December 3, 2025 • 44 mins
Jake Tapper is tapped in to the pulse of current events. Ed takes him out to sea to assess the historic disaster that was the sinking of the Lusitania: a chaotic, cataclysmic act of treachery that ignited wartime efforts faster than you can say "U-Boat."
Don't miss out this holiday season, look for Ed's New York Times Bestseller, SNAFU: The Definitive Guide to History's Greatest Screwups, wherever you get your books, or go to: www.snafu-book.com
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Are you familiar with the I believe it's the upside
down pineapple?
Speaker 2 (00:05):
No, what's if.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
You put this like sticker or symbol on your door,
it means like you're a swinger, okay, or you're open
to swinging with other with other upside down pineapples.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
As opposed to a regular pineapple. Well, then you're just
a door.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
You're just like no one wants, no one wants to
swing with you. Hello. I'm Ed Helm's host of snaff Who,
(00:41):
my podcast about history's greatest screw ups, or, more specifically,
the show where I ask brilliant guests to help me
unpack some of the least brilliant moments in history and
in the process, perhaps understand ourselves a little bit better.
This week, I am talking with one of the legendary
(01:01):
TV journalists of our time. He's an anchor and Chief
Washington correspondent at CNN, host of The Lead with Jake
Tapper and State of the Union. He's also someone with
a shockingly dare I say, offensively expansive grasp of politics, history,
pop culture, world affairs, and so much more. He is
(01:22):
a delightful conversationalist and Emmy winner, A prolific author and
he has a brand new book out, Race Against Terror,
Chasing an Al Qaeda killer at the Dawn of the
Forever War. It's out now.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
He is smart, thoughtful, funny, and a lot of people say,
we look like brothers. Please welcome Jake Tapper.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Thank you so much. It's great to be here.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
We do, we do.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
There's a lot of forehead going on right now. Yeah,
on this podcast eight head, we went.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Yeah, we had a ten head. One.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
One might even say, well, I'm super grateful that you're
here and allowing us to be part of your free time.
Your passion for work is admirable, and it's just the
news cycle is so intense every day. I'm curious, is
that exhilarating for you as a journalist or is it
more just like a furious treadmill from hell, like a
(02:15):
Sisaphian torture, where you can't get into a story and
give it the depth it deserves.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
That's a great question. I do remember.
Speaker 4 (02:26):
So I've been a journalist for a long time, and
I do remember periods where there didn't seem to be
a lot to cover. There didn't you know, like you know,
times when I was an anchor. So since twenty thirteen
when I first got my own show, where like how
are we going to fill the hour today?
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Was actually a question and that wasn't fun.
Speaker 4 (02:47):
Although looking back on it, it's kind of a stupid
question because there's so much that you could report on,
but like in terms of like compelling news, interesting news,
it didn't seem as easy as it is now. Now,
does that mean I'm excited about the threats being made
to TV news stations by Donald Trump because I get
(03:09):
to cover it. No, I'm not. I'd I would prefer
that not be happening. But it is true that there
is no shortage of stuff to cover to the point
that I you know, we really have to prioritize. Sure,
you know, there are times when there are like serious
erosions of democracy or what are traditions in the United
(03:32):
States that we're used to, such as the president in
his administration using the power of the government to silence
and squelch speech and speakers they don't like, mister Kimmel
being the most recent example, and that you know that
also is a time and a cause for alarm.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
Well, we should say that that's Kimmel is the most
recent example as of the date of recording. This. It
will be out later and we'll see you and.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
I will be in Guantanamo by the time this post probably.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Oh god, that is grim.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Then they came for the podcasters exactly.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
It's a good jumping off point because this story I
want to tell you today is rooted in another book
that a friend sent to me. Ryan Holliday, who you
may know is the host of the Daily Stoic podcast.
He gave me Eric Larson's incredible book Dead Wake. Do
(04:29):
you know this book?
Speaker 2 (04:30):
No, I know Eric Larson, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
It's the story of the sinking of the Lusitania.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Oh wow.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
It's written almost as a thriller, and it's just a
phenomenal piece of history writing. Ryan sent me this book
because he knows I'm a snaffoo nerd, and it's a
hell of a read, and it just struck me as
the perfect Jake Tapper story because it's not just about
a shipwreck. It's about politics, international conflict, and even a
(04:57):
fight over the narrative itself at the end of the day.
And that's just a battleground that you navigate every day
as a journalist.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
So let's just.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Dive right in the sinking of the Lusitania. Now our
backdrop here, of course, is the Great wool aka World
War One. I don't want to get too bogged down
in the war itself, but basically, in nineteen fourteen, a
guy named Archduke Franz Ferdinand gets shot, and then Europe
(05:31):
basically just descends into a full on Looney Tunes bar fight.
Austria swings at Serbia. Russia's like, oh hell no. Germany
hops up and smashes a chair over Russia and then
takes a swing at France, elbowing Belgium along the way.
This gets britten up off its stool, like, oh, I
don't meshed with Belgium, and the Ottomans leap in. Japan
comes flying in through a window. It's just absolute chaos.
(05:54):
And then of course the Assembite samfires his pistol and
the dust settles, and you've got two sides, the Central
Powers Germany, Austria, Hungary and the Ottoman Empire versus the
Allies Britain, France, Russia, Belgium, Serbia, Japan, Portugal and a
handful of others.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
How did I do? Is that a good summary?
Speaker 2 (06:14):
That's great? I love that?
Speaker 3 (06:16):
Oh my god, all right, good, that's a little America.
Speaker 4 (06:18):
Is America Yusemite Sam? Or was Yosemite Sam just a
thrown in refraen?
Speaker 3 (06:22):
You know what he could he kind of could be.
But we're not there yet.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
Because doesn't Yeah, because doesn't the US kind of come
in a little bit and save the day a little bit,
teeny bit.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
In this metaphor, Yosemite Sam's just that guy that walks
into the saloon and kind of like and like shuts
everyone up for a second.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
I know, Blackjack Pershing is a huge character in the
in the war.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
That's what That's my main knowledge point.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
Amen. The sort of initiation of World War One is
so fascinating because it just shows how a single spark
can just kind of ignite this simmering powder keg of tensions,
and I don't know, it feels like they're there are
It feels like this is just a recurring thing throughout
(07:07):
history and even perhaps all around us as we speak.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
Yeah, And like the Arab Spring, you know, if that
one merchant hadn't set himself on fire and protest in Tunis,
would the Arab Spring have even happened? Right, It's the
corollaria of the Great Man theory of just like one
man getting killed or setting himself on fire or whatever
that changes history.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
That is the spark.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
I like the domino metaphor because these things just they
escalate so quickly and before you know it, there's so
many dominoes on the ground.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
So the western front of the of the war, which
was the that's the bloody battle line across northern Europe
where Germany is trying to push into France. It gets
very quickly bogged down in this nightmare of trench warfare,
a brutal stalemate. But out on the ocean things are
a lot more dynam Britain threw up a massive naval
(08:02):
blockade to choke off German supplies. So Germany rolled out
its new toy, the U boat, which by the way
is short for unter sea boot, a word that sounds
way scarier in German, but it literally just means under
sea boat, so thanks.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Guys for that.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Everything sounds scarier in German.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
This is the first U boat, I believe, the very
first U boat. Yes, and these things were incredible feats
of technology for their day, about two hundred and ten
feet long, crewed by thirty five men, all crammed in there.
They were able to say, submerged for a few hours
at a time. They carried torpedoes as well as a
deck gun, and as you might imagine, life on board
(08:43):
was just a total nightmare. While diving, the subs became
unbearably hot, with diesel fumes, food rapidly spoiling. There was
so little fresh water that sailors never bathed ever, But
the payoff was huge. Throughout the war, the U boat
sank thousands of tons of Allied shipping, casting a shadow
(09:04):
of fear that was far larger than the actual numbers themselves.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Could you do you think you could handle life on
a U boat? Oh?
Speaker 4 (09:12):
God, no, I can't even handle going down in like
one of those water parks to look at like the
fish and the coral, Like I mean, I can scuba
di scuba dive, I like it, But that's free and open.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
You had the.
Speaker 4 (09:22):
Claustrophobic nature of a submarine. Sounds just I haven't even
seen das boot because of like, I don't, this seems
like it would be really awful.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Oh, and the they were so dangerous. I mean, the
batteries were filled with sulphuric acid, and if any seawater touched.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Them it instantly turned into chlorine gas. Any I mean
it was just a didn't this just.
Speaker 4 (09:46):
Happened like ten years ago, like a Russian sub they
got stuck somewhere and they all died.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Do you remember this?
Speaker 1 (09:52):
This has happened a couple of times in Russian, This
happens all the time.
Speaker 4 (09:55):
Yeah, it's all Russian, everyone or Soviet Russian, and they're
every one of these disasters, but they're it's been a bunch.
In two thousand there was one an explosion in the
torpedo compartment caused a catastrophic event. All one hundred and
eighteen people were killed. But the one I was thinking
about was in two thousand and eight, the Nerpa accident.
A crew member activated the fire suppressing system, releasing halon gas.
(10:17):
Twenty people died, forty other one injured.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
I mean, it's just that kind of NonStop chemical risk.
Speaker 4 (10:23):
Yeah, you were talking about the second ago with like
this could turn into chlorine gas or whatever, like it's
all so insane.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
And just but just the claustrophobia alone probably would probably
kill me, Like I would have a heart attack.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Before naming your head against the wall exactly.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
So America at this point was basically that guy at
the bar trying not to get dragged into the fight.
President Woodrow Wilson's official stance was strict neutrality, but to
be clear, we were still feeding the Allied war effort
with tons of financial credit, grain, oil, and weapons, et cetera.
Maybe not that neutral. But this is where today's story
(11:03):
officially kicks in because Americans weren't just trading with Britain,
they were also hopping aboard British ships in the booming
transatlantic travel business. Enter the star of today's snafu the
RMS Lusitania.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
It's an American ship or a British ship.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
It is a British ship.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
It is launched in nineteen oh six by the Cunard Line,
a huge passenger shipping enterprise. Here she is, yeah, and
all of her glory.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Holy smokes, that's a big ship.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
It's a big boat. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
No, no water slides, I'll note.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
Yeah, let's I'll give you a little rundown of some specs.
Seven hundred eighty seven feet long, eighty seven feet wide,
four steam turbines. You can see there are smokestacks there.
Carried over twelve hundred passengers and over six hundred crew,
had elevators inside, which was like a breathtaking marvel. The
first class suites had marble amenities, a wireless telegraph, and
(12:05):
it was fast. It was legit fast. It could go
twenty six knots or about thirty miles per hour, which
for a ship that big is just no joke.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
This is before the Titanic sank. Right.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Titanic was nineteen twelve, but the Lusitania was launched a
lot earlier. It had a success, It had many successful
transatlantic crossings.
Speaker 4 (12:27):
The Lusitania is introduced and the Titanic has not yet
been sunk, and everyone's like, nobody's thinking that it's going
to sink. Everyone's thinking it's unsinkable because it's this big,
beautiful ship.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
Exactly.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
It's giant, it's beautiful, it's the latest technology, and it's
also incredibly fast. It goes about thirty miles an hour,
which is fast enough to win the Blue Ribond Prize.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
Was the quickest ship across the Atlantic.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
This is very significant the speed because it also it
also gave a sort of false sense of confidence to
q Nard as a company and the crew, the captain
and crew of the ship that they weren't subject to
threat from other from any sort of military enterprise because
they could.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
Basically outscape, right, they could outrun just about anybody. Are
you a cruise guy in general? You ever? Do you
ever go on cruises?
Speaker 4 (13:18):
I would, but my wife has made it very clear,
I think pretty early on in the relationship that that
was never going to happen. You're a David Foster Wallace fan.
He wrote a great essay for I forget if it
was The Atlantic or Harper's. I think probably harper Is
called a supposedly fun thing that I'll never do again.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
Oh of course. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
And then Gary Steinart did another sort of like revamp
of that, a new one in the last few years.
Speaker 4 (13:47):
I think a cruise sounds great if you are in
the mindset of all you can eat and drink, like
twenty year old me would love all you can eat
and drink.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Yeah, fifty six year old me, no thanks.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
I'm also a little freaked out by like a giant
and seafood buffet. I don't know what it's just I
can't do. I used to I used to love that.
See oh, crabs, shrimp like load me up, lobster.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
Unless you have control of the passenger list. Do you
want to be locked on a ship with people?
Speaker 2 (14:15):
Yeah? People?
Speaker 4 (14:16):
You're talking about people other people, right, Yes, younger people have.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
Met some people. I've met some great ones, but.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
You just talking about them. I'm not talking about the
great ones. That's not who's on the ship with you?
Speaker 3 (14:30):
Are you?
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Are you familiar with the I believe it's the upside
down pineapple?
Speaker 3 (14:34):
No, there's it's like a it's a.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
I read this somewhere that I think it's an upside
down pineapple. If you if you put this like sticker
or symbol on your door, it means like you're a swinger,
or you're open to swinging with other with other upside
down pineapples on the.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Coast to a regular pineapple. Go on, Jake, why you
can get married? I don't even understand it.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
All right, never mind, I'm getting you a ticket for
a swinging cruise.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
A swinging cruise. It's called the upside down pineapple.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
Is there anything more of an aphrodisiac than than a
seafood buffet?
Speaker 2 (15:09):
A seafood buffet on a swinging cruise?
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Oh god, oh boy?
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Diving back in here, okay, Lusitania got it, he got
way off track. On May first, nineteen fifteen, the Great
War is in full swing. The Lusitania left New York's
Peer fifty four bound for Liverpool.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
And this is just a cru this is just a
cruise shift.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
This is not a military The short answer is, yeah, sure,
of course that's what it is.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
Nice at the helm was Captain William Thomas Turner, a
veteran mariner known for his steady hand. But the ship's
role was a bit more complicated than it looked. The
British Admiralty had helped bankroll the building of the Lusitania
with the understanding that she could be requisitioned in wartime.
So while on paper she was just a glamorous passenger liner,
(16:03):
in practice she and a number of ships like her
were sometimes carrying munitions alongside.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
They're paying customers.
Speaker 4 (16:11):
Can I just make an observation on that? Yeah, that's
some that's some dirty shit, Like that's not cool.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
Well, especially because a lot of the passengers are completely
none the wiser.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
All of them, except for the except for the except
for the semen.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
Yeah, well, are we back to the swinging.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Kat.
Speaker 4 (16:33):
The crew, let's call them the crew. A pause, A
pause between the cales.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
Next time, the Germans caught onto this, and by early
nineteen fifteen they declared the waters around Britain a war zone,
warning that even passenger ships might be targeted. Uh and
on the morning of the Lusitania's departure, the German embassy
even published that warning in very stark terms in New
(16:58):
York City newspapers.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
So this was not a secret.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Now, if you were Captain William Turner, would you have
said sail under such conditions?
Speaker 3 (17:08):
He was British, he was a brit.
Speaker 4 (17:11):
He was probably, I mean, just based on my limited
knowledge of the UK and the military in the UK,
he probably was a navy veteran, and so I would
assume that he was loyal to the crown. And you know,
once a sail are always a sail. Like I, personally,
I don't know what I would have done. I like
to think that I would have been noble and loyal
and full of courage. But I'm just saying, like putting
(17:33):
myself in his shoes. He's a navy veteran, he hates
the bad guys in World War One. I don't know
who is king or Queen at this point, but let's
just assume that they are calling him on the telegraph
and saying we need you to do that, we need
you to do this.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
I don't First of all, that was a terrible British accent.
But I'm not a committee, so that's interesting you say
all that. I believe he came up through the merchant
marines and was and worked his way up as a
Cunard company man. Hey had tremendous experience, but I also
(18:09):
don't know for sure.
Speaker 4 (18:10):
By the way, just just doing a quick search of
his fellow mister, captain Turner married his cousin, like right
off the bat. That's one of the first things I
learned about him.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
Oh but Jake, it's a different time, is it? Isn't
that great? Isn't it insane when people say that, like
it was a different time.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
He married his sister, Well, it's a different time.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
It's like people explain away the most horrific shit with
it was a different time.
Speaker 4 (18:36):
Let me just say that he's lucky that we don't
know his name as being the captain of a ship
that went down like.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
He very easily could have.
Speaker 4 (18:42):
He's basically gone down anonymously in history, but we could know,
like people could call each other, Oh you're such a turner.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
Well, I don't know that. I don't know how much you're.
Speaker 4 (18:52):
Suggesting he knew that there were British munitions that were
being smuggled in the show.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
What he definitely knew, and what a lot of passengers
even knew, was that Germany had said, be careful because
that's a war zone, and we're taking out passenger ships
because we think some of them are carrying munitions.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
Despite all this, the Lusitania just steamed forth her passengers,
trusting that speed and prestige and maybe a dash of
hubris would would carry them safely across.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
Yeah, and we can go thirty miles an hour.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
Yeah, exactly. They weren't so lucky. Things did not go
as planned on the U boat.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
That you introduced in the at the beginning of the segment.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
This is where he comes back. Yeah, exactly on the afternoon.
I like that Chekhov's U boat. Yeah, you can't introduce
a U boat in a story, I just assumed and
not have a torpedo get get tired out of it.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
On the afternoon of May seventh, nineteen fifty six days
out from New York, the Lusitania was gliding past the
gorgeous southern coast of Ireland under clear skies when a
German U boat struck a torpedo slammed into her starboard side,
ripping open the hall. Moments later, a second explosion tore
(20:18):
through the ship. Now this second explosion is a sort
of is a very hotly debated subject. Some folks believe
it was the boiler getting sort of like jarred and
having an explosion. A lot of people think I think
the most common or the most sort of agreed upon
(20:39):
version is that the first torpedo impact actually kicked up
a ton of coal dust in the engine rooms. And
that's incredibly validile so like literally any spark in that
would cause an explosion that had happened to other ships.
But there were other sort of theories that perhaps the
torpedo had struck some of the munition store in the
(21:00):
belly of the ship and that's what caused an additional explosion.
That's uh, but we don't we don't really know for sure.
But an interesting tidbit, a quick flash forward into nineteen
ninety three, divers exploring the wreck of the Lusitania verified
the presence of munitions in her hold. Until then, it
(21:24):
was still contested and hotly contested, and records were conflicting.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
And and and again. It's just unclear who knew what
and how and when people knew what.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
But fascinating, Yeah, it was the coast. How far away
from Ireland?
Speaker 4 (21:41):
Is?
Speaker 3 (21:42):
Was the ship very close within sight? I think it
was about ten miles off the coast? Oh wow?
Speaker 1 (21:48):
But that you know, but they could see Ireland from there.
But you are you sort of went here automatically. But
this all forces a brutal question, right, right, when villions
and weapons share the same ship, where do you draw
the line between a fair target and an atrocity. I mean,
there's like two thousand people on this boat, I.
Speaker 4 (22:09):
Think, I mean, I think it's a huge question because,
first of all, this story shows that the idea of
using human shields well, I mean, I guess that wasn't
human shields in the sense of what we see in
the Middle East or whatever, because it wasn't as though
they were advertising it. They were smuggling it. But there
(22:29):
is without question or responsibility that any government has when
they use a civilian vehicle or whatever to hide something
military related, because the conceit of civilized warfare is we
don't target civilians, and once you as a country violate
(22:52):
that separation.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
It is on you, not your enemy, for doing that.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
I think I want to give a little more context
for sort of what was happening regarding the kind of
rules of war at that moment. So there was a
whole framework of sort of maritime rules and traditions, and
U boats had been expected to follow the Prize laws,
(23:18):
which are these sort of like maritime traditions, and this
in the case of this war, these laws required a
sub to surface and stop a merchant ship, check it
for contraband or weaponry or whatever, and if found, then
give passengers time to leave the boat before sinking it.
(23:41):
There was a German U boat U seventeen that sank
a British ship Glitra in October nineteen fourteen, and it
followed this playbook exactly. But surfacing left these submarines very vulnerable,
and the British were starting to exploit this, attacking this
as they were surfacing to follow the rules.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
And so by nineteen fifteen, all of these rules were
in tatters.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
And sometimes a ship was stopped politely, other times a
torpedo just came without warning.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
It's so fast these is that wild.
Speaker 4 (24:15):
The rules are so weird, And just the one that
I'm reminded of is the fact that the chemical warfare
in World War One was so horrific that they didn't
engage in chemical warfare in World War two. Right, even
the Nazis they gassed Jews and Poles and whatever in
the concentration camps, but they would not use chemical warfare
(24:37):
against the Brits and the Americans, et cetera. And it's
just these rules are so weird to me, because we
can torture you over here, but not over here, you know.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
It's so strange. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
And then you go back to like the Revolutionary War,
and the rules were just so rigid, like they would
soldiers would line up behind a drummer, yeah, and then
just shoot each other.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
In an open field. It is wild if you think
about it, like the point of a war is just
to win. But there is also this, and I guess
this says something good about humanity that there's this, There
is this kind of overarching morality that we want to
preserve human dignity.
Speaker 4 (25:23):
Somehow, it's all such a slippery slope of hypocrisy.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Yeah, And when one side starts to kind of break
the rules, the whole structure whatever, this sort of rule
scaffolding just implodes.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
It all collapses.
Speaker 4 (25:40):
But you can always justify it because I'm sure the
Brits were like, well, we're breaking the rule, but the
Germans broke this rule to even start the war.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
So back to our sinking of the Lusitania. It's struck
by the torpedo, A dire panic ensues. Most of the
lifeboats become impossible to launch because the shit was started
listing so severely to one side almost immediately.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
It took just eighteen minutes for the entire ship to sink. Now,
for reference, it took the Titanic about two hours to sink.
Speaker 4 (26:15):
Was there structural weakness or was it just this is
what happens when it torpedo hits the ship.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Well, it was this second explosion in the belly of
the ship that really like that, Like a single torpedo
hitting the Lusitania, A lot of historians believe should not
have taken it down. It shouldn't have necessarily like sunk it.
Speaker 4 (26:37):
So it was likely the munitions that were hit in
the one or the coal dust explosion or whatever caused
that second explosion.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
But the divers didn't solve that problem. They didn't solve that.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
No, that is not clear. That that is not it's
that's still in the land of theory.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
The ship sank so fast and only a few lifeboats
were able to be long launched. The human toll was staggering.
Of the almost two thousand men, women and children aboard,
about twelve hundred perished.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
The exact numbers are still disputed, but the total also
included one hundred and twenty three Americans. Of course, this
headlines just were screamed across the world. Here's the New
York Times.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Wow, look at that.
Speaker 4 (27:28):
Lusitania is sunk by submarine, probably two hundred and sixty dead,
twice torpedoed off Irish coast, sinks in fifteen minutes. Captain
Turner saved, Frohman and Vanderbilt missing. Washington believes that a
grave crisis is at hand. That's the headline. They weren't
very piff They weren't very pithy back then. No, if
CNN was around that, I mean that Chiron would be
(27:50):
the whole screen. That's a lot of information. Captain Turner saved.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
He did not go down with the ship, did not
go down with the ship. Outrage erupted on both sides
of the Atlantic. This wasn't just another wartime tragedy. It
was a turning point. Let's move into the aftermath. Eric
Larson's book Dead Wake, which I cannot recommend more strongly
(28:19):
suggests that British intelligence may have actually known a U
boat was stalking her, or at least prowling around where
the Lusitania was. They had captured German codebooks and cracked
naval ciphers, and they were reading the enemy messages, and
(28:39):
according to Larson, they knew a sub was patrolling the
very waters Lusitania was heading into, and yet they gave
no warnings.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
That.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
This is really interesting. There are a couple of factors
at play that I'm curious to get your take on.
Winston Churchill, who was at the time the Lord of
the admiralte felt that the Lusitania was a very badass
ship and really wasn't in that much danger because of
its speed and maneuverability, et cetera. But also there is
(29:15):
the cold logic of protecting secret intelligence, right because the
minute you act on secret intelligence, you might be revealing
that you have a way of acquiring secret intelligence which
endangers your code breaking, et cetera. It was felt that
(29:36):
to act on that would reveal too much and that
they're better off waiting for a bigger message of like
maybe a much more substantial naval maneuver that they could crack.
Speaker 4 (29:48):
And this is the cold logic of an intelligence professional.
The Lusitania sinking doesn't actually hurt British the British war
effort beyond the loss of those munitions, and in fact
could rally the Americans to join the effort. I mean,
that's that's how these that's how these bastards think.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
So where does America faul on all this? Well, President
Wilson urged caution, he's still very reluctant to drag the
US into the war. Of course, Former President Theodore Roosevelt
is like, give him hell. He wants to just dive
right in dolphin.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
Yeah, he's like, he's super He's writing a Great White
Shark on the way. Just furious.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
Germany defended itself, insisting the Lusitania was carrying weapons, which,
while technically true, was unprovable at the time, so this
was not received well. Tensions ratcheted even further when Germany
sank another British passenger ship, the ss Arabic, resulting in
just a tidal wave of anti German sentiment across the
(30:53):
US and and of course already in Britain. Germany promised
more restraint, but in eighteen seventeen, British intelligence intercepted the
infamous Zimmerman Telegram, which revealed that Germany not only planned
to resume unrestricted submarine warfare, but that it was also
dangling an alliance with Mexico if the US had the
(31:17):
audacity to join the fight. So what was in it
for Mexico, you might ask. Well, Germany said it would
financially assist Mexico in reclaiming its old territory from the US,
which included Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. This was a
breaking point. Wilson released this telegram and the American public
was outraged and they were now firmly in favor of
(31:38):
entering the war. Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war,
and on April sixth, nineteen seventeen, the US joined the
Allies against the Central Powers.
Speaker 4 (31:49):
Incredible, so the history shows that it had it not
been for the sinking of the Lusitania in the Arabic
the US might and we can only say might not
have joined the war.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
Is that possible? So it wasn't a Pearl Harbor moment.
It wasn't It wasn't a thing that it was like
here we go, We're definitely in. But it was it
was like a domino, right, and it was something that
started this cascading effect. So then when the Zimmerman Telegram
was intercepted, there was enough tension that it was like, oh,
(32:23):
hell yeah, this is all like we're getting we're diving in.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
So if it were not for the Americans, it's not
clear that the Germans wouldn't have won World were one
for sure.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
Yeah, I'm curious, like just some bigger picture takeaways. I mean,
what what this is like my favorite part where we
just kind of deconstructed a little bit. And what strikes
me most about the Lusitania is is what a turning
point it was and the domino effect it precipitated. I mean,
it was one torpedo, one ship on one afternoon, and
(32:53):
suddenly public outrage, policy shifts, and eventually America's entry into
the war. And the thing about dominoes is you don't
always know which ones are going to keep going and
keep falling, or which ones are just going to kind
of tip over and stop right. So looking back, it's
easy to see the chain reaction, but in the moment
(33:15):
it had to just be so unclear and confusing. Do
you think we're any better now at spotting which events
are just noise and which events are true turning points?
Speaker 3 (33:27):
We're not.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
We're not.
Speaker 4 (33:29):
And one of my favorite monologues in a film is
in Charlie Wilson's War, when the late Great Philip Seymour Hoffman,
playing a I think a CIA officer, is trying to
give the Texas congressman a lesson on even though dumu
Jahadeen have successfully beat back the Soviets in Afghanistan, who
(33:53):
knows what the dominoes will fall? And it's this whole
thing about the zen master and the child. The short
version for your listeners is a boy gets a horse,
and everybody in the village is like, oh, that's so wonderful,
and the zen master says, we'll see. And then the
boy falls off the horse or the horse falls on
him and he breaks his leg and it injures him forever,
and everybody in the village says well, that's so horrible,
(34:15):
and the zen Master says, we'll see, and then all
the young men in the in the village are called
to war, but he can't go because it's broken list
of injury, and everyone's like, isn't that great, And the
ze Master's like, we'll see, well, and that's and that
is everything, Like you could while you were telling talking
about trench warfare, I immediately I always immediately think of
the World War two World War One movies. I've seen
(34:36):
In the remake of All Quiet on the Western Front,
which was done by a German director, writer, et cetera,
I believe they add a scene where the Germans are surrendering, uh,
and the I think the Brits and the French are
being like, really tough.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
And this was.
Speaker 4 (34:57):
A German way of looking World War One, which is
because of the austerity measures and what you did to
Germany during the Armistice of World War One, world War
two happened.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
And that is a very German view of well, not
just German.
Speaker 4 (35:14):
I think there are historians who think that the armistice
and the peace of World War One in many ways
set the.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
Conditions that created World War Two.
Speaker 3 (35:24):
So I don't know.
Speaker 4 (35:25):
I mean I was about to say, well, that guy
who smuggled, who ordered the smuggling of munitions into the
Lusitania probably had some really bad months. And then at
the end of it, you know, the Americans come in
because of that domino that fell and saved the way.
Speaker 3 (35:39):
It's like a we'll see moment, Yeah, right.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
Exactly, we'll see.
Speaker 4 (35:42):
But then there's also the we'll see of the of
the victory of World War One is then it could
then causes World War two becauses Hitler's rise to power.
You know, would it have been better in history if
if if Germany had had won World War One? I
mean maybe then Hitler wouldn't have come to power all
all the horror from there.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
So I don't know.
Speaker 3 (36:03):
So that's a I love that analysis, Jake.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
It's a very I think, sort of prudent and responsible
way to look at the way dominoes fall through an
historical lens.
Speaker 4 (36:18):
Well, and that's how it happens, as we talked about
with the assassination of arts Duke Ferdinand. But I'm guessing
that whoever made the decision to hide diminutions in the
Lusitania definitely like probably at the end of the day,
like all sorts of war medals.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
Yeah, you know that is the you're speaking to the
one constant in all of these snaffoos, which is that
no one is ever held accountable, correct, and more likely
they are rewarded in some way for the snaffoos.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
So, but also, like this guy would have I'm assuming
it's a guy.
Speaker 4 (36:54):
Please don't condemn me for my sexism when I suggest
that there were no female admirals or whatever at the time.
But I will say, like, whoever that guy was. Also,
the decision was bad, so it could only have been
made by a man that that person could say like, look,
because of that, we won the war.
Speaker 3 (37:11):
M hm. And also there were a lot of very
successful a passengership munition shipments, you know, apart from the Lusitania,
So they were they were getting lots of sort of
contraband across the ocean.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
Don't you think that still happens today?
Speaker 4 (37:29):
Don't you think that our government, not just our government,
but all governments are hiding stuff in Yeah, I mean
I would oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
Yeah, I mean the CIA was fully like fully engaged
in in cocaine trafficking right in the eighties, Like it was.
It started out as kind of like, oh, we're trying
to kind of get inside undercover, and then it was
just like, oh, but also, we don't mind if you
profit a little bit on the side, and it's yeah,
(37:59):
there's it's wild.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
So the snaff who in this is the decision to
put the munitions in the in the ship.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
You're drilling down on the on the sort of technical
specificity of our.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
I'm not I'm not disagreeing with it.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
I'm just saying that, No, I would say that the
snaff who is the disaster? The snaff who is the
sinking of the ship, the epic loss of life?
Speaker 4 (38:22):
And uh see that's a human approach. I'm going at
it like a journalist to blame who's responsible?
Speaker 1 (38:30):
But no, But that is that is such a sort
of exciting part of discovery when you dig into this story,
is is that the who's to blame just becomes this
very murky web.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
Did anybody else have submarines?
Speaker 1 (38:44):
Yes, yeah, submarines that the Brits had submarines, but the
the Germans had. We're really pushing the technology forward in
ways that that others just gotten quite caught up to.
Speaker 4 (38:57):
Whoever made that decision, that's who I give the snaffoo
to not that you give awards at the end of
these but still that's but you should perhaps think about
that for future ref But I mean that that's the decision,
right or or the bread who decided we're going to
start shooting U boats while they're coming up and following
instructions and surprise laws.
Speaker 3 (39:19):
That's where it gets that, That's where it gets real,
real dodgy. Yeah, the rules are for you, guys, they're
not for us.
Speaker 4 (39:27):
I feel like I've now very dangerously entered terrain where
and blaming the British for their own ship getting shot
by the Germans, but which I do not mean to do.
And it's obviously the Germans fault and I proved that
with my accents earlier in the episode.
Speaker 3 (39:42):
Jake, it's the fog of war, all right, Let's be clear.
This is that gives you a very a whole lot
of leeway here.
Speaker 4 (39:49):
I just do think that, like when you are hiding
military material and the material l in a civilian ship,
you are creating an untenable situation for the civilian. I
feel comfortable making that assertion. I don't disagree even if
the Germans are the bad guys.
Speaker 3 (40:08):
Tell me just a little bit about this book you have.
Oh great, thank you. It's right behind you. I can
see it. It's a beautiful cover Race against Terror.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
So there it is.
Speaker 4 (40:17):
So it's really just an interesting story. Did I send
you one yet? I'll send you one. If I haven't,
text me your address and I'll send you one, Okay.
So it's just this really interesting story that I heard
from a guy about it's the Arab Spring.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
To that does not sound legit, by the way, it's
totally true. I mean, from this guy named Louie. I
admit it a b No, Well, you need to.
Speaker 2 (40:40):
Ask me who the guy is and I'll tell you
a good story about that. But but but so it's
the Arab Spring.
Speaker 4 (40:45):
Refugees from Tunisia and Libya are fleeing Africa. They're ending
at the southern Italian Islands. Berlusconi Commandeer is a cruise
ship and they start, you know, bringing refugees to the
mainland of Italy and to Europe. And on that cruise ship,
a short African guy from these air approaches a guard
and says he wants water. The guard notices he has
(41:08):
a bullet hole in his arm or a bullet scar.
He asks him where he got it, and the guy says, well,
I got it fighting Americans in Afghanistan.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
I'm with al Qaida.
Speaker 4 (41:16):
And the Italian guard they take him to a room,
they hear more about his story. They take him into
custody and they call the Americans and they say, this
guy says, his name is spin Ghoul and he's killed Americans.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Have you heard of him?
Speaker 4 (41:29):
And the Americans have heard of him, even if you
and I haven't. And the Italians are like, great, take them,
we don't want him, we.
Speaker 1 (41:38):
Can't hold Why did he Why did he identify himself
to the Italians?
Speaker 3 (41:42):
Did he just think out of it?
Speaker 4 (41:45):
He didn't belong with the riff raff, the refugees. He
had just gotten out of a Libyan prison, remember when
the Libby was just completely falling apart, and Kadafi and
his thug emptied the prisons and they sent like Islamic
extremists to Europe to recavoc that's what. So he had
(42:08):
been in a prison for a long time, he'd been tortured,
he wasn't all there. But also he was a very
proud member of al Qaida. A lot of these guys
are just very proud of their work. Anyway, the Americans
now have a ticking clock because the Italians are like,
we don't want him, we can't hold him for much
longer than a month or two. Please take him in
the Americans, because it's during the Obama years. They can't
just fly him off to Gitmo and just told him indefinitely.
(42:29):
I'm not saying that's a good thing, but I'm just saying,
like that's the reality. Obama wants to prosecute all these
guys in criminal courts. The Americans now have a ticking
clock to prove a case against this Al Qaida operative,
a guy who says he's killed Americans, has tried to
blow up a US embassy and wants to kill as
many Americans as possible.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
So it is this race against terror. They can't.
Speaker 4 (42:49):
They have to prove a case against him through sleothing,
finding evidence finding fingerprints, finding witness testimony, et cetera, figuring
out who he killed, et cetera, before the Italians free
him or put him in a refugee camp where he
can just escape. And that's it's just a true story
that I happened upon. So anyway, we've talked enough about
(43:09):
the book, and I appreciate it, and I'm going to
send you a copy, but I will tell you that
it's getting good reviews and I think people will.
Speaker 3 (43:14):
Like it excellent. Well, I can't wait, and I really
appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (43:19):
Jake, Thank you so much for coming on to Snaffoo's fun.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
Can I do this every week?
Speaker 3 (43:26):
Yeah? Hell, yes, let's do it. You could be my
co host.
Speaker 4 (43:29):
This was so interesting because I knew vaguely of the Lusitania,
but now I know much. Now I'm like basically a
world authority.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
Now you can just go and regale your status turner. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:40):
Free Snapo is a production of iHeart Podcasts and Snaffo Media,
a partnership between Film Nation Entertainment and Pacific Electric Picture Company.
Speaker 3 (43:51):
Our post production studio is Gilded Audio. Our executive producers
are me Ed Helms, Mike Falbo, Glenn Basner, Andy Kim Whitney, Donaldson,
and Dylan Fagan. This episode was produced by Alyssa Martino
and Tory Smith. Our video editor is Jared Smith. Technical
direction and engineering from Nick Dooley. Our creative executive is
(44:12):
Brett Harris. Logo and branding by Matt Gosson and The
Collected Works. Legal Review from Dan Welsh, Megan Halson and
Caroline Johnson. Special thanks to Isaac Dunham, Adam Horn, Lane Klein,
and everyone at iHeart Podcasts, but especially Will Pearson, Kerrie
Lieberman and Nicki Etoor. While I have you, don't forget
(44:33):
to pick up a copy of my book, Snaffoo, The
Definitive Guide.
Speaker 1 (44:36):
To History's Greatest screw Ups. It's available now from any
book retailer. Just go to Snaffoo dashbook dot com. Thanks
for listening, and see you next week.
Are you familiar with the I believe it's the upside
down pineapple?
Speaker 2 (00:05):
No, what's if.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
You put this like sticker or symbol on your door,
it means like you're a swinger, okay, or you're open
to swinging with other with other upside down pineapples.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
As opposed to a regular pineapple. Well, then you're just
a door.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
You're just like no one wants, no one wants to
swing with you. Hello. I'm Ed Helm's host of snaff Who,
(00:41):
my podcast about history's greatest screw ups, or, more specifically,
the show where I ask brilliant guests to help me
unpack some of the least brilliant moments in history and
in the process, perhaps understand ourselves a little bit better.
This week, I am talking with one of the legendary
(01:01):
TV journalists of our time. He's an anchor and Chief
Washington correspondent at CNN, host of The Lead with Jake
Tapper and State of the Union. He's also someone with
a shockingly dare I say, offensively expansive grasp of politics, history,
pop culture, world affairs, and so much more. He is
(01:22):
a delightful conversationalist and Emmy winner, A prolific author and
he has a brand new book out, Race Against Terror,
Chasing an Al Qaeda killer at the Dawn of the
Forever War. It's out now.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
He is smart, thoughtful, funny, and a lot of people say,
we look like brothers. Please welcome Jake Tapper.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Thank you so much. It's great to be here.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
We do, we do.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
There's a lot of forehead going on right now. Yeah,
on this podcast eight head, we went.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Yeah, we had a ten head. One.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
One might even say, well, I'm super grateful that you're
here and allowing us to be part of your free time.
Your passion for work is admirable, and it's just the
news cycle is so intense every day. I'm curious, is
that exhilarating for you as a journalist or is it
more just like a furious treadmill from hell, like a
(02:15):
Sisaphian torture, where you can't get into a story and
give it the depth it deserves.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
That's a great question. I do remember.
Speaker 4 (02:26):
So I've been a journalist for a long time, and
I do remember periods where there didn't seem to be
a lot to cover. There didn't you know, like you know,
times when I was an anchor. So since twenty thirteen
when I first got my own show, where like how
are we going to fill the hour today?
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Was actually a question and that wasn't fun.
Speaker 4 (02:47):
Although looking back on it, it's kind of a stupid
question because there's so much that you could report on,
but like in terms of like compelling news, interesting news,
it didn't seem as easy as it is now. Now,
does that mean I'm excited about the threats being made
to TV news stations by Donald Trump because I get
(03:09):
to cover it. No, I'm not. I'd I would prefer
that not be happening. But it is true that there
is no shortage of stuff to cover to the point
that I you know, we really have to prioritize. Sure,
you know, there are times when there are like serious
erosions of democracy or what are traditions in the United
(03:32):
States that we're used to, such as the president in
his administration using the power of the government to silence
and squelch speech and speakers they don't like, mister Kimmel
being the most recent example, and that you know that
also is a time and a cause for alarm.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
Well, we should say that that's Kimmel is the most
recent example as of the date of recording. This. It
will be out later and we'll see you and.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
I will be in Guantanamo by the time this post probably.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Oh god, that is grim.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Then they came for the podcasters exactly.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
It's a good jumping off point because this story I
want to tell you today is rooted in another book
that a friend sent to me. Ryan Holliday, who you
may know is the host of the Daily Stoic podcast.
He gave me Eric Larson's incredible book Dead Wake. Do
(04:29):
you know this book?
Speaker 2 (04:30):
No, I know Eric Larson, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
It's the story of the sinking of the Lusitania.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Oh wow.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
It's written almost as a thriller, and it's just a
phenomenal piece of history writing. Ryan sent me this book
because he knows I'm a snaffoo nerd, and it's a
hell of a read, and it just struck me as
the perfect Jake Tapper story because it's not just about
a shipwreck. It's about politics, international conflict, and even a
(04:57):
fight over the narrative itself at the end of the day.
And that's just a battleground that you navigate every day
as a journalist.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
So let's just.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Dive right in the sinking of the Lusitania. Now our
backdrop here, of course, is the Great wool aka World
War One. I don't want to get too bogged down
in the war itself, but basically, in nineteen fourteen, a
guy named Archduke Franz Ferdinand gets shot, and then Europe
(05:31):
basically just descends into a full on Looney Tunes bar fight.
Austria swings at Serbia. Russia's like, oh hell no. Germany
hops up and smashes a chair over Russia and then
takes a swing at France, elbowing Belgium along the way.
This gets britten up off its stool, like, oh, I
don't meshed with Belgium, and the Ottomans leap in. Japan
comes flying in through a window. It's just absolute chaos.
(05:54):
And then of course the Assembite samfires his pistol and
the dust settles, and you've got two sides, the Central
Powers Germany, Austria, Hungary and the Ottoman Empire versus the
Allies Britain, France, Russia, Belgium, Serbia, Japan, Portugal and a
handful of others.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
How did I do? Is that a good summary?
Speaker 2 (06:14):
That's great? I love that?
Speaker 3 (06:16):
Oh my god, all right, good, that's a little America.
Speaker 4 (06:18):
Is America Yusemite Sam? Or was Yosemite Sam just a
thrown in refraen?
Speaker 3 (06:22):
You know what he could he kind of could be.
But we're not there yet.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
Because doesn't Yeah, because doesn't the US kind of come
in a little bit and save the day a little bit,
teeny bit.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
In this metaphor, Yosemite Sam's just that guy that walks
into the saloon and kind of like and like shuts
everyone up for a second.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
I know, Blackjack Pershing is a huge character in the
in the war.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
That's what That's my main knowledge point.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
Amen. The sort of initiation of World War One is
so fascinating because it just shows how a single spark
can just kind of ignite this simmering powder keg of tensions,
and I don't know, it feels like they're there are
It feels like this is just a recurring thing throughout
(07:07):
history and even perhaps all around us as we speak.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
Yeah, And like the Arab Spring, you know, if that
one merchant hadn't set himself on fire and protest in Tunis,
would the Arab Spring have even happened? Right, It's the
corollaria of the Great Man theory of just like one
man getting killed or setting himself on fire or whatever
that changes history.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
That is the spark.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
I like the domino metaphor because these things just they
escalate so quickly and before you know it, there's so
many dominoes on the ground.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
So the western front of the of the war, which
was the that's the bloody battle line across northern Europe
where Germany is trying to push into France. It gets
very quickly bogged down in this nightmare of trench warfare,
a brutal stalemate. But out on the ocean things are
a lot more dynam Britain threw up a massive naval
(08:02):
blockade to choke off German supplies. So Germany rolled out
its new toy, the U boat, which by the way
is short for unter sea boot, a word that sounds
way scarier in German, but it literally just means under
sea boat, so thanks.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Guys for that.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Everything sounds scarier in German.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
This is the first U boat, I believe, the very
first U boat. Yes, and these things were incredible feats
of technology for their day, about two hundred and ten
feet long, crewed by thirty five men, all crammed in there.
They were able to say, submerged for a few hours
at a time. They carried torpedoes as well as a
deck gun, and as you might imagine, life on board
(08:43):
was just a total nightmare. While diving, the subs became
unbearably hot, with diesel fumes, food rapidly spoiling. There was
so little fresh water that sailors never bathed ever, But
the payoff was huge. Throughout the war, the U boat
sank thousands of tons of Allied shipping, casting a shadow
(09:04):
of fear that was far larger than the actual numbers themselves.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Could you do you think you could handle life on
a U boat? Oh?
Speaker 4 (09:12):
God, no, I can't even handle going down in like
one of those water parks to look at like the
fish and the coral, Like I mean, I can scuba
di scuba dive, I like it, But that's free and open.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
You had the.
Speaker 4 (09:22):
Claustrophobic nature of a submarine. Sounds just I haven't even
seen das boot because of like, I don't, this seems
like it would be really awful.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Oh, and the they were so dangerous. I mean, the
batteries were filled with sulphuric acid, and if any seawater touched.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Them it instantly turned into chlorine gas. Any I mean
it was just a didn't this just.
Speaker 4 (09:46):
Happened like ten years ago, like a Russian sub they
got stuck somewhere and they all died.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Do you remember this?
Speaker 1 (09:52):
This has happened a couple of times in Russian, This
happens all the time.
Speaker 4 (09:55):
Yeah, it's all Russian, everyone or Soviet Russian, and they're
every one of these disasters, but they're it's been a bunch.
In two thousand there was one an explosion in the
torpedo compartment caused a catastrophic event. All one hundred and
eighteen people were killed. But the one I was thinking
about was in two thousand and eight, the Nerpa accident.
A crew member activated the fire suppressing system, releasing halon gas.
(10:17):
Twenty people died, forty other one injured.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
I mean, it's just that kind of NonStop chemical risk.
Speaker 4 (10:23):
Yeah, you were talking about the second ago with like
this could turn into chlorine gas or whatever, like it's
all so insane.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
And just but just the claustrophobia alone probably would probably
kill me, Like I would have a heart attack.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Before naming your head against the wall exactly.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
So America at this point was basically that guy at
the bar trying not to get dragged into the fight.
President Woodrow Wilson's official stance was strict neutrality, but to
be clear, we were still feeding the Allied war effort
with tons of financial credit, grain, oil, and weapons, et cetera.
Maybe not that neutral. But this is where today's story
(11:03):
officially kicks in because Americans weren't just trading with Britain,
they were also hopping aboard British ships in the booming
transatlantic travel business. Enter the star of today's snafu the
RMS Lusitania.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
It's an American ship or a British ship.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
It is a British ship.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
It is launched in nineteen oh six by the Cunard Line,
a huge passenger shipping enterprise. Here she is, yeah, and
all of her glory.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Holy smokes, that's a big ship.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
It's a big boat. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
No, no water slides, I'll note.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
Yeah, let's I'll give you a little rundown of some specs.
Seven hundred eighty seven feet long, eighty seven feet wide,
four steam turbines. You can see there are smokestacks there.
Carried over twelve hundred passengers and over six hundred crew,
had elevators inside, which was like a breathtaking marvel. The
first class suites had marble amenities, a wireless telegraph, and
(12:05):
it was fast. It was legit fast. It could go
twenty six knots or about thirty miles per hour, which
for a ship that big is just no joke.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
This is before the Titanic sank. Right.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Titanic was nineteen twelve, but the Lusitania was launched a
lot earlier. It had a success, It had many successful
transatlantic crossings.
Speaker 4 (12:27):
The Lusitania is introduced and the Titanic has not yet
been sunk, and everyone's like, nobody's thinking that it's going
to sink. Everyone's thinking it's unsinkable because it's this big,
beautiful ship.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
Exactly.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
It's giant, it's beautiful, it's the latest technology, and it's
also incredibly fast. It goes about thirty miles an hour,
which is fast enough to win the Blue Ribond Prize.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
Was the quickest ship across the Atlantic.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
This is very significant the speed because it also it
also gave a sort of false sense of confidence to
q Nard as a company and the crew, the captain
and crew of the ship that they weren't subject to
threat from other from any sort of military enterprise because
they could.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
Basically outscape, right, they could outrun just about anybody. Are
you a cruise guy in general? You ever? Do you
ever go on cruises?
Speaker 4 (13:18):
I would, but my wife has made it very clear,
I think pretty early on in the relationship that that
was never going to happen. You're a David Foster Wallace fan.
He wrote a great essay for I forget if it
was The Atlantic or Harper's. I think probably harper Is
called a supposedly fun thing that I'll never do again.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
Oh of course. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
And then Gary Steinart did another sort of like revamp
of that, a new one in the last few years.
Speaker 4 (13:47):
I think a cruise sounds great if you are in
the mindset of all you can eat and drink, like
twenty year old me would love all you can eat
and drink.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Yeah, fifty six year old me, no thanks.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
I'm also a little freaked out by like a giant
and seafood buffet. I don't know what it's just I
can't do. I used to I used to love that.
See oh, crabs, shrimp like load me up, lobster.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
Unless you have control of the passenger list. Do you
want to be locked on a ship with people?
Speaker 2 (14:15):
Yeah? People?
Speaker 4 (14:16):
You're talking about people other people, right, Yes, younger people have.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
Met some people. I've met some great ones, but.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
You just talking about them. I'm not talking about the
great ones. That's not who's on the ship with you?
Speaker 3 (14:30):
Are you?
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Are you familiar with the I believe it's the upside
down pineapple?
Speaker 3 (14:34):
No, there's it's like a it's a.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
I read this somewhere that I think it's an upside
down pineapple. If you if you put this like sticker
or symbol on your door, it means like you're a swinger,
or you're open to swinging with other with other upside
down pineapples on the.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Coast to a regular pineapple. Go on, Jake, why you
can get married? I don't even understand it.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
All right, never mind, I'm getting you a ticket for
a swinging cruise.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
A swinging cruise. It's called the upside down pineapple.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
Is there anything more of an aphrodisiac than than a
seafood buffet?
Speaker 2 (15:09):
A seafood buffet on a swinging cruise?
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Oh god, oh boy?
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Diving back in here, okay, Lusitania got it, he got
way off track. On May first, nineteen fifteen, the Great
War is in full swing. The Lusitania left New York's
Peer fifty four bound for Liverpool.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
And this is just a cru this is just a
cruise shift.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
This is not a military The short answer is, yeah, sure,
of course that's what it is.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
Nice at the helm was Captain William Thomas Turner, a
veteran mariner known for his steady hand. But the ship's
role was a bit more complicated than it looked. The
British Admiralty had helped bankroll the building of the Lusitania
with the understanding that she could be requisitioned in wartime.
So while on paper she was just a glamorous passenger liner,
(16:03):
in practice she and a number of ships like her
were sometimes carrying munitions alongside.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
They're paying customers.
Speaker 4 (16:11):
Can I just make an observation on that? Yeah, that's
some that's some dirty shit, Like that's not cool.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
Well, especially because a lot of the passengers are completely
none the wiser.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
All of them, except for the except for the except
for the semen.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
Yeah, well, are we back to the swinging.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Kat.
Speaker 4 (16:33):
The crew, let's call them the crew. A pause, A
pause between the cales.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
Next time, the Germans caught onto this, and by early
nineteen fifteen they declared the waters around Britain a war zone,
warning that even passenger ships might be targeted. Uh and
on the morning of the Lusitania's departure, the German embassy
even published that warning in very stark terms in New
(16:58):
York City newspapers.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
So this was not a secret.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Now, if you were Captain William Turner, would you have
said sail under such conditions?
Speaker 3 (17:08):
He was British, he was a brit.
Speaker 4 (17:11):
He was probably, I mean, just based on my limited
knowledge of the UK and the military in the UK,
he probably was a navy veteran, and so I would
assume that he was loyal to the crown. And you know,
once a sail are always a sail. Like I, personally,
I don't know what I would have done. I like
to think that I would have been noble and loyal
and full of courage. But I'm just saying, like putting
(17:33):
myself in his shoes. He's a navy veteran, he hates
the bad guys in World War One. I don't know
who is king or Queen at this point, but let's
just assume that they are calling him on the telegraph
and saying we need you to do that, we need
you to do this.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
I don't First of all, that was a terrible British accent.
But I'm not a committee, so that's interesting you say
all that. I believe he came up through the merchant
marines and was and worked his way up as a
Cunard company man. Hey had tremendous experience, but I also
(18:09):
don't know for sure.
Speaker 4 (18:10):
By the way, just just doing a quick search of
his fellow mister, captain Turner married his cousin, like right
off the bat. That's one of the first things I
learned about him.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
Oh but Jake, it's a different time, is it? Isn't
that great? Isn't it insane when people say that, like
it was a different time.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
He married his sister, Well, it's a different time.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
It's like people explain away the most horrific shit with
it was a different time.
Speaker 4 (18:36):
Let me just say that he's lucky that we don't
know his name as being the captain of a ship
that went down like.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
He very easily could have.
Speaker 4 (18:42):
He's basically gone down anonymously in history, but we could know,
like people could call each other, Oh you're such a turner.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
Well, I don't know that. I don't know how much you're.
Speaker 4 (18:52):
Suggesting he knew that there were British munitions that were
being smuggled in the show.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
What he definitely knew, and what a lot of passengers
even knew, was that Germany had said, be careful because
that's a war zone, and we're taking out passenger ships
because we think some of them are carrying munitions.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
Despite all this, the Lusitania just steamed forth her passengers,
trusting that speed and prestige and maybe a dash of
hubris would would carry them safely across.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
Yeah, and we can go thirty miles an hour.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
Yeah, exactly. They weren't so lucky. Things did not go
as planned on the U boat.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
That you introduced in the at the beginning of the segment.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
This is where he comes back. Yeah, exactly on the afternoon.
I like that Chekhov's U boat. Yeah, you can't introduce
a U boat in a story, I just assumed and
not have a torpedo get get tired out of it.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
On the afternoon of May seventh, nineteen fifty six days
out from New York, the Lusitania was gliding past the
gorgeous southern coast of Ireland under clear skies when a
German U boat struck a torpedo slammed into her starboard side,
ripping open the hall. Moments later, a second explosion tore
(20:18):
through the ship. Now this second explosion is a sort
of is a very hotly debated subject. Some folks believe
it was the boiler getting sort of like jarred and
having an explosion. A lot of people think I think
the most common or the most sort of agreed upon
(20:39):
version is that the first torpedo impact actually kicked up
a ton of coal dust in the engine rooms. And
that's incredibly validile so like literally any spark in that
would cause an explosion that had happened to other ships.
But there were other sort of theories that perhaps the
torpedo had struck some of the munition store in the
(21:00):
belly of the ship and that's what caused an additional explosion.
That's uh, but we don't we don't really know for sure.
But an interesting tidbit, a quick flash forward into nineteen
ninety three, divers exploring the wreck of the Lusitania verified
the presence of munitions in her hold. Until then, it
(21:24):
was still contested and hotly contested, and records were conflicting.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
And and and again. It's just unclear who knew what
and how and when people knew what.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
But fascinating, Yeah, it was the coast. How far away
from Ireland?
Speaker 4 (21:41):
Is?
Speaker 3 (21:42):
Was the ship very close within sight? I think it
was about ten miles off the coast? Oh wow?
Speaker 1 (21:48):
But that you know, but they could see Ireland from there.
But you are you sort of went here automatically. But
this all forces a brutal question, right, right, when villions
and weapons share the same ship, where do you draw
the line between a fair target and an atrocity. I mean,
there's like two thousand people on this boat, I.
Speaker 4 (22:09):
Think, I mean, I think it's a huge question because,
first of all, this story shows that the idea of
using human shields well, I mean, I guess that wasn't
human shields in the sense of what we see in
the Middle East or whatever, because it wasn't as though
they were advertising it. They were smuggling it. But there
(22:29):
is without question or responsibility that any government has when
they use a civilian vehicle or whatever to hide something
military related, because the conceit of civilized warfare is we
don't target civilians, and once you as a country violate
(22:52):
that separation.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
It is on you, not your enemy, for doing that.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
I think I want to give a little more context
for sort of what was happening regarding the kind of
rules of war at that moment. So there was a
whole framework of sort of maritime rules and traditions, and
U boats had been expected to follow the Prize laws,
(23:18):
which are these sort of like maritime traditions, and this
in the case of this war, these laws required a
sub to surface and stop a merchant ship, check it
for contraband or weaponry or whatever, and if found, then
give passengers time to leave the boat before sinking it.
(23:41):
There was a German U boat U seventeen that sank
a British ship Glitra in October nineteen fourteen, and it
followed this playbook exactly. But surfacing left these submarines very vulnerable,
and the British were starting to exploit this, attacking this
as they were surfacing to follow the rules.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
And so by nineteen fifteen, all of these rules were
in tatters.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
And sometimes a ship was stopped politely, other times a
torpedo just came without warning.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
It's so fast these is that wild.
Speaker 4 (24:15):
The rules are so weird, And just the one that
I'm reminded of is the fact that the chemical warfare
in World War One was so horrific that they didn't
engage in chemical warfare in World War two. Right, even
the Nazis they gassed Jews and Poles and whatever in
the concentration camps, but they would not use chemical warfare
(24:37):
against the Brits and the Americans, et cetera. And it's
just these rules are so weird to me, because we
can torture you over here, but not over here, you know.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
It's so strange. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
And then you go back to like the Revolutionary War,
and the rules were just so rigid, like they would
soldiers would line up behind a drummer, yeah, and then
just shoot each other.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
In an open field. It is wild if you think
about it, like the point of a war is just
to win. But there is also this, and I guess
this says something good about humanity that there's this, There
is this kind of overarching morality that we want to
preserve human dignity.
Speaker 4 (25:23):
Somehow, it's all such a slippery slope of hypocrisy.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Yeah, And when one side starts to kind of break
the rules, the whole structure whatever, this sort of rule
scaffolding just implodes.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
It all collapses.
Speaker 4 (25:40):
But you can always justify it because I'm sure the
Brits were like, well, we're breaking the rule, but the
Germans broke this rule to even start the war.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
So back to our sinking of the Lusitania. It's struck
by the torpedo, A dire panic ensues. Most of the
lifeboats become impossible to launch because the shit was started
listing so severely to one side almost immediately.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
It took just eighteen minutes for the entire ship to sink. Now,
for reference, it took the Titanic about two hours to sink.
Speaker 4 (26:15):
Was there structural weakness or was it just this is
what happens when it torpedo hits the ship.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Well, it was this second explosion in the belly of
the ship that really like that, Like a single torpedo
hitting the Lusitania, A lot of historians believe should not
have taken it down. It shouldn't have necessarily like sunk it.
Speaker 4 (26:37):
So it was likely the munitions that were hit in
the one or the coal dust explosion or whatever caused
that second explosion.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
But the divers didn't solve that problem. They didn't solve that.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
No, that is not clear. That that is not it's
that's still in the land of theory.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
The ship sank so fast and only a few lifeboats
were able to be long launched. The human toll was staggering.
Of the almost two thousand men, women and children aboard,
about twelve hundred perished.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
The exact numbers are still disputed, but the total also
included one hundred and twenty three Americans. Of course, this
headlines just were screamed across the world. Here's the New
York Times.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Wow, look at that.
Speaker 4 (27:28):
Lusitania is sunk by submarine, probably two hundred and sixty dead,
twice torpedoed off Irish coast, sinks in fifteen minutes. Captain
Turner saved, Frohman and Vanderbilt missing. Washington believes that a
grave crisis is at hand. That's the headline. They weren't
very piff They weren't very pithy back then. No, if
CNN was around that, I mean that Chiron would be
(27:50):
the whole screen. That's a lot of information. Captain Turner saved.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
He did not go down with the ship, did not
go down with the ship. Outrage erupted on both sides
of the Atlantic. This wasn't just another wartime tragedy. It
was a turning point. Let's move into the aftermath. Eric
Larson's book Dead Wake, which I cannot recommend more strongly
(28:19):
suggests that British intelligence may have actually known a U
boat was stalking her, or at least prowling around where
the Lusitania was. They had captured German codebooks and cracked
naval ciphers, and they were reading the enemy messages, and
(28:39):
according to Larson, they knew a sub was patrolling the
very waters Lusitania was heading into, and yet they gave
no warnings.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
That.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
This is really interesting. There are a couple of factors
at play that I'm curious to get your take on.
Winston Churchill, who was at the time the Lord of
the admiralte felt that the Lusitania was a very badass
ship and really wasn't in that much danger because of
its speed and maneuverability, et cetera. But also there is
(29:15):
the cold logic of protecting secret intelligence, right because the
minute you act on secret intelligence, you might be revealing
that you have a way of acquiring secret intelligence which
endangers your code breaking, et cetera. It was felt that
(29:36):
to act on that would reveal too much and that
they're better off waiting for a bigger message of like
maybe a much more substantial naval maneuver that they could crack.
Speaker 4 (29:48):
And this is the cold logic of an intelligence professional.
The Lusitania sinking doesn't actually hurt British the British war
effort beyond the loss of those munitions, and in fact
could rally the Americans to join the effort. I mean,
that's that's how these that's how these bastards think.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
So where does America faul on all this? Well, President
Wilson urged caution, he's still very reluctant to drag the
US into the war. Of course, Former President Theodore Roosevelt
is like, give him hell. He wants to just dive
right in dolphin.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
Yeah, he's like, he's super He's writing a Great White
Shark on the way. Just furious.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
Germany defended itself, insisting the Lusitania was carrying weapons, which,
while technically true, was unprovable at the time, so this
was not received well. Tensions ratcheted even further when Germany
sank another British passenger ship, the ss Arabic, resulting in
just a tidal wave of anti German sentiment across the
(30:53):
US and and of course already in Britain. Germany promised
more restraint, but in eighteen seventeen, British intelligence intercepted the
infamous Zimmerman Telegram, which revealed that Germany not only planned
to resume unrestricted submarine warfare, but that it was also
dangling an alliance with Mexico if the US had the
(31:17):
audacity to join the fight. So what was in it
for Mexico, you might ask. Well, Germany said it would
financially assist Mexico in reclaiming its old territory from the US,
which included Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. This was a
breaking point. Wilson released this telegram and the American public
was outraged and they were now firmly in favor of
(31:38):
entering the war. Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war,
and on April sixth, nineteen seventeen, the US joined the
Allies against the Central Powers.
Speaker 4 (31:49):
Incredible, so the history shows that it had it not
been for the sinking of the Lusitania in the Arabic
the US might and we can only say might not
have joined the war.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
Is that possible? So it wasn't a Pearl Harbor moment.
It wasn't It wasn't a thing that it was like
here we go, We're definitely in. But it was it
was like a domino, right, and it was something that
started this cascading effect. So then when the Zimmerman Telegram
was intercepted, there was enough tension that it was like, oh,
(32:23):
hell yeah, this is all like we're getting we're diving in.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
So if it were not for the Americans, it's not
clear that the Germans wouldn't have won World were one
for sure.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
Yeah, I'm curious, like just some bigger picture takeaways. I mean,
what what this is like my favorite part where we
just kind of deconstructed a little bit. And what strikes
me most about the Lusitania is is what a turning
point it was and the domino effect it precipitated. I mean,
it was one torpedo, one ship on one afternoon, and
(32:53):
suddenly public outrage, policy shifts, and eventually America's entry into
the war. And the thing about dominoes is you don't
always know which ones are going to keep going and
keep falling, or which ones are just going to kind
of tip over and stop right. So looking back, it's
easy to see the chain reaction, but in the moment
(33:15):
it had to just be so unclear and confusing. Do
you think we're any better now at spotting which events
are just noise and which events are true turning points?
Speaker 3 (33:27):
We're not.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
We're not.
Speaker 4 (33:29):
And one of my favorite monologues in a film is
in Charlie Wilson's War, when the late Great Philip Seymour Hoffman,
playing a I think a CIA officer, is trying to
give the Texas congressman a lesson on even though dumu
Jahadeen have successfully beat back the Soviets in Afghanistan, who
(33:53):
knows what the dominoes will fall? And it's this whole
thing about the zen master and the child. The short
version for your listeners is a boy gets a horse,
and everybody in the village is like, oh, that's so wonderful,
and the zen master says, we'll see. And then the
boy falls off the horse or the horse falls on
him and he breaks his leg and it injures him forever,
and everybody in the village says well, that's so horrible,
(34:15):
and the zen Master says, we'll see, and then all
the young men in the in the village are called
to war, but he can't go because it's broken list
of injury, and everyone's like, isn't that great, And the
ze Master's like, we'll see, well, and that's and that
is everything, Like you could while you were telling talking
about trench warfare, I immediately I always immediately think of
the World War two World War One movies. I've seen
(34:36):
In the remake of All Quiet on the Western Front,
which was done by a German director, writer, et cetera,
I believe they add a scene where the Germans are surrendering, uh,
and the I think the Brits and the French are
being like, really tough.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
And this was.
Speaker 4 (34:57):
A German way of looking World War One, which is
because of the austerity measures and what you did to
Germany during the Armistice of World War One, world War
two happened.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
And that is a very German view of well, not
just German.
Speaker 4 (35:14):
I think there are historians who think that the armistice
and the peace of World War One in many ways
set the.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
Conditions that created World War Two.
Speaker 3 (35:24):
So I don't know.
Speaker 4 (35:25):
I mean I was about to say, well, that guy
who smuggled, who ordered the smuggling of munitions into the
Lusitania probably had some really bad months. And then at
the end of it, you know, the Americans come in
because of that domino that fell and saved the way.
Speaker 3 (35:39):
It's like a we'll see moment, Yeah, right.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
Exactly, we'll see.
Speaker 4 (35:42):
But then there's also the we'll see of the of
the victory of World War One is then it could
then causes World War two becauses Hitler's rise to power.
You know, would it have been better in history if
if if Germany had had won World War One? I
mean maybe then Hitler wouldn't have come to power all
all the horror from there.
Speaker 2 (36:02):
So I don't know.
Speaker 3 (36:03):
So that's a I love that analysis, Jake.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
It's a very I think, sort of prudent and responsible
way to look at the way dominoes fall through an
historical lens.
Speaker 4 (36:18):
Well, and that's how it happens, as we talked about
with the assassination of arts Duke Ferdinand. But I'm guessing
that whoever made the decision to hide diminutions in the
Lusitania definitely like probably at the end of the day,
like all sorts of war medals.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
Yeah, you know that is the you're speaking to the
one constant in all of these snaffoos, which is that
no one is ever held accountable, correct, and more likely
they are rewarded in some way for the snaffoos.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
So, but also, like this guy would have I'm assuming
it's a guy.
Speaker 4 (36:54):
Please don't condemn me for my sexism when I suggest
that there were no female admirals or whatever at the time.
But I will say, like, whoever that guy was. Also,
the decision was bad, so it could only have been
made by a man that that person could say like, look,
because of that, we won the war.
Speaker 3 (37:11):
M hm. And also there were a lot of very
successful a passengership munition shipments, you know, apart from the Lusitania,
So they were they were getting lots of sort of
contraband across the ocean.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
Don't you think that still happens today?
Speaker 4 (37:29):
Don't you think that our government, not just our government,
but all governments are hiding stuff in Yeah, I mean
I would oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
Yeah, I mean the CIA was fully like fully engaged
in in cocaine trafficking right in the eighties, Like it was.
It started out as kind of like, oh, we're trying
to kind of get inside undercover, and then it was
just like, oh, but also, we don't mind if you
profit a little bit on the side, and it's yeah,
(37:59):
there's it's wild.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
So the snaff who in this is the decision to
put the munitions in the in the ship.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
You're drilling down on the on the sort of technical
specificity of our.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
I'm not I'm not disagreeing with it.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
I'm just saying that, No, I would say that the
snaff who is the disaster? The snaff who is the
sinking of the ship, the epic loss of life?
Speaker 4 (38:22):
And uh see that's a human approach. I'm going at
it like a journalist to blame who's responsible?
Speaker 1 (38:30):
But no, But that is that is such a sort
of exciting part of discovery when you dig into this story,
is is that the who's to blame just becomes this
very murky web.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
Did anybody else have submarines?
Speaker 1 (38:44):
Yes, yeah, submarines that the Brits had submarines, but the
the Germans had. We're really pushing the technology forward in
ways that that others just gotten quite caught up to.
Speaker 4 (38:57):
Whoever made that decision, that's who I give the snaffoo
to not that you give awards at the end of
these but still that's but you should perhaps think about
that for future ref But I mean that that's the decision,
right or or the bread who decided we're going to
start shooting U boats while they're coming up and following
instructions and surprise laws.
Speaker 3 (39:19):
That's where it gets that, That's where it gets real,
real dodgy. Yeah, the rules are for you, guys, they're
not for us.
Speaker 4 (39:27):
I feel like I've now very dangerously entered terrain where
and blaming the British for their own ship getting shot
by the Germans, but which I do not mean to do.
And it's obviously the Germans fault and I proved that
with my accents earlier in the episode.
Speaker 3 (39:42):
Jake, it's the fog of war, all right, Let's be clear.
This is that gives you a very a whole lot
of leeway here.
Speaker 4 (39:49):
I just do think that, like when you are hiding
military material and the material l in a civilian ship,
you are creating an untenable situation for the civilian. I
feel comfortable making that assertion. I don't disagree even if
the Germans are the bad guys.
Speaker 3 (40:08):
Tell me just a little bit about this book you have.
Oh great, thank you. It's right behind you. I can
see it. It's a beautiful cover Race against Terror.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
So there it is.
Speaker 4 (40:17):
So it's really just an interesting story. Did I send
you one yet? I'll send you one. If I haven't,
text me your address and I'll send you one, Okay.
So it's just this really interesting story that I heard
from a guy about it's the Arab Spring.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
To that does not sound legit, by the way, it's
totally true. I mean, from this guy named Louie. I
admit it a b No, Well, you need to.
Speaker 2 (40:40):
Ask me who the guy is and I'll tell you
a good story about that. But but but so it's
the Arab Spring.
Speaker 4 (40:45):
Refugees from Tunisia and Libya are fleeing Africa. They're ending
at the southern Italian Islands. Berlusconi Commandeer is a cruise
ship and they start, you know, bringing refugees to the
mainland of Italy and to Europe. And on that cruise ship,
a short African guy from these air approaches a guard
and says he wants water. The guard notices he has
(41:08):
a bullet hole in his arm or a bullet scar.
He asks him where he got it, and the guy says, well,
I got it fighting Americans in Afghanistan.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
I'm with al Qaida.
Speaker 4 (41:16):
And the Italian guard they take him to a room,
they hear more about his story. They take him into
custody and they call the Americans and they say, this
guy says, his name is spin Ghoul and he's killed Americans.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Have you heard of him?
Speaker 4 (41:29):
And the Americans have heard of him, even if you
and I haven't. And the Italians are like, great, take them,
we don't want him, we.
Speaker 1 (41:38):
Can't hold Why did he Why did he identify himself
to the Italians?
Speaker 3 (41:42):
Did he just think out of it?
Speaker 4 (41:45):
He didn't belong with the riff raff, the refugees. He
had just gotten out of a Libyan prison, remember when
the Libby was just completely falling apart, and Kadafi and
his thug emptied the prisons and they sent like Islamic
extremists to Europe to recavoc that's what. So he had
(42:08):
been in a prison for a long time, he'd been tortured,
he wasn't all there. But also he was a very
proud member of al Qaida. A lot of these guys
are just very proud of their work. Anyway, the Americans
now have a ticking clock because the Italians are like,
we don't want him, we can't hold him for much
longer than a month or two. Please take him in
the Americans, because it's during the Obama years. They can't
just fly him off to Gitmo and just told him indefinitely.
(42:29):
I'm not saying that's a good thing, but I'm just saying,
like that's the reality. Obama wants to prosecute all these
guys in criminal courts. The Americans now have a ticking
clock to prove a case against this Al Qaida operative,
a guy who says he's killed Americans, has tried to
blow up a US embassy and wants to kill as
many Americans as possible.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
So it is this race against terror. They can't.
Speaker 4 (42:49):
They have to prove a case against him through sleothing,
finding evidence finding fingerprints, finding witness testimony, et cetera, figuring
out who he killed, et cetera, before the Italians free
him or put him in a refugee camp where he
can just escape. And that's it's just a true story
that I happened upon. So anyway, we've talked enough about
(43:09):
the book, and I appreciate it, and I'm going to
send you a copy, but I will tell you that
it's getting good reviews and I think people will.
Speaker 3 (43:14):
Like it excellent. Well, I can't wait, and I really
appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (43:19):
Jake, Thank you so much for coming on to Snaffoo's fun.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
Can I do this every week?
Speaker 3 (43:26):
Yeah? Hell, yes, let's do it. You could be my
co host.
Speaker 4 (43:29):
This was so interesting because I knew vaguely of the Lusitania,
but now I know much. Now I'm like basically a
world authority.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
Now you can just go and regale your status turner. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:40):
Free Snapo is a production of iHeart Podcasts and Snaffo Media,
a partnership between Film Nation Entertainment and Pacific Electric Picture Company.
Speaker 3 (43:51):
Our post production studio is Gilded Audio. Our executive producers
are me Ed Helms, Mike Falbo, Glenn Basner, Andy Kim Whitney, Donaldson,
and Dylan Fagan. This episode was produced by Alyssa Martino
and Tory Smith. Our video editor is Jared Smith. Technical
direction and engineering from Nick Dooley. Our creative executive is
(44:12):
Brett Harris. Logo and branding by Matt Gosson and The
Collected Works. Legal Review from Dan Welsh, Megan Halson and
Caroline Johnson. Special thanks to Isaac Dunham, Adam Horn, Lane Klein,
and everyone at iHeart Podcasts, but especially Will Pearson, Kerrie
Lieberman and Nicki Etoor. While I have you, don't forget
(44:33):
to pick up a copy of my book, Snaffoo, The
Definitive Guide.
Speaker 1 (44:36):
To History's Greatest screw Ups. It's available now from any
book retailer. Just go to Snaffoo dashbook dot com. Thanks
for listening, and see you next week.
Host
Ed Helms
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