The Rest Is History - 184. History's Biggest Questions with Dan Carlin (Part 2)

Episode Date: May 12, 2022

Could the West have lost the Cold War? Would we be happier if we didn't study history? Would you prefer to have a samurai, a Viking or a Spartan as your bodyguard? Tom and Dominic are joined by Hardcore History's Dan Carlin for a second episode to tackle the biggest questions in history. Join The Rest Is History Club for ad-free listening to the full archive, weekly bonus episodes, live streamed shows and access to an exclusive chatroom community. Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producers: Tony Pastor & Jack Davenport *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Hello and welcome to our second episode of The Rest Is History in our Avengers Assemble-esque crossover with Hardcore History's Dan Carlin. Now, if you haven't listened to the first episode already, just listen to the first episode. You will remember that Tom Holland and I set out to ask Dan Carlin the biggest questions in all history. Tom's were ridiculous and futile multiple choice questions. Mine were genuinely big and serious questions. And anyway, without further ado, let's get on

with it or we'll be approaching the length of one of Dan's infamous 27 hour podcasts. So Tom, the next question for Dan, please. What would you choose to be? A French nobleman born in 1330, a Lakota chieftain born in 1865, a member of the British upper classes born in 1894? Is this like a trick question? It's only my ignorance that makes me want to pick the French example because I'm trying to think what happened after 1330 that's as bad as what happens to the Lakota after the 1800s and what happens. Black Death. Oh, yes.

Okay. Of course, it's the Black Death. I wasn't thinking continent wide. I was thinking the Hundred Years War. I was thinking the Hundred Years War. That's what I was thinking of. But the Black Death is really what's. Oh, goodness gracious.

What was the first option again? French nobleman born in 1330. Oh, what was the second option? Lakota chieftain born in 1865. A member of the British upper classes born in 1894. Oh, man. Those all suck, don't they? That was the point.

I'm going to say the British upper classes gonna say the british upper class is uh that's the right answer isn't it i think it's got to be because i mean they don't i mean you're thinking the first world war but lots of people don't fight in the first world war okay a male a male there's lots of planners there's lots of people behind the scenes and you guys are looking at this from too too high afalutin it'sistry. This has to be decided based on the level of dentistry. It's all bad, though. It's all bad. It's not 14th century bad. I mean, Tom, surely someone like Bertie Worcester was born in 1894. Didn't George Orwell famously say that the real Bertie Worcester died in 1915?

I think you could have had a very different life where you you could still have gone to eton and then oxford or cambridge but then you could have spent the war throwing bread rolls at people in the drones club and doing some sort of well you could you could be invalided out and become a poet i suppose well you could be jr tolkien couldn't you you could be writing fantasy novels about a bit of winston churchill yeah absolutely you could be but tolkien i mean he lost was it, kind of three of, you know, there was a band of four friends and three of them died. That's right, but it's still better than that.

That's a hell of a lot better than the Black Death. Or having your civilization wiped out with a Lakota. You could be Chaucer. I mean, Chaucer lived through that. When was Chaucer born? About the same time. He's not French, though, is he? No. But lots of French? About the same time. He's not French though, is he? No.

But lots of French people survived the Black Death. I think you're likelier to be killed in the trenches, if you remember. So would you... A junior British officer. Is your choice a French nobleman? I think it is, yeah. It's interesting that nobody chooses the Lakota option.

That's just unspeakably awful. Yeah, it is, isn't it? Because there you have your entire way of life destroyed as well. and if you survive it still sucks so i mean that's the difference yeah so when you're about 30 is it you're doing the ghost dance is that about right is that 1890s 1890s yeah so you've got the ghost dance to look forward to as it were yeah but then you get then you get wounded knee right afterwards right yeah it's not good is it it's bad good yeah okay that was actually quite an easy one i think it's not i think i think being a french laborer would be brilliant no especially if you're good at jousting you're gonna get killed at ashen core you are you

are you're gonna be killed tom when you're well i mean look at these dates you'll be killed when you're 85 yeah but you're likely you're likely to be killed in the battle of the song then you aren't you know a battle during the hundred years war if you if you had the choice of which you know would you rather fight in the first world war or the hundred years war hundred years war every time oh god i think especially if you're a nobleman because no hundred years because if you're a nobleman you're like you're going to get ransomed yeah if you live yeah that's if you're a member of the upper class you know you're you're a junior officer dan i don't know if you've noticed this, but Tom's questions come with an enormous number of caveats. So if you remember, there was that one about the siege where he would be a woman with children.

This time, he would be a French nobleman. As a French nobleman, I'm going to be ransomed, whereas as a British officer, I'm going to be blown up. Well, but let's understand, though, a lot of people survived the First World War. I mean- I accept that. Including Germans. I mean, Russians. I mean, and those people took abhorrent casualties.

I mean, Hitler survived it. Yeah, he did. Yeah. That is true. All right. So you're both going for British member of the upper classes. I'm going for French nobleman. And none of us are going for Lakota chieftain.

No. All right. So we have another one, yeah so we have a big question a big and woolly question uh dan wouldn't we be happier if we stopped studying history oh that's an interesting line um i don't think so myself but i i have no other way to look at it. I can't imagine what it would be like to go through life not knowing this stuff. I see your point. I see the opposite of what you might expect, where people will say, gosh, I thought my life was so terrible until I studied about what it was like in the trenches of the First World War, and now I have a better perspective that my life isn't so terrible. I think that's how I look at it. Like I had mentioned the dentistry example to you guys earlier. I try to keep it real. Things like that make me appreciate my own time more and

put it into a perspective and realize how fortunate I am. But yes, that only is reflected in the fact of how terrible the other times were. So I don't see it that way, but it depends maybe on one's personality type. But also, doesn't it depend where you are? So for example- If you're in Ukraine. Right. Or if you're in Russia, or indeed, if you're in Yugoslavia in the 1990s. I mean, there are an enormous number, I would argue, of civil wars, for example, or ethnic conflicts,

where a sense of history is absolutely central to the stoking up of resentments, the sense of victimhood, the sense of fear that leads to hatred, that leads to violence. And if you take the history out, in other words, if people are no longer saying, well, let me tell you, great uncle so-and-so was butchered by the people next door and we'll never forget it. If you take that out, I mean, Northern Ireland might be a good example. The Serbs with the field of blackbirds, right?

The Battle of Kosovo. Yeah, exactly. I mean, Vladimir Putin is a man who spent last summer writing a ridiculously long manifesto. Getting someone to write it for him. Right, exactly. Fair enough, Tom. But you know what I mean? I mean, I don't doubt that Putin has a sense of history, of Russia's history, and it's a sense of grievance based on history and if you took that out of course it's an implausible scenario because you never can take it out well but it reminds me of what you're saying is wouldn't we all be happier if we didn't have any memories right if we if all of a sudden we didn't remember any of the bad things that ever happened to us we would go through it's you know the planet of the apes comes to mind with the lobotomy you know or brave new world really

i mean it's brave new world isn't? We're all just happy on drugs. But I mean, in the United States, we're talking about this cold civil war. History does seem to be at the heart of what people are tearing themselves to pieces over in the US at the moment. See, what that implies is that if we didn't have the history that we would be all, you know, lovey dovey instead. And I and there's two kinds of history. Maybe we could differentiate here if I'm going remember the last 10 years, that might be enough to cause 90% of the problems we have today. The United States does not have a long historical memory anyway, is the traditional knock on it compared to the old world, as we call it. So I don't know. I think that implies you need a reason to hate someone, and I'm not sure you do, although I was doing stories. I was a local news reporter when Yugoslavia broke up and we used to do things called localizing

the news which is you know you'll go find some people who live in your area who are expats or something from that area and while the big national network news is running actual footage of Sarajevo under siege you're talking to people who used to live there and asking them questions and they brought up just what you were mentioning, that these ethnic hatreds that have been such a long-term facet of the region. And as you all remember better than most, before the First World War, you had these terrible Balkan wars that had gone on. They had said that most of that had gone away.

So imagine a fire that had died down to just the glowing coals. And then they had said that the the bad economic times that struck was seized upon by demagogues who were able to of how much they hated each other as a way to personally benefit or to create the conditions where greater Serbia could emerge or what have you. So in that sense, maybe you have a point. It would have been better to not have that memory to stoke again. Yeah. I once read a brilliant book, actually. What put this in my mind was I read a book by a guy called, I don't know if you heard this, Tom, by a guy called Jeremy Treglaun, and it's called Franco's Crypt. And it's about the Spanish Civil War. And most of the books that are written in English about the Spanish Civil War, sort of commentaries on it, talk about the unfinished business.

About this sort of, this sense that there was a culture of forgetting. And there are still graves where, you know, people are very keen to to sort of dig up to find the mass graves and so on and to sort of and and spanish politics still involves an enormous amount of arguing about the spanish civil war and in this book he said i think they should just let it go yeah i think i think it creates too much bad blood it intensifies political conflict and partisanship it creates a sense of us and them. And actually, sometimes there really is an argument, unjust as it may seem. And I do think it just seems unjust. But there may be an argument to just say, absolutely forget about it. Let it go.

Well, that was, I mean, it wasn't quite what Mandela said. He said, you know, forgiveness can become a kind of amnesia. Yeah. Up to a point but but look at how look at how weird this can get if we take it to the you know the the really uh the really big versions right it would be like saying if we could just forget the holocaust it would be you know it be such a weight off society's shoulders or blah, blah, blah. I mean, but that almost sounds offensive, but it's a unique situation. But it's not a unique situation, right? Because everybody, I mean, the field of blackbirds is its own kind of Holocaust, isn't it? Masada's still remembered.

The Armenians and the Turks are still remembered. I mean, at a certain point, to suggest that you just get over it is offensive to those people because you're asking them to forget their history. I mean, but listen, the point is well taken. The point is well taken. I mean, if you could just erase, if we could selectively erase people's memories so that the hatreds that are ancient were gone would be great, except that a lot of those hatreds exist for certain reasons. I mean, also there's a particular situation, say, in the United States or in Britain or in France, which are countries that traditionally have been very self-confident about their history. They have felt that British history or French history or American history is a cause of pride. It fosters a sense of patriotism. And a lot of the culture wars seem to me to be about whether that is

actually the case or not, whether there is more in American or British or French history to be ashamed of than to be proud of. And I get the sense that people who are made happy by reflecting on their country's history, that is one of the things that makes them most angry is when that sense of happiness is kind of threatened. Do you think? Well, I think it's one of those things. And it's a point I have not considered enough, perhaps, when you bring it up, because I'm thinking about the countries maybe that have histories that are a lot less laudable, right? In other words, would you be if you are a Chinese person today? Would you be happy recounting Chinese history in the last couple of hundred years or would you be embarrassed? Right. But you'd be proud, I think, thinking of the antiquity of Chinese civilization.

There's no question. And the great role that it's played in bringing. No question. But I don't think you'd be ashamed, Tom, or embarrassed. I think you would – if you're a country that has – my sense is that a country that has, as it were, been on the receiving end in the last, let's say, 500 years, the way you tell that – they tell that story tends to be our resilience under terrible pressure from these ghastly bullies. I mean, that's the story of Chinese history, right? It's not we were a complete basket case and everybody invaded us. It's more we stood up over time to Western imperialism. We were resilient.

So there is definitely pride in China. I would say countries almost always try to find pride in their history. Well, except that. I mean, I'm thinking the case of the United States, that traditionally the story of the revolution and the founding fathers has been a cause of pride. And the beginnings of America is identified with the Revolutionary War. But recently, of course, it's been identified with the bringing of the first slaves to America in the early 17th century.

And that has generated a kind of counter narrative which asks americans essentially to stop being quite so happy about their history and the same here in britain where most britains were churchill is a hero he saved britain he saved the world but now there's a kind of counter narrative that emphasizes you know he was a racist he did this he did that tom i mean maybe dan dan can um correct me if i'm wrong but i would say those arguments that you're talking about are arguments within small, highly educated, largely university and media based minorities. And I'm not sure how much they percolated to the general public. But I think that that's what, I mean, I remember some, I can't remember where it was. If somebody said, woke Tosh is.

Is this me? Did I say this say this no it wasn't you woke tosh is the stuff that people get taught about history in schools that you weren't taught in your school that sense that people academics in in universities are chipping away at george washington or winston churchill and how dare they What do you think, Dan? I think that it's the difference between, you know, I talk about it all the time and you guys know this absolutely perfectly. It's the difference between how a historical figure looks to us centuries or decades later versus what they looked like at the time, how they get squashed into a two-dimensional figure that's more of a representation of something, right? Someone you put a statue up because they serve a purpose. You know, in your society at the time, you put the statue up, right, as an example or

something to look forward to or to emulate. Whereas when you add water to that two-dimensional figure and they three-dimensionalize again and you see them with all their warts, I think there's two things in play. One, a sense of almost betrayal, right? How can our hero be a racist, for example? But also this sort of a feel that there's more than one side to history. So, for example, if I was going to teach a course on Winston Churchill, I would love to have every, you know, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, you bring in somebody who's an enormous fan of Churchill, and Tuesday, Thursday, you bring in somebody who's an enormous fan of Churchill and Tuesday, Thursday, you bring in somebody who brings up all the bad points and you three dimensionalize the person. And you and and that I think when you do that, you begin to to to disabuse people of the notion that if somebody has warts, one should not revere them anymore. It's like I was talking to somebody the other day because Thomas Jefferson came up in the recent show that I had, and I was trying to point out that if Thomas Jefferson was

a horrible person for owning slaves, the fact that he pushed forward these ideas of freedom and liberty actually helps slave societies all over the world who seized upon those ideas and used them for their own justification. And what I had said was, and I don't mean that he was, I'm not trying to say that, but let's imagine a guy who invents one of the great vaccines that has saved millions of lives in world history was a terrible person. Well, one still celebrates the achievement. One doesn't have to love the person. And so I feel like a lot of the reason we get so angry, these historical figures, is there's this sense that they have either let us down, right? Or this sense that we're either let us down, right, or this

sense that we're celebrating somebody who's not this good person. But there are definitely good things you can tease. It's a pendulum, isn't it, where the pendulum tends to overcorrect before it finds its new baseline, which, look, should we understand that Churchill had views that we were considered to be racist today? We absolutely should. But that Churchill had views that we were considered to be racist today we absolutely should but that should be presented in the context that if only people in the night who born in the 1880s 1890s if the only people we can celebrate are the ones who weren't racist by today's standards who grew up in that place in that time it's going to be a remarkably small group of people and they may have no other reason to laud them except for that. But also, I suppose, isn't there, I mean, I agree with everything

you're saying, Dan, but I would argue that we're more, as a society, maybe we are less tolerant of warts than we might have been 50 or 100 years ago. In other words, I don't think- Perhaps our sense of what warts are has changed. That's it. I was just going to say that, Tom, exactly. But I don't think there was ever a time when people, if you take Churchill, let's say, or indeed the American founding fathers, I mean, even when the statues were put up, I don't think there was ever a time when people genuinely thought these are pristine, saintly, utterly unimpeachable figures. I mean, Churchill is the obvious example. Everybody knew about the various

flaws that the church had, the mistakes, the outrageous public statements, all those kinds of things. But they had a mature view of what it was to be human. In other words, that any well-known public figure was bound by definition to have said and done things that people might find objectionable. I wonder whether the current climate is more hostile to that sort of capacious view of human nature and that we are less tolerant of failings than our predecessors might have been. Well, but you bring up a good point about Churchill, which is here's a guy who lived long enough to be born in a period where his views were not controversial and lived through when those views had changed, right? So here's a guy who lived long enough to be born in a period where his views were not controversial and live through when those those views had changed.

Right. So here's a man who, by the time he dies, is is reviled by a whole segment of the British governing class. Right. And as you said, even during his prime, some of them, I think that's a little bit different than the way when I'm growing up in the 1970s, we still view George Washington. And I don't remember hearing a bad thing about the guy ever right i mean it was it was the the put up statues to your founding fathers and and create a myth around them yeah we were still taking talking about george washington cannot tell a lie chopping down the cherry tree stuff and this is in the 1970s so i think it's on a figure by figure basis maybe yeah okay okay um i think it's on a figure by figure basis, maybe. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I think it's time to move on to another hugely important question. Tom, before you do that, let us take a quick break.

We'll see you in a second. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&AA we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes, and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com.

That's therestisentertainment.com. Hello and welcome back to The Rest Is History. Tom, I'm sorry, I know I rudely interrupted you there to ensure that we satisfy our loyal commercial partners with one of our greatly loved ad breaks. So listen, let's fire away with question number six. Off you go, Tom. Dan, you are the ruler of a Eurasian state in AD 1000, so anywhere in Eurasia, which one of the following inventions would you choose to have? And you can only have one, gunpowder, the printing press, or the germ theory of disease. Wow. Well, as a ruler, none of those sound that good to me other than gunpowder, because that's the only one I think I can use for me, right? Because if I'm

not necessarily going to care about any, I mean, you know, the printing press, to me, that's a negative waiting to happen. As a ruler, you're demented. Yeah, you don't want anything about that. Don't be translating texts that my average people can read. That's an easy one. And the gunpowder thing, I mean, as you guys all know, I mean, gunpowder was in existence for a long time before anybody found a way to usefully use it in warfare. So I'm not sure that as the Eurasian ruler in 1000 that I'm going to manage to figure out anything other than some colorful fireworks for a while with that stuff. So I'm going to default to the germ theory of history because the other two to me don't sound like what I as a ruler would want. And maybe if only because a germ theory of history helps me protect me and mine and maybe gives me some clues as to how maybe I could weaponize it against my enemies. And you might be remembered as Dan the Good. If I had anything to say about

it with my printing press, that is how I would remember it. The germ theory. I mean, I'm thinking about rulers in the year 1000, so Canute. Yes. Or Ethelred the Unready.ready yeah what are they gonna what are they gonna do with the germ theory infect the infect the merseians you know well well um actually the setting up of hospitals is a caring for the sick is very important i don't see canute doing that tom yeah of course he did did he he went on pilgrimage to rome that was for his own purposes that That made him look good. That's a power move right there. Right, exactly. That's nothing to do with being kind to people who've got smallpox. I think you're being unduly cynical.

But, I mean, Dominic, what would you choose? Well, I completely agree. When you read out the question, I initially thought the printing press, but of course when you read out the question, and I thought ruler of a Eurasian state. So, okay, so yeah, if you're a ruler of a Eurasian state um so it's okay so yeah this is if you're a ruler of a eurasian state and you've only got one lifetime as it were you're mad to choose the printing press if you're playing a computer game in which you're controlling a state for a thousand

years or something obviously you do choose the printing press right right but but no i choose probably i just don't see what they're gonna do with the germ theory or gunpowder though that's the problem. Well, the fireworks. I like the thought of the fireworks. Okay, okay. You're a Chinese emperor. Yeah. But what did they do with it?

But imagine you're a caliph in Baghdad and you have a printing press. But would you control it, though? The nature of a printing press is… Is there ever an instance in history of a state that got the printing press and then the regime... And then it didn't go horribly wrong. Yeah, and then the regime had a monopoly which it kept. It's a destabilising

force, isn't it, the printing press? Okay, but I think this is revealing quite a lot about the approach that you would bring to ruling a Eurasian state. Because you might say that as a ruler, your concern is with the prosperity and health and happiness of your people. As long as mine's included in that. And there may be a divergence.

Well, I'll tell you, Tom, about my theory of history. So my son at school was asked the other day, because everybody knows that his dad does history podcasts with the great Tom Holland. And they said, does he ever tell you anything about the great Tom Holland. And they said, does he ever tell you anything about the lessons from history? And he said in front of the whole class, he said, yes, your neighbors will probably try to kill and eat you. So you should eat them first. So true. That is the lesson of history. There's a t-shirt in there somewhere. You see, I would go for the printing press because I would want to bring education to my people and make them happier and wiser. I don't believe you. They would overthrow you. Somewhere. You see, I would go for the printing press because I would want to bring education to my people.

I don't believe you. And make them happier and wiser. I don't believe you. They would overthrow you. Well, that's as may be. But I would die knowing that I'd done good. All right. So I think we're all agreed. Tom is wrong.

Tom the wise. Tom, you're not thinking like a ruler from the one. I mean, those people, I mean, ruler, right? Not average citizen, not cleric. Alfred the Great. Alfred the Great. Great sponsor of literacy. Okay. He would have had a printing press. I agree with you. Yeah, absolutely. And he's a great king. So that's who I'm going with. So let's get back to 20th century again. So Dan, do you think the West could have lost the Cold War?

Yes, I think they could have lost the Cold War. Could I just ask, what does losing the Cold War mean? Well, that's the interesting thing, isn't it? What would that look like? Getting nuked? No, no, that's a very good question. I think that losing the Cold War as we had defined it, and all of us are old enough to remember how that game was played, right, would have been for lots of the world to have gone communist, right? That was the way, I mean, with the domino theory, I mean, this was how you measured how you were either winning or

losing at that time. And that's why so many of these proxy wars were fought, or certainly what the excuse was openly, right? So had there been a reality to the domino theory, which I don't think there was in my own opinion, but let's imagine that there had been. And maybe to piggyback off of what Dominic was saying is that maybe winning simply me. I mean, losing means not winning. Right. I mean, simply not having the Soviet Union fall. That may be victory enough, depending on how you're viewing it. But I do think to say that the West couldn't have won, couldn't have lost the Cold War is to insinuate that no mistake made by any major leader in the West would have been consequential enough to have cost them the game. In other words, you're saying that every American president essentially could have just been on autopilot or make terrible decisions and yet the end result would be we'd win the cold war anyway and i just don't buy that i mean there are two ways aren't there really uh so there's a nuclear war in which nobody wins so that i guess

is always was always a risk but isn't the stake in the cold war basically who controls europe yeah it's only the beginning at the beginning it basically who controls Europe? Yeah, it's only the beginning. In the beginning, it's who controls Europe. Well, you guys, wait a minute. Are we thinking about this in traditional geopolitical terms or are we thinking about this in the ideological terms that colored that war? Because if you're thinking about this as though it were Alfred the Great's England and that's how we're grading things, well, then it's a different story. But I think the people at the time would have seen the ideological winning and losing to be the main issue, not the geopolitical. You know, how far has the Soviet Union expanded westward? You know, I mean, I mean, in that sense, then communism doesn't matter. and Dyer's attitude that if you took the ideology out of it, that the Cold War would have been

completely understandable to, you know, 16th century Spanish diplomats and whatever as a pure power game. But I think if you're the United States and you're talking about the kind of arguments we used to have amongst Republicans and Democrats and hawks and doves, it all would have been ideological based rather than some geopolitical question. On the ideological front, Soviet communism collapsed, but the world's most dynamic state at the moment is at least nominally a communist country with the party in control. Well, what if India had gone communist? I mean, what if, what if, what if, I mean, so you're talking about the Chinese version of this. Well, what if somehow India had gone communist too? And you had an India Chinese, I mean, fascinating things to think about.

Yeah. I mean, I things to think about. Yeah. I mean, I think the West could have lost the Cold War. You see, growing up in Britain in the 1980s, my understanding of the Cold War, who was going to win or lose, was would Britain end up communist? Yeah. Maybe that's a very… Or kind of within the Soviet sphere.

I mean, as Dan says, there are two different ways of looking at it, aren't there? There's the way where you look at the maps that we grew up with in Britain, which were the division in Europe. Yes, and with kind of Warsaw Pact units and NATO units and blocks and things. Is it plausible? I think I was over-influenced by General Sir John Hackett's The Third World War. Did you ever read that? I read a lot of Hackett stuff i didn't read that one well it kind of he it was actually quite rather chilling because it was um it was i think it

was set i think he wrote it 1978 so it was before iran went toto and it kind of it tried to work out how a war soul pact nato war in europe would pan out and the war soul pact starts to lose rather in the way that Putin perhaps is suffering reverses in Ukraine at the moment. And the Soviets choose to escalate it by nuking Birmingham in England. They do nuking Birmingham, don't they? And so NATO then have to respond and they nuke Minsk. And it's on a kind of knife edge whether the whole world is now going to get nuked.

And there is a coup in Moscow. And Hackett said this was the only way he could think of to stop nuclear armageddon happening which is a cheery a cheery thing to bear in mind perhaps at the moment i mean the question i suppose the the the question that underpins this is um was communism doomed to fail and um i'm not convinced necessarily that it was i mean we did a series of podcasts about the Soviet Union in the 1980s and then Russia in the 1990s. And the sort of the contingency, the great contingency is the arrival of Gorbachev. If you take Gorbachev out of the equation,

it's not obvious to me that the USSR dissolves in 1991. Communism, what one party state I would say could have, well, I i mean there's no reason why it couldn't have continued indefinitely if it's done so in china with there's a wonderful theory though i mean and let me throw this out there because i i remember hearing it from a military guy first and i've since seen it in print in a number of different places and it has to do you know um in the in the united states we have a um uh uh what's the word here we have a what's the word here? We have a sort of a totem, for lack of that's taken control about how and why the Soviet Union fell. And it's the whole Reagan outspent them kind of thing. But that's the military guy that I spoke to. And like I said, I've since seen this in multiple places, had a much better point, which is that if you look at where military hardware development was going, and starting in the late 1970s,

the systems were going to require heavier-duty computer elements to it that eventually was going to require the equivalence of communication and all sorts of things that were the antithesis of what the Soviet society could have handled. In other words, if you want the brand-new, really good tanks and aircraft, you're going to have to allow your society to develop technologically to levels that can compete with the West. But you can't do that in a closed society. And the argument was that part of what Gorbachev was doing with this glasnost was not some peace and love, wonderful thing.

It was an attempt to open up the door enough so that you could continue to compete militarily with the West that was going to defeat you eventually with drones and satellites and all these things. I mean, can you imagine the Soviet Union, who was afraid and upset with one radio signal crossing the Iron Curtain with Radio Free Europe? Can you imagine them trying to deal with it with Twitter? I mean, the two things almost can't coexist. And you'd have to be like North Korea. And if you're like North Korea, can you really have the top sort of weaponry and communication technologies you need to compete with the West without the openness that those tools sort of commit you to? Does that make sense? But it's interesting, isn't it? Because

China undoubtedly has kind of picked up on the lesson that to compete with the West, you need to be absolutely the cutting edge of tech and seems to have done it very successfully, but has not gone for the kind of open society option. Oh, but they're much more open than the old. I mean, imagine the Soviet Union in the 50s looks much more like North Korea does in China. I mean, there are people who say China's got a got a sort of a communist patina on it now, but that it's not really what we would. I mean, what can you imagine what somebody like Stalin or Gorbachev or someone like Khrushchev would have said about modern-day China and how well that fit into the Trotsky-Leninist-Bakaran paradigm? I mean, it doesn't even look like a communist country of the sort we grew up.

It just looks like an authoritarian country. Yeah, that's a fair point. I think that is a fair point, that it's not in any meaningful way a kind of Marxist-Leninist country, is it? Or indeed a Maoist country. But it's quite a totalitarian becoming a more, I mean, under Xi, it is becoming... Yeah, it's an authoritarian

society. Becoming more authoritarian. I mean, in 30 years' time, people may be asking the same question about the contest between the United States and China, perhaps. Who knows? I don't know. Yeah. Anyway. so what did we decide on this we decided the west well dan you said the west could have lost well but if you say they couldn't have lost then then then none of the decisions that were made matter yeah i suppose well for example i there's a scenario i suppose in which the united states walks away at the end of the 1940s or early 1950s in a similar way to what happened after the First World War.

I mean, obviously, it didn't happen, and it didn't happen for very good structural deep-seated reasons. But the United States could have walked away. There could have been no Marshall Plan. There could have been communism in Italy or France. And then you're in a very different kind of ballgame, aren't you? I think so. I think especially, you know, I remember going to Italy in the late 70s, so let's say 77. And I remember seeing a red flag with a hammer and sickle flying from one

of the main buildings. And I just remember as an American during that era, just being shocked because you didn't expect communism to have such a foothold in a place like Italy. But your point is well taken. And I mean, imagine seeing, I i mean imagine it here's here's funny imagine it in the scandinavian countries i mean that's you can't even get your mind around a a communist norway or a communist sweden but think about how different that would have been well i mean actually the example finlandization i was about to say yes yes exactly that yeah a finlandization of more of Europe in which Sweden, Denmark, who knows, West Germany, Western border zone is… Well, that seems to be Putin's… I mean, that seems to be his ideal for much of Eastern Europe, certainly, and I would guess Scandinavia. Yeah, but given that Finland and Sweden are just about to…

I know, but he's miscalculated. But I would have thought that that was probably what he was hoping for to get from Ukraine if he conquered Ukraine. Well, that was his dream scenario, wasn't it? I think. Well, let me ask you guys, because now I've got you here. I'm going to turn the tables a little bit because I'm curious about your thoughts on this. But I mean, do you think he just, Putin in this sense, do you think he just miscalculated the attitudes that the former Soviet border states had in turn? I mean, we're reading a lot here and I never trust this sort of material for like you had said, we're going to have to wait 30 years to really find out, you know, all the ins and outs of what's going on right now. But the idea that he would be welcome, that the Russians would be

welcomed with flowers the way that they were saying the United States would have been welcomed in Iraq. Is that just is that rose colored glasses? And is that something that's connected to his rose colored view of the old Soviet past? To me, right there, that's that's a huge miscalculation. And it looks like his strategy and tactics were inordinately based on on that view of the situation. What are your thoughts on that? As you say, it's very hard for us to know right now. Fog of war is terrible right now. Yeah, how the decision-making in the Kremlin works. But I mean, I don't know. I think the danger – I mean, I'm not the first person to have said this by any means.

I've read it elsewhere. When you produce propaganda, the first people you persuade are yourselves, the producers of the propaganda and the stuff that he's come out with about you know the ukraine government are all neo-nazis but also the sort of the more babble sort of stuff where he says you know zelensky is a drug addict um they're all degenerates all this kind of sort of stuff i think he he said that so often that he actually genuinely ended up believing it. I think also, Dominic, don't you, that there was clearly a massive undercover war going on within Ukraine between rival security services. And my guess is that Putin thought that he had basically kind of gone through the Ukrainian military, the Ukrainian government,

the Ukrainian civil service, like kind of wood through the Ukrainian military, the Ukrainian government, the Ukrainian civil service, like kind of woodworm. And that all he had to do was give it a knock and the whole structure would come tumbling down. But it's evident that there was a kind of an incredibly effective Ukrainian campaign of combating that. And I think that US and actually British intelligence as well probably seems to have played a very important role in kind of rolling up that campaign. And that is a campaign that also, of course, has been manifest in the Baltic States where the Russian minorities and, you know, in France where he was funding Marine Le Pen, in Italy where he has quite... I suspect that he, maybe because he's a man in a hurry and he wanted to believe it, maybe because his deputies were telling him what he wanted to hear, maybe because they genuinely believed that they had turned Ukraine rotten. But for all those reasons, I think that he overestimated how easy it would be. But I think there were lots of arguments, aren't there, that Russian nationalists are predisposed within the Ukraine as rotten, that they have a very particular relationship with Ukraine,

where they undervalue Ukrainian nationalism. They think it's invention, a concoction created by Western powers. I mean, it's really interesting how that, as soon as the invasion started to go badly and all those clips from Russian talk shows that circulate on social media, you know, you've probably seen, certainly, Tom, there's one in Britain that's been circulating where the guy, there was a Russian MP who's denouncing Britain,

saying there's a, the double-headed, you probably won't have seen this, Dan, because it's something that matters to us but probably not to anybody else because it makes us seem very important this russian mp went on this show about three days ago and he said you know there's a double-headed dragon that controls world affairs and there's the united states and there's britain and as everybody knows britain is the more evil and conniving of the two heads. The glow of patriotic pride that we've all been feeling. Relevance, sweet relevance.

Yeah, sweet relevance. But he sort of ends this by saying, you know, what was it, go back to your island, catch your chip and fish and your foggy marshes. Eat your porridge and pray for your moss-covered queen yeah but um but obviously they lots of people in in russian nationalist circles think that britain the united states in particular nato have created a false national identity in ukraine and they merely needed to give that a push and it would just disintegrate

as the miserable kind of concoction that it was. And they completely underestimated the resilience of the Ukrainian ideal. I think also, don't you, that there has been a lurking sense in Russia that the West is decadent. And that's why Putin's been so keen on kind of transgender toilets and things like that.

But he's not, yeah, he's keen on talking. He's not keen on them. I mean, he's still keen. No, he's keen on talking about them. And I think in that sense, Zelensky is a kind, you know, was the absolute embodiment of that kind of decadence. To Putin, yeah.

Who, you know, who'd been on television playing a grand piano with his penis. I mean, this is absolutely, he must've looked at that and thought the whole country is going to fold. You know, you can't help but notice that that's a very similar attitude toward Hitler's idea when he invaded the Soviet Union, that he wasn't going to have to conquer it lock, stock and barrel, but that like a rotten house, all you had to do was kick the door down, right? And by the way, as a veteran of the First World War, that's not a terrible example of maybe what happened to the Tsarist regime in the First World War. But let me point out, and I'm going to get a lot of maybe Americans upset with me for noticing the similarities,

but if you change the word Nazi that the Russians are using for Ukraine and substitute communism, which, of course, the the all the things that you mentioned that he was looking at with Zelensky and that we've seen. I mean, they even brought up this this news story about cocaine and Zelensky. I mean, it's almost like there's a playbook of various things that you can, you know, not 19 things that you can cite and, you know, at least at least five of them to go to war and they're all the same variations of things that we've seen forever i mean machiavelli might have had the the original 19 and you just mad i don't know if mad libs means anything to you guys but you just sort of mad lib your way to uh to a war um a rationale and and and calling i mean the

i mean the russian minister was it today or yesterday, calling Hitler, citing Jewish heritage? I mean, that whole it's so wickedly weird and wild and yet in a certain way predictable to people who know history that I can't help but notice that if if the shoe were on the other foot or the circumstance reversed, your country or my country might have figured out their own way to utilize those night into some of those 19 stereotypical war aims. Well, I mean, I've got no doubt that that the West is practicing propaganda. I mean, clearly, everybody does. I mean, we just have to accept that. And in a way and in a way, because ours is less obvious, it's probably more effective. Tom, let me throw another angle at you. There are those who would suggest that if we were not, that we would somehow be ceding the field to our adversaries, right? It's like I always tell people, if they say, do you think the US is involved in this? I would suggest that if they weren't, you would consider it somehow a dereliction of duty, right? That the reason that these agencies often exist is, and they wouldn't say they were there to

change the scene. They would say that they were there to to change the scene. They would they would say that they were there to play defense against what the other side. Well, I think they did on this occasion. I mean, I think it's pretty clear that U.S. intelligence knew exactly what Putin's plans were and they revealed it at every stage. So that the whole kind of false flag narrative that Putin had obviously been preparing would be historical standpoint. Isn't that I mean, because we're getting some President Biden and I'm not a fan of any president in my lifetime, but but but he took some flack for this. But I think it was genius to be. And as you guys well know, if you decide to sacrifice means and methods in an intelligent situation, mean it must be worth it and to be able to say uh it would be the equivalent of being able to tell the world that hitler was dressing

wehrmacht soldiers in polish uniforms to have them fight i mean it's brilliant if you think about it's almost like like announcing their chess move before they make it exactly i thought it was it's and i can't think actually of many examples in the history i can't either well when it's ever been done yeah it's brilliant it's going to many examples in the history. I can't either. When it's ever been done. Yeah. It's going to go down in the annals of military history as something worth noting anyway. We've got two more. Any two more?

We'll get to five hours, guys. You'll get to five and a half hours on this. I know. You're just getting into your seat. Yeah. I'm finally warmed up. Exactly. But hold on.

But in your podcast, you're just talking to yourself. Yeah. Well, I have a lot of good counterpoints. No, I disagree with myself. I'm wrong. I think you could do five hours on your own, Tom. No, I couldn't. I need you, Dominic.

You're so kind. The grit that produces the pearl. I love that. Okay, so this is the final. This is a crucial question. Dan, you need to choose bodyguards. Who would you choose to serve as your bodyguards a spartans b vikings or c samurai so spartans vikings or samurai they all have something to offer but in this case i'm going to go with samurai i think that uh just from a

loyalty standpoint i think i would trust them more although that you know i mean i'm sure some japanese history person's gonna say well that would be a dumb move because of blah, blah, blah. But I certainly think that Vikings and Spartans would have probably more of an ability. I don't know. I think samurai would be the way I would go. Short answer. And that's a good answer. I was tempted by Vikings, Tom, because of course, that huge business about oaths with Vikings. But then if you read the sagas, they're full of people staying overnight at somebody's house who lops off their head and yeah i think vikings would be a terrible terrible choice i think that's a yeah i mean what if they're berserkers and they

just you know start taking their clothes off i mean you wouldn't want that would you it'd be very embarrassing depends on the social occasion you. You're going out to a restaurant and suddenly your bodyguards are chewing the table and stuff. What are Spartans? Why are you not choosing Spartans? Well, I think Spartans would be very, very good, but you'd have to ask their motivation because Spartans are motivated by the collective, the idea of the collective. Would they be as committed to looking after you as a private individual? Well, and if you give them a reason to argue, if you give them a reason to make those distinctions, you're already probably farther along in terms of worry as a leader about your bodyguard than you might be with the samurai who might not get to that level of questioning. You know, I think I think samurai every time, because Dan, as you say, I mean, their whole ethos is of loyalty.

Well, I'm sure there's some examples where that would work against you, but I think less. Of course. But you are the kind of enlightened person who's going for germ theory. So, you know, if they fall sick, you can look after them and they'll absolutely love you. There you go. And I want to say that not choosing Vikings as a fan of Alfred the Great, there might be a little bit of prejudice involved in that decision also. That's fine. Let's acknowledge your bias. We all have prejudice.

Am I not right in thinking the Vikings are the only people in that multiple choice? Who actually were bodyguards. Who were hired bodyguards for a foreign power. Which is to say they were. Yeah, right. So that's Harold Hardrada, friend of the show. Yes. He was a very successful bodyguard, wasn't he?

Yes, but they would just go around graffitiing your house. They did leave graffiti, didn't they? Yes, you wouldn't want that. I think you could rely on the samurai not to do that. The samurai would beautiful writing. All people are not telling me that you would reject Viking graffiti in your house. Some runes on the side of your house. I would quite like that.

We all would. I would actually go for Spartans just because I'd love the idea of having Spartans. But if I wanted to stay alive, I'd probably go for Samurai. Okay. Anyway, important. So those are nine of the ten questions. These are the really big questions. We have one last big historical question.

So this is the question that destroys our podcast, isn't it, Tom? If Dan answers it wrong, we have to hang up our boots. All right. Well, no. No pressure. I don't think so. Well, let's see. And I'd be interested to actually know what Tom thinks about this as well.

So, Dan, can we ever really know what happened in the past? Oh, there was a great quote in Pierre Briand's book on the Persians. He quoted somebody else, and I don't remember who it was, but the great line was, even if it's not true, you have to believe ancient history. And I love that line because it's so summed up to me that the problem, right? I mean, the choice is to not believe any of it, in which case you're blind or believe it and recognize that there's all kinds of stuff that you can't get your mind around in terms of truth. I would say rephrase the question so I answer it properly. It's not a yes or no answer, is it? Because I'm

going to say that the earlier you go, the harder it is to answer that question. And conversely, the more recent you go, it's also very hard to answer that question. I think it's easier for us to know about the late 1800s, early to mid 1900s, maybe maybe not even mid than it is to know either Pierre Briand's Persian era or our current era right this minute for obvious reasons. So, yeah, I'm going to say, yes, you know more than you don't. I mean, if you didn't know any of the stuff about the ancient Greeks because you threw it out because there was a whole bunch of nonsense mixed in, you'd be the poorer for it, I would think. Essentially, every book I've written has been about this question

because I write about periods where the evidence is often very, very – well, do you know, often what we call the primary sources are often crafted as literature. question because i write about periods where the evidence is often very very um well it's well do you know often the prime what we call the primary sources are often crafted as literature yeah they're herodotus herodotus or livy or tacitus my god he's a gossip colonist yeah so my feeling is is that that the way that the past is mediated to us understanding that is is understanding the past is mediated to us, understanding that is understanding the past. We can know, for instance, that the Romans saw the world in a certain way that is not our way. And that the way that historians or inscriptions or whatever is preserved, they may not tell us absolutely pure objective facts that we can nail down and say, yes, this definitely happened.

But what they do tell us is that this is the expression of a particular way of seeing and understanding the world. And I think we can get a handle on that. But for example, OK, that's fine. That's understanding how they understood the world. Which is also, Dominic, why I moved on to christianity and islam because i because i felt on safer but no because i came to realize that that our way of seeing the world is not neutral and that it's kind of bred of particular traditions and inheritance of tradition just as much as as tacitus or herodotus had Tom, what if you had Carthaginian sources to pit against the Roman ones? Well, then our understanding of what happened in the past would become richer.

But also maybe less stable. We can understand what happened in the Punic Wars to the degree that we can understand how the Romans saw it. When we try and work out how the Carthaginians understood what they were living through, we're looking through a glass darkly. And we're looking through the glass darkly because of the result of that war. So that is a part of the truth of the war. The fact that we don't know what the Carthaginians thought by and large is a part of the reality that we're studying, if that makes sense. But let's take a character that you two have both, you know, you're both

very interested in. You've both, in your case, Dan talked a lot about and Tom written about Julius Caesar. So much of what we know about Julius Caesar is based on a handful of sources. And those stories are repeated. Some of those sources are Caesar himself, too. No, I would say that relative to other great figures, I mean, certainly Alexander. Yeah, but Alexander, you're talking about four sources. Exactly, exactly. But actually, we know quite a lot about Caesar.

But not by the standards of ancient history, not by the standards of any modern thing. Yeah, but we have his writings. We have writings about him in actually voluminous amounts from Cicero, which is very, very unusual. We have biographies. We actually have quite a lot of material and we have enough, I think, to get a sense of his character, his personality, what he was about. We don't know some fairly fundamental things about his life. That's absolutely true. But I think we know enough about him to arrive at an approximation of what he was doing. Partly, not just because we have facts about Caesar personally, but because we have the period of Roman history in which he lived is the most

richly documented in the whole of ancient history. And therefore we can situate him in a context that makes sense of the kind of person that he was. What about a later figure then, like Caligula or Nero, who we've also talked about in this podcast? Caligula, I think is very difficult. I mean, everything that we all know about Caligula, all the stories, picks up the seashells on the beach, the console, his horse, all that stuff. I do not know what happened, what that was about. I've read every theory there is, and none of them make sense.

So I just don't know what that whole, you know, Caligula getting his soldiers to pick up shells. But let's add another aspect to this that we should all be aware of. I just don't know what that whole, you know, clearly getting his soldiers to pick up shells. But let's let's let's add another aspect to this that we should all be aware of. I mean, Alexander the Great famously went around with what we would call today a paid for personal press corps. Right. So these are people who are taking an active interest in trying to manipulate how future generations will view them. And the funny thing is, when you're so bereft of sources that you only oftentimes have those kinds of sources or sources that may be polluted by those kinds of things, it makes it even harder. It's just like, you know, trying to figure out Augustus Caesar's situation when you know darn well that if somebody during his lifetime wrote something nasty, they might not be around the next day. So it's difficult, obviously,

it's part of the job, isn't it, to tease all that stuff out if you can. Yeah, absolutely. But I think the fact that Alexander was the kind of person who did employ people to follow around writing him up is a part of what we know. Yes, good point. So, and we know that his particular understanding of fame and undying glory, for instance, is influenced by Homer and the model of Achilles. So we know that as well. So in a sense, what we can know, I suppose, is how treacherous the standards of objectivity in vast stretches of history are. But that in a sense, you to surrender to to accepting that what we are studying is

is never going to be objective in the way that that a 21st century historian would want it to be and i think it can't be because they are situated in entirely different contexts they have entirely different understandings of who they are, what they're about, what the very nature of history is. But large numbers of, as you'll know from reading Briand, the Persians didn't have an understanding of history in that way. Which is why you have the disbalance between, say, what the Persian wars, we only have records from the Greeks. Or Alexander, we only have records from the Macedonian side. Sounds like what you're saying is even if it's not true, you have to believe ancient history.

Well, that's it. Well, but what is truth? What is truth, I guess. Yeah, well, what is truth? But also, I mean, what actually Dan is putting his finger on, Tom, is that in a previous podcast, you identified yourself, didn't you, as a cakist, rather like Boris Johnson. So you believe in having your cake and eating it.

I didn't know what a cakist was. I was feeling like an idiot. I'm going, what's a cakist? No, so a cakist is somebody who says, well, the sources are very dodgy, depend very much on literary formulas. However, I will now spend the next 10 pages telling you this fantastic story. Yes, yes. But I just –

Wait, that's how I start every podcast so you know so i would i would say if that that by and large if i'm writing about people who believe in angels i will include angels within the narrative but i will make it clear yeah that that i don't necessarily believe in angels i remember once but the belief in angels is an important part of the world in which these characters live in i remember once doing when i did um when i was an undergraduate doing by zantine history and talking to my tutor and he was saying we were talking about this icon that had won a siege or something it had been the crucial factor in this siege the icon had displayed used its power and the attackers had been driven away and it sort of became obvious in the course of the tutorial that we were talking slightly across purposes because i was talking as if the icon was obviously a fiction and this hadn't

happened and he said well how do you know it didn't happen i mean the sources say the icon you know are you do you know better and i exactly well that's exactly i mean that's difficult to be writing about that's like our old friend um ptolemy and his talking snakes in the desert tom when they're lost on the way to the or of Siwa. And Arian says, the talking snakes showed Alexander the way. And Ptolemy, I got this story from Ptolemy and he's a king and he wouldn't lie. But Dominic, I think it also plays back to something we were talking earlier about how do you frame George Washington or Churchill? In a sense, you have to place them in the context in which they live. That is kind

of the reality. That's part of the reality. That's part of the truth. Yeah. Yeah, but it's not what a lot of historians do though, is it? Because a lot of historians' instinct is to take people sort of out of the mock heroic context that they might have thought themselves in, Churchill is a good example, and to subject them to the sort of bright, forensic lights of modernity, don't you think? Yes, but I remember when I wrote a book about the origins of Islam, and it rapidly became clear to me that the stories told by Muslims about the life of Muhammad and the origins of the Quran and so on were not to be trusted as records of what I would recognize as fact. And yet they created their own reality. And that reality- I was just going to say that, yes.

You know, it has changed the world. Yes. And I remember also talking about this and a Muslim in the audience saying, well, you know, on what basis are you saying it's not true? Because, you know, it's not like you're being neutral. Your perspective is just as, you know, you don't believe in God. You don't believe in the God that I believe in. But your disbelief is just as much a, that it if enough people believe it for long enough it creates its own reality as if as if it doesn't matter so much whether it actually happened or not because that didn't influence all the people that were 100 sure it did happen and acted on that basis i can't actually remember what dan's answer was now it seems so long ago um your answer was

yes you do think was that answer yes? We can know? Yes, yes. Yes, I think so. Okay, brilliant. Well, that's a relief because we can continue our history podcast. No, otherwise we'd have to cancel it. I asked science historian James Burke that same question, and he answered yes also. Excellent.

He must be right then. He was right on everything. That's what I was asserting, yes. Wonderful. So, Dan, we haven't quite made five hours, but we have gone on. That's not my fault,

Dominic. That's not my fault. We have gone on exactly an hour longer than we were expecting to, which is a sign, I think, of a good conversation. I hope so. So thank you so much for,

for coming on the rest is history. It's great to, we have had other podcasters on from time to time, Tom, but I don't think we've ever had people with the who've who've gone past the five hour mark on their own podcast never so you guys this was actually a great honor and i'm a big fan so thank you for having me on i appreciate it thank you and tom is all ours tom restrained himself from doing his american accent

which is i mean if he did it with you, you'd have, well, you'd have run screaming out into the night. You would have done, yeah. So I'm not going to. We can all play that game. So you guys are just as fortunate I didn't do one of my British accents. All right. Brilliant. Well, thank you all for listening.

And thank you again to Dan Carlin from Hardcore History for coming on the show. And we'll see you all next time. Goodbye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye thanks for listening to the rest is history for bonus episodes early access ad-free listening and access to our chat community please sign up up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com. I'm Marina Hyde.

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