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

Episode Date: November 21, 2024

Robert concludes the story of T.E. Lawrence by getting into the real bastardry of his life, including a pretty heinous war crime!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Call zone media. What's murdering 75 men in hand to hand combat? My, Margaret, have you killed 75 men in hand to hand combat? I've been told to not comment on this until I'm more certain about a few steps. I would fucking follow you into war so fast. I'd be like, yes, yes boss, where are we going? Let me grab my axe, let's go.

That's gonna be conditional for me on what kinds of men you count when you're killing, right? Like, Auda didn't count Turks. Do you count Turks if you kill them in hand to hand combat? These are the questions that I need to know. Yeah, no, chuds are are the ones that not certain count. You don't count. No, Chud's. Yeah. Yeah. No, I refer to my truck as a Chud truck.

Yeah. And people think I refer to it as a Chud truck because it looks like a truck a Chud would drive, but actually it's just very good at. Anyway. Outa would have been a truck guy. I think we can all agree on that. Yes. Yeah. Shocking about himself.

It's a shame that none of these people live long enough to see the Hilux. I know, it's tragic. He was born for the Hilux. Oh my God. Can you imagine how much Lawrence would have loved the Hilux? I got my own change recently by this guy

who was like trying to tell me about why it's worth it to import a Hilux. Absolutely. You don. I just met this guy who was like trying to tell me about why it's worth it to import a Hilux. Absolutely. You don't have to convince me brother. The cost of importing the high. He went over all of the prices of all of the importing the Hilux and I was like, this no longer seems worth it.

I thought the point of it was that it was cheaper than the other Toyota trucks. Yeah. The point of it is that it's a Hilux. You know, that's just, that's just got some flair. You can't replace it has high classiness It's in the name. Yeah, I I do feel some some I can understand Lauren's better now that I've gone into battle in the back of a Hilux in the fucking Arab world Driven across Syria. Yeah In an up armored Hilux. Yeah, that that is a good life experience to have for for really getting te Lawrence

Yeah, it would have been a lot of fun probably if we got in to blow up a bridge or two But that wouldn't have been helpful in the situation. We were in now Now so strategic scientifically scientific and I have no idea how to really do that. I would just blow up the bridge. Yeah, yeah. Now when we discuss T.E. Lawrence, particularly when we try to answer the question, was he a bastard? Sitting at our computers in the fall of 2012. Have we been forgetting to do cold opens,

haven't we, Sophie? We just do them and then Dan'll cut some in later. Dan'll cut some in later? Well. He's a hero. I don't know I Don't is Dan Sorry, I just it's fine. Yeah. Yeah, I wonder which one Daniel counts. Yeah, I it depends I still don't know. I don't know what kind of men Daniel counts when he when he when he's killing men So she doesn't count men. It's pretty impressive. Wow. Wow only Only the women you kill. Okay. Yeah.

That's good to know. I would never kill women. Yeah, that's what I, Sophie just never kills anyone by Sophie's standards. Woke swashbuckler who only counts the NBs he kills. Men and women don't count to me. Just the they thems. Each one counts for Morgan one, Is this like a political ad that plays during baseball games?

Oh my god. Jesus Christ. You go far enough left with your jokes. You wind up doing a Trump ad. Sometimes where a crime took place leads you to answer why the crime happened in the first place. Hi, I'm Sloane Glass, host of the new True Crime podcast, American Homicide. In this series, we'll examine some of the country's most infamous and mysterious murders and learn how the location of the crime becomes a character in the story.

and learn how the location of the crime becomes a character in the story. Listen to American Homicide on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming. This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award. Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards.

Hi, I'm Dani Shapiro, host of the hit podcast, Family Secrets. How would you feel if when you met your biological father for the first time, he didn't even say hello? And what if your past itself was a secret and the time had suddenly come to share that past with your child? These are just a few of the powerful and profound questions

we'll be asking on our 11th season of Family Secrets. Listen to season 11 of Family Secrets on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, my undeadly darlings. It's Teresa, your resident ghost host. And do I have a treat for you. Haunting is crawling out from the shadows,

and it's going to be devilishly good. We've got chills, thrills, and stories that'll make you wish the lights stayed on. So join me, won't you? Let's dive into the eerie unknown together. Sleep tight, if you can. Listen to Haunting on the iHeart radio app, eerie unknown together. Sleep tight if you can. Listen to Haunting on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy, Elian Gonzalez, was found off the coast of Florida. And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home, and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami? Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom.

Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So when we discuss T.E. Lawrence while sitting in our computers in the fall of 2024, one thing probably stands. What? That wasn't even a joke. I know, but so funny. It's still pretty good. Yeah. One thing stands above every other matter, which is his support for the Balfour Declaration, particularly his support.

I mean, because that was not made. He did not help make that, but he is a supporter of Zionism in this particularly post-war period, right? When all of these European powers give their official support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Lawrence is not initially on that side, but he's going to wind up on that side, right? When all of these European powers give their official support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Lawrence is not initially on that side, but he's going to wind up on that side, right? And given what's going on in Gaza right now, it's probably impossible

to avoid having this dominate your thoughts on the man's legacy. And that's not entirely wrong. We are going to talk about his role here because it's significant, but it's important to note that at the time, his feelings on Zionism are not what any of his critics, including in the Arab world, saw as the most problematic thing about the man. If you were a Westerner or a Turk, the top argument in your Lawrence's evil ledger probably would have been the war crimes.

And so we're gonna talk about those first. The gist of this story is that after Lawrence escaped the Turks, the forces under his command exhibited increasingly brutal behavior on the battlefield. He started ordering his soldiers not to take prisoners, which is against the law. And in several cases began executing wounded men himself

as they lay bleeding on the battlefield. He would just walk around battlefields afterwards, shooting guys in the head, doing coup de, couping de grace. Yeah. Okay. Which is, you know, bad. You're not supposed to do that. I mean, arguably in a lot of these cases that may have been the kindest thing to do, but it's not legal to do that. Yeah. So he's couping some de grace. He's killing people. Scott Anderson writing for Smithsonian magazine describes how his judgment seems to have degraded as well.

And the general way, this often gets credited to like the fact that he has just been gang raped, right? That like this kind of his mind breaks after that. Quote, he attacked a Turkish troop train despite being so short of weapons that some of his men could only throw rocks at the enemy. If this was rooted in the trauma at Deraa, it seems he was at least as much driven by the desperate belief that if the Arabs could reach Damascus first, then the lies and guilty secrets he had harbored since coming to Arabia might somehow be set right.

So that's kind of the debate here is like, is he traumatized because he's just been raped and as a result, he's making all of these very rash moves. He's becoming increasingly brutal in battle. Is it more that he's desperate to try and he's traumatized because he knows that he's kind of betraying his friends and he's trying to make things right by getting them to Damascus before the war ends, you know, in order to kind of cut off Sykes-Picot at the knees, right? I think that's a strong argument to me because he wants to be a moral man and he knows he's not.

So if he can find a loophole to loophole himself into morality by killing everyone. Yeah. Yeah, maybe that's the only thing he can do. There's also this argument that like Lawrence describes himself as a virgin. And he is someone who his friends insist he has no discernible sexual leanings. And maybe there's this the fact that it's forced upon him, like he has an extra strong reaction to it. We just will never know, you know, the actual answer to these questions. I mean, he also grew up going to rape school.

He did go to, he did, he went to less rapey schools than a lot of other British boys of his, of his era. But like, I think that is kind of built into a lot of that school system though. Yeah. But I have no evidence as to whether or not anything like that happened to Lawrence. He certainly doesn't write about it. So even if you hold to the argument that Lawrence lied about the rape, and maybe he would have lied about that in order to explain why he was obsessively trying to get the Arabs to Damascus because that was kind of some like light treason

against his own side. Whatever's going on here, it makes total sense that his mental state would be degraded by this point. He has spent more than half of his time in Arabia deathly ill, sick with plague and heat stroke and catastrophic dehydration. He's experienced harrowing combat at close quarters. He has blown his camel's brains out and been flung into the hot desert sands during a battle. So yeah, I mean, just not weird that he's kind of losing it at this point. And as Anderson notes, he's also weighed down with guilt over the fact that all these guys are fighting

and dying with him, maybe for nothing, because his government might betray them. This all culminates in late September in an attack on a town called Deraa, where Lawrence had been, if he was raped, this is where that happened, right? So this is part of a general offensive that he is carrying out with Allenby that's meant to coordinate with an attack by Allenby on Palestine in the North, right? Lawrence and his Bedouin allies are supposed to cut off the Turkish avenues of retreat by taking the railroad junction at Deraa. So one of the arguments here is that like this is, you know,

where he claims to have been tortured. So maybe what he's about to do is like him taking vengeance, you know, for that attack. And I'm going to quote from Anderson again, after coming upon the village of Tafas where the fleeing Turks had massacred many residents, Lawrence ordered his men to give no quarter. Throughout that day, the rebels picked apart a retreating column of 4,000, slaughtering all they found. But as Lawrence doubled back that afternoon, he discovered one unit had missed the command and taken 250 Turks and Germans captive.

We turned our Hotchkiss machine gun on the prisoners, he noted in his battlefield report, and made an end of them. Lawrence was even more explicit about his actions that day in Seven Pillars. In a madness born of the horror of Tophus, we killed and killed, even blowing in the heads of the fallen and of the animals, as though their death and running blood could slake our agony. Whoops. Yeah, he's going full light corn berserker here. You know, he's just massacring people. And it's, you know, the people he's massacring had also just massacred a bunch of civilians. It's a very ugly war.

Like war crime, plenty of war crimes to go around here. Right. But this this slaughter of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of prisoners and wounded men would have been a massive war crime in any theater of World War I. That's enough to put him in, he belongs in behind the bastards now. Yeah, that's an international criminal court crime. Right, yeah.

Now again, many of the bastards you've had on have killed like three people. Right, right. Now that said, do I kind of sympathize with him still? Yeah. Yeah, totally. This is just, no, I don't know. I just don't know how likely it is

that most commanders in a similar situation, having gone through what he's gone through, would have been much better, right? Especially since this is not entirely, Lawrence, by his own admission, is partaking in the bloodshed. But a lot of this is just that his own troops are so angry at all of these war crimes, including on some of their families, right?

And they're just bent for slaughter now, right? Like everyone has just lost their minds. The war has gotten that ugly. So anyway, you know, you can you can parse that out morally, however you want to. You can judge him however you want to sitting at your computer. We all do to some extent. But yeah, from here, from DeRoy, Lawrence himself moved directly to Damascus, right? Like he and his forces rush there and they they beat the Turks out of Damascus and they beat European forces to the city.

Now, I have a question. Yeah. How did he get out of conscription rape jail? He kind of just escapes. Okay. I mean, they're not great at doing guarding. They don't know that he's Lawrence of Arabia, right? He just sort of bounces, you know, after a while.

Cool. So this was an explicit and a direct attempt to destroy Sykes-Picot. As soon as the city was in their hands, Lawrence helped organize a provisional Arab government headed by Faisal, right? Now again, the Arabs of Syria don't really want Faisal in charge of them.

They certainly don't want his dadaisal in charge of them. They certainly don't want his dad in charge, but they have their own leaders and they see they don't really like guys from Mecca. They write about these Arabs in Syria who are pissed about this, some of whom are making overtures to the Ottomans because of how unhappy they are about Faisal.

They kind of see Faisal and his dad, this whole family of guys, the Sharif of Mecca, the way rural Americans talk about people from San Francisco or DC. They have the kind of like Richmond, north of Richmond talk about them, of these fucking city assholes from Mecca, coming into Syria and telling us

how to live our goddamn lives. I don't like that any better than the Turks, you know? And there's actually, this kind of Zionism is going to play a weird role in this here because it becomes kind of crucial to this conflict in between these different factions on the Arab revolt, right? So within a few days of the Arabs taking Damascus,

General Allenby arrives and he's like, provisional government my ass, the French are in charge here now. And Lawrence, like there's really and he's like, provisional government, my ass, the French are in charge here now. And Lawrence, like there's really nothing he can do, right? Allenby is his superior officer. The British are there with like, you know, a significant amount of assets and this is, you know, kind of shatters him, right?

Like he is so distraught over the fact that all of their work, you know, even though they took the city, it's just been handed over to French control. He's so distraught by this that he begs to be relieved of command by Allenby. He leaves for London hell-bent on using his celebrity to win Western support for an independent Arab nation after this.

Now as a note, Lawrence was definitely a very famous over in Europe by this point. An American journalist based in Palestine, Lowell Thomas, had like spotted his story and been like, well, this is one of the most interesting things happening in the war. It's much more interesting than just like recording slaughter at the various trench fronts.

I'm gonna follow this guy around. I'm gonna take some video and photographs and whatnot. And he puts together like a lecture show, basically like a slide show with a lecture attached to it that runs in movie theaters. It's like a matinee hit in England. It's a huge blockbuster at the time. Like prior to the 1960 Lawrence of Arabia,

this is kind of like the first movie version of Lawrence and it's portrayed as journalism, but Loewel is a, he's like a tabloid guy, right? Like he is exaggerating. He's kind of outright lying about stuff. There's some evidence that Lawrence is deeply, deeply unhappy as a result of like the kind of attention that Loewel draws on him and how much he makes Lawrence

the center of the story. But he's also able to use this fame in order to secure meetings with like politicians to try and talk up Faisal side of things, right? As during like these negotiations over what's going to happen to Ottoman territories in the wake of Ottoman collapse. He's such a vocal part of this and such like so vocally against Sykes Picot that he starts to be seen as a threat from within the military and like within the government of the British Empire. A lot of them see him as a fame hound because like this is happening while his movie is a big deal. They see him as like he's just some like, junior officer who's gotten way too big for

his britches and he's trying to ruin this good thing we've got with France. This horrible war is finally done and we're finally going to get fucking some money, a place we can plunder, right? To help make up for all of the money we spent on this stupid war we got our country into, right? And this guy's going to fuck it all up. Right? Now, the Balfour Declaration had been leaked out to the public right around the same time Sykes-Picot had been made public. So right at the end of 1917. And some in the British administration during these

negotiations in late 1918, 1919, saw the Balfour Declaration, which has a complicated reaction, especially over in the Arab world, saw it as potentially good news for their support of the Husayns. Because again, Faisal and his dad are wildly unpopular in Syria, right? They're seen as these assholes from Mecca trying to lord over a place they don't belong. And Lawrence's boss in the intelligence service, one of the masterminds behind the whole Arab revolt was a brigadier general named Gilbert Clayton. And Gilbert saw the Balfour Declaration as problematic. He's going to be the guy who writes most accurately about why this is a bad idea.

But he also is like, this could help us with Faisal, right? And he writes, up to date, the Syrian Arab has shown the utmost distaste for any idea of a government in which Meccan patriarchism has any influence, hence a lack of real sympathy with the Sharif. Fear of the Jew may cause a rapprochement. If we make it clear that we're going to give the Jews a homeland, the Arabs may get so angry that they line up behind our guy,

who they're not really happy about right now, but maybe their racism against Jewish people will convince them, you know? Which obviously, that's an incredibly racist move from Clayton, right? Like, we'll just use anti-Semitism to solve our imperial problems and get our puppet in charge. It's pretty classic.

It's pretty classic, right? Yeah. Now, Sykes himself tried to convince Clayton that the declaration was a positive for Arab independence, which Clayton, for all of the racism you see in his writing, really does care about Arab independence. He is one of these guys like Lawrence, who is like, we made promises to these people and we should keep them. Clayton more than Lawrence recognizes, because Lawrence kind of gets behind the idea of Zionism

eventually. Clayton is always like, this is a bad idea and we shouldn't have done it. But he does get into that, he comes to that conclusion also through a very racist way by saying that Arabs would be dismayed by knowledge that the Jews, quote, whose superior intelligence and commercial abilities are feared would take over in Palestine.

In a different letter to Gertrude Bell, the Arab Bureau's Baghdad correspondent, Clayton wrote this, "'The Arab of Syria and Palestine sees the Jew with a free hand and the backing of Her Majesty's government and interprets it as meaning the eventual loss of his heritage. Jacob and Esau once more.

The Arab is right and no amount of specious oratory will humbug him in a matter which affects him so vitally. Experience such as I have gained in this war, impels me to deprecate strongly and cautious declarations and visionary agreements. We are like men walking through an unknown country in a fog and it behooves to feel our way and take care with each step we take." And he is not wrong. Yeah, we are men. We shouldn't be doing this in part because like, obviously, this is going to lead to

Arabs being displaced from their homes in Palestine, right? Arabs recognize this, they're right to recognize this. And even by sticking our hands into this mess, we are men walking through an unknown country in a fog. We don't know what we're doing. Yeah. So we shouldn't be doing it. Right. Yeah. Which is. Yeah. No, that's that's what the British Empire should have been doing. Yes. Yeah. Instead of being an empire. He is. Again, everyone here is racist, but some of the racists are correct about what's going to happen. Yeah. Right? Yeah.

Bell, who also deserves much more coverage than we're giving her, Gertrude Bell was a fascinating character. This woman who had just like traveled alone throughout this huge stretch of the Middle East, become a legitimate expert on the area, really interesting person, someone who knew Lawrence too, kind of in his early travels, replied that she also hated quote, Mr. Balfour's Zionist pronouncement. But Lawrence, whose instincts for this region and its people were generally much better than this, got caught up in the Zionist cause. And he did so in an interesting

way as part of his backing of the Arab cause, right? So during Lawrence's struggle against Sykes-Picot in London after the war, he came to see European Zionists as potential allies in the fight for Arab independence. He met with Chaim Weisman, head of the English Zionist Federation, who was willing to back Lawrence's fight for an Arab state so long as Lawrence supported the establishment of a Jewish state. Lawrence, by one account, convinced Faisal. By another, Faisal is kind of the one who's saying, hey, Lawrence, I want you to make overtures to this guy. But either way, Lawrence and Faisal get on board with Weisman and the Zionists. And they make an agreement, they actually sign an agreement, right?

Which if the Zionists support a Faisal-led Arab state based in Syria, Faisal will support European Jews immigrating to Palestine. Now Faisal does not explicitly embrace a Jewish state, but that was understood to be the result of this. The treaty between the two of them reads, mindful, and this is just fascinating reading just in light of where we are today, mindful of the racial kinship and ancient bonds existing between the Arabs and the Jewish people and realizing that the surest means of working out the consummation of their national aspirations is through the closest possible collaboration in the development of the Arab state and Palestine. It continues that the Arab state and Palestine should in all

their relations be controlled by the most cordial goodwill. A commission would be established to lay out boundaries of the Arab state and Palestine. There's a lot there about like, obviously no one will be displaced by this. Right. It's presented in two states, would be established to lay out boundaries of the Arab state and Palestine, right? And there's a lot there about like, obviously no one will be displaced by this. Right, it's presenting a two-state solution for Palestine. Not entirely, right? There's an Arab state and then there's Palestine, but Palestine is also understood

to be encouraging Jewish immigration and seen as a Jewish state. Now it's not clear, does that mean Arabs and Palestinians, like Arabs and like European Jews who immigrate and like, you know, like the people like, and who live there at now, will they be kind of equal partners in a state? That's kind of how I read it is the idea,

but it's not a two state solution. They are always referring to Palestine, right? Like they don't call it Judea or Israel, but yeah. To the one-state solution, the like one secular you can be Jewish or Muslim. Yeah, yeah, that is the closest thing, right? Okay. Like the arrangement that they are talking to,

when I say that like he supported Zionism, the actual text of the kind of thing he was trying to set up is very different than what exists today. Right? I'm going to quote again from that agreement. All necessary measures shall be taken to encourage and stimulate immigration of Jews into Palestine on a large scale and as quickly as possible to settle Jewish immigrants upon the land

through closer settlement and intensive cultivation of the soil. In taking such measures, the Arab peasant and tenant farmers shall be protected in their rights and shall be assisted in forwarding their economic development. It goes on to state that no interference and free exercise of religion would be permitted, and the Mohammedan holy places in Jerusalem and elsewhere shall be under Mohammedan control." Okay. Yeah, I mean, it's presenting a fairly reasonable idea. Jerusalem and elsewhere shall be under Mohammedan control. Okay. Yeah, I mean, it's presenting a fairly reasonable idea.

I mean, like, obviously, like, that's clearly not what large scale Jewish immigration meant. It's not what's going to happen. But when we say that he's a Zionist, he's not supporting what exists currently, right? Like that is the result and he's worthy, it's worthy of criticism. Faisal is worthy of criticism too. And it's important to note that like Faisal,

this guy seeking to be the king of this Arabic state is supportive of this measure, right? Right. But there's some economic reasons for it, yeah. At the very beginning where he's like, the long standing appreciation between Arab and Jewish folks, I mean, that is real. And like, there is like, you know, when you study Ottoman Empire before it started falling

apart, it's like, well, that's where European Jews went because they were like second class citizens in the Ottoman Empire, but like they were... Yeah, we all know what happened in Russia, right? We all know what happened in Ukraine. They were way worse than second class citizens citizens elsewhere in Europe. Poland, right, yeah. When the other thing that happened in 1492 as relates to Spain is that all the Jews were kicked out and forced to convert.

There's just massive immigration into the Ottoman Empire. Yep. Yeah, so this is messy. And obviously none of this works out the way that Feisal and Lawrence had hoped. While researching this, I've come across several extremely pro-Israel publications, including the Israel Forever Foundation,

who published articles trying to remake Lawrence into a hardcore supporter of the modern state of Israel. I found this line in an article they republished from the Jerusalem Post. You won't find this truth in the lengthy biography of Thomas Edward Lawrence, the legendary Lawrence of Arabia in the Encyclopedia Britannica. Don't expect to hear about this on the BBC.

The world remembers Lawrence as a guide, friend and champion of Arabs, but hardly knows that he believed in Zionism as a force to restore Palestine to its ancient glory, brought about by active British Jewish Arab cooperation. And that's not really, like that is making him into, nothing that he has described sounds like the modern state of Israel, right?

He was not in favor of Palestinians being forced out of their land. Now we can say that was a foolish thing for him to hope and he should have known that there was very likely this was going to get ugly, right? But you know, he winds up doing what he does, right? And a big part of like what he and Feisler are both hoping for is that if we allow

Jewish immigration to Palestine, that will bring in a lot of money to this economically depressed area and it will be good for these like Palestinian farmers and peasants, right? That it will like a rising tide will kind of lift all boats. That is what they are writing about, right? There were ways it could have worked out differently

than it did, right? But you know, it's also worth noting that whatever their plans and whatever their hopes for how this works out, Lawrence winds up on the side of what becomes a major calamity for the Middle East, right? Is how bloody and brutal everything that results from this eventually is, right? And I actually think it's the same problem he has in general, which is that even though he doesn't want England to control these things, he's still on some level, he's more okay with

fucking around with England controlling things. Yeah. more okay with fucking around with England controlling things. Yeah. You know, and so it's like, and that is the same problem that happened with British mandate Palestine. Yeah. Is that the British? We're again, it's like Clayton writes, right? We don't know what we're doing. We're going to fuck a bunch of things up because we don't really understand

what we're messing around with here. Yeah. And yeah, like probably just shouldn't have been fucking around with any of this. Yeah. Maybe a bunch of British guys should not have been making all of these calls. Yeah.

And maybe, and to be fair, a bunch of guys like Faisal, rich guys from Mecca, shouldn't have been making all of these calls. Oh yeah, totally. Like none of it works very well. Yeah. Now, I will say for as much, you know, because of what's happening right now,

this gets a lot of focus. We're going to inherently think a lot about Lawrence's support of this, of the Balfour Declaration of all this stuff. This probably was not a big part thing on his mind when he thought about like his failures, you know, here in the wake of kind of the peace agreements and stuff, because like nothing happens

during his lifetime, right? He dies in 35, right? So none of this like leads to anything while he is around, you know? And there's like a couple of riots and stuff, but it's not. Yeah, there's some riots, you know, there's some stuff that does result from this, but he's probably not super plugged into it, right?

Yeah. He is, what really is occupying his mind as he sees the wheeling and dealing in the immediate wake of the war as a fucking calamity for this cause that he cares about. Nearly every piece of the cause that he cared about goes down in flaming failure. The French get their mandate in Syria. The British wind up running much of his imagined Arab state, including Palestine and Iraq. And once it becomes clear that Arabs had fought and won a war of independence, only to wind up ruled by Europeans, the response was bloody as this passage from an article

in Smithsonian magazine makes clear. Lawrence was particularly prescient about Iraq. In 1919, he had predicted full-scale revolt against British rule there by March of 1920, if we don't mend our ways. The result of the uprising in May 1920 was some 10,000 dead, including a thousand British soldiers and administrators. And man, that's a good prediction, right?

He calls March, it happens in May, not bad. Tasked to clean up the debacle was the new British colonial secretary, Winston Churchill, who turned for help to the man whose warnings had been spurred, T.E. Lawrence. At the Cairo conference in 1921, Lawrence helped to redress some of the wrongs. In the near future, Faisal, deposed by the French in Syria,

would be placed on a new throne in British-controlled Iraq. Out of the British buffer state of Transjordan, the nation of Jordan would be placed on a new throne in British controlled Iraq. Out of the British buffer state of Transjordan, the nation of Jordan would be created with Faisal's brother Abdullah at its head, right? And obviously Faisal and his family don't wind up in charge of Iraq for all that long, you know, thanks to our friend of the pod, Saddam Hussein and the Ba'ath party.

And then Faisal's brother Abdullah, that is still the ruling family in Jordan, right? That's where that's where that all gets started. Now the fact that this is the result, right? You know, it's not a total failure. You do have Arab states that are independent, you know That get come out as a result of this but largely, you know during his lifetime It's France and Britain kind of calling the shots in a large lot of this region. This shatters Lawrence, right? He never really recovers from his failure here.

And you know who else has never recovered from their failures? Is it the casinos? Yeah, the casinos, they're a failure to give you too much money, right? Yeah. You know, they just can't wait to give you money. Now they lose money more often than they win.

That's why gambling, if you gamble enough, you always win. The house always loses. That's why they say that. Yeah, exactly. The house always loses. It's always safe. Always safe to gamble. Keep your money in a casino, right? It's an investment.

I mean, if it's controlled by the casino, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. They will succeed. Whenever a homicide happens, two questions immediately come to mind. Who did this and why? And sometimes the answer to those questions can be found in the where. Where the crime happened. I'm journalist Sloane Glass, and I host the new podcast American Homicide.

Each week, we'll explore some of this country's most infamous and mysterious murders. And you'll learn how the location of the crime became a character in the story. On American Homicide, we'll go coast to coast and visit places like the wide-open New Mexico desert, the swampy Louisiana bayou, and the frozen Alaska wilderness. And we'll learn how each region of the country holds deadly secrets.

So join me, Sloane Glass, on the new true crime podcast, American Homicide. Listen to American Homicide on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose.

This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to the leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong though, I love technology, I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough, So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts,

or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming. This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award. Submit your podcast for nomination now at iheart.com slash podcast awards. But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking,

it's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iheart.com slash podcast awards. That's iheart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. On Thanksgiving day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. Look like a little angel. I mean, he looks so fresh.

And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian, Elian. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy

and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home, and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well.

Listen to Chess Piece, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the MyCultura podcast network available on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Robert, I have terrible news. I followed our advice and now I have no money left. Oh no. Well, maybe you should just put all of your remaining money on black and just do a shadow roulette. I think that'll fix your problems, Margaret. Yeah, the 48.5% chance of success. That's more than 50, so it'll work.

Yeah, absolutely. So Lawrence is shattered. He's very depressed. He has seen all of his hopes for a better future go down in flames. He's never going to recover from his failure here or the attendant PTSD as a result of his wartime experiences. And honestly, this is a big part of what makes him a sympathetic figure to me, right?

But he is not seen that way by a lot of the men who fought for him or his descendants. One of my favorite articles analyzing Lawrence's legacy was that piece in Smithsonian magazine by Scott Anderson in 2014. He followed in Lawrence's shadow during the early years of the Syrian Civil War and interviewed descendants of the Bedouins who'd fought by Lawrence's side. One Sheikh Al-Atoon of Mudawara in southern Jordan lamented that after the war, the badly damaged Hejaz railway was allowed to fall apart entirely, isolating many communities once connected by the imperial project.

The partitioning of the Arab world had made the maintenance and rebuilding of such a railway impossible, and there's no real way to conceive of such a project working out and preserving such accomplice peaks of infrastructure through all of the conflicts that have roiled the area since. Quote, my grandfather thought that these destructions were a temporary matter because of the war, but they actually became permanent. You have to remember, this railway had been backed and funded by donations from Muslims in places like the Hezhas because this was their future.

This would have connected them to the world. And there's no way to keep this going in like these carved up conflicting states that are the ultimate result, right? Of the actual, you know, post-war period. And Lawrence had kind of convinced people to blow up this railway and the promise that, and then you'll get a state and we can fix things, right? Like, you know, the British, right?

And that never happens, right? Now, Lawrence things, right? Like, you know, the British, right? And that never happens, right? Now, Lawrence tries, right? How much credit does that get him? You know, maybe not a lot. If you're living in the rusting shadow of this dead railway, watching any hope of a better future, you know, fade away, right?

So are they kind of like, you know, in the end it was better under the Ottomans? No, I think it's a little more complicated than that. Ultimately, when I read kind of analyses of Laura, you can find some good pieces of Muslim scholars talking about how Lawrence gets talked about. It's mostly just like, he's not really seen as a major figure in all of this, right?

They're more interested in guys like Faisal. They're more interested even in British people like Allenby. There were some other British agents who were moving around like Lawrence, because I think in part of how much attention he gets, has for a long time been kind of like, well, he wasn't really as important as everyone thinks he is, right? Now that is, there's a reappraisal that's going on in the present day. And you can find some some like Muslim historians who are essentially like, yeah, I actually he actually was a pretty very significant part. His book is a fairly accurate accounting of things. And he seems to have really tried to do what he

thought was best, even though like a lot of it didn't work out. Like there is a reappraisal going on here, in part because modern historiography has found that Lawrence was actually telling the truth about a lot of stuff that he had been kind of believed to be bullshitting about for a while. Now that said, attitudes about him are very complicated over there, right? Now I wanna refer back to that article

in the Smithsonian Magazine, because later in that article, Sheikh Al-Atttoon says this, some people think he was really trying to help the Arabs, but others think it was all a trick that Lawrence was actually working for the British Empire all along. When I press for his opinion, the shape grows slightly discomfited. May I speak frankly? Maybe some of the very old ones still believe he was a friend of the Arabs, but almost everyone else, we know the truth. Even my grandfather, before he died, he believed he had been tricked.

And that's a common attitude towards Lawrence over there. Now it's not universal. His old friend, Emir Faisal, who became king of Iraq, said in 1920 that Lawrence had been truthful in his promises, a matter that made the Arabs trust him, but a lot of people dislike Faisal, right? I mean, this gets into the like, why I believe so strongly in honesty is that,

well, to the people that you're working alongside of, is that you set yourself up for that when you lie to people, even if you're trying to, like his paternalism, in the end makes people realize that he was fucking them over. You know, because he didn't treat them as equals and make decisions alongside of them. Yeah. Because they might have reached the same conclusions.

They might have been like, well, cynically, I guess we should side with the British because dynamite and British gold will accomplish everything. You know? Yep. And there's a lot of like, you could argue probably be part of why Faisal is, you know, so positive towards Lawrence is that like, you know, Lawrence is kind of honest with Faisal in a way that maybe he isn't to a lot of these other people, right? He's different because a lot of these

a lot of these Arab tribes that he was getting in line behind the rebellion weren't super pro Faisal what they were like, well, but we hate the Ottomans and he's saying it'll work out better. Maybe we'll just like give it a shot. The rebellion seems to be working pretty well. And then they wind up being like, oh, well, we just kind of got fucked on this, right? We sent our sons to die and this asshole became a king,

but like, what did we get, right? Yeah. So after his brief stint with Churchill, Lawrence changed his name and asked to be allowed to reenlist in the British military, this time as a private. He told a friend that he never wanted to be responsible for anyone or anything significant again for the rest of his life.

Like, this is how broken he is that he was like, I don't want any of this fame. I am not going to, I'm going to take a new name and it reenlist as a private. So I just don't have to do anything, but follow orders for the rest of my life. Like I have- Yeah, like kill and die.

That's the time with that part. Kill and die, sure. I'm fine with that. Literally anything. Like I've done lots of killing. I'm okay with that. I just can't, like I have failed so utterly in what were my goals in this thing, right?

That I just, I don't wanna make another decision for the rest of my life. Yeah, whoa. So he spends the next, I think, 14 years stationed on a series of small bases around Britain. He lives a quiet, almost solitary life, reading voraciously, listening to music, writing letters to friends,

and riding his motorcycle through the countryside. Through this time, the legend of Lawrence grew and grew, spurred on by the publication of an edited version of his book, which is, there's a fascinating story here, Margaret, about like what happens to Lawrence's manuscript here. And this is one of the, there's a great article by Robert New

that's just an author's worst nightmare. So Lawrence, he writes while he's like, you know, in the the start of the 1920s, after all of this had fallen apart, he wants to write his great memoir, which he'd planned for a long time, he planned to publish a book called Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Initially this was going to be based on his before the war, his travels through the Muslim world. He writes that book and then he destroys it. He gets anxious about it. He decides it's no good.

Before he goes off to war, he destroys the entire book. Then he takes the title of that book and he uses it for the book that he writes about his time fighting in this desert war. He puts together using all of these notes that he's taken a 250,000 word manuscript. And then after finishing the manuscript, he destroys his notes. I don't know why. I've never heard a good reason as to why does he destroy all of his original notes once he finishes it. But he does and he only has a single copy

of this manuscript. And then when he is at reading station, he leaves it in a bathroom and loses it. Yeah. I see why every author's worst nightmare. Yeah, that's a nightmare. Now I once lost a file of about 35,000 words of an hour. Oh my God. Oh my God. What a nightmare. Now, I once lost a file of about 35,000 words of an hour. Oh my God.

Oh my God. What a nightmare. Oh my God. Yeah. Oh, that hurts to hear. I never finished that book. There is debate, Margaret, about this, right? Some biographers or some people will argue

he probably didn't lose this. He probably, he was so angry about this guy Some biographers or some people will argue, he probably didn't lose this. He probably, he was so angry about this guy who is, this journalist who has made him into like the center, like a celebrity, right? And he's just so ashamed of what happened that he destroys this manuscript, right? And then like regrets it immediately, right?

But that like, maybe that's what happened, right? And he's destroyed a manuscript before, it wouldn't be weird, right? And then like regrets it immediately, right? But that like, maybe that's what happened, right? And he's destroyed a manuscript before, it wouldn't be weird, right? Whatever the case, Lawrence gets back to work working on a new version of the book. And the second draft of this, which he has to make from memory since he's destroyed most of his notes is 400,000 words.

And he writes this in three months. Which is like, that's like some Stephen King ass shit. I do wonder if, I know cocaine was available over the counter back then. What were you doing, Lord? How do you do 400,000 words in three months? That's nuts. Yeah, it's like what, like 5,000 words a day or something?

I'm out of math. Yeah, that's an insane rate of, something like that. I could do that for like three weeks if I had to. And he's unhappy with it, so he throws that out. And then he writes a third version of the book. Oh my God, so he's on his fourth seven pillars of wisdom. He's on his fourth seven pillars of wisdom. It might as well be called seven manuscripts of wisdom.

He almost does write fucking seven. The fourth version of this comes in at 335,000 words. And this time he has the Oxford Times press print eight copies of it, right? He's not gonna lose this fucking one, right? He sends some of these, and this is the text from which we get the final version. And Lawrence would kind of regret for the rest of his life.

He would say that the first draft was more accurate. Like I fucked up less, like I got more of the basic, the nuts and bolts right. Some people will say like, well, it's actually probably much better because in the process of writing a million words of this story over and over again, he got better at writing. I'm sure the prose is better

and I'm sure the accuracy is better in the first one. Yeah, that's probably fair to say. And that's like, my God, what a fucking nightmare. I know. I know. I would not be able to live with myself. But would the first version have helped the Vietnamese defeat- Yeah, would the first version have helped

the Vietnamese war strategy, right? Maybe not. I think it's at this point here, like when we talk about all these different versions of the truth and the question of like, how accurate is this that we get dragged back once again to the question of Lawrence's sexuality, right? One of the key arguments against the rape in DeRos story is that some of Lawrence's comrades in the tank corps would later claim that he asked them to beat and whip him for sadomasochistic pleasure.

Now there is a lot of reason to doubt these claims. Even if they are true, we could just as easily interpret this as Lawrence working through his trauma as a result of having been gang raped. But one piece of evidence to the contrary is that in the original version of Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Lawrence's description of his rape was, and this is wild, 200 pages longer than the version that wound up in print, which is a lot. And so some people will be like,

this kind of reads like he was more putting out a fantasy. That's a lot of time to spend talking about yourself being tortured in this kind of very graphic detail. It is tinged with romance too. about yourself being tortured in this kind of like very graphic detail that is, it is tinged with romance too. Like it's very, it's an odd bit of writing. Now that's just the way Lawrence writes. Yeah. Yeah. And also there's a huge difference between romanticizing the bad stuff that happens to you and romanticizing bad stuff in general, right? Yeah. Like if the way that you want

to process something bad is by romanticizing being like, at least my life is interesting and beautiful, even though it's terrible and tragic. Yeah. Like good on you. Yeah. So the journalists that we get these claims that Lawrence, he's basically writing pornography, right?

Just because he's so into this stuff, it didn't really happen, is a guy named Philip Knightley. And when I say journalist, you might put some air quotes around this, but he reports heavily on Lawrence, right? And he's kind of the origin of a lot of this. And he says, quote, it was so redolent of the sort of sadomasochistic literature that you get in the Charing Cross Road. It sort of cried out that this is Lawrence writing for his own interest in delectation,

right? It sort of cried out that this is Lawrence writing for his own interest in delectation. This reads like a lot of the sadomasochistic like smut that was being published at the time and so that's why I think it's fake. quote, Lawrence continued these sadomasochistic practices with the help of a man called John Bruce. Bruce was paid to birch Lawrence and then write an account of Lawrence's bearing under the birching. The letters were collected by Lawrence who read them again and got two kicks for his buck, so to speak. This is Knightley's

claim. The unedited version of the book also paints a darker and more self-serving and consciously imperialist picture of Lawrence. In the original text, for example, he describes Faisal as a very weak man, an empty man. You were able to use Faisal to get what you wanted. And is that a more accurate depiction of Lawrence or is that just kind of him in a much darker frame of mind after writing three versions of this story, right? How do we know what the first one said? Is it cause he's later saying like-

We know what earlier drafts say, right? We have that draft of the 400,000 word one, I think. Oh, we do have that draft. I think that's what he's talking about, not the original draft that's lost forever, or like the 335,000 word one or something like that. There are earlier, there are earlier longer drafts than what got published that we have access to.

I don't actually know exact, there's so many copies of Seven Pillars floating around. I admit that if I were to write that and I spent 200 pages describing a thing that happened to me, I could imagine being like, it's time for a third draft. Time for a third draft, I might need to cut this down a little bit. Kill your darlings.

Lawrence, maybe the torture scene is a little long. Yeah, there's this classic thing with writing where your first novel, you can't get away with spending eight pages Maybe the torture scene is a little long. Yeah. There's this classic thing with like writing where your first novel, you can't get away with spending eight pages describing stained glass. Yeah. But by the time you like on your like fifth novel and the audience is like.

There's a fucking window. Yeah. But by the time you're on your fifth novel, you can spend eight pages talking about stained glass cause you already have the author buy-in. So Lawrence, your problem was that it was your first book. It was your first book, buddy. You know? Well, actually, it was like his third through or second or third through like fifth books or something like that.

Whenever a homicide happens, two questions immediately come to mind. Who did this and why? And sometimes the answer to those questions can be found in the where. Where the crime happened. I'm journalist Sloane Glass, and I host the new podcast American Homicide. Each week, we'll explore some of this country's most infamous and mysterious murders. And you'll learn how the location of the crime became a character in the story. On American Homicide, we'll go coast to coast and visit places like the wide-open New Mexico desert, the swampy Louisiana bayou,

and the frozen Alaska wilderness. And we'll learn how each region of the country holds deadly secrets. So join me, Sloane Glass, on the new true crime podcast, American Homicide. Listen to American Homicide on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how Tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline

is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to the leading journalists in the field and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong though, I love technology, I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough.

So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999,

a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian, Elian. Elian Gonzalez.

Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami.

Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Piece, the Elian Gonzalez story as part of the MyCultura podcast network available on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Now nightly, I should say say, who is making this case that like Lawrence was an asshole. He was a real imperialist.

He was a bad person. He was this like masochist who lied about what happened to him. Knightley's not a great source himself. The first articles I found about him that were like, well, there's this guy who says, you know, all this bad stuff about Lawrence described him as like a scholar.

That's not really who Knightley was. To describe like who this guy is, I want to read a quote from the New York Times. Early in 1965, Philip Knightley and Colin Simpson, journalists specializing in feature pieces for the London Sunday Times, were assigned to follow up a 60-ish Scotman story that when he was 19 and Loris 33, he was paid by the Hero of Arabia to administer periodic beatings. That Lawrence relished testing his body in other ways was nothing new, but the revelation was clearly of a kind when stretched into a front page Sunday series to stimulate both

reader and newspaper circulation. By early June of the same year, the sensationally headlined articles began to appear, The Shake, Who Made Lawrence Love Arabia, and How Lawrence of Arabia cracked up a full and exclusive confession from the man who shared his tragic secret. With the global facilities, established press power and generous pocketbook at the Sunday Times at their disposal, Knightley and Simpson could locate and interview people from Turkey to Australia, pay for information, pry open library doors and foreign office files long locked shut and do it all in time to meet their newspaper deadlines.

So, you know, maybe take this with a grain of salt. Some of these things they're claiming, these recollections from other people decades later, you know, these guys who are hungry for big stories that they can sensationalize about, you know, T.E. Lawrence, right? Jerry- I just was like, don't care if it was like whether it was a kink or trauma dealing with because it was related anyway and like whatever.

Yeah, I'm interested in like whether or not it happened, right? But like, yeah, I have no moral claim based on it. Yeah. Right, right. Now, Jeremy Wilson, Lawrence's official's biographer, interprets the original text, or at least what we have of the earlier texts of Seven Pillars, very differently from Knightly. The fact that you have Lawrence being more of a dick, you know, about some of this stuff, as this segment from an article in The Independent makes clear.

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

original texts. So Wilson, who is more of a scholar, certainly than Knightley is like, well, no, actually like the original text includes him kind of talking about how he tried to get himself killed because he felt so bad about what he had done, right? Which does not portray him as like this cold imperialist, right, just fucking over people, right?

And is more a man who did some very immoral things, but was also trapped in this just fucked up situation. Right? Now- And that's the version that I feel like has been, that I've certainly taken away from this. Yes. Is the like, the man who always wants to do right

and realizes he can't and then feels trapped and like. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's probably the closest reality, to the reality that we're gonna get. He would have made such a good Catholic. Like he wants're gonna get. Based on what I can know about him. He would have made such a good Catholic. He wants to get whipped.

He would have made a nice, yeah. He likes to get whipped. He wants forgiveness. He would have been a great monk, right? Yeah, totally. If he had come about in the medieval era, he would have been so happy as a monk. Yeah.

Yeah. Now, partly as a result of the war on terror and largely pushed by the work of scholars like Barr and shedding doubt on aspects of Lawrence's narrative, Lawrence saw a reappraisal in the early 21st century that was largely late 20th, kind of early 21st century that was largely negative, right? The Arab revolt has regularly been described as a sideshow in World War I, which I really hate to hear whenever people are like, well, actually, it wasn't even that big a deal

that any of this went On because one in ten of the people living in the region died in the fighting right like this is not a sideshow This is a major historical event no matter how you slice it It's really fucked up when people argue otherwise sorry fewer white people were there sorry there weren't as many white people there, right? Lawrence has been described as a braggart, a liar, a fantasist, and a historic reappraisal of the man has to caution against taking this interpretation too far. Again, Barr, who's very properly critical, I would say responsibly in a historical sense,

critical of Lawrence, also describes Seven Pillars as essentially accurate, right? And more recent scholars, including the leftist academic, Neil Faulkner, have urged a reappreciation of Lawrence as a Titanic figure in world history and that of the region. Now, Margaret, you asked a little earlier, are we going to hear about what like happened to Dau? Right? And I, it's time for us to tell that story, which is a bummer.

Yeah. So after Lawrence left the car, the Karkemasish dig site in 1914, the two never met again. Because during the war, partly as a result of the war, there's a typhus epidemic in Doam's hometown and he dies in 1916. Oh, shit. So he's only like 16 or something. Yeah, he was, yeah, I think he might've been 18. Yeah, because like he was like 16 when Lawrence left, right? So he was probably like 18.

Yeah, but he does not get a long life. You know, this is partly as a result of the war, although not Lawrence's part in it. Lawrence is not an active participant in the fighting until Daum's dead. Now, if you don't find the claims made in Knightley's report incredible, and instead take Lawrence at his word

and the words that he sent along to close friends. He never had any other kind of intimate relationship, sexual or otherwise in his life. I want to quote now from an article in salon.com by Anthony Satin. In 1927, he wrote to his friend, the homosexual novelist, E.M. Forster, I'm so funnily made up sexually. And later that same year went further having read Forster's ghost story, Dr Dr. Wulecott, in which a man dies after a gay sexual encounter, Lawrence wrote that the Turks, as you probably know or have guessed through the reticences of Seven Pillars, did it to me by force. I couldn't ever do it, I believe. The impulse strong enough to make

me touch another creature has not yet been born in me." And that is, that kind of sounds like, yeah, like this is someone who is ace. That man's very ace, right? Like the following year with Robert Graves, the poet, and at that point his biographer, he had a discussion about fucking. As I wrote with some courage, I think, few people admit the damaging ignorance.

I haven't ever, and I don't much want to. And that's part of what's so interesting to me is that like, this isn't really some, if we're looking at Lawrence, this isn't something we have to be like wondering about because he, not only does he write about it, he is aware and open to homosexuality. He is talking to his gay friends about his sexuality,

which is so interesting to me, so unexpected, right? I really didn't think that we would have him directly talking about like fucking and being like, yeah, I never wanted to do it. Like, that's fascinating to me. Perhaps there's so many historical figures that I wish I knew that about, right? Cause you're like, oh, why did this woman

never have children or get married? Was she gay? Was she ace? Was it just never work out? Like, was she just actually loved dick but it was, didn't want to marry? Like who knows, you know? Yeah.

And it's like with Lawrence, this is as clear as you can get of a figure in this era talking about asexuality. And probably I think the best final source on this is one of Lawrence's homosexual friends, Vivian Richards. And it's like spelled V-Y-V-Y-A-N, it's a man's name, but I think it's just pronounced Vivian. TheV-Y-A-N, it's a man's name, but I think it's just pronounced Vivian.

The two met at Oxford and Vivian is in love. You've never seen the young ones? No, I haven't. Oh, there's a man named Vivian. Anyway. Well, Vivian is in love with Lawrence, right? Vivian is a homosexual man who has a massive crush on Lawrence and he was like-

I could fix him. Yeah, horribly sad that Lawrence was never reciprocated. He wrote later, he had neither flesh nor carnality of any kind. He received my affection, my sacrifice, in fact, eventually my total subservience, as if it was his due. He neither gave the slightest sign that he understood my motives or fathomed my desire. In return for all I offered him, with admittedly ulterior motives, he gave me the purest affection, love and respect that I have ever received from anyone. A love and respect that was spiritual in quality.

I realize now that he was sexless, at least that he was unaware of sex. And yeah, that's beautiful. That's kind of sweet. And that's like what sometimes like when people who have sexuality, who date people who are ace, you know, might be like, oh, well, there's something else that's beautiful about this.

Yeah, yeah. And that's very much what Vivian is saying. I think if Dome had lived and he might have written something similar, right? Like this was never a physical thing, but he was the best and most dedicated friend I ever had. Yeah. And this is where we will conclude

the life of Lawrence, Margaret. After one of the most action-packed first acts in history, the remainder of his military career and existence was not the stuff great movies are made of. The simple reason seems to be that he was just absolutely shattered by war. Lawrence's nerves never recovered and in 1935 at age 46 he opted to retire from the military. As he was settling into his new home, he wrote one friend of his discomfort with this situation,

I imagine leaves must feel this way after they have fallen from their tree and until they die. Let's hope that will not be my continuing state. Alas, it was. A week after writing this, Lawrence crashed his motorcycle and perished in the accident. And that... Wow. Yeah. Again, just like beautiful writer. Yeah. It's like when there's like several really sad musicians who accidentally drowned. And you're like, I'll let you have it. I'll let you pretend.

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

Whoa. See, I would watch the movie about the second half of his life, but it'd be more like watching The Lighthouse or something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That I would watch the movie about the second half of his life, but it'd be more like watching The Lighthouse or something Yeah, yeah, yeah That that I would as well Also, I'll be watched The Lighthouse great movie. Yeah, I think Lawrence of Arabia probably would have liked The Lighthouse Yeah, that would have been too. He wouldn't have gotten all the masturbation. I didn't get all the masturbation He would not not have been a fan of all of the masturbation. Yes, not interested in that. I'll make a new edit for me and him.

Yeah, explaining the mer-mussy to Lawrence of Arabia. If I get my time machine working, I'm gonna go back in time and be like, Lawrence, wait a second before you get on that motorcycle. All right, first off, this is a photo of a man named Willem Dafoe. He's gonna be born in a couple of decades. Great actor.

Now I need to explain to you with something called a book series called the Twilight series. This is not your kind of books. There are vampires, which I feel like you might be in do, but not in the way that you're into them. Yeah. Yeah. Oh man.

Yeah, what a, I didn't know the first thing about him. I've read about the Ottoman Empire, I've read about British Mandate Palestine. I knew that there was this guy, I never saw Lawrence of Arabia, the movie. Oh, it's great. You should see it. Yeah. And I think by the time I would have watched it, I would have been like, ah, another movie about a white guy and off to go save the world or whatever.

And well, now I want to watch the movie, but yeah, I recommend it. No he's he's interesting. And it's like most of the really simple narratives that are around available for him don't seem accurate. Yeah. You know, because like, absolutely is orientalism part of his story completely for sure. Yes. his orientalism part of his story completely. For sure, yes. Right? And like, but it's, but you can compare his orientalism to the guy, the like daddy guy who like wants to go

around the Ottoman Empire or whatever. Yeah. And then also, you know, he's still doing bad while trying to do good and ah man, he's interesting. Yeah, fascinating character. Yeah. Yeah, and that's Lawrence of Arabia. Well Margaret You're gonna go blow up a train now

We know legally not Go listen to cool people do cool stuff if you like complicated moral stories about people that I kind of like yeah, yeah Yeah, yeah, this was kind of that from me. Because that is, I guess we should answer the question I said we were going to be asking this. Where do you land, Lawrence of Arabia? Bastard, yes or no? Bastard in the way that we're all doomed to be.

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

I would just stay morally clean even if it kills me, whatever. Yeah. And here's someone who wanted to stay morally clean even though it would kill him. And then he's like, oh, no, nevermind. I'm just going to gun down everyone. Yeah. Time to machine gun hundreds of people. So like, he is a bastard. Yeah, everyone. Yeah, and so time to machine gun hundreds of people

He is a bastard and he's a bastard almost by like accident of birth and like thing he's involved in rather than like a Character trait. Yeah, you know like he's up to some bastardry. Yeah Yeah, it's tough. It's tough He did his best. Anyways. But he also probably shouldn't have been doing some of the things he was doing. Yeah. It's a mix.

Yeah, like don't stumble around in the fog in foreign countries. Don't stumble around in the fog of a foreign country and try to institute new states. Maybe you don't know what you're doing. Maybe that's a bad idea. Maybe there's more wisdom in the prime directive. Not that this is a less advanced, I'm not saying that,

but just in the idea that don't just go sticking your dick in every fucking situation you see. Maybe the fact that some people are having a war doesn't mean that you need to like make a call there, right? Even though you fell in love with one of the people. Even though you fell in love with one of them. And even though it is very sweet to say I'm going to liberate his entire race, yeah?

Yeah. It's also pretty fucked up in Orientalist to do. So maybe just don't do that. Maybe just buy him like some chocolates, you know? Maybe chocolates are better than launching a rebellion. Maybe the ring of power needs to be cast into the fiery pits of Mount Doom. Yeah, I'm sorry.

Yes, he is. There is some strong Boromir vibes to T.E. Lawrence. Yeah. He was Boromir maxing there for a little while. I wonder, some of the story about like going across the desert to go get the allies to attack the city. I'm like, did Tolkien read that? And then Aragorn going to go find the like undead army

to bring it to bear like. Tolkien obviously would say like, no, you know, this is none of it, because that was always his stance. But like, also it like obviously World War I influenced what he wrote and this is part of World War I influenced what he wrote and this is part of World War I. This definitely, who definitely takes from this, this is the basis of doom, right?

Yeah, totally. Like this is directly, like this is not, I'm not like going out on a limb here, this is directly what inspires a lot of doom. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, and it's not really all that hard to see why. Yeah. And it's also, it that hard to see why you know yeah And it's also it's interesting because it shows that Frank Herbert

I think understood this similarly to we do to how we do because dude is fundamentally about how like It's a really bad idea to have this white savior stumble into another culture and just start leading a war Well, he goes crazy. He commits a shitload of war crimes. He becomes an absolute monster. And like, oh, okay, you got it. You really took the right thing out of the T.E. Lawrence story. Unfortunately, everyone is going to interpret your book wrong for forever because you made the horrible mistake of doing it, making it all look really cool.

Yeah. And that's why I don't write. Yeah, this is why I don't write fiction about, for example, anarchist militant characters who are meant to be very complicated and not necessarily good people, but I also like writing about cool people so they wind up sounding cool.

And then people are like, oh, is this guy a good guy? No, no, he's not. And Bernie was curious, they should go read Robert's book after the revolution because that is what that is talking about. Yes, a book full of morally compromised people who regret their actions in war. Just to say, wear sunscreen, drink lots of water,

touch grass and pet a dog if that dog says they want to be petted. And if you want to do a moral action that is essentially never wrong, feed people. Feed people. Feed people. Don't blow up bridges. You know what?

Honestly, more often than not, blowing up bridges works out badly. Yeah, sure. Don't blow up a bridge, unless you're a hurricane. Then that's your business, you know? Yeah. Not that I support it, but you have that right, hurricane. And if you do want wanna do a hurricane,

just call up Nancy Pelosi, cause she's got that hurricane on speed dial. Oh, I don't know what that's a reference to. I only know about the drink. What the fuck is, what the fuck is Nancy Pelosi doing with the hurricane? Oh, the, okay. I was just doing,

I've been doing a bunch of episodes about witches recently, and they were believed to control the weather. And that was a, it was actually not actually what caused the witch hunts, but a lot of them were, people were like, oh, the witches control the weather. And I'm like, ha ha ha, look at you silly, early, modern fools thinking people, oh crap, no, that's happening now.

Yep. Yeah. Anyway. Anyways, bye. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonedmedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday.

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