Transcript of 599. The First World War: Downfall of the Habsburgs (Part 6)

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Until he has experienced all the intricacies of war with his own eyes, his own body, and his own soul, no man can ever truly imagine it. Marching through sand and marshland, through fathomless swampy forests in the searing heat, with no water in his stomach, groaning in hunger. Then suddenly, as you were plodding along so tired tired, and bruised and battered, the scene comes alive before you. The first shots of barking in your ears and the roaring and howling of the shells is getting nearer and nearer. To one side, you hear the crackling of machine gun fire. You taste the battle, a peculiar sour yet bland taste that settles in your mouth. And you feel it because all your nerves and muscles contract, and your brain can think of one thing and one the thing only. You have to act. That is from the thrillingly titled Kaiser Jäger, Persevere, the heroic death of the Second Regiment of the Tyrellian Kaiser Jäger in the days of September 1914. It was published in the late 1930s and is quoted in nick Lloyd's new book on the Eastern Front. Dominic, you have written, We've always had a soft spot for the Tyrolean, Kaiser Jäger, an elite regimen, the Imperial Hunters with lovely sky blue uniforms and feathered hats.

Now, I've never had a soft spot for the Tyrelaian Kaiser Jäger because I've never even heard of them. But as I said in the previous episode, we are now on your home territory. This is a part of the world, like the back of your hand. You've roamed the mountains, you've plunge into the depths of the forests, you speak all the languages. This is your home territory. Tell us, what's going on here? Who are the Tyrellian Kaiser Jäger? What is it with their lovely sky blue uniforms and their feathered hats? What's going on? Is it the Hell of War or what? I imagine it is, probably, because everything in this series seems to be about the Hell of War, but surprise us.

It is the Hell of War, Tom. Actually, Tom, you're being falsely modest because even before we did the Rest is History, you used to talk to me about the second regimen in particular, the Tyrolean Kaiser Jäger. They're your favorite regimen of your favorite Austro-Hungarian unit, and don't deny it.

I am hiding my light under a bushel here, but I only say that you will blaze all the more brightly. That's kind. That's good generosity.

I think It's the feathered hats that do it for us, isn't it? Actually, yes, the Tyrolean Kaiser Jäger had a terrible time in the September 1914. What happens to them is just one aspect of a wider story. So we began this series more than a year ago with Franz Ferdinand and his assassination in Sarajevo. And we're ending this part of our great sweep through the First World War by talking about the beginning of the end of Austria-Hungry, the destruction of its army, and the fraying of the bonds that had held the empire together. Last time, we talked about how the Austrians sought to wreat revenge on Serbia, and it became a humiliating route for them. The bloke in charge, General Pottyorek, the master of security in Sarajevo, ended up being fired just before Christmas.

Presumably after that, there are no feathers left in the hats of the Tyrolean Kaiser Jäger.

Not at all. Today, we're turning to the arena in which they saw combat, which is the Eastern borderlands of Poland and Ukraine. It's the area that Timothy Snyder calls Europe's bloodlands in the 20th century. At the center of this episode is the story of one city, which is called Pschiemischl.

What's it called?

It's called Pschiemischl. So this was the most formidable fortress of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and it became... The struggle for this fortress became the longest siege of the war. I have to be honest with the listeners, the reason I know about this is because I read a brilliant book called The Fortress by the historian Alexander Watson. So just a massive shout out to this book, The Fortress, because so much of what follows is dependent upon it. It's a story that's not just a riveting story in and of itself, but it captures the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, an empire with centuries of history, the ethnic cleansing of Eastern Europe, and the agony of the Jews of Poland and Ukraine, which begins really here. To give a sense of where we are, I'm sure this will immediately help you out, Tom. When I tell you that we're in the Kingdom of Galicia and Laudomaria.

Of course we are.

So today Eastern Poland, that's where Pashimishal is, very close to the Ukrainian border. Now, at the time, this was Austria's most northeastern province. It was a crown land so-called governed from Vienna. And the province of Galicia had two big cities. One is a place then called Lemberg, but which we know as Lviv, and the other is Krakow, now in Southeastern Poland. The area had a very diverse population, so about 45% each Polish, and what was then called Ruthenian, what we would now call Ukrainian. And that leaves about 10%, which those people were Jewish. And the third biggest city in Galicia was this place, Przimiszl. I love hearing you say that. And today, it's just a few miles in from the Polish border with Ukraine.

What's it called now? Still called that.

It's still called Przimiszl. That's the Polish name. And it was given an award by Vladimir Zelenskyy a couple of years ago for taking so many refugees, so many Ukrainian refugees Eges. But back then in 1914, in most respects, it was just your classic, sleepy, middle European city. So it's got a castle, it's a cathedral, it's got loads of churches, it's got synagogues, it's got tons of coffee houses. And there were about 50,000 people who lived there. About half of them were Catholic and were Polish. About a third were Jewish, and the rest were what were then called Greek Catholic, which is to say they're Ukrainians.

So they're Orthodox, but they accept the supremacy of the papacy. Is that right?

Exactly right. But there was also a garrison of about 10,000 men for a couple of reasons. First of all, because Giemisch was an important railway junction, and it guarded the Carpavian mountain passes into Hungary. If you look at a map of Austria-Hungari, in the northeast, there's the great sweep of the Carpavian Mountains, but they are not the border. There's a bit of Austria-Hungary that's on the other side of the Carpathians, and this is Galicia, so this is where this is. The second reason why there's this garrison is that since the early 1870s, Przemischal had been designated as a fortress city, so it was designated as the cornerstone of Austria-Hungary's Eastern defenses.

So it's the verdun of Austria-Hungary.

It is verdun. Exactly. A citadel that becomes an emblem of national defense, national security.

And a salient.

Yeah, salient, I guess. Osgiliath, Tom, for Gondor, I guess. So by 1914, they've built this huge fortress, and it's a chain of 17 major and 18 minor forts, arranged in a 30-mile ring around the city and two lines of trenches. So it looks pretty impregnable. And inside this this ring, there's a huge military base of seven barracks with a rail yard, with warehouses, with ammunition magazines. All of this cost the Austro-Hungarians hundreds and hundreds of millions of pounds in today's money. And Chimishal has become this huge symbol of Imperial prestige, and the Austrians are very, very proud of it.

Well, it sounds as if they should be.

Sounds brilliant. Yeah, it's the equivalent of having a really fancy aircraft carrier today or something of that. So to the war. In August 2014, tens of thousands of troops passed through this city heading east to the far border of Galicia to defend it against the Russians. As we said in the last episode, they were a very complicated mosaic of Germans, Hungarian, Czechs, Poles, whatever. Not winning formula under the pressure of total war. And of course, the man who's commanding them is this bloke, Konrad von Hutzendorff, who has basically started a world war in order to impress his mistress, Gina von Reininghaus, and to get to marry her. Now, Konrad, as we said in the last episode when we talked about the complete disaster of the war against Serbia, he is a great believer in attacking spirit. Even though the Austrians have fewer divisions than the Russians, they have 34, the Russians have 53, he thinks that's fine. We can easily, him and Vigo, we'll wipe the floor with the Russians. So he's developed this insanely ambitious plan to basically envelop the Russians in Southern Poland. But right from the start, as is the way with the Austro-Hungarian military operations, there are some small teething troubles.

So first of all, he says, Well, I'll need 11,000 trains to send all these men east. The train network can only produce 2,000 trains, so that's nowhere near enough. These trains travel at only 10 miles an hour, and they stop for six hours every day, so the troops can have lunch. Before they even fire a shot, there are warnings signs. So at one point, all these troops are going east, and the station master, a place called Paul Borge, which is in Eastern Silesia, has a nervous breakdown under the stress of so many people on the network. He reverses all the signals the wrong way. The trains will go backwards, and then he shoots himself.

Do you know what they should have had?

A monkey. Jack the signalman.

Jack, the signalman. They should have had a monkey.

He was one of his just top monkeys because He never made a mistake, paid in beer, ran the South African railways for years. Yeah, he was brilliant.

For those who may have missed that episode, we'd like to hear it again. It's episode 426, History's Greatest Monkeys. I wasn't actually expecting them to turn up in the middle of the First World War, but you never know.

Well, one of them fought in the First World War.

Corporal Jacky.

Great to have him back on the show. Anyway, back to the Eastern Front. Eventually, they get off the trains and they set off. Now, Eastern Galicia is a very poor, very rural part of the empire. There actually aren't many railways, and the roads are shocking. And most Habsbourg soldiers, when they get there, they say, God, this is awful. This is very hot, and it's dusty, and it's very alien. And what are we doing here? They won a couple of early victories against the Russians, actually, which we won't go into. But by the end of August, things are starting to go wrong. The language difficulty is such a massive issue for them. They can't actually understand what each other are saying. So the orders are getting muddled. Some units literally are marching in these vast circles, going around round and round, or they lose touch with their supplies or whatever. And because of the language difficulty, there are innumerable instances, and this is not funny, of friendly fire. So a load of Croats will bump into a load of checks, and they'll start shooting to each other because they think the others are Russians, or Germans, and Hungarian or whatever.

So all this chaos is unfolding.

So, Dominic, can I just ask, they don't all have a standard uniform, then? Do the different units have different uniforms?

Well, of course, different. Yeah, they're not all got feathered hats like the Tyroly and Kaiseriger with their sky blue uniform.

Yeah. So there is scope for complication there.

There's definitely scope for complications. Now, meanwhile, far to the east, the Russians are building up their forces, and soon they outnumber the Austrians, almost two to one Now, back in, people have no idea. The troops have been and gone, and people have no idea what's happening at the front. And then in late August, the first trains of wounded start to arrive in the city. And a woman who was serving hot drinks to the wounded at the station later described the spectacle. She said, I saw shot through lungs and hearts, terrible stomach wounds, blood, vomit, feces, but not a single groan, just apathy. Then on the 30th of August, for the first time, they hear, You call it the crump, I call it the dull thud, of guns in the east. So the front is clearly coming closer. Then, an extraordinary scene, a train comes through Chez Michal, carrying Russian prisoners And as it rolls through the station, a man shoves his head out of the window of the train, and he screams out in Polish, Oh, you poor, poor people. A great power is coming towards you.

They will murder you.

God, it really is like a horror film, isn't it? The zombies are approaching.

Well, exactly. So next come a whole load of trains from Lviv. Lviv is 60 miles away in the east, on the Eastern frontier of the Empire. And these trains are packed not with wounded men, but with civilian refugees. So it's now clear that something out east has gone horribly, horribly wrong. Actually, when these refugees shout out at the trains and they say, Lviv is in chaos, the mayor or the officials have fled, the banks have shut down, the streets, the parks are full of wounded soldiers, there's no food, law and order are broken down completely. It is a bit of a zombie film. And then there are no more trains. It's as though communications with Lviv have completely gone down because Galicia's capital, Lviv, has fallen to the Russians. Hello, hello. Can you hear me?

Can you hear me? Exactly like that.

It is like that. I wonder what was going on there at first, and then I thought, no, that's great acting. It is. Brilliant. So what has gone wrong out east? What has gone wrong is this, that Conrad has thrown 600,000 men into action, but not enough. And they don't have enough good guns, and the Russians have completely steamrolled them. Lviv had fallen on the third of September, occupied by General Alexei Brusilow's eighth Russian Army. And that's just the beginning. Further north, the Russians are absolutely battering the Austrians at a place called Rava Ruska. And so by the ninth of September, the Austrians are facing total and utter integration. And the next day, the 10th, General Conrad drove out himself to the front line with the Archduke Karl, the heir to the Austrian throne. So they went to a place called Grodeck. This was very unusual for Conrad because usually he's behind the lines. And he was absolutely horrified by what he found the total chaos. And one thing above all, in Grodeck, there were six bodies hanging in the main square, two of them accused of betraying Austriansans to the enemy and the others for robbing the dead and the wounded on the battlefield.

So a very haunting scene. Conrad goes up to the highest ridge to survey the battlefield, and even he, with his optimism, can see that the Russians are about to break through. So the following night, the 11th, he gives the order to fall back behind the River Sand, which is one of the It was in Southeastern Poland. And the next day, the Austrians began to retreat. And the same day, perfect timing, the clouds open, the rain starts coming down. Tom, the heavens are weeping for the Habsbourg Empire.

Presumably for Conrad's relationship with Gina, because she's not going to be impressed by this at all, is she?

Well, the news actually gets much worse for Conrad. Five days after he'd given the order to retreat, his adjudant came into his office looking very, very stricken. Conrad said, What? More bad news in the front, really? The adjudant said, It's actually a personal matter for you, sir, concerning your son. Conrad said, Oh, no, please tell me he's not badly wounded. The adjudant said, No, it's worse than that. Conrad's youngest and his favorite son, who was called Herbert, was a lieutenant in the Dragoons, and he had been killed at Rava Ruska. Conrad says to the adjudant, Can you leave me a minute? For an hour, he wept. And then he washed his face and he straightened his uniform, and he went back to work as though nothing had happened. But everybody said that after this, he was basically a broken man, a withdrawn and broken man. But he doesn't lose his job. He carries on running the Austrian army.

And even before that, he'd been melancholy, hadn't he? Because there was that war, war, war.

Yeah, exactly.

His misery must be even greater.

Yeah, he doesn't lose his job. He carries on making decisions, which, unfortunately, is disastrous for Austrian cause.

Do you think anyone could have stabilized the situation?

There must be up against it. I was thinking about this, actually, when I was doing the notes, because I'm quite austrophile.

You are, yeah. Which is why I've been surprised by these two episodes, because they haven't come out of it well. No.

I don't blame the Austrians for starting the first war. I think any serious power faced with the murder of their air, clearly with the connivance of a country that's basically trying to destabilize them, the United States, France, whoever, they're always going to respond. However, the irresponsability is to respond when basically you don't have the capacity to beat anybody. The Austrians couldn't even beat Serbia. The lack of seriousness of Konrad and the other generals, basically, in starting all this.

I mean, ignoring Russia is mad, isn't it?

Totally. It It's ridiculous. And you can say, well, it's a result of their tunnel vision or their paranoia or their fear of disintegration or whatever. But even so, to just be in such a massive spasm of panic that you basically press the suicide button is insane. Because actually, just I was going to talk about this anyway, but this is a perfect link. Look at what happened to their army. Almost a million men had marched north against the Russians, and fewer than two-thirds of them return. A hundred thousand of them were taken prisoner, 250,000 killed or wounded. And as they return, you made the zombie Apocalypse analogy. The Austro-Hungarian Army that marches back to Pschimischal is just an absolute horde of zombies stumbling through the dust. They've all got typhus or cholera. Some of the regiments They've lost all their officers, more than half their men. They've all got diarrhea. They haven't washed for weeks. They're in shock. They're humiliated. And in the dust behind them, they're leaving this trail of dying horses and dead men. So they get back to this city. And then Conrad says, Right, we will withdraw. We'll go back into the Carpathian Mountains.

However, we have to stop the Russians from following us. Because if the Russians get into these mountains and they secure the passes and they go down the other side, they'll be into the Hungarian plain. They'll be heading straight for Budapest, and then it's game over for the Austrian Empire.

That would then be game over for Germany as well, do you think?

Germany fighting on a loan for a cause in which its main ally, it starts at the war is now out? Hard to see how that... I mean, that could be the end of the first World War, I think, very plausibly. Konrad says, Right, we have to stop them. And the place that we stop them is obviously this citadel, Giemischl, which we have built for this purpose. I'm going to leave behind 130,000 men, orders to hold the fortress at all costs. Now, these are not crack units. These are the dregs that he's leaving behind there, the reserves. They're men in their late '30s and early 40s. Most of them are Hungarian, Polish, or Ukrainian peasants. But their officers, Tom, they're the worst people in the world. I quote, Academics, businessmen, and middling state officials.

I don't know. If you want a heroic defense of a fortress against Russian hordes, those are exactly the people I'd turn to.

When I look at Britain's academics, I see a... Men of high-end resolution and will. Anyway, this is who's going to defend the Austrian Empire. So in the next few days, They make their preparations. Here's an interesting sign of the disintegration of the empire. They say, We're going to clear all the villages around the perimeter. Now, the people who live in these villages are Ukrainian peasants. They basically say to these guys, You've got to clear out. Let's tell them at bayonet point, You've got to clear If you don't clear out, we're going to blow up your village or burn it to the ground. Actually, by this point, the soldiers are blaming those peasants for their own defeat. They say, These Ukrainians are no good. They're traitors. They've been helping the Russians with flags. They've been sending smoke signals to the Russians. This, I think, is not true, but it's a sign of how, as we've said before, diversity is not the Austro-Hungarian Empire's strength at all. It's something that we often celebrate in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, when people write these-Yeah, it's brilliant if you're in in a cafe debating psychology or economics, but it's less good if you have to defend a frontier.

Correct. On the 17th of September, the first Cossacks appeared on the horizon. This was the advance guard of General Brusilow's third Russian army. Brusilow is the outstanding Russian general of the war. He has yet another absolutely colossal mustache.

But does he have breathing problems?

No, he breathes superbly.

He's got wonderful breath. So that's what sets him above the crowd?

Correct. He's a cavalry man. He's half Polish, actually, Bruce Elop. I didn't know that. Anyway, so he orders his field guns to start pummeling the city. And when I say pummeling, they fired about 45,000 shells in four days, which is obviously terrifying if you're a civilian. It was even worse for the people in these forts because they're very claustrophobic, these forts, people in these low tunnels and chambers. Alexander Watson quotes a guy called Second Lieutenant Bruno Prokashka, who said it was like we were being pounded by a colossal battering ram. He said, We wish we were outside, actually, in the trenches. Death would be easier in the open air than in this cramped, suffocating box. But actually, in the trenches, it's even worse. The shells are raining down on these guys. He tells the story of an entire platoon, which was destroyed by just two shells. The officers collapsed and fainted in shock, seeing what has happened to the men. One minute, the men are all standing there. The next minute, the men have been blown into bits, and the bits are hanging from the trees all around them. So really hideous.

Bloody shreds flesh, intestine, and brain parts.

Yes. I decided not to read that out, but you read it out, which is nice.

It's a hell of war, Dominic, and it's good to bring it home to people.

No, you're right. And this terrible shell shock. So again, another story from the book The Fortress. There's a guy who's a corporal. He's in his 30s. He's the veteran of many battles, so he is brave. He's dragged into the Garrison hospital. He's shouting, I want to go home. And then he took all his clothes off. He tore up his underwear. Oh, my God. He started singing hymns and then attacked the orderlies.

So he's like the the governor of the Bank of England in 1974.

No, it wasn't the governor of the Bank of England. It was the head of the Civil Service.

Head of the Civil Service.

William Armstrong. Completely acceptable behavior in Ted Heath's Britain, but not in First World War Austria-Hungry. Anyway, actually, when the Russians launched their ground attack, they didn't get anywhere. They couldn't break through the trenches. The Austrians did very well. They put up a very plucky fight. Some of these forts that they defended, they became legendary. There's a fort called Iwam. And the defense there, I was mean about academics, but the defense was led by somebody called Dr. Istvan Bilek, who was a Budapest lawyer. And he led this Helmsdiep style defense of this fort against the Crimean regimen. It's hand-to-hand fighting, until they can be relieved by more Hungarian troops. So that's good news for the Austrians. And then they hear tremendous news from the north, because as we heard last time, Hindenburg and Ludendorff, the cracked detectives, have driven the Russians out of East Prussia, at Tannenberg and at the Missourian Lakes, and now they're moving south towards Warsaw. So the Russians have to lift this siege, and they move all their troops north to face the Germans. So for the people of, this is brilliant news. And on the ninth of October, they are relieved by the Austrian Field Army, which has returned from licking its wounds.

So after a month, the siege appears to be over. And you could ask, well, so what? Does it matter? In his book, The Fortress, Alexander Watson says, It absolutely does matter because if the Russians had taken the fortress then, they would never have had a better chance to strike into the heart of the Habsberg Empire, get to Budapest, knock Austria-Hungaria out of the war. The war genuinely could have been over by Christmas. But because they didn't take it, because these blokes, lawyers and whatnot, held out, the Russians have missed their best opportunity to bring the war to a speedy conclusion. However, as we've said before, fortunes change ridiculously quickly on the Eastern front. By late October, so after barely a month, the pendulum has swung again. The Russians have just won two victories that nobody has ever heard of that we talked about last time, Tom, the Battle of the Vistula, and then the Battle of Woodge. So now the Russians are heading towards Krakow, and they're actually not that far from the German border. These are, by the way, a massive engagement. A million people fought in these battles.

Insane, isn't it? Nobody's ever heard of them. I'm sure they have in Russia, but not here.

So now the Russians are back. And now, yet again, the Austrians have to retreat. Now, at this point, Some of the officers in the fortress said, Come on, we held out once, but we cannot handle a second siege. We've run up, we don't have the supplies, we don't have... Actually, since we've given the army time to rebuild anyway, what's the point? Why don't we evacuate the city, evacuate the garrison, blow up the forts, and cut our losses? The problem is that the success of that first siege was the only victory for the Austrians worth celebrating in the early days of the war. So it's become completely bound up with Conrad's personal prestige. His only chance of basically, you're building up his reputation, is to hold on to Pushimishal. If he'd written it off, possibly he would have been sacked then, and then it's goodbye, marrying Gina. So he says, It's, right, I want you to prepare for another siege. I'm sure you'll do brilliantly. You were heroic and successful last time. I'm sure you will be again. The next day, however, the garrison told, you should write your farewell letters to your family. That's not a good sign, is it?

Which I don't think inspires much confidence. That same day, which is the third of November, posters go up across the city telling all the civilians to get out.

Again, that's not a good sign. No.

And the police literally go door to door saying, If you haven't packed, get to the station. Come on, just grab your essentials.

Well, it's You're lucky that the Austrian railway Service is performing heroically in these early months of the war, then, isn't it? Because surely they've laid on loads of trains, and there won't be a mad crush trying to get on the trains.

No. Well, no. So total pandemonium. Not enough trains. They have to leave behind 30,000 people. In his book, Catastrophe: Max Hastings tells an awful story about this woman who fights her way into this carriage with her three children. She finally gets in the place in the carriage. Train starts pulling out. She breathes a sigh of relief. She looks around. She can see only two children just out the window. On the platform, she can see the youngest child, her three-year-old son, standing there weeping in terror. Oh, no. All the time, the Russians are coming. And by the eighth of November, they have encircled the fortress once again. And now, to quote Alexander Watson, darkness descended over the Concord land.

So, Dominic, huge tension. Can this great Austrian fortress withstand a second siege? Will they be able to hold out or will the Russians break through? You mentioned how there are large numbers of Jews in this landscape, and you've intimated that things don't turn out well for them, so we'll hear about them, too. So come back after the break.

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Com. Hello, everybody. It's Dominic here.

Now, I'm absolutely delighted to announce that every Friday for the next few weeks, I'll be joined by our Restes History producer and resident Booklover, Tabi Syrett, and we'll be discussing a different book. And members of the Restes History Club can listen to this thrilling new content right away. So what we're doing is we're looking at the context when the books were written, the lives of the people who wrote them, what makes the book so brilliant, and why they still matter today. We'll be digging into everything from Truman Capote's 'True Crime Chiller, In Cold Blood to Albert Camus to Bram Stoker's 'Horror Novel, Dracula'. And we'll be looking at the history behind their great books. So last week, we talked about J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. We looked at how it affected Tolkien's experiences in the First World War, How it reflects the sensibility of the 1920s and 1930s, how Togging drew on all kinds of different influences, from the Imperial fiction of the Victorian era to the Norse epics that he loved so much. And next week, if you don't like The Hobbit, we'll be doing something very different. We're doing Margaret Atmer's book, The Handmaid's Tale.

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Around eight o'clock in the morning, the Cossacks arrived in Dembitza. The Jews who had already survived the initial agonies were gathered in the synagogues with their wives and children. The Cossacks plunged into the Jewish houses with their horses and weapons, and what was not screwed down was smashed and flung onto the open street. Like wild beast, they threw themselves on the defenseless women. Those who defended themselves were stabbed and trampled to death. Spirited women plunge through windows, badly injuring themselves. But they, too, were not left alone by the monsters, and many died in the Synagogue Square in agonies of pain. Then the Synagogue Street was set alight, and after a short while, a whole row of houses stood ablaze. So this is not from a record of 1940 or 1942. It is from the autumn of 1914, and it is an eyewitness account of the Russian occupation of the town of Dembitza, which was then in Galicia. Dominic, we've talked a lot about armies, about about all of that, fluttering of flags, the piping of flutes, the fluttering of feathers in tyroly in caps. But what we haven't talked about is what all this means for ordinary civilians, and I'm guessing nothing good.

Nothing good at all. No. It's actually a chance to talk about war aims and what people are wanting from the war. The Russians have come West with, by far, I think, the most radical transformational agenda of any major combatant. As soon as they got into Galicia, they When the new governor of the occupied territory, who was called Count Georgi Bobrinsky, made this clear right away. When he got into Lviv, he gathered all the local bigwigs and the bishops, and he made a speech. He said, The lands of Eastern Galicia are an eternal part of a single great Russia. In these lands, the true population was always Russian. Thus, the administration of this land should be based on Russian principles. We'll introduce the Russian language, Russian law, and the Russian system. Definite resonances. Echos. Resonances. Now, this was very bad news for the Poles, the people who dominated the political and economic life of the towns of Galicia. It was extremely bad news for the Ukrainians because they were told, You don't exist. Your church, your Greek Catholic Church, your Ukrainian language, your separate Ukrainian, or as people would have said then, Ruthenian identity, all of these things, which interestingly had been not just tolerated, but often encouraged by the Austro-Hungariansians as a counterweight to the Poles, But all of these things will now be erased.

From now on, you are Russian, whether you like it or not. Now, if it's bad for them, it is unbelievably bad for the third ethnic group in Galicia, which are the Jews. Austria-hungry was not exactly a paradise for Jews, because we talked before when we did the rise of Nazism about the influence of Vienna's mayor, Karl Nüge, on Hitler, this populist, anti-Semitic mayor.

But isn't part of that because there is a resentment of Jews in Vienna, say, who have done incredibly well? Yes. So Freud, Mahler.

Massive cultural figures. Jews are very prominent in the Empire's high culture. There's clearly a place for them in a multinational empire like the Habsberg Empire, and they're very loyal to the dynasty. So Franz Joseph had lifted a lot of the existing punitive laws against Jews. Franz Joseph had made a pilgrimage, effectively, to Jerusalem. He made a point of meeting Jewish leaders. So there's clearly Austria-Hungar is a relatively warm and welcoming home if you're an Eastern European Jew. The Russian Empire takes a very different approach to religious diversity. Russia is comfortably the most anti-Semitic country in Europe at this point. It's here in 1903, and it's no accident that conspiracy theorists faked the protocols of the elders of Zion. I think the interesting thing about Russian anti-Semitism is that it's obviously partly rooted in history, but it's also a very modern phenomenon. A lot of historians say the reason it becomes so intense is that Russia is changing so much in the late 19th century. Economic change, industrialization, urbanization, a lot of people are losing out, and the Jews become scapegoats. So from the 1880s in Russia, the harshest anti-Semitic laws in Europe, and then a wave upon wave of pogroms.

So Kyiv in 1881, Kishinev very famously in 1903, Odessa in 1905, hundreds of people killed.

And this is why there are waves of emigration, they're coming to Britain and then even more to the United States.

Exactly. So if you're a Jewish villager or a townsman or whatever in 1914 in Galicia, And you hear the Russians are coming, you are terrified. And people have a particular dread of the Cossacks. You open this half by doing a reading about the Cossacks, because the Cossacks see themselves as the defenders of Russian imperialism and Russian orthodoxy. And they have a blood-soaked reputation. They have been the shock troops in a lot of these pogrums. And as we've heard, they completely live up to this horrendous billing. As soon as they cross the frontier, there are stories about them attacking Jewish villages, looting shops, killing people, raping people, all of this. The very worst pogrum was in Lviv, at the end of September. It's a common story in the first World War that there'll be a rumor goes around, Oh, our troops are being attacked by partisans, or whatever. This is what happened in Lviv. There, the Cossacks were given permission Their commander said, Okay, the gloves are off. You can go and punish people. Do what you like. They ran amok, they slaughter almost 50 people, and they rounded up 300 people for deportation to the east.

It's not yet genocidal. I think that would be a massive overstatement. However, the direction of travel, I would say, is pretty ominous. A lot of the Russian commanders are obsessively anti-Semitic. The chief of staff, who's a guy called General Januszkowitch, is, even by Russian standards, he's a pathological anti-Semite. And so there's no effort made to moderate the violence at all. In fact, officers will have Jewish people, they'll blackmail them, they'll loot their shops and houses, they have them whipped in the streets, hanged and so on. And then in the spring of 1915, the Russians begin mass deportations, huge deportations of Jews to camps in the East. So this is the shadow that is hanging. This is the threat that awaits the people people of Shemishal at the turn of 1914 into 1915. Of course, the Russians haven't taken the city yet. They have learned their lesson from the first seeds. They're not going to do this frontal attack. They're going to starve the defenders out. Now, the guy He was demanding the fortress is a man called General Kusmanik, who is a policeman's son from Transylvania. He was an archive man, Tom. He was a desk officer who had worked in the Austrian War Archive.

We have laughed at the idea of academics and lawyers manning the defenses. But actually, they're coming out of this tremendously well, aren't they?

It was a cheap shot, irresistible, but maybe cheap nonetheless. So this bloke does very well. He runs the city very smoothly. Under the circumstances, he sets up soup kitchens for people who haven't got any food. He gets nuns to cook hundreds of meals for them a day. However, he's really up against it because the conditions, it's your classic siege conditions. So piles of unburied excrement in the streets, disease, rampant, drains overflowing, nothing to eat, all of this thing. The stuff you would see in seizures going back to antiquity, but there are some new elements. So at the beginning of December, the first of December, people look up, they hear something in the sky above the city, and they see a plane, and people come out, actually, to stare at it, to watch it. And then they see these little gray balls falling out of the plane. And somebody suddenly realizes what they are and shouts. They're bombs, and they're people running in panic and whatnot. And this is one of the first instances in history of the aerial bombing of civilians. So in all, the Russians launched 300 bombing raids on Shemishal. They were hoping, I think, to hit the bridges, but they don't, do they?

No, they miss. Just throwing a ball out of a plane, it's never going to land where you think it's going to land. However, it's not a comedy. A dozen people were killed, two dozen people were injured. There's a story, I think it's an Alexander Watson's account, of a girl, she had half her head cleaved off by shrapnel and had to be rushed, twitching to hospital. But the bombings, as always in history, the bombings terrify and appall people, but they don't sap their will to resist because people think, well, the Russians are barbarians. They're monsters to do this. We can never give in to them. So Christmas comes and the city is still under siege. In Eastern Europe, the big day is Christmas Eve. The defenders tried to put up trees and they were given special food, but it's all a bit sad. Alexander Watson quotes this guy, Lieutenant Stanisław of Gechak. And he says in his diary, I couldn't stop thinking about my wife and children. The day was really difficult. Even getting through it was so hard. He gathers his platoon or whatever to celebrate the Holy Day, and everybody starts crying. And then he had dinner with his fellow officers, and they tried to light candles and sing carols.

But again, they all start crying. Mostovski, Stumpf, the captain, all quietly cried. This is the one moment in the story, actually, where the Russians, belying their reputation, I think, very well. Because when Austrian patrols went out of the city that day, they found little parcels of bread and sausages and sugar in no man's land with cards wishing them a happy Christmas. Oh, that is nice. Alexander Watson quotes a lovely example. Galant night. At so great a holiday as Christmas Eve, we wish you and your family's the best, wish you return healthy to your nearest and dearest. We shall not disturb you on Christmas day as you eat your supper and talk of your loved ones as a mark of our fraternal greeting We break this holy wafer with you, your comrade, outside the seedlisk of forts. That's quite sweet in a way, isn't it?

Yeah. So another Christmas truce on the Eastern front as well as one on the Western front. Yeah.

And as on the Western front. As soon as it's over, things get very dark indeed. Once we're into January, they've run out of food inside the fort. They basically start eating all their horses.

But they haven't got onto the rats yet.

They haven't got onto the rats, no. It's not quite the seizure of Leningrad in the Second World War. But unless something drastically changes, Schimishall is doomed. But you know what? General Conrad is waiting in the wings for another crack. He hasn't given up. So he's going to come to the rescue. If there's one man you want to come to the rescue, it's this man with an unbroken track record of catastrophic failure.

The Gandalf the White of the Eastern front.

So his men have been hauled up in the Carpathian Mountains. They've been camping in heavy snow and driving rain. They've all got frostbites and hypothermia. Another commander might say, I'll let them rest a bit and thaw out before throwing them back into the fray. But Conrad, as we know, is a born optimist. So on the 23rd of January, he says, Right, I want 175,000 men to go down at the mountains, retake the mountain passes from the Russians, get down into Galicia, relieve the city. By any standards, this is a big ask, as people say. Actually, what happens next is the Carpathian campaign. Now, again, this is one of those things that I think in the English-speaking Well, most people have no idea this ever happened.

I put my hand up.

I plate guilty. It's one of the most horrific campaigns of the whole war. So hundreds of thousands of Austro-Hungarians are trying to fight their way out of these mountains. They're in snowblizzards. The temperatures are below minus 20 degrees celsius. They don't have winter gear. I mean, we talk about people having the wrong shoes, Tom. A lot of them have got shoes made of paper. Would you wear a paper shoe in a snow blizzard?

No, I wouldn't. I did wear a pair of trainers that came to pieces when I walked up Mount Helvelen in the Lake district.

All right. So you know exactly what they've been through.

And there was sleet blowing in, and we ran into a squad of the SAS who told me off. They told- Yeah, they said, You're an idiot. Look at your shoes. Oh, no. Which makes me ask, why is their kit not better? Because surely, if anyone is used to Alpine conditions, it's the Austrians.

It's a. Their shoes have rotted. They've rotted, and their supply networks have failed.

Haven't they got a nice ski gear?

They have not. Well, I'll give you the proof of this. After two weeks, they've lost two-thirds of their strength. Some of them have been killed, some of them have died of disease, but loads of them have actually frozen to death in their sleep. Now, we began with your favorite regimen, didn't we? The Tyrily and Kaiser Jäger.

The Guys with the Feathers.

They've been involved in this because they're freezing to death. I mean, you'd think they'd be used to this in the Tyrell, but no. I mentioned nick Lloyd's book, The Eastern Front. He quotes one of their memoirs. Would you like to read it, Tom, since you love them so much?

The scene was suffused with three colors: the ash and white of the endless fields of snow, the grave black of the endless mountain forests, the blood red of the flames of battle, the sky stretched boundlessly, mercilessely over the death and suffering of hundreds and thousands of soldiers. The Carpathian front consumed men at an alarming rate. It wore them down like a hammer, day in and day out, week after week, blow after blow, coming down on them with unceasing bigger. So that is the worst ski holiday of all time, isn't it?

It is a terrible skiing holiday. Actually, the blokes who are dying are not just from the Tyrell. They're not just Austrians. They are Hungarian, they're Czechs, they're Poles, they're Croats, whatever. And as every day passes, their faith in the army and their loyalty to the empire and to the monarchy is just leaching away. Of course it is, because they have been, as they say, betrayed by their own commanders for a cause that seems to them baffling. Meanwhile, back at the fortress, the people there are freezing, too. They don't have winter uniforms. They've only got their summer gear. They are these ghostly, shrunken figures. They're Finishing off the horses now. They're having to dilute their flour with birchwood. They're collapsing every day with starvation. 25,000 men are in the hospital with hunger and exposure, and the Russians are just pounding them the whole time with heavy guns. So by mid-March, Conrad finally has to accept defeat, and he sends a message to the fortress, and he says, We're not coming. Basically, you're doomed. But then, he says, very like Hitler at in Malingrad or Stalingrad or something, Imperial honor demands that you don't surrender, you should go down fighting.

And actually this bloke, General Kuzmanec, the archivist, says, Fine. And he actually cobbles together some assault troops and says, Right, we'll do one last breakout. This This is a disaster. They get lost in the snow. The Russians basically unleash a storm of gunfire at them, and they have to fall back into the fortress. On the 21st of March, Kuzmanec convenes his senior offices, and they all agree, there's no point going on. It's all over. It's been months, and we're not going to be relieved. But they decide to go out literally with a bang. They want to destroy everything of value before they surrender and make sure that the Russians march into a ruined city. So overnight, they empty their guns at the Russian lines. Thunder of the guns, people said, was so intense that nobody could sleep. And then at 6: 00 the next morning, the series of enormous explosions ripped through these forts. People said it was like volcanoes erupting around the city. Huge, great clouds of smoke and rubble raining down. And then they blew up the bridges over the River Sand. People said it was like the day of judgment, pillars of fire and black smoke everywhere and the Earth torn open and all of this.

And at breakfast, Kuzmánic sent a message to the Russians. He said, I surrender the open city and wait your command with no conditions. And then at nine o'clock, the Russians marched into the center of this city. Now, what happened to the defenders? It's an interesting story. A hundred and twenty thousand men, masses, taken prisoner. And these were just some of 2 million Austro-Hungarian prisoners of war. Two million? Yeah, mind boggling. 2 million people.

I mean, so large that the numbers just cease to have any meaning.

Right, exactly. You can't imagine what does it look like. You So you can't even get your head around it. Now, officers, by and large, were well treated. Remember when we did Peter the Great in the Great Northern War, what happened to the Swedes? It's actually the same story. The officers tend to be well treated. So Kuzmanec ended up under house arrest in Kyiv. But The men, different story, they were driven with whips by Cossacks to the railway stations and then packed into cattle trucks to go to camps in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. By the time they got there, many were dead from starvation or cold or whatever. In the camps, many thousands more died of malaria or typhus or dysentery. The very worst fate waited Germans and Hungarian. They were singled out. A lot of them were sent to work on this railway line that was being built for a mom in the north, and that was transporting military supplies from Arctic convoys from Britain.

Okay, so this is again a prefiguring of the Second World War.

Exactly it is. And they worked in the most horrendous conditions. So they didn't even get sleep in huts. They had to bury into the snow, carve out burrows in the snow to sleep. If they faltered, they were whipped. If they felt ill, they were denied food. Basically, you're finished. And some historians say the conditions in this Mermansk railway were even worse in 1915, 1916 or whatever than in the gulags under Stalin.

It was that bad. How many survived? What happens to them?

Thousands died. I don't think there's the exact figures. With all these casualty figures, there's no precise number. In Some people ended up going home. So the most famous prisoners of war is to go back home, where people call the Czech Legion. So they ended up, they basically, they became a factor in the Russian Civil War, fighting their way on these armored trains east because the only way they could get back to Czechoslovakia, the newly created Czechoslovakia was to go east all the way through Russia and then around the world. And they ended up being a big faction in the Russian Civil War, which is bonkers. But let's go back to the fall of the Citadel. The news of Seymishal's fall was Front page news across the Empire. Total shock. Franz Joseph wept for two days because he knew that this was catastrophic for the image of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. They'd pinned all their hopes on this place. It was their pride and joy, and now it had become a symbol of decay. So this is a war that they started. They've lost, just in the first three months of 1915, they've lost 800,000 men. They're running out of officers.

And what is worse, when they lose Galicia in the northeast, a lot of their food came from these farmlands. So this is very bad news for the city people in Budapest and Vienna who depend upon the food supply from the east. And what is more, hundreds of thousands of refugees, many of them Jewish, now flood into the heart of the Empire. And they are very unpopular in other parts of the empire, in Vienna, in Budapest, but also in the small towns and villages in which they settle. So there are all kinds of ethnic tensions piled on top of the existing ethnic tensions within Austria-Hungry. And so as early as 1915, you can see a sense of order breaking down. And the Austrian's allies, the Germans, at this point start saying, well, they're finished. They're done. So the German liaison officer at the Habsberg military headquarters wrote to Berlin and he said, this empire is so rotten and so decayed, it can no longer be helped. Even if we win the war, this empire is not going to last.

And what about Conrad? And how does Gina take it?

Conrad is still going. Conrad stays in office for another couple of years, I think, unbelievably. And what Gina makes of all this?

Not impressed, I imagine.

Probably not impressed, but I think there's lots of censorship, of course. She probably doesn't know what's going on. Conrad, interesting. You know who Conrad blames for all this?

The Jews?

No. Blames the Germans.

Germans? Okay, that's original.

He says they They could have given us more help. I think he's being a tiny bit ungrateful because the Germans basically torch their own empire to help the Austrias destroy their own monarchy. So I think he's being a little bit-war, war, war. That's what he said. It's all you care about, General Conrad von Hudsondorff. Now, meanwhile, I mentioned the circling vultures last time, and I think I might use the same metaphor this time. Go for it. What I have in the notes. So a month after the fall of this fortress, which, of course, is news around the world, the Italians sign a deal, secret deal to join the entente, and in return, they will get large swathes of Austria-Hungry, especially along the Adriatic history of Dalmatia. A month after that, Italy finally enters the war against Austria-Hungry. If you thought the Carpathian front was bad, the Italian front- Oh, mad.

Absolutely mad. Blowing the tops off mountains. I've walked through a great tunnel that the Italians dug out at the side of a mountain. And I'm assuming that the Austrons did the same, and it's all absolutely for nothing.

The two worst armies in history, just killing. It's an amazing stories in this book, The White War. The one that sticks in my mind is a whole load of Italians, thousands of Italians advancing up this limestone, scree mountain. And the Austrians at the top of machine guns shouting down saying, Please stop coming. We will kill you all. Just go back. Don't stop. Don't come. And the Italians keep going, and the And the Austrians just say, well, okay, and they kill them all.

You keep saying it's a terrible story. We've already had terrible stories, but there are so many more to come.

So let's just end with the city, Chiemischal. The chance to say it again one more time. A month after the city fell, Nicholas II turned up. He went first to Lviv, and then he went to this fortress, and he toured the defenses. And all the people had been told, Hang out Russian flags from your windows, and all the schools had been told to mark the day, and the children in instructed on how to welcome their new Emperor. Nicholas, of course, is as banal and pooterish as ever. He said he found it very interesting and very picturesque. But this trip really mattered because the authorities used it as a spur for Russification. Nicholas used the opportunity to issue a proclamation, There is no Galicia, there is rather a great Russia to the Carpathians. The people of Przemishal were told, You must adopt Russian time, Russian customs, Russian festivals. The shops must have signs in Cyrillic. Polishness must be eliminated. Polish elites, deported. And Ukrainian identity, erased completely. Ukrainian schools must now teach in Russian.

And what about the Jews?

Well, they pay the heaviest price of all. Since January, the Russians have been deporting Jews eastwards. But in Shemishal, they go further than anywhere else. This is the most obvious example of deportation in the entire war. In 10 days, they rounded up 17,000 people and transported them east.

Why are they doing that?

They don't want these lands to have any Jews in them. They want to corral the Jews.

Is that for ideological reasons or because they see the Jews as Austro-Hungarian sympathizers who can't be won over?

Both. They don't like Jews anyway, but they know that the Jews are loyal to the Habsberg Empire, and they want to get rid for that reason. But to stress that first point, they don't like Jews anyway. Many of these They come with anti-Semitism as part of their intellectual repertoire. So by May, there is not a single Jewish person left in this city.

What happens to the Jews who are deported?

Some of them, I think, do get home because there are definitely Jews in Shemishal by the 1930s, though not after the 1940s. So some of them must have got back. I don't actually know exactly how they did that. But the irony of all this, it was all for nothing. It really was all for nothing. Because less than two weeks after the Tsar's visit, the Germans under August von Mackensen, and again, a bloke with the wrong name, launched a massive offensive in Poland, smashed the Russians, scattered their armies, The Germans went deep into occupied Galicia. On the second of June, the Germans, in turn, march into Schemischel. One of their commanders afterwards said, The joy of the liberated people was indescribable. Wherever we went, German soldiers were embraced, decorated with flowers and handed gifts. Then he adds the killer line, I didn't see any Austrian soldiers. That tells a wider story. On paper, the Austrians are back and they've got their city back, but it's actually the Germans who have done it and the Germans who are the real masters now. The prestige and the legitimacy of the Habsberg Empire will never, ever be rebuilt.

That means that all these various lands with all their different peoples, their different languages, their different customs, that essentially the glue that had held them together is going very, very rapidly. And that, of course, has profound implications for what happens after the war, whether the central powers win or lose.

Completely. I completely agree. So in this story, you've seen a lot of elements of things we associate with the Second World War, racial ideology, deportations, ethnic cleansing, pogrums and stuff. If you're Galician, these began in the 1910s. But as you say, since there is no rebuilding the multicultural society before the war, that means now the gloves are off and there's going to be a very bitter fight to see who controls it. This is what happens when the empire collapses in Shemishul and its environs There's fighting between Poles and Ukrainians. Then it's caught up in the Polish-Bolshevik war. Then it's occupied by the Nazis and tens of thousands of its Jewish population murdered. This has only scratch the surface of all the horror that lies ahead.

Okay, so there are better places to live in the 20th century, basically.

Pretty much anywhere. I mean, that's why Timothy Snyder calls this area the bloodlands. I think basically you want to live anywhere but here, maybe not the Congo.

That's a very cheery note, Dominic, on which to end this series. But we are talking about the world going up in flames, aren't we? We began this series by saying this is the great catastrophe, certainly for Europe. But you could also say for... I mean, it is authentically a world war. And I think this series has given a flavor of why it's so terrible. And of course, there is so much slaughter and misery and horror still to come.

Gosh, you're really selling it.

Well, but having said that, having said that, we are going to be back this year with a little more First World War action, and we're going to be back for our Christmas special. We will be looking at the story of the Festive Truce on the Western front, asking whether it happened, to what extent the story is true, So a little touch of light.

Actually, when we do come back to the First World War, hopefully next year, there's so much to look forward to. It's on Zeppelin's, Gallipoli, the sinking of the Lusetania, the arrival of the Italians, the wars fighting women, lots of fun things. And as always, members of the Restes History Club will be able to get those episodes early, won't they? Why not sign up now at theresteshistory. Com?

Ready for next year. Bed down. But next week, something completely different because, Dominic, we will be leaving your backyard, the mountains and bogs and plains of Eastern Europe, and heading to Chatham High Street. Long promised, long-awaited, finally to be delivered. I know the excitement has been building for that. But if you want to listen to it, that's fine. But also, if you'd like to see it, because we've done it on location, you can see Chatham High Street in all its beauty and glory.

Yeah, you should watch it on YouTube, because I have to say, when we did a filming day at Chatham High Street, I think I probably haven't laughed as much as that. Not always for good reasons since I was about twelve. So definitely do watch it.

I think unmissable. So we will see you then. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Hello, everybody. It's Dominic here. Now, here is an extract from our thrilling books episodes from J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy classic, The Hobbit. Enjoy. He sees someone light a fire in the wood beyond the water. For a moment, he thought a plundering dragon settling on his quiet hill and kindling all to flames. He shuddered, and very quickly, he was playing Mr. Baggins, The Bag End, Underhill Again. Now, the thing is, Tolkien's writing this in the 1930s, and I think that paragraph perfectly captures the sensibility of so many British people in the 1920s and 1930s. In other words, the First World War has happened and they've come home. And for people like Tolkien, the First World War means that they never think of war again as romantic, as glamorous, as pain-free, all of that stuff. Tolkien just wants to stay at home and tend his garden and not get involved. Now, there is a bit of him that feels pulled towards adventure and excitement, but at the same time, they're worried that if they get involved in matters as far from home, Dragons will come and set fire to their homes, their villages, their towns. And you had a fleeting mention earlier then in this podcast of Stanley Baldwin.

And Stanley Baldwin, who's very hobbit-like, he likes a waistcoat, He's from this part of the world, from Worcestershire. He is very much a new politician who's unromantic, I suppose, unglamorous. And he famously said, The bomber will always get through, as in be worried about bombing, a new war would be apocalyptic, and all of that thing. I think Bilbo, he absolutely embodies that tension. There's part of him that is pulled towards adventure and pulled towards excitement, but at the same time, he's anxious, he's Homeloving. He's frightened. He's a perfect representation, I think, of the mentality of so many people of Tolkien's generation at the time that he was writing.

But I also think it's interesting that, obviously, The Lord of the Rings was written a bit later. When this is being written, the storm clouds of war are, they're on the horizon, but they're not yet gathering above. And Bilbo isn't forced out of his comfortable life in Hobbit hole because he knows that he has to do something to save his homeland. He doesn't go because he knows there's darkness beyond the gates that he could play a part in quelling and destroying. In The Hobbit, the stakes aren't that high. There isn't an existential threat at the door yet. No. It's just about reclaiming something that was lost. Whereas, Frodo in the Lord of the Rings has to go and save the world. Lord of the Rings was probably written at a time when the threat of the Nazis was unavoidable. The wolf was at the door.

Yeah, it's much less existential in The Hobbit. It's actually the love of exploration and adventure. I guess to some extent, the story of The Hobbit, it's all about Bilbo finding his courage, really. Not physical courage, because he never really fights in battles and does all those things. In fact, there's a lovely moment, actually. The critic Tom Shippy mentions it, and I thought, Gosh, this is so true. The bravest thing that Bilbo ever does is much later on, he's on his own, he's in a tunnel, and he's going to see Smaug. The drawers have sent him, and the rater says, This was the bravest thing he ever did. The tremendous thing that happened afterwards was nothing. He fought the real battle in that tunnel alone before he ever saw the vast danger that lay in wait. I thought, thought, the man who's written those words is a man who stood in a trench with his mates waiting for the whistle. They had no idea what was on the other side. But that dark night of the soul, that moment when you know you're about to go into battle, but you don't know what's waiting, you You have to go.

You have to overcome it.

Overcome yourself. Yeah.

Totally. So that, to me, is some of the modernity of The Hobbit, that it's written by somebody who doesn't think that war is all exciting and glamorous.

Yeah. That's a really interesting thing that Tolkien does throughout. He situates you in an imaginary world in order to tell you something about the realities of our world. In other words, adventures are not heroic and exciting. They're often just really uncomfortable. There's a lot of sitting in the rain and there's a lot of not getting dinner. The goodies don't necessarily come of winning better people. Winning often makes them worse people. Heroes don't instinctively run headfirst into battle. They have a sense of their mortality and fear as much as the rest of us. They do. Anyway, Bilbo is nevertheless dragged into the adventure by Gandalf, and Gandalf must be one of the most iconic characters of any fantasy series ever. Oh, yeah. I mean, he is the original Dumbledore, right?

He's a version of Merlin, though, don't you think?

He's less dark. He's got a lot more humor to him, a lot more twinkle. He's more fallible. But yeah, I would say in the way that Merlin guides guides the quest, so does Gandalf. Yeah. He's like the dwarf's manager. He is.

And he's basically recruited Bilbo very much against his will to be a burglar for them. Actually, sometimes people, frankly, who I think don't know what they're talking about, say, I don't think Tolkien is a very good writer because actually, they don't like the songs or whatever it might be. Actually, when you look at those first chapters, Token is a great writer because he completely captures the different characters and almost the different temporal registers of the characters through the way they speak. So Bilbo is very modern. Bilbo speaks in a modern, middle-class way. So we see in Bilbo, as you said, he's a bridge to this world. And if you want to hear the full episode, you just need to sign up to the Rest is History Club at therestishistory. Com. And not only will you get access to this thrilling new show, but you get all the usual benefits. You get the ad-free listening, the early access to episodes, the bonus episodes. And if you're not a massive fan of The Hobbit, don't despair. Because in the next couple of weeks, we'll be doing Bram Stoker's Chilling Dracula, and we'll be doing Margaret Atwood's Dystopian Fable, The Handmaid's Tale.

Bye-bye. Hey, it's Anthony Scaramucci from the RessusPolitics US. If you're looking for something to play next, Katie K and I just launched a new mini-series about Ronald Reagan. We're digging into the real Reagan story, the rise, the drama, how his world has been turned upside down in the age of Trump. We trace his rise from Hollywood to the White House, from his role in ending the Cold War to reviving the economy.

We also confront those scandals, Iran Contra, his assassination attempt, and his failure around the AIDS epidemic.

Just search the rest of politics US wherever you get your podcast. Here's a clip from the series. Ronald Reagan knew how to go big and go bold. He truly was the great communicator.

Together, we're going to do what has to be done.

He regrounded the GOP and conservative principles.

Free markets, small government, and an unshakable faith in American exceptionalism.

Mr. Gorbachev teared down this wall. Ronald Reagan shook the country. People keep looking to government for the answer, and government's the problem. President Reagan was shot in the chest by a gunman outside the Washington Hotel.

We did not trade weapons or anything else for hostages.

Uncomfortable as it is to admit, the 40th President inadvertently prepared the ground for the 45th. It's not Reagan's party anymore. Donald Trump destroyed Ronald Reagan. I thought he was great. The style, his attitude, but not great, on trade. Will we be the party of conservatism, or will we follow the siren song of populism? Only one man has the proven experience we need.

Together, we'll make America great again. Thank you very much.

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