Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 352 - The Attack on Mers El Kebir

Episode Date: March 3, 2025

SUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Joe and Nate explore the time the French surrendered during WWII, leaving the British worried if their fleet was going to change sides and fight for the Nazis. Rather than waiting to find out, they conducted the naval equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel. Sources: Philippe Lasterle. Could Admiral Gensoul Have Averted the Tragedy of Mers el-Kebir? The Journal of Military History. Society for Military History. Volume 67, Number 3, July 2003 https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/operation-catapult-the-attack-on-mers-el-kebir/ https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2022/august/force-h-mers-el-kebir https://bmmhs.org/mers-el-kebir-sinking-the-french-fleet/

Hey everybody, our merch store is restocked. So if you missed any of the live shows, specific merch, at wherever date that we went to and you couldn't make it to, it's all on our merch store, LLBDmerch.com. So get your orders in while they last. We only have certain sizes and certain numbers and whichever one it happens to be. So if you want something, get your order in. Once again, that is LLBDMerch.com and the link will also be in Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe and with me is Nate. We're French sailors in the 1940s. We have just left the local bakery for our regular six hour lunch break and mounted our

unicycles to pedal back to our naval base where we work out of. Our ship is the pride of the French Navy, the flagship of the baguette class of destroyers, the SS I'm having an affair but it's fine in our culture. But my god would you believe it, the Luftwaffe is bombing us. We run to our ship and man our guns but we're confused because we pull the trigger and nothing but a stream of warm melted brie oozes out of the end of the anti-aircraft cannon. Nate looks at me and calls me stupid because it's Tuesday, of course the guns would be packed full of brie. Unsure of what to do next, we surrender and spend the rest of the war

being seduced by a series of increasingly older teachers. I tried to stuff it as many things as I could in a paragraph. There's a French film called Prepare vos mouchoirs to like get your handkerchiefs ready, basically, like you're going to cry. And it's basically about, the best way I can describe it is, two guys who are friends and this woman,

and if I remember correctly, the story is that she basically is like a love triangle, but then she falls in love with a 13-year-old boy, but it's okay because he's got like 140 IQ. So he's basically like an adult in terms of intelligence. This is the biography of Macron. Emmanuel Macron. I mean, like when I say 13,

like the actor playing him is probably 13, not like a 16 year old playing a 13 year old. You're sort of like in French film in the seventies. So there's definitely some, so like less like more than implied sex scenes. And you're like, what the fuck? Like, oh yeah, this is funny. kind of off-kilter screwball comedy it's like the french screwball comedy is everyone involved in the production goes to jail in america yeah so you know france

ah beautiful france is an interesting country and if I say anything else you're going to arrest me and put me in prison. Yeah, I like that we've pissed off like all three of our French listeners already. Look, if we end up talking about a part of your country's history, unless it's one of the sad episodes where I don't do a cold open, we're going make fun of you. Yeah, you tend to not do that really. It doesn't feel right. We're gonna talk about Catine Forest and you're like, all right, Nate, so Hey, so it's 1930, we're Polish.

Uh, no, no, I would not do that. Nate, it's 1940, it's May 1940, and we're in France. So bad things are happening. They are. May 1940 and we're in France. So bad things are happening. To make a very long story short, because I really don't want to go into the battle of France as it's called, because we will one day do a series about that.

In a frighteningly short amount of time, France falls to the Nazi invasion. The reasons for this are many, which we will cover at length at one point in the future. But for the context of this episode, you just need to know that France is in fact lose in World War two Which I'm assuming is a fact most listeners knew yeah The summarized version is they're like we're gonna reinforce a certain part of our border to stop German attack because we're you know The German military build up is obvious

The problem is is that the what they call is the not much you know line and it doesn't basically Germans like well the fuck it will just invade by Belgium and Netherlands and come down through Northeast France and it could be worse I actually have a book given to me by a Someone at the Dutch live show written by the Dutch government that came out just before the invasion of the Netherlands that effectively says Don't worry about it. If Germany invades, we can hold them off. I cannot think of a worse time to publish this book. But yeah, things happened. France falls, the low countries fall. But during the period of France getting its teeth kicked in when it's teetering on the edge. Britain was trying anything and everything to keep them in the war.

Even though the Allies had a deal with one another that neither would sign an individual agreement with Germany that would remove them from the war effort. However, the Brits were starting to be a bit worried that the French might do it anyway. The French Premier at the time, Paul Renault, who you might remember from our episode of the Battle of Castle Eider, who was the fair mocked and some French POWs and some American soldiers teamed up to fight the SS. He was involved in that as was a tennis player, but he declared Paris an open city not to be defended and by defended being destroyed in the catastrophic fighting that would have happened and instead moved his government to Bordeaux. That's correct. This left the British government treading water on how to keep France in this shit.

So they offered them a Franco-British Union state. This was surprisingly popular at the time. More popular for the British than the French, I will say, but there were some people that were totally cool with it. I mean, obviously, like it's just it's way, way further back will say, but there were some people that were totally cool with it. I mean, obviously, it's way, way further back in history, but it is funny when you look at some of the sort of like maps, just picking situations at various points in the Hundred Years War and you're like, there's a part of Bordeaux and pretty much all of Calais,

that's territory that's owned by England. It's just English France. Yeah. There was a time, so you know, the borders are fake. Actually, Calais is Britain. Sorry. There was actually a pretty powerful group of people within France and, of course, within Britain that favored a union state, but not now. For the French, they've figured any union state now put the British in charge rather than any kind of actual equality based union that they had talked about even before this.

And they would talk about it again after. But at this moment, the French main objection to it wasn't the fact that the state would be graded, but that if they did, because they had been getting their teeth kicked in by the Germans, that the British should be in charge of it. Yeah, I mean, I don't know how to describe this, but for one, it's very funny to imagine

like Syrian Arab Republic, but for Britain and France, it's like British, like French baptism. By that, I am assuming they went as far as to create a flag that everybody forgot about it for a long time. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's a, yeah, tricolor Union Jack. I mean, the thing about it is, yeah, like there's a lot of Francophilia in British culture. There's a lot of Anglophilia in French culture, but there's also a pretty profound mistrust. That's, I mean, it's, and

I think like the modern incarnation of, you know, Brexit, Boris Johnson bullshit and all this kind of stuff, you know, seeing France is kind of like, yeah, France is like favorite holiday home place and also like the dreaded EU and stuff like that. Second only to the Germans. Like this is, this is a tendency, like there is a lot of mistrust and I'm sure you'll get to this, but. Can't imagine why. Famously, yeah, I can't imagine why. Famously, Britain wasn't allowed to join the, what was it called, the European, I can't

remember if it was the coal and steel community that led to the EEA, that led to the common market in the EU until De Gaulle died. He's like, fuck no, they will never join. Fuck them. They will stab us in the back. They will fuck us. He's like, fuck no, they will never join. Fuck them. They will stab us in the back. They will fuck us over. They're awful. And he was right.

Occasionally even someone like him figures out that you can't trust the British. Worst military nickname in human history, asparagus, because he was tall. It's so weird. Look, my grandpa tried to kill Charles de Gaulle's, but for very, very bad reasons. Oh, what, like the Paris troopers sold on Paris cause they're like, you're not,

you're, you're, you're too woke. Yeah, that was exactly it. Yeah. But like when the fair trip was kind of their pee pee slapped and got their camouflage taken away as punishments. I don't know if you know this, but literally like, they're like, you're not allowed to wear your cool ass camo anymore. You guys tried to fucking take over the government.

He was in the Legion at the time, and the only people that got killed were, I believe, some Legionaries, because they were stupid. But, you know, I do respect a man that is far too tall to be a tanker who becomes a tanker anyway. That's the only nice thing you can say about Charles the Gulp. I was going to say, not that you know anything about that. Nobody ever called me asparagus though. I was mostly just called homophobic slurs. I was gonna say, well, I mean, yeah, I was gonna say that a friend of mine in a writing workshop who was a veteran to the story

and one of the characters in this like platoon in the story he was writing about was called Ass. I'm just like, who in the fuck gets the nickname Ass? And that's all they were referred to in the story. And then I was gonna say, I met you and your last name is Cassabian. And you're like, everyone's just called me Ass. And I'm like, wait, ass is a real guy.

Yep. Yep. Now a lot of people in the French government wanted to take this union deal, but eventually the weight was just too far against it. Raynold told the British he couldn't take the deal. There's no way anybody was going to vote on it. But Raynold also said that he would fight on until the end. He was not going to take a separate piece. He was not going to accept an armistice.

France would fight until they were completely conquered. Yeah, yeah. And Marshal Patin was like... Well, speaking of Patin, he was Reynald's deputy prime minister at the time. Make a very, very long story short for people who are unaware, Philippe Patin might be the history's greatest uno reverse card who went from

World War one national hero to collaborationist fascist piece of shit All in a few decades the only thing saving him from hanging at the end of a rope Was from his service of world war one. Yeah, I mean de Gaulle said as much Yeah, I mean, yeah, he was the closest thing to a national hero. Here's a real piece of shit. Um, we don't really need to go into it thing to a national hero. Here's a real piece of shit. We don't really need to go into it. But basically, the long story short is that you wind up with free French government zone, as well as the government that's controlled out of Vichy. Yeah, we're going to end up talking about that. Yeah.

Pétain and the commander of the French army, Maxime Weygon, both thought that continuing the fighting was pointless. France had lost. There was no reason to deny that. And continuing the fighting and a completely lost war would do nothing, but end in more meaningless French deaths. There is some truth to that. That is the nicest thing I will say about these two men. I also want to point something out that's not meant to be like, oh, you should compromise with the Nazis and the Germans, but you can understand why this sentiment is pretty powerful because if you've ever

visited small towns in France, anywhere in France, anywhere you go in France, in, you know, the near the Spanish border in, uh, in Provence, in Burgundy, in Champagne, in Lille, in Brittany, anywhere, any small town, there's like, oh, there's a nice little monument with like dozens of names of men who died in World War I. Like, every, basically the entire generation of men died in World War I. Yeah, and that's very much in their forethought of their mind. 25 years ago. Yeah.

So imagine if in the year 2000, like 98% of our high school graduating class just all died. And it wasn't from opiates? Yeah. Fuck it. It wasn't from the great Lawrence County Walmart fire of 2000. Our personal battle of the Somme was the time that someone stole oxy from their dad. I mean, like, Patan's a piece of shit. He should have been executed at the end of the war, but you can, if you divide him from his political beliefs for just five seconds, you can understand why he wanted the war to end. He was already a fascist though. And so was Weygand.

Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and Patin, well, you'll, you'll hear about this, but a lot of the stuff as regards the kind of narrative and historiography that they kind of created about why the Germans rolled them over was like, oh, France was too woke and spent too much time on like socialist exercise clubs and fucking like diversions and fun and not like military training and being fascist and being the military technology and tactics simply pass them by. Yes. I mean, not that this is a thing. France has any fucking history with like, like, no one has ranged artillery. That's impossible to go fucking blunder into a war with the Prussians in 1870 and they're like, oh wait, they do have ranged artillery? Not to mention, it's also framed, again, we'll talk about this a lot more when we talk about

the Battle of France, but France rolled over without a fight, which is absolutely not true. The French military fought tooth and nail. They just lost, which is also a possibility in war. I'm still thinking about your book about, don't worry, we can we can fight off the Germans. It's 19, you know, 1939 or 1940 in the Netherlands. And it's like, the only thing that's aged worse than that is like Belgian architect and Leuven being like this cathedral is unburnable. Without going into the depths of Patin and Weygand's political ideology, they were both complete fascists even before they surrendered to the Nazis. I mean, Pétain himself had more in common with Hitler than he did with his own government.

So for instance, Weygand, when the Nazis were steamrolling their way after the French military finally began to truly break down, Weygygandt was worried that rather than losing the war that there might be a communist uprising in Paris and the Nazis could help them stop it. Weygandt has some rehabilitation going on his image because later on during the Vichy regime, he protests against the Nazis. But it's because they slowly but surely, of course, strip away the sovereignty of the fake puppet state in Vichy. It's not because he didn't like the Nazis. Well, it's just funny because yeah, I mean like, okay, people being fixated on fighting the last war, like there might be a communist uprising in Paris because of the instability created by this invasionist thing. Yeah, that literally just

happened. That did actually happen once in France, the end of the Frank-Prussian War. I don't know a ton, but knowing what I know about Philippe Pétain and Maxime Wigan, they are from a very, very right-wing Catholic tradition. Yeah, their version of fascism was more couched in Catholic ideology rather than like Germans, which were more atheist in a way. Yeah, and like weirdly esoteric fucking mysticism shit. Where Pétain was like, no, all glory to the Vatican.

Remember that a lot of that, the tradition of that in this kind of like, you know, return to Catholicism and like as a form of national restoration is post 1870s. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, arguably it's still a response to the French Revolution being anti-Catholic. That is true. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. There's things you I mean, arguably it's still a response to the French revolution being anti-Catholic. That is true. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. There's things you can trace back where like you're always on the right side of a certain argument. If you just look back to a certain event, basically, similarly, any French politician who's from the part of France that used to be Italy and then got

annexed in the 18, in the 1800s, like we'll be a right wing fascist. Like it's just, it's just, the thing is like, if they're from around Nice and their last name is like spaghetti, they are a right wing politician. It's swastiketti. Yeah, exactly. Abnos spaghetti initially is like, Abalouokism. Yeah, that's a hundred percent true. But eventually meetings in Bordeaux with the government

about what to do with the armistice, the Franco British union, all of this stuff began to break down. More and more cabinet members began to see things Pétain's way, leading Reynaud to resign because he refused to be the one that signed the armistice. That leads to, of course, Pétain being appointed Prime Minister of France.

At this point, the British had accepted that the French were absolutely going to give up the fight. They were going to break their gentleman's agreement to not look for an individual peace, so they demanded that the French navy quickly sail all their combat ships to British ports so they did not fall in the German hands. The commander of the French fleet, as well as Petain, refused to do this. The British reason for wanting the French ships to effectively remove themselves from France is pretty easy to see. Once France surrendered, the Brits would be alone at both land and sea against the Nazis and the Italians, who people still worried about for some reason because if there's

only one thing less intimidating than an Italian man is an Italian man in military uniform. I mean, I was thinking about an Italian boat. The Italian Navy was, to make a very long story short, an episode will eventually cover the future. Paper tigers? The term paper tiger doesn't really work for Italy. Paper meatball? It's a Potemkin paper tiger because the paper tiger is only, it's two dimensional because

people have sold all the fucking third dimension on the black market. That's a black market dimension. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. The Brits only hope of holding on was by commanding the seas and keeping supply and trade routes open because obviously they're an island. Britain has a pretty big Achilles heel when it comes to self defense. The British already depended on the French fleet as it was. When the war started, the British and the French split defense duties at sea, with

the French checking the Italians in the Mediterranean and the British checking the Nazis in the Atlantic. If that check in the Mediterranean was gone, the Italian Navy could hypothetically roam free, closing off any route the Brits had to their positions in the colonies in the Middle East, as well as their shortest path to India. So bad. Churchill reaches out to the French government and the French naval commander Jean-Francois Darlin and the men have a conversation where Darlin effectively tells him, fuck you, we're

not doing it. He refuses to hand the fleet over and simply tells Churchill that no matter what happens, we're not giving the fleet up to anybody, British or German. It doesn't matter what the armistice says. Churchill agrees to this kind of saying whatever happens do not give up your fleet. The implication of course being that kill it rather than hand it to the Nazis and Darlau seemed understood and agreed that he would do this. He told Churchill not to worry because he would never surrender his fleet to anyone,

regardless of what his government told him to do. What are those old honor of the naval officer type thing? The Germans did the same thing at the end of World War I. The German Navy scuttled their fleet at Scapa Flow rather than hand it to the British, despite the fact they knew the war was over. It's kind of a tried and true naval tradition. You'd rather kill your fleet than surrender it. I mean, the Germans also have a pretty, they took their traditions to such a profound extent. They also scuttled their civilian population trying to escape. That's a story for another day. But yeah, I hate to scuttle my civilian population

I hate to scuttle six thousand people on a boat I'm not exaggerating the real Kings are when you scuttle your Air Force Japanese did Also their Navy also their Navy actually we've talked about that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah This is where things begin to get a little weird though Darla agrees to keep the French fleet out of Nazi hands, but he gives no specific order to the French fleet to do so. He makes no move to support that. He did not order them to sail for British ports, though some French ships did this entirely

on their own. We've talked about this before in an episode with the very, very dumb submarine, the Surkof, which was a submarine yearning to die before it even saw combat. Then the Armistice, which was in reality a surrender of France to the Nazis, was signed on June 22, 1940. I was never aware this was actually two days before my birthday. Oh, well, look at that, you know? Part of that is funny because how much of a French nationalist my Armenian grandfather

was that I love that two days before I was born, his beloved country surrendered to the country that he would like more but just for the government part. The armistice had a lot going on inside of it. Nazi occupation of large swaths of France, the Atlantic coast, the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, and anything not outlined in that, namely Southern France and the overseas empire under the control of the fascist collaborationist French government, normally known as Vichy France, led by Petain. I have to interrupt you for a second because there's nothing that I find funnier than

people finding patterns of like, oh, the same thing in a tangentially related way happened on the same date X number of years ago. And that must be related somehow like they broke ground on the Pentagon on September 11th, 1941. It's in the numerology, bro. 60 years later. And it's just like, and all I can ever think of when you, because you brought this up and I'm not making fun of you, but you brought this up about your birthday. And all I can think of is years ago, there was a guy, uh, Kay Thor Jensen on social social media.

And he was, it was in 2015 when a certain famous guy from, from Bloomington, Indiana, it became unfamous. And um, he was like 2001, the fall of the twin towers, 2015, the fall of subway chair 20, 29. Now we're all waiting. What's going to happen? Jared was from Bloomington? Yeah, yeah, he was from Bloomington. He walked to Subway because he lived above the subway, the subway on like 2nd Avenue or whatever. There was an apartment building, he lived

in there and he walked downstairs to go to Subway. That was the story. Oh, okay. And then nothing else ever happened. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He moved to the same suburb my parents lived in for a while and he was like, I'm gonna found a children's charity and that's what they're gonna remember me for. Now he's a sovereign citizen. Yeah, he's just having a summer vacation for many, many, many, many decades in a federal housing project. Moving on.

Another part of the armistice was and affect the total surrender of the French fleet to the Nazis. However, it didn't give the fleet over to the Nazis. The fleet was to be quote disarmed with the clause that allowed the Nazis to use the French fleet for coastal defense and surveillance. In short, it left the entire French fleet in something of a gray zone with little more than a paper arrangement between a collaborationist government and the Nazis keeping them out of direct combat operations. Then Darlan continued to give orders to the French fleet that said in short to make sure

that their fleet fell under no foreign command but, quote, our former allies are not to be listened to. Now, Darlan did this because he believed that if the French fleet simply chucked up a white flag and sailed over to the UK or wherever, they would join the Free French movement, which they probably would have. Though the evidence of this isn't ironclad. A lot of French ships did surrender to the British and then their sailors were given the option to join the Free French or just go back to France. A lot of them just went home. So like, who's to say if this would have been a one for one transfer? But Darlong was worried that if these ships did go over to the British even to just surrender,

Germany would see this as a violation of the armistice agreement and throw it out the window and fully take over France because he was under the fake belief that that had not already happened. Yeah. Which is something that happens quite frequently with the Vichy government. When you look into them, they constantly complain about their sovereignty being violated by the Nazis.

Kind of hilariously. It's like, what do you think this arrangement is? You fucking morons. Nobody ever accused fascists of being intelligent, but still. Some bad news about territorial integrity. Yeah, I'm starting to be worried about the territorial integrity of my puppet state. You can see how the British government begins to get a little nervous at this arrangement when it comes to the French fleet. And when it comes to the French fleet, there are two formations that give the British,

much like the UN in the middle of horrific crimes against humanity, deep concern. For starters, there is the French fleet in Toulon. But due to its location, it's effectively unapproachable. The British were not going to be able to touch it, right? However, there was another fleet stationed at Mirzal Kabir in French Algeria. French Algeria fell under the administration of the collaborationist government. However, it was far enough away from France that the British hoped that the French military men there wouldn't be some kind of unwavering, loyal fascist p'tan. I have really fucking bad news for you about Pied Noirs and French Algerians.

Yeah, that's like the biggest bit of military intelligence failure of the British was not understanding what being a French military commander to Algeria meant. I mean, I'm just thinking about a friend of a friend who was doing some research and published this thing. He's like, this is just an example of all the different like explicitly anti-Semitic magazines that people were subscribing to in French Algeria. And it's just like, ah, yeah, I'm just saying. I mean, put it this way, it's like ultra manifest destiny. Algeria was to France like, I mean, imagine if like people saw holding onto Alaska is like,

you know, an innate thing that you had to preserve to maintain the spiritual integrity of the United States. I feel like a fair amount of people would believe that now. Yeah, maybe. I don't know. I mean, it would be the same kind of disgusting people with bubble to the surface, just with a lot less French being spoken, I would imagine.

But just as much anti-Semitism, I'll probably I'll say. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. But I mean, we'd see if the if the two hundred and fifty thousand dollar for F-150s could handle Muscat or not. A whole fleet of technical Cybertrucks immediately breaking down and catching fire. It's like that Volkswagen ad that they couldn't air where the guy tries to do the suicide bombing but the car is too strong and he takes the explosion. Fuck, I remember that.

In this case, the commander of the French fleet in Algeria was Admiral Marcel Bruno Guinsoul. He was, from what I could find, not a fascist, died-in-the-wool type. He was more of a traditional, I am a naval officer with a decades of service behind me that kind of thing white glove Naval tradition believing psycho spoiler somewhere to talk about soon But it's sort of like you're still a bit of a fascist in terms of your affect like the Colonel in Akira But you're not actually a fascist. Oh for sure. He was still an admiral serving a fascist French Navy. So you're an authoritarian dickhead and your entire life has been shaped by this.

But like, you're not like, you know, we have to complete the runic circles so we can eliminate the Jews or whatever. The fuck the Nazis. He probably like if given the choice, he'd probably still vote for Patan. To be completely honest, military guy, national hero, fascist, probably would have voted for him by all accounts. Not a huge fan of the Nazis, but so were some French fascists. They wanted their own fascism. Yeah, exactly. They appreciated Paul Renault being opposed to the Nazis, but they still

thought he was stank by the Wocos. So Winston Churchill began to think, well, how the hell do we get rid of this French Algerian fleet as a threat to the Mediterranean war effort? And this was not a worry isolated to the Brits. FDR, his army chief of staff and his chief of naval operations, were worried about this turn of events as well, despite the fact the US was not even in the war yet. So they considered transferring half of the American Pacific fleet to the Atlantic to counter any kind of European war spreading to American shores via that direction. Which is quite ironic because if he did that he would have saved them from Pearl Harbor.

I was gonna say, I was gonna say because you know I just thought about what happened to the most of the American Pacific fleet you know as existed before the start of the U.S. entry in World War II and then the opening riff of Metallica's Seek and destroy sort of playing in my head. It's just like, yeah, you know, there would be fewer tourist attractions at Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor would just be a place. Yeah. You wouldn't, you wouldn't really have to, you wouldn't be obligated to remember. Well, I suppose it really is still just a place. If you happen to be the U S Navy. And from my understanding, a really shitty place to get stationed for everything. The Japanese hit it with their famous limit break plane.

Exactly. And then the Americans hit it with their famous limit break ecological disaster. So Churchill decided the only thing they could do was issue an ultimatum to the fleet at Mirzal Kabir. Destroy your fleet, surrender, move the fleet to British waters, or face the use of force. This was unsur, incredibly unpopular in Churchill's government. Even the two men that would be charged with conducting this operation, Andrew Cunningham in Alexandria and James Somerville in Gibraltar, both hated the idea.

Most people in the British government, and specifically people in the British military, still saw the French as their ally especially the French Navy and the army remember the French army fought like absolute fucking savages to protect the British during their miracle at Dunkirk a lot of people leave that part out of the story yeah exactly you can imagine that between between these two officers and their two commands that the expression is just not cricket probably got said. A lot of monocles got dropped in the glasses.

Oh, brother. Somerville specifically saw the idea of giving the French an ultimatum and even turning his guns on them as one of the most fucked up things anybody could ever order him to do. Now the other camp in the British government said fuck the French they violated our deal and surrendered they get what they get. So Churchill took both sides of you know this disagreement so to say and went with his original idea of the ultimatum passing the orders to Cunningham and Somerville to compel the French Admiral into negotiations just to see what would happen.

It does seem that Churchill believed that Gonçal would capitulate with negotiations. It doesn't really seem like he actually thought he'd have to go through with it. Somerville would be in charge of the main effort, which would be called Force H, because the Brits love doing stuff like that, and was called Operation Catapult. Somerville accepted his orders but did object to the possibility of having to use force, in my opinion, for very good reason. He pointed out that if they started bombing the piss out of French sailors, the Frenchmen who joined the Free French Movement might be pretty fucking unhappy with the British. The British government took his complaints into account and told them

to shut up and do it anyway. We're gonna do it anyway. Obviously this sounds a lot easier said than done. The French fleet at Merzel Cabir was not exactly small or weak. It consisted of four battleships, six destroyers, a seaplane carrier, and it's called a dispatch boat, which is kind of just a small boat to maneuver through the fleet. Had thousands of sailors, dozens of pilots, it was heavily armed and by all accounts very well trained. The battleships were a bit older, but the destroyers were as modern as any other in the world at the time.

Which was one of the reasons why the Brits were so worried about them. But the fleet had made no move since the armistice. They stayed at port, anchored in a line, the perfect picture of what a fleet at a country not at war would look like. Like literally pulled in like a parking lot, nose first. Somerville's Force H was comparatively even stronger. His flagship was the HMS Hood, one of the most powerful ships of the British fleet at the time, which of course, this is the second time we've talked about the Hood, and had to point out that it is doomed to die in about a year,

when it's killed by the Bismarck. But we'll eventually talk about its death at some episode of the future. With him is the aircraft carrier, which I have to say, for an aircraft carrier named solid aim, the Ark Royal. It sounds like something that's absolutely going to fucking kill you. Yeah, it's like you do a side quest in Castlevania, Symphony of the Night to get like the coolest fucking whip possible. Yeah. Oh, man, did you get the Ark Royal? No, I only got the bat with a nail in it.

No, I only got the Morningstar that's always on fire. Thankfully, Morningstars are really good for clubbing seals to death, as we've recently discovered in the Patavia episodes. On Patreon, there's your plug. They also had 11 destroyers, 2 battleships and two cruisers. In short, Force H more than powerful enough to hand it to Gensoul's fleet at Algeria. So on July 3rd, 1940, Force H makes contact with the French fleet. Somerville sends his second, Captain Cedric Holland aboard the HMS Foxhound into the harbor to negotiate

for him. The Foxhound? That Foxhound, but then also Force H laying waste to Algeria sounds like William Burroughs on vacation. Christ. The HMS Foxhound goes into the harbor to deliver the British terms to Admiral Jean Soule. Holland was picked for some pretty obvious reasons. He had been the former British naval attache in Paris, he spoke fluid French, and he knew Admiral

Jean-Saul personally. So not a better person for the job, right? However, remember how I described Jean-Saul as like the picture-perfect naval traditions guy? How do you think an admiral responded to a captain delivering terms to him? So I'm gonna say that I can only assume that this is a thing that crosses national boundaries and cultural boundaries that the Navy takes rank shit even more seriously than other branches of service who already take it really seriously. Oh, God, yeah. But that, but navies are so into the idea of like, like rank and grade being matters

of life and I guess they are in the sense of like honor. Yes. I mean, I guess in the sense of sort of like, uh, as we learned from the Batavia, sometimes on, you know, a plague Hulk drifting in the ocean. So like, you know, there's a certain, the system has existed for, uh, you know, to kind of like put people in charge and what they say is absolute, but like also from the Batavia, you could just invent your own ranks. Why not? You could. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can invent your own ranks. Why not? You could. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can make your own uniforms.

You could pull out the guy Fox masks and do some, do some crimes. You could, uh, you could have a governing council called the rod, which kind of sounds like like the discipline system in British boarding school. Like yeah, anything goes. Yeah. He was on fucking happy that a captain came to talk to him. He believed that if there was gonna be any... A naval captain is only like two or three ranks below, but it's just a matter of life and death.

It's the principle of the matter. My fascist-honored demands that only an admiral speak to me. Yeah, yeah. Sorry. Sorry, brother. Sorry, but that doesn't work for me, brother. Hulk Hogan in your way into naval negotiations. Again, something that he probably would have something in common is Hulk Hogan's politics. But, uh, Jensoul is so mad that he refuses to be with Holland and instead he sends a lieutenant to go out and meet him thinking it was like a clever dig that he

was then sending someone lower ranking than Holland to negotiate with him. Yeah. Jensoul sending his lieutenant to get him a really strong coffee because he's just cannot believe the amount of Stress is his cousin. He just says I need a cup of serious mud brother I need the world's I need a cup of the world's strongest but smallest coffee. Get me my mistress Holland doesn't give a single shit. Yeah, you negotiate the ten without issue because it turns out he also knows him personally Holland is a it is just the the guy that knows all the people in the French Navy on this specific boat Because coincidence is a motherfucker. He delivers the terms like you want it. You really you're gonna stand up

You want you want you want to talk back to me? I fixed your Vespa so you could go So he delivers the terms to the lieutenant. The terms were simple. Continue to fight with the Brits against the Nazis, surrender the fleet at a British port, and those ships would then be given back when the war was over. If they believed that surrendering the ships in the Mediterranean or the Atlantic to the British would violate the armistice, they had an agreement with the Americans that the French fleet could sail all the way to Hawaii and Surrender to the American Pacific fleet Fuck are they gonna do a very very long trip which I'm sure in our show's history will tell you would go perfectly fine

I'm trying to think like would they go to the Panama Canal and go that way or where they go through the Suez Canal go all The way around the other side of the world? Either or? Either way, that route would suck ass. It would be really, really bad and they'd almost certainly be attacked in route. And the final point, quote, if you refuse these fair offers, I must with profound regret require you to sink your ships within six hours. Finally, failing the above, I have orders from His Majesty's government to use

whatever force may be necessary to prevent your ships from falling into German or Italian hands. Yeah, in short, give up the ships, sink them, or we're going to blow you up. I'm making a holding a shotgun and racking it gesture right now. Jensoul received the letter and you know, remember Force H is parked right outside of Mirzal Kabir. Like he sees this fleet staring at him effectively. William S. Burroughs hearing that there's a delivery of heroin coming. Force H is parked right outside Mirzal Kabir. I gotta go.

Get me a truck. Jensoul also had orders from his government that he wasn't allowed to do any of that, nor was he even allowed to talk to the British. So he told Holland to fuck off. Holland decided he wouldn't and said got on a motor launch boat and made for Jensoul's flagship the ironically named Dunkirk. But in the French spelling of her name, it's Dunkirk. Yeah, but I pronounced it correctly. He wanted to go to plead his case personally, thinking that you know maybe if he saw the urgency in his voice or whatever, he would give up.

He never got close and only managed to deliver a handwritten version of the demands to him personally, before being threatened to leave the ship and return to the Foxhound. Chinsoul then sends an alert to the French Admiralty, telling him the British ultimatum. But he fucks it up. He says that the British fleet demanded they sink their ships and surrender or they would immediately be attacked Which as you noticed is not what the British had said so the French Admiralty reacts by telling him immediately not to do any of those things and then Things get weirder the French Admiralty of the collaboration estate Darlaw being the head of it the elaboration estate, Dar-Law, being the head of it, could not be reached due to the fact that the Admiralty had been evicted from their office in Bordeaux

by the Germans and were in the middle of moving their new offices to Vichy. We are in need of these buildings. You can find something equivalent in Vichy. The rent will be much higher, I assure you. Yeah, but it's okay, you have spare rooms, you can do it on Airbnb. The French showing up and fighting after walking into a German rental, which means it comes

with no kitchen appliances whatsoever. What the fuck? There's not even a stove in here. You will discover that there is a great line of white goods from Bosch. So Jean-Saul ended up talking to rear Admiral Maurice Le Luc, which was Darlan's deputy. Le Luc and everybody else's orders from Darlan were pretty cut and dry in his absence. He was not allowed to change the standing orders, which were, do not negotiate with our former allies. And since Jean-Saul fucked up the most straightforward game of telephone at all time, Le Luc orders French ships both in Toulon and Algiers to fall in line and sail from

Mersal-Khabir to reinforce it. Obviously, the Brits had tapped and decoded everything from the French Admiralty for a long time at this point because they love to spy on their allies. And so when the French become their enemy, it just carries over. And they quickly learn that more French fleets are gunning it to Mors al-Kabir for a fight. So Somerville deploys several planes to begin dropping sea mines at the mouth of Mors al-Kabir in order to prevent the escape of the French fleet.

This all occurred so close to the French ships that French sailors watched them do it. And by all accounts, French sailors are incredibly disinterested in any of this. It's often said from Holland, who was there and watched them, that the French sailors mostly wanted to surrender, or at least didn't want to fight the British.

And so they were just kind of lounging around, not really having a sense of urgency whatsoever. It's kind of like you're playing Little League and your friend's dads are about to fight to the death, and you're just sort of like, why? This is stupid. Yeah, just- I want to go to Pizza Hut.

I want to go to Algerian Pizza Hut, the 40s. Pizza Hut. Somerville had given the French six hours to make up their minds and it was almost 1.15 PM. And so that time was running out. Somerville really not wanting to be the guy who opened fire on the people who had just been their allies a few weeks ago,

told Jensoul that he would have two more hours. He did this without any clearance from the British Admiralty or the British government. Jensoul then sent word to the British fleet that he would like to talk to Captain Holland again. And as soon as he did so, Somerville again gave the French fleet another two hours to make up their minds.

Holland sailed for the Dunkirk and Melle-Gensoul in person. Despite Gensoul being absolutely fucking pissed. I mean, he was given an ultimatum and he's being held at naval gunpoint. So you can imagine he's not the most friendly. Yeah, fair. He told Holland that if the Germans try to take his fleet from him, or, failing that, ordered the French fleet into combat against the British, he would personally sail for the United States. This according to

the Frenchman was as far as he could go as far as making an agreement with Somerville without violating the orders had been given to him by his government. So at 5pm, Holland told Somerville no deal was going to happen before the end of the time limit. So Somerville was going to extend it again. He wanted this to last as long as possible, hoping that Gensoul would eventually just cave. But the British Admiralty then sent a wire to him saying that the French fleet was on its way with reinforcements, meaning there's certainly a fight that was going to happen.

There was another concern as well. Somerville and his fleet had been sitting off North Africa for 11 hours now There is a really good chance that the Italian Navy is going to be on to him soon At least one guy has said hey, yo, I'm fucking sality So Somerville wired Holland with one last message for Jean-Saul, If none of the British proposals are acceptable by 1730, they'll be necessary to sink your ships. Meaning he would give Jean-Saul another 30 minutes tops. Jean-Saul read the messages, said goodbye to Holland,

asked him nicely to leave his ship before the British blew it apart. And the French officers saluted him as he left, only five minutes before the time limit expired. Then as one final fuck you to the French, as Holland left on the HMS Foxhound, he deployed sea mines his entire way out of the harbor. Like, bro, why did you have to do that? It's just naval Mario Kart throwing banana peels and blue shells at people. Yeah, naval mines are kind of the banana peel of warfare, aren't they? Yeah, exactly. You know, few people are aware of British military tradition being one where you, when

you do this, you're supposed to say, I'm a wadio. I'm going to, I should never mind the Italian Navy is right there. Yeah. It's all fun and games till your ship hits one of the bananas and spins out and falls off Rainbow Road. Yeah. I was supposed to say, I can't, it's just, it's very inappropriate to bring up the British for this when the Italian Navy is basically like they're they're accidentally doing this to themselves about

50 miles 50 nautical miles away But Somerville still didn't open fire He was really hoping to see some white flags or some form of communication from the French fleet So then he sends out a message to the French crews in semaphore Flashing lights and whatnot from the ship telling them to surrender or join them, anything other than fight them. The French fleet was still lined up, moored to port, nose in, completely helpless and not prepared to fight them whatsoever. He receives a semaphore message back reading, I will go down with the ship, I won't put my hands up and surrender, there will be no white flag above my door, I'm in love and always will be.

I fucking hate you. There will be no white flag above my door. I'm in love and always will be Slowly the British crew been sitting other ships are here Katy Perry's fight song emit from the harbor Then at 6 p.m. He finally gave the order for the fleet to open fire and it was about as accurate as it could possibly Get not only were the French fleet still just sitting at port, prior to opening fire the Ark Royal sent observation aircraft to fly up and act as spotters for incoming gunfire. So as soon as the British sailors opened fire everything was smashing directly into French ships. The battleships Brittany and Strasbourg as well as the seaplane carrier are immediately on fire. The battleships Brittany and Strasbourg, as well as the seaplane carrier, are immediately on fire.

The French tried to return fire, but their biggest guns, the ones on Strasbourg and Dunkirk, couldn't even be used. They were pulled into port nose first, and their biggest guns were on the forward portion of the ship, meaning they could not be fired whatsoever. I'm just trying to think of an equivalent. This is like you're trying to roll coal, but your truck is backed into your garage. And so the smokestack is in your garage. It's just giving you carbon monoxide. That's just a Viking funeral for a piece of shit. That's a Viking funeral for a dude with the salt life sticker

on the back of his lifted truck. Everybody's standing outside the garage, crying, dabbing their eyes slightly. Also hitting the dab because they're pieces of shit. I mean, I remember there was a dude who was, I want to say it was a Navy seal and he died and his blue book instructions for his family was that they wanted to pull his Camaro up to the fucking grave site, literally to like the, the, the, where the body would be interred at fucking blast like iced earth from the car and everyone slam keystone The family was like well, this is what he wanted. It was for America

That's the closest thing that we're ever gonna have to like a military citadel Where Napoleon's buried we just have dudes chucking daddy ice It's chucking daddy ice. Oh my God. Only two ships, the Brittany and the province, had guns that can move their guns into position to open fire in the British. However, the French ships were, for the lack of a better term, flooring it to try to get out of port as fast as they could to try to escape. And when a ship does that, they pump out a massive amount of steam, which then fell directly over their own ships, meaning they had given their own crews a smoke screen they could not see through.

So the Brits could bomb them pretty much at will because they do exactly where they're lined up nose to nose into the port. And the French could not see the British at all. So the French did not hit a single British ship with cannon fire at all. And I was gonna say, I don't know what kind of aviation support the Brits have in this situation, but it's like if you were looking to do like,

you know, dive bombers, kind of like the way they employed fighter planes back then. And you're like, hmm, I wonder where the targets are. It's like an enormous fucking like smoke signal emanating from the port spelling out, Minel in fucking, you know, whatever the Morse code of smoke is. Ah, putain, merde. A growing human chain of French sailors

smoking more cigarettes than the human mind can comprehend. That's just very funny because this is a side note and I know I'm not supposed to interrupt, but everyone thinks, people in the English language are like, oh, it's not very, oh la la, like kind of the way they use that expression in French, but the way people actually use that expression in French is not to mean like fancy and kind of fruity,

the way that people do in English, it's more like, well, there's your problem. It's like, oh la la la la la la la la la la la la la. When you find like, like someone forgot to install a plumbing joint and fucking water's just pouring, you know, basically the toilet's just dumping onto the floor, that's when you'd say, oh la la la la la la la la.

Yeah, in the Midwest we'd say, oh We'd say oh Yeah, exactly brother. I do it so often I do it as well another British volley slam directly into the Brittany hitting the ship's magazine and Exploding it into a pillar of flame The hit was a fatal one and the ship began to sink within only two minutes taking over 1000 French soldiers down with it. Jesus fucking Christ. I remember reading that the death toll on this was like 12, 1300 people. I didn't realize it was like basically it was like ultra HMS.

What was the fucking the problem? There was a bit like the ultra Belgrano or the HMS Sheffield in the Falklands War. Like there were two mass casualty ships sinking in that war. And it's like, yeah. And, and yeah, it's like, wow. A thousand people in one. Yikes. But the Brittany wasn't the only ship that was dying.

The seaplane carrier was on fire and the Dunkirk, the fleet's flag ship struggled to get out of port as it was hit four more times. The electrical system failed and the poor bastards manning the guns had to turn them with huge manual gears. And I can't say how much that sucks on a ship. I assume a lot. I've had to do it in a tank before. Would you do gunnery in a tank? You have to do like a failure type shot where you don't have any hydraulic power. And you have to crank the fucking manual gear thing to move the turret.

And it sucks ass. I feel like I've used this metaphor numerous times on many podcasts, but it's just basically like the military version of like the horrible gear seller in Fritz Lang's metropolis. We're just doing the thing all day long. Yeah. The province was hit and caught fire. The ship's captain was worried that another hit, which he was sure was coming and it probably was, would kill it and block the port for any other ship trying to get away. So he jammed that shit to the left and beached his ship to make sure it died out of the way

of everybody else's. The Strasbourg and three destroyers gunned it for the open sea, somehow managing to dodge all of the sea mines and hauling ass at full speed towards Toulon. But these ships were the only ones that were actually able to damage the British at all that day. Anti aircraft crews aboard the French ships managed to shoot down five British planes that took off from Ark Royal, killing two people. The Battle of Mirzal Kabir was a naval shooting gallery. In just nine minutes, Somerville ordered his ships to cease fire and give the French a

chance to surrender. Ten minutes past 10pm, Gensoul messaged the HMS Hood, quote, All my ships are out of action. I request you cease fire. And they did, but not before requesting Jean Sol fly a white flag, which he didn't have, Sir Risorda just flapping a blanket outside the window. In the end, 1,297 French sailors were killed, another 350 were wounded. The British lost two men, another two were lightly wounded. Pétain's shithealed government broke off official relations with the British and ordered

the French planes to bomb Gibraltar, but they didn't really do anything. Churchill, and therefore much of British World War II history, often frames this attack as brutal but necessary. A necessary evil that needed to be done in order to protect themselves from the fascist fleets joining up against them. That is, surprisingly, what Charles de Gaulle thought when he learned of the attacks afterwards. In much more morose terms, he said it was a necessary evil. Churchill, of course, as being ruthless to a ruthless enemy, bolstered the few British allies left and scared the hell out of possible allies to the Nazis. Like Spain, for example, is often cited as being so intimidated by the attack in the Mediterranean

that it was one of the reasons they stayed out of the war, which is just not true for many, many, many reasons. They were a bit busy doing this to themselves. The civil war had just ended. They're not exactly at that dimension. They do a lot of business with the allies. They're not in the mood of, you know, shooting that in the face. So with the attack against, let's say, technically a neutral country that had previously been an ally was actually not more of a puppet state. Was it really a necessary evil? We can't say for sure, because we don't know what the fleet at Merzel Kabir would have done if the Nazis did show up to try to take it over.

But we do know what the French fleet did at Toulon when the Nazis tried just that. During Case Anton, the Nazi operation that chucked the armistice in the trash and fully occupied the collaborationist government of France in 1942, this exact thing was attempted. The 7th Panzer Division was tasked with driving towards Toulon and securing the fleet from the ground, while elements of the German Kriegsmarine mined the harbor, ensuring they couldn't try to get away. As soon as the Nazi ground forces entered the base, the French naval chiefs of staff knew what was happening and immediately ordered the fleet to scuttle itself.

Sailors quickly went to work, getting out to deeper water, setting charges and opening sea valves, because this was something they had always planned to do if the Nazis came. The Strasbourg, who survived the Battle of Mersaille-Cabir, even opened fire using its naval cannons on Nazi tanks when troops tried to stop sailors from scuttling ships. So we have a ship-on-tank battle. Other sailors got in gun and knife fights, struggling with Nazis who had boarded their ships to try and arrest them, all while actively setting bombs to destroy their ships. Soon afterwards, scuttling charges began exploding

and the Toulon fleet died one ship at a time. In one case, Germans managed to get aboard the ship before the main charges and its magazines were set. So the captain just lit charges on an extremely short fuse and jammed them down the main turret of the cannon. This forced German and French sailors to run for their lives or die in the resulting explosion. In the end of this mass naval explosive suicide, they managed to sink 77 ships.

The submarines ignored the orders to scuttle and instead ran to join the Free French movement. The Germans were only able to seize three functional ships, all of which had been disarmed, though the Italians eventually descended on Toulon to steal a whole bunch of scrap metal, which is kind of funny. eventually descended on Toulon to steal a whole bunch of scrap metal. Which is kind of funny. I'm just thinking that like the last thing you expect, you know, being kind of raced up in this German ubermensch military tradition is to have a French ship captain holding an enormous fucking charge.

It's lit like comical fucking Wile E. Coyote style fuse jamming down the cannon and being like, Hitler and the allies's gonna dig on the bar? Hitler and the Allies did agree on something in the situation. It was a victory for both of them. Hitler now saw that the French fleet could be used against them, and the Allies saw that the French fleet could be used against them. I guess what I'm saying here is the answer is yeah. Attacking Mers-Alkabir was not necessary whatsoever, because the French fleet, when

they said that they would sink their own ships rather than give them to the Nazis, they fucking meant it. Yeah, it's sort of like the scary role version of Hitler reacts. Hitler reacts happy. Hitler reacts brackets positive. He's just like, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's like, Es bleibt in realm. Keitel, Jodl, Krebs,

und Pogdorf, and then he just gives them all a kiss. Vunderbar! Es ist vunderschön! I'm not here throwing up a defense of the collaborationist French government, but, you know, murdering over a thousand sailors, which doesn't really need to be done,

you know, didn't really hurt the Patent-elle, did it doesn't really need to be done, you know, didn't really hurt the, Patan L, did it? I don't think so. I mean, fuck the Vichy French, whatever, the end. Did it need to be done? No, but let's not pretend that they didn't deserve it. And also it didn't keep Spain out of the fucking war.

It's ridiculous. But also it's just sort of like fucking, it's once again, it's like the world's worst outcome when two dads are fighting it little Two dads fighting it little league armed with katanas Yeah, exactly two dads fighting it little league and then they fucking neo Tokyo is going to explode the entire fucking baseball diamond We have to like rebuild civilization in the ashes of what happened. We have to rebuild neo little league now

They we do something on the show called questions from the Legion. If you'd like to ask us a question, donate to the show on Patreon. You can ask us in the Patreon DMs or the Discord. You also have access to, and we'll answer it on the show. Today's question is, what is the funniest negative review you've ever gotten regarding a podcast or something else? I know what you're gonna say. You can say it, it's fine.

Yeah, I mean, okay. I think Tom quoted this thing that he saw when you and I did Stalingrad and somebody said, lib shit from two fags that makes you wish you could have rooted for the Taliban. And our comment was always, but you can root for Taliban if you want to. Sometimes I kind of did when I was in Afghanistan. It's always nice to be a bandwagon person when someone's winning, you know? There was somebody who was a huge hater of November who gets a lot of psychos, who was really mad at us and the show and so on and so forth.

And Hussein and I had kind of riffed and made jokes, making fun of this very unhinged person who, it was like trying to find creative ways to tell us to commit suicide. They were trying to be transphobic to November, but Hussein and I and November, we're all kind of riffing with this person. And November and I had both commented back and forth,

and then this person replied to me, squeakiest voice on the podcast, riffing with deepest voice on the podcast. I was just like, that's really mean. That's so fucking fucked up. And fucked up, but like, it did kind of lodge in my, I mean, we all laughed it off, but it kind of, I mean, I remember saying something in the person like, Oh, I see Lieutenant Bethea calling in reinforcements. And I was like, that's

actually captain to you. We get a lot of negative reviews that say like really weird shit, but I think my still favorite negative review of all time, there's nothing to do with the show is one of my books. I don't remember which one that said this person's so woke. They obviously never served in the army and they have no idea what they're writing about. Like, yeah, I became so woke. It had stolen Valor. I mean, I do remember somebody getting really mad at me and being like, you're a, you're stolen Valor. You're fake. And I was like, you know, I'm on a commuter train. It's going to take me two hours to get to work. So I actually have time. I'm just going to readact

my DD 214 and you can look at it. Cause here at it and then they were like Oh, you fucking liar you fake bullshit. You think I'm not smart enough. Look at that You spent it says you were in Afghanistan for 29 days Huh combat deployments like no, dude, you just don't know how to read military dates that says February 2009 to March And then the guy just deleted The person I think it was one of, it was certainly one of my military sci-fi books. I do not remember which one, but the person said that because I had a non-binary character

play a pretty important role, that I was too woke to ever be in the military. Famously, it's not a place where there's people who are gender nonconforming in the military. I clearly had no idea what I was writing about, which was very, very funny. Yeah, that's what I can think of I don't know. Yeah, I mean as far as like I don't really go looking for it It's not trying not to look at podcast reviews. Some of them can be really fucking hurtful and I

Yeah, I mean his Satan will sometimes share stuff that he finds funny and like I don't know I just don't really need to see it. Like I don't go looking, I don't name search. I just don't care. Like in the sense that, I mean, like one time I was trying to find an episode, I was trying to find combat of the 30 and I just, it was easier to Google search it and I wanted to send it to a friend and instead it brought up like the subreddit and it was somebody being like, do you guys find Nate fucking annoying? I was just like, I was like, you have no idea how fast I clicked on this insert

uploading all the comments that say that I'm a piece of shit. I know I'm annoying. I know I'm fucking annoying. I just monetized it. That is a podcast, but Nate, you work in other podcasts. You can plug those other podcasts. Yeah, Trash Future, What a Hell of a Way to Dad, Kill James Bond, and then also No Gods No Mayors,

sort of executive producer. So check those out. This is the only podcast I host. So consider supporting us on Patreon. Just $5 gets you almost seven years of bonus content, Discord access, every regular episode early gets you side series, both audio and video gets you eBooks, audiobooks, a lot of other stuff. Donate to the show. It's fun. Do it until next time. Jam brie into a machine gun and die. You know what? Or run down the gangway with a gigantic grenade. Scuttle it all. Vive la France. Bye.