Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 119 - Russo-Japanese War Part 1: Willy, Nicky, and Racism

Episode Date: August 31, 2020

Imperialism and Racism lead Imperial Russia down a path of one of the biggest self owns in military history. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Sources: The Tide at Sunrise: A History of the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-05 The Russo-Japanese War 1904–1905

Hello and welcome to yet another episode of the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. Sweating my fucking ass off in a shack in Hawaii is me, Joe, and freshly nearly being arrested by the military police and for, uh, JBLM Nick. Yeah, we're doing great this week,

man. I gotta say this has been a banner week for both of us. Yeah. It's honestly the, the probably the best thing that's happened to me this whole month. Other than that, it was pretty uneventful until that happened. So you know what?

I'll take it. I'm normally not this angry and overheated, but my landlord monitors my electrical usage, and she sent me a very kindly worded email from the mainland that said, I noticed you're using a lot of electricity, Joseph. I said, yes, I also happen to notice it's over 100 degrees here for the last six days in a row and this motherfucker isn't insulated and i have a single window unit of which i am is the little engine that could except it's keeping me alive from fucking heat stroking

in the middle of the day so now i have like you're trying to live yeah fuck me right for trying to live uh for yeah like and so she's like if you could just please turn it off whenever you leave which like okay but that's through like the hottest part of the day so i come back in so for instance say i come into the shack to record uh on our on our agreed upon recording time it's like 98 degrees in here oh god that sounds so bad it's like oh you must sit while you're just on the toilet taking a poo you gotta be sweating that's those are the worst poos you know it's great I trained in Afghanistan for years to be able to be able to sweat my ass off in a small room while taking a dump and i'm glad that it's it's come back full circle in 2020 where i can do it again so glad did that make you for this

i've been training my whole life uh i'm real glad i can i can just sweat continuously, forever be moist. It's like, you know what? I really don't like the sauna, but now I live in one. Yeah. It turns out that living in a sauna in Hawaii is actually very expensive, while living in a sauna in Afghanistan was free. Now, we're doing something today for the next next several weeks i'm going to say next five weeks mark it on the calendar five i'm going five doing it we're doing a series uh it's been a series that has been pitched to us multiple times um and i've been hesitant to cover it

mostly because it's not a war that western scholars like to pay attention to. It was hard for me to find good resources, especially because one of the most fundamental facts of this war is just Western racism. So there's a lot of things that you read that are very, very stilted and like to gloss over the fact of how exactly Russia and Japan ended up fighting what amounted to be a dry run of World War I before World War I. And that is the Russo-Japanese War.

We're doing it. Let's do it. So this is our first post-corona series or inter-corona series since this is just how we live forever now. We accepted it. It's what's happening. Do you know much about this war? a lot of people don't I don't know anything about it

I know of the war just don't know anything about it there's almost two things that everybody knows about this war that is the battle of Tsushima and the voyage of the damned of the Imperial Russian 2nd Pacific Squadron.

And virtually nothing else. And those are two things we will absolutely cover in episode three. And I cannot wait to get to that point. What episode are we on right now? This is episode one, Nick. Fuck. Nick, welcome to the podcast. It's great to have you here.

God damn it. Can we get a guest to fill in for me on the first episode and second? Yeah, I'm going to need you to gloss over it, yada, yada, yada, by the way, through all this war. Now, to get to the point of everybody's favorite topic, we do have to talk about some weird imperialist geopolitics of the late 1800s and 1900s. Nick, I know that's your favorite.

I know it's nobody's favorite unless your your brain is as severely broken as mine is um so the root cause of this war like many other wars that we've ever covered um is i i believe we have a a running podcast rule list obviously we have our our war movie rule list which is is, uh, the bonus episode territory. And then we have our regular episode rule rule list. And that is almost every war world war one. And before then it boils down to two inbred dudes, beef and over turf. And that's the rule we're following here.

Absolutely. Uh, Oh, wow. So what it comes down to is the Russian czar, Nicholas II, who I will just call Nicholas to make things easier. Don't be proud that your namesake's starring in this. He's the dumbest motherfucker that we have covered, I think.

I mean, I gotta have something. And the Japanese emperor had imperial ambitions over the greater Manchuria area. As the two powers grew in strength and size, they began to eventually seek out the same land and resources as their spheres of influence kind of ran into one another. Japan had become rapidly an imperialist and a militarist power in the region really quickly over the course of just a few decades backed by a populist that clamored for war and a tough form of foreign policy now that sounds weird is that like i'm

put i don't mean to say i'm putting the blame for all this i'm like japanese people uh but they did have a very strange form of social darwinism that is like the survival of the fittest but as societies like I'm not saying the Japanese were this way towards one another, but that they wanted the Japanese foreign policy to encompass social Darwinism. If Japan can beat you,

then Japan should beat you, and we should take you over. That's definitely why they kicked me out of the bar. We kicked you out of the bar because we could. And now also we own your garage. Damn it. And this had become incredibly popular within the Japanese populace and government by the 1800s.

We're going to gloss over a lot of the rebellions and the restorations that led to that moment because I'm not going to go into that. That's a chaos rune of internal politics, and I don't want to piss off people that know way more about that than I do. I did not research the Meiji Restoration. This did the normal thing that it does, and it spilled into national policy, which is even worse.

Furthermore, the common Japanese person was taxed incredibly heavily, so the Japanese government could afford this rapid military progress, because within only a couple decades they went from really not having a central military to having like full armored navies and like a normal like uh an army that you would recognize anywhere in europe they went from having nothing. That's right. Yeah. For the more historical background on all of this, watch the last episode. It's fact. I don't care.

But, you know, in order to do that, they took a lot of debts from foreign governments, especially the British and the French. But they also taxed the living shit out of their people. tax the living shit out of their people but in exchange for those rising taxes they demanded tangible evidence that all of this is worthwhile like say an overseas Empire you know America we do the same thing except we don't call it Empire we call it national security when people thought the government was not aggressive enough overseas there would be protests in the streets against what they saw as weakness and like also people would occasionally assassinate political figures for being cowards in japan yes oh yeah like they would be like wow we didn't persecute the chinese enough we're gonna

take to the streets absolutely wild shit yeah um japanese historian masao muriyama said quote just as japan was subject to pressure from the great powers, so she would apply those pressures to still weaker countries. A clear case of transfer psychology. In this regard, it is significant that ever since the Meiji period, demands for a tough foreign policy have come from the common people, that is, from those that are receiving end of oppression at home so like we get that you're taxing the dog shit out of us and like you know they have secret police and you're oppressing us but like we want to do that to other people too to make us feel better that makes sense that's

something yeah i can get behind that why not let's do it i mean i would i would rather not have the oppression at home or the overseas empire, but clearly I'm American. I don't get either one of those things. Russia, on the other hand, had slowly been inching east ever since the 16th century when Ivan the Terrible began giving bedroom eyes to the Siberian Far East. Did you say Fardis? The Far East. Oh, I heard Fardis. I was like, huh, that's a weird name they call them.

It's a Siberian Arby's. It's disgusting and just full of cheddar cheese. Don't look into that too much. By the early 1900s, they had a vast empire that would stretch from Poland to Vladivostok. So, huge. Eventually, the two would see each other as prime rivals in the region, which occasionally sparked into damn near war at the time as the Japanese shogunate into the early mid-1800s when the Russians popped into the Japanese territories like Hokkaido and Tsushima and kind of just try to muscle their way into Japan and allow them to anchor there. Kind of like what we did. Like, we forced Japan to open by gunfire.

Russia tried to do the same thing, but were worse at it, which is a common theme in this podcast, I know. But a lot of time had passed, and Japan became stronger. They fought China in the first Sino-Japanese War, a massive, sprawling conflict that started because Japan was attempting to leverage their power in Korea into a proxy war to get their puppet on the throne of the Kingdom of Korea. By the end of the war, Japan signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki, which forced China to cede the Liaodong Peninsula

and the island of Taiwan to Japan. So it's a pretty big win for Japan fighting a country as big as China, which obviously this would be the last time that's ever happened, and certainly there wasn't a second one of these wars. Thankfully, Japan would not persecute their neighbors ever again.

Spoiler alert, in case nobody paid attention to all of the 1940s. Oh, God. The main drawback was Liaodong's main port of Port Arthur. A year-round warm water port that they could use to vastly expand their naval power within the

region. This pissed off Russia mostly because they wanted a year round warm water port. Who doesn't? I didn't think this was such a big deal, but then I realized that everything's still coal-powered at the time, so Who doesn't? I didn't think this is such a big deal, but then I realized that, like, everything's still coal-powered at the time,

so, like, just sending a fleet, say, around the world to flex on somebody is a really hard thing to do, which, by the way, that happens in episode three. It doesn't go well. If you fall in the water, it's warm. Who doesn't want that? It's refreshing. Have a schvitz in the fucking bay. But if they held that particular port, Port Arthur,

they'd be able to rapidly expand its sphere of influence into the region and bully Japan. So Russia went to its buddies in France germany to tell them that they needed to help russia kick the japanese out of port arthur the three european powers threatened military force of japan did not give the port back to china japan knew they really had no chance of fighting three european powers at once uh you know maybe a bit of advice they should have taken 30 years from now. Yeah.

So they agreed to leave. So they shit all over the port. Yeah, they probably just drew dicks on everything before they left. Almost immediately afterwards, Russia just happened to strike a rental deal with the Chinese government to rent them Port Arthur

right back to them, right after they just forced the Japanese to leave. Really? Yes. Huh. This to the surprise of, I assume, only Russia really fucking pissed off Japan. Not just the government, but the people

as well. This began what is known as the Gaijin Shoten movement, which translates to, and this is a very Japanese saying, quote, persevering through the hardship for the sake of revenge. Oh, fuck that. Which took the previous military revolution going on with Japan and cranked the dial to 11, so they would never be

embarrassed by another European imperial power again at least not until 1945 never again and you really have to ask why was Russia and seemingly the rest of Europe teaming up to be dicks against Japan it should shock absolutely no one when I say it was just for good old-fashioned european racism okay okay i kind of figured that too so i'm gonna say some fucked up shit that board that absolutely are racial slurs but i'm gonna be quoting primary documents i'm not just gonna say these things to say them all willy-nilly yeah um and i feel like the reason why i do that is so you could understand how disgusting this is um and how your history leaves a lot of this out um so this is an era we now known now know as the yellow peril uh creative name know. Nobody can really claim to be the originators of this racist fever dream of propaganda and war,

but most of the blame seems to fall on, who else but Germany. Now, this is imperial Germany, so hold back on the Nazi jokes. They cranked out incredibly racist propaganda telling any European power that would listen as only a matter of time before Japan and China teamed up and quote, the yellow race launched a war against the white race of Europe.

God, that checks out for Germany, right? It's a, it's a trend. It's a trend. Um, obviously this is incredibly ridiculous.

Obviously we're looking back at like hindsight's 2020, clearly Japan and China are never going to fucking team up. They literally still hate each other in the year of 2020. Uh, but yeah, uh, cause Japan hates fucking everybody and everybody hates Japan for a very good reason.

Oh, I kind of like Japan. Well, I mean, they never enslaved our people and fucking bombed us with the plague and then like, and said that nothing ever happened um but you know obviously the the politics of the region are uh are fraught at best um and through

the histories of japan and china and korea for that matter they have literally been fighting each other constantly uh and normally to this, that other countries really didn't care because they saw as two subhuman races smacking one another around. So that really only changed recently. The only real treaties ever signed between China, Japan, and Korea were at the barrel of a Japanese gun

until after World War II. So the idea that they're going to become like best buds and then i don't know i don't somehow invade through russia or something is ridiculous but nobody ever accused a racist of being intelligent and nobody ever accused kaiser wilhelm to be fucking smart either so you know whatever now if you're wondering what the hell happened and how something like this that something like the germans were pushing actually had an effect on Imperial Russia, well, I got some big inbred

energy coming because both the Tsar of Russia, Nicholas, and the Kaiser of Germany, Wilhelm, were cousins. And they would exchange friendly letters calling each other Nicky and Willy. This continued all the way until World War I when their people were killing each other by the millions, by the way. They're not great people. Oh, the way until World War I when their people were killing each other by the millions, by the way.

They're not great people. Oh, even in the World War I they were sending correspondence? Oh, yeah. There's a whole chain of letters that pretty much shows that both of them were largely powerless to control their giant militaries. To the point that they were calling each other cutesy nicknames and talking about how they didn't want to fight one another. But, you know, we already called up all of of our reserves so it's too late to turn back now

oh okay i see oh it just speaks of two incredibly uh fucking elevated people that have no idea what they were doing and no idea of the realities of war and a lot of people say well who could have known that world war one would have been that bad we're literally talking about why they should have known and they completely fucking ignore it uh but yeah uh that that's it's a time for that's a that's a different conversation for a different series uh our our culminating 100 part series on world war one oh god uh and it will release every six months one episode until my brain finally flashes out and i die uh kaiser dan carlin would just absorb you dan carlin to take my energy like a spirit bomb uh kaiser velhelm beat this racist fear drum uh directly in his cousin the czar's face

who history has repeatedly shown that the czar is a fucking idiot and very easily manipulated by just about everybody uh wilhelm wrote letters to his cousin telling him that quote he was the savior of the white race for checking the imperial ambitions of the japanese this led to a geopolitical strategy of constantly attempting to check japanese expansion wherever it popped up, which led to the powers of Europe flexing on loan Japan and kicking that of Port Arthur. All these things tracked together. It also led to an intense imperial ambition all over China as each Western power slowly ate away at the edges of the country and exploited the Chinese people.

This eventually exploded what became known as the Boxer Rebellion. Have you ever heard about this? I know that one. It's definitely going to be a series we talk about because it's crazy. We're only going to talk about it as far as how the fuck

all these countries got involved in it, but yeah. That is when the awesomely named Society of the Righteous and Harmonious Fists took it upon themselves to purge all Western

and Christian influence from China, normally through the mass murder of white people and harmonious fists took it upon themselves to purge all Western and Christian influence from China. Normally through the mass murder of white people and Chinese Christians. It's a long name, but it's a good name. And also the murder of Western educated Chinese people. What I'm saying, it was a battle ax on a scalpel. Okay.

Yeah, it's an absolute awesome name, but because they, at the very beginning, they lacked weapons, and they focused on hand-to-hand combat and outright martial arts, like just straight up squaring up with people, the Westerners called the Boxers, hence how the name gets stuck.

I just thought they always fought in Fruit of the Loom. Yeah, yeah. So no support either. That's the worst part about that. No, none at all. That's why I wear Calvin Klein. Calvin Klein, the official boxer of the... I can't do that.

Eventually, the boxers were let into Peking and besieged the foreign legations that symbolized Western encroachment into their country. A lot of this is because the Qing Dynasty also kind of wanted the Westerners out. So they openly but not openly fought side by side with the boxers

and probably what is the least... It's the worst ever example of plausible deniability that I think I've ever seen in history. Now, this is a direct threat to Western control of many aspects of Chinese society. And, like, it was effectively all of their footholds in China were being threatened by the Boxers. So all of these imperialist powers got together

and formed what became known as the Eight Nation Alliance to quickly rush soldiers into the fray and turn back boxers this includes like everyone through Western Europe the United States so many countries were involved in this it sounds like the Legion of Doom it kind of is if you're China I guess we'd call that the coalition of the willing now but yes this is this is one of those moments in history that showed that imperialism and racism can be set aside when the exploited rise up. Kind of showing the entire thing as a facade, I guess, because despite Germany vomiting horrible racist bullshit about the Japanese, the Russians buying it and quickly turning that into policy, the rest of the world also doing their own versions of the Yellow Peril at various levels of severity,

none of them better than I when Japan signed into the alliance and sent in more troops than anybody else into the Boxer Rebellion. No, they didn't accidentally vomit. I feel like they fucking were sticking their finger down their throat type vomiting. Oh, for sure.

It's one of those vomits like you know when you have your friend that's really drunk and he insists if you puke you'll feel better oh the old rally yeah yeah i used to do those doesn't work no because it turns out vomiting kind of makes you die a little huh despite becoming sudden if temporary allies with the japanese that absolutely did not mean germany wouldn't be the most racist they possibly fucking could so before german troops deployed to china kaiser wilhelm extolled his men to act like the huns killing as many people as they could so this is a direct quote from his uh i i think they call it the the savage speech or something

like that uh quote when you come before the enemy you must defeat them pardon will not be given prisoners will not be taken whoever falls to your hands will fall to your sword just as a thousand years ago the hans under king attila made a name for themselves with such ferocity which tradition still recalls so may the name name of Germany become known in China in such a way that no Chinaman will ever dare look at German in the eye, even with a squint. We need to tone it down a little bit. So this was so unhinged that his own foreign minister

censored the speech before publication. Yeah. Yeah, even like a German foreign minister minister is like whoa look we might be racist but we're still germany uh the the kaiser ordered field marshal alfred von valdersee uh the german expeditionary commander to quote behave barbarously now uh imperial powers rejected to this vehemently. Like, how dare you? That goes against their Western sensibilities. But then they all gladly took part in the sack of Peking,

raping and murdering as many people as they possibly could get their hands on. Meanwhile, we all still judge Japan for doing the same thing without confronting our own history. Now, Japan obviously wanted to protect their interest in China, but they also thought throwing their lot with the West would protect them from the same kind of bullshit that cost them Port Arthur not that

long ago. So they figured, I'll be part of the cool kids imperial club, so they won't bully me anymore. No, you'll always get bullied. That idea kind of makes sense, but not really. It turns out when all of it is based on racism, if you're the Asian guy in the

club, you're never going to be allowed into the cool kids club. Yeah, fact. They were hoping that when the smoke cleared, they would be the dominant power in the area and therefore kind of be able to fuck the West right back. So they deployed 20,000 men and 18 warships, by far

the most of anybody in the alliance. Furthermore, once on the ground, Japan was constantly on the attack, throwing themselves into battle more frequently and more ferociously than any other country in the alliance. To the point that their Western counterparts thought the Japanese were insane, showing no fear in the face

of enemy fire and refusing to withdraw from battle regardless of their losses until they won. It turns out Russia could just kind of get a preview of what they would be sitting through. Now, the second most troops supplied to the alliance was Russia.

They sent around 12,000, but with vastly different goals than the Japanese. The Russians just invaded Manchuria, an area long sought after by Japan. The Russians told anybody who would listen that they would withdraw as soon as the Boxers were defeated, but instead, once that was all over, they poured in 100,000 troops

and they made a tentative date for withdrawal that they had no intention of agreeing with. Sounds familiar? Again, the Japanese were furious, but they had little power to kick out the Russians militarily, so they offered full, uncontested control over the area in exchange for Northern Korea. Japan also signed the Anglo-Japanese alliance with Britain in 1902. That meant if any country tossed its lot in with Russia, in the event that the two finally

decided to fight, Britain would be forced to join the war on the side of Japan. This sounds like a really confusing intertwining alliance. That's exactly what led to World War I. But that alliance meant that Japan knew everyone else would

leave them alone should Russia and them go at it. So at least they would be one-on-one. At least that is what Japan assumed. After the alliance was signed, Wilhelm continued sending letters to his cousin, encouraging him to expand east, telling them that he had, quote, been chosen by God himself

to defend Europe from the Asian threat. Because who will? God himself, yeah. God looked down and saw fucking Tsarist Russiaussia like ah yes my chosen people you know like i i'm i'm putting a lot of this on on kaiser wilhelm and i don't mean to besides the fact that he's like a real bastard and a baby armed bitch but like it was it's interesting watching him influence russia so easily like to the point that like

all of uh czar nicholas's advisors like this is a really bad idea and like no but cousin willie says it'll be fine like you stupid motherfucker he is using you willie would never he sounds like he's in a toxic relationship yeah yeah it yeah. It's a somehow emotionally abusive relationship with the fucking Kaiser of Germany. The Kaiser sent so many letters to St. Petersburg about all of this that the Tsar was pretty much convinced and he attempted to convince everyone

in the Russian government that the Germans would totally risk a world war to help Russia fight Japan. That's what it sounded like. Germany cannot wait to stand side by side and stem the tide of the yellow people.

Germany was like giving them a lot of stuff, but nowhere did they ever actually agree to send troops or fight with them. It was all bullshit rhetoric by the Kaiser. But it turns out... Oh, so they didn't support him.

No. This possible reassurance of German military help was something that the Tsar needed. As was the 1900s, transporting soldiers across the vastness of Russia to the Far East was damn near impossible. And even once the Trans-Siberian Railroad was finished, it wouldn't be easy and would

take weeks. Because of that, the entire Russian Far East military ability in Manchuria was limited and pretty much impossible to reinforce. Despite the fact that they were cousins and the Tsar trusted him, the Kaiser just kept on playing the czar trusted him the kaiser just kept on playing the czar at the time france and russia were allied and france was very unhappy with russian expansion into the east the kaiser hated the idea of france having a strong ally more so to the east of germany hence like if we go to war if we ever fight france again because this is germany we're talking about they have an ally in russia right behind us so like we'll fight a two front war

thankfully that never happened twice so he thought if he nudged Russia into war it would force the French to break the alliance because they didn't want to fight England and because Japan was allied with Britain it would force Russia to turn towards Germany wherein the Kaiser knew

he could play his idiot fucking cousin and do whatever he wanted because that's what he's been doing the whole time. You already know he'll go for it. It had the added benefit of drawing Russia east, away from the Balkans, and relieving tension on Russia and Germany's close ally, the Austro-Hungarian Empire. If all this sounds like plays that would also fit right in in

World War I, you would be correct. Russia was eventually forced to agree to a timetable to withdraw their forces from Manchuria, but that time passed on April 8th, 1903 with them not doing anything at all. No they didn't. They only They kept reinforcing and digging in. Really? They're doing the old la la la? Yeah. It's a lesson that America would learn

then go on to perfect into a science. In Japan, not only was their government pissed, but so was their populace. People took to the streets to protest against their own government for getting punked by Russia again. The Japanese government sent their minister to St. Petersburg, a guy

named Kurino Shichichiro, but his whole thing was to present Japan's objections to Russia's latest political dick move. And via telegram, he outlined the Japanese government's strict objections, once again saying they could totally have Manchuria if Japan could simply have Korea.

And they would both be allowed to do whatever the fuck they wanted with those two play pieces as much as they wanted. Russia responded by rejecting everything. And instead laid out their own terms that would force Japan and Russia to allow Korea to be independent. But also,

Japan had to withdraw all of their forces from Korea and Russia would do the same. But remember, Russia's right over the border in Manchuria. It meant Japan would lose even more forfeiting geopolitical power right back to Russia and Russia would almost certainly just invade Korea. Or the people that the quote-unquote independent country that they would set up would just be a Russian puppet.

And this like this whole back and forth took a year. Just going constantly like the Japanese like, come on, guys, we're trying to play ball here. But like it quickly became clear to Japan that Russia had absolutely zero intent on settling their territorial dispute. Russia had absolutely zero intent on settling their territorial dispute. They were blowing them off in a way that even diplomatically shooting down someone. There's certain norms that you have when it comes to diplomacy that you have to visit when it comes, even if you're shooting something like this down. Russia was blowing them off offhandedly, wouldn't meet them in person, would want to do this all through telegram. They were just being dicks.

Really? So why then did Russia keep these talks going if they didn't actually care about what Japan was saying? Well, originally, the Tsar was actually completely open to some kind of agreement with Japan. He didn't want war, not for any good reason, mind you. He was just worried about internal palace politics more than the specter of throwing thousands of his soldiers in to die something that i don't think any czars ever lost any sleep over like he was worried that if he made a deal he would look weak and then allow someone to leverage power against him maybe depose him it's a whole palace thing it's all dumb but when

he alerted the kaiser about his plans to make a deal to avoid a war, the Kaiser immediately called him out for being a coward. He called him, quote, you innocent angel. This is the language of innocent angels, not that of a white czar. Oh, got to throw that in there. And with that, the czar changed his mind and continued to stall and reject everything offered to him against the advice of his advisors, who warned them this would eventually lead to war and Japan would only sit through this for so long. And it would be a war that they'd have an incredibly hard time fighting due to the massive problems that would pop up when they attempted to prosecute a war on the Far East with no logistics or supply system in place.

And he ignored them all. And to this day, nobody's entirely sure why he did. I mean, maybe because... Maybe he just didn't feel like it. I don't wanna... Some think it's because he wanted to spark a war against Japan, who they not only saw as a lesser nation, but a lesser race, that he routinely described only in racial slurs.

So he thought it would be an easy war that he could use to inflate the Russian sense of patriotism and strengthen the Tsar's hold on power, which had already begun to slip and would fall completely during the revolution. Another is the one that I have kind of explained.

Tsar Nicholas was dumb and didn't know that he was being to take advantage of by his, to be completely honest, equally dumb cousin, Kaiser Wilhelm. The only difference between the two is that Kaiser had much better advisors at his disposal who had only recently played

most of Europe like fools and created the German Empire out of nothing in the first place. I mean, at this point, Germany is only a couple decades old. And it was all through like political maneuvering and also uh napoleon's nephew being a fucking idiot that created it another is that the czar thought that since they'd been fucking japan over so many times

with virtually no repercussions that the japanese were too afraid to fight a war against their much larger neighbor. I mean, to be fair, they were outnumbered by literally tens of millions. Oh, hell yeah. Also, at the time, everyone in Russia believed that the Russian army and navy was superior to anything that Japanese could bring to any possible war. There's a lot of evidence to suggest that the Tsar did not think that being a chronic asshole to Japan was not enough and was not going to start a war a good example of this was russia's economy was absolute dog shit it's it's not a like if this was a base to start a war

on like you think that like we have you know a war chest to like fund whatever like economic damage is going to happen when we when we conscript most of our working class and send them to die in Lyodong or whatever. But the Russian economy was an absolute wreck, as it was through most of Tsar's rule. Nikolaus was never good at running Russia, but by the 1900s, the cracks that had previously only began to show were wide goddamn open. His inability to manage an economy had plunged Russia into an incredible amount of debt. The entire Russian economy was propped up by French and German lending, which would continue through this war and the next. Wow. But none of that should have mattered because Nick thought there was never going to be a war, right?

Well, it turned out that czar Nicholas would be wrong about literally everything. Single thing. I just said, Japan knew that their time to act was now. They knew that the Russians had no good way to reinforce their positions. And because they thought very little of the Japanese, they would not be expecting them

to make the first move. One of the things they wanted to do was hit before the Trans-Siberian Railroad was complete. So even though it took weeks to get reinforcements to the Far East with that railroad, they knew like, hey, if we hit now, this war could be over before that even matters. Did they? Well, Russia only had about 100,000 troops in the area. That's a pretty small army, even for the day, even pre-World War I, especially for

a target for all of Japan's military to focus on. So, on February 8th, 1904, Japan declared war on Russia, but in a way that had become something of a thing for Japan. They formally declared war three hours after the Imperial Japanese Navy launched a surprise attack on the Russian Far East Fleet that was stationed at Port Arthur. That seems to be a trend.

What they did was the Russian Navy, so Port Arthur is kind of like a boat prison like it's it's defended by huge like mountains on almost every side um and has a very very narrow entrance so it's it's like actually a really easy place to besiege um but they knew that the russians also knew that hey if we just sit in the port they can't come in here we can fuck their shit up but also we can't go out there they'll fuck our shit up so what you're basically yeah we they have us right where they want us cool uh so what japan did is kind of attack with some like tiny torpedo boats which caused the russian navy to flee into the port long enough for the rest of the japanese fleet to show up and besiege them and trap them in.

So that meant like, and this would end up being the death knell for the entire Russian military, is that they couldn't pull that fleet out to like retreat to Vladivostok or even meet the Japanese in open battle. So like, they're just sitting at Port Arthur. Oh, that sounds awful.

And though, to be fair, there's little evidence to suggest that they perfectly timed it that way. I don't mean to carry weight for the Japanese war effort of surprise attacks, but it was 1904 and word traveled pretty slowly. But I'm willing to bet that they knew

word traveled slowly and did that shit on purpose. So it was a surprise attack. Not saying that there's anything bad about that. I don't really care about the niceties of declaring war you're killing people at an industrial scale who cares about the paperwork involved like that's some like uh the that's like the the government workers from futurama ah you're technically correct the best kind of correct like you're murdering people with machine guns and cannons i don't care about the paperwork involved like just just just get on with the killing if you're gonna do it um and the russian government was completely shocked by all of this because they're fucking stupid i mean

like i would be i can't believe they attacked us after all that time we took you know poking them with a stick yeah look at all these at all these rejections we gave them. Like, we're playing hardball. How dare they attack us? We've only been treating them like shit for 30 years. Yeah. And the Tsar was left speechless for a few minutes before he flew into an uncontrollable rage

and began throwing things around the room and then pointing at his ministers one person at a time like time like this is your fault why didn't you warn me like sir we've been doing that for a decade and like and all of the things that like the the kaiser had been telling him like japan would never attack you they deserve it blah blah this is the it's like he'd pointed like his like minister of the navy or whatever like you told me japan would never attack he's like i've that's no that was your cousin who does not work here you said they're giant pussies and it like all of his advisors warned him that this was going to happen and not that just it was going to happen but it's going to happen soon and like all of them ignored him.

And that is when Japan laid siege to Port Arthur, which would be the longest and most costly battle of the Russo-Japanese War. And that is where we pick up next week. Well, you got to get the warm port. You got to get the warm water. So I could see why. Just pee in the port. I'd expend a few thousand men for it. Just deploy your entire navy to jump into a port and pee in it

all at once. It'll be warm. Oh, that would definitely be warm, spicy water. I don't know. I think Russian sailors piss out cold borscht. Ugh. From some horrible disgusting

like scurvy from like the like the old ships from history is the Russian Navy gets borscht dick and they don't know how to cure it yeah they

I gotta see the doc I think I got to see the doc. Hey, doc. I think I got the boar stick. No, it's terminal. All right, go ahead and piss in this bowl. We'll see how far along you are. He takes a spoon and tastes it. Sorry, son, you're not going to make it.

Yeah, good boar. Good boar, though. So, Nick, that is part one of our Russo-Japanese War series. How are you feeling so far? I like where it's going. I like where it's going. It's going to get marketably worse, and you're going to see, like, that's – I'm going to try not to mention it as often as I have in this first episode.

And by that, I mean the borscht dick. But no, the comparisons of World War I. They're everywhere. And there's through all of this war, there's countless advisors from Western powers that would go on to fight in World War I that watched the whole thing. To include like Blackjack Pershing, who would go on to command the AEF in Europe. And all of it ignored. Because most of them were with Japan,

because Japan actually treated their advisors incredibly well. To the point that I believe it was Blackjack Pershing that complained that they wouldn't let him get close enough to the combat. Because they had suites set aside so he could watch battles from afar and be attended to by a personal butler as he's watching people get hosed by a

Maxim machine gun or whatever. Jesus. Throughout all of it, he took a lot of their attacks because Japan, as we'll talk about, fully committed frontal assaults over and over and over again. And he remarked that their attacking was very, very stupid. He also saw that they used indirect fire for the first time,

like using artillery, and calling it in on a phone, and said, well, that's not how you're supposed to use artillery. That's ridiculous. So, like, yeah. phone and said well that's not how you're supposed to use artillery that's ridiculous so like yeah and he he equated a lot of and not not just him but there's countless other people i believe uh douglas macarthur was also there um or one of the macarthur's and they pretty much attributed all of japan's setbacks that we will talk about to like, well, it's because they don't have the fortitude of a white man. And like shit like that.

Like they literally races them their way into no man's land in World War I. It's incredible. Absolutely incredible. I honestly feel like they were watching these battles like how bros watch UFC fights. Yeah, pretty much. That's actually a really good way of putting it. Or like, if... Oh, I shouldn't have done it that way.

I should have done this, this, and that. Or like your shitty uncle or something that's like, you know, those Brazilians are tricky. Like, oh, yeah, are they? They're just naturally better as your ground and pound. Does your uncle talk about Brazilians? Yeah. Who do you know that says that?

Oh, I've literally heard that, yeah. Especially in BJJ circles. Yeah, you got to watch those Brazilians in the heel hooks who are like, bro, I'm pretty sure anybody can do that. You've brought eugenics into martial arts. Congratulations. Which is pretty much what all of the advisors did. All the setbacks that russia had

and this is like because because what it came down to is in order for them to accept that russia is just being beaten they would have to accept that a asian military is beating what is considered a white european military and they just couldn't square with that so they like thought of every excuse they possibly could that were patently ridiculous um and i mean to be fair i don't think that this would have changed the course of world war one but because like by the end of world war one you see well not necessarily from the end but after like the horrible violence of the first two years, you see small unit tactics start to form. You see artillery barrages start to form.

Indirect fire get perfected and things like that. They literally saw it happen a decade before and nobody did shit with it. That won't work in our civilized white armies. They literally saw what would happen.

The British especially, they had tons of advisors there. And they watched the Battle of Mukden, which we'll talk about, and other battles that the Japanese took part in, where they're straight up using Western front tactics. Actually, I would argue that they're a little bit better than Western front tactics, using massive frontal assaults supported by artillery um and they're and they saw exactly what would happen to them in a decade and they completely disregarded it because they just thought they were naturally better which is amazing like millions of people i mean to be fair world

war one didn't have to happen your fucking fucking empires didn't go fuck themselves. Death to all the kings and all that, but like, it didn't have to look like the way it did. No. But, but you know what?

We wouldn't have got the great movies like 1917. God damn it. I, I, I love my World War I walking simulators.

Nick, thank you for joining me on part one we will see everybody next week for part two as always during our series we do not do a question from the Legion at the end of every episode we will see you at the end of part whatever the fuck I said at the beginning don't

quote me on it I'm probably wrong it's supposed to be five yeah probably five we will do quite a few questions at the end of part five or four. We'll see. I'm not good at planning. But until next time, don't listen to your cousin who also happens to be the German Kaiser.

Later.