire gives you some idea of what it would be like if the Golden Horde survived into the 20th century. This is uhm...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, they're Turkic peoples who came in as step warriors.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And conquered the Byzantine Empire and took over all of North Africa.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Basically everything between Morocco and Persia and then down into Egypt.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeaah, the uhm, the idea in the major Islamic empires was always that we, the majority population, the people in the commanding position of this society, we fight the wars and everybody else, the Christian and Jewish minorities for example, they pay for the war.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that's how it works. We're a warrior people. I mean, these are step warriors who came and built up a big civilization. And they kept a lot of that character even as they went forward, even as they were wearing suits and ties and, uh, you know, going to, to,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was perfectly typical to offer your enemies the option to either unconditionally surrender or be massacred totally.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That was the mode of warfare on the steppe when they were conquering civilizations. It's how the Ottoman Empire got to where it was. And so as you, as you move into modernity, you have this society there that, uh, up until the early 1800s, still had its entire bureaucracy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And just go into a village and say, we need 10 people, we need 10 male children, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. And they would do it the easy way because they knew what the hard way looked like under the Ottoman Empire and it was no prettier than it got in the 20th century.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And by the time they got up to, uh, the early 1800s, this group of bureaucrats and soldiers called the Janissaries,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] These were slave soldiers and bureaucrats, uhm, who more or less ran the important functions of the empire.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They held, you know, all the most important government positions and they were getting into this kind of strange place with the ruling elites, the ruling Turkish elites where the Turks are overall in charge.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But this other group of people who are Muslim, they, they were born Christian children, but they were converted as children to Muslims, but that this identifiable group of people who has their own sense of themselves as an identifiable group, these Janissaries, that they have a tremendous amount of influence and power, that they're really the ones running the empire.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it got to a point where the government, the Turkish government decided they couldn't trust these people anymore and they locked them all in their barracks one night and they burned them all to death.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When they felt that this small minority group was accruing too much power and middle management, where they kind of maybe probably could run the empire without the Turks if they really wanted to, their response was to wipe all of those people out overnight. And that's what they did. And it's known in Ottoman history. It was known in Ottoman history as the auspicious event.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That, yeaah, that's one way to look at it. I mean, well, in, so, in the thing that's so interesting about it, right, is if you look at what happened to the overseas Chinese population in Indonesia in the 1960s, if you look at what happened to the East Indian population of East Africa,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If, there, there, you can go down the line. The people who are targeted.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Are almost inevitably this similar group of people, right? If you look in Europe with the Jews, uh, for a long time, you know, we were under a feudal system. The people who were in charge, the elites in a feudal system, they own all the land, the source of wealth in society is from the land.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The majority of the local European population are all peasants or maybe small artisans.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, but then you have this group move in, you have the Jews move in, and the Jews have been living in cities since...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, the Romans kicked him out of Palestine, some of even before that. So these are people who have lived in urban environment. They know how to engage in long distance trade.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They know how to deal in like financial alchemy, they know how to do all, you know, they know banking, they know law, they're all literate at a time when like 1% of your own population is literate because that's what these people do and they don't have their own place to live obviously.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the peasants work the land, but I'll bet you there's a lot of ways that we can help out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they bounced around Europe sometimes, accruing too much power, too much wealth.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was fine, they fulfilled this middleman minority role for centuries.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Say the 1800s, maybe late 1700s, depending on where you are. And you have all these Jews who are engaged in things like banking, law, medicine.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, you know, international trade, all of these things that the nobility didn't want to do, and the peasantry wasn't capable of doing, and they're like, we'll just have the Jews do it, because we don't like them anyway, they're outsiders, have them do it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We get up to like the 1800s and 1900s. What's every mother telling their kid that they should go do? Go be a lawyer. Go be a banker. Go be a doctor.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They were ready, they were ready. They had been doing this stuff for a long time and they started to become very wealthy and very prominent. And when that, when that started to happen, you got...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You had a gigantic spike in antisemitism. You started seeing pogroms all over the place.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] 100%, especially since it redirects any anger they might have toward the people in charge to that layer below them, that intermediary. And they would specifically use them for that purpose, you know? They would use these people as tax collectors, they would use them as estate managers to manage the serfs and stuff because they knew


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So it sort of worked out like that, but the Christians had always kind of been fulfilling those roles, right? Uhm, the Christians in all the Islamic empires, if you go back, and the Jews as well.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They're usually urban populations. Armenians are a little different in that respect. We'll talk about it in a second. But they were the ones who naturally fulfilled those roles. The Turks, they were the warriors. You know, they're not gonna go open a shop.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then you've got a lot of, you know, you've got the Kurdish tribes, you've got a lot of these semi-nomadic Arab villagers and stuff who are out there. You know, the Ottoman Empire is not, we're not talking about like England in the 1900s or something.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's a very sophisticated and advanced society in many ways, but you go like maybe 500 miles out to the east and it's the wild frickin' west out there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, I mean, it is like you got an Armenian village surrounded by Kurdish tribes that raid that village sometimes and kidnap your daughters. And, um, you know, you go outside the Imperial core and the Ottoman Empire did not have the state capacity to really exercise firm control over all of their lands.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, it was a tribute empire, which is again reminiscent of the old steppe empires. Like, we're not gonna come in and tell you that you gotta turn Turkish and you can't speak your language.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just send your taxes, and don't have any uprisings, and if you do, we'll come and you'll learn why the last ten people found out that's a bad idea. That was really how it was. It was a tribute empire. And uhm, the Christians and the Jews,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Christians were more numerical than the Jews, and so they really, and in the Ottoman context, but when I say that, we're talking mostly about Armenians in the East, Greeks in the West, and then Assyrians kind of spread out, Assyrian Christians as well.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, uh, by the time, a very similar thing. They had been engaging in these, these middleman roles, right? Administrative, professional, and commercial services for the empire. Stuff that the empire couldn't do on its own. Things like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Most of the biggest mosques that Istanbul is famous for today were all designed by Armenians, Armenian architects. By the time you got up to the late 1800s, early 1900s, you've got


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The bureaucracy, largely in the upper roles, very often filled with, I shouldn't say it, in the very, very upper roles, those are, those are Ottoman, you know, rulers, but all of these sort of middle management, sort of GS14 roles, right? Those are Armenians, those are Greeks, these, you know, people like that, they really relied on these people.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it was a similar thing. You get up into the dawn of the modern age. We're having bureaucratic skills, being literate and numerate, knowing how to deal with finance and trade and law and medicine, all of these things that the Christians in the Ottoman Empire were doing. That's where you needed to be if you were going to be successful. And they became extraordinarily successful in the Ottoman Empire. Very, very wealthy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, at one point, in fact, just before the outbreak of the First World War, the most, uh, the wealthiest banker in Europe was an Ottoman Armenian. More wealthy than the Rothschilds even. And uhm, when you get to that point,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You get, you run into that, into that trouble where you have this, this empire where the ruling elites, the Turkish elites are experiencing this sense that, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That they aren't really needed so much anymore. Now they don't feel that, they're not gonna think that consciously ever, but that's really what's going on. They're in charge now of an empire that they couldn't have really built themselves, and they couldn't really run themselves.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the people who are running it, they're starting to look at very askew for, uhm, a very particular reason, and that was that this is also the age of European imperialism.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In one of our unraveling episodes recently, we talked about the genocide of the Uyghurs and you go back to the late 1800s.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the Uyghurs kind of became the dominant majority in Xinjiang and that, uh, I got.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, I think you said Qin Jiang. No, I'm just messing with you. Um, and, uh, and, uh, the, the, the Uyghurs were in the territory and they were being kind of oppressed by this dominant group there. And so the Qing Chinese said, roger that. And they went out and just wiped those people out. They were called the Zongars and they don't exist anymore. And, uh, really one of the big drivers for that was, you know, we had talked about how in China,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Outside their borders, well what we think of as their borders today, they never thought about it as like a hard border back in the day. It was just, that was the frontier, past that is the steppe, that's where all the barbarians live.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, and so what they need to do is just, they need to manage the barbarians out there. It's just one big buffer zone between us and them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, all of a sudden you start getting the British Empire, the French.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Later the Russian Empire, these other Europeans start coming around in any territory they see that's not already incorporated within the borders of a state that can actually defend it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They're snatching all that up, and so the Chinese say, well, okay, that's not just the frontier anymore, now that's China.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And anybody in it has to be Chinese, because if you're anything but that...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He's Christian Europe, obviously, uh, and they have a Christian...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Minority population, Greeks and Armenians and others who have not been treated particularly well over the years as a whole.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so they start to worry that these are potential fifth columnists that these European powers could use to start to split off more territory than they already have.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You think of like, think, you really have to put yourself in the mindset of the people running the Ottoman Empire, and I think we can actually probably do that because we're Americans, right? And so you have to imagine, uhm, these are people who


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Again, had the largest and most powerful empire in the world for a number of years.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] All the way up to Vienna twice. You go look at a map of Europe, everybody out there. And I mean, it's not like they're in the Balkans. It's up there in central Europe. I mean, and if they would have, if they would have gotten past Vienna, I mean, you know, Germany was just broken into a bunch of little principalities at the time and they weren't standing up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Ottomans were on good terms with the French. I mean, they may, they may have conquered like, you know, two thirds of Europe if they hadn't been stopped by the Poles of Vienna.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so you have this empire that's not only this, the largest most powerful empire in the world for centuries. It controls, like its capital is Constantinople, the old Roman capital. You know, it controls access to the Black Sea.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then all of a sudden, you know, starting kind of really after that 1683 fight at Vienna that they lost, it was just a gradual and then accelerating downhill slide from there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They lose, they start getting chipped away in North Africa. Eventually they lose all that. They lose Egypt. The Russian Empire finally starts to get its act together, takes over all of the North Caucasus and wars there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Russians are expanding, you know, you have Orthodox Christians in the Balkans, in the Slavic Balkans. The Russian Empire is pushing down there. They lose, uh, their Balkan territories over time. They lose Bulgaria. And so you have this empire that is, you know, you have to imagine being an American, and it's like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeaah, Vietnam was tough. Iraq and Afghanistan were tough. Oh no, Mexico just invaded and took over New Mexico, Arizona and Southern California and there's nothing we can do about it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And now Cuba took over Florida and there's nothing we can do about it. Like the war that's lost, it's gone now. And there's this growing sense.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That it's not gonna reverse any time soon, if, if ever, that this is like an inexorable process of collapse that's going on. And because it's being done.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The, uh, you know, there, there was this sort of sense of hope among some of those Christian minorities that maybe, hey, you know, we're the Armenians over here in the East. It's not great to be an Eastern, an Ottoman Armenian out in the rural areas in the East.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Russian Empire, they're orthodox Christians. There's a bunch of Armenians that live over in the Russian Empire and they're actually doing alright. They're not getting massacred by the tens of thousands. They're not having to pay taxes to...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, the eight Kurdish chieftains that all live around us. And so there was some of this, um,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, these people weren't organized fifth columnists or anything like that, but there was this sort of sense that things might be a little bit better if they weren't living under the Ottoman yoke. That wasn't, you know, completely invented. When, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, after the 1877 war between the Russians and the Turks, they lost Bulgaria. A bunch of Muslim refugees came out of Bulgaria and came and moved into the Ottoman Empire. They also lost a bunch of their North Caucasian territory and a bunch of Circassian Muslims and other


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Muslim tribes from up there had to be pushed, you know, they, they, they fled because the Cossacks were harassing them and stuff. And so they start coming down and a lot of them settled in this area where Armenians had traditionally lived. The whole area of southeastern Turkey today.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, you know, Armenia is right across that eastern border, but you go across the border, that whole area of southeastern Turkey where it's mostly Kurds today, that, that for many, many centuries was all Armenians for the most part. That's traditional like Armenia. And uhm, yet all of these others that moved into this territory,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You start to get, uh, you know, you, you start to get this, this dynamic where, you know, there's multiple things at play. They don't trust the Armenian population out there and they're mistreating them, which is leading to a certain sense of resentment from those Armenians toward the government.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The government doesn't have the state capacity to go out there and really like set up shop and establish order out there. You have all of these destitute new Muslim refugees, including a lot of them are just tribes or Kurdish tribes and things, nomads, who, uh, again, they're refugees. They don't have a lot going on. And so they start robbing and raiding the Armenian settlements that are out there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the Turkish government either lacks the will or the capacity to defend them or to go out and punish them. And so Armenian self-defense movements start to basically pop up just so they can defend themselves from these Kurdish raids and Circassian raids. Well, the Turkish government sees that. They say, you see they're arming up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They just killed a bunch of Muslims from that Kurdish tribe over there. We knew it. We knew they were getting ready for rebellion.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it was just this vicious cycle that started to kick into place to the point where by the time you get to the 1880s, 1890s, you mentioned that song at the beginning that the Turkish schoolchildren were being taught during the first world war.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There was an account I read from an American missionary that saw in a Turkish classroom, talking like first, second, third grade kids, and they're going through lessons where they've got drawings up on the board.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, like cartoon drawings of Armenians, uhm, including women and children participating. Just hacking limbs off of Turks and, you know, raping them, killing them in just the most bloody and horrible ways. And these school children are being taught that this is who these Armenians are. This is what they want to do to you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so this had been, by the time you get to the first world war, this kind of thing had been going on for decades. And the Armenians didn't have, uhm, you know, it didn't come to them as a complete and total shock, a lot of them anyway, because they had seen a sort of premonition of it in the 1890s.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When the Sultan Abdul Hamid the second, uh, infamous in Ottoman and Armenian history ordered a series of massacres starting in 1894 that, um,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, what can you say? It was just a, it was a free for all total massacre. You know, there were soldiers and gendarme, uh, gendarmes who were participating, but really it was a call on the local populations, Muslim villagers and tribes to get out there and participate, kill your Armenian neighbors.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it, and it was specific to the Armenians. There were some cases in fact, and this happened as well in the First World War genocide, uhm, where there are telegrams out there and messages from the government letting them know, hey, don't mess with the Catholics, make sure that you don't mess with, you know, these others. This is about the Armenians. And,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And another hundred thousand or so died in the year or so after that from starvation and exposure and whatever. And so this is something where, you know, they're not going into cities and rounding up 20, 30,000 people at a time. They're going village to village to village, 50 people here, a hundred people here. You look at the map.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Of the massacres in the 1894 Hamidian Massacres.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the whole thing is just covered with like skulls and crossbones or whatever symbol they use to say massacre site, massacre site, massacre site. It's just all of Eastern Anatolia was just covered in blood.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, the local population was basically mobilized to go out there and kill your Armenian neighbors, and that's what happened.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, there's a book that came out recently called The 30 Year Genocide by Benny Morris and George Zevi, which is


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's two Israeli historians who looked real deeply on this and got, they probably went deeper into the, into the records.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To figure out exactly moment by moment like what happened here that anyone really has and one of the things that they discovered is that


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, this was not something that just popped up in the chaos of World War I. That those massacres in the 1890s,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's only one reason that they stopped, and that was that the British made them stop.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There was a, you know, by this point the Ottoman Empire was having huge economic problems. The British and the French were essentially had the Empire's finances in receivership. They were basically controlling the Ottoman, uh, fiscal budget, the governmental fiscal budget. They had, you know, say so over it anyway. And uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In 1896, this Armenian militant group, after all of these murders, said, we have to do something. And there's nothing you can really do. I mean, you know, you can't.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're talking about, it's not even David and Goliath. I mean, it's a flea versus Goliath. They can't fight back. There's nothing like that. The only thing they can hope to do is get the attention of outside powers who can wield influence over the Ottoman Empire.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so they went and they, uh, invaded the Ottoman Central Bank, the bank Ottoman in Constantinople.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they took a bunch of hostages and made a bunch of demands and uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The, uh, they knew that there were a lot of European, uh, hostages that they would be taking and that there were a lot of European assets in that bank.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so the Sultan at the time, he's, you know, again, these are, these are.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Step warriors. He's a hardcore people. He said, yeah, that's nice. Your demands. That's cool. You can throw them away. And he just surrounded the place with artillery and got ready to just blow the place to rubble. And at the same time, uh, put out an order for everybody in Constantinople to just go out and massacre Armenians in Constantinople. And that's what they did. They rampaged through the streets, beating, killing anybody they could find as he prepared to just blow up this bank.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And right at the critical moment, the British sent some warships into the Dardanelles there and sent a message to the Sultan that if you blow up that bank, the next thing that's going to be destroyed is your own house. And so they backed down.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But that's the only reason those things stopped, and he put an order out that the massacres were over. And they came to an end.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, that period though, up until you get to the First World War, most, you know, people who look at this seriously now realize that the First World War was not a reason for the Armenian Genocide, it was just the opportunity for it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, there's maybe a way that uhm, nothing can prepare you for it, even if you've seen it coming. When it happens, you're just not ready. There were a lot of Jews in Europe in the 1930s who


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, we're writing to their relatives in other parts of the world saying, we gotta get out of here. We're sitting on the edge of a volcano right now. Who still, when it actually came, were all, you know, just kind of caught with that deer in a headlights look, because what do you do? You know, and there's a lot of, you can read a lot of, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A lot of stuff from Holocaust survivors, children, and also from Zionists who were in Palestine out of the country at the time, who really can't understand, like, why are our parents or our cousins who were in Europe at the time, like, why aren't they fighting back? Like, why aren't they rising up or whatever? And it's just, you just don't know what it's like to be caught.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Where there's nowhere to go. The, the, the enemy's in control. And there is, yeaah, you can, you can rush the electrified fence. You can, you're caught. And they, and they've established dominance in a way that you're not gonna really be able to get out of.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because again, these modern scale genocides like this are something that could really only be pulled off by a state.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] How'd the young Turks play into this? Yeah, so after you, there were, there were people within the Turkish hierarchy who understood that this, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That this empire as it stands right now, it's gotta change.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If we're going to compete at any level with the British Empire, the rising Russian Empire, like we gotta get, get it together, and the way we're running things now, or we can't even really control our territory effectively a few hundred miles out east, that's just not gonna do it. It's not gonna do it anymore.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and so they were modernizers. This was a movement that started out in universities, a lot of medical students, law students, things like that. And it was a, it was an underground group. It was a sort of a revolutionary group, sort of like you were seeing all across Europe at the time. You know, the Bolsheviks and a lot of the socialists in Russia, for example.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The difference I guess between like them and the Bolsheviks is a million differences, but the main one is they weren't international communists or anything. They were fierce, fierce Turkish nationalists. But they were, they were multi-cultural.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, so they actually had a, what they called the Ottomanist movement. You know, they wanted everybody, this is a big thing in the late 1800s, really up until the defeat in the First World War, that uhm, that


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We're all Ottomans, right? Which at the time was like Ottoman, that's just the name of


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Turkish commander who like came in with that, you know, he, who established their tribe. I mean, he was the tribal leader at the time, Osman.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But, uh, you know, by the time you got up to this point, I mean, America's some old Italian sailor too, right? So like, you can do that, it's no problem. But there was the idea that we're all Ottomans, Ottomans here. Doesn't matter where you were born or whatever. In fact, a lot of the Young Turk and Committee of Union in Progress, which was like a really militant group,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Subgroup of the Young Turks. Uhm, some of their leaders, including some of the ones that would be in charge of the Empire during the First World War,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, they weren't Turkish. Um, Talat Pasha, the guy who was the interior minister and the effective head of government for the Ottoman Empire, uh, was from, he was born in Bulgaria, for example. And the young Turks, they had Jews, they had Armenians. The Armenians, in fact, really supported the young Turks at first because they, they thought, we have this force that's maybe more trying to be a modernizing influence.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Seems like more of a secular influence because that was one other thing I didn't mention is, uhm, as you, as the Ottoman Empire started to get worried about these


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so they're in charge, this is all, this is, you're in somebody else's house, right, if you're a Christian or a Jew. This is the Muslim's house and everybody knew that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, but they really, they had an empire to manage. They weren't trying to create problems between their Muslim and Christian and Jewish subjects, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, by the time, once they started worrying about the loyalty of these Christian subjects, and worrying, not only about that, actually worrying about their non-Turkish imperial subjects, like they were worried about the Arabs.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Not wanting to be under Turkish rule. And as we saw in World War I, that was probably a good call. The British sent Lawrence of Arabia down there and got the Arabs to rise up and march on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You had the Russian Empire who was trying to encourage, like, Kurdish Separatism, for example, just to kind of create some chaos and some problems over there. They wanted them to say, hey, you're Muslims, don't you see those Christians just want to destroy this glorious Muslim Empire?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the side effect of that, or maybe it wasn't a side effect, you know, because they were worried about the loyalty of these internal Christians as well, was that those Kurds said, yeah, we are Muslim, and these Christians are trying to destroy this glorious Muslim empire.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Those Armenians are Christian, and you started to get some real problems there, and when you couple that with like what they were teaching in classrooms and stuff, by the time you get up to, you know, the first world war, it's at a fever pitch. Well,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The young Turks, they seemed to be a force, and to some degree they were a force that was trying to move the empire beyond all that. And so you have these Armenians, including like Armenian


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Militant groups, you know, that had really formed up because they, uh, because of the mistreatment of the Armenians in the east.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In 1909, a year later, there was a counter coup by the conservative Sultan forces, uh, the Sultan's forces. And during that brief period that the Sultan was back in power and the young Turks were out of power, another 30,000 Armenians got massacred in the province of Adana. And it was done with the same character that you just read. You know, this is a


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Again, this is, this is, the first world war in that whole period is, it's so fascinating, right, because it's, it's this war in which


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The old world marched into those trenches and the new world


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Marched out of them, you know, it's the, it's the pre-modern world and then the modern world just really it's that, it's that transition point in that clash. And so you have this genocide that is done for modern reasons, like nationalist reasons almost, right? You didn't, you know, the, this idea of like ethnic purity and needing to have like our internal pure, that's a modernist idea.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the, the means by which it was carried out administratively and all of these things, the Turkish Empire was a modern empire in many ways. But...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is genocide that was not carried out, uh, you know, with, with ledger sheets and, uh, you know, Zyklon B and, and, and gas ovens or anything like that. This was something that was done the old way. It was done with,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hatchets and axes and hand knives and kitchen knives and clubs and boots. And it was something that, you know, it was a, it was a genocide that was conducted in, in ravines just off the road and in people's basements, not on battlefields.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they get started right away. And some people who may have been paying attention at the time,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They may have had some idea that the young Turks had, uh, changed a little because they took the government back over pretty quickly in 1909. So the young Turks are in charge now. And a lot of the Armenians feel pretty good about that, at least relative to what they had been facing before. But in 1910,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There was this incident, people were complaining about all of these stray dogs running around Constantinople.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Tens of thousands of them that were just running around, they were attacking people sometimes, destroying the city, and the Young Turk government was called on to fix this problem. How are you gonna fix it?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well they sent dog catchers, thousands of dog catchers out, and they caught all of these dogs one by one.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's about 80,000 dogs they caught and they put them in cages and they took them all out to this island right off the coast in the Dardanelles and they just dropped them off there and


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The medium sized ones ate the small ones, the big ones ate the medium sized ones, the mean ones ate the big ones, and then the mean ones died of starvation. And that's how they dealt with the dogs in Constantinople. Uhm, you know, the young Turks were...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Pushed back and the young Turks were humiliated by this. They lost the last of their European territories in the Balkans by doing that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so, and, and they blamed very, they very much blamed, uh, sort of fifth columnist Christians in those Balkan territories for what had happened. And, and right around this time you start to see the forces within the Young Turk movement.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That, uh, is very anti-Christian and specifically anti-Armenian because they're the ones that they really worry about.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Greeks are a separate issue. We'll talk about them a little bit, but uhm, because they killed 300,000 Greeks right around this period too. They killed 300,000 Assyrian Christians. They killed a couple hundred thousand Lebanese Christians. This was a, this was a mass killing of all Christians across the empire. They just really had it in for the Armenians in particular. And so the First World War breaks out and


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, again, I mentioned this like very near the beginning. You have the Armenians who recognize it like this could be a problem. Like this is going to be an issue for us. Not necessarily that they're going to do something like genocidus because nobody was thinking like that at the time. You have to remember like nobody had


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This was pre-Holocaust, this was pre-Polpot, this was pre-Stalin, or any of that kind of stuff. Like the idea that you would have one of these major empires, and the Ottoman Empire, like to us maybe,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, we think of it as like this very sort of exotic foreign empire that's almost this, this throwback from like an ancient time or something like that and very orient-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This was a, the Europeans, you know, they had, they were fully integrated with, uh, with Europe for the most part. I mean, this was something that people read about Constantinople in the New York Times every day, you know, this was a, people talk about like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, Germany, how one of the, the crazy things about the Holocaust is like, but it's Germany. How could Germany do something like that? You know, this is where Leibniz came from. It's where, you know, uh, Goethe came from.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so nobody was thinking like they were going to wipe us all out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, there might be massacres. The local populations might get out of control and the local government there might encourage them or, or, or not stop them from doing it. But nobody was quite thinking along.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Such totalizing lines, because they just didn't have a historical precedent for it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So if you look at why the Ottoman Empire was brought into the war by the Germans.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like, what did the Ottoman Empire get out of it? What did the Germans expect to get out of it? What the Germans expected to get out of it was, look, they're facing the British, the French, and the Russians.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] All three of them have been taking away territory from the Ottoman Empire for years. The Ottoman Empire would like to take that territory back and these other three would like to keep it. So if the Ottoman Empire doesn't have to help us conquer the world here or anything, if they can just put some pressure on Egypt, put some pressure on the Caucasus and on the Balkans,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Then it's, then these other three empires that the Germans are facing are going to have to like redirect some resources to defend them. That was the idea. And for the Ottoman Empire, they thought this is an opportunity to get some territory back.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And also to fortify our position internally so that when this war is over, we don't have any, any problems inside that can be exploited again later.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And uhm, the Ottoman Empire was not, look, the Turks can fight. They can still fight to this day from what I understand. I mean, they're, they're a warrior people and they carry that in them, but they were not prepared for this war. They weren't prepared to go toe to toe with the British Empire and with the Russian Empire. And so the first thing that happens, you know, you mentioned Talat Pasha.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you mentioned Jamal Pasha. Those were two out of the three people who were kind of the Ottoman triumvirate during the First World War. Talat was the interior minister and he was the head of government for all effective purposes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Jamal Pasha was the head of the Navy and he was the military governor of Syria, which is a much bigger territory than we're talking about today. It was really like all of Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, like kind of that whole thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And uhm, he was known by the Arabs in Damascus, by the way, as the butcher. He was, uh, he starved to death, very similar to the way Stalin did the Hala Damour, uhm, he starved to death a few hundred thousand, uh, Lebanese Christians in Mount Lebanon where he was, uhm, taking all the food, sending it out to the front.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Not allowing any food aid or anything else to come in and a few hundred thousand people just starve to death on the streets. There are accounts from people who are there, like American University, uhm, and other western, uh, missionaries and diplomats who say they would


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Put cotton balls in their ears in their houses because outside it was just


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Moaning children, moaning women, people dying on the streets begging for food. It just sounded like the zombie apocalypse out there. Just moans, day and night, people dying. You go out in the morning and open up your door and there's a dead child on your doorstep.