Pod Insights Fin vs History Captain Tom, Garden Fox (with Pierre Novellie) | Monty vs Rommel (Part 4/4) About this episode This episode of Fin vs History is brought to you by Surfshark.
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Let's talk about male mental health.
Monty & Rommel (Part Four)
The show for people who like history but don't care what actually happened.
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00:00 - Thigh Mogging
06:24 - Come On Lads
11:02 - The Mafia Tax
18:42 - Barely Legal Bruce Forsyth
21:28 - The Pretend Army
26:22 - I Bet His Wee Smells
30:14 - Employ Flamethrowers
33:14 - He’s A Hippie
35:26 - Hitler’s Lashed Out
40:50 - More Army Than Nazi
46:51 - Fuck Eisenhower
51:20 - Monty’s Cooking
55:20 - It’s A Party For Us
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Transcript 13,249 words · 8 speakers
0:00 Speaker 00 Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid and risked 350,000 Virginians' healthcare to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the House Majority PAC dot com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.
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0:57 Speaker 03 Welcome back to Finn vs. Stu. We're still joined by the colossus, Pianavelli. I meant intellectual and, and also, you're a big guy.
1:05 Speaker 04 A looming man.
1:06 Speaker 03 Who happens also to be the biggest man I know.
1:08 Speaker 04 We've been thigh-mogged.
1:09 Speaker 03 I am, for once, I am being thigh-mogged.
1:12 Speaker 04 Very small thighs, very small knees and Finn's got big ones, but now it's like, it shows the whole gamut.
1:18 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:18 Speaker 04 And then behind the paywall, he's put his jeans, jeans up so you don't get to see them.
1:22 Speaker 03 No, exactly.
1:23 Speaker 05 Subscribers only.
1:23 Speaker 04 On the Patreon, we'll get his, get his thighs out.
1:25 Speaker 03 Shorts on Patreon, yeah. Do you, do you struggle to find shorts?
1:28 Speaker 04 Oh, you always wear shorts though.
1:30 Speaker 05 Yeah, but those are the precious shorts that I've discovered. Those are relics almost. I pine for this era we're discussing now of enormous.
1:38 Speaker 03 Big shorts.
1:38 Speaker 05 Big shorts. Wide, wide shorts.
1:41 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:42 Speaker 05 Somehow wider, somehow wider on the thigh than in the waist.
1:45 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:45 Speaker 05 Huge.
1:46 Speaker 03 Yeah, they need to be. My waist is smaller than my thighs.
1:48 Speaker 04 Yeah, me too.
1:49 Speaker 03 Yeah. I go out like PC Plod.
1:52 Speaker 04 It's nice.
1:52 Speaker 03 Um, now, we're in part four, the final part of this epic Monty and Rommel series. To recap where we left off, the second battle of Ed Alamein has proved to have hit. A second battle has hit Ed Alamein.
2:07 Speaker 05 Someone please Photoshop, it's Rommel whispering to Hitler.
2:12 Speaker 03 Yeah.
2:12 Speaker 05 A second Battle of El Alamein has hit.
2:15 Speaker 03 Monty has a, he's been there for three months.
2:18 Speaker 05 Yeah.
2:18 Speaker 03 And he sorted it out.
2:19 Speaker 04 It's pretty good.
2:20 Speaker 03 I didn't quite realise, because it's Monty versus Rommel, but Monty basically just comes and goes, nah, nah, fuck off, right, done.
2:25 Speaker 05 Yeah.
2:25 Speaker 03 He basically does it in three months.
2:26 Speaker 04 But with a lot of these things, there's all the glory of beating the Nazis in all these fields of war. It does always feel like if you break it down, the Allies were always going to win these things.
2:37 Speaker 03 Well, this is, this is the great Al Murray, Holland revisionism, I don't, and I imagine you're susceptible to. Because I actually think Pierre, Pierre would be a great person to have done this podcast. The only issue Pierre has is that he cares too much about getting stuff right.
2:52 Speaker 04 It's a fatal flaw.
2:53 Speaker 03 I've said to you before, you really care about what actually happens.
2:58 Speaker 04 I do, yeah.
2:59 Speaker 03 Yeah.
2:59 Speaker 04 Unfortunately.
3:00 Speaker 03 But so do you.
3:01 Speaker 04 It's kind of irrelevant.
3:01 Speaker 03 Which is not, not really the spirit of this podcast. But, I mean, when he came to the office this morning, he genuinely inspected our medals as if they were actual medals.
3:10 Speaker 05 Yeah, yeah. I needed to know.
3:11 Speaker 03 Yeah, you need to know.
3:12 Speaker 04 I instinctively stood to attention.
3:13 Speaker 03 Now, so are you, are you vulnerable, Pierre, to the, the Hobbs-borm argument that World War Two is essentially two factories racing each other?
3:23 Speaker 04 I mean, that's a great question. Are you vulnerable?
3:25 Speaker 05 Yes, but if you don't use it, then you won't win.
3:31 Speaker 03 Thank you.
3:31 Speaker 05 So it's this whole thing of going, oh, well, actually, they blah, blah, blah. And you go, yeah, but if you can't be bothered to do it, then you'll lose.
3:38 Speaker 04 What do you mean can't be bothered? What is this like?
3:39 Speaker 05 Well, Vietnam.
3:41 Speaker 03 The Italians.
3:42 Speaker 05 Well, yeah, yeah. Even Vietnam.
3:44 Speaker 03 Yeah.
3:44 Speaker 05 If the Americans could have been, you know, capital B bothered, they'd have just won. But it just would have been horrible.
3:50 Speaker 03 Oh, let's explore that riff before.
3:52 Speaker 05 Yeah.
3:52 Speaker 03 What do you mean by capital B bothered?
3:53 Speaker 05 Like, really, like, we're here for 50 years.
3:56 Speaker 03 Right, okay.
3:57 Speaker 05 Like, we're, we're not leaving Vietnam.
3:58 Speaker 03 Like Japan Night-Night bothered, or?
4:00 Speaker 05 Yeah.
4:00 Speaker 03 As in like just Night-Night?
4:02 Speaker 04 They put more bombs than World War Two in the jungle, in fucking Laos alone.
4:07 Speaker 05 So then if you had like a cadre of like fanatics as opposed to a conscript army full of people who've only just found out about weed and shagging.
4:13 Speaker 03 Yeah.
4:13 Speaker 05 It's just like horrible to be there.
4:15 Speaker 04 Great music, though.
4:16 Speaker 03 But then culturally, in that 20 years, life meant so much more.
4:21 Speaker 05 Way more.
4:22 Speaker 03 It was precious. It became precious.
4:23 Speaker 05 Yeah.
4:24 Speaker 04 Oh, yeah.
4:24 Speaker 05 For one of the first time in history, life.
4:26 Speaker 03 Life suddenly meant something.
4:27 Speaker 05 It matters when someone explodes.
4:29 Speaker 03 Yeah, it mattered. Yeah. Before it was irrelevant. It was generally, oh, my dad.
4:35 Speaker 05 I've had Zeppelin vinyl.
4:36 Speaker 03 Yeah. My dad exploded. Irrelevant.
4:39 Speaker 05 Brilliant.
4:39 Speaker 03 Yeah, whatever.
4:40 Speaker 05 Congratulations.
4:42 Speaker 03 Yeah, you're a man now.
4:45 Speaker 03 Yeah, whereas in Vietnam, I guess, even by that point, a soldier dying was a tragedy when it wasn't in World War II.
4:51 Speaker 04 But fundamentally, Monty had more resources, more men, more everything than Rommel.
4:55 Speaker 05 But crucial.
4:56 Speaker 04 Rommel could have powered through, though, and could have been a mental collapse.
5:01 Speaker 03 Here's a good counterfactual. Could Rommel have beaten now? I mean, the first battle of El Alamein, which, as we say, is the hipster's choice, my favorite. Because that is Rommel's chance, right? Because before Monty arrives, that's the real chance to break through. But would he ever have actually punched through the geography with that supply line? Could he ever actually have pulled it off and gone all the way to Suez Canal?
5:21 Speaker 05 That's what it's all about.
5:23 Speaker 04 Not with that geography.
5:25 Speaker 03 Unless, what, the Germans, Greeks go like Palestine down, but then there's a Palestine regiment that the Brits have, isn't there?
5:31 Speaker 05 Yeah.
5:31 Speaker 03 And then also, sorry, there's also all this fucking French. The Brits fight Vichy French in Syria.
5:38 Speaker 05 Yes.
5:39 Speaker 03 Which I didn't even know about.
5:40 Speaker 05 Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. We're still at war with France.
5:42 Speaker 03 Yeah, we're at war with France in World War II.
5:45 Speaker 05 I know. Is it French people?
5:48 Speaker 04 Yeah.
5:48 Speaker 03 Yeah.
5:49 Speaker 05 Fuck me.
5:50 Speaker 04 Yeah. They're from the naughty half of France.
5:52 Speaker 05 So it's all de Gaulle. He managed to whitewash a lot of the absolute crazy shit.
5:56 Speaker 03 We've got to get Beu back on to do. We fought the French up in World War II.
6:00 Speaker 05 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
6:00 Speaker 03 Brilliant.
6:01 Speaker 05 Madagascar.
6:01 Speaker 03 But yeah, I mean, Pierre's an absolute encyclopedia for the less experienced.
6:05 Speaker 05 We fought the French in Madagascar.
6:06 Speaker 04 We did, yeah.
6:07 Speaker 03 Fuck crazy.
6:08 Speaker 05 I know.
6:08 Speaker 03 Anyway, so, yeah, so is there a world in which Vichy French come down through Syria and pincer the Brit?
6:14 Speaker 05 I think Rommel could have got through the geography if he'd had uninterrupted supply lines. If you just give him enough fuel, he'll do it, but he just.
6:22 Speaker 03 But the fuel is going to Barbarossa at this point.
6:25 Speaker 05 But also, the problem is always like, the Royal Navy. Whenever anyone tries to do a complicated plan across the Mediterranean, you just go, yeah, but the Royal Navy, the Royal Air Force. So, no.
6:34 Speaker 04 But also, we hadn't, yeah.
6:35 Speaker 03 Well, Malta, Malta.
6:36 Speaker 04 Yeah. And this set the tone for the rest of the war. When did Barbarossa, when did Stalingrad happen?
6:41 Speaker 03 It starts in forty, early forty-two, is it?
6:44 Speaker 04 And it goes on for nine months, I think.
6:46 Speaker 05 Yes, I think so.
6:47 Speaker 04 So it's happening during this?
6:48 Speaker 03 Yeah.
6:49 Speaker 05 Yeah, well, they're almost holding out for like, well, we probably won't win here because we don't have any petrol. But if we hold out long enough.
6:55 Speaker 04 To get the Georgian oilfields.
6:57 Speaker 03 Army Group South, the whole point of Stalingrad is to get fuel for the whole war machine.
7:02 Speaker 04 Everyone's bringing their own gear, it's nice. We've all, we've all, finally out loud.
7:07 Speaker 03 We can say, we can say Army Group South out loud.
7:10 Speaker 04 Georgian oilfields, ah!
7:15 Speaker 03 So, let's, let's keep to the topic though, because we don't want to, we've got to fucking wind the spit away from your. So, Monty, in three months, has Sam allerized Rommel. Fuck off. Rommel is now in retreat, contravening Hitler's orders. And he's got, do we do find out how long the supply line is? He goes all the way back.
7:35 Speaker 04 How long is a piece of string?
7:36 Speaker 03 Well, it's thousands of miles.
7:39 Speaker 04 It's funny to answer that with like, clear, like, we know what we need to know, because it's really important. It's really important.
7:46 Speaker 03 Rommel does, Rommel does fight a very good rearguard action, supposedly.
7:51 Speaker 04 But he does.
7:52 Speaker 03 He's not like the Italians. It's roughly 1,100 miles from El Alamein back to Tripoli.
7:59 Speaker 04 You and Berghain is fighting a rearguard action.
8:02 Speaker 03 Bravely fighting a rearguard action in Berghain. No, no, no. What do you mean this is a chill out room? There are four men with their fists up my arse.
8:11 Speaker 03 Now, now.
8:12 Speaker 05 Holding you up like a trophy.
8:14 Speaker 03 Like I hold, like we hold you aloft on your wedding day.
8:16 Speaker 04 1966 World Cup win.
8:18 Speaker 03 Genuinely.
8:19 Speaker 04 Probably more holding your arse.
8:21 Speaker 03 That was Pierre's wedding. Ivo and myself and one of your best men lifted you up, as, as the tradition is.
8:30 Speaker 05 Couldn't believe.
8:31 Speaker 03 I couldn't believe.
8:32 Speaker 04 And you won an Ironman, didn't you, for that?
8:34 Speaker 03 Yes, I did. I got a Huel sponsorship off the basis of the fact that I lifted Pierre up.
8:38 Speaker 04 Hardest geezer.
8:38 Speaker 03 It was, it was extraordinary.
8:40 Speaker 05 Oh, man.
8:41 Speaker 03 And it could, yeah, it was also not long enough. It couldn't last. Listener, this episode of Finn vs History is brought to you by Surfshark.
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10:46 Speaker 00 Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' healthcare to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the HouseMajorityPac.com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.
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11:30 Speaker 05 Keep your data safe, and we'll see you next time. Goodbye.
11:33 Speaker 03 Anyway, so Operation Torch is, happens days after Monty's victory at Alamein.
11:41 Speaker 05 Yeah.
11:41 Speaker 03 And this is the Americans arriving in North Africa in what would be, I guess, French North Africa.
11:47 Speaker 05 Yes.
11:47 Speaker 04 Bloody hell.
11:48 Speaker 03 Which the Germans, now, when, is that Vichy French North Africa?
11:53 Speaker 05 Yes, it is.
11:53 Speaker 03 So have the Germans controlled it?
11:55 Speaker 04 Unless it's Casablanca.
11:56 Speaker 05 Yeah.
11:56 Speaker 04 The film Casablanca would be...
11:57 Speaker 05 That kind of thing.
11:58 Speaker 04 Yeah.
11:58 Speaker 05 They actually land non-Vichy French generals secretly and kind of go in and try and say, "Come on, lads. The Americans are about to land. Just fucking come over to the good boys. Be good boys."
12:13 Speaker 03 Yeah.
12:13 Speaker 05 And they have some generals who are like, "No, that's dishonorable." And they go, "Okay, well, we're kidnapping you then."
12:21 Speaker 03 Yeah.
12:22 Speaker 05 And there is a bit of fighting. But ultimately, a lot of the French do just go, "Okay."
12:28 Speaker 03 And is this, is Patton leading Operation Torch at this point?
12:31 Speaker 05 I'm not sure.
12:32 Speaker 03 Because Patton is in Italy, is he?
12:34 Speaker 05 Patton is the big boy with Sicily, so I'm...
12:36 Speaker 03 Yes, he would be, because this is the ultimate, the long road to Operation Husky.
12:40 Speaker 05 The Yanks, the Yanks have a bad time at Kasserine Pass.
12:45 Speaker 03 Sorry, go on. The tanks have a bad time.
12:46 Speaker 04 At Kasserine Pass. They haven't fought
12:48 Speaker 03 Yes.
12:49 Speaker 04 A modern war before.
12:50 Speaker 03 That's Rommel fucks them up.
12:51 Speaker 04 Yeah.
12:52 Speaker 03 At Kasserine Pass. So where's that? Is that Tunisia?
12:54 Speaker 04 I think so.
12:55 Speaker 03 So just to get the jokes beat up, Rommel has retreated from Egypt back into Libya and then Monty is pursuing, which is the great thing that we didn't do in Compass or Crusader. One of the other earlier operations before Monty arrived, we didn't
13:09 Speaker 04 Chase.
13:10 Speaker 03 Remember, we didn't chase them back across the desert, which allowed them to regroup.
13:13 Speaker 04 Complacent.
13:13 Speaker 03 We sent stuff to Crete, maybe. I can't remember why. Anyway, this time, they're not making that mistake again. Monty just goes after them thousands of miles across Libya and pushes them into what would be Tunisia, where the Americans have landed.
13:29 Speaker 04 Yeah.
13:30 Speaker 03 And they're basically pinching them, which I suppose, you know, you could say that Al-Alemany was pointless if the Americans were landing and they just would have had to go up to where Rommel was.
13:40 Speaker 04 Well, they could look, the Germans, Rommel could have technically broken through Monty's line if there was a collapse from the British and then taking the Suez Canal.
13:48 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah.
13:48 Speaker 04 And then you also have the French Syrian.
13:50 Speaker 03 Yeah.
13:51 Speaker 04 So then it would be one front potentially.
13:52 Speaker 05 The sheer amount of men and equipment they lost is the point, right? Because they could have, if they just waited for the Americans to arrive and Rommel had retreated in good order.
14:00 Speaker 03 Yeah.
14:01 Speaker 05 We're talking, I mean, there's what, 300,000 Italians? Prisoners of war we disposed of, an enormous amount of German prisoners of war. Had to leave so many tanks behind, the ones that we didn't blow up. That could all have just been shipped back to Europe.
14:13 Speaker 04 Where are these 100,000 horny Italian guys? Because that's what I'm worried about.
14:16 Speaker 03 They are horny. We haven't talked about how horny they are.
14:18 Speaker 04 These are horny blokes and they're probably being stuck. It's like a war crime because they don't have escorts.
14:24 Speaker 03 Charlie, what have you Googled?
14:25 Speaker 07 How loud would it be if 300,000 Italian men cried at the same time?
14:29 Speaker 04 Let's get the decibels.
14:30 Speaker 03 Extreme acoustic level, a high-powered gunshot.
14:32 Speaker 07 Close-range fireworks or a top-fuel dragster is 300,000 Italian crying men.
14:38 Speaker 04 Surprisingly little in a way.
14:39 Speaker 03 I don't feel like they've got a grip on it. They are Italian. AI open doesn't.
14:43 Speaker 04 What, three Italians crying is like a gunshot?
14:46 Speaker 03 Yeah.
14:47 Speaker 07 And are they making the same noise or is it kind of a radio?
14:50 Speaker 03 No, they're throwing themselves on the ground. It's messy. It's messy.
14:55 Speaker 05 But that's the whole point, right? It's attrition.
14:57 Speaker 03 Yes.
14:57 Speaker 05 So if you just wait for the angst to show up and scare everyone, then you're just going, oh, well, let's just make, allow the enemy to concentrate themselves. Where it's already hard enough to get rid of them.
15:07 Speaker 03 So, yeah, so Rommel fights quite a good regard. Action fucks the Americans up at Kasserim Pass. Do you know anything about what actually happened there?
15:16 Speaker 04 Was this because Americans are new to the war base?
15:18 Speaker 05 Yeah, they, they, they didn't quite.
15:20 Speaker 03 Is this their first action in Europe?
15:22 Speaker 05 Well, in, in the European theatre, yeah.
15:23 Speaker 04 Yeah, like a baby deer, just fucking.
15:25 Speaker 05 Yeah, well, they got a lot of tanks knocked out because they did just go down a pass and just got anti-tank to fucking bits.
15:31 Speaker 04 Are we in the territory of the first American foreign intervention? It must have been on this line.
15:37 Speaker 03 We nearly are, yeah. Not quite Tunisia, it would have been.
15:41 Speaker 04 This was, you said it was in Tunisia, I believe.
15:42 Speaker 05 The shores of Tripoli.
15:43 Speaker 04 Yeah.
15:44 Speaker 05 You're asking about?
15:45 Speaker 03 Barbary pirates.
15:46 Speaker 05 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
15:46 Speaker 03 First US Barbary War.
15:48 Speaker 04 That's it, in slavery.
15:49 Speaker 03 Well, actually, it was actually white slavery, yeah. Algiers, and so maybe it was, it was about the same, yeah, it was.
15:54 Speaker 05 They must have been thinking, yeah, we've been here before.
15:57 Speaker 03 So maybe 130 years after, the first American intervention in the Middle East.
16:02 Speaker 04 But there was like quite.
16:02 Speaker 03 Or North Africa, rather.
16:03 Speaker 04 There's like, there's some mythology about the daring, kind of, kind of Delta Team style.
16:09 Speaker 05 Marines.
16:10 Speaker 03 Yes.
16:11 Speaker 04 Yeah.
16:11 Speaker 03 Decatur.
16:12 Speaker 04 I wonder if that was part of their whole mythology going into North Africa.
16:16 Speaker 03 Now, it says here in the script that Operation Torch renders Monty's victory at El Alamein strategically unnecessary. I refute that entirely.
16:25 Speaker 04 I think I do as well.
16:26 Speaker 03 I think the Americans, at this point, they only knew, has the Battle of Midway happened?
16:30 Speaker 04 Yeah, it must have, yeah. It's almost earlier than I, I thought it was later.
16:35 Speaker 03 Earlier on, yeah. So that all they know is the Pacific Ocean at this point, so.
16:39 Speaker 04 Which they dominated, to be fair to them.
16:41 Speaker 03 Anyway, so Rommel's Axis forces are surrounded, so they basically just constantly withdraw. And then it gets to the point where they have to surrender because they cut off Rommel's planned route of retreat. So the Eighth Army coordinate with the Americans, which is quite a funny story of the SAS boys trying to link, like, the SAS guys are. Constantly doing these like insane.
17:08 Speaker 03 They're basically hardest. I mean, they're hardest geezering it in the desert.
17:11 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
17:12 Speaker 03 And, and they're just trying to, they're like following the stars and finding, I'm pretty, I'm hopefully, I'm going to bump into some Americans.
17:18 Speaker 04 Yeah, recognizing a dune.
17:20 Speaker 03 Yeah, and they, they stumble up. There's a story of like, they go behind Rommel's lines and they, like, they haven't drunk water for four days and they're about, they really, you know, their feet are cut to shit. And it turns out it's Senegalese French troops.
17:30 Speaker 04 Yeah.
17:31 Speaker 03 Because they're, because they're involved as well.
17:33 Speaker 04 Yes, yes, yes.
17:34 Speaker 03 Um, so they eventually link up, they squeeze Rommel out and he, uh, there's some minor battles in Tunisia. And then, uh, eventually he is recalled to Germany by Hitler in March forty-three to save the humiliation of him having to surrender.
17:49 Speaker 04 So this is quite a long period because the second battle of Alamein was mid.
17:52 Speaker 03 November, end of November. So it's, yeah, a good four or five month retreat.
17:56 Speaker 04 Yeah.
17:57 Speaker 03 Eventually they're surrounded in Tunisia in May forty-three, which is, leads to the widespread surrenders and this big old victory parties with palm trees. And North Africa is liberated from Axis control in May forty-three.
18:10 Speaker 04 Yeah.
18:11 Speaker 03 Huge.
18:12 Speaker 04 That's a big shit.
18:13 Speaker 03 A theatre has closed down.
18:15 Speaker 04 Oh, you love theatre.
18:16 Speaker 03 I love theatre's closing down.
18:17 Speaker 04 You're like Cromwell.
18:20 Speaker 03 I am. My favourite part of Covid, theatre shop, brilliant.
18:25 Speaker 03 You know, again, baby bathwater. So attention to Rommel, uh, is taken to Germany. Attention now turns to Sicily. And the, now this was Churchill's great hope for liberating Europe, wasn't it? Was going through, as you say, the soft underbelly.
18:42 Speaker 04 Yeah, but what was this whole thing about why go at the foot and why not strike at the knee? Was that whole thing about potentially go, landing in the mid?
18:49 Speaker 03 Fucking off Sicily and going to Rome, basically.
18:51 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah. And he didn't do that. So I don't know why, that quote.
18:54 Speaker 05 He had lots of ideas.
18:55 Speaker 04 Yes. And always in great soundbites.
18:57 Speaker 05 Yeah.
18:57 Speaker 03 Monty gets tasked with going up the Adriatic coast of Italy, the eastern side of the heel, which is the gnarly side.
19:06 Speaker 05 Yeah.
19:06 Speaker 03 So Avalanche, which is the western side, that's, it's actually, it's quite gnarly fighting because there's no infrastructure.
19:14 Speaker 03 Structure and it's all just rock. There is no infrastructure.
19:17 Speaker 05 In the south, it is just like the 1300s.
19:20 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah.
19:20 Speaker 04 Everyone's still farming with sickles. The mafia, like.
19:23 Speaker 05 They just have sickles.
19:24 Speaker 04 My mum, I think, went to Sicily like a couple of months ago and that there's this beautiful old theatre that cannot afford to put any productions on. Cause if they put any production on, they have to pay so many of the mafia off. They can't make any of the money back. So nothing gets made. There's also, there's so many roads that just stop or bridges half built because the amount of corruption. They've been giving enough money to build a bridge, but the amount of money being taken by the mafia means that they can only build half the bridge.
19:47 Speaker 03 Yeah.
19:48 Speaker 04 Cause everyone takes their cut.
19:49 Speaker 03 Yeah.
19:49 Speaker 04 So I imagine it's that sort of stuff.
19:51 Speaker 03 So basically, Monty has quite.
19:53 Speaker 04 Sorry, this is, we did this in the mafia series. This is when loads of the Italian Americans.
19:57 Speaker 03 Yeah.
19:58 Speaker 04 Oh, like they have like a badge on for fucking Lucky Luciano and stuff. They're like, they, they wear like an LL or something.
20:05 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah. This is, this is the birth of the Americano.
20:07 Speaker 04 Yeah.
20:08 Speaker 03 We should place this. Forty-three.
20:10 Speaker 04 Forty-three. Do you want to do another placing?
20:11 Speaker 03 Come on. Yeah, you nailed it last time. Uh, let's take.
20:13 Speaker 04 Any two dates.
20:14 Speaker 03 Operation Huskies went in forty, is it July forty-three? Is it in the summer? I can't remember.
20:18 Speaker 05 Summer.
20:19 Speaker 04 Before and after.
20:20 Speaker 05 Okay, this is after Bruce Forsyth's 21st birthday.
20:26 Speaker 03 Christ, he's just pulled that off the dome. It's after his 21st birthday.
20:30 Speaker 05 Bruce Forsyth is older than 21, I think.
20:32 Speaker 04 And is he shagging a lot at 21?
20:34 Speaker 03 Bruce Forsyth was up, was 21 during Operation Husky.
20:38 Speaker 05 I think so.
20:39 Speaker 03 Christ.
20:39 Speaker 04 He's, he was so old.
20:42 Speaker 03 Wow.
20:43 Speaker 04 This is tight. This is tight.
20:44 Speaker 05 It's tight. No.
20:46 Speaker 03 How, how old's Bruce Forsyth in forty-three?
20:48 Speaker 07 He would be fifteen.
20:49 Speaker 05 Fifteen.
20:51 Speaker 04 So it's before, it's after his 14th birthday.
20:53 Speaker 07 After his first wank.
20:54 Speaker 03 Before he became legal, before he became legal.
20:58 Speaker 05 Barely legal Bruce Forsyth. You don't want that coming up on the old history search.
21:02 Speaker 03 Barely legal Bruce Forsyth. That's fine.
21:04 Speaker 05 And I guess it's.
21:05 Speaker 03 That's fine. Yeah. And it's, it's, so it's before Bruce Forsyth became legal.
21:12 Speaker 04 But it's after.
21:14 Speaker 03 It's after.
21:14 Speaker 04 But it's after.
21:17 Speaker 07 Has he got, oh wait, I've got one.
21:18 Speaker 03 Go on Charlie. Charlie likes to rhyme them.
21:21 Speaker 04 Yeah, it's gonna be something fucking stupid.
21:23 Speaker 07 Cause it might be.
21:24 Speaker 04 No, he's not. So why would he be circumcised?
21:26 Speaker 07 Bruce Forsyth. I don't.
21:27 Speaker 04 I don't see Bruce Forsyth, but oh right. Yeah.
21:31 Speaker 03 Is Bruce Forsyth circumcised? There is no public information available.
21:36 Speaker 07 Well, it's after. He may have been circumcised this before he, um.
21:39 Speaker 04 Yeah.
21:39 Speaker 07 He became legal.
21:40 Speaker 03 God, it's messy. It's absolutely, it's messy stuff.
21:43 Speaker 04 Alright.
21:44 Speaker 03 Anyway.
21:44 Speaker 04 Well, now we know.
21:45 Speaker 03 Barely, we can't know. We can't know. Barely legal Bruce Forsyth, um, is around when Operation Husky starts.
21:51 Speaker 04 Yeah.
21:53 Speaker 03 Now, Rommel gets assigned to, uh, try and defend Italy from the incoming invasion. He has differing ideas with, uh, Field Marshal Kesselring.
22:03 Speaker 04 Yes.
22:04 Speaker 03 Kesselring wants to defend the whole of Italy. Rommel, uh, who I think is rarely wrong, uh, decides that there is no point trying to defend the south because it's a fucking pudding and who cares?
22:16 Speaker 04 Yes.
22:16 Speaker 03 So let's just pull all our lines above Rome and use the, uh, territory of the Alps and the mountains north.
22:22 Speaker 04 Yeah.
22:22 Speaker 03 To hold them off, which they eventually do, but Hitler doesn't like that and he goes for Kesselring's strategy. Which means that the south is, the south of Italy is pretty gnarly fighting.
22:32 Speaker 04 So is Rommel in Italy?
22:33 Speaker 03 Yeah. Rommel and Monty are both in Italy.
22:36 Speaker 04 So they, they do North Africa, Italy and Normandy?
22:38 Speaker 03 They follow each other around. That's why, that's why we're doing this series.
22:41 Speaker 04 Yeah. And then at the end, they, they came so near to just finally kissing.
22:46 Speaker 03 Yeah. They never actually met. Would you know when the, the nearest point they met? So obviously they start in 1940, they, they fight in.
22:53 Speaker 04 Geographically, the closest they were must have been Normandy.
22:55 Speaker 03 Yeah. Monty goes up the eastern side, which is, they have quite a tough time going up the eastern side. This is where Patton's involved and he does not like General Patton.
23:04 Speaker 05 No.
23:04 Speaker 03 We don't, I mean, basically, Italy becomes a stalemate. When do they get knocked out of the war? Is it 43?
23:10 Speaker 05 It's debatable because you've got like the Republic of, the Kingdom of Southern Italy, or whatever, the Republic of Southern Italy that the Allies kind of make up.
23:18 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah.
23:19 Speaker 05 They want to bring all the Italian POWs and, and non-aligned Italians into the war. And, and they do fight.
23:25 Speaker 03 Because they, they can't afford to keep them prisoners.
23:27 Speaker 04 At least some of the British prisoner of war they got from North Africa.
23:31 Speaker 05 Some of them, yeah.
23:32 Speaker 03 There's half a million men to look after, to babysit.
23:34 Speaker 05 And it's better.
23:35 Speaker 03 Italians.
23:36 Speaker 05 They would do them, they would do things like send 20,000 of them to just dig an entirely new harbor at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands.
23:43 Speaker 04 Too busy.
23:43 Speaker 03 In Orkney.
23:44 Speaker 05 They, my, my grandmother would tell me, she was from the Orkneys, and she would say like, yeah, there's all these like Italians like just having to like do this horrible freezing cold.
23:53 Speaker 03 Yeah.
23:54 Speaker 05 Like pouring concrete and trying to repair Scapa Flow from when the Germans blew it up.
23:58 Speaker 03 Christ.
23:59 Speaker 05 Yeah, a lot of labour.
24:00 Speaker 03 But this is, this is, this is the, it's this division, the Southern Italy, where the Allies basically, yeah, they, they don't really want the new country to manage. This is where the mafia becomes so powerful again. It's because they, they just take over.
24:12 Speaker 05 Yeah.
24:13 Speaker 03 Because the Americans are like, whatever, you run it if you're the guy.
24:15 Speaker 05 They're willing to say, look, we'll just make people go away.
24:18 Speaker 03 Yeah.
24:18 Speaker 05 Because we are fine with that and you're not.
24:21 Speaker 03 Totally.
24:21 Speaker 05 Well, your supplies will be left alone.
24:24 Speaker 03 Yeah. So Rommel does, I think he does quite a good job in defending the northern or the.
24:30 Speaker 05 The Gothic line.
24:31 Speaker 03 Yeah.
24:31 Speaker 05 The line of mountains just south of Rome, like Monte Cassino and all that.
24:34 Speaker 03 Now, Monte Cassino, we'll, we'll get into that separately. Anyway, let's, well, there's too much of Italy to go through really, but basically by early 44, they're both pulled out of Italy. Because it's time for the, for D-Day, for the big push.
24:50 Speaker 05 Yeah.
24:50 Speaker 03 From the Allies to win the war in Europe. Monty is assigned as the commander of the 21st Army Group. So he's responsible for controlling two separate field armies. Now, Pierre, you have a very good grasp of like army terminology and scale.
25:07 Speaker 05 This is tough though.
25:08 Speaker 03 Compared to us.
25:09 Speaker 05 Okay.
25:09 Speaker 03 And our listeners, and compared, and our listeners.
25:12 Speaker 05 Okay.
25:12 Speaker 03 Who are thick.
25:13 Speaker 05 Okay.
25:14 Speaker 03 And smelly and sad.
25:16 Speaker 05 Very sad.
25:17 Speaker 03 Very sad. What is a, how big is a field army?
25:21 Speaker 05 It's a full army on its own. So it has its own detachments of like artillery, infantry, armour, maybe even an attached wing from an air force.
25:32 Speaker 03 So when you talk about like Monty's Eighth Army, is that a field army?
25:34 Speaker 05 That's a whole army. Yeah, that's a field army.
25:36 Speaker 03 So he's controlling two entire field armies.
25:39 Speaker 04 Two British armies.
25:40 Speaker 05 Yeah, so those will be Commonwealth.
25:41 Speaker 04 Commonwealth.
25:42 Speaker 03 So this could be.
25:43 Speaker 04 And then what's Eisenhower controlling?
25:46 Speaker 05 Oh, the whole thing. He's the supreme commander of Europe.
25:49 Speaker 04 And then is Patton doing?
25:51 Speaker 05 Patton has fucked everyone off so much by this point that they make him not do D-Day and his job is to drive around East Anglia, waving him some Jeeps and stuff as part of the pretend army that's going to attack Calais. They're making him do the pretending thing with all the inflatable tanks and things.
26:07 Speaker 03 Oh, really?
26:08 Speaker 05 They got so fucking sick of him because he went and he bullied that guy in the hospital. Patton showed up and was visiting troops in the hospital and there was a guy there with like terrible shell shock and he just started chanting at him. You started screaming at him and hitting him with sticks and things. Yeah, he went mad at him and everyone was like, oh Jesus, even for you, this is bad. So his punishment kind of was to drive around East Anglia saluting rubber tanks that someone had inflated.
26:30 Speaker 03 That's very funny.
26:31 Speaker 05 So everyone was like, we've seen him, Patton's here. And the Germans were like, he is too crazy to be wasted on inflatable tanks. It must be real.
26:39 Speaker 03 We talked about this in the previous episodes in that Britain at this point is doing so much am dram.
26:43 Speaker 05 Yeah.
26:43 Speaker 03 In the desert.
26:45 Speaker 04 We're using more am dram than any other nation. No one else is doing it. Japan's not doing it.
26:48 Speaker 03 The Russians aren't tapping into the am dram.
26:50 Speaker 05 But these are our cultural skills.
26:52 Speaker 03 Of course.
26:53 Speaker 05 Autists.
26:54 Speaker 03 Yes.
26:54 Speaker 05 Am dram.
26:55 Speaker 03 Hobbyists.
26:56 Speaker 05 Big shorts.
26:57 Speaker 03 Big shorts. This is what wins the war. Charts, big shorts, amateur dramatics.
27:02 Speaker 05 Yeah. Navy.
27:04 Speaker 03 Yeah, the Monty's autism, I mean, D-Day is probably one of the high points of autistic preparation.
27:11 Speaker 05 Definitely.
27:11 Speaker 03 The scale of it.
27:12 Speaker 05 Unbelievable.
27:13 Speaker 03 I mean, how many?
27:14 Speaker 04 I mean, Dad at an airport scaled up.
27:16 Speaker 03 Yeah, to infinity. It's the endpoint of.
27:19 Speaker 04 Have you got your passports?
27:20 Speaker 03 Yeah.
27:20 Speaker 04 Yes.
27:21 Speaker 03 And by that, have you got your landing craft?
27:23 Speaker 05 Yeah.
27:23 Speaker 03 Have they got fuel? Have they got maps? Are the maps laminated to protect themselves from the water?
27:28 Speaker 04 You didn't need passports to go into.
27:30 Speaker 03 D-Day?
27:31 Speaker 04 D-Day. There was no border control. I guess there was.
27:34 Speaker 03 Probably out these days though. Trying to fucking, trying to get into Tenerife, fingerprints. Christ, please stay. It'd be easier with D-Day.
27:41 Speaker 04 An amphibious landing.
27:42 Speaker 03 Yeah, I prefer it. I might, the queue was probably was worse than fucking being shot out of a bunker. Genuinely disgrace. The new EU exit controls were disgrace.
27:52 Speaker 05 Yeah.
27:54 Speaker 03 Anyway, so yeah, Monty, they put, because he's so meticulous, they put him in charge of planning. Is it the, is it all the larger, is it all the landing areas?
28:03 Speaker 05 Just his two armies, right?
28:04 Speaker 03 Is it an army, is it a field army per beach?
28:08 Speaker 05 Unsure. I know he's the one who argued for much wider landing areas and like a much bigger, broader front as opposed to like a little cove or something. Like he was very keen on.
28:18 Speaker 03 Yeah, like spreading it.
28:19 Speaker 05 We need to really land.
28:21 Speaker 03 Yeah.
28:22 Speaker 05 Otherwise they'll just push us into the sea.
28:24 Speaker 03 Yeah. And fascinatingly, it is Rommel, I didn't know this, who, he is tasked with building the defenses.
28:33 Speaker 05 Yeah.
28:33 Speaker 03 For the D-Day landings.
28:35 Speaker 05 Yes, which is kind of a punishment as well, I think, because like a lot of the troops as well on D-Day are like ost troops, like conscripted, random Eastern Europeans and wounded regiments from the eastern front and stuff. They kind of don't think it's going to happen.
28:48 Speaker 03 Yeah.
28:49 Speaker 05 Or if they do, they think, yeah, well, you're just a guy in a bunker.
28:51 Speaker 03 And is this because the, the, like, the height of the Wehrmacht is in, is still in Russia?
28:57 Speaker 05 Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's elite Panzer regiments like waiting to push into the beaches if they do land, but the actual troops there, like, there's a lot of like.
29:05 Speaker 03 Because by the time they actually get to like, they cross the Rhine, everyone's a teenager.
29:09 Speaker 05 Yeah.
29:10 Speaker 03 And it's terrifying.
29:10 Speaker 05 Yeah.
29:11 Speaker 03 The, but the, I read the Ben McIntyre SAS book.
29:14 Speaker 05 Yes.
29:15 Speaker 04 Depends what you're into, I guess.
29:15 Speaker 03 Eh?
29:16 Speaker 04 Depends what you're into.
29:17 Speaker 03 Yeah.
29:17 Speaker 04 There's a barely legal Bruce Forsen.
29:21 Speaker 03 Yes, I suppose. There's an argument that maybe Monty would have really liked to cross the Rhine.
29:26 Speaker 03 But we'll get, we'll get to that. But yeah, the, I mean, it's like teen, a teenage German boy would come out with his hands up and then just basically fucking jihad and just blow himself up.
29:35 Speaker 05 Yeah, yeah.
29:35 Speaker 03 In front of, and just take out allied troops. It's pretty gnarly. Anyway, Rommel, mate, Rommel's asparagus.
29:42 Speaker 05 Yeah.
29:43 Speaker 03 Talk us through what that is.
29:44 Speaker 05 It's a big stick that you jam into the beach and it stops landing craft.
29:48 Speaker 04 It was disappointing when I saw it. I thought it would be more exciting.
29:51 Speaker 05 It sounds pretty exotic.
29:52 Speaker 03 I mean, I bet it's piss stank.
29:53 Speaker 05 Yeah.
29:54 Speaker 03 Having been on Speed in the Desert for 18 months.
29:56 Speaker 05 Oh, like engine oil.
29:57 Speaker 03 Yeah, but yeah, so that that kind of iconic Saving Private Ryan opening scene with all the.
30:02 Speaker 04 Those Romulus asparagus?
30:03 Speaker 03 Yeah.
30:04 Speaker 04 Did he come up with that in, or did he just?
30:07 Speaker 05 I think they just nicked it.
30:07 Speaker 04 Get someone.
30:08 Speaker 03 It's not, it's not, I reckon we just shove a fucking.
30:10 Speaker 04 I would have thought of it.
30:10 Speaker 03 Yeah.
30:11 Speaker 04 I would have.
30:12 Speaker 03 Shove some scrap metal on the beach, maybe really annoying. But he also is in charge of the whole bunker at the Atlantic Wall.
30:19 Speaker 05 Yeah.
30:19 Speaker 03 But I don't think he's getting enough money or time or resources to build it properly.
30:23 Speaker 05 Concrete, you need concrete factories and it's all, it's.
30:26 Speaker 03 So like.
30:27 Speaker 04 Could you build a wall on the, on the actual shore? Build a massive wall.
30:32 Speaker 03 It's a bit of a Charlie question, that. Can you build a wall on the beach?
30:36 Speaker 04 Just, yeah. I'm just trying to think if they, they could have done more. If you have some time to prepare a beach.
30:42 Speaker 05 It'd be interesting to see like the plans for what it should have been like when it was finished, because it was horrifying enough as it was.
30:46 Speaker 03 Well, I did.
30:47 Speaker 04 Also, they didn't know that, where was the main preparations? Were they, were they planning for Calais?
30:51 Speaker 05 They were still very worried about Calais.
30:53 Speaker 04 What was the most offended part of the coast?
30:55 Speaker 03 Point, right? They're going for the narrowest point and actually it's not Normandy. But there is one mega cannon or a couple that the Nazis built. You're gonna like this.
31:05 Speaker 04 A Nazi mega cannon.
31:06 Speaker 03 A Nazi mega cannon, you know, because by this point in the war, it's the V2 era. The Nazis, let's not forget, have gone to space.
31:13 Speaker 04 Yes.
31:13 Speaker 03 So.
31:14 Speaker 04 Wunderwaffen.
31:14 Speaker 03 Exactly, right? The wonder weapons. So there's a massive mega cannon basically just pointed at London from fucking Calais. Just Route One, just fuck off. I don't think they ever fired it. I watched a video of James Holland's. I was having, go through a tough time. I watched a video of James Holland inside a mega cannon going, wow!
31:35 Speaker 04 I watched a video of his wife.
31:36 Speaker 03 Amanda was out, Amanda was out.
31:37 Speaker 04 Please come home.
31:38 Speaker 03 Please.
31:40 Speaker 03 Anyway, so Rommel also oversaw all these minefields, because that's what he'd done in North Africa. But he set all the traps to try and funnel the Allies into kill zones. So I guess is this, you know, with what we know about how Monty beats Rommel, how does? How did the Allies get through? Like, is it preparation?
32:00 Speaker 05 Yeah. Overwhelming naval bombardment.
32:03 Speaker 03 Just numbers, sheer numbers, resources.
32:05 Speaker 04 And now, is it true, we talked about this maybe on another episode, that Monty's was so much into rehearsing it, he rehearsed so many, there's so much training for D-Day and most of it was in like Cornwall in terrible weather.
32:15 Speaker 03 Yeah.
32:16 Speaker 04 More people died in the training for D-Day on Monty's side than in actual D-Day.
32:22 Speaker 05 There was some big disaster.
32:23 Speaker 03 Off his two armies? There was a...
32:24 Speaker 04 Yeah, I think loads of people died, like 2,000 people died in Cornwall. That's something crazy.
32:29 Speaker 05 A bunch of ships capsized, the landing craft capsized, it was a big...
32:32 Speaker 04 And like the weather was awful. How many of you died in?
32:35 Speaker 07 Um, 749.
32:37 Speaker 04 Exized Tiger.
32:38 Speaker 03 Oh, that's Exized Tiger. So that's, I mean, Lyme Bay in St. Devon, I know, German torpedo boats ambushed the convoy and friendly fire had just took place.
32:48 Speaker 07 As a joke?
32:49 Speaker 03 Not, what do you mean as a joke?
32:54 Speaker 07 Like, why would they do that?
32:55 Speaker 03 We were at war with the Germans.
32:57 Speaker 07 But the Americans are doing it, aren't they?
32:58 Speaker 03 What?
32:59 Speaker 07 I thought the Americans just shot at the English people.
33:01 Speaker 05 No.
33:01 Speaker 03 Because German torpedo boats ambushed the convoy and then they got confused and friendly fire happened.
33:07 Speaker 07 I misunderstood.
33:07 Speaker 03 Yeah. As a joke.
33:09 Speaker 04 As a joke.
33:10 Speaker 05 As a joke!
33:11 Speaker 03 Guys!
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33:44 Speaker 01 How many discounts does USAA Auto Insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount, safe driver discount, uh, new vehicle discount, storage discount, legacy...
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33:59 Speaker 05 It's preparation, it's a huge naval bombardment, it's, it's the airborne a- aspect.
34:04 Speaker 03 Yeah.
34:04 Speaker 05 Surprise.
34:05 Speaker 04 But they.
34:06 Speaker 05 French Resistance.
34:06 Speaker 04 They planned for 20,000 people to die in D-Day. They just said, look, probably this. And only a quarter of that dead.
34:14 Speaker 03 Really? Is it only 4,000 Allies dying?
34:16 Speaker 05 About that, yeah.
34:18 Speaker 03 Wow.
34:18 Speaker 05 It's less than you think, more casualties, but I think that's deaths. So, yeah.
34:21 Speaker 04 And the worst one was that Omaha Beach, Sir Brian Ryan. Is that the most kind of cinematic?
34:25 Speaker 03 I think, I think a lot of them are actually fine.
34:28 Speaker 04 Yeah, because we don't see the other ones. Omaha Beach is all the video games, everything.
34:32 Speaker 05 There was one of them, maybe it was Sword or Gold. It was one of the Commonwealth ones where, you know, there's like French.
34:37 Speaker 03 Canadians got a bit fucked up, didn't they?
34:38 Speaker 05 The Canadians had a bad time at Juneau Beach. That was not nice. They had to really employ flamethrowers to get through that. But there was one.
34:45 Speaker 04 And they're probably apologising while they do it as well.
34:47 Speaker 03 Employ flamethrowers.
34:48 Speaker 05 These are the hockey.
34:48 Speaker 03 We need to employ flamethrowers.
34:50 Speaker 05 Hockey Canadians.
34:52 Speaker 04 Fucking Hojer.
34:54 Speaker 05 Going full, full ice rink.
34:56 Speaker 03 Yeah.
34:57 Speaker 05 There was one where you see photos of it and like there's German machine gun emplacements and stuff. But it's one of those French seaside towns where it's like beach, the road, all the buildings.
35:07 Speaker 03 Yeah.
35:07 Speaker 05 Like there's no gap at all. And so it's weird. You're like attacking on a beach immediately into a town. With all like the signs that you get from video games of like whatever Bernard's Cafe or whatever.
35:17 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
35:18 Speaker 05 Casino or something.
35:20 Speaker 03 I think I prefer that.
35:21 Speaker 05 Yeah, I think so, rather than the bunker thing.
35:23 Speaker 03 So, so Rommel is basically is, is running the defences, but obviously D-Day's a success for the Allies. They establish a, a, a bridgehead. Careful, ladies, careful. Now, Rommel, at some point, he's in the south of France. This is what maybe is this, is this in later in June? Oh, it's in July. So he's in the south of France and he gets critically wounded by, his, his car gets strafed by Allied aircraft. The driver dies. He's basically taken out of the war.
36:00 Speaker 05 So he's. You'd want to know if you were the pilot that you fucking got it.
36:03 Speaker 03 Shot Rommel, but he's still alive, right? But then we get to one of the most devastating moments of the war. Operation Valkyrie.
36:14 Speaker 03 This is treachery beyond belief.
36:18 Speaker 04 Junus!
36:20 Speaker 03 A bunch of snakes.
36:22 Speaker 04 You're all Hitler on Facebook Live. You're all snakes!
36:26 Speaker 03 Yeah.
36:26 Speaker 05 Just posting, "Days like today, you know who your real friends are." Everyone commenting, "Hope you're okay, babes."
36:33 Speaker 03 Yeah. July 20th, 1944. Now, as we mentioned in the first episode, the German military had this sort of Prussian aristocratic heritage. And so a lot of these conservative, conservative Prussians, who basically saw the oncoming collapse that Germany would have. And they were like, "We've got to assassinate Hitler and overthrow the Nazis."
37:00 Speaker 05 These are German telegraph readers.
37:02 Speaker 03 Yes, and they're not Nazis.
37:03 Speaker 05 And they never, they never liked Hitler.
37:05 Speaker 03 No.
37:06 Speaker 05 They called him a bohemian corporal. As in, as in from, from Bohemia.
37:10 Speaker 03 Hitler's a bohemian.
37:11 Speaker 05 He's a hippie.
37:12 Speaker 03 He's been to, he's been to India. He's got beads for a door.
37:18 Speaker 05 Adolf Hitler's Lonely Hearts. Like that album he released.
37:21 Speaker 03 Yeah, Adolf Hitler's Lonely Hearts. He's playing a sitar. Anyway, he's got incense, he's burning incense. He's burning many things.
37:30 Speaker 05 Holocorma.
37:31 Speaker 03 Thank you, Charlie. Yeah. She's deflated, Pierre. Now, now, a bunch of officers, what's one of them called? I've forgotten. Can you remember the names of it?
37:44 Speaker 05 Von Stauffenberg is the main one.
37:45 Speaker 03 That's Stauffenberg, that's the main one. Cloud von Stauffenberg.
37:47 Speaker 05 A lot of Vons, because that's the aristocrats.
37:49 Speaker 03 Exactly. Oh, these are all the Prussian guys. So they have this plot to assassinate Hitler. Now, eventually, a bomb goes off in his East Prussian headquarters.
37:58 Speaker 05 They've got a comedy exploding briefcase.
37:59 Speaker 03 Basically, yeah. It's Mission Impossible stuff. And I think-
38:04 Speaker 05 Does the bomb properly go off, though?
38:05 Speaker 03 It does.
38:07 Speaker 05 But someone moved it.
38:07 Speaker 03 Someone moved it and Hitler is not in the room when it goes off. So it kills someone, doesn't it?
38:12 Speaker 05 It kills one or two people. It deafens and wounds a whole lot of others. But someone moved it behind the table they're meeting at. It's some kind of insane, like Bond villain reinforced steel table. And someone moved it onto the other side of the table from where Hitler was and behind the leg.
38:26 Speaker 03 And is that because they knew what was in it?
38:28 Speaker 05 No, they were just like, "Oh, there was some tidying."
38:30 Speaker 03 Yeah.
38:30 Speaker 04 It looks like a bomb's gone off in here.
38:35 Speaker 05 Someone left a big clock inside this briefcase.
38:39 Speaker 03 It did make him deaf in one ear, though, partially deaf in one ear.
38:42 Speaker 05 Yeah. You've got to tip away Hitler, bit by bit. Like a video game boss.
38:46 Speaker 03 Yeah.
38:47 Speaker 05 You have to wait till he shows, he shows the underbelly with the big ruby and then you shoot that.
38:52 Speaker 03 So, yeah.
38:53 Speaker 04 Should shout out, Pierre does a great gaming podcast called Button Boys.
38:57 Speaker 03 Oh, we should shout out Button Boys, yeah, yeah. If you are a video game enthusiast, which, knowing this audience, you will be.
39:04 Speaker 05 Surely, if you love World War Two this much as well.
39:07 Speaker 03 Pierre does a great video game podcast called Button Boys, which you have a Patreon for as well.
39:12 Speaker 05 Yes, yeah, yeah. We've just interviewed SNL UK's George Four Acres about his horrifyingly detailed interest in Pokemon. I mean, you've no idea.
39:22 Speaker 03 Yeah, I mean, this.
39:23 Speaker 05 George Four Acres.
39:23 Speaker 04 Really?
39:24 Speaker 05 Oh, man.
39:24 Speaker 03 This is going to set off a lot of guys. I mean, a lot of guys are tizzing out for this.
39:27 Speaker 04 Yeah, they're rattling their cage now. You've upset them.
39:29 Speaker 03 Yeah, that's right.
39:31 Speaker 04 They're gnashing their teeth.
39:32 Speaker 03 Let's get back to Operation Valkyrie to soothe them.
39:34 Speaker 05 Wait, so Von, what's his name, Von?
39:35 Speaker 03 Stauffenberg.
39:36 Speaker 05 Is Von Stauffenberg played by Tom Cruise?
39:38 Speaker 03 Yes.
39:38 Speaker 05 I don't mean to aim the gun at you. You're right, yeah, you're right. He's the Tom Cruise Nazi. Right, and Tom Cruise in that film has Tom Cruise's voice, right? Yes, they've just stuck with their own voices.
39:49 Speaker 03 And an eye patch?
39:50 Speaker 05 And an eye patch. And an eye patch. And does Von Stauffenberg look anything like Tom Cruise, Charlie?
39:55 Speaker 05 I think pretty close. Okay.
39:56 Speaker 03 Really?
39:58 Speaker 05 That's, I'm bet, I think so. I wonder maybe that's what you thought when he was about to get shot, maybe.
40:02 Speaker 03 Fair enough.
40:03 Speaker 05 Hope Tom Cruise plays me in the film one day.
40:05 Speaker 03 He's a good looking, he's a good looking guy.
40:06 Speaker 05 Yeah, fair play. Hot piece of ass.
40:09 Speaker 03 Now.
40:10 Speaker 05 Too sexy to plan a proper assassination.
40:13 Speaker 03 Hitler, you know.
40:15 Speaker 05 Von Stauffenberg. That's his problem.
40:18 Speaker 03 Hitler at this point, what's he wearing? Hitler at this point is getting quite paranoid, okay? He's got a lot going on.
40:25 Speaker 05 It's something to do with the war and the meth.
40:27 Speaker 03 Something to go on with the massive bomb.
40:29 Speaker 05 He's a hippie who smoked too much weed.
40:30 Speaker 03 Yes, he's a bohemian, he's a bohemian.
40:32 Speaker 05 This is Manson-era hippies.
40:34 Speaker 03 He's Charles Manson with a swastika on his forehead and his arm.
40:37 Speaker 05 He's like, the government are hiding stuff from us, man.
40:42 Speaker 03 You had a joke about Manson having a swastika on his forehead.
40:44 Speaker 05 I did.
40:45 Speaker 03 I think about that. You know, you used to get stuck with a joke in your head whenever I see Manson with a swastika on his face.
40:51 Speaker 05 What's the joke?
40:52 Speaker 03 I think of Pierre going, "We get it, Charles. You're unreasonable."
40:55 Speaker 05 You're unreasonable. It's such an overkill. Because he did it once, he'd been arrested.
40:59 Speaker 03 Yeah.
41:00 Speaker 05 Ship's a sail, bud.
41:01 Speaker 03 Goes to court. And don't you even imagine his defence lawyer.
41:05 Speaker 05 So like, don't give, yeah, you haven't actually done any of the murders yourself, so this should be an easy, okay.
41:10 Speaker 03 Walks in with a swastika, "Right, okay, brilliant."
41:13 Speaker 05 In the jury system, is it?
41:15 Speaker 03 Yeah.
41:16 Speaker 05 Good run, man. Try not to do any insane rambling, though. Oh.
41:21 Speaker 03 So, now, Operation Valkyrie causes Hitler to go on a bit of a, you know, it's not his finest moment.
41:29 Speaker 05 Go on.
41:29 Speaker 03 It's not Hitler's, he acts out. He lashes out. He acts rashly. And he starts to try-
41:36 Speaker 05 But male mental health hadn't really been talked about.
41:37 Speaker 03 As we keep saying. Hitler is the canary in the coal mine of male mental health. Okay?
41:46 Speaker 05 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
41:46 Speaker 03 You know, he's the Fuhrer in the bunker. He's the canary in the coal mine.
41:49 Speaker 05 It wasn't normalized men talking about their feelings.
41:51 Speaker 03 No.
41:52 Speaker 05 No.
41:52 Speaker 03 And Hitler, by this point-
41:53 Speaker 05 It was taboo. It was massive taboo.
41:54 Speaker 03 He doesn't know who his friends are.
41:55 Speaker 05 Yeah.
41:56 Speaker 03 You know?
41:58 Speaker 05 He's like Elvis or-
41:59 Speaker 03 Exactly.
42:00 Speaker 05 Any number of other drug addicted, very powerful men.
42:03 Speaker 03 Exactly. It's either you're gonna blow your brains out or you're gonna eat so many burgers and die in the toilet. Right? That's all men have got at this point.
42:08 Speaker 05 At this point, yeah.
42:09 Speaker 03 At this point.
42:09 Speaker 05 Those are your two exits.
42:10 Speaker 03 Exactly. And they are also both my exits as well.
42:15 Speaker 05 Yeah. You're on the fence, but you've got time.
42:18 Speaker 03 I've got, yeah, yeah.
42:18 Speaker 05 Are you gonna double whammy?
42:20 Speaker 03 Eat so many burgers, big poo then blow my brains out.
42:22 Speaker 05 Yeah.
42:24 Speaker 03 The Fuhrer Elvis double. The honorable, the most honorable suicide there is.
42:28 Speaker 05 The Adolf Presley.
42:29 Speaker 03 Yeah.
42:29 Speaker 05 You're fucking wearing like a white suit with a hat.
42:32 Speaker 03 With a swastika on. The El- oh man, the Elvis suit with a swastika on it. That's a real-
42:37 Speaker 05 Shouldn't have brought that up.
42:37 Speaker 03 All right, Banksy.
42:38 Speaker 05 Shouldn't have brought that up.
42:38 Speaker 03 That's a real Goering. I can imagine Goering and an Elvis-
42:41 Speaker 05 He was wearing a white suit, wasn't he?
42:42 Speaker 03 But if you make it Vegas Elvis with a swastika.
42:45 Speaker 04 It's a Banksy.
42:46 Speaker 03 Do you know I'm gonna be wearing an Elvis, I'm gonna be wearing like Eddie Murphy, get up on my tour.
42:50 Speaker 04 Amazing.
42:50 Speaker 05 Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes.
42:52 Speaker 03 I can't wear a sauce, anyway.
42:53 Speaker 04 You're gonna have to talk him up. I like you going like, oh fuck. Cause of fucking health and safety.
42:56 Speaker 03 Manson did it first. Oh, health and safety, yeah. Anyway, no. Oh, yes, because of the moral thing. Anyway. So Hitler goes mad and he says that, he goes on the radio and says, I'm fine, but I am, he says divine intervention spared him.
43:10 Speaker 04 Yeah.
43:11 Speaker 03 And he goes on this brutal purge. Now Rommel gets implicated in it because a, one of the conspirators gets tortured and under questioning implicates Rommel, or maybe a couple of them.
43:23 Speaker 04 Yeah.
43:24 Speaker 05 They had meetings with him.
43:25 Speaker 03 Yeah, now Rommel did not.
43:27 Speaker 04 What's your thoughts? Was he involved?
43:29 Speaker 05 They would have wanted him to take over because all the other people around Hitler have the same problems that they have with Hitler, which is that they're mad drug addicts.
43:37 Speaker 04 Right.
43:38 Speaker 05 And also they're not proper German officers.
43:40 Speaker 04 Okay. Yeah. Cause Rommel's.
43:42 Speaker 05 Rommel's the hero.
43:43 Speaker 04 Rommel's more army than he is Nazi.
43:45 Speaker 05 Yeah.
43:45 Speaker 03 Thank you.
43:46 Speaker 05 Eighty twenty.
43:47 Speaker 03 Thank you.
43:48 Speaker 05 And also that like.
43:48 Speaker 04 But the army is a Nazi army.
43:50 Speaker 05 That's why they keep giving him shit.
43:51 Speaker 03 Fucking pedant.
43:53 Speaker 05 They keep giving him shit jobs. That's why they're like, Rommel's such like a heroic figure that Hitler, he's like probably the biggest popular threat.
44:00 Speaker 03 Yes.
44:01 Speaker 05 So it's like, well fuck off to Normandy and dig holes, you know?
44:03 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah.
44:04 Speaker 05 I'm not sending you to the Eastern Front where you can be even more of a bloody hero.
44:06 Speaker 04 He's like Captain Tom.
44:08 Speaker 05 Yes, in so many ways.
44:10 Speaker 03 Yeah, he's the original Captain Tom who was, by the way, fighting in this fight.
44:13 Speaker 05 The garden fox.
44:14 Speaker 03 Yeah.
44:15 Speaker 04 I would admit.
44:18 Speaker 04 Admittedly. His blitzkrieg was a little slower.
44:22 Speaker 03 The Zimmerfrän fox, guard Captain Tom, outmaneuvering the lawn.
44:27 Speaker 05 Trying to outmaneuver his own family by going round and round.
44:31 Speaker 03 No, I'll tell you who's the real garden fox is his daughter.
44:33 Speaker 04 That's his real daughter. Garden fox.
44:35 Speaker 03 The spa, the home spa fox.
44:37 Speaker 05 Yeah.
44:39 Speaker 03 She's the real Rommel of that family.
44:41 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
44:42 Speaker 03 Anyway, God bless. God bless Captain Tom.
44:45 Speaker 04 That's a good phrase. He's the Rommel of the family, would you say?
44:49 Speaker 03 Yeah. Now, evidence gathers that Rommel is implicated.
44:55 Speaker 04 Yeah.
44:55 Speaker 03 But it's never really cleared up. But as you say, I guess he's the, he's the kind of Beckham. He's the celebrity of the German war effort.
45:02 Speaker 04 He's way too much of a threat.
45:03 Speaker 03 Yeah.
45:04 Speaker 04 At some point he'd have had to go.
45:05 Speaker 03 But that means that the way they have to. Do you think it was?
45:07 Speaker 04 I think at some point he'd have had to go, yeah.
45:08 Speaker 03 Yeah.
45:09 Speaker 04 Yeah. But the, the way they get rid of him has to be, um, seem accidental because he's so popular.
45:15 Speaker 03 Well, this is it. So what they do is now Rommel is recovering from being strafed by a fucking airplane. I mean, terrifying. Um, so he is, now he's set to be tried in a people's court, which is basically a sham court where they would have been tried to death. But Hitler realizes that if you're executing your star military officer, you're going to out.
45:34 Speaker 04 You can't kill David Beckham.
45:35 Speaker 03 You cannot kill David Beckham.
45:36 Speaker 04 David Beckham look like he killed himself.
45:38 Speaker 03 It's Epstein stuff, right?
45:40 Speaker 04 Well, because Epstein was a national hero and everyone was like, if you killed Epstein.
45:44 Speaker 03 Then I'm out, I'm out.
45:45 Speaker 04 It's like, that is.
45:46 Speaker 03 You can't, come on.
45:47 Speaker 04 He's the people's champion.
45:48 Speaker 03 If Obama kills Epstein, I mean, anyway, so, um, Rommel gets off, offered the option to quietly commit suicide.
45:57 Speaker 04 Yeah, it's very ancient Rome.
45:58 Speaker 03 It is very ancient, very, it's Nero-esque.
46:01 Speaker 04 Yeah. And also his name, Rommel, when he was fighting with Italians, they mythologized him as being Romulus, right?
46:06 Speaker 07 Yes.
46:07 Speaker 03 Yes, they call him Romulito.
46:08 Speaker 04 Yeah.
46:08 Speaker 03 Like he's a footballer. Yes, John?
46:09 Speaker 07 How do you think they offer that?
46:11 Speaker 03 I don't think it's really an offer. I think it's a.
46:13 Speaker 04 Is he got two choices?
46:14 Speaker 07 Is it using metaphors or is it like?
46:16 Speaker 04 Yeah, is it innuendo?
46:17 Speaker 07 Is there any level of nuance?
46:18 Speaker 04 Because there's that great, who was the guy, who's the, the gay guy in the spa and the night of the long knives?
46:23 Speaker 03 Oh, Ernst Rum.
46:24 Speaker 04 That was Rum, where they're like, you know what to do. They have a gun and they leave for 15 minutes, they go back in.
46:29 Speaker 03 He shoves it up his arse like, ah, Rom.
46:31 Speaker 04 I'm not going to kill myself. You just left without asking. No.
46:33 Speaker 05 Also, you're giving me a means of defending myself.
46:35 Speaker 04 Yeah, what the fuck?
46:36 Speaker 03 So then they come in and submachine gun him.
46:38 Speaker 04 Yeah, you meant to fucking kill yourself. It was meant to be cool. It was meant to be like a cool ending.
46:42 Speaker 03 Yeah.
46:42 Speaker 04 You can still be alive.
46:43 Speaker 05 What a way to find out you're not as convincing as you thought you were.
46:45 Speaker 03 Yeah.
46:46 Speaker 04 You know what to do.
46:48 Speaker 03 And he's there going, what do I do?
46:52 Speaker 04 You know what to do.
46:54 Speaker 03 Yeah.
46:54 Speaker 04 Not that, fucking hell, Ernst.
46:56 Speaker 03 Christ.
46:59 Speaker 03 He's just there, strung up like a hog.
47:02 Speaker 04 I don't know.
47:03 Speaker 03 The gun's still on the table.
47:04 Speaker 04 I don't understand the context. Oh, the gun.
47:07 Speaker 03 Oh, the gun. Oh, right. He'd not seen Chekhov.
47:10 Speaker 04 No.
47:12 Speaker 03 Chekhov's rope. Anyway, Chekhov's flashlight. So Rommel gets told, gets told.
47:20 Speaker 05 Yeah.
47:21 Speaker 03 To kill yourself.
47:22 Speaker 05 Yeah.
47:22 Speaker 04 What'd you kill yourself for, yeah?
47:23 Speaker 03 Which allows him to maintain, to sort of maintain a military, he gets buried with military honours, and his family won't be persecuted as snakes.
47:34 Speaker 05 They say it was a heart attack or something, I think.
47:35 Speaker 03 So, yeah, he takes cyanide pill.
47:38 Speaker 04 They said he died like Stuma. He rolled off a.
47:41 Speaker 03 Off a jeep.
47:42 Speaker 05 Well, it's like a big sausage. Came his home peacefully, surrounded by his family.
47:47 Speaker 05 It was a big haggis with a grenade in it. It was very peaceful.
47:50 Speaker 03 A peaceful German death.
47:51 Speaker 05 A peaceful German death.
47:52 Speaker 03 His sausage casing burst at home.
47:53 Speaker 04 Exploded from eating sausages.
47:55 Speaker 05 His heart exploded from sausages, surrounded by his family.
48:00 Speaker 03 It's what he would have wanted.
48:03 Speaker 03 So he kills, he takes cyanide, but he's wearing his Africa Corps jacket and holding his Field Marshal's baton. Which the thing is, I remember from when we did Goring, is that the higher up the army you get, the gayer the aesthetic is. I'm holding my baton while I kill myself. It's quite.
48:16 Speaker 05 Yeah, little sticks and things.
48:17 Speaker 03 Anyway, then the official narrative is that Rommel dies from a heart attack caused by complications from the injuries he'd sustained in Normandy.
48:26 Speaker 05 Yeah.
48:26 Speaker 03 Hitler then gives him a state funeral, it's a national day of mourning, and it only comes to light after the Allies speak to his widow in, after the war. So it's covered up, really.
48:36 Speaker 04 I mean, that's one of my favourite things about being a despot would be to kill my enemies and then celebrate their death as if they'd been a hero.
48:42 Speaker 03 Yeah.
48:42 Speaker 04 Very much à la Putin when he killed Prigozhin, you know, the head of the Václav.
48:48 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
48:49 Speaker 04 And then he sent flowers to his funeral, saying, I'm so sorry for your loss.
48:54 Speaker 05 Very Game of Thrones.
48:55 Speaker 04 Yeah, awesome.
48:56 Speaker 05 Sitting at the funeral.
48:58 Speaker 04 Yeah, smiling. He was a great man.
49:00 Speaker 03 So Monty, after, after the Allies win, Monty becomes a national hero because, I guess, is there another British general who?
49:10 Speaker 04 Stephen stands out at all?
49:12 Speaker 03 Stands out like.
49:13 Speaker 05 Not with this level of press, no. You've got like Slim with, in the east with.
49:20 Speaker 05 Myanmar and stuff, but it's not really making the headlines.
49:23 Speaker 03 I know so little about that, all that stuff.
49:24 Speaker 05 The chindits. It's cool stuff, but it's not making headlines.
49:27 Speaker 03 No, but.
49:28 Speaker 04 Who are the big British?
49:29 Speaker 03 I think it's because this is, well, this is why, this is why this series is so absorbing is that it's, it's character driven military history and Monty becomes synonymous with defeating another character.
49:42 Speaker 05 Yes.
49:43 Speaker 03 Who himself was quite, his personality.
49:45 Speaker 04 The man behind the supply lines and Jerry Kanson.
49:47 Speaker 03 Exactly, yeah. But who's the man behind the supply lines?
49:50 Speaker 05 It's easier to picture in your head.
49:52 Speaker 03 Yeah, yes, exactly.
49:52 Speaker 05 You want to imagine a different guy.
49:53 Speaker 04 So you don't need the characters because you can see through it.
49:56 Speaker 03 Because you can read those maps.
49:57 Speaker 04 Exactly. So you don't need it. But it's a way, it's a balance, it's a bridge.
50:00 Speaker 05 It's nice to imagine a guy with some visual branding going, hurrrrrrr on the other end of the telephone.
50:05 Speaker 03 The guy with big shorts and a flyswatter.
50:07 Speaker 05 Yeah.
50:07 Speaker 03 He won the war.
50:08 Speaker 05 He's annoying the guy with the weird little baseball hat with goggles on it.
50:12 Speaker 04 The steampunk.
50:13 Speaker 03 Yes.
50:13 Speaker 05 Steampunk Rommel.
50:15 Speaker 03 Yeah, the big shorts beats the steampunk. I understand, I understand the war. Rock, paper, scissors, big shorts beat steampunk. Done.
50:22 Speaker 05 Rommel's clockwork top hat has been knocked off.
50:25 Speaker 03 Good. I fucking hate steampunk.
50:29 Speaker 04 But you love Nazis, so it's.
50:30 Speaker 03 I'm interested in Nazis. I find them fascinating.
50:36 Speaker 03 Anyway.
50:37 Speaker 05 Yeah.
50:37 Speaker 03 But he's also, he's the, he's the artist who defeats the desert fox.
50:41 Speaker 05 Yeah.
50:41 Speaker 03 And so, and as you say, Rommel's the most, you know, famous, I guess after like Hitler, Goering, Goebbels. He's probably the most famous Nazi.
50:50 Speaker 04 He's kind of the one.
50:51 Speaker 03 Yeah.
50:51 Speaker 04 But also, what does, what's Rommel actually achieved? So I guess he was, he did great.
50:57 Speaker 03 Well, 1940.
50:59 Speaker 04 Yeah.
50:59 Speaker 05 Yeah.
51:00 Speaker 04 But then everything else has been a loss. I guess he did the best he could, but I don't know what, is he, he wrote a book on military tactics, but those military tactics were.
51:11 Speaker 03 They were used in as the Germans, you know, the German high point, you'd say is basically up to Monty's arrival, right? It's when Barbarossa kicks off and at the same time, Rommel has pushed the Brits all the way up to basically Alexandria. That's the high point of the whole war for Germany. And that's all been based off Rommel's, he's the personification of the tactics they've used to do that. And they think Barbarossa will be over in two months.
51:37 Speaker 04 And Rommel's not evolved in Barbarossa?
51:39 Speaker 03 No, because he's in North Africa.
51:41 Speaker 05 And the tactics that Rommel was using, or pre-figure the tactics that we're still trying to use now, where the German training was like, you had to be able to do the job of the guy one rank above you and one rank below you. So like, there was never a moment where anyone knew, where everyone, there was never a moment where no one knew how to load a thing or do a thing. And it was all based on decisions on the ground, use your initiative, which they were doing that first.
52:04 Speaker 03 Yes.
52:05 Speaker 05 It's a lack of resources, really. If you'd given that guy enough fuel, I mean, God knows. So it's best of a bad hand, right? Like.
52:14 Speaker 04 And where would you say, collectively, where would you say they're both, if you were going to rank World War Two commanders, top five?
52:21 Speaker 03 If if.
52:24 Speaker 04 Because we've got, who's the guy, who won Stalingrad? Who was the Russian guy?
52:28 Speaker 03 Don't Charlie, put the mic away.
52:29 Speaker 04 Zhukov?
52:29 Speaker 05 I think Zhukov. I think so. Well, Zhukov was the cavalryman.
52:34 Speaker 03 Shut up. Shut up Charlie.
52:36 Speaker 05 There were a bunch of generals there.
52:39 Speaker 04 I'm going to leave this gun here.
52:40 Speaker 03 Yeah.
52:46 Speaker 05 Marshal Zhukov, I think is the main kind of guy.
52:48 Speaker 04 He's the main Russian.
52:49 Speaker 05 But the Russian army is so big that there's so many marshals and generals.
52:52 Speaker 04 It doesn't feel like it's like.
52:53 Speaker 03 So how much strategy is it? You're throwing men at bullets. That's kind of the strategy. Just throw men.
53:00 Speaker 04 So there's Patton, there's Eisenhower, there's Monty.
53:03 Speaker 05 Well, Eisenhower's like supreme command. So he's really like looking down from space.
53:08 Speaker 04 He's more doing political.
53:09 Speaker 03 Pen pusher, really, Eisenhower.
53:11 Speaker 04 Yeah, fuck Eisenhower.
53:12 Speaker 03 Fuck Ike, man.
53:13 Speaker 04 Fucking pen pusher loser Eisenhower. Fuck Ike.
53:16 Speaker 05 Nerd.
53:17 Speaker 03 Wear your shorts, you fucking pen pusher.
53:19 Speaker 04 Chat GPT, rank them.
53:20 Speaker 03 No, come on. We need to get to post-war Monty.
53:23 Speaker 07 George Marshall was quite significant.
53:24 Speaker 03 We need to get to. Post-war Monty, right. So Monty becomes, he gets moved up, he's very high up in the army, becomes, what is it, commander of the British Army of the Rhine, so I guess the occupying force after the war. And then what's the chief of the, let's just get the, chief of the Imperial General Staff is basically as high as it gets in post-war Britain.
53:45 Speaker 04 Is it as high as it gets? Because it says one of the most senior, and I'm always like, when it's the best one, who's higher, who's the fucking-
53:50 Speaker 03 It looks like Channel 4. You think you've cracked it and there's some twat above them who goes, "Now..."
53:54 Speaker 04 If it's not Monty, why is Monty not the main-
53:56 Speaker 03 "We need more maths. I don't care if they're guilty of rape, people watch it." Not my words. Anyway, so Monty becomes this sort of celebrity, but as we highlighted in the last episode, he lives too long. Because when there's not a war on, he opens his mouth.
54:16 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah.
54:17 Speaker 03 And listen-
54:18 Speaker 04 These men are not built for peacetime.
54:20 Speaker 03 This man, as we said, was built in, he was born in the late 1880s, the height of the Victorian era. Britain was at its pomp. Is he a man who's going to fit in with the 60s in the miniskirt? He's not.
54:33 Speaker 04 My heart breaks the fact they had to live through the 70s to see it all.
54:36 Speaker 03 It's devastating. It's devastating.
54:38 Speaker 04 He should have died thinking that it was all going to be okay.
54:40 Speaker 03 In the 50s, he would have died.
54:40 Speaker 05 He's the opposite of Austin Powers.
54:43 Speaker 03 He is the, yes, he's one of Austin Powers' Horcrux, is bird of Montgomery. Now, in his 2001 biography, The For Monty, a man named Nigel Hamilton argued that Montgomery was a repressed homosexual.
54:56 Speaker 04 It's the kind of people Tucker Carlson interviews, gives them three hours interviews.
55:00 Speaker 03 His evidence for this is that Monty would write a series of love letters to young boys in the 50s, one of which was Nigel Hamilton, his later biographer, who was so, whether platonic or sexual, they were such friends that Monty gave him all his papers. So that's why he's an official biographer. He was groomed to be his official biographer.
55:21 Speaker 05 Are these love letters, as in love letters, or is this that thing that some people do to sell books where it's like-
55:28 Speaker 05 Just to kind of, the smallest amount of affection from a repressed Victorian.
55:32 Speaker 04 I'm like a love letter from Monty.
55:33 Speaker 03 Sorry, I've got a book out. Are you saying that I could, what do I do? Do I have to?
55:36 Speaker 05 You need to accuse a famous historical figure of homosexuality, but it's just.
55:41 Speaker 03 160 episodes of that, fucking right. It's a whole Patreon archive that's calling everyone a paedophile. What else do you want?
55:48 Speaker 05 Then it's done. The book's gonna nail it.
55:49 Speaker 03 The book will sell, fine.
55:50 Speaker 05 Oh, big time.
55:51 Speaker 03 If anything, I guess accusing people of not being paedophiles, that's more.
55:54 Speaker 05 That's more controversial.
55:54 Speaker 03 More controversial.
55:57 Speaker 03 So, now, in 1967, Monty's in the House of Lords and he opposes the decriminalization of homosexuality.
56:07 Speaker 05 A psychological projection.
56:08 Speaker 03 So they think that that stance he took is pure psychological projection.
56:11 Speaker 05 Right.
56:12 Speaker 03 And the evidence for this is that he, after his wife died of an insect bite, he basically just like never, never really hung out with women again.
56:21 Speaker 05 Right.
56:22 Speaker 03 But he dismisses the idea of decriminalized homosexuality by saying that this, this sort of thing may be tolerated by the French, but we're British, thank God.
56:35 Speaker 03 Cook, King.
56:40 Speaker 03 I love this guy.
56:41 Speaker 05 I, I don't know, I think, I think there was no need to do any projection if you were a repressed homosexual in British politics in the mid 20th century. You just were a Tory lord.
56:52 Speaker 03 Yeah.
56:52 Speaker 05 There's more than enough to be getting on with.
56:54 Speaker 03 Yeah.
56:54 Speaker 05 God.
56:55 Speaker 04 You go, there's a lot of cocks to suck in the toilets in the House of Lords.
56:57 Speaker 05 You go, inevitably, you're banging like one of the Cray Twins or something mad, like there's a big scandal and MI5 covers it up. There's no need to be going around legislating anything.
57:06 Speaker 03 Yeah, but exactly.
57:07 Speaker 05 I think this is too sincere.
57:08 Speaker 04 It works fine, yeah.
57:09 Speaker 05 He's sticking his little head up above the parapet because he actually means this shit.
57:13 Speaker 04 But it's just like, why ruin the fun?
57:14 Speaker 05 Yeah.
57:15 Speaker 03 Yeah.
57:15 Speaker 04 Yeah, I prefer it being an elite activity.
57:17 Speaker 03 It is more fun when it's legal.
57:21 Speaker 03 So, Hamilton, who is sort of groomed to do his biography, claims that banning homosexuality was a crutch they would use to sort of, you know, bury his own urges.
57:31 Speaker 04 Because, of course, they were, it was illegal, yeah.
57:32 Speaker 03 Yeah. Now we get to, Pierre, I'll let you go off on this.
57:36 Speaker 05 Oh, good.
57:37 Speaker 03 Monty's public endorsement of apartheid.
57:39 Speaker 04 Oh, interesting.
57:42 Speaker 04 Hundred points for pronouncing it correctly.
57:43 Speaker 03 Thank you. Well, it's a party, isn't it? That's we.
57:48 Speaker 04 A party.
57:48 Speaker 03 A party.
57:49 Speaker 04 It's a party for us.
57:50 Speaker 03 A party for us, not for you, not if you're not invited. That's the whole, that's why it's called that.
57:54 Speaker 04 In theory, you'll have your own separate but just as good party.
57:57 Speaker 03 Yeah.
57:58 Speaker 04 But you won't really.
57:59 Speaker 03 Yeah.
57:59 Speaker 04 But we're gonna say that at the start.
58:02 Speaker 03 Now, his infatuation with the South African regime has two major visits. In 62, he visits South Africa and dines with the prime minister, who basically was the architect, which I know which one.
58:14 Speaker 04 62 would be Fervuut, I think.
58:16 Speaker 03 Yeah.
58:16 Speaker 04 Were you a fan of architecture?
58:18 Speaker 03 This kind of architecture. Big fan of apartheid architecture. Apartheid architecture is a beautiful thing. He calls it a, quote, "excellent thing." He goes on a sort of pro-apartheid press tour.
58:29 Speaker 04 Oh, man.
58:30 Speaker 03 Arguing that God never intended the races to mix because if you, quote, "shake a black man's hand, a negative electrical force resists the contact which you could physically feel."
58:40 Speaker 04 I did not know he said this.
58:42 Speaker 03 Deep, deep cuts, you know?
58:44 Speaker 04 That is a deep. Wow, I did not know this at all. He thought an electrical, but that's true of all atoms, for one thing.
58:50 Speaker 03 I didn't, I didn't think about this before we fucking did a series wearing berets.
58:55 Speaker 04 Crazy.
58:55 Speaker 03 Isn't that crazy?
58:56 Speaker 04 That is mad. Because that's also like, we've covered a lot of great racists in their time.
59:01 Speaker 03 Scholars and.
59:02 Speaker 04 Scholars, racists, to like, taking races to new heights we never imagined. This is groundbreaking.
59:07 Speaker 05 Bringing, bringing atomic level electrical charges into this.
59:10 Speaker 04 It's like a particle, particle racism.
59:12 Speaker 03 You can't physically shake their hand.
59:14 Speaker 04 That's new.
59:15 Speaker 03 That is new, yeah. But this is 60s, space age racism.
59:19 Speaker 04 Psychedelic.
59:20 Speaker 03 It is. It's gone off, it's trippy. It's been disconnected from its scientific racial roots.
59:24 Speaker 04 It's one day we'll put a racist on the moon. It's.
59:28 Speaker 03 Oh, imagine Monty's that guy. Yeah, it is. Now, he gets, now, in 1999, the government declassifies Cabinet papers from 48 under the 50-year rule, and they reveal that fucking Monty had done a two-month tour of 11 African nations. And then he wrote to the prime minister, which would be Attlee, saying that the, the African is, quote.
59:51 Speaker 04 Quote. Yeah, sorry. You were about to go straight into that.
59:55 Speaker 03 No, I wasn't. The African is a quote, my king, the African is quote, "A complete savage and incapable of developing the country himself." And he urges the government to ignore the UN and exploit Africa as a white supremacist bulwark against communism.
1:00:13 Speaker 05 This was a big thing in apartheid.
1:00:15 Speaker 03 Was it?
1:00:16 Speaker 05 They would talk about the Red Danger, the Rui Hafar. And the big thing was like, "We're not racist, it's just that all the communists are black." You know, that was a kind of their angle for a long time.
1:00:26 Speaker 03 Steve Biko, left-leaning, but then left-leaning against Africa means can you stop apartheid? It's not communism.
1:00:32 Speaker 05 Yeah, they would just say like, "Oh, well, this is our foundation of good Christian civilization against..."
1:00:38 Speaker 03 It's quite funny to call apartheid a bunch of commun... people who are anti-apartheid, you're a fucking communist.
1:00:43 Speaker 05 That was the line. They went for it.
1:00:45 Speaker 03 But this is where the revisionism about actually the North African campaign being won by Turing starts.
1:00:51 Speaker 05 As a counter to...
1:00:52 Speaker 03 As a counter to the fact that he was actively pro-apartheid, pro-white supremacist.
1:00:57 Speaker 05 I guess this is the problem with the House of Lords, is it's your fucking uncle at Christmas.
1:01:02 Speaker 03 Yes.
1:01:03 Speaker 05 And it's when you all sat down afterwards, and he's like, he does have a seat, he's a member of the family.
1:01:06 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:01:07 Speaker 05 It's a huge...
1:01:08 Speaker 03 Why has he got a microphone?
1:01:09 Speaker 05 It's the Chamber of Uncles.
1:01:12 Speaker 03 It is the Chamber of Uncles.
1:01:13 Speaker 05 All legislation has to pass through the Chamber of Uncles to be amended and approved.
1:01:17 Speaker 03 Why? Why are we getting our uncle pissed and them signing off on fucking legislation?
1:01:19 Speaker 05 They're all pissed, they're all getting pissed. There's a bar open from 7am all day.
1:01:23 Speaker 03 It's awful. Crazy.
1:01:25 Speaker 05 They're overheated in the big slopes.
1:01:26 Speaker 03 He becomes such a renowned sort of British establishment figure that supposedly Monty Python is named after Monty.
1:01:34 Speaker 05 Oh, interesting.
1:01:35 Speaker 03 Sort of mocking tribute to him. And also, there is a thing called a Montgomery Cocktail, which is a martini mixed at 15 to 1 gin to vermouth, because supposedly he would refuse to attack unless he had a 15 to 1 advantage. That's a lot of gin. Or it's basically just drinking gin, isn't it?
1:01:51 Speaker 05 Gin with a dash of vermouth.
1:01:52 Speaker 03 Yeah, a splat of a pet of vermouth.
1:01:54 Speaker 05 Given the stuff I've just found out he was saying in the 60s, you don't want to say... I'll have a Montgomery cocktail. Is this something to do with the atomic racism again?
1:02:04 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:02:04 Speaker 05 No, no, it's just a big pint of gin, please. Good, that's nice.
1:02:08 Speaker 03 So he dies in 76, I believe.
1:02:12 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:02:12 Speaker 03 Although he was in public, he was sort of a public figure until he basically got too old and sort of hid. He died with his brother holding his hand. And he received a military funeral with his coffin draped in a Union Jack and a beret placed on top of the coffin. Yes, Charlie?
1:02:30 Speaker 07 You know, you said that he died too late. What age would you ideally like to go?
1:02:34 Speaker 03 No, no, it's not about his age. It's about his views coming out.
1:02:38 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:02:39 Speaker 03 At a time when they were, you know, deeply out of step with public opinion.
1:02:43 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:02:43 Speaker 03 To say the least.
1:02:45 Speaker 04 The 70s shouldn't have seen Monty, Monty shouldn't have seen the 70s.
1:02:48 Speaker 07 Do you think that could happen to you? Do you think like?
1:02:49 Speaker 03 Hundred percent. If anything, I'm already there.
1:02:52 Speaker 04 He's the Pharaoh of Monty.
1:02:53 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:02:55 Speaker 07 What decade do you think you'd ideally live to?
1:02:58 Speaker 03 We, we, I don't know, I mean, they might come around again.
1:03:01 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:03:04 Speaker 03 The 30s might come around again, who knows? Who knows? And so I suppose it's, you know, Monty is the great, outlasts Rommel. It's, you know, Rommel's here for a good time, not a long time.
1:03:15 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:03:16 Speaker 03 And Monty just sort of, I guess it's a victory of autism over ADHD.
1:03:21 Speaker 05 We do need to keep asking at the end of these series what Charlie's learnt from this.
1:03:24 Speaker 03 That's true. Charlie, what have you learned at the end of four hours of?
1:03:27 Speaker 05 Autism over ADHD.
1:03:30 Speaker 04 Because of the Reformation, you didn't know what the Reformation was.
1:03:32 Speaker 03 That was very dispiriting, actually, after the end, we asked you.
1:03:35 Speaker 05 Though sadly, a lot of people have come up to me and said, I did agree with Charlie at the end and did also didn't know what the Reformation was.
1:03:40 Speaker 03 Right.
1:03:41 Speaker 05 So.
1:03:42 Speaker 07 I've learnt that there's loads of, I think that fish can sink.
1:03:47 Speaker 05 No, no, no.
1:03:47 Speaker 07 Fish can drown on the floor of the sea.
1:03:49 Speaker 03 I don't think they drown, though, they just sink. They just sink.
1:03:52 Speaker 07 Fish die, there's loads of dead fish on the floor in France.
1:03:55 Speaker 05 Anything about Monty and Rommel?
1:03:56 Speaker 07 Monty. Monty, wait, hang on, I've got something. Monty and Rommel.
1:04:05 Speaker 07 They never met and maybe if they had, it would have actually been all right and they could have hashed it out. Because I don't actually think they actually, they would have never conversed in person.
1:04:13 Speaker 03 Hmm. Yeah, that's true. They did never meet.
1:04:15 Speaker 04 But then them hashing it out is kind of a worst case scenario because if it's like they, Monty and Rommel meet.
1:04:22 Speaker 03 I think, I think they did hash it out. I think that's what the Battle of El Alamein was, was them hashing it out.
1:04:27 Speaker 05 Let's, I'll meet you at El Alamein, we'll hash this out.
1:04:29 Speaker 03 Famously. They hashed it out. That's kind of what the series is about.
1:04:35 Speaker 03 Pierre, your concluding thoughts on the, how important to the war is it? These, you know, we've, we've sort of done a deep dive on, you know, we wanted to do North Africa, but also this is the funnest way to do it because it's the importance of the scope.
1:04:48 Speaker 03 How, you know, when you're weighing up the whole, the whole World War Two, how important do you send them on to?
1:04:56 Speaker 05 Oh yeah, big deal. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You just need someone autistic enough to ignore angry texts from Churchill to hurry up. You just wait till you have an overwhelming advantage in supplies and armour and then just smush the enemy.
1:05:09 Speaker 03 Smush. Rommel got smushed.
1:05:11 Speaker 05 Rommel got smushed like a big bug.
1:05:13 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:05:14 Speaker 05 And then, yeah, unfortunately then Monty got over excited and Operation Market Garden and all that.
1:05:20 Speaker 03 Was that him?
1:05:21 Speaker 04 Yeah, it was his plan. It's his big fuck up.
1:05:23 Speaker 03 Oh fuck, we didn't even talk about that.
1:05:24 Speaker 04 Yeah, we also didn't talk.
1:05:25 Speaker 05 Land up there, Berlin, 10 minute drive, you know.
1:05:28 Speaker 04 Yeah, that was his big fuck up. But also, we didn't talk about the PR disaster. Because we didn't have disasters during the war because he's such a British supremacist. He still viewed Britain as far more superior than America. And when the Battle of the Bulge happened.
1:05:43 Speaker 03 Yes.
1:05:43 Speaker 04 Which was mainly an American thing. It was a very small thing that Monty did. He basically did a press conference where he said it was all the Brits and it pissed off everyone to the point where Churchill had to apologise.
1:05:53 Speaker 05 He would annoy the Americans like constantly.
1:05:56 Speaker 03 But this is, this is the autism coming through, right? This is the bluntness. This is why press conferences are not his forte.
1:06:02 Speaker 05 You mustn't let someone like this talk to the public.
1:06:04 Speaker 04 No, of course not.
1:06:05 Speaker 03 No, the politic, internal politics.
1:06:07 Speaker 04 This is Errol Musk sort of stuff.
1:06:08 Speaker 03 This is Errol Musk. We're gonna, we're gonna have to bring up.
1:06:11 Speaker 04 Press conference with Errol Musk.
1:06:12 Speaker 03 We're gonna have to bring up Errol Musk on the Patreon where Pierre's gonna stick around and we're gonna do, we're gonna carry on our history of the SAS. But we will also get his opinion on the grandfather of the pod, Errol Musk, as a fellow South African. Pierre, we need to plug your, your podcasts, your two podcasts.
1:06:27 Speaker 04 Yes.
1:06:28 Speaker 03 Video games and then you do Bud Pod with Glenn.
1:06:30 Speaker 04 I do Bud Pod with Glenn.
1:06:31 Speaker 05 Which is a sort of just general comedy chat.
1:06:33 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:06:34 Speaker 05 Kind of pathetically. We did a big, we won an award for a big riff about how Mr Blobby was in the IRA.
1:06:39 Speaker 03 Brilliant.
1:06:39 Speaker 05 And that's why he has that.
1:06:40 Speaker 04 An award winning riff?
1:06:41 Speaker 05 An award winning riff.
1:06:42 Speaker 03 You can get awards for riffs?
1:06:43 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:06:44 Speaker 03 Christ.
1:06:45 Speaker 05 Modern day. Awards for bloody everything. Um, yes, the idea was that Mr Blobby's voice was dubbed like Jerry Adams. And that he wasn't actually saying Blobby Blobby Blobby. He was making quite salient points about the plantations. And he'd been overdubbed by the BBC.
1:06:58 Speaker 03 You're also, people need to check out your stand up. You're doing Edinburgh.
1:07:01 Speaker 05 Doing Edinburgh Fringe?
1:07:02 Speaker 03 Again.
1:07:02 Speaker 04 What's this? In a row? How many hours is this?
1:07:04 Speaker 05 Eleven or twelve.
1:07:05 Speaker 04 Eleven, twelve hours. Can't even keep counting the amount of hours in a row.
1:07:09 Speaker 03 I mean, it's kind of like unfair to everyone else doing Edinburgh. It's a bit like Michael Phelps joining the Paralympics. It is not fair that you're doing Edinburgh again this far in. It will be the best thing you see at the festival if you go to see Pierre.
1:07:21 Speaker 05 I'm going to keep doing it until they make me stop.
1:07:23 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:07:23 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:07:24 Speaker 05 Promote me to the league above.
1:07:25 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:07:26 Speaker 05 Whatever that is.
1:07:27 Speaker 03 One of the best stand ups there is. Uh, so go and check out Pierre's stuff and your, your Radio Four, the reels of your Radio Four series are really good as well.
1:07:36 Speaker 05 Thank you, man. Those, yeah, that series is still just up forever, I think.
1:07:39 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:07:40 Speaker 05 Just through your iPlayer, BBC Sounds, whatever it is.
1:07:43 Speaker 03 Check Pierre out. Uh, he's going to stick around and we're going to get into the SAS again.
1:07:46 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:07:46 Speaker 03 Um, and if not, we'll see you next week for a brand new topic from all of us here. Good night. God bless.
1:07:51 Speaker 05 Good night.
1:08:10 Speaker 00 Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the House Majority PAC dot com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.
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Previous I Prefer El Alamein’s Early Stuff (with Pierre Novellie) | Monty vs Rommel (Part 3/4) Next What You Do In Your Own Home Is All Of My Business | East Germany & The Stasi Page updated October 29, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated