Part Four: How Lawrence of Arabia Invented Modern War

Summary

Summary of "Behind the Bastards" - Part Four: How Lawrence of Arabia Invented Modern War

Released on November 21, 2024 by Cool Zone Media and iHeartPodcasts

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1. Introduction to T.E. Lawrence

The episode delves into the complex figure of T.E. Lawrence, commonly known as Lawrence of Arabia. The hosts explore his pivotal role in the Arab Revolt during World War I and examine the darker aspects of his legacy, including allegations of war crimes and his controversial support for Zionism.

Dan (00:19): "Few stats one way or the other."

2. Lawrence and the Arab Revolt

Lawrence's involvement in the Arab Revolt is a central theme. The hosts discuss his strategic maneuvers, such as the attack on the town of Duras, and his collaboration with Arab leaders like Faisal. They highlight Lawrence's tactical decisions, including his controversial orders to give no quarter and execute wounded soldiers, which deviated from wartime regulations.

Robert (06:08): "Lawrence... began executing wounded men himself as they lay bleeding on the battlefield."

3. War Crimes and Brutality

A significant portion of the discussion focuses on Lawrence's alleged war crimes. The hosts cite Scott Anderson from Smithsonian magazine, who describes Lawrence's degraded judgment and increasingly brutal tactics. They debate whether Lawrence's actions were a result of trauma from wartime experiences or deliberate attempts to instill fear and achieve strategic objectives.

Robert (07:19): "This slaughter of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of prisoners and wounded men would have been a massive war crime in any theater of World War I."

4. Support for Zionism and the Balfour Declaration

Lawrence's support for the Balfour Declaration and Zionism is scrutinized. The hosts explain how Lawrence, initially not in favor, shifted his stance to align with Zionist objectives, believing it could aid in the economic development of the Arab state. They discuss the implications of this support, especially in the context of modern conflicts in the Middle East.

Robert (05:37): "One thing stands above every other matter, which is his support for the Balfour Declaration."

5. Legacy and Historical Reappraisals

The episode examines the mixed legacy of Lawrence of Arabia. While some view him as a sympathetic figure haunted by his actions, others see him as an imperialist who betrayed the Arabs. The hosts reference various historians and publications that either support or criticize Lawrence's portrayal in history, highlighting the ongoing debate about his true character and intentions.

Robert (26:14): "The world remembers Lawrence as a guide, friend, and champion of Arabs, but hardly knows that he believed in Zionism..."

6. Personal Life and Sexuality

Lawrence's personal life, particularly his sexuality, is explored in depth. The hosts discuss letters and accounts suggesting Lawrence identified as asexual, challenging earlier claims of his involvement in sadomasochistic practices. They highlight conversations between Lawrence and his friends, providing a nuanced view of his relationships and personal struggles.

Robert (58:53): "Lawrence wrote that the Turks... did it to me by force. I couldn't ever do it."

7. Final Years and Death

The hosts recount Lawrence's post-war attempts to document his experiences through his book, Seven Pillars of Wisdom. They narrate the challenges he faced in publishing his work, including the loss of his manuscripts and his eventual disillusionment with his legacy. The episode concludes with Lawrence's tragic death in a motorcycle accident, underscoring the tumultuous end to a complex life.

Robert (63:00): "And then, a week after writing this, Lawrence crashed his motorcycle and perished in the accident."

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Notable Quotes:

• Dan (07:00): "You don't count no chuds."

• Margaret (08:24): "He wants to be a moral man and he knows he's not. So if he can find a loophole to loophole himself into morality by killing everyone."

• Robert (21:00): "Gertrude Bell is a fascinating character... someone who knew Lawrence too, in his early travels."

• Margaret (39:28): "The way you want to process something bad is by romanticizing being like, at least my life is interesting and beautiful, even though it's terrible and tragic."

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Conclusion

"Behind the Bastards" offers a thorough and engaging examination of T.E. Lawrence's life, highlighting both his strategic brilliance and the moral ambiguities that marred his legacy. Through insightful discussions and critical analysis, the hosts present a multifaceted portrait of a man who both shaped and was shaped by the tumultuous events of his time.

Transcript

[Sophie]

Call Zone media.

[Dan]

What's murdering 75 men in hand to hand combat? My Margaret, have you killed 75 men in hand to hand combat?

[Margaret]

I've been told to not comment on this until I'm more certain about a.

[Dan]

Few stats one way or the other.

[Sophie]

Fucking follow you into war so fast, I'd be like, yes, yes, boss.

[Margaret]

Where are we going?

[Dan]

To me, to me.

[Sophie]

Let me grab my axe. Let's go.

[Dan]

That's gonna be conditional for me on.

[Robert]

What kinds of men you count when you're killing.

[Emily]

Right.

[Dan]

You know, like Auda didn't count Turks.

[Robert]

You know, do you count Turks if.

[Dan]

You kill them in hand to hand combat?

[Robert]

These are the questions that I need to know.

[Margaret]

Yeah, no. Chuds are the ones that not certain count.

[Dan]

You don't count no chuds.

[Margaret]

Yeah, yeah, no, I refer to my CHUD kind of thing and people think I refer to it as a CHUD truck. Cause it looks like a truck a CHUD would drive. But actually it's just very good at any.

[Dan]

Oh, Auda would have been a truck guy. I think we can all agree on that. Yes.

[Margaret]

People live long enough to see the Hilux.

[Dan]

I know, it's tragic. He was born for the Hilux. Oh my God, can you imagine how much Lawrence would have loved the Hilux?

[Margaret]

I got my oil recently by this guy who was trying to tell me about why it's worth it to import a Hilux.

[Dan]

Absolutely. You don't have to convince me, brother.

[Margaret]

The cost of importing the Hilux, he went over all of the prices of all of the importing the Hilux. And I was like, this no longer seems worth it. I thought the point of it was that it was cheaper than the other Toyota trucks.

[Dan]

Yeah. The point of it is that it's a Hilux. You know, that's just. That's just got some flair you can't replace.

[Margaret]

It has high classiness. It's in the name.

[Dan]

Yeah. I do feel some.

[Robert]

I can understand Lorenz better now that I've gone into battle in the back.

[Dan]

Of a Hilux in the fucking Arab world. Driven across Syria. Yeah. In an up armored Hilux. Yeah. That is a good life experience to have for really getting T.E.

[Robert]

Lawrence.

[Dan]

Yeah. It would have been a lot of.

[Robert]

Fun probably if we gotten to blow up a bridge or two.

[Dan]

But that wouldn't have been helpful in.

[Robert]

The situation we were in.

[Margaret]

No, just a strategic. Scientifically scientific.

[Robert]

And I have no idea how to really do that.

[Dan]

I would just blow up the bridge.

[Margaret]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Yeah. Now when we discuss T.E.

[Robert]

Lawrence, particularly when we try to answer.

[Dan]

The question, was he a bastard? You know, sitting at our computers in.

[Robert]

The fall of 2020.

[Dan]

Have we been forgetting to do cold opens? Haven't we, Sophie?

[Sophie]

We just do them and then Danil cuts them in later.

[Robert]

Danil cuts them in later.

[Sophie]

Well, I don't know. I don't.

[Dan]

Does Dan. Sorry, I just.

[Sophie]

It's fine.

[Dan]

Yeah. Yeah. I wonder which men Daniel counts. Yeah, it depends. I still don't know. I don't know what kind of men.

[Robert]

Danil counts when he. When he. When he's killing men.

[Margaret]

Sophie actually doesn't count men. It's pretty impressive.

[Robert]

Wow. Wow. Only. Only the women you kill. Okay.

[Dan]

Yeah, that's good to know.

[Sophie]

I would never kill women.

[Margaret]

Yeah, that's what Sophie just. Never kills anyone, by Sophie's standards.

[Dan]

Woke swashbuckler, who only counts the enbies. He kills.

[Robert]

Men and women don't count.

[Dan]

To me, just the they thems.

[Margaret]

Which one counts for more than one because of the plural.

[Sophie]

Anyway, Is this like a political ad that plays during baseball games?

[Margaret]

Oh, my God. Yeah.

[Dan]

Yeah. Jesus Christ.

[Robert]

Okay, far enough.

[Margaret]

Left with your jokes, you wind up.

[Dan]

Yeah, you wind up doing a Trump ad.

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[Sloan Glass]

Sometimes where a crime took place leads you to answer why the crime happened in the first place. Hi, I'm Sloan Glass, host of the new true crime podcast, American Homicide. In this series, we'll examine some of the country's most infamous and mysterious murders and learn how the location of the crime becomes a character in the story. Listen to American homicide on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Dan]

So when we discuss T.E.

[Robert]

Lawrence while sitting in our computers in the fall of 2024. One thing probably stands.

[Dan]

What? That wasn't even a joke.

[Sophie]

I know, but so funny.

[Margaret]

It's still pretty good.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Robert]

One thing stands above every other matter, which is his support for, for the Balfour Declaration.

[Dan]

Particularly his support, I mean, because that was not made.

[Robert]

He did not help make that.

[Dan]

But he is a supporter of Zionism.

[Robert]

In this particularly post war period.

[Emily]

Right.

[Robert]

When all of these European powers give their official support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

[Dan]

Lawrence is not initially on that side.

[Robert]

But he's going to wind up on that side.

[Emily]

Right.

[Dan]

And given what's going on in Gaza right now, it's probably impossible to avoid.

[Robert]

Having this dominate your thoughts on the man's legacy.

[Dan]

And that's not entirely wrong.

[Robert]

We are going to talk about his role here because it's significant.

[Dan]

But it's important to note that at the time, his feelings on Zionism are.

[Robert]

Not what any of his critics, including in the Arab world, saw as the most problematic thing about the man. If you were a Westerner or a Turk, the top argument in your Lawrence's evil ledger probably would have been the war crimes.

[Dan]

And so we're gonna talk about those first.

[Robert]

The gist of this story is that after Lawrence escaped the Turks, the forces under his command exhibited increasingly brutal behavior on the batt. He started ordering his soldiers not to take prisoners, which is against the law, and in several cases began executing wounded men himself as they lay bleeding on the battlefield. He would just walk around battlefields afterwards.

[Dan]

Shooting guys in the head, doing coup de grace. Couping de grace. Yeah.

[Margaret]

Okay.

[Robert]

Which is, you know, bad.

[Dan]

You're not supposed to do that. I mean, arguably in a lot of.

[Robert]

These cases that may have been the.

[Dan]

Kindest thing to do, but it's not legal to do that.

[Margaret]

Yeah.

[Dan]

So he's cooing some degrasse. He's killing people.

[Robert]

Scott Anderson, writing for Smithsonian magazine, describes how his judgment seems to have degraded as well.

[Dan]

And the general way this often gets credited to, like the fact that he has just been gang raped.

[Robert]

Right.

[Dan]

That like this kind of his mind breaks after that quote, he attacked a.

[Robert]

Turkish troop train despite being so short of weapons that some of his men could only throw rocks at the enemy. If this was rooted in the trauma at Daraa, it seems he was at least as much driven by the desperate belief that if the Arabs could reach Damascus first, then the lies and guilty secrets he had harbored since coming to Arabia might somehow be set right.

[Dan]

So that's kind of the debate here is like, is he traumatized because he's just been raped.

[Robert]

And as a result, he's making all these very rash moves. He's becoming increasingly brutal in battle.

[Dan]

Is it more that he's desperate to try? And he's traumatized because he knows that.

[Robert]

He'S kind of betraying his friends and he's trying to make things right by getting them to Damascus before the war.

[Dan]

Ends in order to kind of cut.

[Robert]

Off Sykes Picot at the knees.

[Dan]

Right.

[Margaret]

I think that's a strong argument to me, because he wants to be a moral man and he knows he's not. So if he can find a loophole to loophole himself into morality by killing everyone.

[Dan]

Yeah, yeah. Maybe that's the only thing he can do. There's also this argument that, like, Lawrence describes himself as a virgin and he.

[Robert]

Is someone who his friends insist he has no discernible sexual leanings.

[Dan]

And maybe there's this.

[Robert]

The fact that it's forced upon him, like he has an extra strong reaction to it.

[Dan]

We just will never know, you know, the actual answers.

[Margaret]

I also grew up going to rape school.

[Dan]

He did go to. He did.

[Robert]

He went to less rapey schools than.

[Dan]

A lot of other British boys of his era. But, like, I think that is kind.

[Robert]

Of built into a lot of that school system, though.

[Margaret]

Yeah.

[Dan]

But we don't. I have no evidence as to whether or not anything like that happened to Lawrence.

[Robert]

He certainly doesn't write about it.

[Dan]

Yeah. So even if you hold to the argument that Lawrence lied about the rape.

[Robert]

And maybe he would have lied about that in order to explain why he.

[Dan]

Was, like, obsessively trying to get the Arabs to Damascus, because that was kind of some, like, light treason against his own side.

[Robert]

Whatever's going on here, it makes total sense that his mental state would be degraded by this point. He has spent more than half of his time in Arabia, deathly ill, sick.

[Dan]

With plague and heat stroke and catastrophic dehydration.

[Robert]

He's experienced harrowing combat at close quarters. He has blown his camel's brains out.

[Dan]

And been flung into the hot desert sands during a battle. So, yeah, I mean, just not weird that he's kind of losing it at this point.

[Robert]

And as Anderson notes, he's also weighed down with guilt over the fact that all these guys are fighting and dying with him, maybe for nothing, because his.

[Dan]

Government might betray them.

[Robert]

This all culminates in late September in an attack on a town called Duras, where Lawrence had been. If he was raped, this is where that happened.

[Emily]

Right.

[Dan]

So this is part of a general.

[Robert]

Offensive that he is carrying out with Allenby that's meant to coordinate with an attack by Allenby on Palestine in the north.

[Emily]

Right.

[Robert]

Lawrence and his Bedouin allies are supposed to cut off the Turkish avenues of retreat by taking the railroad junction at Dira. So one of the arguments here is.

[Dan]

That, like, this is where he claims.

[Robert]

To have been tortured. So maybe what he's about to do.

[Dan]

Is, like, him taking vengeance for that attack. And I'm going to quote from Anderson again.

[Robert]

After coming upon the village of Tafas, where the fleeing Turks had massacred many residents, Lawrence ordered his men to give no quarter. Throughout that day, the rebels picked apart a retreating column of 4,000, slaughtering all they found. But as Lawrence doubled back that afternoon, he discovered one unit had missed the command and taken 250 Turks and Germans captive. We turned our Hotchkiss machine gun on the prisoners he noted in his battlefield report, and made an end of them. Lawrence was even more explicit about his actions that day. In Seven Pillars, in a madness born of the horror of Tophis, we killed and killed, even blowing in the heads of the fallen and of the animals, as though their death and running blood could slake our agony.

[Margaret]

Whoops.

[Dan]

Yeah, he's going full, like, corn berserker here. You know, he's just massacring people. And it's, you know, the people he's.

[Robert]

Massacring had also just massacred a bunch of civilians.

[Dan]

It's a very ugly war, like, war crime. Plenty of war crimes to go around here. Right?

[Robert]

But this slaughter of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of prisoners and wounded men would have been a massive war crime in any theater of World War I.

[Margaret]

It's enough to put him in, like. Yeah, he belongs in behind the bastards now.

[Robert]

Yeah.

[Dan]

That's an International Criminal Court crime, right? Yeah.

[Margaret]

Now, many of the bastards you had on have killed, like, three people.

[Dan]

Right.

[Emily]

Right.

[Dan]

Now, that said, do I kind of.

[Robert]

Sympathize with him still?

[Dan]

Yeah, totally. Like, this is just.

[Robert]

No.

[Dan]

I don't know.

[Robert]

I just don't know how likely it.

[Dan]

Is that most commanders in a similar.

[Robert]

Situation, having gone through what he's gone.

[Dan]

Through, would have been much better.

[Emily]

Right.

[Dan]

Especially since this is not entirely Lawrence.

[Robert]

By his own admission, is partaking in the bloodshed, but a lot of this.

[Dan]

Is just that his own troops are.

[Robert]

So angry at all of these war.

[Dan]

Crimes, the Turk, including on some of their families. Right. And they're just bent for slaughter now.

[Emily]

Right.

[Robert]

Like, everyone has just lost their minds.

[Dan]

The war has gotten that ugly. So, anyway, you can parse that out morally, however you want to. You can judge him however you want to sitting at your computer. We all do to some extent. But, yeah, from here, from Dira.

[Robert]

Lawrence himself moved directly to Damascus, right?

[Dan]

Like, he and his forces rush there and they beat the Turks out of.

[Robert]

Damascus and they beat European forces to the city.

[Margaret]

Now, I have a question.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Margaret]

How did he get out of conscription? Rape, jail?

[Dan]

He kind of just escapes.

[Margaret]

Okay.

[Dan]

I mean, they're not. They're not great at doing guarding.

[Robert]

They don't know that he's Lawrence of Arabia.

[Emily]

Right?

[Dan]

Okay. He just sort of bounces, you know, after a while. So this was an explicit and a.

[Robert]

Direct attempt to destroy Sykes, Picot. As soon as the city was in their hands, Lawrence helped organize a provisional Arab government headed by Faisal.

[Emily]

Right?

[Dan]

Now, again, the Arabs don't really want. The Arabs of Syria don't really want.

[Robert]

Faisal in charge of them. They certainly don't want his dad in charge. But they have their own leaders, and.

[Dan]

They see, they don't really like guys from Mecca.

[Robert]

They write about these Arabs in Syria who are pissed about this, some of whom are making overtures to the Ottomans.

[Dan]

Because of how unhappy they are about Faisal.

[Robert]

They kind of see Faisal and his dad, this whole family of, like, guys.

[Dan]

The Sharif of Mecca.

[Robert]

The way, like, rural Americans talk about.

[Dan]

Like, people from, like, San Francisco or, you know, D.C. you know, they have the kind of, like, Richmond, north of.

[Robert]

Richmond talk about them of, like, these.

[Dan]

Fucking city assholes from Mecca coming into Syria and telling us how to live our goddamn lives. I don't like that any better than the Turks, you know, and there's actually. There's. This kind of Zionism is going to.

[Robert]

Play a weird role in this here because it becomes kind of crucial to this conflict in between these different factions on the Arab revolt, right?

[Dan]

So within a few days of the.

[Robert]

Arabs taking Damascus, General Allenby arrives and.

[Dan]

He'S like, provisional government, my ass. The French are in charge here now. And Lawrence, like, there's really nothing he can do, right?

[Robert]

Allenby is his superior officer.

[Dan]

The British are there with, like, you know, a significant amount of assets. And this is, you know, kind of shatters him, right? Like, he is so distraught over the fact that all of their work, you know, even though they took the city.

[Robert]

It'S just been handed over to French control. He's so distraught by this that he begs to be relieved of command by Allenby.

[Dan]

He leaves for London, hell bent on.

[Robert]

Using his celebrity to win Western support for an independent Arab nation After this.

[Dan]

Now As a note, Lawrence was definitely.

[Robert]

Very famous over in Europe by this point. An American journalist based in Palestine, Lowell.

[Dan]

Thomas, had spotted his story and been like, well, this is one of the most interesting things happening in the war. It's much more interesting than just like recording slaughter at the various trench fronts. I'm gonna follow this guy around, I'm gonna take some video and photographs and whatnot.

[Robert]

And he puts together like a lecture.

[Dan]

Show, basically like a, a slideshow with.

[Robert]

A lecture attached to it that runs in movie theaters. It's like a matinee hit in England.

[Dan]

It's a huge blockbuster at the time. Like prior to the 1960 Lawrence of Arabia. This is kind of like the first movie version of Lawrence and it's, it's portrayed as journalism. But Lord, you know, Lowell is a, he's like a tabloid guy, right?

[Robert]

Like he is exaggerating.

[Dan]

He's kind of outright lying about stuff. There's some evidence that Lawrence is deeply, deeply unhappy as a result of like the kind of attention that Lowell draws.

[Robert]

On him and how much he makes Lawrence the center of the story. But he's also able to use this fame in order to secure meetings with.

[Dan]

Like, politicians to try and talk up.

[Robert]

Faisal's side of things, right during like these negotiations over what's going to happen to Ottoman territories in the wake of Ottoman collapse.

[Dan]

So he's such a vocal part of this and so vocally against Sykes Picot that he starts to be seen as.

[Robert]

A threat from within the military and like within the government of the British Empire.

[Dan]

A lot of them see him as a fame hound because, like this is.

[Robert]

Happening while his movie's a big deal.

[Dan]

They see him as like, he's just some like junior officer who's gotten way.

[Robert]

Too big for his britches and he's trying to ruin this good thing we've got with France. This horrible war is finally done and we're finally going to get fucking some money. A place we can plunder, right?

[Dan]

To help make up for all of.

[Robert]

The money we spent on this stupid.

[Dan]

War we got our country into, right? And this guy is going to fuck it all up right now.

[Robert]

The Balfour Declaration had been leaked out to the public right around the same time Sykes Picot had been made public. So right at the end of 1917. And some in the British administration during.

[Dan]

These negotiations in late 1918, 1919 saw.

[Robert]

The Balfour Declaration, which has a complicated.

[Dan]

Reaction especially over in the Arab world.

[Robert]

Saw it as potentially good news for their support of the Hussein's, because again, Faisal and his dad Are wildly unpopular in Syria, right?

[Dan]

They're seen as these assholes from Mecca.

[Robert]

Trying to lord over a place they don't belong. And Lawrence's boss in the Intelligence Services Service, one of the masterminds behind the whole Arab revolt, was a brigadier general named Gilbert Clayton. And Gilbert saw the Balfour Declaration as problematic. He's going to be the guy who writes most accurately about why this is a bad idea.

[Dan]

But he also is like, this could.

[Robert]

Help us with Faisal, right? And he writes, up to date, the Syrian Arab has shown the utmost distaste for any idea of a government in which Meccan patriarchism has any influence. Hence a lack of real sympathy with the Sharif. Fear of the Jew may cause a rapprochement.

[Dan]

Right. If we make it clear that we're.

[Robert]

Going to give the Jews a homeland, the Arabs may get so angry that.

[Dan]

They line up behind our guy, who they're not really happy about right now, but maybe their racism against Jewish people will, like, convince them, you know, which, obviously, that's an incredibly racist move from Clayton, right? Like, we'll just use antisemitism to solve our imperial problems and get our puppet in charge.

[Margaret]

I mean, it's pretty classic.

[Dan]

It's pretty classic, right? Yeah.

[Robert]

Now, Sykes himself tried to convince Clayton that the Declaration was a positive for Arab independence, Which Clayton, for all of the racism you see in his writing, really does care about Arab independence. He is one of these guys like.

[Dan]

Lawrence, who is like, we made promises to these people and we should keep them.

[Robert]

Clayton more than Lawrence recognizes, because Lawrence.

[Dan]

Kind of gets behind the idea of Zionism. Eventually. Clayton is always like, this is a.

[Robert]

Bad idea and we shouldn't have done it. But he does get into that. He comes to that conclusion also through.

[Dan]

A very racist way, by saying that.

[Robert]

Arabs would be dismayed by knowledge that the Jews, whose superior intelligence and commercial.

[Dan]

Abilities are feared, would take over in Palestine.

[Robert]

In a different letter to Gertrude Bell.

[Dan]

The Arab Bureau's Baghdad correspondent, Clayton wrote this.

[Robert]

The Arab of Syria and Palestine sees the Jew with a free hand and the backing of Her Majesty's government and interprets it as meaning the eventual loss of his heritage, Jacob and Esau. Once more, the Arab is right, and no amount of specious oratory will humbug him in a matter which affects him so vitally. Experience such as I have gained in this war impels me to deprecate strongly and cautious declarations and visionary agreements. We are like men walking through an unknown country in a fog, and it behooves to feel our way and Take care with each step we take.

[Margaret]

And that makes sense to me.

[Dan]

Not wrong.

[Robert]

Yeah, we are. We are mentioning we shouldn't be doing.

[Dan]

This, in part because, like, obviously this is going to lead to Arabs being.

[Robert]

Displaced from their homes in Palestine.

[Emily]

Right.

[Dan]

Arabs recognize this, their right to recognize this.

[Robert]

And even by sticking our hands into.

[Dan]

This mess, we are men walking through.

[Robert]

An unknown country in a fog. We don't know what we're doing. And so we shouldn't be doing it.

[Emily]

Right.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Margaret]

Which is. Yeah, no, that's what the British Empire should have been doing instead of being an empire.

[Dan]

He is. Again, everyone here is racist, but some of the racists are correct about what's going to happen.

[Robert]

Belle, who also deserves much more coverage than we're giving her.

[Dan]

Gertrude Bell is a fascinating character.

[Robert]

This woman who had just traveled alone throughout this huge stretch of the Middle east, become a legitimate expert on the area. Really interesting person.

[Dan]

Someone who knew Lawrence, too, in his.

[Robert]

Early travels replied that she also hated Mr. Balfour's Zionist pronouncement. But Lawrence, whose instincts for this region and its people were generally much better than this, got caught up in the Zionist cause. And he did so in an interesting way as part of his backing of the Arab cause.

[Emily]

Right.

[Robert]

So during Lawrence's struggle against Sykes Picot in London after the war, he came to see European Zionists as potential allies in the fight for Arab independence. He met with Chaim Wiseman, head of the English Zionist Federation, who was willing to back Lawrence's fight for an Arab state so long as Lawrence supported the establishment of a Jewish state.

[Dan]

Lawrence, by one account, convinced Feisal by another.

[Robert]

Feisal is kind of the one who's.

[Dan]

Saying, hey, Lawrence, I want you to.

[Robert]

Make overtures to this guy.

[Dan]

But either way, Lawrence and Feisal get.

[Robert]

On board with Wiseman and the Zionists and they make an agreement. They actually sign an agreement.

[Emily]

Right.

[Robert]

Which if the Zionists support a Faisal led Arab state based in Syria, Faisal will support European Jews immigrating to Palestine. Now, Faisal does not explicitly embrace a Jewish state, but that was understood to be the result of this. The treaty between the two of them. Reads mindful.

[Dan]

And this is just fascinating reading, just in light of where we are today.

[Robert]

Mindful of the racial kinship and ancient bonds existing between the Arabs and the Jewish people, and realizing that the surest means of working out the consummation of their national aspirations is through the closest possible collaboration in the development of the Arab state and Palestine, it continues that the Arab state and Palestine should in all their relations be controlled by the most cordial goodwill, a commission would be established to lay out boundaries of the Arab state and Palestine.

[Emily]

Right.

[Dan]

And there's a lot there about like, obviously no one will be displaced by this.

[Margaret]

Right. It's presenting a two state solution for Palestine.

[Dan]

Not entirely right. There's an Arab state and then there's Palestine.

[Robert]

But Palestine is also understood to be encouraging Jewish immigration and seen as a Jewish state.

[Dan]

Now it's not clear, does that mean Arabs and Palestinian, like Arabs and like.

[Robert]

European Jews who immigrate and like, you.

[Dan]

Know, like the people like and who.

[Robert]

Live there now, will they be kind.

[Dan]

Of equal partners in a state?

[Robert]

That's kind of how I read it, is the idea. But it's not a two state solution. They are always referring to Palestine.

[Emily]

Right.

[Dan]

Like they don't call it.

[Margaret]

So it is always closer to Israel. But yeah, to the one state solution. The like one secular, you can be Jewish or.

[Robert]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dan]

That is the closest thing.

[Robert]

Right. Like the arrangement that they are talking to.

[Dan]

When I say that like he supported Zionism, the actual text of the kind of thing he was trying to set.

[Robert]

Up is very different than what exists today.

[Dan]

Right. I'm going to quote again from that agreement.

[Robert]

All necessary measures shall be taken to encourage and stimulate immigration of Jews into Palestine on a large scale and as quickly as possible to settle Jewish immigrants upon the land through closer settlement and intensive cultivation of the soil. In taking such measures, the Arab peasant and tenant farmers shall be protected in their rights and shall be assisted in forwarding their economic development. It goes on to state that no interference and free exercise of religion would.

[Dan]

Be permitted and the Mohammedan holy places.

[Robert]

In Jerusalem and elsewhere shall be under Muhammadan control.

[Margaret]

Okay.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Margaret]

I mean it's presenting a fairly reasonable idea. I mean like obviously, like that's clearly not what large scale.

[Dan]

It's not what's going to happen. But when we say that he's a Zionist, he is not supporting what exists currently.

[Emily]

Right.

[Dan]

Like that is the result. And it's worthy of criticism.

[Robert]

Faisal is worthy of criticism too.

[Dan]

And it's important to note that like Faisal, this guy seeking to be the king of this Arabic state is supportive of this measure. Right, right.

[Robert]

There's some economic reasons for it.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Margaret]

At the very beginning where he's like, you know, the long standing appreciation between Arab and Jewish folks, I mean that is real. And like there is like, you know, when you study Ottoman Empire before it started falling apart, it's like, well, that's where European Jews went because they were like second class citizens. In the Ottoman Empire. But like they were.

[Dan]

Yeah. We all know what happened in Russia.

[Emily]

Right.

[Dan]

We know what happened in.

[Margaret]

They were way worse than second place citizens elsewhere in Europe.

[Dan]

Right. Yeah.

[Margaret]

When the other thing that happened in 1492 as relates to Spain is that all the Jews were kicked out and forced to convert, you know, and there's just massive immigration into the Ottoman Empire.

[Dan]

Yep. Yeah. So this is messy and obviously none of this works out the way that.

[Robert]

Feisal and Lawrence had hoped. While researching this, I've come across several extremely pro Israel publications, including the Israel Forever foundation, who published articles trying to remake Lawrence into a hardcore supporter of the modern state of Israel. I found this line in an article they republished from the Jerusalem Post. You won't find this truth in the lengthy biography of Thomas Edward Lawrence, the legendary Lawrence of Arabia, in the Encyclopedia Britannica. Don't expect to hear about this on the BBC. The world remembers Lawrence as a guide, friend and champion of Arabs, but hardly knows that he believed in Zionism as a forced to restore Palestine to its ancient glory brought about by active British Jewish, Arab cooperation.

[Dan]

And that's not really like that is making him into. He is not. Nothing that he has described sounds like.

[Robert]

The modern state of Israel.

[Emily]

Right.

[Dan]

He was not in favor of Palestinians.

[Robert]

Being forced out of their land.

[Dan]

Now, we could say that was a.

[Robert]

Foolish thing for him to hope and.

[Dan]

He should have known that there was.

[Robert]

Very likely this was going to get ugly.

[Emily]

Right.

[Dan]

But you know, he winds up doing what he does. Right. And a big part of like what he and Fisler are both hoping for is that if we allow Jewish immigration to Palestine, that will bring in a lot of money to this economically depressed.

[Robert]

Area and it will be good for.

[Dan]

These like Palestinian farmers and peasants.

[Emily]

Right.

[Dan]

That it will like a rising tide.

[Robert]

Will kind of lift all boats. That is what they are writing about.

[Emily]

Right.

[Dan]

There were ways it could have worked out differently than it did. Right. But you know, it's also worth noting that whatever their plans and whatever their.

[Robert]

Hopes for how this works out, Lawrence.

[Dan]

Winds up on the side of what.

[Robert]

Becomes a major calamity for the Middle East. Right.

[Dan]

Is how bloody and brutal everything that.

[Robert]

Results from this eventually is.

[Emily]

Right.

[Margaret]

And I actually think it's the same problem he has in general, which is that even though he doesn't want England to control these things, he's still on some level he's more okay with fucking around with England controlling things.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Margaret]

You know, and so it's like. And that is the same problem that happened with British mandate Palestine. You know, is that. Is that the British.

[Dan]

We're. Again, it's like Clayton writes, right.

[Robert]

We don't know what we're doing. Like we're going to fuck a bunch.

[Dan]

Of things up because we don't really.

[Robert]

Understand what we're messing around with here.

[Margaret]

Yeah.

[Dan]

And, yeah, like, probably just shouldn't have been fucking around with any of this. Maybe a bunch of British guys should.

[Robert]

Not have been making all of these calls.

[Margaret]

Yeah.

[Robert]

And maybe.

[Dan]

And to be fair, a bunch of guys like Faisal, rich guys from Mecca.

[Robert]

Shouldn'T have been making all of these calls.

[Dan]

Oh, yeah, totally.

[Robert]

None of it works very well.

[Dan]

Yeah. Now I will say for as much, you know, because of what's happening right now, this gets a lot of focus. We're going to inherently think a lot about Lawrence's support of this, of the Balfour Declaration, of all this stuff.

[Robert]

This probably was not a big part. Thing on his mind when he thought.

[Dan]

About, like, his failures, you know, here in the wake of kind of the peace agreements and stuff, because, like, nothing.

[Robert]

Happens during his lifetime.

[Emily]

Right.

[Robert]

He dies in 35.

[Emily]

Right.

[Dan]

So none of this, like leads to anything while he is around, you know. Yeah.

[Margaret]

And there's like a couple riots and stuff, but it's not.

[Dan]

Yeah, there's some riots. You know, there's some stuff that does.

[Robert]

Result from this, but he's probably not.

[Dan]

Super plugged into it.

[Emily]

Right.

[Dan]

Yeah, he is.

[Robert]

What really is occupying his mind as he sees the wheeling and dealing in the immediate wake of the war as a fucking calamity for this cause that he cares about. Nearly every piece of the cause that he cared about goes down in flaming failure. The French get their mandate in Syria. The British wind up running much of his imagined Arab state, including Palestine and Iraq. And once it becomes clear that Arabs had fought and won a war of independence only to wind up ruled by Europeans, the response was bloody, as this passage from an article in Smithsonian magazine makes clear. Lawrence was particularly prescient about Iraq in 1919. He had predicted full scale revolt against British rule there by March of 1920. If we don't mend our ways. The result of the uprising in May 1920 was some 10,000 dead, including 1,000 British soldiers and administrators.

[Dan]

And, man, that's a good prediction, right.

[Robert]

He calls March. It happens in May.

[Dan]

Not bad.

[Robert]

Tasked to clean up the debacle was the new British Colonial secretary, Winston Churchill, who turned for help to the man whose warnings had been spurred, T.E. lawrence, at the Cairo Conference in 1921. Lawrence helped to redress some of the wrongs in the near future, Feisal, deposed by the French in Syria, would be placed on a new throne in British controlled Iraq out of the British buffer state of Transjordan. The nation of Jordan would be created with Faisal's brother Abdullah at its head.

[Emily]

Right.

[Dan]

And obviously Faisal and his family don't wind up in charge of Iraq for all that long, you know, thanks to our friend of the pod, Saddam Hussein and the Ba'ath party and then Faisal's brother Abdullah.

[Robert]

That is still the ruling family in Jordan. Right.

[Dan]

That's where that all gets started. Now, the fact that this is the result, right, you know, it's not a total failure.

[Robert]

You do have Arab states that are.

[Dan]

Independent, you know, that get come out.

[Robert]

As a result of this.

[Dan]

But largely, you know, during his lifetime, it's France and Britain kind of calling.

[Robert]

The shots in a large lot of this region. This shatters Lawrence, right?

[Dan]

He never really recovers from his failure here. And you know who else has never.

[Robert]

Recovered from their failures?

[Margaret]

Is it the casinos?

[Dan]

Yeah, the casinos. Their failure to give you too much money.

[Emily]

Right?

[Margaret]

Yeah.

[Dan]

You know, they just can't wait to give you money.

[Margaret]

No, they lose money more often than they win. That's why gambling, if you gamble enough, you always win. The house always loses. That's why they say that.

[Dan]

Yeah, exactly.

[Robert]

The house always loses.

[Dan]

It's always safe.

[Robert]

Always safe to gamble.

[Dan]

Keep your money in a casino, right? It's an investment.

[Margaret]

I mean, if it's controlled by the casino.

[Dan]

Yeah, yeah, they do.

[Margaret]

They will succeed.

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[Dan]

And we're back.

[Margaret]

Robert, I have terrible news. I followed our advice and now I have no money left.

[Dan]

Oh, no. Well, maybe you should just put all of your remaining money on black and just do a shadow roulette.

[Robert]

I think that'll fix your problems.

[Dan]

Margaret.

[Margaret]

Yeah, the 48.5% chance of success, that's more than 50. So it'll work.

[Dan]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Robert]

So Lawrence is shattered. He's very depressed.

[Dan]

He has seen all of his hopes.

[Robert]

For a better future go down in flames. He's never going to recover from his failure here or the attendant PTSD as a result of his wartime experiences.

[Dan]

And honestly, this is a big part.

[Robert]

Of what makes him a sympathetic figure to me, right?

[Margaret]

Yeah.

[Robert]

But he is not seen that way by a lot of the men who fought for him or his descendants. One of my favorite articles analyzing Lawrence's legacy was that piece in Smithsonian magazine by Scott Anderson in 2014. He followed in Lawrence's shadow during the early years of the Syrian civil war and interviewed descendants of the Bedouins who'd fought by Lawrence's side. One Sheikh Alatun of Mudawara in southern Jordan, lamented that after the war, the badly damaged Hejaz Railway was allowed to fall apart entirely, isolating many communities once connected by the Imperial Project. The partitioning of the Arab world had made the maintenance and rebuilding of Such a railway, impossible. And there's no real way to conceive of such a project working out and preserving such a complex piece of infrastructure through all of the conflicts that have roiled the area since. My grandfather thought that these destructions were a temporary matter because of the war, but they actually became permanent. You have to remember this railway had been backed and funded by donations from Muslims in places like the Hejaz, because this was their future, Right. This would have connected them to the world.

[Dan]

And there's no way to keep this going in, like these carved up conflicting.

[Robert]

States that are the ultimate result, right.

[Dan]

Of the actual post war period.

[Robert]

And Lawrence had kind of convinced people.

[Dan]

To blow up this railway and the promise that.

[Robert]

And then you'll get a state and we can fix things, right. Like, you know, the Brit. Right.

[Dan]

And that never happens.

[Emily]

Right?

[Dan]

Now Lawrence tries, right. How much credit does that get him? Maybe not a lot if you're living.

[Robert]

In the rusting shadow of this dead.

[Dan]

Railway, watching any hope of a better future fade away.

[Emily]

Right.

[Margaret]

So they kind of like, you know, in the end it was better under the Ottomans.

[Dan]

No, I think it's a little more complicated than that.

[Robert]

Ultimately. When I read kind of analyses of.

[Dan]

Laura, you can find some good pieces of Muslim scholars talking about how Lawrence gets talked about. It's mostly just like he's not really.

[Robert]

Seen as a major figure in all of this, right.

[Dan]

They're more interested in guys like Faisal. They're more interested even in British people like Allenby. There were some other British agents who were moving around Lawrence because I think.

[Robert]

In part of how much attention he.

[Dan]

Gets has for a long time been kind of like, well, he wasn't really as important as everyone thinks he is right now. There's a reappraisal that's going on in the present day and you can find some Muslim historians who are essentially like, yeah, he actually was a very significant part.

[Robert]

His book is a fairly accurate accounting of things. And he seems to have really tried.

[Dan]

To do what he thought was best, even though a lot of it didn't work out.

[Robert]

There is a reappraisal going on here in part because modern historiography has found.

[Dan]

That Lawrence was actually telling the truth.

[Robert]

About a lot of stuff that he.

[Dan]

Had been kind of believed to be.

[Robert]

Bullshitting about for a while.

[Dan]

Now that said, attitudes about him are.

[Robert]

Very complicated over there right now.

[Dan]

I want to refer back to that.

[Robert]

Article in the Smithsonian magazine, because later.

[Dan]

In that article, Sheikh Alatun says this.

[Robert]

Some people think he was really trying to help the Arabs. But others think it was all a trick, that Lawrence was actually working for the British Empire all along. When I press for his opinion, the sheik grows slightly discomfited.

[Dan]

May I speak frankly?

[Robert]

Maybe some of the very old ones still believe he was a friend of the Arabs, but almost everyone else, we know the truth. Even my grandfather, before he died, he believed he had been tricked.

[Dan]

And that's a common attitude towards Lawrence over there. Now, it's not universal.

[Robert]

His old friend Emir Faisal, who became King of Iraq, said in 1920 that Lawrence had been truthful in his promises, a matter that made the Arabs trust him. But a lot of people dislike Faisal.

[Dan]

Right. You know, I mean, this gets into.

[Margaret]

The, like, why I believe so strongly in honesty is that. Well, to the people that you're working alongside of, is that you set yourself up for that. When you lie to people, even if you're trying to like, his paternalism.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Margaret]

In the end, makes people realize that he was fucking them over, you know, because he didn't treat them as equals and make decisions alongside of them.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Margaret]

Because they might have reached the same conclusions. They might have been like, well, cynically, I guess we should side with the British because dynamite and British gold will accomplish everything, you know.

[Dan]

Yep. And there's a lot of, like, you could. You could argue maybe part of why Faisal is, you know, so positive towards Lawrence is that, like, you know, Lawrence is kind of honest with Faisal in.

[Robert]

A way that maybe he isn't to a lot of these other people.

[Dan]

Right. These different. Because a lot of these Arab tribes.

[Robert]

That he was getting in line behind.

[Dan]

The rebellion weren't super pro Faisal, but they were like, well, but we hate the Ottomans.

[Robert]

And he's saying, it'll work out better.

[Dan]

Maybe we'll just give it a shot. The rebellion seems to be working pretty well. And then they wind up being like, oh, well, we just kind of got fucked on this.

[Robert]

Right.

[Dan]

We sent our sons to die, and.

[Robert]

This asshole became a king.

[Dan]

But what did we get, right?

[Margaret]

Yeah.

[Dan]

So after his brief stint with Churchill.

[Robert]

Lawrence changed his name and asked to be allowed to reenlist in the British.

[Dan]

Military, this time as a private.

[Robert]

He told a friend that he never wanted to be responsible for anyone or anything significant again for the rest of his life.

[Dan]

Like, this is how broken he is that he was like, I don't want.

[Robert]

Any of this fame. I'm going to take a new name.

[Dan]

And reenlist as a private, so I just don't have to do anything but.

[Robert]

Follow orders for the rest of my life.

[Margaret]

Like kill and die.

[Dan]

That's kill and die.

[Robert]

Sure.

[Dan]

I'm fine with that. Literally anything. Like, I've done lots of killing. I'm okay with that. I just can't. I have failed so utterly in what.

[Robert]

Were my goals in this thing.

[Emily]

Right.

[Dan]

That I just.

[Robert]

I don't want to make another decision for the rest of my life.

[Margaret]

Yeah. Wow.

[Dan]

So he spends the Next, I think.

[Robert]

14 years stationed on a series of small bases around British. He lives a quiet, almost solitary life, reading voraciously, listening to music, writing letters to friends, and riding his motorcycle through the countryside. Through this time, the legend of Lawrence grew and grew, spurred on by the publication of an edited version of his book, which is.

[Dan]

There's a fascinating story here, Margaret, about, like, what happens to Lawrence's manuscript here. And this is one of the. There's a great article by Robert New that's just an author's worst nightmare. So Lawrence, he writes while he's like, you know, in the start of the 1920s, after all of this had fallen.

[Robert]

Apart, he wants to write his great memoir, which he'd planned for a long time. He planned to publish a book called Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Initially, this was gonna be based on his.

[Dan]

Before the war, his travels through the Muslim world, and he writes that book.

[Robert]

And then he destroys it. He gets, like, anxious about it. He decides it's no good. And before he goes off to war.

[Dan]

He destroys the entire book, Right?

[Robert]

And then he takes the title of.

[Dan]

That book and he uses it for the book that he writes about his.

[Robert]

Time fighting in this desert war. And he puts together, using all of these notes, that he's taken, a 250,000 word manuscript. And then after finishing the manuscript, he destroys his notes. I don't know why. I've never heard a good reason as to, like, why does he destroy all of his original notes once he finishes it?

[Dan]

But he does, and he only has a single copy of this manuscript. And then when he is at Reading.

[Robert]

Station, he leaves it in a bathroom and loses it.

[Margaret]

Yeah, I see why. Every author's worst nightmare.

[Dan]

Yeah, that's a nightmare.

[Margaret]

Now, I once lost people a file of about 35,000 words of the night.

[Dan]

Oh, my God.

[Sophie]

Oh, my God.

[Dan]

What a nightmare.

[Sophie]

Oh, my God.

[Margaret]

Yeah.

[Sophie]

Oh, that hurt to hear.

[Margaret]

I never finished that book.

[Sophie]

Yeah.

[Dan]

There is debate, Margaret, about this, Right.

[Robert]

Some biographers or some people will argue he probably didn't lose this. He probably. He was so angry about this guy.

[Dan]

Who is, you know, this journalist who.

[Robert]

Has made him into, like, the center.

[Dan]

Like a celebrity, right? And he's just so ashamed of what happened that he destroys this manuscript.

[Emily]

Right?

[Dan]

And then, like, regrets it immediately.

[Emily]

Right.

[Dan]

But that, like, maybe that's what happened.

[Emily]

Right?

[Robert]

And he's destroyed a manuscript before. It wouldn't be weird.

[Dan]

Right. Whatever the case, Lawrence gets back to work, working on a new version of the book.

[Robert]

And the second draft of this, which he has to make from memory since he's destroyed most of his notes, is 400,000 words.

[Dan]

And he writes this in three months, which is like. That's like some Stephen King ass shit. I do wonder if. I know cocaine was available over the counter back then.

[Robert]

What were you doing, Laura?

[Dan]

How do you do 400,000 words in three months? That's nuts.

[Margaret]

Yeah, it's like, what, like 5,000 words a day or something?

[Dan]

I'm mad at. That's an insane rate of something like that.

[Margaret]

I could do that for, like, three weeks if I had to.

[Robert]

And he's unhappy with it, so he throws that out.

[Dan]

And then he writes a third version of the book. Oh, my God.

[Margaret]

He's on his fourth Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

[Dan]

He's on his fourth Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

[Margaret]

It might as well be called seven manuscripts of wisdom.

[Dan]

He almost does write fucking seven.

[Margaret]

Yeah.

[Robert]

The fourth version of this comes in at 335,000 words. And this time he has the Oxford.

[Dan]

Times press Print 8 copies of it, right?

[Robert]

He's not going to lose this fucking one.

[Emily]

Right?

[Dan]

He sends some of these and that.

[Robert]

This is the text from which we get the final version. And Lawrence would kind of regret for the rest of his life, he would.

[Dan]

Say that the first draft was more accurate. Like, I fucked up less. Like, I got more of the basic. The nuts and bolts, right? Some people will say, like, well, it's.

[Robert]

Actually probably much better because in the.

[Dan]

Process of writing a million words of this story over and over again, he got better at writing.

[Margaret]

I'm sure the prose is better, and I'm sure the accuracy is better in the first one.

[Dan]

Yeah, that's probably fair to say. And that's like, my God, what a fucking nightmare. I know.

[Margaret]

I know.

[Dan]

I would not be able to live with myself.

[Margaret]

But would the first version have helped the Vietnamese defeat?

[Robert]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Would the first version have helped the Vietnamese War strategy?

[Emily]

Right.

[Dan]

Maybe not.

[Robert]

I think it's at this point here.

[Dan]

Like, when we talk about all these.

[Robert]

Different versions of the truth and the.

[Dan]

Question of, like, how accurate is this?

[Robert]

That we get dragged back once again to the question of Lawrence's sexuality, right? One of the key Arguments against the rape and Duras story is that some of Lawrence's comrades in the Tank Corps would later claim that he asked them to beat and whip him for sadomasochistic pleasure.

[Dan]

Now, there is a lot of reason to doubt these claims, and even if.

[Robert]

They are true, we could just as easily interpret this as Lawrence working through his trauma as a result of having been gang raped.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Robert]

But one piece of evidence to the contrary is that in the original version of Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Lawrence's description of his rape was, and this is wild, 200 pages longer than the version.

[Dan]

That wound up in print, which is a lot. And so some people will be like this.

[Robert]

This kind of reads like he was.

[Dan]

More putting out a fantasy.

[Emily]

Right.

[Dan]

That's a lot of time to spend talking about yourself, being tortured in this kind of, like, very graphic detail that is.

[Robert]

It is tinged with romance, too.

[Dan]

Like, it's very. It's an odd bit of writing. That's just the way Lawrence writes.

[Margaret]

Yeah, yeah. And also, there's a huge difference between romanticizing the bad stuff that happens to you and romanticizing bad stuff in general. Right?

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Margaret]

Like, if the way that you want to process something bad is by romanticizing being like, at least my life is interesting and beautiful, even though it's terrible and tragic, like, good on you.

[Dan]

Well, yeah. So the journalists that we get these claims that Lawrence, he's basically writing pornography.

[Emily]

Right.

[Dan]

You know, just because he's so into this stuff, it didn't really happen. Is a guy named Philip Knightley. And when I say journalist, you might.

[Robert]

Put some air quotes around this. But he reports heavily on Lawrence. Right.

[Dan]

Like, and he's kind of the origin of a lot of this. And he says, quote, it was so.

[Robert]

Redolent of the sort of sadomasochistic literature that you get in the Charing Cross Road, it sort of cried out that this is Lawrence writing for his own interest in delectation.

[Emily]

Right.

[Robert]

This.

[Dan]

This reads like a lot of the sadomasochistic, like, smut that was being published at the time. And so that's why I think it's fake.

[Robert]

Quote, Lawrence continued these sadomasochistic practices with the help of a man called John Bruce. Bruce was paid to birch Lawrence and then write an account of Lawrence's beating, a bearing under the birching. The letters were collected by Lawrence, who read them again and got two kicks for his buck, so to speak.

[Emily]

Right.

[Robert]

This is Nights Knightley's claim.

[Emily]

Right.

[Dan]

Now, the unedited version of the book also points.

[Robert]

Paints a darker and more Self serving and consciously imperialist picture of Lawrence. In the original text, for example, he describes Feisal as a very weak man, an empty man. You were able to use Feisal to get what you wanted.

[Dan]

And is that a more accurate depiction.

[Robert]

Of Lawrence or is that just kind.

[Dan]

Of him in a much darker frame of mind? After three writing three versions of this story.

[Emily]

Right.

[Margaret]

How do we know what the first one said? Is it because he's later said, we.

[Dan]

Know what earlier drafts say.

[Emily]

Right.

[Robert]

We have that draft of the 400,000.

[Dan]

Word 1, I think.

[Margaret]

Oh, we do have that.

[Dan]

I think, I think, I think that's.

[Robert]

What he's talking about. Not the original draft that's lost forever.

[Dan]

Or like the 335,000 word or something like that.

[Robert]

There are earlier. There are earlier, longer drafts than what.

[Dan]

Got published that we have access to. I don't actually know exactly. There's so many, so many copies of Seven Pillars floating around.

[Emily]

Right.

[Margaret]

I admit that if I were to write that and I spent 200 pages describing a thing that happened to me.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Margaret]

I could imagine being like, it's time for a third draft.

[Dan]

Time for a third draft. I might need to cut this down a little bit.

[Margaret]

Kill your darlings.

[Dan]

Or it's maybe, maybe the torture scene is a little long. Yeah.

[Margaret]

There's this classic thing with like writing where your first novel, you can't get away with spending eight pages describing stained glasses. But by the time you like on your fifth novel.

[Dan]

And there's a fucking window.

[Margaret]

Yeah. But by the time you're on your fifth novel, you can spend eight pages talking about stained glass because you already have the author buy in. So, Lawrence, your problem was that it was your first book.

[Dan]

It was your first book, buddy. Well, actually it was like his second or third through fifth books or something like that.

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[Sloan Glass]

Get more with Geico Whenever a homicide happens, two questions immediately come to who did this? And why? And sometimes the answer to those questions can be found in the where where the Crime happened I'm journalist Sloan Glass and I host the new podcast American Homicide. Each week we'll explore some of this country's most infamous and mysterious murders, and you'll learn how the location of the crime became a character in the story. On American Homicide. We'll go coast to coast and visit places like the wide open New Mexico desert, the swampy Louisiana bayou, and the frozen Alaska Wild wilderness. And we'll learn how each region of the country holds deadly secrets. So join me, Sloan Glass, on the new true crime podcast American Homicide. Listen to American homicide on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Dan]

Now. Knightley, I should say, who is making this case that like Lawrence was an.

[Robert]

Asshole, he was a real imperialist, he.

[Dan]

Was a bad person. He was this like masochist who lied about what happened to him. Knightley's not a great source himself.

[Robert]

The first articles I found about him.

[Dan]

That were like, well, there's this guy who says, you know all this bad stuff about Lawrence, described him as like a scholar. That's not really who Knightley was.

[Robert]

And to describe like, who this guy.

[Dan]

Is, I wanna read a quote from.

[Robert]

The New York Times. Early in 1965, Philip Knightley and Colin Simpson, journalists specializing in feature pieces for the London Sunday Times, were assigned to.

[Dan]

Follow up a 60ish Scotman story that.

[Robert]

When he was 19 and Lawrence 33, he was paid by the hero of Arabia to administer periodic beatings.

[Dan]

That Lawrence relished testing his body in.

[Robert]

Other ways was nothing new, but the revelation was clearly of a kind when stretched into a front page Sunday series to stimulate both reader and newspaper circulation. And by early June of the same year, the sensationally headlined articles began to appear the Sheikh who made Lawrence Love Arabia and How Lawrence of Arabia Cracked Up. A full and exclusive confession from the man who shared his tragic secret, huh? With the global facilities, established press power and generous pocketbook of the Sunday Times at their disposal, Knightley and Simpson could locate and interview people from Turkey to Australia, pay for information, pry open library doors and Foreign Office files long locked shut, and do it all in time to meet their newspaper deadlines.

[Dan]

So, you know, maybe take this with a grain of salt.

[Robert]

Some of these things they're claiming, these recollections from other people decades later.

[Dan]

You know, these guys who are hungry.

[Robert]

For big stories that they can sensationalize.

[Dan]

About, you know, T.E.

[Robert]

Lawrence, right. Jerry.

[Margaret]

I just like, don't care if it was like, whether it was a kink or trauma dealing with, because those are related anyway.

[Dan]

And like, whatever, yeah, I'm interested in, like, whether or not it happened, right.

[Margaret]

But like, yeah, I have no moral based on it.

[Dan]

Yeah, right. Right.

[Robert]

Now, Jeremy Wilson, Lawrence's officials biographer, interprets the original text, or at least what we have of the earlier texts of Seven Pillars, very differently from Knightley. The fact that you have Lawrence being.

[Dan]

More of a dick about some of this stuff, as this segment from an.

[Robert]

Article in the Independent makes clear. Wilson said the text shows that Lawrence felt guilty after he encouraged the Arabs to rise up and fight. He knew they would not get an independent state in exchange for their help because France and Britain had other plans. Wilson told BBC Radio 4 when he realized how duplicitous his role was, he became upset about it and went off on a spying mission to Damascus. But the point is he was hoping to get killed on the way. There is no reference to that in the final text, but there is an allusion to it in the original texts. So Wilson, who is more of a.

[Dan]

Scholar certainly than Knightley, is like. Well, no, actually, like the original text includes him kind of talking about how.

[Robert]

He tried to get himself killed because he felt so bad about what he had done, right.

[Dan]

Which does not portray him as like.

[Robert]

This cold imperialist, right. Just fucking over people, right? And is more a man who did some very immoral things, but was also.

[Dan]

Trapped in this just fucked up situation right now.

[Margaret]

And that's the version that I feel like has been that I've certainly taken away from this. Is that like the man who always wants to do right and realizes he can't and then feels trapped and like, yeah, yeah.

[Dan]

I think that's probably the closest to the reality that we're gonna get, right?

[Margaret]

He would've made such a good Catholic. Like, he wants to get a mate.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Margaret]

He wants forgiveness.

[Dan]

He would have been a great monk.

[Emily]

Right.

[Dan]

Like, if he had come about in.

[Robert]

The medieval era, he would have been so happy as a monk.

[Dan]

Yeah, yeah.

[Robert]

Now, partly as a result of the war on terror, and largely pushed by.

[Dan]

The work of scholars like Barr and.

[Robert]

Shedding doubt on aspects of Lawrence's narrative, Lawrence saw a reapprisal in the early 21st century that was largely late 20th, kind of early 21st century that was largely negative.

[Emily]

Right.

[Robert]

The Arab revolt has regularly been described as a sideshow in World War I, which I really hate to hear whenever.

[Dan]

People are like, well, actually, it wasn't.

[Robert]

Even that big a deal that any.

[Dan]

Of this went on because one in.

[Robert]

10 of the people living in the region died in the fighting.

[Dan]

Right. Like, this is not a sideshow. This is a major historical event, no matter how you slice it. And it's really fucked up when people argue otherwise.

[Margaret]

Sorry, fewer white people were there.

[Dan]

Sorry, there weren't as many white people there. Right.

[Robert]

Lawrence has been described as a braggart, a liar, a fantasist, and a historic reappraisal of the man has to caution against taking this interpretation too far.

[Dan]

Again, Barr, who's very properly critical, I.

[Robert]

Would say responsibly, in a historical sense critical of Lawrence, also describes Seven Pillars as essentially accurate.

[Emily]

Right.

[Robert]

And more recent scholars, including the leftist academic Neil Faulkner, have urged a reappreciation of Lawrence as a titanic figure in world history and that of the region.

[Dan]

Now, Margaret, you asked a little earlier, are we going to hear about what happened to Daoud?

[Emily]

Right.

[Dan]

And it's time for us to tell.

[Robert]

That story, which is.

[Margaret]

Okay, I know it's a story.

[Robert]

A bummer.

[Margaret]

Yeah, yeah.

[Robert]

So after Lawrence left the Carchemish dig site in 1914, the two never met again.

[Dan]

Because during the war, partly as a result of the war, there's a typhus.

[Robert]

Epidemic in Daum's hometown and he dies in 1916.

[Margaret]

Oh, shit. So he's only like 16 or something?

[Robert]

Yeah, I think he might have been 18.

[Dan]

Yeah. Cause he was like 16 when Lawrence left.

[Robert]

Right.

[Dan]

So he's probably like 18. Yeah. But he does not get a long life, you know. This is partly as a result of the war, although not Lawrence's part in it. Lawrence is not an active participant in the fighting until Da Eun's dead. Yeah.

[Robert]

Now, if you don't find the claims made in Lightly's report incredible and instead take Lawrence at his word and the words that he sent along to close friends. He never had any other kind of intimate relationship, sexual or otherwise, in his life. I want to quote now from an article in salon.com by Anthony Satin. In 1927, he wrote to his friend, the homosexual novelist E. M. Forster, I'm so funnily made up sexually. And later that same year went further, having read Forster's ghost story, Dr. Wollicott, in which a man dies after a gay sexual encounter.

[Dan]

Lawrence wrote that the Turks, as you.

[Robert]

Probably know or have guessed through the reticences of seven pillars, did it to me by force. I couldn't ever do it. I believe the impulse strong enough to make me touch another creature has not yet been born in me.

[Dan]

And that is. That kind of sounds like.

[Robert]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Like, this is someone who.

[Margaret]

Yeah, that man's ace.

[Robert]

Ace. That man's very ace, Right. Like the following year with Robert Graves, the poet, and at that point, his biographer, he had a discussion about fucking, as I wrote, with some courage. I think few people admit the damaging ignorance. I haven't ever, and I don't much want to.

[Dan]

And that's part of what's so interesting to me is that, like, this isn't really.

[Robert]

If we're looking at Lawrence, this isn't something we have to be, like, wondering about because he. Not only does he write about it, he is aware and open to homosexuality. He is talking to his gay friends about his sexuality, which is so interesting to me.

[Dan]

So unexpected.

[Emily]

Right.

[Dan]

I really didn't think that we would have him directly talking about, like, fucking and being like, yeah, I never wanted to do it.

[Margaret]

Yeah.

[Dan]

That's fascinating to me.

[Margaret]

That's because there's so many historical figures that I wish I knew that about.

[Dan]

Right.

[Margaret]

Because you're like, oh, why did this woman never have children or get married?

[Dan]

Was she gay?

[Margaret]

Was she ace? Was it just never work out? Like, was she just actually loved Dick? But it was. Didn't want to marry? Like, who knows, you know?

[Robert]

Yeah.

[Dan]

And it's like, with Lawrence, this is as clear as you can get of.

[Robert]

A figure in this era talking about asexuality.

[Dan]

And probably, I think the best final.

[Robert]

Source on this is one of Lawrence's homosexual friends, Vivian Richards. And it's, like, spelled V Y. V Y, A N. It's a man's name.

[Dan]

But I think it's just pronounced Vivian.

[Robert]

The two met at Oxford. And Vivian is.

[Margaret]

You never seen the Young Ones?

[Dan]

No, I haven't.

[Margaret]

Oh, there's a man named Vivian.

[Robert]

Anyway, well, Vivian is in love with Lawrence.

[Emily]

Right.

[Robert]

Vivian is a homosexual man who has A massive crush on Lawrence.

[Dan]

And he was like, I could fix him.

[Robert]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Horribly sad that Lawrence was never reciprocated.

[Robert]

He wrote later. He had neither flesh nor carnality of any kind. He received my affection, my sacrifice, in fact, eventually my total subservience, as if it was his due. He neither gave the slightest sign that he understood my motives or fathomed my desire in return for all I offered him, with admittedly ulterior motives, he gave me the purest affection, love and respect that I have ever received from anyone. A love and respect that was spiritual in quality. I realize now that he was sexless, at least that he was unaware of sex.

[Dan]

And. Yeah, that's beautiful.

[Margaret]

That's kind of sweet. And that's like, what? Sometimes, like when people who have sexuality who date people who are ace.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Margaret]

You know, might be like, oh, well, there's something else that's beautiful about this.

[Dan]

Yeah. Yeah. And that's very much what Vivian is saying.

[Robert]

I think if Dom had lived and he might have written something similar.

[Emily]

Right.

[Dan]

Like, this was never a physical thing.

[Robert]

But he was the best and most dedicated friend I ever had.

[Margaret]

Yeah.

[Robert]

And this is where we will conclude the life of Lawrence Margaret after one of the most action packed first acts in history. The remainder of his military career in existence was not the stuff great movies are made of. The simple reason seems to be that he was just absolutely shattered by war. Florence's nerves never recovered. And in 1935, at age 46, he opted to retire from the military. As he was settling into his new home, he wrote one friend of his discomfort with this situation. I imagine leaves must feel this way after they have fallen from their tree and until they die. Let's hope that will not be my continuing state. Alas, it was a week after writing this, Lawrence crashed his motorcycle and perished in the accident. And that.

[Dan]

Yeah. Again, beautiful writer. Yeah.

[Margaret]

It's like when there's, like, several really sad musicians who accidentally drown and you're like, yeah, I'll let you have it.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Margaret]

I'll let the world pretend that's an accident. Yeah, yeah, sure. Lawrence accidentally crashed his motorcycle. Okay.

[Dan]

Yep. Yep.

[Margaret]

Whoa.

[Dan]

Whoa. Yeah.

[Margaret]

See, I would watch the movie about the second half of his life, but it'd be more like watching the Lighthouse or something.

[Dan]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I would as well. Also, I'll rewatch the Lighthouse.

[Robert]

Great movie.

[Dan]

Yeah. I think Lawrence of Arabia probably would have liked the Lighthouse.

[Margaret]

Yeah, that would have been too. He wouldn't have gotten all the masturbation. I didn't get all the Masturbation.

[Dan]

He would not have been a fan of all of the masturbation. Yes. Not interested in that.

[Margaret]

I'll make a new edit for me and him.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Robert]

Explaining the Mermussi to Lawrence of Arabia.

[Dan]

If I get my time machine working, I'm going to go back in time and be like, lawrence, wait a second. Before you get on that motorcycle.

[Margaret]

Yeah.

[Dan]

All right, first off, this is a.

[Robert]

Photo of a man named Willem Dafoe.

[Dan]

He's going to be born in a couple of decades. Great actor. Now, I need to explain to you something called a book series called the Twilight series. This is not your time to book. There are vampires, which I feel like you might be into, but not in.

[Robert]

The way that you're into them.

[Margaret]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Damn.

[Margaret]

What a. I didn't know the first thing about him. I've read about the Ottoman Empire. I've read about British Mandate Palestine. I knew that there was this guy. I never saw Lawrence of Arabia, the movie.

[Robert]

Oh, it's great. You should see it.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Margaret]

And I think by the time I would have watched it, I would have been like, oh, another movie about a white guy and off to go save the world or whatever. Yeah. And. Well, now I want to watch the movie. But, yeah, I recommend it. No, he's. He's interesting. And it's like, most of the really simple narratives that are around available for him don't seem accurate.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Margaret]

You know, because, like, absolutely. Is Orientalism part of his story? Completely.

[Robert]

For sure.

[Dan]

Yes.

[Margaret]

Right. And, like. But it's. But you can compare his Orientalism to the guy, the, like, daddy guy, who, like, wants to go around the Ottoman Empire or whatever. And then also, you know, he's still doing bad while trying to do good. And, oh, man, he's interesting.

[Dan]

Yeah. Fascinating character.

[Margaret]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Robert]

And that's Lawrence of Arabia.

[Dan]

Well, Margaret, you gonna go blow up a train now?

[Robert]

Legally, no.

[Dan]

Legally not.

[Sophie]

Is the podcast over?

[Margaret]

Go listen to cool people, do cool stuff. If you like complicated moral stories about people that I kind of like.

[Dan]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. This was kind of that from me, because that is. I guess we should answer the question. I said we were going to be asking this.

[Robert]

Where do you land? Lawrence of Arabia, Bastard. Yes or no?

[Margaret]

Bastard. In the way that we're all doomed to be.

[Robert]

Hmm.

[Dan]

Yeah, that might be it.

[Margaret]

You can't go into. You talk all the time on this show about how you can't go into war and come out with your hands clean. And I'm always like, yeah, but I probably could. I could.

[Dan]

I could make it work.

[Robert]

Yeah.

[Margaret]

I would just. I would just stay morally clean even if it kills me. Whatever.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Margaret]

And. And here's someone who wanted to stay morally clean even though it would kill him. And then he's like, oh, no, never mind. I'm just going to gun down everyone.

[Dan]

Yeah. Time to machine gun hundreds of people.

[Margaret]

So like he is a bastard. And he's a bastard almost by like accident of birth and like thing he's involved in rather than like a. A character trait.

[Dan]

Yeah.

[Margaret]

You know, like he's up to some bastardry.

[Dan]

Yeah, yeah. It's tough, it's tough. He did his best anyways. But he also probably shouldn't have been doing some of the things he was doing. It's a mix.

[Margaret]

Yeah. Like don't stumble around in the fog.

[Dan]

In foreign country and try to institute new state. Maybe you don't know what you're doing. Maybe that's a bad idea.

[Robert]

Maybe there's more wisdom in the Prime Directive.

[Dan]

Not that this is a less advanced. I'm not saying that. But just in the idea that don't just go sticking your dick in every fucking situation. You see. Right. Maybe the fact that some people are having a war doesn't mean that you need to make a call there. Right.

[Margaret]

Even though you fell in love with one of the people.

[Dan]

Even though you fell in love with one of them.

[Robert]

And even though it is very sweet.

[Dan]

To say I'm going to liberate entire race. Yeah, yeah. It's also pretty fucked up and orientalist to do. So maybe just don't do that. Maybe maybe just buy him like some chocolates. You know, maybe chocolates are better than launching a rebellion.

[Margaret]

Maybe the Ring of Power needs to be cast into the fiery pits of Mount Doom.

[Dan]

Yeah, I'm sorry. Yes, he is. There is some strong boromir vibes to T.E. lawrence. Yeah, he was Boromir maxing there for a little while.

[Margaret]

Wild Wonder. Some of the storyboards about like going across the desert to go get the allies to attack the city. I'm like, did Tolkien read that? And then Aragorn going to go find the like undead army to bring it to bear.

[Dan]

Like Tolkien obviously would say, like, no, you know, this is none of it. Cause that was always his stance. But like also it like Obviously World.

[Robert]

War I influenced what he wrote.

[Dan]

And this is part of World War I.

[Robert]

This definitely. Who definitely takes from this.

[Dan]

This is the basis of Dune, right?

[Margaret]

Yeah.

[Dan]

Like, this is directly. Like, this is not. I'm not like going out on a limb here. This is directly what inspires a lot Of Dune. Yeah, right, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah.

[Robert]

And it's not really all that hard.

[Dan]

To see why, you know.

[Sophie]

Yeah.

[Dan]

And it's also, it's interesting because it.

[Robert]

Shows that Frank Herbert, I think, understood.

[Dan]

This similarly to we do, to how we do. Because Dune is fundamentally about how like, yeah, it's a really bad idea to have this white savior stumble into another culture and just start leading to war. It does not end well. He goes crazy, he commits a shitload of war crimes, he becomes an absolute monster and like, oh, okay, you got it. You really took the right thing out of the T.E. lawrence story.

[Robert]

Unfortunately, everyone is going to interpret your.

[Dan]

Book wrong for forever because you made the horrible mistake of doing it, making it all look really cool.

[Margaret]

Yeah, that's why I don't write.

[Dan]

Yeah, this is why I don't write fiction about, for example, anarchist militant characters.

[Robert]

Who are meant to be very complicated and not necessarily good people.

[Dan]

But I also like writing about cool people.

[Robert]

So they wind up sounding cool and.

[Dan]

Then people are like, oh, is this guy a good guy? No, no, he's not.

[Margaret]

And for anyone who's curious, they should go read Robert's book After the Revolution, because that is what that is talking about.

[Dan]

Yes.

[Robert]

A book full of morally compromised people.

[Dan]

Who regret their actions in war.

[Sophie]

Just to say, wear sunscreen, drink lots of water, touch grass, and pet a dog if that dog says they want to be petted.

[Margaret]

And if you want to do a moral action that is essentially never wrong. Feed people, feed people, feed people.

[Robert]

Don't blow up bridges.

[Dan]

You know what, honestly, more often than not, blowing up bridges works out badly.

[Sophie]

Sure.

[Robert]

Don't blow up a bridge. Unless you're a hurricane, then that's your business.

[Dan]

You know, not that I support it, but you know, you have that right. Hurricane.

[Sophie]

And if you do want to, if you do want to do a hurricane, just call up Nancy Pelosi because she's got that hurricane on speed dial.

[Dan]

Oh, I don't know what that's a reference to. I only know about the drink. What the fuck is.

[Margaret]

I assume it's about controlling the weather. Okay, I was just doing. I've been doing a bunch of episodes about witches recently and they were believed to control the weather. And that was a. It was actually, not actually what caused the witch hunts, but a lot of them were. People were like, oh, the witches control the weather. And I'm like, hahaha, look at you silly early modern fools thinking people. Oh crap. Nope, that's happening now. Yep. Yeah, anyway, anyways, bye.

[Sophie]

Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the Bastards is Now available on YouTube. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel, YouTube.comeehindthebastards.

[Advertiser]

How do you feel when you switch to Geico and save on your car insurance? It's like going to work on one Thursday morning and thinking to yourself, just one more day until Friday. But then somebody in the elevator says, happy Friyay. Then you check your phone quickly and discover today is actually Friday. So yes, Happy Friday, random stranger in the elevator. Happy Friday indeed. Yep, switching and saving with Geico feels just like that.

[Sloan Glass]

Get more with Geico Sometimes where a crime took place leads you to answer why the crime happened in the first hi, I'm Sloan Glass, host of the new true crime podcast American Homicide. In this series, we'll examine some of the country's most infamous and mysterious murders and learn how the location of the crime becomes a character in the story. Listen to American homicide on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.