It Could Happen Here - A Brief History of Molotov Cocktails

Episode Date: March 11, 2022

We sit down with James Stout to learn the history of Molotov Cocktails. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Oh, welcome to It Could Happen Here. I'm Robert Evans, recording from a deeply unsettling Airbnb right near the border of Texas and Mexico. I'm here with my good friend, James Stout.

Say hello to the people. Hi, everyone. And we're going to talk about, well, let me introduce briefly. You'll see the episodes soon enough. We're down here reporting on a mixture of right-wing militancy, government militarization of the border, and the attempts by people trapped in the middle to survive and avoid those authoritarian structures. So today, James and I are going to talk about Molotov cocktails. But first, James, you want to talk about this Airbnb we're in for a second? Because you book this motherfucker. Deeply, yeah, yeah, yeah.

this Airbnb we're in for a second? Because you book this motherfucker. Deeply, yeah, yeah, yeah. So what happens when you have like less than 24 hours before you arrive and need a place for more than two people is you really get into the depth of Airbnb. And I found this place, which, how to describe it?

Yeah, yeah. Unsettling, yeah. Yeah, it just feels wrong. I can't put my finger quite on it, but there is a basement, which definitely has, like, murder vibes. And there's not basements in Texas normally. And it's crumbling and unsettling. There's a sump pump that doesn't appear connected to anything.

There's puddles of standing water. I think there's, like, nine bedrooms in this house. Yeah, but only one like is upstairs uh and it seems to have like like to be designed to command an arc of fire around the house then there are other bedrooms which are like kind of in this stable block uh what else is weird like three of the bedrooms are separate from the main house and built in a way that it looks like a roadside motel. And then there's a main house that has like four living rooms. We're sitting at a large kitchen table right now, which spins around a central axis for some inexplicable reason.

We have the overwhelming feeling that something horribly wrong was done in this space because it doesn't. Everything is a little off. None of the decorations look like people. This is some sort of trap house, but we cannot identify the kind. I think, Robert, you described it best when you said, it's like one of those, this person does not exist photos, but of a home and you can't work out what's wrong, but it's not human and it's not right. So we just had to get that out of our systems because it's been deeply unsettling the last couple of days we're here. Now, James, in 2020, you wrote an article about Molotov cocktails that got you in a bit of a fascinating situation. I want you to just kind of walk me through what happened there and what the fallout was.

Yeah, well, the one that started it was about how to tear down statues. And that was for Popular Mechanics. and in that article i interviewed a couple of experts uh and one of them explained how to make something called thermite um thermite it's like an exothermic reaction you mix a couple of things they get hot they get hot enough to melt some metal so if you were uh interested in bringing down a statue of a bigot that might be helpful to you by the, it's legal in basically all of the US to possess thermite and pretty simple to make. Not that, you know, you can Google it.

You can figure that out yourself. Yeah, I'm not telling you how to make it. I'm telling you that it exists. It exists and is surprisingly legal. Yes. And if you need to weld some shit underwater or join together some train tracks, it's the right tool for the job. Yeah, if you happen to be, I know a lot of the Russian army in Ukraine

listens to this podcast. If you happen to be in the process of abandoning hundreds of millions of dollars in armor, Thermite can allow you to stop Ukrainian farmers from towing it back to their homes. Yeah, but don't do that if you're a Russian soldier. Just run. Go to the Ukrainians.

I'll let you call your mom. They're nice. Okay, so I write the story for PopMac, right? It's just a useful guide to people who are looking to safely dispose of a racist statue, right? And when I write it, I think their readership might lean pretty conservative, or they felt like that was a safe space. Anyway, it immediately became like the epicenter of the culture war for like a week, including triggering one Benjamin Shapiro,

who then subtweeted me, like a coward, and asked when I'll be writing my story about Molotov cocktails, which I subsequently wrote. So that gets us to the Molotov cocktail story. It was in Russia Today as well, now banned media outlet. Your article, you didn't write it for Russia Today. No, no, no.

I wrote it for a British magazine called Huck. I describe Huck as like vice, but less tragic. Like after vice went bad, Huck's cool. And so, yeah yeah ben was upset uh ben orchestrated this kind of right-wing panic around the story uh they cancelled pop mech for a while and i wrote a piece about the history and i guess chemistry of molotov and their role in democratization movements that was really fascinating to me so yeah that's how we got to the molotov story. And you want to give me kind of some CliffsNotes

on the history of the Molotov and its role? Because what I know about Molotov cocktails, I assume it's named after Molotov of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, right? Vyacheslav Molotov. Yeah. And I know I have been near a couple of them going off. I nearly got lit on fire by one, and I watched a colleague get lit on fire by another.

So I am aware of what they do. But yeah, why don't you walk us through kind of the close notes of the history of Molotovs? Yeah, absolutely. So a lot of times you'll go on the internet and you'll read something about history and it will turn out not to be right. And that's often the case with Molotov cocktails.

So yes, they're named after Vyacheslav Molotov. We can get to why they're named that way in a second. But their origin is actually with Franco's nationalist, fascist, national fascist, whatever you want to call them, national Catholic troops in the Spanish Civil War. So early on in the Spanish Civil War, 1937-ish, the Republic had some Soviet tanks. And they were using these against the Fuentes de Ebro.

They were using these against the Nationalists. And Nationalists were throwing what they then called petrol bombs at the tanks to great effect. Those old tanks had rubber on the wheels that turned the tracks and those would melt. So that's when they were first used. If you're not familiar with what a Molotov cocktail is, it's an improvised incendiary device. It's a glass thing filled with a flammable thing topped with some kind of cloth with a flame that the cloth is burning. And when you throw it, obviously the glass thing breaks, the flammable liquid comes out and the flame catches a liquid and you have a fireball.

The first time we see them is used in the Spanish Civil War. We see references to them in British media in the 1930s when British reporters were going out to watch the Spanish Civil War, and they were like, wow, what a development, what a technology. They're used there, but where they get their name is in Finland, right? When the Soviets invade Finland. Why they got their name is that Molotov claimed that his planes were not dropping bombs. You'll see like a history of gaslighting in Russian foreign policy, Soviet foreign policy here.

He claimed they weren't dropping bombs. He claimed that they were bringing aid to the people of Finland, right? And Finland was like, this is ridiculous. So they started calling the bombs Molotov's bread baskets. And pretty soon everything that was shit was associated with Molotov. So bombers were Molotov's chickens. Blackout curtains were Molotov's curtains. And so they switched many of their state alcohol factories to making Molotov cocktails.

And so they started calling these, what were called petrol bombs, Molotov cocktails. And that's how the name stuck. It is neat that Russia has such a long history of causing other nations to retool their domestic liquor production towards making bombs to throw at Russian soldiers. And like how, what are we now 80 odd years on from from 1936 37

and like it's it's not always russian tanks but it's nearly always russian tanks right like spain and the russian tanks are obviously like in the republic in spain is is much preferable to franco uh finland hungary in 1956 right um and today in ukraine you see people throwing bottles of petrol with flames on top of russian tanks but yeah they have a long history yeah i mean and it's it's among other things like especially if you don't have easy access to firearms and and no access to explosives and stuff like it's it's not a force equalizer but it does allow you to to do certain things in militarily that that would be harder to do um if you were like trying to manufacture something a little bit more like it's easier than making a grenade right like yeah yeah and it does much more damage than a rock but it's not much harder to come by for most people

right um one really interesting thing i read about them was by this academic who i really like his work it's called ali khadiva uh and he's iranian and he's looked at like democratization movements all over the world right so how do authoritarian regimes collapse and his research suggested that like peaceful extreme like extreme like quote-unquote peaceful protests tend not to work. And insurgencies hadn't had that high of a success rate. But his paper is called Stickstones and Molotov Cocktails. And his research suggests that if you're prepared to do violence against property

by hitting it with a stick, throwing a stone, throwing a Molotov cocktail, then you are more likely to have success in toppling a regime. So because they're accessible to people who don't necessarily have guns or aren't doing insurgencies, they've had this really interesting role in arming non-state actors or arming liberation movements throughout history. I mean, that's really interesting, because it would seem to suggest, like a reading of that paper would seem to suggest that, yeah, it's not so much like being willing to carry out like a militant movement, but being willing to destroy things is one of the primary signs that like you have a chance of actually overthrowing an authoritarian regime. It's like your ability to prepare to do damage like of a financial nature.

Like is that kind of the argument he's making? Yeah, I think the argument he's making is that like – and it's an argument that can't be made enough, right? I think the argument he's making is that like, and it's an argument that can't be made enough, right? Damage to property is not the same as damage to people. And violence against property in the name of liberation or justice is okay and tends to work. But yeah, you have to have some skin in the game. You have to be prepared to fuck some shit up if you want to bring down a regime which is prepared to use violence against you. So that's kind of talking about the use of these tools within liberatory struggles, but they're not – I guess liberatory struggle isn't the eye of the beholder. That's talking about the use of these tools and kind of like street movements that are agitating for change. But we also have this military history, which I think is much more muddled in terms of its actual efficacy as a weapon, its ability to deny area, its ability to destroy or damage like enemy – like combat ability.

Do you have any kind of sense of like how effective – like we're seeing all these people in Ukraine arming themselves with cocktails. Evidence of the efficacy of these in combat is a lot murkier, at least within the present conflict. Do you have a sense of how historically they useful they tend to be for that yeah i think depending on the age of the and then the type of the vehicle you're attacking right so like these old russian tanks um and what they would do a lot was make something which is not quite what we would see as a molotov cocktail so i had a whole blanket that was soaked in petrol and that would get caught up in the track. There was a bit of rubber on the wheels interfaced with the tracks and it would melt and that would immobilize the tank and then folks could swarm it from all angles. That was the move there. I think they've been more useful in Ukraine than one might have expected because of the nature of some of the Russian military vehicles.

They tend to carry their fuel on the outside. They also, because of the mud, they'll carry lots of pieces of wood that they can use to put under their wheels, like sand ladders on a truck. So those tend to catch fire more easily. I know the BMPs also have fuel storage on the back door, which is pretty's pretty optimal for

right if you want to walk up behind someone and set something on fire uh so they've worked pretty well there in other places yeah they seem to be more of annoyance like i know i've spoken to people who have been in the military uh in the uk and like the big thing in northern ireland right again right you have a sort of uh a liber movement there. And so they were very popular, but they didn't seem to do much of it and cause people distress, cause people personal injury sometimes, but not particularly to,

they weren't game changing in terms of like the monopoly on violence there. But yeah, they seem to be very, very, I think they're better when you have a ton of people throwing them. I think if you have a lot of people

setting things on fire, that tends to be, causes people to stop. i think with russia being uh lacking in excellent leadership it seems like we could say in ukraine and some of their soldiers may be lacking in training and with the fact that they tend to carry fuel externally so their vehicles catch fire if you can just convince some conscripts that their vehicle is on fire, they are going to get out and run away. And we've seen that a lot, right? A lot of people running away. Yeah, when I think about outside of military uses where I've seen Molotovs be most effective in the time I've been covering conflict,

the first thing that comes up is the Maidan revolution in Ukraine, late 2013, early 2014, where people were throwing, some of the same people throwing molotovs at Russian troops now, were through a mix of throwing by hand and like catapult devices were launching sometimes hundreds of molotovs in a couple of minutes and like melting tank treads to the ground, which is definitely like,

that's obviously it was effective. It's also almost a different kind of weapon system when you're dealing with that kind of volume. It's like a grad molotov launcher. yeah um but then i can think about like there's this really amazing video that you can find if you look of uh greek anarchists on bicycles swarming past a greek police station and throwing it looked like about a dozen molotovs at once and and just like sacking a police station that way and then biking right the fuck off and like disappearing into the city um which is which you know seemed like a more effective tactic than some of the ways i've seen them used where it's like a person throwing a

molotov um and then the cops get really fucking angry but it doesn't really do that much damage to them and then people get or they hit the wrong person like it is it is a tool with a high degree of chance for error if you don't know what you're doing. Yeah, it's a decent skill requirement. You also really don't want to have like anything flammable on your hands or shirt or anything like that. Like I've seen people really end up badly after trying to make a Molotov

and just hurting themselves trying to light it or throw it or drop it. Yeah, it's not one of those things that like you want to casually suggest people use because the odds of actually injuring yourself with it are pretty high if you're not being careful um and if you if you're going into a situation where you think people might have molotovs natural fibers people natural fibers not synthetics yeah wool is your friend yeah uh welding gloves your friend like yeah you don't want to be caught on fire. Welcome.

I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows

as part of My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So let's talk a little bit about how, like, what are the different kinds of constructions of Molotovs you've seen people using and how they changed over time? You talked a little bit about kind of the early Spanish ones were like full blankets and stuff. Yeah, I think one of the interests, so we go from Spain to Finland, right? Well, we're seeing the same thing, basically petrol or maybe ethanol or something like that inside a bottle with just a wick, right? Something sort of, I know in Spanish Civil War, they were using jars a lot, like jam jars. But when things started to develop, I think,

is in the UK, so in Britain, and you actually have this guy called Tom Winteringham who went to Spain as a war correspondent, decided to become a soldier, and then returned to the UK and tried to share what he'd learned with British people, right? This article he wrote for Picture Post.

And he was very much into Molotov cocktails as a great way of fighting an invasion. Much like actually the old guy you heard, did you hear the guy who called into NPR recently? Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was outstanding. Just turning NPR into a how to do guerrilla warfare.

So what they did, they made this thing called the number 76 grenade. And they made 6 million of them, I think. Jesus Christ. And they still find them. It's funny. They'll still find them in like, when they'll be digging the foundation for a building.

They'll be like, oh shit, this is not a box of beer. And what those had was a strip of rubber that they dropped in it. It was in a bottle with a cap and it had a phosphorus igniter actually. So you didn't have to light it you just tossed it um yeah and those were extremely effective the rubber dissolves and then that allows the flaming liquid to adhere better to the person or thing that is hit right

and you're almost like making a napalm bomb yes exactly yeah yeah yeah um and the phosphorus will last for a long time it's much less risky to theower. And you can also have a whole box of them and just keep throwing them, right? You don't have to light each one. You don't have to have someone else light each one. So those seem pretty effective. I don't know if they were ever really used in anger, because obviously the Nazis never landed in the UK. landed in the UK. But yeah, that was a pretty big development. And that kind of set the tone for the other developments, which I've seen at least. I'm not like a Molotov expert, but people put sugar in them.

People put polystyrene in them. What do you call that? What does sugar in them do? I think it gives it a higher viscosity. And I think they sort of of it maybe melts when they and it like sticks and it like creates like a sticky kind of hot like like if you're making toffee i would imagine um the big thing i've seen people putting in them is various like uh plastics right so um when you look at the you've seen these videos old ladies in ukraine with cheese graters just grating like packing styrofoam.

And they put that in there. And that does the same thing, right? It creates a more viscous kind of napalm, which adheres to the thing that you throw it at. And that, I think, if you're talking about persuading someone that their tank is on fire, if it keeps burning for 10, 20 seconds, you don't have a very long time to get out of a BMP. So you're going to start getting out, I would imagine. Well, and that does point to an interesting reality of not just this war, all war, but specifically in the context of territorial kind of volunteers who are on paper terribly outgunned. terribly outgunned. But the psychological dimension is that,

like you said, if you can convince people they may be in an armored vehicle that has unquestioned supremacy over the partisans attacking them, but if you can convince them they are on fire, they will make decisions that lead them to no longer have the advantage in terms of firepower. It's not impossible to do.

Yeah, I think you saw that. I think there was some footage from Maidan of them sort of ambushing some armored vehicles. And yeah, once you throw half a dozen Molotov cocktails from above at windows, you can either get those people to abandon their vehicle and run away if that's their goal. If they get out, they're a lot more vulnerable to further attacks from Molotov cocktails or anything else, right? So yeah, I think it really plays into that kind of guerrilla or sort of like underdog side of conflict. Yeah, one of the things that's interesting to them about me, you and I just finished this series that dealt heavily with like 3D printed weapons, homemade guns and stuff. But, you know, there's a lot that you as the state can do to reduce people's access to firearms

or even to reduce people's access to like knives that are bigger than kitchen knives. A lot you can do to reduce people's access to conventional arms, but everywhere's got liquor. Yeah, exactly. It's almost impossible to stop people having them, right? If you have gasoline, diesel, alcohol, and glass things, and fabric, and a lighter, you have access to these. So yeah, they're accessible to everyone.

And they are, yeah, incredibly effective. Like they're probably the most effective And they are incredibly effective. They're probably the most effective thing that you could make in your home if you were doing an insurgency or fighting Russian invaders in this case. Yeah. Well, James, was there anything else you wanted to get into on the subject of Molotovs or other forms of cocktails? Yeah. Let me think. I should probably say that it's probably illegal to make them in the United States. I mean, there are specific ways you legally can, but you need a number of different permits. Yeah, yeah. You do have to ask the government. So I probably wouldn't suggest

doing that. But no, I think it's always interesting to look at these like uh if we want to move towards a world where there is less authority more freedom then these things which take away the state's monopoly on the ability to do violence should always be into not necessarily like things that we want but like it's interesting yeah that's one of the things that's fascinating to me obviously ukraine is a a pretty standard government within the global – or at least up until this point has been. Like they are a state that has done a number of ugly things in its past and will do them in the future. But they're in this fascinating moment where the government has really set down any claim to a monopoly on force in a lot of fascinating ways, the kind of widespread, here's how to make a Molotov.

Here's how to disable. And one of the things that's fascinating, the Ukrainian government very famously sent around sheets, which are like, here is where to throw Molotovs to do the most damage to different Russian vehicles, which are also Ukrainian vehicles. Yeah. And also those vehicles now belong to random farmers. Like I saw that there was a thing with the Ukrainian equivalent of the IRS

who'd said like, don't worry, you don't need to declare this tank on your income tax, right? How does one tax a person who has a tank? Yeah. Or in the case of some of them has a $20 million anti-aircraft system. Yeah. Who is the tax man who is willing to go and collect that? Like they have become ungovernable, right?

Yeah, I mean, they are in the thick of it. And maybe for the rest of all of our lives, nobody knows how long this thing is going to last. But if the war does end in any kind of reasonable time frame, what's Ukraine going back to? I don't know how they go back to being a normal state when they have opened the floodgates to everyone is the army now. Yeah, well, I think it's, yeah, it calls into question a number of things, right? Like that maybe you don't necessarily always need this very strict disciplinarian structure to fight very effectively.

But also, yeah, that like, do you need the state, right? People are just doing their own thing right now. And yeah, I don't know how you really take that back. Like, how do you go and collect the tanks from people? They know how to kill tanks. That's what they've been doing. Yeah, the Ukrainian government in the future, if we imagine a time of peace,

it'll be quite a while before there's any chance of like, well, we'd better send in the riot troops to crack down on this protest. It's like, no, you're not going to get those riot troops to go anywhere near there. Yeah. Like, uh, yeah. We're testing out this armed society as a polite society thesis. Right. But yeah, I don't know how the police return to a country which is seemingly at least holding off if not defeating a military superpower. Yeah. Yeah, it is a fascinating question and no one really has a clear answer, but I do think it's interesting.

Of course, they have embraced the Molotov as you've kind of made the case here. It really has this history as this great kind of democratizing force within the conflicts between people and governments and governments and governments. Yeah, and people and capital right like if you're prepared to destroy capital goods like people have done for centuries

and that that seems to be the way to make change right it's kind of interesting a thing to reflect on from our myanmar podcast i thought was that they had very strict gun ownership laws before this um very very strict apart from for one ethnic group called the Chin. But what they've promised to do afterwards, at least according to our sources, is to allow people to keep and bear arms, right? Because I guess they kind of have to, right? Because A, they can't stop them anymore. These people are 3D-printed guns.

And B, the only way they got freedom, or if they're able to defeat the Tatmadaw, then the only way they've become free is through fighting for their freedom. And it seems that they're not going to be willing to give that up, especially for the ethnic groups there. So yeah, it's really interesting to see what kind of a state emerges from a sort of, what's the word? It's not an authoritarian structure, right?

The militaries, a lot of people in Ukraine are not necessarily authoritarian structures. So what emerges for the state when we've had this horizontal resistance? Yeah, these are fascinating questions and ones that I think we'll all be continuing to ask and answer for the foreseeable future. For now, do you have anything you want to plug

before we roll out, James? No, you should listen to our podcast on Myanmar. You can follow me on Twitter. That's my name, at James Stout. I have Patreon. I write for some other things. I teach at the community college. If you want to take some history courses, we can learn about Molotovs, have a lecture

about that. But otherwise, no, that's about all. Well, that's going to do it for us here. Until next time, don't make a Molotov if it's illegal where you live, but do think about Molotovs because as the last couple of weeks have shown us, you could by next week be living in a state where it's very legal to make Molotov cocktails. That could happen to any of us. You never know, you know? You never know. So, you know, do some reading online. Use a VPN to do that reading that reading yeah tour browser if you're going to

be how to make molotov do some very careful reading and um you know keep an eye on the world it could happen here as a production of cool zone media for more podcasts from cool zone media visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of right.

An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.