A Simple Kiss

Politics can often be curious, although the outcome from each story hits different depending on the players involved. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.

(00:36):
Smedley Butler was an American hero, one of the greatest
military leaders in its history. Born in eighteen eighty one,
he came from a high class family in Philadelphia, then
joined the Marines at a young age. From eighteen ninety
eight to nineteen thirty one, he served with distinction. Butler
foughts on multiple continents, too, always furthering America's interests. He

(00:58):
installed new governments in Mexico, Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic,
and Honduras. He was awarded multiple medals of honor, and
the Marines even incorporated his name into a song. By
nineteen thirty three, Butler had retired and consigned himself to
furthering the interests of veterans in the United States. He
felt the Veterans Administration was poorly run and that the

(01:20):
veterans deserved greater compensation for their service. Well. One day,
Butler was contacted by a member of the American Legion,
a guy named Gerald McGuire. The American Legion is an
organization of veterans who advocate for themselves, so Butler was
happy to meet with McGuire. But their meeting went differently
than Butler expected. McGuire offered him tens of thousands of

(01:41):
dollars to recruit more members to the Legion and to
give speeches speaking out against the presidency of FDR. Butler
was shocked at his proposal and turned it down right away.
He didn't believe in speaking out against the president like that.
He felt he owed him his loyalty. Butler's goal was
to try and work with the government to do right
by veterans, not to cause animosity between them. Maguire accepted

(02:05):
that the speech wasn't going to happen, and then he
spent the next few months traveling in Europe. Butler was
surprised to receive postcards from him. It was strange that
this man that he barely knew was so adamant about
keeping in touch. When McGuire returned from Europe, he reached
out again and asked for another meeting with Butler. Butler
was either trying to be nice or was genuinely curious

(02:26):
why McGuire was so desperate to work with him, so
he agreed to the meeting, and this time McGuire laid
out his cards on the table. He revealed that he
was being funded by an organization of powerful business interests,
with members including executives from the likes of JP Morgan,
General Motors, Phillips Petroleum, and General Foods. They had sent
him to Europe to learn what he could about how

(02:48):
the veterans' organizations in those countries were able to influence
their governments. But this wasn't simply because these businessmen wanted
to help veterans in America. No, they wanted to use
those veterans to over throw President Roosevelt. They didn't like
Roosevelt's socialist New Deal policies. They felt that he cared
too much about the common man and not enough about

(03:08):
big business. They believed that the veterans were an untapped
private militia who could be used to carry out their desires.
During his time in Europe, McGuire learned how veteran militias
in France, Germany, and Italy had overthrown their presidents and
helped to install right wing and outright fascist leaders. McGuire
and his bosses wanted Butler to lead the American Legion

(03:29):
in doing the same thing in the United States. Maguire
was sure the Butler, who had spent his whole life
furthering the cause of a strong America, would help the
businessmen in their coup. He couldn't have been more wrong, though. Butler,
in fact, harbored immense guilt for what he had already
done in the Marine Corps. All those countries that he
supposedly helped, he would later write that he actually destroyed

(03:49):
their democracies and installed dictators. He even enslaved some of
their people to work on American building projects. He said
that the American government claimed to be furthering democras in
these countries, but it was actually destroying them so that
American banks, oil companies, and food companies could profit. Butler
was not about to help those same companies instigate yet

(04:10):
another fascist coup in the place that he had supposedly
spent his life defending. He went to the press first,
then Congress, telling them everything but this time he wasn't
hailed as a hero. The press was owned by many
of the business men he was blowing the whistle on,
and they all said that his story was ridiculous. And
while Congress investigated and agreed that there had been a plot,

(04:32):
they refused to prosecate any of the prominent men involved.
Gerald Maguire, by the way, mysteriously died the following year.
It took decades before historians started to lend more credence
to Butler's story, but even today, the powers that be
have an interest in keeping the story hidden. The plotter's
descendants remained powerful and influential. Banks like JP Morgan are

(04:55):
making more money than ever, and one plotter raised a
political dynasty, with both his sons and grandson becoming President
of the United States. That banker, Prescott Bush. Coup or not,
it's hard to disagree with Butler's ultimate goal. Our soldiers
are heroes deserving of honor and support, not ponds in
a game of power, especially when that game is played

(05:17):
at home. Once upon a time, there was a city
split straight down the middle, literally sliced in io by
a wall of concrete and barbed wire. On one side,

(05:40):
you had state surveillance, brutalist apartment blocks, and the relentless
hum of authoritarian control. On the other, a sprawling, chaotic
urban jungle where rules and social norms were flaunted, where
basic utilities rarely worked, and where anything was possible. I'm talking,
of course, about Berlin during the nineteen seven these the

(06:00):
city was the epicenter of the Cold War. It stood
like a scar across the heart of Europe, divided between
the democracy loving West and the Soviet controlled east. When
you walked in its streets, you could feel the tension
of the whole world pressing in. Armed soldiers manned the
wall at all hours, prepared to shoot anyone who tried
crossing from east to west. Families that had called the

(06:22):
city home for generations were split up, separated not by
distance but by ideology and steel. But despite all of that,
or maybe because of that, Berlin had a strange allure
that you couldn't find anywhere else. There was an honesty
to its ugliness, almost like the conflict that normally existed
beneath the surface had been made tangible. It had a

(06:44):
magnetic energy, and soon West Berlin became a haven for artists, punks, poets,
and painters, all crammed into squat houses, chasing meaning and
beauty against the backdrop of oppression and tragedy. And that's
the kind of place was when Dave arrived. Dave was
a music loving thirty year old, soft spoken Englishman with

(07:06):
sharp cheekbones and a quiet intensity. He kept mostly to himself,
renting a small apartment above a car repair shop and
walking the cities for hours by day or by night.
He looked like a tourist, but Dave wasn't just passing
through like so many creatives. He had come to Berlin
looking for inspiration and a place to think. He wound
up finding more than he bargained for. Though. When he

(07:28):
wasn't out walking, Dave spent his days writing music, sometimes
alone in his apartment, sometimes in a grand, eerie recording
studio that had once been a Nazi ballroom, now repurposed
into a creative sanctuary. The studio sat just five hundred
yards from the Berlin Wall, and when Dave looked out
its window, he could see the soldiers on the other
side working there, walking the streets every day and seeing

(07:52):
the impact of a cold war filled Dave with a
melancholy and that was a big problem because Dave was
right in the middle of a new song and it
was meant to be anything but brooding. The music was
already finished, and it was powerful, stirring and uplifting in
a way that would demand a triumphant story to match.
The chords rang like a declaration, but the words would

(08:13):
not come. He stared at the blank page for hours,
but every time he tried to imagine something hopeful or inspirational,
it just struck him as false. Well, one afternoon in
mid nineteen seventy seven, Dave just locked himself away in
the studio determined that for better or for worse, he
was going to finish that song. After crumbling up yet
another sheet of paper, he happened to glance out the window.

(08:36):
The view was the same as it always had been,
but this time something different caught his eye. Across the street,
just in front of the wall, he saw a man
and a woman locked in a kiss. The guards stood
a short distance away, armed and watching, but the lovers
didn't care. And that's when it clicked. Dave sat back down,
picked up his pen, and started to write. The lyrics

(08:57):
that flowed out of him weren't about overthrowing government or
storming barricades. Instead, he imagined two lovers, one from East
Berlin and one from the West, meeting in secret and
spending a single day together. It was hardly a revolution,
just the story of two ordinary people living their lives.
But after his time in Berlin, Dave thought that that
kind of simple humanity carried its own kind of heroism.

(09:21):
Once he got started, the words came quickly. The lyrics
didn't quite match the triumphant music, but to Dave, that
just made it better. It felt honest, like the city
he had come to love. He finished his album and
left Berlin soon after, but a decade later, in nineteen
eighty seven, he came back to play a concert right
next to the wall. The Cold War was still very cold,

(09:41):
but the city felt different. Thousands gathered in West Berlin, dancing,
shouting and singing, and just across the divide, people in
East Berlin gathered to listen. They huddled against fences and
climbed on the rooftops, straining to hear the music. And
when Dave sang that song, the one Born from a
Stolen Kiss, it was like all the heartache the city

(10:02):
had been feeling was let loose. That night's riots broke
out on the eastern half of the city. East berlinners
clashed with the police while chanting the Wall must fall.
The Soviets moved swiftly to crush the disobedience, arresting over
two hundred people, but the spark had been lit. Over
the two years that followed, the riots and protests continued

(10:23):
to escalate until November of nineteen eighty nine, when the
Berlin Wall was finally torn down. The song, of course,
did not bring it down on its own, but it
did create a crack, one of many that eventually broke through.
And in case you're wondering, that song was called Heroes
and Dave. Will you know him better as David Bowie.

(10:47):
I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet
of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn
more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com.
The show was created by me Aaron Manke in partnership
with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show
called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show,

(11:10):
and you can learn all about it over at Theworldoflore
dot com. And until next time, stay curious,