April 9, 2025 • 37 mins
Jesse wraps up the final installment of the Italian front of World War I and the White War. Avalanches played a major part in the death toll, and really there are three ways to go via avalanche. Mounting a counter attack in the mountains. Why gas was such a terrible way to go. The sound of silence.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is the Jesse Kelly Show.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
It is the Jesse Kelly Show. Another hour of The
Jesse Kelly Show on a wonderful, wonderful Wednesday. And obviously
this hour is going to be part three and most
definitely the final part of our Italian campaign and.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
W and W one talk. And I don't know that
it'll last an hour. I don't have any idea.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
I haven't started talking yet, but I'm most definitely gonna
wrap it up today. Then we're gonna make fun of
Michelle Obama. We'll talk about the Head of the Irs
resigning because of illegals, all that, parents naming their kids,
weird things, emails, including hate mail, and so much more.
So to come on The Jesse Kelly Show. But back
to what we've been discussing for somebody maybe just now
(00:59):
joining us.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
You're joining us on part.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Three of a little history thing I've been doing on
the Italian Campaign, the Italian portion of World War One,
the part nobody knows about, no one pays attention to it,
and in my opinion, purely an opinion, I believe these
are the worst battlefield conditions anyone ever fought.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Here's your little recap. If by the way.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
If you want a much more detailed recap, it's all podcasted.
The show is podcasted on iHeart, Spotify iTunes. You can
download it and listen. It's our two of Yesterday and
Monday show. Go enjoy all right Part three to recap
where we are. Italy is a fairly new country. They
(01:44):
have a poorly equipped, poorly trained military at the outbreak
of World War One. Austria Hungary is a very old country,
an old empire, and they also are stretched pretty thin
during World War One, They're already fighting on other fronts.
What they do have, though, is possession of the Alps
(02:05):
that are in the northeast.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
Portion of Italy.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Austria has those, they have the mountaintops, they have the
mountaintop fortifications. Italy wants those mountaintops. Italy believes those are
they're a natural border for their country. They believe that
should be an Italian possession, and they decide to look.
There's no nice way to talk about Italy's involvement in
(02:28):
this war. It was really opportunistic. It was Britain and
France were fighting Germany and Austria Hungary. Yes, Russia's in
there too. Italy looked and thought this is a good
opportunity if I jump in on the right side to
get the territory I want. I understand it, but it
(02:49):
looks a little opportunist Italy jumps in. So now you
have poorly trained, poorly equipped Italian troops throwing themselves. Not
exactly Austria's crack troops by any means, but Austria's troops
who are mostly outnumbered. They're dug into the mountaintops, mountaintops
(03:10):
that are oftentimes covered with snow. We talked extensively yesterday
about the nightmarish logistical situation for both sides. How do
you get the men up there? How do you get
their equipment up there? Artillery pieces, ammunition, food, They have
to come up with, cable, pulley systems. I can show
(03:32):
you a picture, you can go look it up. It's
fascinating of a donkey, a mule, most likely a mule
being hoisted up into the mountains. And once you even
get into the mountains, well there are other mountains. You're
connecting this mountain peak to that mountain peak. How do
you get men and supplies from this and that? They're
(03:52):
building tunnels, carving caves, blasting caves, mining, things into the
side of the mountain, and that brings me to I'm
just going to try to wrap up this World War
One story today with a couple of things that I
think will bring home the horror of all this.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
You know what an avalanche is. Have you ever wondered?
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Has it ever crossed your mind why an avalanche is fatal?
And what I mean by that is how do you die?
What is it about an avalanche that kills you? I
am not an expert, of course, but I'm fairly well
versed on avalanches because I grew up in Bozeman, Montana.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
We were always always in the mountains.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
We were hiking in the mountains, we were camping in
the mountains, we were skiing in the mountains. I was
in the Rocky mountains all the time. And one thing
you learn about is avalanches. You know, extreme skiers and snowboarders,
these types who will you'll see You've seen movies or
videos of them being dropped out of a helicopter. They're
(05:00):
on top of the Swiss Alps somewhere. You've seen this stuff,
or at least you know what exists. Do you know
they have something on them, most of them, they have
something on them. It's a locator beacon. It's for avalanches.
It's in case they get avalanched in, someone knows where
they are how to find them. Do you know when
(05:22):
an avalanche washes over you, you generally die one of
three ways. If you are lucky, and I want to
stress this, if you are lucky, the avalanche will wash
you over a cliff and you will fall to your death.
(05:44):
Those are the lucky people who die in an avalanche.
And just pause on this before I keep going. In
one avalanche, I want to try to explain the scale
of the avalanche problem during this hellscape of a war campaign.
Avalanches killed more men than bullets in the Italian campaign.
(06:09):
In one gigantic avalanche, ten thousand men were lost ten thousand. Now,
you've read different versions of that. Some said it was four,
some said it was one. The most consistent version I've
seen is nine to ten thousand men were loshed. Back
(06:29):
to what we were discussing, you may be washed over
the cliff, and if you're one of the people who's
going to die in the avalanche, you're one of the
lucky ones if you got washed over the cliff, because
a second way you can die during an avalanche is well,
(06:51):
I know, you know it's snow, right, but it's snow
that's falling, and it's picking up steam as it falls,
picking up other snow. But it's also picking up rocks, trees.
Avalanches will clear trees out, it'll snap them like toothpicks
off of their Everything on the mountain side that is fallible,
(07:15):
I know that's not probably a word. Everything that's not
nailed down, and some things that are, they will come
with the avalanche. So when the avalanche hits you, depending
on the amount of force it hits you with, it
may shatter your body like an artillery shell shatters your body.
And those guys, they aren't even the most unlucky ones,
(07:40):
because the most unlucky ones, Well, how you normally die
when an avalanche gets you is you suffocate. You suffocate
surrounded by snow, and you are so surrounded and packed
in by snow that you no longer have a sense
(08:04):
of gravity. Did you know that people who have survived
survived avalanches will tell you you don't know which way
is up or down. Maybe you have thought to yourself, well,
I would simply dig my way out of it. No,
you will not. You are packed in with snow. You
can't really move in any way that will allow you
(08:26):
to dig.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
And even if you.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Could dig, you don't know which direction leads you out
of the avalanche. You could very well be digging down
in the wrong direction. If you are not located promptly
and dug out, you will suffocate surrounded by snow packing
(08:49):
you in. And this was not a one time thing.
Thousands and thousands and thousands of Italians in Australian died
by avalanche during the Italian campaign. They would describe it
as sounding like a rolling thunder, and you knew immediately
(09:11):
what it was, and you would look up and see
what was essentially a white tidle wave pouring down the mountain,
and you can't escape it. Contrary to what you see
in James Bond movies, you can't throw on some skis
and outrun it. Most of the time you have to
try to hunker down, hide me behind a rock, and
(09:34):
pray to God that the snow doesn't engulf you to
such a degree that you will suffocate inside of it.
It was such a problem each side started to use
avalanches as an offensive weapon. I'll tell you for a fact,
in the Bridger Mountains which are close to Bozeman, Montana.
(09:55):
To this day, the trained professionals, they will take elves
up high into the mountains when the mountain is cleared
out and they will explode. They will set off explosives
on purpose to cause avalanches to clear out all that
snow that may fall so it doesn't kill other people.
It's a professional clearing of deep snow. They would fire
(10:19):
artillery shells into hard snow packed areas above enemy troops
and then sit back and watch as thousands, as entire companies,
entire battalions have a tidal wave of snow wash over
them and kill them. Are you starting to come around
(10:39):
on my opinion that this is the worst battlefield conditions
in history? Chris is starting to come around yet on
any of this. We'll continue this, maybe I'll even finish
this in just a moment. Before I finish it, I'm
going to talk to you about America. First, we love
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(11:02):
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Speaker 1 (12:00):
We'll be back, Jesse Kelly.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
It is the Jesse Kelly Show on a wonderful Wednesday,
our final.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
Part three of World War One, our final.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Little history thing this week, and then we will get
back to the politics. Member, you can email the show
Jesse at Jesse kellyshow dot com. All right, that was
the avalanches. Now let's talk about something else that was
just so terrible. Because I mentioned the map yesterday, I
mentioned this part and it kind of gives away the
endgame here, but it doesn't matter. You probably get it
(12:34):
by now. Where I'm looking at this map, and the
map had the lines, the battle lines. These were the
Austria battle lines. These were the Italy Italian battle lines,
and it had dates on them, right, Hey, these were
the battle lines in nineteen fifteen, and then these were
the battle lines when it ended in nineteen seventeen. And
you're looking at these things and they don't move, not really,
(13:00):
they don't move at all. They remain the Italians. They
wanted to attack and get the Austrians off the mountaintops
because the mountaintops controlled the passes, they controlled the valleys,
they had better observation. You want the high ground, they
wanted the mountaintops. And the Italians didn't always fail in
(13:24):
taking these peaks. I want to be clear about that.
In fact, we'll talk about a couple quote success stories here,
but what would oftentimes happen is they would get counterattacked
once they were successful. Now, let's just discuss in general
counter attacking, because that's probably a term you've heard many
times before when people talk about wars or battles or
(13:45):
what is It is pretty obvious, and why is it effective?
Is less obvious? Okay, so counterattacking. Let's say I'm on
the defensive. It's World War One, so we'll make it
about a trench. I'm in my trench. I'm in the
first trench line. This is what routinely happened to both sides.
If you were able to get into the opposing guy's
(14:08):
trench line and take it over, you would the guys
you didn't kill or capture, you would run them out
of the trench line. Okay, so I just charged the
trench line or I forgot I'm on defense here. My
trench line just got charged. They dropped an artillery brage
on us, and they blew the barb wire, and they
(14:28):
had it organized the right way, and now they're fighting
and killing our way. We can't hold this trench line anymore.
What I do, as a smart commander is I tactically retreat.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
Remember I know.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
It doesn't play well in the movies, but tactical retreat
is a critical part of battle. What I do is
I gather my men because we can't defend that trench
line anymore, and we in an organized fashion, we back away.
We back into another trench line. At the same time,
we're backing away. I have rein f orsements in the rear.
(15:01):
This is a common part of World War One. The
reinforcements are called up. Now, the assaulting guy who just
jumped into my fence line, what's the state of his troops?
What are his troops like after they took my trench line.
They're shot to pieces. They're shot to pieces. They left
dead and wounded everywhere. They're probably out of ammunition. They're
(15:24):
dang sure out of energy. They are not even close
to being at full strength. Yes, they're in my trench
line now, but they are shot.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
Well.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
I now get my reserves and my men that I
left with, and I use the opportunity to counterattack, and
I go right back at the trench they just took over.
They don't have the strength and the men to keep
me from taking it back, and they end up losing
in the end and having to run back to their
(15:57):
original lines because of the counter attack. Now, that's a
World War One version of a counter attack. But that's
why counter attack itself is so successful, because attacking takes
more energy, and you will lose more men while attacking
than you will while you're defending. So even if your
(16:17):
attack is successful, yes, you may hold the mountaintop in
this case, but you started out with fifty men. There
are now ten of you still left standing on the mountaintop.
I retreated, and I have reserves, and I'm simply going
to come take it back. This happened all the time
in the Italian campaign. You would you would make tunnels
(16:40):
and supplies, and you'd make plans, and you'd bring up
the artillery, and you'd get the units ready and make
sure everyone has AMMO, and you would know, on this day,
we are going to finally do the final assault to
this mountain. And you'd wait until there was bad weather,
when there was fog and you could move, and you
would plan everything right. And then let's say it was successful.
(17:00):
Maybe maybe you blew the barb wire in all the
right places and your artillery barrage worked correctly and you
managed to fight your way through machine gun nests and
all this other death and misery going on. Oh and
did I mention I brought this up Day one?
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Roller bombs?
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Did you know that was a thing kind of cool
and fascinating. They would take what essentially was cast iron
and they would fill it up with explosives and light
the fuse and roll it down the mountain, and it
would blow up on people. Beyond bombs, I already mentioned
the avalanches, Boulders a commonly used weapon. I will tell you,
(17:38):
as somebody who spent a lot of time hiking and
skiing in the mountains, looking up for rocks or boulders
coming down your way is something you learn really, really,
really fast. If my wife is hiking ahead of me,
and so much as a rock the size of an apple,
(17:58):
if it comes bouncing down my way, it'll break the skin.
It catches a bad bounce, it'll shatter the teeth out
of my mouth. That's a rock the size of an apple.
You know the damage you can do with the rock
the size of a bowling ball. They're rolling those down,
But even when you do take a peek, even then
(18:22):
you'll get counterattacked right off of it. So let's talk
briefly about that as we wrap this up, and.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Then we'll move on. Hang on, this is the Jesse
Kelly Show.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
It is the Jesse Kelly Show. Final Well, I shouldn't
say final World War One segment of the Jesse Kelly Show.
I shouldn't say that it may It might be I
might need one more to finish this whole thing up.
So let's just again talk briefly about the conditions on
the mountaintop. You already know about the lack of food
(18:56):
and water. We already talked about these things. But one
and I know it's a little dark. I understand there
are kids listing, but it's something we forget about. Men
have lived through this for us. What about the dead bodies.
If you've ever been on a battlefield, you've seen them,
(19:18):
and maybe more importantly, you smelled them. It's something you
never forget. What do you do when you're holding a
mountain top, a mountain top of rock. Remember this is
not top soil, not at these elevations. What do you
do with your best friend who got killed yesterday? He
(19:40):
caught a bullet between the eyes, he's dead. Well, you can't,
you can't really just leave him there. One, it's very
bad for morale. Military commanders have known this forever. Men
they need to see other men being buried for a
couple different reasons. One, the body does some really ugly
(20:02):
physical things after it dies. It gets bloated as the
gas are in there. You turn colors. You don't want
to see your best friend that way. Okay. It affects
the morale of the men, and it's something in the
human psyche. You want to see some sort of care
taken with dead bodies, your dead comrades, because that tells
(20:26):
you that should the worst happen. And all these men
on both sides all thought they were going to die.
They said, this is the most fatalistic portion of the
entire war. They all assumed they were all going to die.
They want to see that there is a certain level
of respect paid for their bodies after you're gone.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
Human beings want that.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
It's part of why we have different burial traditions depending
on your culture, but everyone has a tradition. That's part
of the reason why it helps. It helps ease the.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
Pain of death.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Okay, now I'm on a mountaintop and my buddy's dead.
I can't dig a six foot grave and put a
lovely tombstone up for him. I don't even have the
equipment to dig something like that up there. So what
they had to do wherever they could was dig something
(21:20):
as shallow as possible and then throw the bodies in there. Okay,
so let's call it a.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
One foot ditch. We'll call it two feet deep, a
little two foot area.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
We paid our respects, set a prayer over my buddy,
dragged him into that little hole and threw rocks on him,
and we left him because there's nothing else you can do. Now, Remember,
I said, Aboddy, if this is a critical mountaintop, many many, many,
many many men have died up there already, so they're
(21:54):
buried all over. Okay, now they're going to be shooting
our twoillary at me. Artillery was particularly nasty in this
portion of World War One. It was nasty all over
World War One, but in this portion of the war
it was actually worse than everywhere else because artillery didn't
(22:18):
have any mud to sink into.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
Here.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
It landed on top of rocks all the time. Rocks
themselves create shrapnel on top of the shrapnel from the artillery.
The artillery wounds, the wounds in general in this field
were ghastly. The stories were awful as I combed through
(22:42):
all my research on this thing, just awful, awful, awful stories,
similar to what Ewojima was for the Pacific War Marines.
They talked a lot about Pelelu in Ewogima in particular
as having kind of theest, gnarliest wounds, uglier than others
because it's all rock, it's all coral, it's all shrapnel.
(23:02):
It's one big shrapnel pit. Well that's what the rocks
were like. Well, what happens when you're dug in on
that mountaintop and that artillery shell lands, and it happens
to land on the little two foot ditch where you
just buried your buddy this morning, Not only will rocks
(23:23):
and shrapnel be raining down on you, so will your
buddy's body parts. This is not something out of a
horror movie. And I don't share this with you to
be macabre. This is what real men, flesh and blood,
(23:43):
people just like you, just like me. They have lived
in this existence. This is why the mutinies were so bad,
why the Italian army executed thousands of troops. Troops would
go on leave and never come back. At one point,
the Italians, they were terrible about releasing this information to
(24:06):
the public. They kept telling the public how they were
winning and how everything was going great. At one point
they sent the men home on leave with warnings, Hey,
don't be telling people how bad the conditions are here
where the men all went home and they told all
their relatives. You can't even imagine what it's like. That
was the moment public sentiment for the war turned, because
(24:26):
the stories finally got out that our young men, our
young boys, are going into hell up there, and so
I just wanted to bring that home. In fact, I'm
going to actually do something that I never ever do
during these things. I'm going to read something for you
(24:48):
in a moment before I read something for you. At
one point in time, the Germans, who were not involved
in this really for the most part, they left it
up to Austria. They had some new storm trooper tactics
they were using. It involved things like making sure the
artillery prevented the reserves from coming up, preventing counter attacks
(25:10):
and the infiltration tactics. And the Germans decided they had
enough troops they wanted to come down and actually help
the Austrians with a big offensive, and they did, and
gas was of course used. And I brought this up
that at one point in time, you want to talk
about living in existence, that no human beings should ever live.
(25:32):
At one point in time, Austrian troops in Austrian unit,
they went up to the line to replace another unit
that had been on the front line. They went into
the trenches and found the other unit was not only dead,
and they were terrible colors, and they obviously had died
by gas, most of them. But it wasn't all of them,
(25:55):
you see, because they found other things in the trench.
They found maces, clubs with spikes on them. Where the
Austrians and Germans, after they gassed the Italian troops in
their caves and their trenches and their tunnels, they went
in with gas masks on and bayonets and maces in
(26:20):
their hands, and as they were laying there choking to death,
they beat them to death with maces.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
I tried to tell you this was as bad as
it gets, Chris. It's as bad as it gets. And
remember the gas was designed to be heavier than air,
so if you were in one of these caves that
was essentially a pit, they would make sure the winds
were right release the gas. You might be in your bunk,
(26:50):
maybe finally getting warm, enjoying a meal. Completely unbeknownst to you,
a monster known as gas is seeping through the entrance
to your cave and you're about to die in terrible
terrible fashion. Now maybe you thought all of that was
(27:11):
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Speaker 1 (28:47):
We'll be back, Jesse Kelly.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
It is the Jesse Kelly Show. Final World War One
segment of The Jesse Kelly Show. Remember you can email
the show Jesse at Jesse kellyshow dot com. So on
this final segment, I'm actually going to read something from
a book I told you about. The White War is
the name of the books. A lot of details and
(29:12):
stuff like that, But if you're into that, it's there
certainly a great resource, wonderful resource. But I just thought
maybe this little story would bring it home. Remember I
told you about the mines and the tunnels they were
all digging, and how the Italians would dig mines. They
would dig a tunnel essentially underneath an Austrian position and
(29:35):
then fill it up with explosives and blow them out
of the position. This was done routinely, and the Italians
would dig countermines trying to stop it. Sometimes in the
mountains in the dark, they would run into each other
and then have a good old fashioned knife and dagger fight.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
In the dark.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Now, what if what if you were holding one of
these mountain peaks, and what if you knew the explosion
was coming and couldn't stop it. Let me read you something.
In the final stage of the digging, aromas from Austrian
(30:18):
rations being prepared in the Castellanos seep through fissures in
the limestone to the Italians below.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
The Italians were below mining.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
Obviously, if the Austrians noticed these air currents, they might
release poison gas above the fissures, slowing the tunneling or
even stopping it. That's right, as you were tunneling, gas
might come in. Apparently, the idea never occurred to the Austrians,
who were absorbed by the challenge of keeping their sanity.
The senior officer at the Castellado was Hans Schneberger, a
(30:48):
nineteen year old ensign in the Austrian whatever unit. In
early June, he was ordered to lead his platoon up
to the Castelletto. It's a peak. A reputation for agility
around the mountains had already earned young Schneeberger the nickname
of the snow Flea. Yet his commanding officer explained that
the main reasons for his assignment were his age and
(31:11):
marital status because he was single. For it was clear
that the enemy were prepared to detonate his spectacular mind.
The rock was buzzing and trembling under the Austrian boots.
Another drill could be heard behind the surface of Tofuna
across the saddle Visiting visiting the Castellato one night, Schneberger's
(31:33):
sector commander, Captain von Roch, put him in the picture.
In the long term, it was impossible to hold the Casteletto.
For reasons of prestige, the divisional command refused to abandon
a single foot of territory without a fight. The situation
was hopeless. If you do not freeze or starve to
death first, you will be blown up. That's what his
(31:55):
commander told him. There were two ways of averting this outcome.
They could drive the Italians off Tofana completely, or foiled
their plan by discovering and destroying their tunnel. The first
option was out of the question. The Italian counter offensive
was too strong, so on and so forth. The second
option was highly improbable, for the army was unable to
(32:15):
provide a rock drill. The most they could hope for
were a few flame throwers and heavy machine guns. Schneberger
resisted the impulse to share the bad news. The cavern
walls were thin, and word quickly got around. The effect
on the Austrians' nerves can be imagined young Schneberger soldierly resolved,
(32:37):
his soldierly resolved, sometimes wavered. Not so the thirty men
under his command of the Alpine stock themselves. That was
the Austrians. They lived up to the reputation of Highlanders
for strength and dependability. Their stoicism shamed and heartened the
young ensign. When he asked what they thought of the situation,
(32:59):
they shrugged and carried on. As the days passed, Schneeberger
began to find the noise of the enemy drill, reassuring
it meant the Italians were not yet ready. As long
as they're not ready, we survive. When the drills fell silent,
everyone knew the countdown had started, but not when it
would end. Schneberger asked who wanted to be transferred off
(33:22):
the rock. Nobody spoke, not even Ashenbrenner, with eight children
at home, nor the Spinley, fifty two year old.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
He gives out his name.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
At midday on the tenth of July, the Italian guns
across the valley below open fire on Castellto The intensity
suggested a detonation was imminent. At three point thirty am
the next morning, Schneeberger was in his cavern trying to sleep.
A candle gutters on the table. Outside. The sky is
(33:53):
pre dawn gray. At once, the rock shakes, Everything goes black,
and he's flung off his hand coming too. He hears
his head roaring his brains when a burst out of
his skull. The air is thick with sulfurous dust. Stones
crash around him. Men grown. It has come at last.
From across the valley, the king sees a tower of
(34:15):
flame blaze up between Castellano and Tofano. A noise crashes
around the mountain walls. Schneberger staggers outside. The sky has
vanished into boiling dust. The saddle was unrecognizable. A crater
has been blown in the middle a church or as
(34:36):
deep as a church tower, fringed with rubble. Turning around,
he sees the southern end of the summit crest has disappeared.
Only ten of his platoon survive. The rest of them
were exploded, and they had to sit there day after
day after day, freezing in starving on a mountaintop, listening
(35:03):
to the Italian's plant explosives underneath their feet, knowing with
full knowledge that one day the drills would stop, the
explosives would be loaded, and an explosion would happen, and
rocks and body parts would be blown off the top
(35:24):
of the Swiss Alps. Some of these craters, in fact,
really all of them can be seen to this day
if you go look up images of this area of battle.
Chris asked, why have we never been taught this? America
wasn't really involved? And maybe the saddest part of all
(35:46):
this is all this death, all this freezing loss of life,
all this horrible misery was for nothing. The lines really
never moved In the end, Austria succumbed to the war
and everything just kind of went away. All those lives
well north of a million, I think it was seven
hundred and fifty thousand Italians alone, All those lives tossed
(36:11):
for nothing. Horrible, right, But I bet you're more interested
in the White War now than you were before. Anyway,
how about that.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
That's it. Now, let's get back to politics.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
Let's talk about the head of the Irs resigning for
an interesting reason. To make fun of Michelle Obama. We'll
do some emails, read some hate mail. Now, let's first
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that sound good, to feel good all the time, to
be full of energy, full of pep. Guys, ladies, you
(36:46):
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(37:32):
Com promo code Jesse.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
We'll be back.
This is the Jesse Kelly Show.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
It is the Jesse Kelly Show. Another hour of The
Jesse Kelly Show on a wonderful, wonderful Wednesday. And obviously
this hour is going to be part three and most
definitely the final part of our Italian campaign and.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
W and W one talk. And I don't know that
it'll last an hour. I don't have any idea.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
I haven't started talking yet, but I'm most definitely gonna
wrap it up today. Then we're gonna make fun of
Michelle Obama. We'll talk about the Head of the Irs
resigning because of illegals, all that, parents naming their kids,
weird things, emails, including hate mail, and so much more.
So to come on The Jesse Kelly Show. But back
to what we've been discussing for somebody maybe just now
(00:59):
joining us.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
You're joining us on part.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Three of a little history thing I've been doing on
the Italian Campaign, the Italian portion of World War One,
the part nobody knows about, no one pays attention to it,
and in my opinion, purely an opinion, I believe these
are the worst battlefield conditions anyone ever fought.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Here's your little recap. If by the way.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
If you want a much more detailed recap, it's all podcasted.
The show is podcasted on iHeart, Spotify iTunes. You can
download it and listen. It's our two of Yesterday and
Monday show. Go enjoy all right Part three to recap
where we are. Italy is a fairly new country. They
(01:44):
have a poorly equipped, poorly trained military at the outbreak
of World War One. Austria Hungary is a very old country,
an old empire, and they also are stretched pretty thin
during World War One, They're already fighting on other fronts.
What they do have, though, is possession of the Alps
(02:05):
that are in the northeast.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
Portion of Italy.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Austria has those, they have the mountaintops, they have the
mountaintop fortifications. Italy wants those mountaintops. Italy believes those are
they're a natural border for their country. They believe that
should be an Italian possession, and they decide to look.
There's no nice way to talk about Italy's involvement in
(02:28):
this war. It was really opportunistic. It was Britain and
France were fighting Germany and Austria Hungary. Yes, Russia's in
there too. Italy looked and thought this is a good
opportunity if I jump in on the right side to
get the territory I want. I understand it, but it
(02:49):
looks a little opportunist Italy jumps in. So now you
have poorly trained, poorly equipped Italian troops throwing themselves. Not
exactly Austria's crack troops by any means, but Austria's troops
who are mostly outnumbered. They're dug into the mountaintops, mountaintops
(03:10):
that are oftentimes covered with snow. We talked extensively yesterday
about the nightmarish logistical situation for both sides. How do
you get the men up there? How do you get
their equipment up there? Artillery pieces, ammunition, food, They have
to come up with, cable, pulley systems. I can show
(03:32):
you a picture, you can go look it up. It's
fascinating of a donkey, a mule, most likely a mule
being hoisted up into the mountains. And once you even
get into the mountains, well there are other mountains. You're
connecting this mountain peak to that mountain peak. How do
you get men and supplies from this and that? They're
(03:52):
building tunnels, carving caves, blasting caves, mining, things into the
side of the mountain, and that brings me to I'm
just going to try to wrap up this World War
One story today with a couple of things that I
think will bring home the horror of all this.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
You know what an avalanche is. Have you ever wondered?
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Has it ever crossed your mind why an avalanche is fatal?
And what I mean by that is how do you die?
What is it about an avalanche that kills you? I
am not an expert, of course, but I'm fairly well
versed on avalanches because I grew up in Bozeman, Montana.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
We were always always in the mountains.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
We were hiking in the mountains, we were camping in
the mountains, we were skiing in the mountains. I was
in the Rocky mountains all the time. And one thing
you learn about is avalanches. You know, extreme skiers and snowboarders,
these types who will you'll see You've seen movies or
videos of them being dropped out of a helicopter. They're
(05:00):
on top of the Swiss Alps somewhere. You've seen this stuff,
or at least you know what exists. Do you know
they have something on them, most of them, they have
something on them. It's a locator beacon. It's for avalanches.
It's in case they get avalanched in, someone knows where
they are how to find them. Do you know when
(05:22):
an avalanche washes over you, you generally die one of
three ways. If you are lucky, and I want to
stress this, if you are lucky, the avalanche will wash
you over a cliff and you will fall to your death.
(05:44):
Those are the lucky people who die in an avalanche.
And just pause on this before I keep going. In
one avalanche, I want to try to explain the scale
of the avalanche problem during this hellscape of a war campaign.
Avalanches killed more men than bullets in the Italian campaign.
(06:09):
In one gigantic avalanche, ten thousand men were lost ten thousand. Now,
you've read different versions of that. Some said it was four,
some said it was one. The most consistent version I've
seen is nine to ten thousand men were loshed. Back
(06:29):
to what we were discussing, you may be washed over
the cliff, and if you're one of the people who's
going to die in the avalanche, you're one of the
lucky ones if you got washed over the cliff, because
a second way you can die during an avalanche is well,
(06:51):
I know, you know it's snow, right, but it's snow
that's falling, and it's picking up steam as it falls,
picking up other snow. But it's also picking up rocks, trees.
Avalanches will clear trees out, it'll snap them like toothpicks
off of their Everything on the mountain side that is fallible,
(07:15):
I know that's not probably a word. Everything that's not
nailed down, and some things that are, they will come
with the avalanche. So when the avalanche hits you, depending
on the amount of force it hits you with, it
may shatter your body like an artillery shell shatters your body.
And those guys, they aren't even the most unlucky ones,
(07:40):
because the most unlucky ones, Well, how you normally die
when an avalanche gets you is you suffocate. You suffocate
surrounded by snow, and you are so surrounded and packed
in by snow that you no longer have a sense
(08:04):
of gravity. Did you know that people who have survived
survived avalanches will tell you you don't know which way
is up or down. Maybe you have thought to yourself, well,
I would simply dig my way out of it. No,
you will not. You are packed in with snow. You
can't really move in any way that will allow you
(08:26):
to dig.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
And even if you.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Could dig, you don't know which direction leads you out
of the avalanche. You could very well be digging down
in the wrong direction. If you are not located promptly
and dug out, you will suffocate surrounded by snow packing
(08:49):
you in. And this was not a one time thing.
Thousands and thousands and thousands of Italians in Australian died
by avalanche during the Italian campaign. They would describe it
as sounding like a rolling thunder, and you knew immediately
(09:11):
what it was, and you would look up and see
what was essentially a white tidle wave pouring down the mountain,
and you can't escape it. Contrary to what you see
in James Bond movies, you can't throw on some skis
and outrun it. Most of the time you have to
try to hunker down, hide me behind a rock, and
(09:34):
pray to God that the snow doesn't engulf you to
such a degree that you will suffocate inside of it.
It was such a problem each side started to use
avalanches as an offensive weapon. I'll tell you for a fact,
in the Bridger Mountains which are close to Bozeman, Montana.
(09:55):
To this day, the trained professionals, they will take elves
up high into the mountains when the mountain is cleared
out and they will explode. They will set off explosives
on purpose to cause avalanches to clear out all that
snow that may fall so it doesn't kill other people.
It's a professional clearing of deep snow. They would fire
(10:19):
artillery shells into hard snow packed areas above enemy troops
and then sit back and watch as thousands, as entire companies,
entire battalions have a tidal wave of snow wash over
them and kill them. Are you starting to come around
(10:39):
on my opinion that this is the worst battlefield conditions
in history? Chris is starting to come around yet on
any of this. We'll continue this, maybe I'll even finish
this in just a moment. Before I finish it, I'm
going to talk to you about America. First, we love
to say those words now by American right, hire Americans.
(11:02):
I love it too, and I really love companies that
were doing it before it got popular again. Pure Talk
didn't start hiring Americans after November when Trump won the election.
They didn't look around and lick their finger and stick
it in the air. See which way the wind's bone. Oh oh,
everyone wants us to hire Americans. That was important to
(11:23):
Pure Talk before anyone else was doing it. When I
switched my cell phone service from T Mobile to Pure Talk. One,
my bill got cut in half. Two I didn't sacrifice service.
Mine actually got a little bit better. And three I
spoke to an American. I was shocked. I talked to
my wife about it. I'm speaking to an American who
speaks English. And they make it easy. They're friendly. Switch
(11:45):
you switch during the break. It's fast, it's easy. Dial
pound two five zero and say Jesse Kelly. That'll save
you an extra fifty percent off your first month pound
two five zero, say Jesse Kelly.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
We'll be back, Jesse Kelly.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
It is the Jesse Kelly Show on a wonderful Wednesday,
our final.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
Part three of World War One, our final.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Little history thing this week, and then we will get
back to the politics. Member, you can email the show
Jesse at Jesse kellyshow dot com. All right, that was
the avalanches. Now let's talk about something else that was
just so terrible. Because I mentioned the map yesterday, I
mentioned this part and it kind of gives away the
endgame here, but it doesn't matter. You probably get it
(12:34):
by now. Where I'm looking at this map, and the
map had the lines, the battle lines. These were the
Austria battle lines. These were the Italy Italian battle lines,
and it had dates on them, right, Hey, these were
the battle lines in nineteen fifteen, and then these were
the battle lines when it ended in nineteen seventeen. And
you're looking at these things and they don't move, not really,
(13:00):
they don't move at all. They remain the Italians. They
wanted to attack and get the Austrians off the mountaintops
because the mountaintops controlled the passes, they controlled the valleys,
they had better observation. You want the high ground, they
wanted the mountaintops. And the Italians didn't always fail in
(13:24):
taking these peaks. I want to be clear about that.
In fact, we'll talk about a couple quote success stories here,
but what would oftentimes happen is they would get counterattacked
once they were successful. Now, let's just discuss in general
counter attacking, because that's probably a term you've heard many
times before when people talk about wars or battles or
(13:45):
what is It is pretty obvious, and why is it effective?
Is less obvious? Okay, so counterattacking. Let's say I'm on
the defensive. It's World War One, so we'll make it
about a trench. I'm in my trench. I'm in the
first trench line. This is what routinely happened to both sides.
If you were able to get into the opposing guy's
(14:08):
trench line and take it over, you would the guys
you didn't kill or capture, you would run them out
of the trench line. Okay, so I just charged the
trench line or I forgot I'm on defense here. My
trench line just got charged. They dropped an artillery brage
on us, and they blew the barb wire, and they
(14:28):
had it organized the right way, and now they're fighting
and killing our way. We can't hold this trench line anymore.
What I do, as a smart commander is I tactically retreat.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
Remember I know.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
It doesn't play well in the movies, but tactical retreat
is a critical part of battle. What I do is
I gather my men because we can't defend that trench
line anymore, and we in an organized fashion, we back away.
We back into another trench line. At the same time,
we're backing away. I have rein f orsements in the rear.
(15:01):
This is a common part of World War One. The
reinforcements are called up. Now, the assaulting guy who just
jumped into my fence line, what's the state of his troops?
What are his troops like after they took my trench line.
They're shot to pieces. They're shot to pieces. They left
dead and wounded everywhere. They're probably out of ammunition. They're
(15:24):
dang sure out of energy. They are not even close
to being at full strength. Yes, they're in my trench
line now, but they are shot.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
Well.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
I now get my reserves and my men that I
left with, and I use the opportunity to counterattack, and
I go right back at the trench they just took over.
They don't have the strength and the men to keep
me from taking it back, and they end up losing
in the end and having to run back to their
(15:57):
original lines because of the counter attack. Now, that's a
World War One version of a counter attack. But that's
why counter attack itself is so successful, because attacking takes
more energy, and you will lose more men while attacking
than you will while you're defending. So even if your
(16:17):
attack is successful, yes, you may hold the mountaintop in
this case, but you started out with fifty men. There
are now ten of you still left standing on the mountaintop.
I retreated, and I have reserves, and I'm simply going
to come take it back. This happened all the time
in the Italian campaign. You would you would make tunnels
(16:40):
and supplies, and you'd make plans, and you'd bring up
the artillery, and you'd get the units ready and make
sure everyone has AMMO, and you would know, on this day,
we are going to finally do the final assault to
this mountain. And you'd wait until there was bad weather,
when there was fog and you could move, and you
would plan everything right. And then let's say it was successful.
(17:00):
Maybe maybe you blew the barb wire in all the
right places and your artillery barrage worked correctly and you
managed to fight your way through machine gun nests and
all this other death and misery going on. Oh and
did I mention I brought this up Day one?
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Roller bombs?
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Did you know that was a thing kind of cool
and fascinating. They would take what essentially was cast iron
and they would fill it up with explosives and light
the fuse and roll it down the mountain, and it
would blow up on people. Beyond bombs, I already mentioned
the avalanches, Boulders a commonly used weapon. I will tell you,
(17:38):
as somebody who spent a lot of time hiking and
skiing in the mountains, looking up for rocks or boulders
coming down your way is something you learn really, really,
really fast. If my wife is hiking ahead of me,
and so much as a rock the size of an apple,
(17:58):
if it comes bouncing down my way, it'll break the skin.
It catches a bad bounce, it'll shatter the teeth out
of my mouth. That's a rock the size of an apple.
You know the damage you can do with the rock
the size of a bowling ball. They're rolling those down,
But even when you do take a peek, even then
(18:22):
you'll get counterattacked right off of it. So let's talk
briefly about that as we wrap this up, and.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Then we'll move on. Hang on, this is the Jesse
Kelly Show.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
It is the Jesse Kelly Show. Final Well, I shouldn't
say final World War One segment of the Jesse Kelly Show.
I shouldn't say that it may It might be I
might need one more to finish this whole thing up.
So let's just again talk briefly about the conditions on
the mountaintop. You already know about the lack of food
(18:56):
and water. We already talked about these things. But one
and I know it's a little dark. I understand there
are kids listing, but it's something we forget about. Men
have lived through this for us. What about the dead bodies.
If you've ever been on a battlefield, you've seen them,
(19:18):
and maybe more importantly, you smelled them. It's something you
never forget. What do you do when you're holding a
mountain top, a mountain top of rock. Remember this is
not top soil, not at these elevations. What do you
do with your best friend who got killed yesterday? He
(19:40):
caught a bullet between the eyes, he's dead. Well, you can't,
you can't really just leave him there. One, it's very
bad for morale. Military commanders have known this forever. Men
they need to see other men being buried for a
couple different reasons. One, the body does some really ugly
(20:02):
physical things after it dies. It gets bloated as the
gas are in there. You turn colors. You don't want
to see your best friend that way. Okay. It affects
the morale of the men, and it's something in the
human psyche. You want to see some sort of care
taken with dead bodies, your dead comrades, because that tells
(20:26):
you that should the worst happen. And all these men
on both sides all thought they were going to die.
They said, this is the most fatalistic portion of the
entire war. They all assumed they were all going to die.
They want to see that there is a certain level
of respect paid for their bodies after you're gone.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
Human beings want that.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
It's part of why we have different burial traditions depending
on your culture, but everyone has a tradition. That's part
of the reason why it helps. It helps ease the.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
Pain of death.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Okay, now I'm on a mountaintop and my buddy's dead.
I can't dig a six foot grave and put a
lovely tombstone up for him. I don't even have the
equipment to dig something like that up there. So what
they had to do wherever they could was dig something
(21:20):
as shallow as possible and then throw the bodies in there. Okay,
so let's call it a.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
One foot ditch. We'll call it two feet deep, a
little two foot area.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
We paid our respects, set a prayer over my buddy,
dragged him into that little hole and threw rocks on him,
and we left him because there's nothing else you can do. Now, Remember,
I said, Aboddy, if this is a critical mountaintop, many many, many,
many many men have died up there already, so they're
(21:54):
buried all over. Okay, now they're going to be shooting
our twoillary at me. Artillery was particularly nasty in this
portion of World War One. It was nasty all over
World War One, but in this portion of the war
it was actually worse than everywhere else because artillery didn't
(22:18):
have any mud to sink into.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
Here.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
It landed on top of rocks all the time. Rocks
themselves create shrapnel on top of the shrapnel from the artillery.
The artillery wounds, the wounds in general in this field
were ghastly. The stories were awful as I combed through
(22:42):
all my research on this thing, just awful, awful, awful stories,
similar to what Ewojima was for the Pacific War Marines.
They talked a lot about Pelelu in Ewogima in particular
as having kind of theest, gnarliest wounds, uglier than others
because it's all rock, it's all coral, it's all shrapnel.
(23:02):
It's one big shrapnel pit. Well that's what the rocks
were like. Well, what happens when you're dug in on
that mountaintop and that artillery shell lands, and it happens
to land on the little two foot ditch where you
just buried your buddy this morning, Not only will rocks
(23:23):
and shrapnel be raining down on you, so will your
buddy's body parts. This is not something out of a
horror movie. And I don't share this with you to
be macabre. This is what real men, flesh and blood,
(23:43):
people just like you, just like me. They have lived
in this existence. This is why the mutinies were so bad,
why the Italian army executed thousands of troops. Troops would
go on leave and never come back. At one point,
the Italians, they were terrible about releasing this information to
(24:06):
the public. They kept telling the public how they were
winning and how everything was going great. At one point
they sent the men home on leave with warnings, Hey,
don't be telling people how bad the conditions are here
where the men all went home and they told all
their relatives. You can't even imagine what it's like. That
was the moment public sentiment for the war turned, because
(24:26):
the stories finally got out that our young men, our
young boys, are going into hell up there, and so
I just wanted to bring that home. In fact, I'm
going to actually do something that I never ever do
during these things. I'm going to read something for you
(24:48):
in a moment before I read something for you. At
one point in time, the Germans, who were not involved
in this really for the most part, they left it
up to Austria. They had some new storm trooper tactics
they were using. It involved things like making sure the
artillery prevented the reserves from coming up, preventing counter attacks
(25:10):
and the infiltration tactics. And the Germans decided they had
enough troops they wanted to come down and actually help
the Austrians with a big offensive, and they did, and
gas was of course used. And I brought this up
that at one point in time, you want to talk
about living in existence, that no human beings should ever live.
(25:32):
At one point in time, Austrian troops in Austrian unit,
they went up to the line to replace another unit
that had been on the front line. They went into
the trenches and found the other unit was not only dead,
and they were terrible colors, and they obviously had died
by gas, most of them. But it wasn't all of them,
(25:55):
you see, because they found other things in the trench.
They found maces, clubs with spikes on them. Where the
Austrians and Germans, after they gassed the Italian troops in
their caves and their trenches and their tunnels, they went
in with gas masks on and bayonets and maces in
(26:20):
their hands, and as they were laying there choking to death,
they beat them to death with maces.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
I tried to tell you this was as bad as
it gets, Chris. It's as bad as it gets. And
remember the gas was designed to be heavier than air,
so if you were in one of these caves that
was essentially a pit, they would make sure the winds
were right release the gas. You might be in your bunk,
(26:50):
maybe finally getting warm, enjoying a meal. Completely unbeknownst to you,
a monster known as gas is seeping through the entrance
to your cave and you're about to die in terrible
terrible fashion. Now maybe you thought all of that was
(27:11):
the worst. I'm actually going to read something to you
really quick when I get back, and this might be
the coup de gras of one of I mean, it
just gives me the willies just thinking about it before
I read you that. You know who didn't spend the
last two or three days or week panicking about the market.
(27:34):
It's up, it's down, it's up, it's down. Oh my gosh.
People who fortified their retirement with gold or silver precious
metals outlast everything. They outlast tariff's taxes, they outlast China,
they'll outlast America. They'll outlast you, your kids and their
kids after them. A thousand years from now. Gold and
(27:58):
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Speaker 1 (28:47):
We'll be back, Jesse Kelly.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
It is the Jesse Kelly Show. Final World War One
segment of The Jesse Kelly Show. Remember you can email
the show Jesse at Jesse kellyshow dot com. So on
this final segment, I'm actually going to read something from
a book I told you about. The White War is
the name of the books. A lot of details and
(29:12):
stuff like that, But if you're into that, it's there
certainly a great resource, wonderful resource. But I just thought
maybe this little story would bring it home. Remember I
told you about the mines and the tunnels they were
all digging, and how the Italians would dig mines. They
would dig a tunnel essentially underneath an Austrian position and
(29:35):
then fill it up with explosives and blow them out
of the position. This was done routinely, and the Italians
would dig countermines trying to stop it. Sometimes in the
mountains in the dark, they would run into each other
and then have a good old fashioned knife and dagger fight.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
In the dark.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Now, what if what if you were holding one of
these mountain peaks, and what if you knew the explosion
was coming and couldn't stop it. Let me read you something.
In the final stage of the digging, aromas from Austrian
(30:18):
rations being prepared in the Castellanos seep through fissures in
the limestone to the Italians below.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
The Italians were below mining.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
Obviously, if the Austrians noticed these air currents, they might
release poison gas above the fissures, slowing the tunneling or
even stopping it. That's right, as you were tunneling, gas
might come in. Apparently, the idea never occurred to the Austrians,
who were absorbed by the challenge of keeping their sanity.
The senior officer at the Castellado was Hans Schneberger, a
(30:48):
nineteen year old ensign in the Austrian whatever unit. In
early June, he was ordered to lead his platoon up
to the Castelletto. It's a peak. A reputation for agility
around the mountains had already earned young Schneeberger the nickname
of the snow Flea. Yet his commanding officer explained that
the main reasons for his assignment were his age and
(31:11):
marital status because he was single. For it was clear
that the enemy were prepared to detonate his spectacular mind.
The rock was buzzing and trembling under the Austrian boots.
Another drill could be heard behind the surface of Tofuna
across the saddle Visiting visiting the Castellato one night, Schneberger's
(31:33):
sector commander, Captain von Roch, put him in the picture.
In the long term, it was impossible to hold the Casteletto.
For reasons of prestige, the divisional command refused to abandon
a single foot of territory without a fight. The situation
was hopeless. If you do not freeze or starve to
death first, you will be blown up. That's what his
(31:55):
commander told him. There were two ways of averting this outcome.
They could drive the Italians off Tofana completely, or foiled
their plan by discovering and destroying their tunnel. The first
option was out of the question. The Italian counter offensive
was too strong, so on and so forth. The second
option was highly improbable, for the army was unable to
(32:15):
provide a rock drill. The most they could hope for
were a few flame throwers and heavy machine guns. Schneberger
resisted the impulse to share the bad news. The cavern
walls were thin, and word quickly got around. The effect
on the Austrians' nerves can be imagined young Schneberger soldierly resolved,
(32:37):
his soldierly resolved, sometimes wavered. Not so the thirty men
under his command of the Alpine stock themselves. That was
the Austrians. They lived up to the reputation of Highlanders
for strength and dependability. Their stoicism shamed and heartened the
young ensign. When he asked what they thought of the situation,
(32:59):
they shrugged and carried on. As the days passed, Schneeberger
began to find the noise of the enemy drill, reassuring
it meant the Italians were not yet ready. As long
as they're not ready, we survive. When the drills fell silent,
everyone knew the countdown had started, but not when it
would end. Schneberger asked who wanted to be transferred off
(33:22):
the rock. Nobody spoke, not even Ashenbrenner, with eight children
at home, nor the Spinley, fifty two year old.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
He gives out his name.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
At midday on the tenth of July, the Italian guns
across the valley below open fire on Castellto The intensity
suggested a detonation was imminent. At three point thirty am
the next morning, Schneeberger was in his cavern trying to sleep.
A candle gutters on the table. Outside. The sky is
(33:53):
pre dawn gray. At once, the rock shakes, Everything goes black,
and he's flung off his hand coming too. He hears
his head roaring his brains when a burst out of
his skull. The air is thick with sulfurous dust. Stones
crash around him. Men grown. It has come at last.
From across the valley, the king sees a tower of
(34:15):
flame blaze up between Castellano and Tofano. A noise crashes
around the mountain walls. Schneberger staggers outside. The sky has
vanished into boiling dust. The saddle was unrecognizable. A crater
has been blown in the middle a church or as
(34:36):
deep as a church tower, fringed with rubble. Turning around,
he sees the southern end of the summit crest has disappeared.
Only ten of his platoon survive. The rest of them
were exploded, and they had to sit there day after
day after day, freezing in starving on a mountaintop, listening
(35:03):
to the Italian's plant explosives underneath their feet, knowing with
full knowledge that one day the drills would stop, the
explosives would be loaded, and an explosion would happen, and
rocks and body parts would be blown off the top
(35:24):
of the Swiss Alps. Some of these craters, in fact,
really all of them can be seen to this day
if you go look up images of this area of battle.
Chris asked, why have we never been taught this? America
wasn't really involved? And maybe the saddest part of all
(35:46):
this is all this death, all this freezing loss of life,
all this horrible misery was for nothing. The lines really
never moved In the end, Austria succumbed to the war
and everything just kind of went away. All those lives
well north of a million, I think it was seven
hundred and fifty thousand Italians alone, All those lives tossed
(36:11):
for nothing. Horrible, right, But I bet you're more interested
in the White War now than you were before. Anyway,
how about that.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
That's it. Now, let's get back to politics.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
Let's talk about the head of the Irs resigning for
an interesting reason. To make fun of Michelle Obama. We'll
do some emails, read some hate mail. Now, let's first
get you strong and energetic. I'm want to feel good,
that sound good, to feel good all the time, to
be full of energy, full of pep. Guys, ladies, you
(36:46):
ever get down, just almost inexplicably depressed. Your levels are off.
We are drinking estrogen. It's in the water and it's
screwing our bodies up big time. Chalk is how we
fight back. I personally take a male vitality stack. There
are female vitality stacks. There's Chad Mode. If you're looking
(37:10):
for a natural pre workout, there's Chuck Litpowder. Whatever you're
looking for, whatever you're looking to improve in your life.
Chuck is your first stop. It's my first stop. It's
not last first c ho q dot com promo code
Jesse gets you a huge discount on subscriptions Chuck dot
(37:32):
Com promo code Jesse.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
We'll be back.
Host
Jesse Kelly
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