← Behind the Bastards
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- [00:02]
Robert Evans
Call Zone Media. What's murdering my everyones? I'm Robert Evans, and right now I'm thinking about murdering everyone because yesterday I got stuck in traffic for Sophie, six minutes. Oh, insufferable.
- [00:18]
Unnamed Co-Host
If you drive a giant truck, you shouldn't have to get stuck in traffic.
- [00:21]
Robert Evans
That's exactly what I thought. But every time you drive it over other people, suddenly there's all sorts of crimes that are being committed. Well, who? Uh huh. Well, by the way, I did have a lady back into me yesterday and hit my front end. But like, it did no damage to. Oh my God, I felt so bad. She was like sobbing and I was like, look, ma'am, I'm not going to call the cops. Like, your back bumper is a little cracked, but if you don't want to report this to insurance, I don't give a fuck.
- [00:52]
Unnamed Co-Host
Also, because the insurance will take her side if she decided it was your fault even though she backed into you.
- [00:58]
Robert Evans
I mean, yeah, I don't think there was much of a chance of that. Like, I was 20ft back. She just pulled straight out of a parking space. Like, I saw her backing up. I gave her room. She just, she just, just straight into me. Like, it was like, what? Lady, you had a lot of chances to recognize that you were making a mistake here. But I don't know, I see somebody cry like, I'm not going to. One of my favorite things is whenever you see someone get upset because they've hit you and you get to be like, hey, I'm not calling anybody over this. Oh, it's such a good feeling.
- [01:33]
Unnamed Co-Host
But one time someone rear ended me and I was like, look, I'm not calling everyone over like a $20 sensor in the back of my terrible car. And then the kid, it was a teenager, her mom wrote me and was like, great, can I get you to sign something saying that you will not like, sue or ask for money later? And I was like, no. If there's paperwork involved, it goes through.
- [01:56]
Robert Evans
That's a real different situation.
- [01:58]
Unnamed Co-Host
Ma'am, you thought we were being from my insurance company.
- [02:02]
Robert Evans
Why, why is everybody so unchill lately? Just calm down. Everyone's lost their mind. Calm down. You know who didn't lose their mind?
- [02:09]
Unnamed Co-Host
Unlike in the future when you are listening to this because I think America is about to be really chill. Starting next week.
- [02:17]
Robert Evans
We are, we are electing a new president who instead, Kamala or Trump, I think is going to be a being of pure light who is incapable of sin. So it's impossible. The president's right. On. I'm sure in like two years we will have murdered them because a being of pure light will not get very far as a precedent in this country.
- [02:39]
Unnamed Co-Host
We all get to wear those hats that say, be thou not afraid.
- [02:42]
Robert Evans
Yeah. Oh, no, that part's going to be great. That's the new maga is be thou not afraid.
- [02:47]
Unnamed Co-Host
Yeah. Oh, God.
- [02:52]
Robert Evans
Are you a maggot? No, I'm. But yeah.
- [03:02]
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.
- [03:37]
Unnamed Narrator
From. Audio up, the creators of Stephen King's Strawberry Spring Comes the Unborn. A shocking true story.
- [03:44]
Robert Evans
My babies. Please. My babies.
- [03:48]
Unnamed Narrator
One woman, two lives and a secret she would kill to protect.
- [03:51]
She went crazy, shot and killed all her farm animals, slaughtered them in front of the kids, Tried to burn their house down.
- [04:00]
Listen to the unborn on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [04:08]
Brandon Kyle Goodman
My name is Brandon Kyle Goodman. I'm a black, gay, non binary author, TV writer, actor, and I'm messy, but not in the way you think. Messy, as in I'm human and flawed. I'm on a mission to destroy shame around sex, and the only way to do that is to talk about sex. So that's what we'll do on my brand new podcast, tell Me Something Messy. Join me on Tell Me Something Messy with brand new episodes every Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcast.
- [04:47]
Robert Evans
Anyway, let's talk about Lawrence of Arabia.
- [04:50]
Unnamed Co-Host
Yeah.
- [04:50]
Robert Evans
Ol Te. Okay, but speaking of Edward angel and.
- [04:56]
Unnamed Co-Host
Lawrence of Arabia, is he particularly religious?
- [04:59]
Robert Evans
Not as an adult. As a kid, he is. As an adult, he's just kind of like vaguely spiritual but not like, particularly religious. I think he's just kind of too much of a thinker to be particularly devout.
- [05:14]
Unnamed Co-Host
And it makes some good sense when you're traveling around in a part of the world that has a different religion than what you were raised in.
- [05:20]
Robert Evans
He very clearly is not someone who's like, well, all these people are going to hell, right? He does not believe that at all. Through Daum and his experience traveling the Arab and Kurdish regions of the world, Lawrence began to develop an understanding of the brutality of the Ottoman Empire as well as its incompetence. Now, during the years leading up to the big dub dub uno, there was. That's World War I for all of you people who hate me every time I do this bit. There was a general sense among Arabs that the Turks were at least their best bet at protection from Western imperialism. Right, that like. Well, we don't really like being ruled by the Ottomans, but we see what you Westerners are doing to the rest of the world and we don't want that either. At least these people are Muslim. Right. The British had occupied Egypt in 1882 and had fought a very bloody war there against an enemy who was seen in the west not dissimilarly from how Isis was depicted in the 21st century. So there' a lot of anger towards the West. In 1908, just before Lawrence began his explorations, the Young Turks had taken the reins of the Ottoman government. They'd turned the Caliph into a figurehead and ignited a period of conflict over who would rule the dying empire. The Young Turks were comparatively secular, they were Western aligned. And this amped up the internal imperialism in the Ottoman Empire substantially because that is not how most of the people in these, like Arab and Kurdish and other regions of the empire really are. The Young Turks created the Committee of Union and Progress to try and spread some of their sexy new ideas among the people they ruled. And the most significant idea they wanted to push was called Pan tyrannism. And this is key to understanding Tayyip Recep Erdogan and the current Turkish government, its genocide against the Kurds in Syria and in southern Turkey. This is a very. Pan tyrannism is a very important imperialist concept. This is.
- [07:13]
Unnamed Co-Host
Runs all the way up to like Finland.
- [07:16]
Robert Evans
Yeah, it's. Yeah. Well, let's. Let me just explain.
- [07:19]
Unnamed Co-Host
Yeah, no, I'm so sorry. Yeah, go ahead.
- [07:21]
Robert Evans
This is the Turkic version of the Pan Germanic racial theories that would spread after World War I. Dr. Kaveh Farouk, an expert on ancient Iran, describes Pan Turinism as an ideology that aims at creating a Turkic super state stretching from the Balkans in Europe eastwards across Turkey, Iran, the Caucasus, Central Asia, up to and including northwest China. Now, you will recognize, if you know much about the world, that most those areas are not Turkish. Iran, not Turkish Northwest China, very much not Turkish Central Asia, not really Turkish. The Balkans, not Turkish. Turkish influence in some of those places. Of course, go to Sarajevo, you'll see that. But not Turks. Now, this very much a historical belief is justified by the claim that all the real indigenous Peoples of those regions speak Turkish, or at least in their natural cultural state spoke Turkish and thus should belong to the same state. Hungarian pan tyrannianist activists even go further. They have proposed that the entire Eurasian landmass between Hungary and Norway and Europe to Japan and Korea was once an empire known as Tyrrhenia. Apart from non scholastic websites, no linguistic, anthropological and archaeological evidence for such an empire exists. Panteranian racialists and historians would beg to differ. They are impervious to logical explanations, even in the face of hard evidence. I love this shit. Everything was Turks.
- [08:56]
Unnamed Co-Host
Yeah.
- [08:57]
Robert Evans
In the ancient past it was all Turks all the way down. I just love that shit. What a bat shit. Like no, everything wasn't Turkish. I'm sorry, it wasn't. That's like everything was fucking. That's like the Germans being like our, you know, like the root of the Aryan race is these guys living in Nepal, you know, and also the same as like our dreams of, you know, rebreeding this like Aryan perfect race. I mean they are Aryans in Nepal, but that's not what Aryan means, you know. So this belief forms the core of a lot of current fascist theory in Turkey and underpins for example, the genocidal acts of the Turkish state towards Kurdish rebels in the south and across the board in Rojava. Now all this is a lot less settled. In Lawrence's day, it's just kind of gearing up. But he is watching the early stages of this thing that's going to end in genocide and he recognizes this has a bad end. Right. Anything like this is going to not end well. Yeah. And as the Young Turks, one of the ways in which they push these pan Turanian ideas is by disseminating anti Arab propaganda. They are arguing at this point in time that like, instead of, you know, Arabs existing in all these regions, like all of them, all of these different peoples are descendants of like Genghis Khan, who is the progenitor of the nation. This pisses people off. And there are counter revolutions starting in 1909, the year before Lawrence goes on his first dig. Now that revolution had been sparked by army officers and angry students at a religious school. But the crackdown afterwards bred hatred among locals of Armenian Christians, who they saw as supporting the hate Young Turk government. 30,000 of these Christians were butchered in massacres that would prove an ugly prelude to the looming genocide. Lawrence arrived in the wake of all this chaos. And while he was living in Ottoman territory, in 1911, Italy invaded and conquered Libya. All of this provoked a surge in Arab nationalism, which we should rightly see as not disconnected from the swells of nationalism across the Austro Hungarian Empire and elsewhere in Europe. There's a direct line between this Arab revolt that's going to brew and like Serbian nationalism. Right. These are all part of, like, a broader cultural movement around the world. Now, there are two different but not entirely contradictory explanations for what motivated Lorenz ultimately to support an Arab uprising against the Ottomans. The most sympathetic reason, and the one that paints him in the best light, is related to his relationship with Dauum, Lawrence's friend later in life. Eam Forster argues that Lawrence was intimate and passionately devoted to Daum, although they never consummated their relationship. And given Lawrence died a virgin, he likely had no idea to do so. Satin, whose biography of young Lawrence gives the best texture on the man's life, describes the relationship as something intense but fundamentally unknowable to people reading today. However, he cites with clear textual evidence that however we define this relationship, it inspired Lawrence's actions during World War I. In 1919, Lawrence admitted in a letter to a friend that he had joined the Arab revolt because I liked a particular Arab very much, and I thought that freedom for the race would be an acceptable present. And that is both profoundly Orientalist and also so romantic. I know I'm going to free your people because, like, I like you. Like, that's such a. Not. You're not even romantic. That's so. Because, like, I don't think this was a romantic relationship. That's so sweet.
- [12:35]
Unnamed Co-Host
But it's like, I also love. Okay. It reminds me a little bit about how. Okay, so Sam and Frodo. Cause I have to bring Lord of the Rings into this somehow. Sam and Frodo have a relationship that when Tolkien talks about, like, Tolkien talks about it, and it's like, it's the relationship between brothers in arms in war.
- [12:52]
Robert Evans
Right? Yeah.
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Unnamed Co-Host
And it's the kind of relationship that now that heterosexuality and homosexuality are much more, like, defined. Doesn't translate to anything. Like, the modern world has no way of understanding this relationship you're describing. Yeah, it's just interesting because romantic is probably the closest word, but there's connotations.
- [13:15]
Robert Evans
That aren't meant, that aren't meant and that make this seem like, for one thing, is something much more problematic than I think it was.
- [13:22]
Unnamed Co-Host
Right.
- [13:22]
Robert Evans
And man, it is just like, yeah, the whole, like, I like this guy so much, I am going to free his people from imperial bondage, like, personally is pretty cool.
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Unnamed Co-Host
I know. With no background as a soldier, as Far as I can tell, with no.
- [13:39]
Robert Evans
Military background at this point, just the experience of, like, making chain mail and learning how to sword fight with his.
- [13:45]
Unnamed Co-Host
Friends, the SCA is coming to the rescue.
- [13:50]
Robert Evans
Now in a more artful bit of writing, Lawrence. I want to quote from a poem that Lawrence writes in Seven Pillars of Islam, which Satine argues is a poem that he is. He doesn't explicitly say this is a poem about Daoum, but Satine argues this is a poem written for Daum after Daum's death. Quote, I loved you so I drew these tides of men into my hands and wrote my will across the sky in stars.
- [14:16]
Unnamed Co-Host
Damn.
- [14:16]
Robert Evans
Jesus. Yeah, that's a line that's bars right there.
- [14:21]
Unnamed Co-Host
That is beyond romance. Is like, paling.
- [14:24]
Robert Evans
Yeah. I wrote my will across the sky and stars. He's just a good writer, you know? Yeah. So in this conception, if we take this as the reason why Lawrence ultimately backed the Arab revolt, and I'll tell you right now, it can't be all of why. Right.
- [14:42]
Unnamed Co-Host
Yeah.
- [14:43]
Robert Evans
There are less romantic reasons that his country, Great Britain, gets involved. Obviously, they're not doing it because some random British dude liked an Arab kid. As I noted last episode, the Germans had started making inroads with the Ottomans after the British pulled back their support of the Sultan Zikaiser, who had thrown away Germany's alliance with Russia because he was a dumb shit, needed the Ottomans. Because once he's like, fuck you, Russia, he also realizes, like, oh, my God, there's no one watching our ass. Right. So we kind of have to have the Ottomans now. Right. And he also, the Kaiser, has convinced himself that, well, if I get the Sultan in my back pocket, if we ever have a big fight with Great Britain, I can incite a jihad against the British Empire in India. And that'll solve all my British people problems.
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Unnamed Co-Host
Yeah, totally. Because Muslims are definitely in power in India and always have been.
- [15:30]
Robert Evans
Yes, yes. That is a clear fact that, you know, I mean, if you're the Kaiser, I guess I'm just kind of proud he knows enough about India to know there are Muslims there.
- [15:39]
Unnamed Co-Host
Yeah, fair enough.
- [15:39]
Robert Evans
That's more knowledge than I would have credited Kaiser Wilhelm with having.
- [15:43]
Unnamed Co-Host
Yeah.
- [15:44]
Robert Evans
Now, a further complication here was the recent construction of the Hejaz Railway, which connected the Arab peninsula to the rest of modern day Saudi Arabia. This is a railway that goes from, like, you know, the Ottoman heartland and the Arab world all the way down through what is modern day Saudi Arabia to, like, Oman and Yemen, I think. Right. Like, that's the Hejaz is this massive desert peninsula, right? And this is, you know, the Ottomans. Once the Great Britain had gotten the Suez Canal going, the Ottomans had become dependent on Great Britain to move goods to a lot of parts of the world. And this railway was not only supposed to connect a lot of these backwaters of the empire, these tiny little off the map places that were really completely separate from the rest of the world. Also supposed to be this, like, economic lifeline to the empire that reduced their dependence on Great Britain. The railway was so crucial not just to the Ottomans, but in a lot of eyes, to the. To Islam. Right. That it had been funded by donations from Muslims all over the world, including a huge number of Indian Muslims. And the fact that so many Indian Muslims had donated to fund the Hejaz Railway was seen by a lot of, like, British observers as evidence that, like, oh, we really do need to be worried that the Caliph could spark a rebellion right Now. This ties back to Lawrence because during the years he was digging, a realization had spread among the brass back home in England that we might. It's becoming increasingly likely that we're going to have to scrap with the Germans. And if that's the case, we probably have to have a plan to deal with the Turks. Now. Lord Kitchener, who is like the king shit of the British military, you know, in the period leading up to, in the early stages of World War I, is the guy, the man in power in the British military establishment who is first, like, hey, I am backing. Like, I am. I am officially backing that. We want to incite an. We're looking into the possibility of inciting an Arab rebellion in Syria, right. And supporting it enough to create a friendly state that will fracture Ottoman power. Right. Kitchener is like, he's not the guy who originates the idea, but he's the first guy in power who's like, I think we should explore this as a potential official, like, policy move. Right?
- [17:57]
Unnamed Co-Host
Is this the first time? Because this is like the US's playbook, right? Is you back an uprising in order to create a friendly state to the us? Is this like, are there previous examples?
- [18:11]
Robert Evans
Oh, yes. From the British, right. I don't think the US is doing much of this. I mean, we've done, you know, you could look into some aspects of our history, but like, we get it either way from the Brits, right? They do this in Africa. They do this all over the place.
- [18:25]
Unnamed Co-Host
So it's an existing playbook.
- [18:27]
Robert Evans
Yeah, yeah, it is definitely an existing playbook. Right. This is always how the British Empire's playbook is Always, you know, although it's usually a bit different because, like this is we are trying to disrupt an enemy by doing this. Usually it's more we have this area we control that we are not native to and we're going to find a warrior people and we're going to both back them, but also kind of incite conflicts between them and other peoples in. In order to take the pressure off of us. Right, but you can see how, like that playbook, you can translate that directly to what's being done here with the Ottomans. Right?
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Unnamed Co-Host
Well, everyone likes doing that. The Tsar did that with the Cossacks.
- [19:02]
Robert Evans
Yes, yes. It's a very old playbook. Right. So In September of 1913, the coming war between European powers was both something that, like, everyone knew it was happening. Right. That there was some sort of general European conflict probably. And also nobody really expected it to happen. Right. Not when it happened. Right. It's one of those things where it's like, well, this will happen one day, but probably not tomorrow until eventually tomorrow comes. Right.
- [19:29]
Unnamed Co-Host
I hope this is impression for when this episode comes out.
- [19:32]
Robert Evans
Impression for any number of things. Now, Kitchener being a bit smarter than a lot of people in the British Empire is not just like, well, we'll probably have a war one of these days, but not tomorrow. Kitchener's like, well, we should probably get ready. Like, if we're going to wind up fighting the Germans and the Ottomans, we probably have a plan for how to, like, incite this rebellion that might get the Ottomans, you know, off of our fucking backs. So he sends operatives to Palestine to gather information on Ottoman military facilities there. Now, since the Ottomans weren't just about to. Okay, like, spy visas. Oh, you want to send some spies to the Holy Land? Absolutely. It was suggested that they send some local boys, some local, like, English boys who were already in the Ottoman Empire. Playing at archeology, right? And that is how T.E. lawrence and his friend Seed L Woolley find themselves called upon to act as spies for the mother country. Lawrence was described by his mentor to the shell organization created to execute this expedition as someone who, quote, gets on very well with the natives. He has, I think, more the instincts of an explorer, but is very shy. Right. That's like the. What gets him this job as like, you know, he's kind of doing some James Bond shit, you know, MI6, MI5 doesn't exist then, but like that, that's very much what he's doing here. Right. He's being brought in by the state to help provide cover to an espionage operation.
- [20:52]
Unnamed Co-Host
Yeah.
- [20:53]
Robert Evans
Now, he and Woolley insist that Daem be hired as a photographer and general assistant to the team they have. They are carrying out a real historical survey, but that survey is also cover to this group of actual spies that are being sent, like, as assistants, but are there to do their actual, like, spy work. Right. Lawrence is aware of this, and he writes back to his mom, we are obviously meant as red herrings. Now, the trip, I love how they.
- [21:20]
Unnamed Co-Host
Could trust the mail so well back.
- [21:22]
Robert Evans
Then that you, of course, nobody would look in the mail.
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Unnamed Co-Host
Yeah.
- [21:27]
Robert Evans
Now, the trip was mostly uneventful for our purposes, save that it marks the first time Lawrence found himself traveling the Sinai and thinking about the military value of different towns and forts along the way. One morning, he and Woolley were late meeting up with their baggage men because they were hunting a gazelle. Their camels, which had bolted the night before, were found, and the Egyptian police were contacted In a panic. Lawrence wrote home that, quote, the result was wild telephoning all over the frontier. The Turks were wandering over their hills. About 40 Arabs were arrested and brought in as hostages for our reappearance. And meanwhile, we were sitting quietly wondering where in the world our tents had got to. Now, to anyone else, this would just be kind of like a funny moment. But Lawrence, being very perceptive, takes something crucial from the experience. He writes, quote, it shows how easily it is and an absolutely deserted country to defy a government. And this is going to lead him to one of the most important realizations of the last 150 years. After the expedition, Lawrence and Woolley went back to their dig. Woolley left around June, but as was usual, Lawrence stayed. He got regular pushes to go back home, but in the last 18 months, had spent just three weeks in England. Daoum and another local friend of his, Hammoudi, had by this point heard stories from Lawrence about home. And they'd repeatedly asked, hey, can we. We would like to see. You've spent so much time in our home. We would like to see England, right? And eventually, in 1913, in the last summer before the world went mad, Lawrence obliged them. Now, they stayed about 10 days. He brings these two Arab friends of his, and they stay for 10 days in Oxford. They are mostly treated as, like, curiosities. They give, like, speeches and stuff in public where people get to question them about, like, their lives in their home. And for the most part, I think it's kind of interesting that this happened, but it's not super relevant to our question, where do we put this guy morally? There is one anecdote here that I think is worth reciting to you. And so I'm going to quote again from Anthony Satin's book, the Young T.E. lawrence, where he writes about a story that Hammoudi told of this visit. After Lawrence's death, many wished to photograph us, Hammoudi and Daum, as we sat with him, Lawrence in our customary clothes. And after they took a picture, they would come and speak to him. And always he said, no, no, no. One day I asked why he was always saying, no, no. And he laughed and said, I will tell you, these people wish to give you money, but for me, you would now be rich. Don't call yourself my friend, Hammudi shouted, and say thus calmly, that you kept me from riches. It was a rare moment of cultural division between them. It also showed that the Syrians understood the wealth and privilege of their young friend. Hammoudi remembered that Lawrence had laughed at his anger. And the more he laughed, the angrier Hammoudi became. Then Lawrence said, yes, you might have been rich, richer than any in Jarabulus. And I, what should I have been? I should have been the showman of two monkeys. And suddenly, Hammoudi admitted, all my anger died down within me.
- [24:25]
Unnamed Co-Host
Wow.
- [24:26]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [24:27]
Unnamed Co-Host
Yeah. So he's thinking about what he's doing.
- [24:30]
Robert Evans
Yes. He is attempting to. Not that he does it perfectly, but he is trying to think ethically about the complexity and the class dynamics and wealth dynamics and disparity of his relationship with these guys.
- [24:42]
Unnamed Co-Host
Oh, that's fascinating. Cause I was already thinking about how it's like, well, when he goes there, they're not, like, putting him on stage and being like, tell us about the weird, wacky, cold place you're from.
- [24:52]
Robert Evans
You know, and that does happen here. And he's, like, conscious, and he's like, I don't want to turn this into me prostituting these boys for Orientalist reasons. Right.
- [25:03]
Unnamed Co-Host
Yeah.
- [25:04]
Robert Evans
That seems bad to me.
- [25:06]
Unnamed Co-Host
Right. On the other hand, he probably could have been like.
- [25:08]
Robert Evans
He could have talked this out with them. Right. There is some of that paternalism here, you know.
- [25:13]
Unnamed Co-Host
Right, totally. Because they could have been like, yeah, no, let's get rich, Fuck it.
- [25:15]
Robert Evans
Yeah, yeah, exactly. They could have made that decision. And he. Again, he's definitely paternalistic. He's older than them. You know, this isn't unproblematic. Perfectly. But I also. It's interesting to me that he is really trying to think about this in an ethical sense that somewhat comports with our modern ethics.
- [25:34]
Unnamed Co-Host
Yeah.
- [25:34]
Robert Evans
You know what doesn't comport with our modern ethics, Margaret?
- [25:38]
Unnamed Co-Host
Is it our ads?
- [25:41]
Robert Evans
They sure don't. But you know what? I like being able to pay my mortgage.
- [25:45]
Unnamed Co-Host
Me too. We all just get to talk about it and then make these decisions together.
- [25:50]
Robert Evans
That's right. Let's make some decisions together. Let's you and me prostitute ourselves.
- [25:55]
Unnamed Co-Host
Excellent. Yeah, that sounds great.
- [25:58]
Robert Evans
That sounds great.
- [26:01]
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- [27:10]
Sloan Glass
Whenever a homicide happens, two questions immediately come to mind. 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 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 podcast podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [28:20]
Unnamed Narrator
In the quiet town of Avella, Pennsylvania, Jared and Christy. Akron seemed to have it all. A whirlwind romance, a new home, and twins on the way. What no one knew was that Christy was hiding a secret so shocking it would tear their world apart.
- [28:35]
Robert Evans
911 response. What's your emergency? My babies. Please.
- [28:38]
Unnamed Narrator
My one woman, two lives and the truth more terrifying than anyone could imagine.
- [28:45]
They had her as one of the suspects, but they could never prove it.
- [28:47]
Robert Evans
You're going to go to jail. If you don't come with us right now. Throughout this whole thing, I kept telling myself, nobody's that crazy.
- [28:55]
Unnamed Co-Host
Crazy.
- [28:55]
Unnamed Narrator
Uncover the chilling mystery that will leave you questioning everything. A story of the lengths we go to protect our darkest secrets.
- [29:03]
She went bash it crazy. He shot and killed all their farm animals, slaughtered them in front of the kids, tried to burn their house down.
- [29:11]
Audio represents the unborn on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [29:21]
Brandon Kyle Goodman
My name is Brandon Kyle Goodman. I'm a black, gay, non binary author, TV writer, actor. And I'm messy, but not in the way you think. Messy as is. I'm human and flawed. I'm on a mission to destroy shame around sex. And the only way to do that is to talk about sex. So that's what we'll do on my brand new podcast. Tell me something messy. Okay, let's play this messy round of smash or pass.
- [29:46]
Robert Evans
Okay.
- [29:46]
Brandon Kyle Goodman
Okay, here it is. Smash or pass. Spit play.
- [29:49]
Robert Evans
I don't know. I don't know how I feel about bodily fluids being on me. Unless it's because we're doing the pull out method and we're living on the edge. Oh, my God.
- [30:04]
Brandon Kyle Goodman
I was not expecting that, baby. Like I always say, if you know how to work that body, that sexualness and that heart, you're unstoppable. Embrace your power. That's really what we gonna do on this show. Join me on tell Me Something Messy with brand new episodes every Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
- [30:33]
Robert Evans
And we're back. So when the war broke out In August of 1914, the time of leisurely afternoons painting and reading with Dome were over. Based on his work in Palestine the previous year, Lawrence was offered a commission in the Army Intelligence Corps as a second lieutenant. This landed Lawrence, who's now in kind of like his mid to late 20s, in Cairo, which is where the movie begins, to show us his story. Right. This is where the 1962 film starts. I think it's valuable that we've gone a little bit back there. By the time the fighting started, Kitchener's interest in sparking an Arab revolt had only deepened. And he'd had several clandestine conversations with Prince Hussein IBN Ali, the Arab nobleman charged with protecting the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. Kitchener and his advisors believed that Prince Hussein could be used to sever much of the Arab world world from the Ottomans and prevent them from functioning as an ally to Germany. Now, Prince Hussein was not the only potential game in town for The Brits, Kitchener and his allies supported him as the new caliph, while others backed a young chieftain from Riyadh named Abdul Aziz IBN Saud. Now, I want you to think about that last name, Saud for a hint as to what his family's doing today.
- [31:54]
Unnamed Co-Host
Yeah, they're doing pretty well as well.
- [31:55]
Robert Evans
Yeah, they're doing quite well. Some of the evilest people on planet Earth. And Abdulaziz IBN Saud sucks ass, too. Now. So does Prince Hussein. Both of these guys are huge dicks and a big part of why this Arab revolt doesn't end in a better place for the Arab world. You know, I would say overwhelmingly the blame is on the Ottomans and the European powers. But a lot of it comes down to the fact that the local leaders, you know, the Arab leaders of this revolt are also assholes, right? And that plays a role in the structures that get set up at the end of this. All right?
- [32:31]
Unnamed Co-Host
Yeah.
- [32:31]
Robert Evans
Now, Saud is Wahhabi, right? Which is a puritan strain of Islam that is also strongly anti idolatry. And Prince Hussein is a guy. He is a real asshole about. He is super anti woman. He is a very strict. He's also a puritan, Right. He is the guy who, like, bans drinking in Mecca, you know, but he is also. He's not a Wahhabist because the Wahhabis, they're anti idolatry. And Prince Hussein kind of wants to be worshiped almost as much as Allah, right? And so he doesn't like the anti idolatry stuff about Wahhabism.
- [33:06]
Unnamed Co-Host
He's like, humility. Humility is no good.
- [33:08]
Robert Evans
No, no, no, that's not my bag. I am a prince.
- [33:12]
Unnamed Co-Host
Yeah.
- [33:15]
Robert Evans
Now, the outbreak of World War I has been a disaster for Mecca, right? Which is tourism would be like kind of the wrong way of saying, but it's like religious pilgrimage, right, is like what the city does. That's where its money comes from. People aren't doing as much of that after the whole war decides, like, what if we take all these young men who were, you know, around to go on pilgrimages to Mecca and the like, and instead we feed them to each other's machine guns, you know? And honestly, a great. This is a great time to be a machine gun. Bad time to be a young man. So traffic to Mecca collapses and the economy follows with it. And I'm going to quote from James Barr's book here. Meccans were reduced to selling their furniture and the ornately carved wooden doors and fretwork windows of their houses for firewood to feed themselves These screens shielded their womenfolk indoors from prying eyes. It was a deeply humiliating resort to have to take.
- [34:16]
Unnamed Co-Host
Wow.
- [34:17]
Robert Evans
Yeah. So Prince Hussein blames the suffering and the war itself on the secular modernizing of the Ottomans, which he says violated the Quran by, for instance, allowing women to work in the post office. A major reason why Hussein gets on board with being like the figurehead of an Arab revolt against the Ottomans is he goes to Constantinople a couple of years back and he sees women working at the post office and he is. He loses his mind. He absolutely goes fucking batshit over, like, ladies in the post office. This guy is the anti wokist of the anti wokes. He describes lady post office workers as an evil that will greatly injure us if it increases. Like all this debate. Why did this terrible war happen? Why are we slaughtering each other? It's lady post office workers. So out of his mind. The words mailman, mailman, goddammit. Yeah, Prince Hussein, real piece of shit in this story now debate.
- [35:18]
Unnamed Co-Host
Lawrence is gonna end up backing anyway.
- [35:21]
Robert Evans
This is who Lawrence and England end up backing, although this is not who Lawrence personally backs. Hussein is the father of the guy that Lawrence really sees as being the great leader. Right. So debate rages within sort of the British intelligence and military establishments. It's very similar to how, like during the Syrian Civil War, you had like the US kind of military intelligence back the Kurds and you had like the CIA back these kind of alliances of like rebel groups. Well, you have within, you know, the military and the intelligence arms of kind of the British state are backing 2Di, like Saud or Hussein. Right?
- [35:58]
Unnamed Co-Host
Oh, shit.
- [35:58]
Robert Evans
Okay. And there's a lot of argument over, like, who is better. And this is. It's also worth noting that when we're parsing out the morality of this, what Great Britain is doing here playing with these people's lives is evil. What Prince Hussein is doing here trying to get absolute power, make himself into a caliph, is evil. Right. The other Arabs, by the way, he wants to specifically be king of this massive greater Arab state and wants to be ruling Iraq and Syria because that's prestigious and the Hejaz is a backwater people. The Arabs in Iraq and Syria don't want this guy ruling. You know, they don't like him more than they like the Ottomans, in some cases a lot less. Right. But also when we're talking about, like, the morality of this, you know, what Great Britain is doing here is fucked up. The Ottomans are actively doing a genocide. They are doing the Armenian genocide. In this period of Time. So there's not like a. Ah, these are the. This is the shining bright side of this conflict to back. These guys were the real heroes here. Everyone's an imperialist and everyone's a piece of shit. You know, Lawrence might have the most noble kind of alongside a lot of the individual dudes who are just fighting because it seems like the Ottomans suck. But of the people with power in this, he's at least less objectionable than some. So he spends the first two years of his time as an intelligence agent from 14 to 16 in Egypt, in Cairo, writing intelligent summaries from hundreds of sources across the region. Right. Other people are bringing in data. He is turning it into briefings and sending it out. Right. And he becomes, as a result of this duty, he's a guy who studies constantly. He's fascinated in the culture of the region, and he becomes acquainted with the history of the Bedouins. These are the nomadic peoples in the Hejaz in the Arab peninsula. And they are primarily the way everyone sees them, raiders and bandits. Right. They fight a lot within each other. They are a clannish tribal people, and they make a lot of their living from, like, banditry, you know.
- [38:01]
Unnamed Co-Host
Is this comparable to the Kurds at the time?
- [38:03]
Robert Evans
Maybe, yeah, there's a lot of similarities. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you could definitely draw that in some ways. Right. And, like, you know, you've got some of these guys, like Prince Hussein, who have started to urbanize, but you also have these people who, like, they very much do live this nomadic existence, except for the fact that they have guns. Not different from how they would have lived 700 years ago when, like, Muhammad was alive.
- [38:28]
Unnamed Co-Host
Right, yeah.
- [38:29]
Robert Evans
So the fact that Lawrence is starting to understand these people and study them was going to prove crucial to what comes next. But at the time, he's really frustrated that he's, like, forced to just sit on his ass and do nothing. In May of 1915, less than 1 year into the war, his brother Frank had been killed in France. Four months later, his youngest son Will was shot down and perished.
- [38:51]
Unnamed Co-Host
Youngest brother?
- [38:52]
Robert Evans
Yeah, youngest brother Will was shot down in Paris. So he loses two brothers in the first two years of the war while he's sitting in this office in Cairo.
- [38:59]
Unnamed Co-Host
Wow.
- [39:00]
Robert Evans
Being bored. And he is wracked with survivor's guilt over this. He and his brothers had been very close. In letters home to his mother, he veered between shows of strength. In a time of such fearful stress in our country, it is one's duty to watch very carefully lest one of the weaker ones be offended. But he also complained to her. We do nothing here except sit and think out harassing schemes of Arabian policy. My hair is getting very thin and gray. I'm going to be in Cairo till I die. You know. He's an emotional guy. He's going through a lot here. This is a complex time to him. And his grief is compounded by fury at the failed Allied invasion of Gallipoli masterminded by friend of the pod, Winston Churchill. This was a vast invasion by sea of the Ottoman coast that ended in just the worst fuck up ever. Right. One of the great disasters in military history. Yeah. Just. Just a calamitous fuck up. Now Lawrence writes a report on precisely why the campaign which he termed a disgrace failed. It was buried. This report of his. To protect the people who'd planned it. Right. We can't have Winston Churchill getting criticized here. And it's a very good report. James Schneider writes in his book Guerrilla Leader. He discovered then the reality in modern war that the civilian population will always suffer when a European power pursues its national interests without regard to the culture and aspirations of the native populace. Right. And so this is kind of like he makes a decision here to be different. That we have to be different. Because if we're not, if we make these decisions based purely on what we know and think of war without any kind of like. Without any sort of openness to the realities on the ground, we wind up walking into disasters. Right.
- [40:52]
Unnamed Co-Host
Yeah.
- [40:53]
Robert Evans
Trying to preach against Vietnam syndrome. Right. Where you just like stumbling. Well, we're America. We know how to fight a war. This is how you do it. I don't need to know shit about this country. Right. I'll just fight this the way I fight every war. Oops. Turns out it's a different part of the world that doesn't work here. You know.
- [41:08]
Unnamed Co-Host
Yeah. And wasn't a big thing. Is that when the Brits were trying to fight in the Ottoman Empire because there just wasn't transportation and all this thing like the modern method of moving all of the arms and all those things just like fell apart.
- [41:20]
Robert Evans
Oh yeah. I mean a lot of it supply issues and stuff. But this was also stuff had been more knowledge of the realities of the geography of the era. Like they wouldn't have tried it. Right. This is a thing with more knowledge and less arrogance. You would just like, no, we can't do this. We don't have the capacity.
- [41:37]
Unnamed Co-Host
Yeah.
- [41:38]
Robert Evans
On June 10, 1916, Prince Hussein had been goaded sufficiently into action that he used a small force of fighters to lay siege to the Turkish garrison at Mecca. They took it after three days, but the rebellion lost steam after that. Medina did not fall and it was clear to anyone with eyes that the Ottomans would soon exact a punishment because their garrison in Medina is isolated. But they've got this train that can get stuff down there. So they have the ability, eventually we'll get enough guys there that will crack down on this little rebellion. Now, much of the internal debate in this period among the British revolved around whether or not we should send our own troops in to stop the Ottomans from like, crushing this rebellion, specifically from capturing a place called Rabigh, which contained valuable wells that would allow resuppl for an attack on Mecca. The problem was twofold. Number one, if the British sent in Christian soldiers, white guys, right? That would infuriate soldiers because, like, Christians are not supposed to be in the Holy Land, you know, and that would dry up support for the rebellion if it's seen as like, oh, this is really just a British thing. Oh, the British are in this, you know, like, maybe people aren't gonna be willing to die if they're like, oh, so we're just, we're just fighting to become slaves of the British Empire. Well, I don't like that any better. Right? But at the same token, the British have this option. We have all these Muslim soldiers, right? From India. India we can send in with modern guns and they would probably make a difference. But if we send in Muslim soldiers, no one's going to believe that Prince Hussein is backed by us. And that's also necessary because otherwise why would you take him seriously if he doesn't have the backing of a great power, right? So it's this like catch 22 situation, you know, of like, we can't send in white guys, but nobody takes it as ser unless they see some white guys. And Lawrence is on the side of arguing that we absolutely cannot send in British soldiers. Right? And he argues, interestingly, he takes the stance that not only should we not send in British soldiers, they're not needed. The Bedouins can, on their own, defeat the Ottomans in Hejaz so long as we arm them properly. Right. His attitude is we don't need to send in troops. They can handle this. They just need guns.
- [43:49]
Unnamed Co-Host
Yeah.
- [43:51]
Robert Evans
Now he is also terrified. A big motivation for Lawrence is that the French are poking around this situation. They keep being like, oh, you guys don't want to send in troops? We got troops. We can send in troops. And then ends in. Maybe the Arab peninsula is a French peninsula. Perhaps we Wind up with Syria. Yeah. That is what the French want. Syria in particular, they see this as natural French territory.
- [44:17]
Unnamed Co-Host
Syria, everywhere is natural French territory.
- [44:20]
Robert Evans
Everywhere is natural French territory. Right. Now, Lawrence, he's not. Just doesn't like this because the British and the French don't like each other traditionally. He is a man of the world. And he is aware that the French, when they took Algeria, immediately carried out a hideously brutal genocide. And he's like, well, if they take Syria, they're gonna do another genocide. Right. Like, that's just how the French be. He argued in letters meant to be read by other British officers that support supporting Prince Hussein as the new caliph also would effectively neuter Islam as a threat to the empire. Right. So there's a very imperialist slant to this, too. Although the question is, does he believe that, like, oh, we can neuter Islam as a threat to our ambitions in India, or does he know that saying that will get people to back his play back home?
- [45:09]
Unnamed Co-Host
This is one of the hardest things when you look at history.
- [45:11]
Robert Evans
Yes. Yes. Especially since Lawrence lies to his Arab allies and he lies to his British masters. He lies constantly to them. So it is not. He is deceitful to some of these Arabs that he claims to care about, and he is deeply deceitful to all of his superior officers. So the idea that he would just be like, oh, yeah, this will stop Islam from overthrowing the Indian subcontinent or whatever. Like, if he thought that lie would work, he would say it.
- [45:41]
Unnamed Co-Host
Totally.
- [45:42]
Robert Evans
It's not necessary. It could be, instead of Orientalism, just him trying to manipulate his bosses. Right.
- [45:48]
Unnamed Co-Host
Who he knows are Orientalists.
- [45:50]
Robert Evans
Who he knows are Orientalists. Right? Yeah.
- [45:56]
Sloan Glass
Whenever a homicide happens, two questions immediately come to mind. 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 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 podcasts.
- [47:06]
Unnamed Narrator
In the quiet town of Aella, Pennsylvania, Jared and Christy. Akron seemed to have it all. A whirlwind romance, a new home, and twins on the way. What no one knew was that Christy was hiding a secret so shocking it would tear their world apart.
- [47:21]
Robert Evans
911 response. What's your emergency? My babies. Please. My babies.
- [47:25]
Unnamed Narrator
One woman, two lives, and the truth more terrifying than anyone could imagine.
- [47:30]
They had her as one of the suspects, but they could never prove it.
- [47:33]
Robert Evans
You're going to go to jail if you don't come with us right now.
- [47:37]
Unnamed Co-Host
Throughout this whole thing, I kept telling.
- [47:39]
Robert Evans
Myself, nobody's that crazy. Crazy.
- [47:41]
Unnamed Narrator
Uncover the chilling mystery that will leave you questioning everything. A story of the lengths we go to protect our darkest secrets.
- [47:49]
She went batshit crazy. Shot and killed all her farm animals, slaughtered them in front of the kids, Tried to burn their house down.
- [47:57]
Audio represents the unborn on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [48:07]
Brandon Kyle Goodman
My name is Brandon Kyle Goodman. I'm a black, gay, non binary author, TV writer, actor, and I'm messy, but not in the way you think. Messy as in I'm human and fl. I'm on a mission to destroy shame around sex. And the only way to do that is to talk about sex. So that's what we'll do on my brand new podcast. Tell Me Something Messy. Okay, let's play this messy round of smash or pass.
- [48:32]
Robert Evans
Okay.
- [48:32]
Brandon Kyle Goodman
Okay, here it is. Smash or pass? Spit play.
- [48:35]
Robert Evans
I don't know. I don't know how I feel about bodily fluids being on me. Unless it's because we're doing the pull out method. We're living on the edge. Oh, my God.
- [48:50]
Brandon Kyle Goodman
I was not expecting that baby. Like I always say, if you know how to work that body, that sexualness and that heart, you're unstoppable. Embrace your power. That's really what we gonna do on this show. Join me on Tell Me Something Messy with brand new episodes every Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
- [49:20]
Robert Evans
Anyway, Lawrence kind of makes a name for himself in all of these arguments, and he's also because of some. I'm not going to get into all of the politicking within the British military establishment. But he winds up getting to go along with his boss to the Hijaz in order to meet some of these people because the other guy who should have gone in his place was too controversial as a result of all these arguments over who to back and whether or not to send troops. So Lawrence gets to go. This is his first time going to the Hejaz. And over the course of 10 days, he meets and befriends the prince's son, Feisal, Faisal Hussein. And Feisal is the guy. He's the guy that you see in the movie, and he's the guy that, like, Lawrence is actually going to back as the leader of this future Arab state that he wants to incite to rebellion and independence. Feisal and him get along so well that Feisal kind of insists that Lawrence become his appointed liaison to the British army. And Lawrence, for his. Barthes becomes convinced that Feisal is the future of the revolt. Writing back that Feisal has leadership, not intellect nor judgment nor political wisdom, but the flame of enthusiasm that would set the desert on fire.
- [50:33]
Unnamed Co-Host
Thus the title of the book, thus.
- [50:35]
Robert Evans
The title of Barr's book. Now, the primary opponents of arming the rebellion countered Lawrence by arguing that the Bedouin were, in one officer's word, untrained rabble, most of whom have never fired a rifle. And this is a complicated. There's a lot of, like, back and forth where, like, they'll be promised arms. Lawrence will kind of say, like, oh, I just got back from my boss's, guns are coming in, so we need to carry out this attack. But, like, the guns are coming and, like, the guns are not coming. Lawrence is lying to them. He's pretending that this has been done and he's doing it because he wants to. He's trying to motivate them to carry out attacks that he thinks that they can succeed at and they, in fact do succeed at. Right. But he is also lying to them. And also the British are. Paternalism. It's paternalism, Right? It's the same thing. Yeah, exactly. And also separately, the British are just, say, agreeing to send arms and then there will be some, like, behind the scenes fight and they'll be like, oh, actually, we can't do that. Right. Although, you know, a lot of arms do wind up getting to these rebels. Right. So Lawrence knows that in order to kind of secure support for Feisal to get these arms, he has to make a case very, very clearly to his very hesitant superiors that the Bedouins can win this war. Right. Lawrence arrived shortly after the situation in the southern Hejaz had devolved into a stalemate, one that favoured the Turks. Feisal's men had worn out a lot of their initial strength, failing to chew through the defences of Medina. But the Turks had made unexpected retreats after rumours of an Arab attack which had allowed Feisal's men to capture the port of Rabig in the first place. This was confusing because they'd moved vastly superior forces into the region. It was an analysis, realizing their decisions here, like why all of this happened, that Lawrence would make his first key realization. And here is how Schneider describes it. Why did the Turks waver? It occurred to Lorenz that perhaps the virtue of irregulars lay in depth, not in face, and that it had been the threat of the attack by them upon the Turkish northern flank which had made the enemy hesitate so long. The actual Turkish flank ran from their front line at Rabeg, their face, in Lawrence's words, to Medina, a distance of some 50 miles. But if we moved towards the Hejaz railway behind Medina, we might stretch our threat and accordingly their flank as far potentially as Damascus, 800 miles away to the north. Such a move would force the Turks to the defensive and we might regain the initiative. Do you see what he's saying here? Because this is the core of his understanding of how to do an insurgent struggle.
- [53:10]
Unnamed Co-Host
The thing that you can present yourself as everywhere at once and it messes up a regular army.
- [53:15]
Robert Evans
Exactly. We've got this like 50 mile. And in a conventional European war, that would be the threat area. Right. That would be the attack. That's the area they'd have to worry about. But because we have all of these tiny little units of guys on camel who are capable of traveling for weeks at a time and then carrying out insurgent attacks, the actual area they have to defend is 800 miles deep. And so they can't attack and regain the initiative the way they otherwise would be able to because they have to have forces split off and be aware of all of these potential everywhere is vulnerable. Right. And by doing that, we don't actually even have to carry out all that many attacks. Just the reality of our threat opens possibilities to us.
- [54:00]
Unnamed Co-Host
Now it's kind of like the IRA's. We only have to be lucky once. You have been lucky every time.
- [54:06]
Robert Evans
Yes. Yeah. That's what he is starting to realize here. The Bedouins know the terrain much better than the Turks, who are not locals. And they can travel in small groups almost indefinitely with minimal need for resupply, launching frontal attacks with these, and there's not many of them. The Bedouins are not a numerous people. These are, you know, nomads are not a high population group in the desert. So you don't want to use them the way British officers instinctively wanted to use them by like sending them to run at guns until they were all gone. You know, that is kind of what a lot of Lawrence's superiors see is like, well, this is how you fight a war, right? We just throw them at guns. And, like, oh, they're not good at being thrown at guns. There's this whole thing. The British, like, really have this distaste for these Bedouin troops because, like, they're scared of artillery. They don't like to get blown up. It must be because, like, their religion tells them they won't go become whole in heaven if they get blown up. So, like, fools, they're scared of field guns. This cowardly Arab terror at being exploded.
- [55:13]
Unnamed Co-Host
Which is funny because isn't all of war changing after World War I, where we.
- [55:17]
Robert Evans
Like, yes, it should be.
- [55:19]
Unnamed Co-Host
No one's good at running at machine gun nests.
- [55:21]
Robert Evans
It's a bad idea, but they still have it. The British have not really figured this out yet. Some of them have, but, like, a lot of people are still doing the old ways. And, yeah, there's like, this whole. Can you believe these cowardly Muslims don't like to explode? Not like our good English boys. They love blowing up in fear fields. They can't blow up enough. It's so fucking funny to me. They're just, like, looking at generations being wiped out in the trenches for nothing. And, like, why don't the Muslims like this?
- [55:57]
Unnamed Co-Host
Yeah, totally.
- [55:58]
Robert Evans
These primitive people hate dying. Oh, it's so funny. So Lord Lawrence is like, we shouldn't be wasting them. Right? Like, there's not a lot of these guys, and they can do so much more damage if we split them into these tiny, like, fire teams and send them in behind the lines to fuck shit up. Right, yeah. And that will open opportunities for us to carry out massed attacks in areas when we have the advantage and when we can actually sweep over them without taking nightmarish casualties.
- [56:31]
Unnamed Co-Host
Which is the actual reality of guerilla wars, is not just these isolated strikes. You have to also work with the, like, massed attack.
- [56:37]
Robert Evans
No, it's what you call. The modern term is. It's a strategy of tension. If you keep enough tension on the enemy to where they have this massive flank that they have to defend, then they will make mistakes. They will expose areas that you then can take with more conventional attacks.
- [56:56]
Unnamed Co-Host
Okay.
- [56:56]
Robert Evans
Yeah. Now, Lawrence advised his allies to move troops away from prepared defenses and towards operating a terrain that would let them strike at the railway. Railway. With one redeployment, Feisal's men went from threatening a single city to 200 miles of this railway. Lawrence began to take part in raids on isolated Turkish units defending chunks of railway or on patrol over the course of three months, he got a feel for his Bedouin troops. Being largely composed of family units from a culture with a low population, they had little stomach for casualties. At one key battle in January 1917, the Arab forces overran Ottoman defenders in a town called Waj, alongside British infantry and naval support. The Brits lost one man, the Arab tribesmen lost 20. Now, the British officers in charge of this operation had all fought in France, and they were like, fucking 21 dudes to take a town. This is great, right?
- [57:52]
Unnamed Co-Host
Yeah.
- [57:52]
Robert Evans
Lawrence had to caution them that, like, no, no, no, the Bedouin don't feel like this is a great victim victory quote. Instead, he feared their deaths might easily upset Arab morale. Our rebels were not materials like soldiers, but friends of ours, trusting in our leadership.
- [58:10]
Unnamed Co-Host
In his book.
- [58:11]
Robert Evans
Yeah, I do love that. Like, soldiers, you know, they're just materials. They're trash, basically. Right. He's like, no, no, these guys are our buddies, and they don't like to see their family die. Right. You are going to war with your uncle. It's not just a casual. Right. Like, that's. Your uncle got killed. Yeah. In his book, James Barr notes that Lawrence later added this explanation. We were not in command nationally, but by invitation, and our men were volunteers, individuals, local men, relatives. So that a death was a personal sorrow to many in the army.
- [58:44]
Unnamed Co-Host
I mean, that's a better way to run a. I mean, I guess it's probably bad, like, strategically in some.
- [58:51]
Robert Evans
Why is she not such a war?
- [58:53]
Unnamed Co-Host
Yeah, because it makes them think more carefully and instead of just throwing people in the machine gun nest. Yeah, no, yeah.
- [58:58]
Robert Evans
It is the. Right. And it's why this war that is carried out over the Arab revolt, and in broader terms, a lot of. Because this isn't the only part of the war in the Middle East. Right. The British are carrying out conventional military actions, trying to take the Holy Land in this period, which have been disastrous up to this point. There's an attempted invasion of Jerusalem. That's just a fucking catastrophe, you know? But there are more conventional attacks, but where they're taking, like, large chunks of land in, like, entire influential cities and ports. And you're seeing, like, two guys died in this battle. Right. Two of our guys died. Right. Like, that is the theater where Lawrence is active. Because they are thinking smart, you know.
- [59:39]
Unnamed Co-Host
That's cool.
- [59:40]
Robert Evans
Yeah, it's pretty cool. Now, one of the reasons why the Europeans had not felt, as I said, that the Bedouins could be good soldiers is that they're scared of artillery. Lawrence, in these letters, he's Writing back to the British general staff argues they're not scared of hardship itself. They're not scared of fighting. They're not even scared of dying. He writes this in Seven Pillars of Wisdom. In mass, they were not formidable, since they had no corporate spirit nor discipline, nor mutual confidence. The smaller the unit, the better its performance. A thousand were a mob, ineffective against a company of trained Turks, but three or four Arabs in their hills would stop a dozen Turks. Napoleon remarked this of the Mamluks. We were yet too breathless to turn our hasty practice into principle. Our tactics were imperial snatchings, were empirical snatchings of the first means to escape difficulty. But we were learning, like our men, this recognition that, again, you know, just thinking about modern times is like, well, if you get a thousand of these people together, it's just chaos, right? Like everyone's fighting with each other. People don't really get along very well. They certainly don't trust each other in battle. But if you separate them into these three and four man groups, then you can make them extremely effective. Right. And then maybe occasionally take the risk of having them carry out larger actions.
- [61:00]
Unnamed Co-Host
Yeah. I mean, this is the way that I would assume my friends would be useful in battle and not the other ones.
- [61:05]
Robert Evans
Right? Yeah. So his first few months in theater were too chaotic and violent for much in the way of groundbreaking strategy, overarching strategy to occur to him. Right. He's kind of it's catch is catching can. But later in March, Lawrence gets lucky, by which I mean he nearly dies from another one of his constant illnesses. He gets this horrible mix of like, boils and malaria and the shits that face.
- [61:29]
Unnamed Co-Host
Boil, malaria, shit.
- [61:30]
Robert Evans
Boil, malaria, shit. Yeah. He spends 10 days dying in a tent. To distract himself from dying, he spends all of the time kind of like hallucinating from dehydration and writing out the most influential military theory of the system century.
- [61:45]
Unnamed Co-Host
Amazing.
- [61:46]
Robert Evans
And he's consolidating here these years of military theory that he had studied back in school and applying it to his experiences thus far in the Hejaz. And as he's trying to do this, his mind is drawn to an Austrian general, Maurice de Sax, who back in the early 1700, had decided that the generals of his day spent too much time worried about tactical details. How do I move this unit in opposition to this unit, Right. In order to get a flight, how do I get this unit of riflemen? How do I get cavalry around their side to fly this one group of guys? Right. That's a tactical problem. Right. And Desax is like really, the game is figuring out larger operational concerns, what he calls the higher problems of war. Now, interestingly enough, Desax had written his book, which is kind of the precursor to Lawrence's groundbreaking work, while he was dying for two weeks in a tent.
- [62:39]
Unnamed Co-Host
I mean, it makes sense.
- [62:39]
Robert Evans
It's like, otherwise, you're busy, soldier. That's what you do. Yeah, yeah. Two things. Soldiers love cigarettes and dying. Intense.
- [62:48]
Unnamed Co-Host
Yeah.
- [62:50]
Robert Evans
So De Sax had written a book about war that provided the framework for Lawrence's understanding of how the Bedouins fought. An article I found helpful in all this is T.E. lawrence and the Art of War in the 21st Century by George Gaurici. He writes, de Sax offered a theory of war based on the model of a general who practiced the dictum that a war might be won without fighting back. Whether Lawrence was aware of this or not, others had presented a similar ideal some 2500 years earlier. Sun Tzu, the most famous Chinese. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Sun Tzu has a quote about this, right? And he's the guy. You'll see him recommended often today in the reading of Instagram posts of guys who want to sell you unregulated testosterone.
- [63:30]
Unnamed Co-Host
I know. Even though it's still worth reading, it's still worth reading.
- [63:33]
Robert Evans
And Lawrence is going to use. He's not reading Sun Tzu here, but he's going to use De Sax, who's saying a similar thing and a very useful way. It has become clear to him that the Ottoman ability to project power rested entirely on the Hejaz railway, which were in the length of the peninsula and cut through this infinity of desert. But the railway was incredibly vulnerable. It is so long, you can't have men stationed on every inch of it. And Ottoman troops have very little ability to maneuver outside of where the railway takes them. Now, any fool with soldiers can tell you that if your enemy has a blow it up. But Lawrence is smarter than this. He's like, no, no, no, don't blow it up. That's the worst thing to do. If you destroy the train so it can't operate, your enemy has to adapt and find a different way of getting troops and supplies in theater. And when they adapt, that will make them less vulnerable to you. If you just fuck with the railway, constantly damaging bits and pieces of it, they'll have to keep repairing it. They'll have to keep sending troops to these different areas to repair it. They're going to have their repair crews. They're going to be like spe resources to do this. And every resource that they scramble to Defend and repair. This railway is a source that's not out there actually pressing the attack or defending other territory. Right. You want to keep them on the railway. You just want to fuck with it a little bit, you know? Yeah. World military, yeah.
- [65:01]
Unnamed Co-Host
Okay. Now I'm like, yep, this man is smart.
- [65:03]
Robert Evans
This man is smart. Yeah. This is a guy with some stuff going on under the hood. Yeah. Now world military history is filled with insurgent movements. Alexander the Great dealt with this shit, and he was not the first imperial warlord to do so. What makes Lawrence special is not just his understanding of guerrilla tactics, but how to marry them to the larger, greater power struggle. And here's Gowerchi again. In developing his own theory of a regular war, Lawrence identified three key elements for analysis. The Algeria algebraic, the biological and the psychological. The algebraic element of things refers to the physical environment that has shaped warfare in the Hejaz. For Lorenz, this was the decisive moment. Using simple math, Lawrence calculated the size of territory held by the Arabs in relation to the number of Ottoman troops in theater. The ottomans, with only 16,000 troops in Arabia and with a shortage of staunch Arab allies among the tribes, lacked enough soldiers to establish effective control over 140,000 square miles of territory, territory, geography. The vast desert gave the Arab revolt sanctuaries that the Ottomans could not seize and hold for any length of time. As noted by Lawrence, to make war upon rebellion is messy and slow, like eating soup with a knife. I just love his writing. Yeah. The Arabs possessed safe havens in the vast desert and therefore had the time to conduct a protracted struggle. They received critical assistance from the British army, an army that posed serious threat to Palestine. Consequently, the Ottoman high command felt it could ill afford to spare additional troops to quell the Arab uprising. Foreign assistance and a distracted enemy proved a window of opportunity for the rebellious Arabs. So a key part of this, it's not just that we're threatening this whole area, we're threatening this train. And that diverts Ottoman troops. The Great Power War. The British army that hasn't succeeded in taking the Holy Land, but threatens, it also blocks troops away. And so he is looking at, Lawrence is looking at these very local small unit acts, actions as part of this grander struggle, which is exactly, by the way, what the Vietnamese are going to do, right? They don't have this vast desert, but they have Laos and Cambodia. They have these underground tunnels. This is their safe haven, right? And what the Viet Cong are doing very much exists not just in concert with the greater struggle being waged by other Vietnamese elements. Like the nva, this conventional army, but in the greater power struggle of the Cold War, all of these different conflicts that have an impact on who can send resources where and what can be sent where. Right. And how much things can be escalated. Right. Lawrence is the guy who is writing out. This is how you think about a conflict that is so broad in scope, it boggles your mind. Right, yeah. That's where a lot of his genius comes in.
- [67:51]
Unnamed Co-Host
No, that makes sense, because is that called grand strategy or is that.
- [67:57]
Robert Evans
Yeah, definitely. This is grand strategy. Right.
- [68:00]
Unnamed Co-Host
I think that a lot of people are bad at that because we're good at thinking about. We all think about tactics, and then we even sometimes think about strategic goals, but we're rarely thinking about how that one strategic goal is going to affect, how a different political power is going to be impacted and what they're going to do.
- [68:16]
Robert Evans
It's the mind of a Dom, or it's the mind of. It's domino theory. He almost thinks about war the way an electrician has to think. Right. Where you can't just be thinking about, where does this problem in the circuit. But how does all of this connect to this broadcast? Broader structure of circuits and this broader flow of power. Right. He's thinking about the flow of power. Right. In a very literal sense.
- [68:36]
Unnamed Co-Host
Yeah. So it's engineering.
- [68:38]
Robert Evans
Yeah. He is an engineer of war.
- [68:41]
Unnamed Co-Host
Whoa.
- [68:42]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [68:42]
Unnamed Co-Host
Cool.
- [68:43]
Robert Evans
This is what elevates Lawrence's understanding beyond being just another guerilla leader. These basic elements, this local guerilla force pinning down an undermanned opponent, retreating to a safe haven, backed by a foreign power itself in separate conflict or conflicts with the occupier. This is how you would describe every great conflict of the last 75 years. Right. Like, this is what everything is. Right. There's a lot of Israel, Palestine in here. Right. And this conflict between. You've got Israel and the United States backing them. You've got Iran supporting Hezbollah and Hamas. This is the nature. The basic nature of all modern conflict. Really?
- [69:19]
Unnamed Co-Host
Yeah.
- [69:20]
Robert Evans
In other words, I just find this stuff cool. One of the many things that sets Lawrence apart from his colleagues is that he also has an understanding of his limitations. He knows, for example, I'm a white guy. I cannot be the leader of a grand Arab revolt. That is not my place. But he also knows how to find leaders and craft propaganda around them to turn them into heroes. And one of these heroes is a guy who's one of the coolest figures in this, although he's also. He's someone who does a lot of Back dealing and wheeling and dealing, dealing. But Lawrence meets him in 1870 or in 1917. In April, Auda Abu Taiyi of the Howitot tribe. A passage from Schneider's book that I love gives you an idea of like, what a fucking almost. Yeah, a storybook character this. You could, you could hardly invent like a cooler sounding protagonist. Centuries earlier, the Howitot arrived from the Hejaz and now their clans prided themselves on being true nomads and the better Bedouin manner. Auda was a tribal archetype, a heroic leader and warrior in the tradition of Cochise, Geronimo, Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull. His generosity made him poor, as his growing legend made him ever richer in reputation. He had taken 28 wives during his adult life. His body bore the scars of 13 wounds. He had seen most of his relations slain in countless raids. Auda had slain 75 Arabs with his own hand. How many Turks? Auto did not tally them. They simply did not count. His retinue compromised the fiercest men of the tribe, fighting besides Auto, with relentless courage. I've killed seven. I've personally, in a hand to hand combat, killed 75 of the men that I consider men.
- [70:54]
Unnamed Co-Host
Yeah, the people who count. Yeah.
- [70:57]
Robert Evans
Which is like. I mean, this guy's also a monster, but you know. Yeah, he can't like undeniably badass.
- [71:02]
Unnamed Co-Host
Yeah, yeah.
- [71:04]
Robert Evans
I think paragraphs like this help make it clear also why Lawrence finds the Bedouin way of war so much more intoxicating than say, the Western Front. If you're a draftee in the Western Front, your combat leader's prior life experience was like competing with other rich kids to molest underclassmen at Eton. Right? Whereas if in this war, if you wind up under Auda, it's this guy from like. Yeah, from like a fucking storybook, right? You know, the swashbuckling figure. And Lawrence is a romance. He is still enthralled with medieval poems of knights and ladies. This is catnip to him, right? Like there was no chance of him not being on these guys side once he starts to meet these people. Now at the time they met, auda had about 500 fighters, half as many as he'd brought into the war. A desert pirate, he was frustrated trying to fight a conventional war. Auda saw himself as an epic hero. Schneider notes, this guy, in addition to everything I've said, Oda refers to himself exclusively in the third person.
- [72:03]
Unnamed Co-Host
Yeah, of course he does.
- [72:04]
Robert Evans
Of course he does. That's what you expect from a man who has killed dozens of men. In hand to hand combat.
- [72:09]
Unnamed Co-Host
Yeah. By the time you get to your 10th wound and your 70th man who actually counts, you start referring to yourself in third person.
- [72:16]
Robert Evans
Right? Right. Lawrence sat down with Feisal and Aouda and explained his new theories about how the war should be run. He built to a thrilling conclusion where he argued, argued that rather than being outnumbered and outgunned, the far more mobile Bedouins had a chance to attain superiority of men and materiel where it mattered. But think of it in regular terms. We are stronger than the Turks in transport, machine guns, cars and high explosives. At the decisive point, we can deploy a highly mobile, lightly equipped striking force of the smallest size and use it successively at distributed points along the Turkish line to force them to strengthen their posts beyond the usual 20 men. This will be our shortcut to success. Right. This is this other recommendation, like war battles always go to who has the numbers, who has the most men and guns. But that doesn't mean who has the most men and guns in total. It means where it matters. Right?
- [73:11]
Unnamed Co-Host
Yeah. I mean, we just. On two.
- [73:13]
Robert Evans
Shit. Where it matters, Right? Exactly.
- [73:14]
Unnamed Co-Host
You don't fight when you're going to lose.
- [73:17]
Robert Evans
Exactly. Lawrence assured Auda and Feisal that allowing the Ottomans to keep Medina and the railway would work because it would. Their forces bottled up trying to defend these things while the Arabs took everything else. His stupidity will be our ally, for he believes that his success depends on holding as many of the older provinces as possible. This pride in his imperial heritage will keep him in his present absurd position. All flanks and no front. Now, if you remember nothing else about the way empires think and function from these episodes, remember this. All flanks and no front. They can't really help themselves. That's just the way they are. Anyway, this is fascinating.
- [74:02]
Unnamed Co-Host
I like this stuff. I like. I wonder how much. I wonder how much this still does or doesn't work.
- [74:09]
Robert Evans
Right?
- [74:09]
Unnamed Co-Host
Because, you know, the idea of, like, oh, and then we disappear into the hills, I mean, I guess the Taliban did that to the US and Afghanistan.
- [74:17]
Robert Evans
So I guess very successfully. Yeah, I mean, I think it does work. It just. People don't always get it right. You know, like, we're looking right now at what's happening on a strategic level. I'm not talking a moral level necessarily, but like in Gaza, you know, with what Hamas, you know, has been doing, is this going to work out? Like, was it a good strategy? Is this going to work? We simply don't know like a good strategy in terms of will they achieve ultimately their goals. That's Unknown. Right, right. We can look at what the Taliban did and say they very successfully employed a version of this strategy and it worked for them. Right. And we can look at to an extent, Iran and Iraq. Right. Iranian influence in Iraq and the degree of political power that it's given them in the modern day state. And like the damage that they did to the United States. As another example of like. Well, yeah, this is the, you know, they were fairly successful, not to the same extent the Taliban was, but fairly successful with a strategy like this. Right.
- [75:13]
Unnamed Co-Host
When you also get into the sort of fourth generational warfare thing of like, those who control the hearts and minds of the people are the people who control the people. So it's like. Which is why, I mean, it's why even the right wing wants to do mutual aid. Is that like, literally whoever is feeding the people is. If you feed people, that's where their allegiance is. Right, yeah, the system that feeds them. But it's interesting because in a situation like this, this, it's just home territory and the Ottomans haven't really. I don't know enough about how the Ottomans were exerting power in that region, actually.
- [75:48]
Robert Evans
Yeah. I mean, the same way empires generally did. Right.
- [75:52]
Unnamed Co-Host
Mostly extractively, with some outposts.
- [75:54]
Robert Evans
Yes, yes, yes. And they're not great at it. Right. Again, the Ottomans are a failing empire. Right.
- [76:00]
Unnamed Co-Host
Yeah.
- [76:01]
Robert Evans
Yeah. Anyway, cool stuff. Yep. Magpie, do you have a new book that people can buy?
- [76:12]
Unnamed Co-Host
I do have a new book that people can buy. It's called the Sapling Cage. And if you like amazing people running around who travel and do small scale conflict, you might like this story about a young trans girl who wants to go be a witch and learns how to spear fight. Because in my book, witches learn how to spear fight before they learn how to use magic.
- [76:32]
Robert Evans
And, hey, maybe learn how to spear fight yourself. You know, it's very. What the Greeks always said about it is that it kind of just comes naturally. There's very little training, really, that you need. Poke a man with a spear. It's surprisingly easy. That's what John Brown thought, too. Or not. Goodbye.
- [76:50]
Unnamed Co-Host
I was gonna say it didn't work out well for him, but I'm like.
- [76:51]
Robert Evans
Actually didn't work out well, but it.
- [76:53]
Unnamed Co-Host
Yeah, I mean, learning strategic goals were successful.
- [76:56]
Robert Evans
Right? Yeah. I mean. Yes.
- [76:58]
Unnamed Co-Host
All right.
- [76:58]
Robert Evans
Yeah. So anyway, go make a spear.
- [77:02]
Unnamed Co-Host
Yep.
- [77:06]
Robert Evans
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.com behindthebastards.
- [77:31]
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.
- [78:06]
Unnamed Narrator
From. Audio up, the creators of Stephen King's Strawberry Spring Comes the Unborn, A shocking true story.
- [78:14]
Robert Evans
My baby's Please. My babies.
- [78:17]
Unnamed Narrator
One woman, two lives and a secret she would kill to protect.
- [78:21]
She went crazy, shot and killed all her farm animals, slaughtered them in front of the kids, tried to burn their house down.
- [78:30]
Listen to the unborn on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [78:37]
Brandon Kyle Goodman
My name is Brandon Kyle Goodman. I'm a black, gay, non binary author, TV writer, actor. And I'm messy, but not in the way you think. Messy as in I'm human and flawed. I'm on a mission to destroy shame around sex and the only way to do that is to talk about sex. So that's what we'll do on my brand new podcast. Tell Me Something Messy. Join me on Tell Me Something Messy with brand new episodes every Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.