Hmm. Welcome back to the horse Shittingest Podcast and all the Land behind the Bastards. This is part two of our episode on Alfred Prupp, Faimed Arms, Maven and horse poop Lover. Uh. My guests as in part one is Alison Stevenson, writer and comedian Alison How are you doing today? Uh? You know, excited to hear more about horseshit. Yeah, there's definitely more horse ship in this. Also, a lot of people get killed. Um and uh spoiler, we get a Germany. Okay, ready to learn how Germany came about? Yeah, man, let's do it. Yeah. It's one of those things that has nothing but positive consequences. Thank god. Can you imagine life without Germany? How different history would have been. That's facts, that's bad. I'd have more relatives, problems, you would. You would definitely have more a lot of a staggering amount of people. A lot of Germans would have more relatives if there had never been a Germany. Actually I will say there would be too many English people. Um, yeah, don't want that. So all the historic events we've discussed so far, we're happening during a mostly forgotten by modern standards, but very violent period called the Wars of German Unification. So for most of the last few centuries, Germany hadn't been a thing. It had been a patchwork of often warring and always quarreling kingdoms, and the kind of thing that became Germany started to gradually coalesce, together with the birth of the German Common Market, which we talked about last episode in the German Confederation. But Germans being Germans, it was going to take a series of wars to actually seal the deal. One of those wars, in eighteen sixty four involved Prussia and Austria allying to fight Denmark, which at the time controlled a chunk of land and what we now would consider northern Germany. Um, Denmark used to have possessions outside that weird little fucking is the most or whatever the fun you want to call it, sticking out of the top of Europe. They owned a bunch of the continent, and the Germans were like, but that should be ours, and so they had they had a war. Now, when this war kicked off in eighteen sixty four, the Danish army was small but extremely experienced. It included one of the highest proportions of combat veterans and continental Europe, and in the past that had made all of the difference in European wars, you know, more than minor difference differences in musketry or cannon was whether or not your your troops were veteran, because like guns sucked, and cannons also kind of sucked. Um, So what really mattered was if you had a bunch of guys who were able to like stand together when they got shot at and then charged the other guys with sharpened sticks like that was kind of what determined battles. Um. And the Danes had that, and the German army was like completely inexperienced. Um, they were well drilled in everything, but they had never actually been in battle, and so everyone kind of when this started assumed that the Danish army was going to win. But for this war, the Danes were armed with brass cannons and muzzle loading muskets, while the Prussians and the Austrians had been armed by Kroop with breach steel cannons. They also had drice needle guns, which were essentially the first bolt bolt action rifles. So both the Prussian and Austrian armies were again made up of guys who had never fought before. But that didn't wind up mattering, because with their advanced cannons and rifles, they cut the Danish army to pieces without breaking a sweat thanks to their advanced firepower. This was the first time that a European war had been decided purely by arms technology, and it would not be the last. So obviously, like you look at European conquest of of you know, North America, South America, Africa which is kind of starting in this period, Southeast Asia, they always have a technological advantage on their opponents, but in European wars, they'd all been equal enough that what had mattered was like quality of generals and like how good your troops were. This is the first time that one European army goes up against another with such an advantage in technology that nothing else matters. Um. Yeah, and it kind of freaks people out because they'd always assumed that, like, well, we're all equal, right, Like when we fight these other people who aren't white, we always have an edge, but when we fight each other, we're all on the same And now, yeah, suddenly that isn't true anymore. And yeah, so for the first time, you know, people start flipping out about this. Both Austria and Prussia start putting in orders for more guns, and of course Alfred was happy to sell to them both. And this actually kind of piste off the King of Prussia, who was presently in the process of getting into a war with his former ally Austria. So Austria and Prussia fight den Or fight the Danes and win and take a big chunk of Germany. Um. And then they go to war with each other. In By eighteen sixty six, both nations were mobilizing to fight, and Krupp had penning orders from both sides. And since Essen was in Prussia, like he's under the King of Prussia, who's not happy about the fact that he's arming the guys, they're about to go fight. So the Kings is this kind of the first time that this sort of thing is happens, Yes, this is the first time that this is happening. Um, which is again yet another like uh thing that we can thank al Ford Krupp for. Yeah, thank you, Yeah, thanks buddy. So the King's war minister sends Alfred a letter I venture to ask you whether you are willing out of patriotic regard to present political conditions to undertake not to supply any guns to Austria without the consent of the King's government. Now, at this point, Alfred Krupp had put a lot of stock into being a patriotic gunmaker, and this was a pretty hobbiest conflict of interest between his nation and his business. Alfred did the right thing, though, and avoided responding for nearly a week. When he finally did reply, he wrote that he knew very little about the political conditions and planned to go on working quietly. He pointed out that Vienna wouldn't get their new cannons until June, and that the King could impound krup shipments if he wished, so, like, what was the big deal? Like? It probably won't get there in time to kill your soldiers? Why are you complaining? This? Piste off the King of Prussia, and he called Krupp in for a special meeting with himself and his right hand man, Otto von Bismarck. It says a lot about how valued Krupp was that the King was afraid to offend him, merely urging him not to fulfill Austria's order too quickly. But Alfred was irritated by even this, insisting that he had to fulfill his obligations. Then, sensing an opportunity for a sale, he warned the King that Prussia's defenses were inadequate. Um. So yeah, so he he tells the King like basically like, I'm not going to stop selling guns to your enemies. And then he's like, hey, by the way, your current guns aren't good enough and you might get your ass kicked in this war, maybe you should buy some more guns, which freaks out the King of Prussia. Um, but Alfred is happy about that. He writes home to his employees that evidently startled him, which was what I wanted. Um. And then, after all of this, because again Alfred cannot read a room, he asks for a loan from the crown. So he's like, yeah, kind of kind of bad at reading people. This k yeah. Obviously, the King says no, and Alfred is flummixed as to why. So. Over in France, the Emperor Napoleon the Third had been pretty psyched that Prussia and Austria were going to war. German unification terrified the French, and he had been relieved at because he thought that they were going to have like a long and bloody war that would exhaust them both and that would make France safer. But the opposite happened. The war lasted only seven weeks because you know, mainly the Prussians had a hell of a lot better guns than the Austrians, and a lot more of them. Krup cannons functioned mostly marvelously, but there were flaws with the design that only revealed themselves under battle. A handful of flawed guns exploded and killed their crews, and the sent Alfred into a depressive spiral. It provided an opportunity for the war King's war minister, a kind of unhinged advocate of brass cannons, to start demanding that preuscious switched away from steel guns and back to brass. Now desperate, Krupp offered to give the army hundreds of free guns. He found himself so anxious over the whole debacle that he fled to be with his wife in a spa town where he was incredibly out of place, and wound up embarrassing her in front of her friends. And you kind of assume, based on the context, the men that she was cheating on him with, Like he sort of shows up out of nowhere in this like crowd of people that she's like friends with and fucking and he's like bummed because his guns killed their their gunners, and it's just it's a very awkward situation. Um Thankfully, he proves himself incapable of relaxation and assumed back at home and his fifth Palace, trying to sell guns to another one of his nation's enemies, France, because he's also a man who never learns anything. Damn. In eighteen sixty eight, he showed up but yet another Paris exhibition with a brand new fourteen inch gun, which he described as a monster such as the world has never seen. The barrel alone weighed fifty tons. The powder charge for each shell was a hundred pounds. Emperor Napoleon the Third awarded krup the highest honor of the exhibition, and a bunch of fancy French military awards. He started talking about buying from Krupp and Bulk, and Alfred sent France a catalog of his wares. The Emperor kept Krups hopes, hope hopes up for months, but his generals were convinced that brass cannons were all that French France needed. The Emperor, who had written a book about the use of artillery, decided not to buy from Krupp after all and gave him a terse rejection. Alfred sank into yet another depression. He sent the giant canyon cannon he'd bought brought to the exhibition to the King of Prussia, and he sent an identical gun to the Czar in order to keep his biggest client happy. Alfred was a lot more popular internationally than he was within the bounds of Prussia. Representatives from the United States offered to let him move to Alabama and start a factory there. He turned them down. Japan and Sweden sent members of their royal families to tour his factories. Turkey, Brazil, Belgium, and Russia all showered him with awards. None of this meant much to Alfred. The only international acclaim he valued, was, of course, money and interestring So like he's in this interesting situation because the Prussian government is like constantly the actual military is constantly pushing back on buying more of his guns. But the king gets locked into an agreement with Alfred to where Prussia won't buy weapons from any other company. At the same time, Krupp is like, like, and this is because crup basically threatens them. He's like, if you buy guns from anybody else, then I will sell my guns to all of your enemies. And this is kind of weird because he's also actively trying to sell his guns to all of he's still do doing it. It's kind of weird that it works. Um, but it does. Uh, And it doesn't seem to matter to the Prussian government because Kreup at this point is tens of thousands of workers and like it's described as a state within a state, Like it's become as powerful in some ways as the government of Prussia. And this is again the first time that happens photo capitalism. Yeah, this is early capitalism. This is the first massive international arms concern, and it's so big that it's able to get the government to agree not to buy from anyone else while they're selling to all of the government's enemies. Like, that's very interesting that Alfred is able to do this, And it's because the cannons are that much better than anyone else's guns. M now, and around this same time, Alfred started designing a new home for himself. His factory had polluted essence so badly by this point that it was no longer fit for human habitation. His workers would continue to live there, of course, but Alfred wanted fresh country air. He interviewed dozens of architects, but decided in the end to go with himself. He designed a building based around three main concerns. Number one, he believed that standing or sleeping in one room for too long was toxic. He would consume all of the air and suffocate, so his house had to have hundreds of rooms. Number two, he was terrified of fire, so the entire building needed to be made from stone. And number three, he was absolutely in love with the smell of poor ship, so the hare house had to be built so that it waked the feces at all times. Beautiful, it's it's an amazing house, and it's crazy. In the sixties, when this book that I was one of the big sources for this, was written, they didn't know how many rooms it had. Like the counts of the number of rooms in this mansion varied by up to a hundred like nobody was quite sure. Because he had god, he liked to spy on people, so it had hundreds of secret passageways in and behind the rooms that he could crawl through and watch people while they were in his houts. People would just like wake up in the morning and he would have notes in their bedroom about their behavior the day before. Yeah, he's he rules, Uh, you gotta love Alfred, but I want to about in the making. Yeah. So from the arms of quote, he gave a lot of thought to this, this being how to get as much horseshit smell into the house as possible. And then it came to him in in a flash, what an idea. He could build his study directly over the stable with shafts to waf the scent upward. And that is precisely what he decided to do, crowing so to speak on his private dunghill. Jeez, fucking dude loves horseshit. And it's funny because like damn, all these kings and queens come to visit him and stay at his house, and like they all comment that like fucking smells like ship here when it's wronger this guy, and thank you, it does smell, and they can't do anything, like they can't not go because he's the guy with the guns you have. It's it's it's a very strange situation, but it is an evidence that if you're rich and successful enough, you can make everybody indulge your like very bizarre our whims. Eighteen seventy came and in June of that year, Prince Leopold of Holands all Learned decided to accept the job of being Spain's king, because apparently that's how royalty worked in those days. This really pissed France off because they didn't like the idea of being surrounded on both sides by Germanic monarchs. The Fridge Foreign Minister threatened Berlin, and the King of Prussia backed down and asked his son to not accept the offer to be the king of Spain. But this was not enough for France. France in fact demanded a royal apology from the King of Prussia. This was a bridge too far for the King of Prussia and he refused. He drafted up a telegram and he handed it to Otto von Bismarck, who was basically like Ottos like the prime minister. He's like basically the guy running the country for the king. And Otto decides that this this telegram isn't defensive enough and so he edits It to make it basically a declaration of war because there was a bunch of French territory he'd been eyeing a while he wanted to like take it over for Germany. And he also wanted to test out the German military because at this point, France is the pre eminent military force in Europe. A generation or so earlier, they've taken on the entire rest of the continent, and one for the most part right up until the end. And Bismarck wanted to prove that Germany was now the stronger military force, and he calculated that France was not as strong as she thought she was, particularly in the crucial realm of artillery. And he also kind of thought that this war would be a good opportunity to finally unify Germany as a single political entity for the first time in history. Bismarck was the guy who had orchestrated Prussia kind of gobbling up all of these German kingdoms, and he saw war with France is basically the same. Like so for Bismarck in this period, he spent his whole life cobbling together this what what becomes Germany, and he sees war with France is like the equivalent of a dude with a low rider sees a fiesta parking lot like it's a place to show off this Germany that he's built. So that's that's kind of what Bismarck does. And so what is basically starts as one king asking another to apologize and the other king saying no, turns into a war that kills hundreds of thousands of people as a result of all this, which is awesome, okay, okay, worth it, Yeah, totally worth it. So at the time, everyone expects France to win. Newspapers, all right, that the Prussian causes doomed. German peasants cut their corn down early, certain that French invaders would soon be stomping through their fields. Instead, what followed was a slaughter. The French had better rifles, but they had brass cannons and the Germans had steel, crooked cannons, and that turned out to be all that really mattered. The whole war came down to a siege in a city called Mets, and I'm gonna write about read about that from an article in World Crunch that kind of contextualizes this battle. Modern warfare began in eighteen seventy at the Siege of Metz, the first the final battle in the Franco Prussian War. It was the first time that the true scale of industrial metallurgical death revealed its true potential. Over two months, the Prussian artillery bombarded French troops hold up in the city's fortifications. The Wheach army had the same number of cannons the bronze artillery of Napoleon the Third's army was no match for the range, accuracy, and durability of pruscious steel cannon. Some hundred and ninety three thousand French soldiers were killed to the Prussians five thousand, seven hundred and forty casualties. After mess came to Siege of Paris, the collapse of the Napoleonic dynasty, the unification of Germany, and the birth of the Second Reich. So this battle is very we don't like nobody fucking talks about the eighteen seventy Franco Prussian War. It's one of the most important wars in history. Because Germany comes out of it. They declare Germany in Versailles. The reason that World War One ends with the Treaty of Versailles is because the Germans humiliate the French here in eighteen seventy sign a treaty in Versailles that leads to the creation of Germany, and fucking two generations later, the French want to do the same thing in Versailles when they beat Germany. Like that's that's why that all happens. It all starts here. And this is the first modern battle and the first modern death toll. Right before then, a hundred three thousand was like an insane number of people to die in a in a war, let alone, like a long battle. Um. And in here it's like one part of the war. Um. It's just like this, this tremendous death toll that had not been seen earlier in the same kind of time frame. It's just it's it's it's a fucking nightmare. Um And yeah, like it's uh, this is like where the modern world is kind of borne out of this battle, and it's born because of krupt cannons, because there was so much better than the brass cannons the French had. It really did just come down to that. Now France had been on the cusp of building its own steel cannons via its own giant Arms company Schneider, but their production was halted before they could get out in time for the war because of a communist strike, and so you can actually say that communism helped lead to the birth of the German state as a result of this, which is another interesting little tidbits. Yeah, so corrupt guns would get another chance to impress the world and kill a funkload of people after the actual fighting had mostly ended. See, the emperor himself was captured, you know, in the battles before this, and his army routed, but the city of Paris refused to surrender, and there was kind of like a revolution in this city. Is like we're going to take back France on our own, like funk our emperor and stuff like we'll we'll fight the Germans um, which is of course like a swell. It's pretty suicidal because Krupp has these you know, we've been talking about these giant guns he's been building just to show off. Well, now they get used and they're not any use on a battlefield because they have ranges that are measured in miles, but they're long enough away that you can be outside of a city and level the city from like five miles away and that had never been done before. So what you see with the Siege of Paris is a sneak peek to how Warwood looks seventy years later, when you have you know, bombers reigning down bombs on cities from miles up. This is the same thing, but with artillery on the ground, just blowing the ship up out of Paris without troops ever entering the city. Oh god, yeah, it's the first time that happens, thanks to Alfred Krupp. Okay, okay, yeah, it's good stuff. We're gonna talk a little bit more about how he murdered a whole on to people. But first, you know, who doesn't shell Paris from five miles away? Who the products and services that support this podcast. We're back and we're talking about the siege of Paris. So again as saying, this is like the first time that a city is destroyed from a distance without troops ever entering. It as like a military tactic, and it was very controversial at the time. Bismarck was immediately like, yeah, just just kill everybody in Paris if they resist, and his generals were like, well, that's a that's a crime, sir um. But eventually they decided to do it. And yeah, I'm going to read a quote from Hate Winds. Yeah, yeah, it always does. Um, so I'm gonna find I'm gonna read a quote from a collection of eyewitness accounts from the Siege of Paris that were gathered by Salem College. Quote a Colonel Heitzler and his wife. We're giving breakfast at Avrone to several friends. A servant being in the room. One of the guests was laughing with the hostess and said, no, butters, certainly, but there may be a shell in its place. And as he spoke, a shell burst in the room, killed six of the party and wounded severely the host and hostess, and only the doctor of the regiment and the servant got off unscathed. The remains of the six came just now to valde Grass Hospital, but it was such a human ruin that no individuality could be recognized. Prussians are firing with eight e guns, some of them being hundred and twelve pounders, ranging from three miles to half three miles and a half to four miles. So they're just killing anybody and everybody. Yeah, they're just showing. They're dropping hundred and twelve pound explosive shells on a city, blindly shooting into it. Jesus until people don't want to fight anymore. Yeah, as terrifying. Yeah again, this would not have been possible without Alfred Krupp's invention, and this would become the norm. This is the Norman warfare. Now you talk about the Siege of Rocca, it was U S artillery pounding Rocca from miles away in order to clear out the Islamic state. And also all of the civilians who happened to me, I watched some of this ship happened in Moses like this has been war ever since, and it starts here in eighteen seventy thanks to the steel canons of Krupp. That's sad. It's cool ship. It is cool ship. Archibald Forbes, of war correspondent with the London Daily News, had this to say. He was there in Paris at the time and he had seen like bunches of wars previous to this, but they've been like the little bit of European wars. We have like a bunch of lines of guys shoot at each other with shitty rifles and like a couple of hundred die and then your war is done right now, he's in the middle of the first modern slaughter. And here's what he writes. The terrible ghastliness of those dead transcended anything I had ever seen or even dreamed of in the shuddering nightmare after my first battlefield. Remember how they had been slain. Not with the nimble bullet of the needle gun that drills a minute hole through a man and leaves him undisfigured unless it has chanced to strike his face, Not with the sharp stab of the bayonet, but slaughtered with missiles of terrible weight, shattered into fragments by explosions of many pounds of powder, mangled and torn by massive fragments of iron. Huh. Yeah, it's the first modern modern deaths. That's how everybody dies. Now. It's good stuff. Yeah, yeah, it's fucking rules. So cities have been ravaged by war before, but eighteen seventy marked the first time one was wrecked by soldiers who never even entered the city's borders. Far from horrifying the planet, it ignited a tremendous hunger for krupt guns. So people see this fucking slaughter instead of being like, you guys just murdered a bunch of civilians and broke all the laws of war. They're like, I gotta get some of those fucking cannons. I need some of that ship. Give me those, Give me those motherfucker's. Yeah, this guy is really good at making guns. Look at how many dead people there are in Paris. It's great. Sucks. This is not one of our more optimistic about people episodes. It sure isn't. At least government suck and a lot of the tists. Yeah. So from the arms of Krupt quote krup cannon became the new status symbol of nations. Turkey used them to guard the Bosphorus Romania to protect the forty bastions of Bucharest. According to legend, Tiny and Dora bought a long range gun and then discovered that it couldn't be fired without hitting French soil. In eighteen seventy three, the Corrupt Work payroll was half again as large as in eighteen seventy. The firm had surpassed the peak of its wartime production. Then came the Sino Japanese War Scare of eighteen seventy four. In eighteen seventy five, the first in a long series of plums which fell into Alfred's lap. Tokyo had purchased cannon from Schneider, and the Chinese warlords had been buying from Armstrong, but by now memoirs of men who had fought at Sadan Mets in Paris those are all battles from eighteen seventy were being read over the globe. When Krupp wrote flattering letters to Lee Hong Chang, the Bismarck of Asia, and sent him a model railroad. Lee responded by ordering two hundred seventy five field guns, another hundred fifty cannon to arm the Taku fort guarding the approach to Tiensen, and a complete armament for eight warships. And gratitude. Alfred hung over the head of his bed a portrait of Lee, despite his fear of combustible combustible objects in the castle. Word, if his Chinese coup reached Potstam, Krupp tells governments what they must buy. If governments were poor enough, He really did. Backward countries were given shipments of obsolete weapons despite the huge bill paid by Asia's Bismarck. Li Hong Cheng didn't receive Essen's latest model, which was being delivered to St. Petersburg. That winter, the Taku forts got outdated cannon and a handsome order from bang Hawk was filled. From the same prescription, Alfred wrote, tartly Chinese and Siamese can blow their enemies to bits well enough with these. Wow. Yeah, send the shitty guns that explode sometimes to the Asians. They're not white, damn. Yeah, he's a real piece of ship. Yep. Yeah, he's a terrible Person's a piece of horse ship. Sorry, yeah, no, don't say that. He that's that's a compliment. Yeah, he would love to hear that. You tell him he's a piece of horse. He would say thank you, yes. But to everyone else, yeah, except for they have to pretend it to like it, because they want his guns fair enough, Krupp. One of the things I guess that is kind of heartening here is that as successful as he was, Krupp was fundamentally incapable of taking any pleasure in his success. He always found new things to worry about. And in the Yeah, as the eighteen seventies rolled on, this thing was communism. So in eighteen seventy one, like, I love that there's no like guilty conscious going on. It's like it's not worried about how his guns are gonna sell. He is incapable. The only thing he ever feels guilt about is when his guns blow up and kill German crews. M M yeah, Um, he's a good dude, so he starts flipping out about He thought communism was pretty funny in eighteen seventy when the French went on strike and they didn't get their steel cannons in time. But in eighteen seventy one, the Social Democratic Party goes on strike in Germany and threatens to shut down the minds that brought Krupp his iron and coal. Alfred was furious. He issued a company directive that neither now nor at any future time would a former striker be allowed to work for Krupp. He was kind of enough to recognize that strikes and communist sympathy among workers were caused by the fact that a lot of workers were miserable and desperate. He decided to address this by issuing a groundbreaking list that he called his General Regulations. These guaranteed his permanent employees a pension, healthcare, old age care, and a variety of other benefits that we now look together as part of a social safety net. He invents welfare. Basically, he's he's the first company to do a pension. Is see if this was to be made into a movie, that's the only thing that they would yeah, that they would say about him and ignoring all the weapons ship well and where it's not as good as it sounds. So he sends out a list of these benefits to his employees in part to make sure that they won't strike. But the list aren't mostly benefits. They're mostly a list of obligations that the workers have to the company. Yeah, so he like really focuses on what the companies owe the firm, and he liberally threatens his workers throughout the document. As in this passage, the full force of a of authority must be used to to suppress disloyalty and conspiracy. Those who commit unworthy acts must never be permitted to feel safe, must never escape public disgrace. Good, like wickedness, should be examined through a microscope, for their truth is to be found. Even as a seed bears fruit and direct ratio to the nourishment or poison it is given. So it is that from the spirit that an act benigner evil arises. And again the act that is evil. He's talking about is like unionizing um, which is yeah. Now, the more corrupt played with the idea of his general regulations, the more they turned into a corporate dictatorship. He decided that his company was entitled because he was now paying them pensions and stuff. His company was entitled to an employee's full and undivided energy, and he gradually came to feel that that meant CRUP should be the entire focus of a CRUP employees life. To that end, he developed housing colonies for his employees, each building named after a CRUP ancestor. He built a bread factory, a wine store, a butcher plant, and even a hotel. This city of Essen turned into an extension of Alfred Krupp's personal property. From his vantage point, the best thing about providing all of these services to his employees was that he could take them away from workers who did things he's disproved of and destroy their entire lives. A dismissed employee lost everything, even his pension and of course his company home. Alfred wrote to the Kaiser that this system would quote be useful for the prevention of socialistic errors, because you lose your whole life if you get fired now. Damn kind of true today. Yeah, thanks, Alfred, Yeah, not not much different. He's a trailblazer, not not like an Alfred Right now. To help further prevent those errors, Krupp instituted a program of snooping, the first centralized workplace espionage program. Yeah, you talk about like the night early nineteen late eight hundred, early night, like the eighteen nineties through the nineteen twenties. This is huge in the United States. The Pinkerton's are a big deal. Kruff is doing this in the early eighteen seventies. He's he's the first company to have an organized program of spy. Yeah, yeah, very ahead of his time. Today, companies like the Pinkerton's provide corporations like Amazon with surveillance of workers who might win a unionize. And that starts with Krupp, who ordered, quote a constant, quiet observation of the spirit of our workers, so that we cannot miss the beginning of any ferment anywhere. And I must demand that if the cleverest and best workman or foreman even looks as though he wants to raise objections or belongs to one of those unions, he shall be discharged as quickly as practicable without consideration of whether he can be spared. Wow. Wow, he's a fucking cool dude. Let's just go to ads and not think too much about any of this. We're back. I love not thinking too deeply about history. Um So again, a lot of as nice as some of these social welfare things sound on the surface, a lot of them are really very negative and abusive. But I do have to give Alfred credit for something which is that inspired by the rules that Alfred puts in for his company and the social like welfare that he gives his workers, Otto von Bismarck introduces a series of landmark German social welfare legislation that is like based on the general regulations that Alfred writes, and those become the backbone of all German social security to this day. The entire German welfare state starts because of Alfred Krupp, like he he inspired, like writes down the initial laws that become the backbone of everything that has done later, which is like something you have to make note of. I guess he doesn't do it for a good reason, but he does do it. So yeah, wow right, yeah, it's it's it's fun. Um Now, Obviously, even that is more problematic than it might sound. Um, And I'm going to quote from the arms of Krupp here. In nineteen eleven, the Reich's workman Insurance Code was extended to all laborhoods. Extended to was to extend to all labors the rights that Krupp had given his men nearly four decades before. And the following year Kaiser Wilhelm the Second declared an essen that the Iron Chancellor Bismarck had been prodded by Krupp. Echoes of the general regulations were to be heard in the third Reich. Hitler wrote in Mind comp that his own program had begun with a study of Bismarck's social reforms, and the slogan of the Fewer's Labor Front leader Robert Ley community spirit must be drilled, was taken almost verbatim from Alfred's fourth article, So both the Kaiser. Long after Alfred's death, both the Kaiser and Hitler copy his labor reforms not because they care about the workers, but because they're a good way to prevent communism from taking place, because they provide just enough security that it makes people not want to unionize. And yeah, a little more complacent, and the Nazis recognized this and almost copy him word for word in some pet places like yeah, it's good stuff. Good stuff would have made a pretty good dictator. He would have made it. He was basically a dictator, and he would have made a fantastic Nazi. I mean his his his son was an amazing like his like grandson, I guess was an amazing Nazi. So yeah, yeah, his grandson was a huge Nazi, big, big solid Nazi. Uh great, a solid Nazi. Did he inherit the horseship thing? Or was that just no? I think that was just Alfred. Yeah, yeah, it's a little peculiar. Still stuff, it's weird. So Krupp himself never lived to see the lot rise of the Third Reich, but his descendants loved it, and there's no reason I think he wouldn't also have loved it. He Yeah. He wrote this in reference to the German Social Democratic Party, which, in spite of his best efforts, rose throughout Germany. In his later life, I wish somebody with great gifts would start a counter revolution for the best of the people, with flying columns, labor battalions of young men. He's saying, he wants a Nazi party. Like that's what that statement is, is, like, there's too many fucking liberals. I wish somebody would start a counter revolution with like flying columns of young men ready to beat the ship out of socialists. Yeah, that's definitely what humanity needs as a solution to things. Yeah. Yeah, when he's crying out for somebody with great gifts, he's he's crying out for Hitler, Like that's who he Like, he doesn't know it at the time, but that's who he's begging for. What if he like built Hitler himself out of like a bunch of horseshit. Yeah, I mean, in a way, he kind of did. He certainly was one of the people made Yeah, he was one of the people who made you know, Hitler possible. Obviously, you know, you don't get a Hitler without a lot of people wanting a Hitler and a lot of ground work had to be laid. But Alfred's one of the guys who's down there plugging away to make Germany ready for a Hitler. That is absolutely fair to say. Alfred was a staunch opponent of democracy. He wanted the abolishment of universal human stuff, Ridge and the franchise to vote withdrawn from people without property. He urged his workers to ignore politics and put up notices in his factory that a vote for the Social Democratic Party was a vote for the idle, dissolute, and incompetent. He went on to advise them, enjoy what you have when work is over. Stay in the circle of your family, with your wife, children and the old people, and think about the household problems and education. Let that be your politics. Then you will be happy. But spare yourself the excitement of big cut. Questions of national policy, issues of high policy require more time and knowledge than the workman has at his command. You're too dumb to think about politics. Yeah, when the Social Democrats, yeah, he's not. He himself is a pretty smart guy. When the Social Democrats won seats in the reichs doug anyway, he fired thirty men for suspicion of socialism. Now in his late sixties, Crupp became a tyrant, cracking down or rationally on anything that seemed like the scent. Periodically he would flee Essen and his company for weeks at a time, hiding in his terrible house and sending missives out. He would invite p belover and then refused to see them, spying on them secretly through hidden chambers in his home and leaving them notes critiquing their behavior. Once, when an unmarried couple flirted in his home, they woke up to find a sheet of paper with his handwriting on it in their bedroom telling them that a carriage was ready to take them away because they kissing and ship. Yeah, he's a weird dude. In short, Alfred Krupp lost his damn mind. His wild success brought him a kind of megalomania. He mortgaged the company near the breaking point to buy up almost every mine in Germany on the notion that he must secure for his descendants a hundred years worth of raw materials to keep the company running. He threatened to sue employees who left Krupp for another company, and even attempted to have it made illegal for people to switch employers. Like, oh my god, Yeah, he's out of his damn mind by the time he's like in his fifties and sixties. Um, I'm gonna quote from the arms of Krupp again here. Since he was providing his employees with homes, schools, hospitals, and food, he reasoned that they're hours away from work belonged to him too. It is an astonishing fact that most of them agreed, or at any rate right displayed no signs of mutiny. There is no evidence that he provoked either indignation or amusement with what was, by any yardstick, his most extraordinary order to the men of my works. He had been thinking it over, he said, it had come to the conclusion that a faithful workman's place of work included the marriage bed. Just as the sole proprietor was acquiring enough raw materials to last the house of Krupp for the next ninety nine years, so must every conscientious CRUP employee strive to provide the state with plenty of loyal subjects and to develop a special breed of men for the works. In other words, you owe me a duty to have kids so that I have employees in the future and my children have employees. Damn, this is messed up. Yeah, it's it's really bad. He's terrible, and a lot like Jeff Bezas. He's just open homeless shelters for Amazon employees. So the continued success of the social Democrats through Alfred into a constant rage in his waning years, he ran for election and lost amidst a massive leftward swing that saw the SPD. The Social Democratic Party allied with the Centrist Party to try and block a landmark military appropriations bill that would have been a lot of money for Alfred. Alfred became incredibly invested in that year's elections, pushing his employees to vote for an approved mandate and going so far as to have the local elections Commission, which he controlled, issue marked ballots so he could punish any employee who voted the wrong way. And yet still his candidate, who was his son at this point, lost and the Social Democrats gained seats. Alfred threatened to dynamite his entire factory and had to be argued down by his employees, who pointed out that the Nationalists were still in charge and we're still going to pass the appropriations bill, so it was kind of stupid to blow up his entire factory just because they were slightly less overwhelmingly in charge than they had been before. But he's that kind of guy, like, you're still in power, but other people have had political success, so you want to blow up your own factory. Like he's yeah, he is kind of trumpy um, and the fact that the SPD still existed and seemed to be gaining ground kind of bro Alfred. He posted a note in his shop that stated, the next time I go through the works, I want to feel at home, and I would rather see the place empty than to find some fellow with venom in his heart, such as every social democrat is. Oh boy, it's like maybe a little bit of it might be putting that a little bit, uh, projecting a little bit there, buddy, Like yeah. So next he hired inspectors to go through all the trash and his workshops and his worker housing projects and comb for literature critical of either company management or the German government. An old man who had worked as a corrupt night watchman for thirty three years was fired, so was a worker whose landlady had wrapped his lunch in a newspaper Alfred disliked. Alfred considered this program a great success, and so he hired a new inspector to go through the used toilet paper to see if socialists had left any notes in the bathroom Like it's he's fucking out of his mind at this point, um, And it's weird because like the left never harmed his business in any way. In fact, the last decade or so of his life was the most profitable period in CRUP history to date. At least fifteen little wars broke out and involving countries he sold arms to. Sometimes his clients even fought. Yeah, yeah, and he loved this. Yeah. So the Russio Turkish War happens from eighteen seventy to eighteen seventy eight, and Krupp had sold guns to both sides, and so he starts asking both sides for testimonials both so he can improve the killing power of his weapons. And he takes these like testimonials from Russians and from Turks about how deadly his guns are, and he sends them to every member of the English House of Commons, and he's like, why are you guys buying British guns when my guns are so much better? Like look at how good, look at how good they are at killing my customers, Like you should be buying guns for me. Geez, like drawing little pictures like everything hurt this guy. Yeah, boom nico boom on him. Yeah, he's a little bit, it's just yeah, he's kind of obsessed with England. Too, so he's very frustrated that they never do buy his weapons. By the late eighteen eighties, Alfred was constantly ill in more than half mad. He spent his twilight years constructing and attempting to sell what was basically an enormous stationary tank. It was just a giant armored gun that couldn't move and was wrapped in so much armor that it was basically destructible. During demonstrations, Alfred would sit inside it and wait while his own gunners shot him with artillery shells. Despite this display, nobody bought a single one of his guns. He hatched hatched another scheme to create hollow islands topped by armored guns that he was going to use to blow up boats. But everyone was like, these are crazy, And eventually his son instructed the factory to ignore any further communications from his father because he had just gone mad. Uh Krupp finally ceased to rule the arms factory that had been his entire life's work, and he died almost immediately after that, on July seven, from a heart attack. And that's the story of Alfred Krupp. Wow, Yeah, he lived so long for a horseshit guy, for a guy who breathed in nothing but industrial poisons and horseshit his whole life. Maybe there's something too that ship thing. Yeah, maybe he wasn't wrong. I'm gonna not try that, but let me know how that goes. Yeah yeah, somebody else wouldn't have to try it. Yeah, yep, yep, yep. So that's the story of the man who made everything else that happened in the twentieth century possible damn good. Yeah, and the guy who helped in invent Germany. So him and Bertha did have a kid, Yeah, no, he had. He had a couple of kids with her, and the kids mostly Actually, the reason they finally split is in two she asks him to um like she comes to him, he's like, hey, our son wants to get married. And it was to a woman that Alfred didn't like because he didn't like anybody, and he was like no, and she packed up all of her ship and left for good and it broke his heart and she never talked to him again, even though he like let his kid get married after that. Um because he's again just like a like a cussed piece of ship who was incapable of like hated being with himself and as a result, it was miserable to be around, and so nobody could be with him, and he just spent his entire waning years designing increasingly impossible weapons. Jeez, all he could think about as an old man because he had nothing else. All he could think about as an old man was how to make more ways for other people to kill each other. What a life for in existence? Could have been the train track guy, Alfred, But instead you're the guy who people killed. What a waste of being a smart person. Yeah, if he just made better ways for people to travel, everybody, Alfred crap, the train guy. What a cool dude. Yeah yeah, but no, that is not the way the story ends. So how are you feeling taking it all in, absorbing all of these facts. Yeah, I had no idea. Yeah, yeah, this is definitely a little bit more German history nerd uh for our podcast. I should also state for the record that Alfred was pretty anti Semitic, but also so was everyone at the time. Like I don't get the sense that like he was different from literally every other person in German and that right right right, Like he like everybody's racist against Jewish people in Germany in the eighteen seventies. You know, history has shown it's pretty easy to be Anicomitic. They were that racist in France and England, in America too, something about us in Russia, Turkey, everywhere, but China pretty it wasn't anti China. China was good about In fact, there was there was I forget which city, but one of the coastal cities in China had like a huge Jewish population by the time World War two broke out, because like the Chinese actually liked having Jewish people in their cities, and then of course the Japanese killed all those people to please the Germans, and it was just like this horrible thing, and that's why we eat Chinese food on Christmas. And the China after that massacre, after like the city was retaken, China build a giant monument to the murdered Jews of that city because they felt bad about it. Because yeah, there's that, there's that, but everybody else unbelievably racist against juan people. But yeah, Krupp is not like a trailblazer in his as. Yeah, yeah, he's just kind of like joining the mob on that one. Yeah, at this point in time, anti Semitism is like liking Rick and Morty. It's just not at all worth acknowledging. Okay, so Alison, you've got any pluggables to plug? I mean I will speaking of Jews, plug my uitable original like Mother. It's very Jewish. I mean, I will say that's the that's the most positive statement that's ever come after the words speaking of juice. Normally that does not lead to something good. Well, here we go. I'll give it to you. Uh if you want to listen to a mother daughter comedy called Like Mother that starts me and comedy legend Susie Esman, then there you go. There you go, check out that, check out everything and check out I don't know, cannons. I feel like that's a bad thing to check out. Cannons. Don't check out horseshit. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I like to be honest, I much prefer people have a lot of horseshit than a lot of cannons. I mean, fair enough at the point, Yeah, what about cannons, but instead of like cannon balls, it's big horseship balls. He didn't come up with that, just fling horseshit at the enemy to try to give them better ideas. Yeah, weirdo what a fucking weirdo,