The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Why Does Putin Keep Mentioning Stalingrad?

Episode Date: February 7, 2023

Putin keeps us guessing.  Why are no crowds visible at his public appearances? Why did his honour guard go on parade without weapons?  Brian Stewart has his thoughts on all that and more.  Plus, an end bit on Nazi gold -- is it real?

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. Why does Putin keep mentioning Stalingrad? What's up with that? It's Tuesday. Brian Stewart is with us, and he'll answer the question. And hello there. Tuesdays on the bridge is Brian Stewart Day. The past year, Brian's been talking about the Ukraine war, putting it in context for us, giving us some of the history behind it, some of what to expect, and we'll do that again today. But first of all, something else. Just want to spend a couple of minutes on this, because I woke up this morning, I was thinking about Charlie Lynch.

Now, some of our older listeners will definitely remember Charles Lynch, great journalist, part of the Canadian Journalism Hall of Fame, and deservedly so. When I arrived in Ottawa as a parliamentary reporter in the mid to late 1970s, Charles Lynch was somebody you kind of looked at with awe. There's Charlie Lynch. Charlie Lynch had been a D-Day. He was one of that small contingent of Canadian journalists. Matthew Halton, David's dad, was there.

A number of others. But Charles Lynch was kind of famous for having been a D-Day, carrying his typewriter ashore. And there was that story about Charlie who had written out his first story about what had happened on the landing. And they used pigeon carriers to send the stories back to Britain so they could be sent around the world. Well, as the story goes, Charlie did his piece,

took it to the pigeon department, and off the pigeons flew, but they flew towards the German lines. And Charlie was said to have looked up at the sky and said, Traitors, traitors! You pigeon traitors! Well, that story made it in a number of books and movies. I think it was in The Longest Day. I mean, they didn't credit Charlie with it.

Why would you do that? Why would you credit a Canadian? Let's credit somebody like British. And that's what happened, I think, in the movie. Anyway, Charlie went on for a distinguished career. The United Nations in Canada was off and on. I can remember the first election night I watched, I think it was 1958, on television, and Charlie Lynch was kind of one of the CBC anchors. But the story I'm going to tell, which kind of made me think of him today,

was what happened in the early 1980s at one of those First Ministers conferences. They'd always kind of met in public, you know, with the cameras rolling, and it was great television. It really was great television. We're talking of the days of Pierre Trudeau and René Levesque and Peter Lawheed and Bill Davis and Alan Blakeney. And there was quite a group. And they were arguing about, you know, patiation of the Constitution, something constitutional. And they weren't getting very far.

And so the prime minister decided and the premiers agreed, let's go in camera. Let's take it away from the cameras. Let's go and sit in private and we'll try and hammer out a deal, some kind of an arrangement. And so that's what they did. There was only one problem. Charles Lynch wouldn't let them.

Their original plan was to stay in the room but just kick all the reporters and cameras out. But Charlie Lynch wouldn't let them. He refused to leave. He stood there in the middle of the room and wouldn't budge. He said the public has a right to know what's going on with these discussions and these talks. This is about Canada.

This is the Canadians should know about it. And he wouldn't leave, and he wouldn't leave, and he wouldn't leave until they said, okay, we'll leave. And so then that's when they went off into another room. So here we are today. Charlie's gone now. Died just shortly after the 50th anniversary of D-Day. It was 1994.

He was a young guy. He was in his mid-70s when he passed away. But today, you can just imagine he would have been there in Ottawa any time that the First Ministers who were sitting down today to talk about a huge new multi-billion dollar health deal for Canadians. Charlie would have said, you've got to have these discussions in full public. Canadians should know it's about Canada. It's about Canadians. But those days are long gone since the day Charlie Lynch stood in the middle of the conference hall in Ottawa. Very few of the First Minister's meetings have been held in public.

They're all held behind closed doors. And you've got to kind of wait for leaks, and some leaks are strategic. You never know really what to believe, about what actually happens in the room. Well, Charlie would have stood there and said, no, no, no, you can't do this. So that's my memory about Charles Lynch, First Minister's conferences, and we'll watch to see what happens in Ottawa today and how it unfolds and whether or not there is a new health deal. Some people seem quite optimistic, but you never know with these things. When you live in a federation and you're looking for unanimity, man, that's tough.

Doesn't matter what the subject is. All right. Tuesday, Brian Stewart Day. And this one's being no different. He's been in guiding us through the Ukraine story, and it's some really interesting stuff again today. So without further ado, as they say, let's get to it. Here's our discussion for this week with Brian Stewart. All right, Brian, we're going to start with a question that I think I actually know the answer to, but you are much better at history than I am, much better, especially military history, and you can put it in a much better context than I can.

Here's the question. Why does Putin keep mentioning Stalingrad? He keeps mentioning it because it's the single most glorious moment of the Soviet Union's war against Nazi Germany. In the end of 1942 and the beginning to February 2nd, 43, the Russians managed to trap a giant German army in the town of Stalingrad, in the city of Stalingrad, named after Stalin, of course. And after a horrific siege, it was a bloodiest battle in the entire Second World War. They actually conquered it and took about 300,000 German prisoners. And it stood, it was really the turning point of World War II. I mean, the Germans never quite recovered from that. They were so broken. And also, Putin has for the last year or two been on this real drive to

associate current Russia with the kind of Stalin period, including the Second World War period. There are more and more celebrations of the Second World War, and they've been using it throughout the period of invasion of Ukraine, the buildup, and now as a symbol that it's the same Russia with the same heart, the same muscle, and we win our wars and we win our battles. That's not an entirely accurate portrayal of history, but it's one that every Russian can resonate to. Is he kind of looking for a Stalingrad of today? Well, it would be a much smaller scale, of course. There were like two million casualties in the Battle of Stalingrad. But yes, he's looking for, you know, capturing a big chunk of the Ukrainian army in either the north, central or southern fronts.

If he can do that, surround it, have a cauldron and capture it and destroy it. But basically, he's looking for a will to war amongst the population. He's trying to stoke up the sense that, you know, we have our destiny, we Russians. And in war, we rise to our finest level. And this is what we're now facing now. We're facing a kind of, in the West, in Ukraine as a Nazi country. He started speaking in these terms again, that Ukraine is a new version, a neo-Nazi nation full of thugs

and fighting a proxy war for Western Europe and NATO, which is, of course, just an awful anti-Russian force out to destroy us as a country. These are extraordinary fabrications, but that's what he comes out with every time he appears in public almost now. There are two things you've mentioned here that I want to pick up on. The first one is you talked about marking certain celebrations and the anniversary around Stalingrad has just passed in the last week or so.

But one of the things that some of the Western reporters have noticed at these celebrations or remembrances, these ceremonies that have taken place where Putin has attended, there aren't any onlookers. Like there's no crowds. It's really eerie. Yes, good point. Western intelligence and reporters, of course,

are always studying every picture they see of Putin to see what they can pick up from it. And at a couple of, at least one place of putting a wreath to a monument, I believe it was in current Volgograd, which was renamed Stalingrad. There's a picture of Putin standing there almost alone. I mean, a couple of officials, but no crowd in the background, no citizens you would normally find. And then, strange enough, a military honor guard standing without any rifles, without any sidearms of any kind, which is unheard of for an honor guard like that. And this sent the message, I think, to those trying to read it, that this is a man deeply paranoid now about the possibility of somebody taking a shot at him or somebody being in on an attack on them of some kind. And if you start taking arms off your honor guards,

you've really got to an extreme point. It reminds one, you know, in the Second World War near the end, in the last year or so for Adolf Hitler, particularly after several officers tried to blow him up in a bunker, every visiting general, even a field marshal at the very top, would have their small sidearms removed by SS guards before they could get in to see Hitler. That was an indication that nobody now was to be trusted. And that's causing a lot of discussion, that single picture. You know, it's interesting when you think back, reflect back over this past year, when the war started last February, Putin was having those, you know,

and he was feeling pretty good that he could wrap this up in a few days, but he was paranoid about COVID then. Remember, there was the huge long table, and he would make everybody else sit down at the other end of the table and he'd be alone at his end um and so now we have the situation where at least in in what we've witnessed in the last little while um people aren't allowed to have have guns anywhere near him or for that matter crowds i mean this is a strange guy. Very strange.

And, you know, he doesn't appear in public all that much. We think he does because every time he does, he's on our television sets. But in actual fact, for a leader of a giant superpower, he's rarely seen. He travels around the country only extremely rarely. And the appearances are kind of like an emperor coming out. You know, they're a big event because you don't see it often. So he's becoming more and more isolated. And the thing that we don't know, I don't think anybody knows accurately, is in his isolation, who are the voices? Which are the voices he listens to? Who are the very few people that he'll sit down with and get words from? This is why many people think it's actually, we shouldn't criticize Western leaders like Macron of France who wants to call up and talk to Putin.

People say, well, you're showing weakness. Well, it's actually quite important, I think, and other diplomats do. Not other diplomats, as if I'm one. You're our diplomat. You're our diplomat. By the way, I think so, too. I believe that, you know, the more foreign voices that get on the phone, at least he's hearing somebody saying, you know, sir, don't you understand Russia's going to lose?

Even if you win in Ukraine, it will cost you so much. Your nation is on the path to destruction. It's important that he hear that message because he may not be getting it from the officers around him and the various politicians around him. You know, the other thing you mentioned was that in this sense of looking for a Stalingrad, he's looking for a way to trap Ukrainian forces, to capture Ukrainian forces, not just land, but to, you know, make prisoners of war out of a large number of Ukrainians, as Stalin did in Stalingrad with the German forces. That brings us to the next element of today's discussion, which is what are the Russians up to? Because there's this sense that they are on the verge of something, and it could be something big in terms of an offensive. What do you hear?

It's widely anticipated now that there will be a major Russian offensive, possibly within weeks. I mean, it's three weeks. Some in Ukraine are even suggesting it may come at the end of this week, which I don't think is at all possible. But the reality is the Russians have a lot more troops than they did six months ago. It's thought they have somewhere well up, close to 300,000 now, which is almost twice what they had when the original invasion. They have moved more troops in. They're better trained, a lot of them, than the ones of a year ago. And they're starting to move around.

They're moving to various locations as if they're getting ready for a major offensive. And the Russians have shown over and over again in the attacks they've been launching that they're willing to take enormous human casualties. They're sending human waves of troops in now, despite the death toll and the injured toll. They are going to try and overwhelm Ukrainian lines. That's the warning right now that's out there. That's what the Ukrainians are bracing for. That's why they keep saying to the West, race those weapons in because we're going to need them soon. Not only to stop the Russians, but to launch our own offensive. So it could come in the northeast front.

It could come in the central front and it could come further to the south. But again, I go back to the thing that's been bothering me throughout. I don't see in an age when Ukrainians who are masters at intelligence and deception and what have you, are able to see every single truck movement, every platoon of soldiers moving around, how they can ever mass enough to have a real surprise. We may ourselves be very surprised by that, but maybe they can move into one location within, say, under a day and then go over the lines. The other thing I think that, so that leaves me wondering a bit,

will it be a major offensive as we think of on the Stalingrad front before it surrounded Stalingrad, the Russians, the Soviets surrounded Stalingrad? Or will it be three or four minor offensives all at once to wear down the Ukrainians, cause maximum casualties, and really shatter Western will? The West will get all nervous and the rest of it. The thing I mentioned, I think it was a week ago or so, is what I keep waiting to see is where is the Russian Air Force? I mean, it's hardly appearing over Ukrainian airspace right now

because of risks being shot down. But they'll take risk in a big moment. And I would not be surprised if, fact we were all uh very surprised by some horde you know swarms of a russian ground attack and fighter planes coming over and bombers coming over all in one day or two and then really changing the face of this war you know the other so this is why you know everything's on everything right now in ukraine is um you is kind of holding their breath. They're getting ready. They seem to be very confident.

They know that Russia, even Russia eventually, has to get weary of taking so many casualties, as they've been taking now for almost a full year. And, you know, if the Russians do launch an offensive, it's a Ukrainian chance to really maybe smash that offensive. You know, not all offensives, you know, succeed like Stalingrad or Western offensives on the Western front have, and Alamein did in North Africa. A lot of offensives come to grief,

and that's what the Ukrainians are hoping they can bring to Putin's attention. I keep timing my offensives, trying to get another question. Poorly on you, but that's okay. Last week, the other thing you mentioned last week, aside from the Air Force issue, was this issue of new leadership, military leadership on the Russian front, and that was with General Gerasimov taking over controls. So you point out to us that they are better resourced in terms of not only troops and machinery,

and that they may use the Air Force. Is there an indication yet, I know it's early in his term, but is there an indication yet that they know it's early in his term, but is there an indication yet that they're better led with Gerasimov than they had been in the first year of this war? Yes, I think they're better led in so much as they were careful to go quickly on to the defensive, and they've been building up their own defenses because, of course, they have to worry about a very major Ukrainian offensive. So they've got their defensives, and they're moving their troops around a lot more.

The one area Iraq your brain with, though, is this Battle of Bakhmut, which probably everybody has heard of, where the Russians for months, think how long ago last August was. Well, that's where they began to try and take this fairly non-sequential Ukrainian city, you know, very, very small city, which no great strategic value. And they have month after month after month been pouring troops in, losing thousands, perhaps tens of thousands in a kind of micro, mini Stalingrad, micro Stalingrad. That's where the Wagner, the mercenaries have been used and have been claiming success after success. But all this time later, they're trying to get backwood because it's become a matter of pride for Russia. And I thought everybody started to think about a week ago that Zelensky would pull out his Ukrainian troops from there so they wouldn't get surrounded. Instead, in the last 24 hours, he just announced it's going to become Fortress Bakhmut and they're going to fight it out.

And the Ukrainians are now saying, yeah, we're almost surrounded. They have our supply lines under indirect and direct fire, which means eyes on fire. But we have many advantages. There are hills in there and broken ground that we can use as a fortress. And they are fighting, according to the Russians, have said this themselves, Ukrainians are fighting street by street, block by block, and in fact, staircase by staircase. So, you know, I don't want you second-guessing Ukrainian generals or Russian generals, for that matter, but when you look at that decision to fight it out for Bakhmut on the part of the Ukrainians, smart move? Not so smart?

What do you think? Well, here's a real toughie. I hate to go on longer than you want, but here's a real toughie in the sense that if they get the troops out, of course they save their own troops. They're going to lose a lot there. But it's a chance to

continually wear down every day, every hour, the Russian forces. The Russians are so almost hysterical in their attempts to get it with human wave attacks that the Ukrainians see it as a, you know, the military is a term meat grinder. Not very delicate, but that's what it becomes. They're just grinding down Russian forces. And they're also pinning them down to that one area. So they can't move around that much. So it looks like a wild attempt to stay put where they shouldn't stay put, where in actual fact, it may be strategically important in the long run. The two factors I

also keep in the back of my mind, maybe in fact, they can't pull out now. Maybe it's already too late to pull thousands of troops out. So why not get them to dig in? They've got ammo and supplies. They can really make this costly for Putin. And the other thing is, this is the weird factor of this war, with all the prisoner exchanges, the prisoners who surrender in Bakhmut, if and when they do, will probably be home within six months because there are exchanges of prisoners going on every few weeks now, which is very rare for a war. Okay, we're going to take our regular quick break in the middle of this, but when we come back, I want to talk about a plane that left Canada

in the last 24 hours with a special cargo and what it all means. We'll be back with that right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge, the Tuesday episode with Brian Stewart on the war in Ukraine. You're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks,

or on your favorite podcast platform. Tomorrow, Wednesday, Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth with Bruce Anderson will be by. And also on Friday, Bruce and Chantelle Hebert will be with us. And those two programs, they are both also available on our YouTube channel. You can find it, no cost, by going to the link that's on my Instagram and my Twitter feed. Okay, Brian, let's get back to the story of the aircraft that left Canada with a special cargo.

And that special cargo, a week after promise, is the first of the four Canadian tanks. Now, some people have been making fun of that, given the number of tanks that other countries are offering up, these Leopard 2 tanks. You see it in a different light. Tell me about it. Well, I think it's a smart move by Canada.

First of all, we have a half dozen of these Globemasters, these giant planes that can fly at one tank at a time over. So why not get them there rather than send them on a ship, you know, and send them months. But I think it's also Canada's nudge in the ribs of some of our allies, maybe even the United States, to remind them that, you know, you're experienced at flying tanks over. Why do we keep going on to say they won't get there for three months and we can get them there now? So they sent the one tank over and they made sure cameras were rolling, which is kind of good for Canada. It often doesn't do that. And it was amazing the

impact it had. I mean, the picture has been appearing in Europe. First Leopard arrives for Ukraine in Poland, where it's going to be used to train Ukrainian tank troops before sending the tanks themselves in. That'll take place over the next month or so. It's getting a lot of footage on newscasts. And I was watching a podcast, a military podcast, by the top Ukrainian military podcaster last night. And he broke in with a picture of this tank going up on board,

a Canadian Globemaster. And he said, the Canadians are first. They're the first to get here. Canada, you are great. He started yelling at the screen. Canada, you are great. I couldn't believe my eyes, you know. I haven't thought of such things as 1945 reading Canadians.

But it's had an emotional impact, but also it's very useful. You've got to get a lot of troops now coming in, probably one's experience with their own T-72 Soviet-era tanks and having to train up on the Leopard 2s. And the sooner they start, of course, the better. And as we have, you you know i think five more globe masters sitting around are working let's say um i think they could get a the rest of the four over there fairly soon if they use that method well they'd be having more to cheer about

than just the long underwear we've been sending them for their winter fighting which they've been jumping up and down about as well um but tell me this they when you say they've got a train a train on them first and that's what they're doing in poland how you know i mean how different are these tanks are they kind of like night and day the kinds they've been using and you know these leopard twos which are made in germany um and everybody wanted them. And then there's going to be the, what, the Bradleys the Americans are sending over. Are all these tanks quite different in their operational?

They are. They're like, I guess, changing to a different fighter plane for a bomber, for a fighter plane or whatever. The T-72s were good tanks. They were badly used by the Russians, and the Ukrainians do have well over 300 of them still ready to go. But the Leopard 2s are thought to be possibly the best tank in the world because they're highly mobile with remarkable visual systems and technology. I didn't know this, quite frankly, but it seems to be really proficient with one of the modern tanks, which are extraordinarily complex to run and to fire and to maneuver in groups. It takes a good three months at least.

Well, the Ukrainians will probably cut that back to one month because they'll work night and day. And they've already had some experience with other tanks. So it's going to be an enormous improvement of quality and sophistication and technology. And when the American Abrams finally make it over there, though, of course, the Americans do have scores of Abrams in Europe as it is with their own troops, but they don't want to give any of those up. But it will be a big impact on the battlefield if the big if, if tanks are still viable in today's battle scenario, which we go back to.

We've had that discussion a few times in the last year. I think I called them Bradleys there a minute ago. Abrams. Yeah, Abrams. Bradleys. Bradley's there a minute ago. Abrams. Yeah, Abrams. Bradley's. Bradley's are those wonderful armored fighting vehicles that go in with the tanks to protect them. And they're like mini tanks almost, very maneuverable. All right. All good.

Brian's going to, next week, we'll be approaching the one-year anniversary of the war. So Brian's going to kind of take us through some of the key points that we've learned about not only this war, but about war in general in the last year. It'll be kind of like an anniversary show of some sort. That'll be next week on the Tuesday episode of The Bridge. So Brian, thanks for this. We'll talk to you again in seven days. Okay. Talk to you then. Thanks a lot. Brian Stewart with us as he has been almost every Tuesday for the last year.

You know, I still think back to those early days on this war and nobody thought it was going to last very long. There was this assumption the Russians would sort of bulldoze their way in and be all over in no time. We were quickly proven wrong on that by Ukrainian resolve, by Ukrainian fighting ability, and by the fact that the world stood by, or most of the world stood by Ukraine. So what have we learned in a year?

We'll talk to Brian about that next week. You're going to see a lot of different anniversary shows roll out in the next couple of weeks, so we thought we'd get in there early with one, and we'll see how that works out. Okay. Moving on, as they say. Time for a bit of an end bit. Saw this headline in the New York Times the other day.

Nazi soldiers buried a treasure. Nearly 80 years later, the search goes on. Now, how many times in the last 80 years have we seen a headline similar to that? This whole thing about Nazi gold. I was spurred on to think about this as a result of, you know, Brian's talks about, during this latest conversation about Stalingrad and Russia versus the Nazis.

So all that Nazi talk had me thinking back to this article I saw. And listen, I've always been fascinated by the story of Nazi gold. I mean, the Nazis raped Europe of our treasures, of gold, of family belongings, everything as we know the stories, right down to wedding rings, gold teeth. So what happened to all that gold? Where did it go? Whose hands did it end up in?

Same with the art treasures. Books have been written, movies have been made, but every once in a while we still hear stories like this. Let me read you the first couple of lines from this New York Times piece by Claire Moses. Claire grew up in the Netherlands and reported this article from the tiny village of Omaren. She didn't find a treasure. She also didn't take a shovel with her, as they say. All right, here's a couple of lines from the story.

In the spring of 1945, a couple of weeks before the liberation of the Netherlands from its Nazi occupiers, and you know who was responsible for a good deal of that, right? Canadian troops. Anyway, I digress. A few weeks before the liberation, five German soldiers buried four ammunition boxes filled with gold, jewels, and watches in a woodsy part of a sleepy Dutch village. Nazi soldiers had snatched the valuables, which could be worth millions,

off the street after they were blown out of a bank vault during an explosion in the city of Arnhem in the late summer of 1944. Documents show that to be a fact. What the men who buried the loot probably did not know was that one of their fellow soldiers, a man named Helmut Schonder, was lying in the bushes with a war injury, observing the scene and committing it to memory. Afterward, Mr. Schonder drew a meticulous map that showed exactly where, by three poplar trees, and how deep, about 1.7 to 2.3 feet, the treasure had been buried. Not much is known about the fate of the man who drew the map,

but the document ended up in the Dutch National Archives in The Hague. This month it was released as part of the archives' annual publicity day, along with thousands of other documents that are no longer classified. Now, the New York Times prints that map that was hand-drawn by Mr. Sonder, right down to the three poplar trees. So, of course, not surprisingly, that set off a huge hunt for the supposedly buried Nazi gold. So far, nothing's been found.

But that doesn't stop people from being out there with their metal detectors and looking for three poplar trees, like they'd still be there. But nobody's found anything. Lots of holes being dug, lots of people out there, grandmas to kids, looking for the Nazi gold. Now, as the time said, it's possible that Mr. Zonder made the whole thing up. But Dutch officials in charge of the search thought that was unlikely. Another theory is that one or more of the government searchers had secretly already found it,

and yet another, and what some people consider to be the most likely, possibility is that one of the Nazi soldiers who hid the treasure went back and quietly unearthed it himself. We don't know. And that's why stories like this will last forever, 50 years from now, long after I'm gone. There'll still be stories like this. Nazi treasure.

There wasn't one last year or two years ago or three years ago about a Nazi gold train buried into the ground somewhere, and they claimed they'd found it. Of course, that claim turned out to be bogus, but nevertheless. So what did happen to all this gold? And is there gold? Is there Nazi gold out there? Or was it all spent? I mean, the Nazis used some of this to buy armaments,

to do stuff during the war. But clearly, a lot of what they had stolen from galleries to private homes was retrieved right after the war you know the what was it the movie called the monument men the american soldiers whose specific job was to find this stuff and return it to its rightful owners. And there's still court battles and arguments going on to this day from members of Jewish families in different parts of Europe who say and are able to prove that things were stolen from their homes

and they know where the stuff is, but they can't get it. Anyway, just to put this in perspective. Sorry about that. I bumped into my music pad. That's the music for tomorrow's show. Anyway, I found a different article on the whole issue of Nazi gold. And is Nazi gold real?

And here is an interesting part of it. This article is, I don't know, it's not recent. Well, it's last fall. And it was in, what is this in? Live Science Magazine. So there's a couple of paragraphs here that are interesting and I think kind of tend to

put things in some kind of perspective. Nazi gold is an umbrella term. It includes both monetary gold, which is held by governments and central banks as part of their currency reserves and valuable items stolen from individuals, often not gold at all.

Monetary gold is gold the Germans seized from central banks belonging to the state. Ronald Zwick, professor of Israel studies at New York University and author of The Gold Train, The Destruction of the Jews and the looting of Hungary. Told Live Science, this is not stuff stolen from individual private victims. We know that the Germans stole the monetary gold reserves of all of the national banks of the countries they occupied, and only 70% of that money was restored after the war. Typically, the Nazis seized monetary gold and stored it in

central depositories and then used it to finance the Nazi war effort. But the Nazis also looted gold from individuals. Non-monetary gold was derived from looting the homes, possessions, and even the bodies of the victims. Zweig wrote in his book, much of what was looted from private individuals was either lost or seized at the end of the war. This story is always going to fascinate, right? Kind of fascinates me always, and that's why, you know, when I see a movie or a book on it, I grab it. Monuments, man, was a disappointing movie for me.

I don't think it worked very well in spite of a kind of star-studded cast. It wasn't great. But I'm sure there will be more. There always are. Because the fascination with that era continues to this day. All right, that's going to wrap it up for this day. Tomorrow is Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth. Bruce will join us.

We'll also be available on our YouTube channel, so catch us there. In the meantime, I'm Peter Mansbridge. If you want to write, you can always find us at TheMansbridgePodcast at gmail.com. TheManspodcasts at gmail.com, themansbridgepodcasts at gmail.com. That's it for this day. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll talk to you again in 24 hours.