Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 172 - The Battle of Sarikamish

Episode Date: September 6, 2021

The Ottoman Empire trips over its own dick into WWI, orders an army to attack up a mountain in the middle of winter without shoes, and commits a genocide. sources: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/60960/wwi-centennial-turkish-debacle-sarikamish https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ew39InPunOY https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/firstworldwar/spotlights/armenian.htm https://www.armenian-genocide.org/1915-1.html https://fx.substack.com/p/today-in-caucasian-history-the-battle-4ab Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys

Hello and welcome to yet another episode of the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe and with me today is the Zoo Crew, Francis and Shox. Liam is still in California and I need to record episodes before I go to Armenia this weekend. So I've drafted them into the hall of horrors that we are creating here today. Hey fellas. Look, I always appreciate doing a podcast where I'm not running it because that means that I get to smoke weed. Otherwise I have to pay attention and then this is not going to work.

I'm just really disappointed because I was told there was a Hall of Horrors and I assumed there was some sort of carnival ride. Instead, I got this bullshit. It's a carnival ride as long as you enjoy long walks through the mountains that are mostly one way uh you know

i i feel like the jugglers don't even want anything to do with this mess today um now this is where i get to point out that you have uh had the uh the joys of joining me whenever we talk about awful shit from world war one hasn't been planned that way it just always kind of ends up that way right like you've you were there for our luigi codorna redo um uh you were there for uh conrad van holtendorf um so this is like the trifecta i mean obviously there is the world war one like there's the verdun's and the Passchendaele's and a few other ones. It's like the obvious glaring ones. But there's a few other battles that are so catastrophically stupid, and they change the way history plays out.

The people just don't give them the attention they deserve. And that's why we are talking about the Battle of Saracomish today. Have you ever heard of this one before? No. Saracomishish that's right see i saw you named this and i was trying to uh you named it sarah comish now i know how to pronounce it i was just thinking it was scaramouche like uh um scaramouche scaramouche it's exciting to talk about queen but no that's fine yeah it is the the battle of freddie mercury it's the battle of what they did to poor freddie mercury in that fucking movie um but i never saw it you did yourself a lot of favors i mean it's scara scaramouche also

just kind of vaguely sounds like something i might like like maybe an alternative form of the ruben or like you know maybe like but uh it's a ruben that doesn't quite care so much like it's like a it's like sauerkraut but different in some way like instead of like cabbage sweet kraut yeah oh god i just made the worst sandwich ever it's uh it's a it's a ruben but instead of uh the sauerkraut you have like have the funny spaghetti candy on top. Ugh. Or some sour worms. You just mix it in with pixie sticks. Ugh.

Now, there's battles that happen throughout time that change the course of history. The Kursks, the Stalingrads, the Gettysburgs. changed the course of history the kursk's the stalin grads the gettysburgs um and this should be included among them but it's generally not and i think the reason for that is because we are talking about two of probably the worst armies in world war one and not to mention both of them would have some pretty serious other shit going on as soon as the war ended in one case during the war uh that's because this battle is far between the ottoman empire and the russian empire um two two dying old ziggurats slapping each other with piles of dead um so this is so we're talking before this is pre-russian revolution then yes yes it's like a fistfight in a hospice yes it's exactly what that is

and to be fair you guys joined me on more than one episode about Russia and generally it's where like and this is where Russia fucks up I don't say that at a single point other than like starting they're getting into World War I but we're not going to talk about the Russian side of World War I

other than being Russian just in general other than being the Russian Empireussia didn't do anything wrong here which is one of the few times you're ever going to hear joe say that yeah um and honestly it takes fighting the turks for joe to say that russia did nothing wrong this is one of those unique parts of history where like the russian empire is um uh heroes is undeniably a force for bad things in in human history generally speaking um but world war one they did more for to stop the armenian genocide than literally anyone else so it's like oh fuck i kind of have to give you this one right like they knew what was happening. Real assholes later.

But I mean, in this one moment, I thought we were cool. Like, legitimately, the Tsar did more for Armenia than almost anyone else. And it's like, it's the worst Tsar, right? Like, it's Tsar Nicholas II, who's a fucking idiot. It's like, I mean, it's not because he truly cared about Armenians. I mean, it had to do with him considering himself the protectorate of Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire. But like

still, he helped. It's the Onion article where like when the worst guy you know is right. Also, I feel like it's just kind of like a participation medal for not actively making the genocide worse.

Congratulations. You didn't do this one, guys. Yeah. You did a lot of ethnic cleansing, but this one, not on your hands, technically. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, good for you. I mean, the same thing could be said for like the United States and helping stop the Bosnian genocide. Like, ooh, congratulations on this one, guys.

Like, you did it. You don't actually have to go full Chomsky. You can actually give them credit for not letting a genocide just continue. You accidentally called it this time. When you roll the dice 20 times,

I do like your odds of eventually coming up on the right number. Now, the Battle of sarah kamish is probably without a doubt the most lopsided battles in all of world war one and it is the small domino that would eventually lead to the armenian genocide being committed by turkish nationalists of the ottoman empire No, that's a big, small domino, big domino. We'll get there. And I do,

I do understand that if, um, any, uh, anyone of like that say Turkish history or Armenian history, they're like, but Joe, you're leaving a lot of things out.

You are correct. Eventually I will have to cover the entire Armenian genocide. Today is not that day. Um, it's when Joe starts really heavily drinking and finally gives up all hope. That's my secret. I starts really heavily drinking and finally gives up all hope that's my secret I'm always heavily drinking I've never had hope people have always asked me like how do you

study genocides for not only for your job here on the show but also in school that is I'm dead inside now to get to this point we do have to figure out how exactly the Ottoman Empire joined Germany in such a badly thought out war in the first place. And as most people know, the Ottoman Empire was known at this point of history and a little bit before then as the sick man of Europe. Now, this can be debated when exactly this period started, but the Ottoman Empire had been formed all the way back in 1299.

It was an old rickety shit bucket and it was showing its cracks. And the period of decline, it's a lot like trying to point out when exactly the fall of Rome started, but on a much smaller, dumber scale. There's a lot of different points you can point out of like, oh, this is when the sick man era started.

I'm not going to try to find it. But now at this point, they were fighting nearly 40 years of constant warfare, trying to hold together their dying empire by the time World War I started. And they spent most of that time losing those wars. Ottoman Empire, early period, most like the lustful turk has conquered

so many parts of europe or whatever but that that era is long gone the ottoman empire is not a military power to be feared in any capacity unless maybe russia who's equally incompetent they just have more bodies um this is both in a good way and in a bad way usually i mean like to be fair that was one of the ottoman empire strengths as well it was huge uh they could i mean at one point they created they controlled most of the balkans uh they created they controlled parts of uh the middle east that's you know israel or what is today israel palestine North Africa, it was very large. They could pull in a huge pool of manpower. But as they started losing these various wars, they're fighting to including losing most of the Balkans, Greece, and a few other places, those numbers would dwindle. And all of these wars, other than being sparked by the fact that being in the Ottoman Empire, while being one of these minorities was kind of hard.

The Ottoman Empire is considered a caliphate. So most of these people were Orthodox Christians, some of them Catholic, some other parts of Islam. They were living as what's known as Demi, which is like non-believers under Islamic law. You had to pay extra taxes. You couldn't have certain jobs. You couldn't enter the civil service unless you had connections. At one point, there was an Armenian that was the foreign minister somehow, even though legally he shouldn't have been able to hold the job.

But like, you were allowed to have very specific jobs. You were taken advantage of. Ottoman police, military could just fuck with you for no reason. So, and this also coalesced together with a swell of nationalism, which is the underlying cause of World War I in general, right?

So, isn't that the cause of most world wars? Yeah, normally. I mean, a lot of wars either, you know, I want your shit or I want you to go away, like, permanently. Yeah, I mean... Compromising another nation to a permanent end. You could... Thank you, John Cena. You could argue that nationalism causes most wars. I think that's very true true but also very reductive um but yeah for the sake

of this nationalism well no i mean you know then also you get into like you know what is actually a nation and what's a nation state so like you know and then you get into like whether or not uh you know certain wars can be called nationalism because is there really like a nation that they were a part of that you know whatever but and you be called nationalism because is there really like a nation that they were a part of that, you know, whatever, but, and you're going to get people that subscribe nationalism to not the bad

things that we're used to here in the West. And like, so when you try to say, you know, like Kurdish nationalism or Palestinian nationalism or Armenian nationalism, like, ah, that sounds like Nazi shit.

Like, Nope, not quite. Because, you, that sounds like Nazi shit. Like, nope. Not quite. Because there's something to be said of an already powerful nation who already has nation states and borders compared to an oppressed people who want a secure state for themselves. So I won't really get into that. Oh, wait. I just heard an Irish tin whistle off in the background. I won't really get into that.

Oh, weird. I just heard an Irish tin whistle off in the background. Not to mention, a lot of this nationalism was born because of how awful the Ottomans were to them as a group. They created an outgroup for themselves. If they simply let them assimilate into the empire, into normal imperial life, a lot of this probably wouldn't have happened um but as one uh breakaway nation succeeded others were like hey the ottomans look kind of beatable right now and in most of those cases russia's like i heard you needed help um a thing that has never happened after that yeah of course not just just trotting behind like an eager dog. It's like, come on. Yeah.

A lot of this was like... I got some guns. A lot of this was guns, sometimes direct troops. Again, because Tsar Nicholas considered himself the protector of Orthodox Christians, which most of these groups were in various form or another. And by the 19th century, things were not looking good for the Ottoman empire and rightfully so. Fuck them. Um, it's actually in my script.

I wrote that. Um, I'm going to be saying that often to make, to make sure that you say the Ottoman empire, fuck them. You got to put it down. I didn't, I didn't want anybody to leave this episode without knowing how I felt.

Uh, now as the Ottomans were dying... A common complaint we get, actually, is not knowing exactly how Joe feels on a subject because he's just so shy. Yeah. Now, as the Ottomans were dying, other imperial powers slid in to fuck with them and to steal their shit. This is most prominent with the French, the Russians, and occasionally the British for good measure. The French and Russians themselves did a lot of the fuckery, mostly because they... So, obviously, the French overwhelmingly Catholic, Russians overwhelmingly Orthodox.

And then the Orthodoxy has various other smaller subsects like the Russian Orthodox Church, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Greek Orthodox Church, Armenian Orthodox Church. All of these are... Russia didn't really see the point of differentiating them because, of course, they didn't. No, all Orthodox, they're ours. Meanwhile, the French are like, no, no, no. All Catholics, those are ours.

They have differing viewpoints. And at various points, the Ottomans themselves would consider via treaty, the Russians to be the protectors of all Christians within their borders, to include Catholics and Orthodox, which, of course, would mean Catholics would be treated like shit by the people who are supposed to be treating all Christians better. And then at one point, the French would be made the protectors of all Christians within their borders and would favor Catholics to include like Palestine and things like that. This is actually what led to the Crimean War. It's as stupid as it sounds, I promise.

That whole war started because the French did gunboat diplomacy and the Russians were like, we're supposed to be the protector. What the fuck? Then they invaded. It's literally that stupid.

It's an entire conflict with the the the best known uh battle in the entire conflict is like the charge of the light brigade which is just a bunch of like fancy british dandies just driving themselves into a bunch of cannons so good news that episode's coming soon um Now, while most of this is soft power grabs, they didn't actually care about Catholics or Orthodox. They would have an in in the Ottoman court. And if you happen to be one of these European protectorates, you can influence Ottoman policy.

The Ottoman Empire is incredibly weak. And like, we'll do whatever you say. Just stop stealing our shit. Which, of course, allows them to come in more and more and just steal more of your shit with extra steps. This is just disguised as religious protectionism. The Christian population of the empire, like the Armenians, the Assyrians, the Pontic Greeks, were during all this point becoming the targets of frequent pogroms, as well as the Yazidis. But nobody ever did anything to protect them.

Unfortunately, it would ring true until very frequently or until very recently rather um now among europeans uh the situation became problematically known as the eastern question the first time that question was ever asked that didn't directly lead to a genocide because nobody's ever said how do we deal with blank question and it's been good now it's not like oh how do we deal with the you know the east questions like well they're coming over at nine so we should have like you know a nice brunch spread set it's never it's always genocide and it's also never you know yeah never like uh how do we deal with the marshmallow question? It's always just a bad thing. Anytime you have national leaders discussing things in vague general terms, it almost always is just like, well, there's a genocide. by the the brits the french and the russians did not mean genocide however that didn't mean a genocide did not occur obviously otherwise i wouldn't have been born in michigan and it doesn't and it doesn't mean that genocide wouldn't at least be one of the options oh don't worry guys

it's fine the british the french and the russians are talking it out and it's sure to be good for you well in in this case, the question meant, how can we, like, what do we do with the Ottoman Empire? Like, they, for the French and the British, the Ottoman Empire is very important. Not because it, you know, it had all this land and minerals and other things that they

could exploit within. That was also important. But they were also, like, the main thing stopping Russian expansion throughout the region was the Ottomans being there, which is why they fought so many goddamn wars. And having a buffer zone effectively right there against Russia was very, very good for France and Britain. That means they didn't have to constantly fight wars, but Turks could do it. The Turks could do it. And not to mention if like another part of the question is, OK, if it falls apart, what what do we get? Like, how can we divvy this up while also propping up bits and pieces of the Ottoman Empire as a shell of some kind to continue doing its job, checking Russian expansion? That was the question. Unfortunately, by the time the question trickled down to Turkey, it did turn into genocide.

Three different ones actually uh but yeah uh now this was all of this happened at the same time as the ottoman uh economy and which was always kind of in the shitter uh through its late stages to crater just constantly uh it was like going back if i was to compare compare, it's like a Weimar Germany level economy here. Money is effectively worthless because the economy is tanking so quickly, constantly. Right now, this was fine for the Europeans. They didn't care so much because they could rope them in with debt diplomacy. Like, yeah, you can continue getting all your debt from us.

It's fine so of course soon the brits and mostly the french in this situation would own massive quantities of the ottoman economy um and these were debts they knew they were never going to pay back because they couldn't it was effectively a nationwide stock shorting um They're going to load all the debt in and then once Ottoman Empire closes, they're going to put a spirit Halloween in. This joke brought to you by My Toys R Us, which is

now a spirit Halloween. This eventually now spirit halloween now this eventually uh led to the europeans taking over the banks themselves and effectively the entire uh ottoman economy it was kind of put in um like the same kind of situation like uh the same situation that britney spears is in right um it was a conservatorship um the ottoman public debt administration was created and staffed entirely by europeans and it employed more people than the ottoman empire's own finance ministry um which honestly might have some to do with how badly the finance ministry was run in the first place but you know rather than like controlling the ottoman debt it really acted like a kneecapping loan shark uh they were in charge of any public spending by the ottoman empire like the ottomans

like oh we kind of want to build like a road like oh you have money for a road huh you have money to pay your debts back i i honestly didn't know that you started this early. Now, each time shit went down, they were there to help them out. Mostly the British, because the British were more concerned about propping up the Ottomans, which is why the British got so heavily involved in the Crimean War. Right. I mean, the French were also involved. It was a huge British event. Now, this is obviously because the British are very, very interested in keeping the Russians in check. They didn't want to throw off the local balance of power.

The British did not care about the Ottomans whatsoever. They just need to be there and be like, you're my defensive line. I don't care about you as a person, though. Then there was the Young Turk Revolution. I'm not going to go into this too far. This eventually warped into the Committee for Union and Progress, which was another group within that revolution made up of hardcore Turkish nationalists that would depose the absolute monarchy and rule as a one-party dictatorship. Effectively, it's like a triumvirate. But the Community of Union of progress was a a large

dominating cell of the young turk revolution and i only point this out to be directed at a single news source any attempt to separate the two is historical revisionism moving on um as the ottomans got more and more desperate coming for you motherfuckers um i don't care if you have an armenian friend um as the ottomans got more and more desperate they decided to join in on the naval arms race those sweeping across europe at the time now remember of all of the problems i just listed now they're like we need dreadnoughts. Okay. It was a prestige thing.

It was a prestige thing. If we can compete with the rest of Europe, because the young Turks did consider themselves European, as a European imperial power. We need to compete with the Germans, the French, and the British. And the only way to do that is by building a big, dumb navy.

Unfortunately, they had no money, right? So they asked for donations from the public. They crowdfunded battleships. Sick. Which they would then contract out to the British, considered the best shipbuilders in the world at the time. And by I mean donations, I don't mean like you chart in something a little bit small on the bottom of your tax form or whatever. They literally went around like hats in hand to ask people

to throw in whatever extra change they had to make building this new Navy possible. They were taken at cafes, at bars, at schools. And people who donated a lot were given a special badge. It was literally a participation trophy. I mean... So hear me out on this one. So I know that Francis just created a new Patreon goal for a technical.

As the resident boat person on the podcast, I think we can aim larger. I'm just saying, there's been a lot know decommissioned ships in the last few years like I think they're getting rid of the LCS's like I think we have some opportunities for some deals here I mean this is just the first form of Patreon we should start our own pirate radio and

uncharted water or sorry international waters I don't know if pirate radio is still a thing that anybody gives a shit about but we should take over Sealand again. Francis gets a little bit of money and starts talking about international waters. All right. Oh, somebody wants to go nine miles away from the shore. To be fair, I want to go nowhere away from the shore generally in any boat that's not a floating hotel.

I'm generally the same. Yeah. Here's a reason I joined the army. They don't go on the boats i like my feet solidly on dry land um thank god we don't uh collectively know anyone who joined the army and ended up on the boats now um then the british entered world war one in august of, which led to a thing. And now the Ottomans weren't involved yet. And they're like, look. Did you just yada, yada, yada over a genocide?

Nope, not yet. I'm getting there. Genocide hasn't happened yet. Just yada, yada, yada over like, and then it led to a thing. World War I. Yeah, I mean, what is the most British way to describe World War I

than a little like a thing, like a tiff? We is the most british way to describe world war one than a little like a thing like a tiff we had a waffle a spot of bother yeah yeah exactly we had a spot of bother and lost like you know two-thirds of our uh young people it's fine though yeah uh we we brexited away an entire generation um now this is very early on the war ottomans aren't involved yet but the british do have hey, we're building these ships. Just keep them. I know they paid for them, but they're already here. We already built them.

Just keep them. And then they did not offer any reimbursement to the Ottomans. This is what is totally money. This is wildly what's done the business as a dick move. And also, Grand Theft Battleship, I guess? I don't know. This is the first, like, World of Warships. Like, they just...

They upgraded by just, like, keeping. Yeah, I mean, they're like, we just got these old Turkish ships laying around, why don't we keep them? I'm like, yeah, right. Now, it wasn't such an easy thing for the Ottomans to be so mad, like, fuck you, we're joining the germans because that's not how that happened even though the germans had been attempting to modernize the ottoman army for quite some time uh and they had slowly and surely

built up a lot of influence over minister of war enver pasha who would kind of single-handedly get the ottoman empire in world war one so while he didn't direct the future genocides as minister of war that fall under uh a different uh guy the minister of of the interior named talat pasha and for pasha pretty much still responsible for all of it um because if world war one wouldn't have happened the i'm not saying it wouldn't have happened, but it would look a lot different. But this splits the new CUP

Revolutionary Court into a pro-German and a pro-British side. Now, the pro-German side was always much stronger because Germany was always much more militarily involved in the Ottoman Empire, while the Brits had not a great track record. And, you know, stealing their ships really put a damper

on the pro-Brit side. As it tends to do. Yeah. Now, the reason that this wasn't so simple as, fuck, you were joining the Germans, remember who the other German ally is, Austro-Hungary, who the Turks have a bit of a history

with. The Austro-Hungarians have who the Turks have a bit of a history with. The Austro-Hungarians have been nipping away at the Ottomans' heels. They've been fighting over the Balkans for quite some time. And not to mention, they had just taken over Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was the Ottomans. And they had been fucking with them in the Balkans as well. So they're like, you know, if maybe your friend wasn't such a dick, it would be a lot easier. Now, Enver Pasha reached out on his own because he does this quite a bit to the Imperial German court to ask for an alliance after the assassination of Archduke in order to protect them from Russia. When Russia inevitably entered this war that was coming and the Germans effectively told them to fuck off.

Germany didn't see the need or the use. They acted like the Ottoman Empire didn't have anything to offer, which to be fair, they kind of didn't, other than the Bosphorus Straits. They were a very, very weak ally. And once the alliance was made, they were casually called a literal ball and chain around their ankle. Now, Talat Pasha wanted to side with the British. Just doing old mother-in-law jokes out of the 1950s, but with an

entire empire. Talat Pasha wanted to side with the British, but was also told to fuck off for the same reasons. Guys, we know about all your problems. We don't want to deal with them. We're all about propping you up with debt

and stuff, but we don't want to actually be your friends. The mood in the Ottoman Empire was kind of caught in the middle all the way up until Winston Churchill, who was Admiralty of the Navy at the time, stole those ships without compensation. This 100%

pissed off the Ottoman public, which remember, paid for it. That's when the court switched over to the pro-German side, never turning back. Now, weeks had gone by and the situation in Europe had only worsened. Kaiser Wilhelm told his government

to reconsider the Ottoman alliance on August 1st, and a secret defensive treaty was signed. The treaty forced Germans to protect Turkish holdings, but it only meant the Ottomans would actively enter the war on Germany's side if Bulgaria did, which would happen.

As Bulgaria goes, so goes the world. As many people say all the time, you know, as Sophia holds the world by its heart. At this point, the Ottoman government was officially neutral, but that wasn't enough for Enver. He wanted the war.

Remember, he'd gotten his way, kind of. He had brought his nation into an alliance with Germany, but he wanted more. He and the German ambassador wanted to bring the Ottomans wholly and actively into the war. And Versailles is the only way to prop up the dying Ottoman Empire, to snatch all this

land back from Russia, which would, of course, restore their lost prestige as a world power, and that would magically knit all of these various different communities that hate each other back together. We did it. We solved Balk back together. We did it. We solved Balkan racism. We did it.

A problem that would never ever reoccur thereafter. Yeah, he wanted to simply turn off the YouTube comment section. Even Talat believed that joining someone anyone in the war

was the only way to save the empire. And it was like, honestly, Enver is very pro-Russia or sorry, very pro-Germany, but they would have joined anybody willingly. They didn't care. They're just like, no, no, no, we just need the war. We don't care about who we're actually fighting. We just need to like, we need a W here. We've been

posting nothing but L's for hundreds of years. A sign of a good foreign policy is just kind of like searching around, rooting around for a war like a fucking, you know, kid looking for quarters underneath a couch cushion. Yeah. Thankfully, that doesn't happen anymore.

Fuck. Now, Germany didn't care so much about that. They just, at this point, they wanted Ottomans in the war to take the pressure off of them. Because remember, now they're fighting a two-front war. They're like, we need somebody to deal with this whole Russia thing off to our east.

The whole Russia problem. Yeah. Now, the eastern problem, if you will. Now, the other problem with that is, well, Talat Pasha was 100% balls deep wanting to go to war. Like he wrote for, I don't know, the Atlantic or whatever. The rest of the government was pretty realistic like, no, we're not ready for

a war. We can't do this. So Enver decided to work around that by simply starting it on his own. He conspired with the German foreign minister to take the decision out of the government's hands and do a little something called a false flag attack.

Oh man, some real imperial Japanese energy right here. to take the decision out of the government's hands and do a little something called a false flag attack. Oh, man. Some real imperial Japanese energy right here. Yeah. The fucking CIA did it. I knew it. Yeah. A hundred years before the invention of the CIA, the CIA did it.

Now, the Ottoman government purchased two German naval ships and their German crews, who remained aboard, simply switched out uniforms uh i i assume they didn't stick out like wow look at those blonde haired blue-eyed fucking ottoman sailors weird um what a wild time to be to be doing war it's just like uh we're just gonna we're just gonna we're turks now yes that's it we're we came with the the boat. No, you do not understand. We are simply blonde Kurds. Yeah, nothing like a guy named Franz who just happens to be from Istanbul. My name is Mehmet Dusseldorf.

I mean, all these guys eventually, their descendants ratlined their way to the United States and ended up in South America and various different places, including the last year in Haiti for no apparent reason. Now, there's a problem with a lot of this, obviously. As I point out endlessly, the Turks are broke. The Ottoman Empire has no money. So they couldn't actually buy these ships. It was all a lie. The German just said, yeah, we sold them. And the Turks were like, yeah, we bought them and then signed a paperwork.

But they were actually still German. Like, all they did is do a quick clothes change like an episode of Scooby-Doo. No, they're're doing supply chain financing for naval warships. We built an entire shell company called the Ottoman Empire. Yeah, it's called WeShel.

The rest of the Ottoman government began to get a little worried because Enver was doing this all without them. Like, weird. How did you afford those two ships? Like, fell off the back of a truck. It was like my dad buying steak on every other weekend, right? The guy who once in the South End tried to sell me speakers

out of a running car at a stop sign. There's also those guys in Detroit. Like, hey, man, we got these really cheap speakers you want to buy those guys get a lot of people but it's one of those things where it's like sir you're not even in park these speakers are going to combat roll out the back of this

fucking van with no windows I don't have a lot of standards in life but like even if it's a running car I at least want it to be in park and not just like have you know like have, you know, the breakdown. Like, you know, I don't know why. I'm just, I'm squeamish like that in that way. They call that the

kidnapping stance. While all this is going on, the government again, kind of get a little suspicious as Enver began to say and do more dubious and inflammatory shit that angered the Russians and the British, including the things like opening the Bosphorus Straits to German and Austrian warships and only their warships, which is in direct violation of various treaties, as well as their status as a neutral nation.

That is when he eventually ordered those two formerly German, but now kind of technically Ottoman ships into the Black Sea, which again was a violation directly and it pissed off the Russians. They were going to go commit some war crimes in what you might call Blackwater. Ooh. Now, Enver told anybody who was kind of suspicious or worried about this whole thing, like, don't worry, it's only a training mission. But obviously, that's not the case.

What really happened was Enver talked to the German ambassador and the German commander of the technically Ottoman ships and came up with a plan to provoke the Russians into attacking the ships, which would then force the Ottoman government to declare war because their ships were under attack. He would frame this as self-defense, making the Ottomans look like the obvious innocent party in the situation. Either it was lost in translation or the German commander did not give a

single fuck about any of that. He was given a mission to start a goddamn war and he went out and started a goddamn war. He just floated out in the middle of the Black Sea and shot at everything that was Russian. You know what? I gotta respect those vibes. Yeah. The bombardment really didn't do anything.

The Russians were like, what the fuck? They're attacking us. And then it was only two ships and they immediately fucked off out of immediate danger, right? As soon as this happened, everyone in the Ottoman government was like, God damn it, Enver Pasha just started a war. Nobody thought it was self-defense. But the British and the Russians declared war on them first because they were attacked.

And then the Ottoman Empire declared war shortly thereafter. So Enver Pasha got what he wanted. Now, unfortunately for the Ottomans, they went sprinting headlong into a war declared war shortly thereafter so you know and verbatim got what he wanted uh now unfortunately for the ottomans it went sprinting headlong into a war with probably the worst army in europe uh now i say probably as probably i also said probably in regards to the austral hungarian army i probably also said that in regards to the italian army um very situational which is the worst of the war um i i will say in my kind of educated opinion the ottoman empire had the worst army of world war one um i mean look at their shining track record um now the german army like i said had been trying to modernize the

military for years and they largely failed to make a dent. The vast majority of the Ottoman military would be filled by draftees between the ages of 20 and 40, which isn't out of the ordinary. But what was, was the fact that they were one of the few developed nations on earth that did not have a professional military education for its officer corps. Officer school did technically exist. However, it was more of a prestige thing and it was largely ignored. Oh, that's always worked out well.

Sure has. So we're talking worse than German or English fancy boys just buying their way into commissions. So funny story about that. The Turks still did that and the british actually stopped doing that during the crimean war immediately after the crimean war because like wow all our officers suck i was gonna say because they had like some famous set of reforms that

happened right after the crimean war right yeah it's a direct cause of yeah um now the turks should have known that seeing how they were the british allies during the war but you know whatever but you know all their losses did not in fact turn out to be lessons no there was there was no ottoman center for lessons that were learned here um uh instead uh people could simply buy their ranks and commission. Though most of the time, they were simply given to them as a gift, a favor, maybe their nobility or a high-ranking politician. It feels more like a prank to me.

Ha ha, you have to be a major. You just got punked. You're an officer in the Ottoman Army. God damn it, Ashton. How'd you get here? Instead of leaving a flaming bag of dog shit, it's just a set of like, you know,

like, like, do tenants bars. I mean, that also is just lieutenants. Now, again, that was not super out of the norms,

say, in like the US. We didn't directly sell commissions, but we just took the long way around, really. A lot of very fancy law boys end up officers that whole lot of professional education uh weird glad we got rid of that yeah uh now in most places uh to even buy a commission you actually to pass an exam

or an academy before getting commissioned like even in the the, the, like the Spanish American order, which is really bad about this. I'm just like people throwing out commissions, even like the lowliest lieutenants had to pass a paper test. Um, it didn't prove a whole lot, but at least you're, I don't know,

you're literate. Um, you had some, you know, you were said some idea of what was going on. You like, they didn't eat your pencil. Uh,

you immediately get sent over to the marines if you did that um but like you know there was uh there's obviously there's always a classism element involved in the enlisted officer divide uh and like we pointed out this purchasing of commission uh system went out of favor uh

after the korean war and the british army which we'll talk about much more extensively when we talk about the Korean War at some point in the future. But there was a staff college and it was established in 1848. If you realize that is awfully close to when the war started, and that's hardly a good time to build a large corps of officers, you're right. Not to mention that these academies were just a clusterfuck of different nations and teaching styles that never would have worked. So the one in 1848 was a French model,

which was then closed and reopened a couple times, depending on the relations between the two. The British also opened a naval training mission, which failed to get much done. And the Germans opened their own 1899, which went through various changes until 1908. Sorry, I just struck it like that being such a kick in the pants for the British Open and Naval Training Mission

that don't actually give you the boats. Just like, yeah, don't worry, guys. We promise. It's like a rest of development, promising you're going to take your son up to the cabin the next year, and it just never quite comes. There's always money in the Naval Academy. Now, again, this wasn't mandatory.

If you were a guy that had money and connections, you weren't going to spend your fucking time in a classroom. And since most high commanders uh you know if you were to raise yourself up uh to become a uh a corps or army commander in the military you're a politician or a noble uh there's a few like the there's a few outliers here but exceptions to the rule um the those people had no professional development or military education whatsoever unless of course they had worked on other campaigns and then it was like on the job training uh which is not how you want to train an army uh this also explains all of those wars

they kept losing which is also not a great way to learn on the job when all you're doing is losing that certainly doesn't job when all you're doing is losing. That certainly doesn't remind me of anything in modern times. Worse still, they had no native manufacturing ability and were completely and

totally dependent on import for all weapons and ammunition which they got from Germany and the Austro-Hungarians. Unfortunately, those modern weapons kind of would be wielded by troops that had not been trained from various different ethnic backgrounds, many of which didn't speak the same language. If that sounds familiar from the Austro-Hungarian episode, you got it. Except it was way worse because there's even more languages floating around.

Now, hypothetically, were they at least not racist towards each other oh god of course they were i know joe i know they were i just i wanted you to mention it hypothetically this is all supposed to be standardized and the soldiers were supposed to learn how to speak turkish but this never actually happened so everything goes sideways whenever it's like oh hypothetically you oh no oh well it's it's a lot like the austro-hungarian thing like no you need to learn a couple command uh uh things so you can understand what your officer is telling you in austrian or whatever and then like some somewhere some hungarian guys like what like i didn't i don't understand what you're telling me.

So Turks, various groups of Slavs, Greeks, Syrians, Kurds, Armenians, and Arabs would all end up living and working side by side. These are my favorite things. Without really ever being able to communicate a lot of times. Now, sometimes people would pick up bits and pieces. But if you grew up in an Armenian village, you probably spoke Armenian. You might know a couple words of Turkish. Same goes for the Assyrians, the Greeks, whoever. You probably

knew bits and pieces. Not enough to have a fucking conversation. Now, like I pointed out, think of all the problems with the Austro-Hungarians. Fucking multiply it. Because this army is bigger, there's more ethnicities, there's more languages, and a significantly worse government. But that didn't stop Enver from having bold plans.

The Germans wanted the Ottomans to open up a second front against Russia to distract them and pull soldiers away from their own Eastern Front problems. Enver didn't see this as a distraction, however. He believed that a campaign through the caucuses would mean they would be able to retake the various lands that Russia had helped them lose or taken for themselves in the last various wars, as well as drive through Georgia and beyond. Not that one. Eventually triggering a revolt of the Caucasian Muslim population. No, not that kind of Caucasian. Against their Russian Orthodox masters. I'm not going to teach everybody the difference in this one this time moving right along um uh this is a it's a hell of a pipe dream

for enver and enver's a fucking moron uh but that is exactly what he would attempt to do he would slap together what is now known as the ottoman third army in order to do this the third was not made up of the best troops in the army. Those had all been sent to Gallipoli to tend to the peninsula that eventually go on to own the perdition Anzac forces. The third was made up of mostly fresh conscripts and reservists who had been either too old to miss the initial conscription for whatever reason, uh,

or had survived previous conscriptions. They're not the ones you want. And Enver would, of course, leave the army himself, despite the fact he had never done that before. And all of the armies he ever had a command in, all of those wars, they lost them all. Certainly, the cream's not rising to the top here. I feel like this is a reoccurring theme

of all the World War I episodes. You just watch all the pre-war fail sons who just show that they were just manifestly unable to handle any sort of large unit action. Just continually get plugged into spaces where they were

absolutely only just going to slaughter their own troops. And it seemed to never be a deal buster. Like it was kind of, you know, almost like... Yeah, everybody just fails up. Yeah, like, you know, what did you do? Well, you know, I used to... I worked at like five or six banks and like every single one got robbed. And like, you know, every single time everyone else around me got executed.

Oh, cool. Well, we're going to make you the branch manager. Yeah, pretty much. Now, seriously, the man had like an 0-2 record. And the only reason he was put in charge of this revolution, or he was put in charge because he ended up being very close to the revolution and it had worked. And then he was made war minister. This is like if the Detroit Lions tried to do a war or us i guess um even though this

army would be able to pull off uh by the pull off uh repulsing the russian failed bergman offensive between november 2nd and 16th of 1914 uh he believed that because they had stopped the bergman offensive they would be able to carry out his offensive on their own. I guess nobody told him through his various experiences that defending is a lot easier than attacking. But whatever. He dreamed big and hilarity did not ensue. So he came up with a plan for the Third Army to advance into the Allah Akbar Mountains. Yes, those mountains to encircle the Russian army at Kars and slowly crush them to anyone who doesn't know anything

about this battle. This seems like a pretty straightforward plan. Encirclement is a try and true military technique that a skilled attacker could use against a defending army. It's literally textbook shit, but do we have a skilled attacker? Well, no, I also feel like most of the

time that the attack attack is uh involves the phrase through the mountains uh that's what you call a clue yeah that's that i you know and and once again i'm just uh i'm a dipshit i i know really only about uh water and uh boats uh but even from what i've from what i've read about land, it seems like mountains are hard. I don't know if either one of you can speak on that. Yeah, you don't want to do that through mountains. You don't want to do anything through mountains. Yeah, it seems like a bad time.

Anytime I ever read about 10th Mountain folks, it seems like they're having a bad time. I will say that this is the part where I get to say, this where it gets worse because there's a lot of small problems at play. One where the mountains were 9000 feet tall and were full of nearly impassable trails and gorges and an altitude where none of the Ottoman soldiers would be prepared for. None of them are from this region. None of them are from the mountains. They were all from like the highlands and the cities. The second problem was the Ottoman army had no means of communication to organize its soldiers.

And Enver would have to be deploying three separate groups of soldiers into battle to complete his encirclement with no way for them to communicate. Problem. The third problem was Ottoman infrastructure was dog shit across most of the empire, and even worse in the Ottoman East. They built a single line of rail, and most of the roads were dirt tracks,

while Russia had a fully functioning railway going through the same area. This meant that the Ottomans would not be able to resupply their forces, while the Russians would be pretty much be able to do the fuck they wanted at will. On the Ottoman side, all of the trails that were

treated as roads going to the direction of Sarikamish and Kars would be completely unusable for artillery, even in the best of times. But this would not be the best of times. I was going to be the best of times i was gonna say like also uh famously uh dirt tracks and trails get uh so much better the after the first 10 000 people who trod down them that's right yeah i mean it was uh during our uh napoleon

invasion of russia one where they literally created a dust storm uh because they're marching in dirt probably the same fucking dirt tracks. Oh, now here's the fourth problem. The entire operation would begin in fucking December. Ah, perfect. You know what's even better than,

you know, attacking Russia and then it turning into December is just starting in December. Yeah. I've heard we're not invading Russia during the winter. We will simply begin in the winter. Now in this area, temperatures are dropped to minus 20 degrees,

even at low altitudes. Unfortunately for soldiers of the third, minus 20 would be a high during this period. That also meant all of those roads, which were hardly able to be used in the first place, were rendered completely useless due to snow and ice. Now, Enver... I mean, at least I assume that they had sufficient winter clothing and good food.

Oh, boy. Caring commanders, reasonable objectives, considerate timetables that were calculated based on the difficulty of the terrain involved. I will give you this much. There are timetables. That's the only part about that that they do have. Or were they reasonable? No, not even a little bit.

Now, Enver was a fucking idiot, but his core commanders under him were not. At least not to the point they're like, uh, we cannot do this. This will kill all of us. So they were all fired and replaced.

You know what? That sounds like, fine, fine, I'm fired. You all go die, I guess. I mean, as I used to say to some of my superiors of the Coast Guard, like, all right, send me home. Just send me home. I'll think about what I did. I'll wear a dunce cap.

I'll sit in the corner. Go save the day. Go save the day by yourselves. It'll be fine. Yeah, the Ottoman court is like, oh, I'm so owned that I got fired. I guess I'll just head on back now. Bye. I guess I'll just continue living. Yeah.

I'm just going to put on my really warm coat and go back to my wife. Yeah, you all have fun. Take care. Some lieutenant colonel is like, why am I getting promoted? It's best you don't ask. Oh, man. Now, the march officially began. Sorry, man. Now, the march officially began. Sorry, guys.

You know, like two weeks beforehand, like, you know, just, boy, man, the chances for advancement in this army are just, you know, like, just aren't there. And just like off in the distance, a monkey paw curls. Good news. How would you like to be a general? Don't ask what happened to everybody else above you sir i i graduated last in my military academy i didn't even go to one of those don't worry about it what do you call the guy who graduates last at his military academy general all right have at it buddy minister of war now the march officially began on December 22nd, and things

immediately went to hell. Ottoman logistics were so bad that most soldiers lacked any and all winter clothing, to include boots. Now, I don't mean winter boots. I just mean boots. Many of them marched with rags wrapped around their feet. And

most units marched out with only enough rations, and by rations i mean a literal fistful of bread and some dry olives ah yes i mean well i mean they were just uh you know they were they were just cutting out all their fats you know they were just doing kind of an atkins thing yeah like all of their fats all the way down to the bone yeah Yeah, the bone of their own skin. Yeah. Oh, I could really go for, I don't know, five or six more almonds.

Now, facing them would be the Russian Caucasus Army, a much better equipped, prepared, and led army. And that's a low bar when it comes to Russia. They were reinforced by several volunteer units made up of various

ethnicities that the Ottomans had spent the last several decades or hundreds of years murdering and oppressing, like Armenians, Greeks, and Georgians, but fled to Russia for protection and now saw a chance to get the revenge. Now, these units, there weren't that many of them. There was actually just

a lot of these guys already in the Russian military because there was populations of them living in russia the um the number of volunteer regiments is vastly overblown by modern day turkish historians is a couple thousand people at most and in the grand scheme of things in world war one a battalion or so is not a whole lot to ascribe a lot of difference to. That's like casualties that can be churned out in 15 minutes. You know what I'm saying? Anyway, pretty much as soon as the elements began marching, they started getting lost and losing contact with one another. They engaged the Russians in various skirmishes

on their way to their ultimate target, but none of these battles were anything of importance. And to the surprise of, I assume, only Enver, they got caught in a continuous blizzard because that's what happens when you send your soldiers

marching through the fucking mountains in December. Unless you're like in Australia, there's really like, unless you're like in Australia, there's not a lot of good times to attack anything in December. It's like, sir, have you heard of weather? Right. Does anybody know?

Did you ask anybody who lives in the mountains how this? No, we're just going to, nobody's going to know anything about the terrain. That's fine. You don't need shoes, buddy. It's fine let's go i i mean i assume the uh the mountains i assume the temperature does as well i will not be looking into this further now it must get warmer because you get closer to the sun you get closer to you get closer to god you can hear your prayers and you'll get warmer it's fine

somewhere and for is just like drawing a picture of him going up a hill closer to God, you can hear your prayers, and you'll get warmer. It's fine. Somewhere, Enver is just drawing a picture of him going up a hill closer to the sun. Like, guys, I figured it out. I figured it out. He looked at one too many third grade children's drawings of the sun being just this warm, glowing orb close to the ground. He's like, oh, well, if we just go closer to the sun, it'll be warmer. I don't know why he saw news announcer of the 20s, but it's fine. Enver glancing down at this

child crayon drawing like, weird, the sun doesn't even have a smiley face. I'm starting to think my map is incorrect. Different Ottoman units got so lost and confused that by December 23rd, two different units began shooting at one another. The 92nd Regiment and the 31st Division

opened fire on the 32nd Division. Neither of them had any idea who the others were and assumed the others were Russian. Their firefight went on for four hours and killed thousands of their own men before someone finally managed to get them to stop. I imagine, too, they probably also

didn't speak the same languages. No, there's definitely a lot of disconnect in there. Bad leadership, scared people, nobody being able to understand one another. Just like a dude who speaks Greek. You're like, I don't know, it's Russian. Fucking shoot him. Get that motherfucker. He's trying

to steal my baklava. Now, in case anybody's keeping track at home home this is day two uh thankfully or not depending on who you are i guess pretty much every ottoman unit got separated from one another uh many didn't have maps and for the ones who did the snow and terrain made marching on the tracks and the maps completely impossible and also hard to tell where the hell they were. A little detail like that did not stop the Ottoman commanders from

forcing their soldiers to march against blizzards for hours at a time. A few units made it through 47 miles of this bullshit by day three, which was still behind schedule because at this point Enver's timetable had them covering double

that. Here's your timetables. By the 25th, soldiers had been marching to the point of not giving a shit, and I'm not injecting that. It's not hyperbole. Between snow and Russian harassing fire, they were described by one of their corps commanders

as, quote, indifferent to their fate. You're just waiting for death at that point. At this point, you're just appropriating Russian culture. This was noted after being forced to march 14 straight hours through the snow. Now, the Ottomans were hoping that the Russians would square up and fight them. But the Russians were much smarter than that.

Why do I need to fight you? You're clearly killing yourself. Now, they did engage the Ottomans occasionally, but they fire off some rifles, machine gun nests here and there. And then they just displace once the Ottoman commanders finally manage to get their troops in order to order them into some form of organized defense or attack. It was hit and run attacks. But that reaction time got slower

and slower as more troops began to get sick and die from the cold or lose body parts from frostbite. For people unaware, your brain doesn't work right when you have hypothermia. You're pretty much drunk. Yeah, I mean mean there's a reason why they say that like if you like if you fall into like cold water or something like in a pond or whatever that it's like a good death because essentially you just like feel vaguely drunk and just kind of like let yourself slip

away at that point it's the same reason why a lot of people dying of hypothermia are found like stripping off their clothes yeah like you just kind of like lose all sense of yourself and just kind of like yeah just let the elements take you which all i'm imagining is just a bunch of russians fire off machine guns and then just accusing them of uh the turks of cultural appropriation running off take cover fuck this i'm jumping. Like, I hope one of them catches me. Now, if all of these things couldn't be made any worse, enter typhus.

That's my least favorite wrestler. Now, for people who maybe are new to the show and haven't heard us talk about this, having 100,000 dudes camp out together in small camps in the early 1900s is a recipe for disease.

It still kind of is today, but at least we understand how to stop the spread for the most part. Clearly, we're not very good at listening to that advice as the last two or so years would tell. But typhus had been ripping through the ranks since the march had began. And now that they're about a couple of days in, it was really starting to take hold. Now the typhus causes nausea and uncontrollable diarrhea. So people were just like freely shitting and vomiting themselves as they were marching. Just put yourself in their shoes,

just liquid shit freezing to the inside of your legs, bonding to your uniform pants, like a giant poop scab I don't want to think about that that's actually the name of my new metal album poop scab or poop scab I mean if you want to

reenact this you can go to like North Dakota this winter and take a certain horse dewormer horse antiviral. Just let some rope worms go and you'll have fun. And then every step, it's getting torn off of you. And everything is like their beards are

freezing to their faces. People are going snow blind. Everyone just covered in poop. That's like the one through line through military history. Like they're probably pooping on their stuff. Like all of the most heroic battles, like pre 1915,

for the most part, everybody's covered in their own shit. It's like, you don't really get a lot of like, when you see the, you know, you get like a crusader, like a Christian supremacist Twitter.

Sloshing around in their armor full of shit and piss. You don't realize that when you post this picture of this brave crusader soldier in his armor and it's like he's just out in the middle of Palestine in 90 degree heat just sloshing around in his own shit.

Yup. The brave confeder Confederate soldiers. No, man, they're bravely shooting themselves, but so are the Union ones. Yeah, everybody's just passing typhus and dysentery back and forth. It's mostly caused by contaminated drinking water

with fecal matter. Everybody's literally shitting to the point that everybody else is shitting and then they're spreading it around. It's great. I love history. It's mostly poop. On the positive side, at least here for the Union soldiers for that one, at least your uniform is like a dark blue. I feel like that's going to hide the shit stains a little bit lighter than a light gray. I mean, really, that's what history is really about.

This is why the red coats went with red so they wouldn't see the blood on the officers. This is why the redcoats went with red so they wouldn't see the blood on the officers. This is why my army all wears brown pants. Can't tell them shit to myself. Now, by December 26th, thousands of soldiers were already dead from friendly fire and hypothermia and typhus, and they haven't

even reached the worst part of the mountains. The Russians had begun to send thousands of reinforcements by rail, quickly filling in the gaps in their line that would have allowed Enver's encirclement to actually work. Not that Enver actually knew about them in the first place. Instead, the Russian left and right

flanks filled out, stopping the Ottomans from completing their goals of encirclement and attacking the city of Sarikamish. And at this point, ottoman field commanders the replacements finally broke down telling enver there is no fucking way we can actually launch an attack like we're all dying i might like i have lost my eyelids like i don't know like my uh my ass is actually frozen on my feet and uh you know like i can no longer see and

i no longer fear death and in fact embrace it so uh my adjutant died a week ago and i just keep his frozen corpse around i hold my maps i just oh fuck it's like like a fucking sword swallower you just use them as a map case uh that did now of course these guys were all fired uh and replaced once again uh these guys were not allowed to go home because they were dying on the mountain um that didn't mean that like enver was going to stop there was no rational reason that enver was going to stop his attacker never want to start it if you could have taken a fucking clue in the first place, he would have stopped when the first bunch of Corps commanders were like, yo, man, no.

This isn't going to work. So instead, like the brilliant brain genius that he is, he ordered an attack on Sarah Commish to begin right away on December 29th. As you can imagine, this attack went terribly. 12,000 Ottoman soldiers rushed into the city with about 300

surviving long enough to break through, causing them to immediately realize, oh, dear God, where did everybody else go? And they turned around and ran back to their lines. I'm sorry. They sent 12,000 and 300 survived. Survived long enough to break through the Russian line to then run for their lives and get shot in the back. That is a fucking meat grinder like that's this is this is like this is this is the like the junior whopper to and this is the big whopper meat grinder yeah this is before like you just had like what we had like anybody you can get an automatic weapon and shoot it into a big crowd of people and takes

like you know in the middle like you know a 240 bravo or something like you're doing this was like some world war one shit man you got to be dedicated to to killing i mean they have maxim machine guns and stuff like that you just pull down the trigger and wipe out an entire division or whatever uh and like to be fair that's it's one of the reasons why um in this era and you know before that one of the most important parts of any army was not your skill it was discipline because you had to sit there and just get massacred and not run away. That was like when people talk about skilled veterans, it was like, oh, we know those guys won't run away when everybody starts getting shot in the face. Like that was a skill that they had was like, I don't care. I'll run directly at that fucking bitch.

I'll smother the barrel with my guts. So just choosing death is really what we're talking about here yeah i mean because like being up until i mean and depending on what army you are in your your experience today is still pretty awful but like you know being a soldier is bad so people are pretty pretty fine doing horrible, not well thought out things like, I don't know, running at a machine gun. Like, I just want to be over warm. It's like, well, I haven't gotten paid in six months. My family's definitely forgotten about me. I have an incurable form of syphilis that I got from the unclean person I last slept with when I was in town.

The last three meals I've had have definitely... Most of the protein has come from maggots. And I have a shit icicle just hanging out of my ass. At this point, I would... And I would

kill myself, but I can't quite like you know reach the trigger with my toes so i guess i'm just gonna run it that's a frostbite i've lost three out of like three out of the five toes on each foot the frostbite along with like two out of the five fingers in each hand and uh like you know yeah like not only is like do i have a shit icicle out my ass but also you know my beard is somehow frozen to my chest and i've vomited on it so really at this point i'm just gonna run into maximum machine gun because if a machine gun cuts me in half that's gonna be the least amount of like pain and humiliation that i've felt in the last eight calendar months hey sarge my typhus is meeting up with my syphilis i don't know what to do

just let him let him hang out billy doing the dragon ball spirit touch doing the fusion dance across your brain it's just like it's like pokemon but you've just like collected every like pre-1940s illness. It's the Mr. Burns sketch with all of the viruses which had to press through the door. But on the other side of the door is an angry Russian with a machine gun. Come on, motherfucker. I dare you.

Now, that 12,000 was even the worst part about it. In the end, 50% of the entire Ottoman force was destroyed while attacking. When Enver ordered another attack on the new year, 40% of those didn't even make it to the point of attacking because they were wiped out by a freak snowstorm. Oh, fucking Christ. Also, just imagine having to walk through that afterwards

as like one of the survivors like you're just like walking through this like you know terracotta army of all of your former like you know all of your other former like peer soldiers and they're just like oh well you know i mean i guess at least he got you know frozen upright so at least like the shit icicle didn't go up his ass as he died like though the russians actually wrote about finding like they after the battle they didn't realize how big it was like they didn't realize there's an entire the entire third army of the ottoman forces that attacked them and they like reported finding just like piles of tens of thousands of frozen corpses that they didn't even fight. Like, what the fuck? Guys, I found more bodies

over here. How many people attacked us? Like, oh no, those guys all just drowned in fire. I thought our sergeants hated us. Yeah, exactly. The one time that the Russian army actually underestimated the amount of casualties that it caused. Yeah, they'll never make that mistake again.

Now, by the second, not even an entire full week into the offensive, Ottoman forces were spent. They were done between taking horrible casualties while attacking, getting annihilated by freak snowstorms or shitting themselves to death. They simply had nothing left. That is, of course, when the Russians decided to launch their counterattack. The Ottoman flanks folded immediately. launch their counterattack. The Ottoman flanks folded immediately.

It was like in the opening exchange of gunfire, an entire division surrendered. Just fucking do something like I'm doing. If I put down my gun, can I have shoes? Or will you shoot me? Because that's honestly better too. Either way.

And then the Russians drew forward and completely encircled what remained of the Ottoman third army, hitting him with the old historic Uno reverse card. Now, while some units of the Ottoman third army fought like hell, uh, the vast majority of them did not. They completely fell apart.

Uh, Russian commanders wrote that they were overwhelmed by the amount of pows that they encountered uh now this uh by the the time that the russian army was pushing in the army headquarters itself was taking fire like confuses to where the fuck all of its soldiers were and they were all like surrendering dead or running as fast as they could at this point the the like the the rush the the the ottoman headquarters like the people inside like let's get the fuck out of here and they ran for their lives too just running past your commanding general while saluting in full sprint

i don't have i don't have to outrun you i just have to outrun the the russians Now, by the 6th, it was obvious that all was lost. And those that could drop their weapons and ran for their lives. But small pockets of Ottomans, either because they had no idea a retreat was ordered. Because a general retreat was ordered, but there was no communication system. Total breakdown of unit cohesion. So a lot of units just didn't know that there was a retreat so they they sat in place and really like oh i'm all by myself some of these dudes just shot themselves um others surrendered um some dudes physically couldn't run uh you know all of the frostbite and disease um and bits and pieces of this resistance last until the 17th uh but

you know pretty much in the sixth the battle's over seven through the 17th is what you call mopping up now the price that the ottomans paid in just three weeks of combat was i mean i know we always talk about high casualties for world war I, but even World War I, this is insane. I guess remember, this is the first year and some change of World War I. This is before the full horrors of this war would fully set in. So the entire Third Army was destroyed. 90,000 people were dead. 50,000 of them died before they even saw combat.

dead 50 000 of them died before they even saw combat the russians claimed they found 30 000 corpses frozen to the sides of mountains in various different places another seven to ten thousand were captured and the same number wounded that meant if you got wounded you probably didn't make it yeah where are you going were you getting medevaced out of the mountain you just freeze into the side yeah you're becoming into the side, yeah. You're becoming like the green boots guy from Mount Everest. I was just about to say, or like any of the rest of it is just known by whatever you're wearing at the point that you froze to death on the side of the mountain. Yeah. Yeah. Make sure if you're climbing the mountain, make sure you take a left at the 30,000 dead Turkish soldiers.

That's how you know you're on your way to the top. You'll start hearing angry Russians. No, they're not mad at you. They're mad that they have to move all these bodies out of the way. This meant outside of some staff officers, almost none of the original 118,000 soldiers that set out made it back on their own. Of the people that made it back,

almost universally, there were people who ran on their own. There was no... During Napoleon's retreat from Moscow, it was said that most people that survived that horrible situation survived because they stayed in their units. And that unit, cohesion kept everybody together.

You could share food, you could share warmth, whatever. Not the case here. The only people who made it just fuck this i'm out like everyone yeah everyone who just like was out for their own shit that was the only thing like which which were like really because i remember that series on uh the retreat from moscow and like talking about how it was like you know that was the only way that you were going to be able to scavenge enough supplies and whatever else and it seems like here is just literally being involved with the Turkish army, like the Ottoman army in any way was just a fucking death

sentence. Yeah. And this was a multi ethnic army. There was Turks, Greeks, Armenians, whatever. At this point, most of the minorities are dead. This is because one, there wasn't that many of them. Two, the Turks always used minorities in like front line

combat situations kind of something like the Soviets would eventually do burn through your minorities before you hurt the ones that you like so by this point the 18,000 stragglers almost universally Turkish they coalesce back together under a corps of officers

and then they immediately begin plundering their way across Armenian villages, stealing and raping people for reasons nobody knows. You only get to do that when you're victorious, man. You don't get to be like the losers and then go sack a place like. And it's their own towns like the Ottoman Empire. It's like if like, I don't know, like the US pulled out of Vietnam and then just if, I don't know, the US pulled out of Vietnam and then just invaded, I don't know, fucking Columbus. Fuck you guys. Now, there was...

This is, in the world of genocide, this is disorganized violence. That's coming. This is the disorganized program. But Enver made it back unharmed, of course. He never really put himself in harm's way.

He was always miles away from any real danger. And if botching an entire operation and getting over 100,000 or around 100,000 people killed bothered him, he didn't let anybody see it. Louis Einstein, who was an American diplomat in Constantinople at the time, recalled, quote,

even when he returned from the Caucasus where an entire army had been lost by his fault, he seemed perfectly happy and went that evening to a concert. Sure. Fucking Christ. Now, while inarguably this is 100% Enver Pasha's fault, he would accept none of that

blame and said he blamed it all on the Armenians. Now, he had a long and he wasn't alone here. A lot of this falls on Talal Pasha, Jamal Pasha, the entire government of framing the Armenians as something that was a fifth column.

I was going to say, because it feels like there had to be a stabbing in the back narrative that kind of drove this from this point forward. There was the Hamidon massacre and things like that. There was other the back narrative that like you know kind of drove this from this point forward there was uh there's the hamidon massacre and things like that there was other um uh racist attacks against armenians leading up to this point uh there's a lot of propaganda uh a lot of the work like some shit you'd see uh in a couple decades in nazi germany um uh race science and things like that came out. Some of it was religious, most of it nationalist.

The CUP, the Committee of Union Progress, was intensely nationalist. They wanted to completely Turkify the empire. They didn't see any place for the minorities, which is why eventually the Pontic Greeks, the Assyrians, the Assyrians, all of them would eventually fall under genocide as well, as well as the Yazidis. But the Armenians went first. Now, he blamed and claimed that the Armenians fought on the side of the Russian military.

The Armenians within the ranks of the Ottoman military, which fought and died in the frozen mountains alongside everybody else, were spies. The Armenians within the third army revolted and that's why they lost it was antifa the whole time sure yeah armeni fa uh no enver enver wasn't demoted because of course he wasn't right uh he didn't take any blame the government didn't blame him at all, even though everybody was like, what the fuck did you just do? Despite

this making no sense, the official government line became, the Armenians did it. Not to mention most of the people that could have pointed out that he was lying were dead. That's a small fact. Now, almost immediately after the battle, by February,

Enver and Damal Pasha would begin talking about and laying out the ground plans to deport all of the Armenians in the empire to the Syrian desert to die. The fact that the Russian Armenians that fought on the side of Russia were not Ottoman citizens, and therefore they couldn't betray a foreign government, did not matter. There were millions of Armenians living within the Russian Empire as the historic Greater Armenia, which encompassed roughly half of modern-day Turkey, had been cut in half for about a couple hundred years with the eastern portion, what today is roughly the Republic of Armenia, controlled by the Persians, who then lost control of it in the early 1800s in the Russo-Persian War. There's absolutely no shortage of Armenians who are not subject of the Ottoman Empire. Neither did the fact that tens of thousands of Armenians were faithfully serving in the Ottoman Empire, both during and after the battle.

And elsewhere, while other minorities were taking up arms in various independent struggles armenians had taken part in the young turk revolution because in the beginning it was supposed to be a secular revolution that would treat everybody the same they would be able to get rid of their status as a demi like they they were quite literally working within the system for progress and armen Armenian political leaders even encouraged their men to enlist and show the empire how dedicated they were to the Ottoman cause. By February, all non-Muslims in the Ottoman army were disarmed and sent to labor battalions, where they were all systematically murdered. During this same time, mass murders of Armenian citizens continued to become widespread. Any weapons and even religious items found at an Armenian home were used as evidence for these people's supposed role in

the betrayal in the East in a popular uprising. Today, Turkish historians will point out that this is an armed Armenian rebellion. If you ever come across one of these people, they will explain that they were casualties of war and they were an armed rebellion. they will explain that they were casualties of war and they were an armed rebellion. This is not true. There's an idea like it is the theory of the fifth column becoming real. Now, historian Taner Akam, who himself is a Turkish historian who has had to flee his home out of the Republic of Turkey for his research into the

Armenian genocide, concludes that, quote, the allegations of an Armenian revolt in the documents in the Ottoman archives have no basis in reality, but were deliberately fabricated to further genocide. When in reality, all of these things spiraled out of control programs, Armenian leaders were telling Armenians not to shoot back, worry that even acts of self-defense would be given as more of a reason for their slaughter. It did not matter. On April 24th, 1915, on the orders of Talat Pasha, hundreds of Armenian political, intellectual, and

community leaders were arrested in Constantinople and across the entire empire. Political organizations were shut, and Armenians who hadn't been deported from their homes were forced out into the middle of the desert to die. And that is why we commemorate the Armenian genocide today on April 24th. And Turkey can suck my fucking dick.

Fuck them Turks. And that's one of the reasons why I always knew about the Battle of Sarikamish, studying history, mostly because of the casualty counts, right? Most people, when military history is taught, you don't get taught the macro outside the battle. What does this battle cause? And I honestly, it's like outside of this surrender of Kiev during World War II that directly led to the Babi Yar massacre. during World War II that directly led to the Bobby R. Massacre. It's really hard to find

a battle that leads to more direct human misery. Yeah, because I mean just from my own perspective thinking about the Battle of the Boyne and shit like that that's kind of the

low point for Irish nationalism and the point at which you know like the british effectively took over ireland and even then is like you know it's a little bit more like attenuated and doesn't directly lead as much to like you know immediate genocide yeah yeah i mean it's normally it's it's political like normally genocide is made uh in a political atmosphere right like not you don't normally see it framed in a military capacity like that even though military ask um you know weapons and equipment and people will be used for it rarely do you see it like evolve uh from from a direct

military incident right like putting the cart before the horse rather than the other way around yeah and this was not the only incident um this is not an exhaustive history of the armenian genocide and i highly recommend anybody go and read literally any of taner akam's books he's a great historian um but yeah it's definitely like middle domino it's not small domino big domino we're a middle domino here but But it's always interesting seeing how these things work at a very small scale. Now, on a less incredibly depressing note, I know we've gone a little bit long, but we do something on this show called Questions from the Legion. If you'd like to ask us questions from the Legion, donate to the show. A single dollar will do. Send us a Patreon question.

Hit us up in the discord and we'll answer it um what is your favorite dumb military superstition um the charms was i was gonna say that too yeah i don't know why and and of course they went away in like the i don't know the aughts or so but of course you know their older mres were still floating around but yeah that's always been that and there was something about a about an apricot with somebody with some they're like i don't obviously not tankers otherwise joe would be saying something but there are there are like dumb little little things and there's something with an apricot for some group but yeah the charms was always my favorite I vaguely remember

something to do with apricots as well um I would ignore that anyway because I fucking love apricots but um the charms things jumps to mind immediately because I came in right before right as they were being faded out um now for people who never eaten an

MRE and bless you um charms are like shitty little candies. What would you compare them to? They're like shitty lifesavers. Yeah, it's fair. Shitty lifesavers. And if you brought them on your vehicle or whatever is considered incredibly bad luck, you'd get yelled at and people would make you throw them out. I saw it happen.

I don't think I ever had to throw mine out or anything like that. If you didn't eat them, that was good enough. But if you ate them on the vehicle, fucking run. People will just bitch and complain at you. Also, Joe, the apricot thing is a tanker thing. It must have been before

my time. I never heard that one. Kerry, what kind of weird, uh, coasty superstitions are there? I mean, I, I was going to say like, I mean, one of them is, uh, I mean, one of the most infamous ones is, uh, you know, all the crossing ceremonies. So what do you, you know, when you cross the equator, when you cross, uh, you know, the Arctic circle, whatever, you know, particularly with the equator, you know, you Particularly with the equator, you join Poseidon's court and there's traditionally a crossing ceremony. All the poliwogs who have never crossed before,

even if you're a more senior officer or something, technically you get hazed. They've toned it down a lot compared to a lot you know compared to like a lot of the shit they used to do i mean as they have across all the branches and you know it's a good thing but um you know you you get you know dunked in you get you know i mean i've all sorts of shit happens to you you know you can get like fucking uh um you know like stripped and like run through the boat and just like you know uh just put in a fucking cargo net and all sorts of shit.

That's definitely one of them. And similarly, all the dudes I know who got very serious traditional maritime nautical tattoos. In particular, I'm thinking of one dude I know who was from Rhode Island who got a rooster and a pig on each foot because apocryphally, those were the only animals that would survive during a shipwreck because they were usually wooden crates.

And so the crates would float, the animals would survive, and those would be what would break open on a nearby island. And so they would survive. the animals would survive and those would be what would break open on like a nearby island and so they would survive so i saw like a lot of you know a lot of guys who would get you know that or like uh you know if they had some sort of waiver trying to get like hold fast tattooed on them or something even though like you know you were you were a fucking like yn or something you never handled a fucking line so like i don't know what are you holding fast like a fucking form or something um hold that clipboard yeah i mean the you know uh the one that always gets me though personally is uh i had a you know a couple of my

buddies when i was in gloucester and there's a the line from was it groundhog day with uh bill murray where uh you know he has the the line like i don't think the heavy stuff's supposed to come down for some time and uh you know and then like snowstorm happens, and that's why he gets caught in Punxsutawney. But one of my friends said that one time. And then when we were doing a touch of both day for some local community outreach event, community outreach event. And then the fucking clouds came, just like black clouds

over the horizon. The fucking sky fell. It was just torrential downpour, fucking surf, fucking lightning storm, all this shit. And so forever after, we just absolutely forbid it from saying the line, heavy stuff is not supposed to come down for some time or whatever the fuck it is.

Because Lord knows, we just saw that that was our own personal curse saying. It's always interesting seeing how many of these things spread. But I mean, the soldiers are just soldiers sailors whatever airmen they're all incredibly superstitious if you have your own military superstition that we didn't cover please send it it'll be interesting i'd like to read how so how dumb some of these are yeah i mean to be honest like i would love to actually do an entire episode just about military superstitions because that there's 100 like uh enough material there for all the different people done over time that'd be interesting

yeah send those in we'll put some together I gotta go this we've been talking for so long I'm so tired anyway so Francis is old I'm so old alright anyway guys

thank you for joining me today and uh until next time do not march up mountain in the winter i guess