Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 178 - The Bloody White Baron Part 2: The God of Opium and Mass Murder

Episode Date: October 18, 2021

Roman invades Mongolia, becomes a legally reincarnated god, murders thousands. Sources: The Bloody White Baron by James Palmer https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/02/ungern-sternberg-buddhist-isis/459327/ Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the

Legion of the Old Crow by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe. With me is Liam. Hi, Joe. Hello, Liam. Hi, listeners. How are you doing liam oh dude i don't remember if we talked about it uh last week but i got laid off and then fired we didn't talk about it a lot because it was still up in the air and we didn't want you to get in trouble word word well i did joe i so i i made a two tweets which were in my mind fairly innocuous i've been very careful to not mention who employed me to not talk badly about my employer

they and then the next morning that would be wednesday so the morning after we recorded all my shit was locked i got a call while i was on the toilet uh that was like yeah we saw you ran to social media i posted those two innocuous tweets posted those two tweets so uh you don't have a job anymore uh mail back your shit so yesterday i mailed back my shit and i filed a wage theft complaint with the city of philadelphia you can get fired for tweeting like we're all aware of that we've seen it happen a dozen times now but like you never said who you worked for you didn't actually say anything bad you just said that they were laying off their entire it department in the middle of a pandemic which was true which

which is a factual statement it's not like you even said, you know, these motherfuckers are laying off. Like, you didn't even say anything like that. I don't know. It's wild to me because, you know, Nick, as everybody's aware, is still in the military. And he says significantly worse things about the military and has never gotten in trouble. And I know that in our listener base is thousands of people in the military. know that in our listener base is thousands of people in the military and someone and people have ran into him in the military that listened to the show to include officers um and he's never got in trouble like dude and i went out of my way to like not obviously say like at pep boy is like

laid off their entire id department i kept it vague on purpose and I was like when it's my last day you're in for some spice like and I guess they didn't like that tweet but like I never said who I worked for and my thing now is like I'm gonna cause you at least as much

in lawyer fees as it would have taken to just fucking pay me that's the the small goal right anyway fuck pet boys i don't even think i have one in this state but if i did i wouldn't go to them they're all closed in hawaii yeah i can't emphasize enough don't go to pet boys yeah it sounds like they're also very like unsafe working environments and things like that. Dude, I loved the Roach Motel. Yeah. I love to breathe in the asbestos every day. Don't spend your money there.

They treat people like shit. If they treat you that badly, you can imagine how they treat people's cars. Oh, yeah. Don't. I do not recommend having gotten my car worked at. And the Pep Boys. Yeah, don't fucking do it. Yeah, and you can't fire me. So. And the Pep Boys. Yeah, don't fucking do it.

Yeah, and you can't fire me, so suck it, Pep Boys. I can't fire you. Now, you know who also doesn't care about their employees? Baron Ungern Sternberg, where we left off last time. This is part two of the Bloody White Baron.

And when we left you last time, he kind of sort of reinvaded Mongolia. As one does. As one does, yeah. I mean, when you're just like, you know, you're on your self-discovery. You're a small being and, you know, sometimes you got to take over Ulaanbaatar. You and 600 of your closest friends just need to invade a sovereign nation. And that's kind of what he did.

He and the remnants of his kind of revolutionary white army faction crossed into Mongolia. Now, we talked before about how he went to Mongolia and did his eat, pray, love montage. But the Mongolia he entered in 1919 was much different than the one that he had gone into before by 1919 the republic of china coming to power after the xinhai revolution had invaded again and occupied the country these motherfuckers just love to invade huh it's a problem yeah

i was just like addicted to invading i can quit whatever whatever I want, looking at you, Tibet. I swear I'll quit any time just pushing aside a stockpile of R98s. The methadone version of invading people just creating think tanks. Oh. Well, that's a good one.

Now, the reason for that was there was the kind of sort of Mongolian revolution that gave them sovereignty. This new republic did not recognize that. And like a lot of, say, revolutionary states of this era, when they came to power, they immediately wanted to do an imperialism by claiming their old empire, Russia. I'm talking about Russia. Really? That's crazy. Sorry. The USSR. What?

Now, at this time, the Soviet Union was not quite a thing yet. The Russian Empire in some form was holding on by a couple strands. The Bolsheviks hadn't quite won yet. Kerensky hadn't been captured yet,

and shot in the face. Right. They were nominally the protector of Mongolia because they made that very, very close treaty years before. But by the time China invades, the civil war is a thing, and Russia's like, you're on your fucking own, man. That's a surprise. Yeah, so China moves right in. And remember remember most of roman's army is mongolian or cossack and many of the cossacks are uh you know

part mongolian and uh as soon as they entered the chinese colony or territory of mongolia whatever you want to call it right word began to spread pretty quickly about them. The reason for that, of course, is Roman, if you remember, is a shameless and relentless self-promoter. And he never shut up about his plans. He told literally every village or every guy he passed what he planned on doing. He told them that it was his idea and his goal to bring the bogged back into power

as the absolute theocratic monarch of Mongolia and free the Mongols from the Chinese. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. I'm sure this looked very weird coming from a white dude who spoke really bad Mongolian. You thought mission trips were white saviors. What if the Mormon missionaries came with like 600 men on horseback oh that's just called utah my bad yeah an awful fucking state while this was happening uh china itself

was collapsing the republic was kind of a sham they had no real centralized government or military everything was pretty much ran by warlords. And this would eventually lead, of course, to their own civil war in a couple of years. But that warlordism was exported to Mongolia, where its new Chinese ruler named Xu Jiang ruled over the area like a fucking asshole. He taxed Mongolians way heavier than he taxed Chinese. He pressed them into his army, and he forced them to pay duty on all exports and imports. And remember, Mongolians are desperately poor already. Right. They've already had all of their wealth extracted by one power or another to include the bogged.

Because remember, he was just using Mongolia as its ruler to extract wealth to run fuck parties. Like he was not a good ruler. What is our official position on fuck parties, Joe? Now, I will say if you enjoy fuck parties, knock yourself out. However, go back to part one

and remember what his fuck parties were. Oh, I forgot about the kids. God damn it. It has kids in it. This is a controversial take, but that's bad. Don't fuck kids. It's real bad. Don't fuck kids is the position we can all...

I hate to say, position we can get behind. It's probably not, depending on who's listening. I don't know how many members of the Catholic clergy we have as fans. Oh, don't be like that. At this point, Mongolia knew that they were over it. They didn't want to go through this again. So they started putting feelers out for international

support, like who would help them fight the Chinese. Unfortunately, in the area, the Chinese army were kind of too strong for anybody to give them much help. This also had to do with them not having a lot of resources to be exploited. So the international community really didn't care. Thankfully

that doesn't happen anymore. Enter our podcast's favorite opium addicted TBI inflicted psychopathic monarchist Roman. I understand that as a very specific brand. That was gorgeous.

I can say he's our favorite because as far as I know, he's the only one. If he's not, I'd love to learn more. Now, Roman reached out to the Boggs because remember, they kind of sort of had connections. He never met the Boggs the first time he was there. He met like monks who kind of knew him, mostly because it was one of those things that a lot of monks would brag that they were close to the Khan because it made them look better. Clout and all that, sure. Yeah. But he managed to get a letter to the Bogd saying, quote, I, Baron Ungern of Russian imperial lineage, intend to enter Urga, or that's Yulan Batar, and according with Mongolian customs of friendship, accompanied by soldiers to provide assistance to the

Bogd Khan to protect Mongolia and set it free from ruthless Chinese oppression. Uh-huh. To install my own oppression. No way about that. That's right. We actually prefer yours better. But the Bogd thought this was a really good idea. Mostly because the Chinese

in their rule um their governor had kind of put limitations on the depravity that he allowed the bog to uh engorge himself on we could say like he wasn't allowed to just spend blindly and have a troop of people going into his palace to be fucked on constantly like uh they did allow him to eat as much as he wanted, which was a peace offering. To be fair, if I were a depraved monster person who fucked kids, never mind. That's not a sentence we want to go down. Never mind.

Someone's going to clip that out. Thanks, Nate. Doing Khan's work. Doing the bogged god's work dude doing the bogged cons work so like the bogged remember he really only wanted to be a monarch because it allowed him to do whatever the fuck he wanted so like he had a guy writing him letters saying i'm gonna come in with all these russians and cossacks and we're gonna let you do that again and he was like all right uh i am all about that action now roman also had an idea of re-establishing the entire former mongol empire under the bogd khan uh this is something that the bogd did not give a single shit about

he just wanted some kind of absolute dictatorship to allow him to be an absolute monster. But the Mongolian people loved hearing this stuff. It was solid propaganda. And people began spreading rumors that this new guy, Roman, was actually the white king of Shambhala. Now, Shambhala is a kind of mystical spiritual kingdom in Tibetan Buddhism. Yes.

So he's just... No. Not trying to insult any indigenous people but like we we I feel like have a duty as white people or just drop pamphlets in any indigenous language that they don't talk to us don't trade with us to be fair they do not know who this guy was quite yet so like at the time he seemed better than the chinese that will change rapidly roman himself his mind blasted by drugs and trauma as well as his obsession with buddhism and the occult also began to believe that fuck yeah i am the white king of shambhala like at first people said that he was spreading it to get more soldiers and stuff.

Because his army is very small. He wanted followers. And at first, his followers and himself were spreading this to get backers. And he did not believe it. And the Russians, because most of his army is Russian, absolutely did not believe this. Because they weren't fucking Buddhists. Most of them were Orthodox Christian. And they were like, oh, shit.

He actually believes he's this guy. Oh no. What have we done? Unfortunately, the army that Roman brought with him wasn't exactly the conquering army of Genghis Khan. Or Genghis Khan, depending on what part of this you subscribe to.

Mongolian government prefers Genghis for what that's worth. Yeah, and I think that's what Dan Carlin said too. So I'm going against the grain. I'm going with Genghis for what that's worth. Yeah, and I think that's what Dan Carlin said, too. So I'm going against the grain. I'm going with Genghis. Also, I don't know. I don't fucking speak Mongolian. Nobody knew how many soldiers he had, because remember, he burned all of his paperwork all the time.

And so he had no idea. He said he had about like 600. You guys are trying to get paid by this fucking guy? I am almost certain nobody ever got paid. I think the pay system boiled down to what you could rob and steal. It's kind of like how armies used to work on the march. You're like, no, you just forge for food, except you have to forge for your paycheck. Now, most of these guys were barely fed at this point.

Because remember, they had just fled Siberia and crossed into Mongolia. They didn't exactly have a lot with them and the ones that were still around had just spent the last several years doing opium to quit drinking and freezing their ass off in siberia yeah these guys were not good uh they were not like a group of soldiers you wanted to show up and be saviors i one of the things that continuously shocks me is how much opium these guys did. Because if there's one thing about opium, it doesn't exactly make you motivated to

go do stuff. That's confirmed, actually. The last thing I could see anybody wanting to do after ripping a whole bunch of opium is getting on a horse and running into battle, but that's what these guys did. Oh, dude. I just want to hang out and watch Pulp Fiction, man.

He eventually went over the bog, he got his new recruits, and eventually he got around 2,000 people, mostly Russians and Mongolians. They were all cavalry and included some random Japanese guys, numbering around 60. These Japanese guys had been artillery soldiers and officers in the Japanese Imperial Army,

but had decided to desert and join Roman, a choice they will live to regret. Yeah, I bet. These guys were also joined by hundreds of Tibetan volunteers, driven by the greater unifying theory of fuck that guy, in regarding, you know, forgetting to fight the Chinese, which, you know, generally

a theory that I support. Roman himself also began to dress in a bright yellow deal which is a deal as a long robe meant to look like it which kind of looks like a dressing gown um he also wore a giant yellow hat uh to go with it uh weather depending cultural appropriation is real but only for this guy i'm kidding i you know at this point i don't know if this could be considered cultural appropriation because they literally had no clothes.

All right. But in order to whip himself up into a frenzy to go into battle, now this is Roman specifically. Nobody else did this. That he would do a ton of opium. How is that whipping yourself up intoibet i don't know um imagine like kurt cobain uh doing a ton of heroin and then wanting

to i don't know rap sounds incredible right like you just don't get energy from this shit but he did a ton of opium jumped off horse, and then would skip into battle while screaming. He would skip like a child at school. Good for him, I guess. I mean, he's having a blast. Honestly, kind of tight. I don't know if I've ever heard of anybody having such a fun time at war as this guy does.

I mean, doing a ton of opium and skipping into battle. Remember, this isn't like this is 1919 guns and machine guns exist like he could just get shot my boy roman is just uh i don't know what i don't know what to say to this he just desperately wants to die and go to shambhala but nobody can fucking kill him yet um now as his brain was you know engulfed by drugs his army grew to include oracles soothsayers and fortune tellers as he slowly advanced towards erga uh now these people would eventually become his main subordinates and war council where he would uh plan all battles and tactical operations on

their advice. And this would actually go much better than you would think for quite some time. I mean, this guy just seems hopeless. So I feel like anything that's going to give him like, as long as one person is sort of not bullshitting him, that's better than he was doing.

It's, it's almost one of the situations. Cause like he's surrounded by czarist era military officers, but also has like psychics and shit he's like look i'm just throwing enough shit to the wall and see what's sticking right it's like david petraeus surrounding himself by chiropractors or something now one time he did this listening to a fortune teller who would heat the bones of a sheep until they would crack, and then they would read the resulting cracks as a fortune, which is a type of fortune telling I've never

heard of before. He was told that his army should attack that night in order to win at the target city of Mai Mai Chen. Problem. There's no moon that night. And it means it's in the steps of Mongolia. It's fucking pitch

dark as hell sure so of course they immediately got lost right so when he uh he finally did find this city um not through the help of a fortune teller but by you know scouting he launched an attack against my my chin uh eventually running out of ammo and fighting the Chinese street by street with swords until he was forced to call off the attack. Now, this failure, which is what it was, would normally sink an effort like this, but it ended up being something of a propaganda success

somehow. Mostly because of the Chinese. Now, the Chinese had no fucking idea who this guy was or where he came from, but the Chinese soldiers that fucking idea who this guy was or where he came from. But the Chinese soldiers that fought in the battle and witnessed it said that this guy dressed in bright yellow and yelling at the top of his lungs seemed to be everywhere at once. And no matter what anyone did, they could not wound or kill him. Because he was on drugs.

He was bending the reality of the world by sheer amount of opium consumption oh man when i was addicted to heroin i never got that far you had to have uh con money to be able to afford that much drugs now this uh spread the the mythology of roman throughout the Chinese army now. So not only does he have Mongolians believing that he is some kind of minor deity, his enemies now believe that too. Interesting.

Which this is when the fringe rumors that he was this white king of Shambhala were no longer fringe. They were just everywhere. This is like his coming out moment. However, losing this city meant that they were just everywhere this is like his coming out moment however losing this city meant that they were left outside to endure the horribly brutal Mongolian winter

like it's some of the worst shit I think I've read I imagine it's gotta be bitter cold there's no weather cover you're just sucking dicks it's like one of those situations where like we talked about when Napoleon's soldiers retreated from Moscow. The areas that they were retreating through had nothing like they had no trees even cut down and burn for warmth. So you just left to suffer outside. And this created something of a dog eats dog attitude within roman's army understandable

the soldiers began turning against one another with the strong preying on the weak and stealing whatever clothes they could leaving their former comrades to die but my personal favorite thing was discovering something called the eternal boot which is the most disgusting footwear i've ever heard of okay just hit me with it this is when so they would slaughter a sheep and cut its legs off they would then cut the skin back and then you would insert that entire thing over your foot and then wrap it in place with cloth until it hardened oh that's fucking gross yeah uh i'm gonna i'm actually going to pitch this idea to Kanye for a new line of Yeezys. I mean, it's got to be cheaper, right? Natural.

Yeah. I mean, it's vegan. Sustainable. It's very sustainable. It's as sustainable as your sustainable seafood will be fine. But yeah, they would put a rotten or rotting sheep leg, slide over their foot like a like a i don't know like a high need boot and until it rotted and calcified in place that's so fucking nart jesus christ i mean i'm sure i'm 100 certain that's some like step survival shit, which is just nightmare fuel

because that's how you survive in a place like that. God damn. That's honestly one of the most metal things I've ever heard of. Well, you get it, but you're just like, which I didn't. Maybe death is fragile. You've just

made yourself a satyr to survive the winter. See, nate we are inclusive now by the time winter passed the surviving soldiers have been wearing the same clothes for four months without changing or washing and you know having rotten animals grafted under their feet like a body horror show. Now, there's also a small problem on top of all of this is their diet. The Mongolian steppe and especially their supply

line could not exactly give these soldiers fruit or vegetables. Right, there's just nothing. Yeah, everybody got wracked with scurvy and their teeth fell out of their mouths. Oh, and then the bubonic plague came i should like i shouldn't laugh but like no it's fine trust me you'll you'll you'll laugh like this is fine like and we're positive that he's a demigod right

this guy is definitely the white king right like we're not getting fucked with you say is the teeth fall out of your mouth from uh from scurvy and you have bubo's full of pus form on your legs oh man thank god i have these goat feet the eternal boot is wrong i don't want to be right the first memory foam is actually just the flesh of sheep it's surprisingly spongy but it doesn't move when i sleep now as you can imagine keeping discipline and order in such conditions were hard it was it was really really hard to keep people in line um so roman resorted to shit that really only exists in the minds of super villains oh no now no. Now, in one case, there was the Eternal Stick. Guy loves eternity, huh? Guy does love eternity.

Remember how, like, we talked about that he modeled a lot of his shit off Buddhist torture art? Yeah. Yep. Ugh. Now, one man was lashed with a bamboo stick 50 times a day, every day for 10 days. This would cause his skin to be cut down to the bone.

He was then taken to the hospital and cared for until this cut was healed, and then the lashing would start again. This went on for two months until the man finally went insane and had to be shot. He was effectively tortured to death. Other men were forced to climb up a tall tree and stay there for days in an

activity known as birding. Oh. If they fell and broke their limbs, they would then be executed. Now, these were not normal executions. Normal is gone now. It doesn't exist. It's been melted from Roman's mind.

Now, for these executions, he peeled open the book of one wily coyote, and he tied the trees back like a catapult set the man down on top of it and then cut it setting him flying through the air and then dying on impact what the fuck which legitimately i was not aware that you could do that for real but it happened a lot if they couldn't find any trees because there's not a lot of trees in the mongolian step he would simply set people on fire but they didn't have gasoline.

They didn't have cars. They didn't have diesel. They didn't even have kerosene. So they would cover people in horse shit until it dried and then set it on fire. Oh, okay. That's Jesus. As the war went on,

these punishments became well-known. Desertion became common because of course it fucking did. Now, these deserters were something that Roman would become obsessed with. He fixated on them, thinking them all to be traitors working against him rather than just people who didn't want to get set on fire on horseshit. So he would send his favorite Cossack or Mongol horsemen to go find them and then bring them back sacks of ears to show that they had been taken care of. Now, what really happened was these horsemen were also terrified

of being punished and a lot of times they'd simply go down to villages and mangle people and cut their ears off in order to make sure that their boss didn't fire them from a tree or something. Oh, this is depraved. Yeah, it's not good.

Baron Sternberg, not good. I also noticed that when he wrote official letters, he dropped the Sternberg part and only called himself Ungern. I noticed that. Remember, the anti-Semitism. It's going to come back. Of course it is. God damn it.

I promise you the next story I make you sit through will involve zero anti-Semitism. Yeah. You know what? Actually, I've suddenly become Turkish. Oh, no. Now, within the ranks, there were groups of people that he found suspicious just by nature. And that was actually suspicious just by nature. Uh, and that was actually mostly his fellow Russians.

He, he can, we're convinced they were all communists, which means that they were Jews or they were spies. Uh, and he, they could not be trusted even if they didn't desert. Just like by virtue of being Russian,

you were guilty, which remember he spent his whole life being Russian and doing as much Russian shit as he could. Yeah, and now he's like, no, I'm Mongolian now. Fuck off. It's not a phase, mom. It was never a phase. Everybody goes through a Mongol Khan phase.

I mean, come on now. He would randomly just go up to people he'd heard speaking Russian, which, remember, was his mother tongue and would beat them to death thinking that they were, you know, plotting communism or something. Remember the last episode where he would sentence people

that were drinking to a wolf-based rehab? Yeah. Now he would force them to eat only raw meat until they died of food poisoning. What the fuck, dude? It just seems wasteful. People are starving to death. Cook the fucking meat! Is it wolf meat, or

is it like meat they just had? I don't want to ask questions, but I'm starting to think it's the other Russians. Daughter party of four? Oh, no thanks. Now, somehow, despite all of this, his recruitment numbers were actually pretty solid, you know, for reasons.

What else is there to do? Yeah, right. What am I going to do? Go not be eaten by wolves? Now, most of his recruits were Mongolian. And because they weren't discriminated against within the ranks, they didn't see anything wrong with any of this. There's a banner system in place, which is kind of like village-based conscription where you know a warlord of a particular area like i'm calling the banners which is every village needs to give out

all of your military age mail for military service he would go into these areas like i'm calling the banners despite the fact he has no legal power to do so he's just just some Russian guy. And people would be like, uh, no, you're not Mongolian. So then he would simply kill the village. Yeah, I figured executing the whole village was coming. Yeah. As his army advanced, their reputation grew. Mongolians called him a god of war. Not the god of war.

You'll hear that a lot. It's like they consider him the god of war, but he was considered one of many. He was not like Aries or whatever you know he was not the mongolian version of aries yeah he's like b-tier god of war and soon temples were independently holding services in his honor though there was no official recognition of roman as being any kind of religious leader or a deity yet that is coming though that did not really seem to matter even

the Soviets began to spread rumors that he could communicate with wolves and do black magic while surrounded by the bones of the dead which makes him sound way fucking cooler than what he really is because remember the Soviets know who this guy is they

fought him for fucking years in siberia and they know he's in mongolia right like they want to kill this motherfucker something fierce so like they're spreading rumors yeah at this point not many people should want roman to be alive except maybe the cossacks they seem to be doing all right now there is a real possibility that roman bribed mongolian monks to spread this rumor for him. This is a very common practice in Mongolian politics, which remember is a theocracy. So their politics are Buddhism on paper. So it was not uncommon for people to bribe holy men to buff them up a bit.

So there's a good possibility that all of this was a grift. And at no point did the actual theocracy of Mongolia believe him to be holy. I honestly think that's probably more likely, especially knowing the kind of person the Bogd Khan was. Anyway, by the new year, his army had grown large enough to attack Urga itself, even though throughout all of this winter, which was remember, sheep foot fusingly bad. Army of no food, right. He had been sending riders to constantly harass the Chinese on the

outskirts of the city, and they'd also lit massive fires on top of the Bogd Ul, which was a holy mountain that overlooked the city every day for two months. Dick move. This is actually a brilliant propaganda a holy mountain that overlooked the city every day for two months. Dick move. Now, this is actually a brilliant propaganda move. People are terrified of

this guy, and rumors began to spread that he was offering human sacrifices to the mountain gods. Now, this was not true, at least not anything I could find. However, it was common practice to offer a kind of spiritual sacrifice in Taoism and Chinese Buddhism,

which is, you know, all loosely connected. So Chinese soldiers who saw these fires and knew that this was an enemy position could not fire on them because they were like, if they fired artillery on them, you shooting at God, right.

Or at least some like manifestation of something you believe to be God. So they're like, they're just literally trembling in fear. This isn't like a knock against them by any means. We all have our weird hangups, but like most of these Chinese soldiers are very uneducated, illiterate peasant conscripts. Right. A professional army.

No, um, they were probably steeped in pretty traditional beliefs in their home villages and then pressed into military service and now there's a weird Russian guy in the mountains setting celestial fires so like they don't know what's happening right

you'd be pooping your pants a little bit too and not to mention the rumor mill gets out of control in any military even back then you know it starts as like hey the mountains on fire and by the time it gets down to private whoever the god of war any military, even back then. It starts as like, hey, the mountain's on fire. And by the time it gets down to private whoever, the god of war is setting humans on fire on the mountainside and calling God down on you.

It happens like the game of telephone, but with gods, I guess. Mountain fires. Yeah. Now, as Roman and his army moved towards Urga, the Chinese had every advantage of manpower and firepower. And Urga had the downside of not being a very naturally defensible city. There was really no walls, though some had been built in haste. In Mongolian tradition, it was supposed to be a holy place, meaning that they never really needed to worry about defending it from a weird Russian guy.

Pathological monster. Yeah. And the Chinese soldiers and officers sent to Urga had been hardly trained, most of them at all. The officer corps of this era and the various warlord factions

of the Chinese army were mostly just promoted via old boy system or connections. They didn't go to any kind of military academy and there was no basic training for their soldiers. They were conscripting people

off the streets. For instance, they had artillery, but they weren't entirely sure how to effectively use it. They had Maxim machine guns, but had no idea how to fix them if they jammed. So, like, it's what happens to get a whole bunch of flashy toys and don't actually train how to use them. Right.

The garrison in the city also hadn't been paid in months. The morale was nonexistent, and due to the reputation, both real and imagined, of this bloodthirsty god of war coming to fight them, they were scared shitless. Facing them, Roman soldiers were very well trained and led, but had been stuck outside in negative

20 degrees Celsius weather for months. In fucking flesh boots, and occasionally eating nothing but raw meat. Which may have been months. They're outnumbered. And fucking flesh boots. And, you know, occasionally eating nothing but raw meat. Which may have been Sven, their friend. Yes. They were outnumbered and

outgunned, attacking a fortified city. And if they failed, there was a good chance they were all going to die horribly. This was 100% win or die situation. Win or go home. Trying to hit a buzzer beater. Yeah, they're trying to hit a buzzer beater,

firing off a three-pointer, like a half-court shot, but it's just like... You hope the arrow goes into a guy. It's just like a Mongolian throwing a hook shot of a dead Russian. Dribbling with a skull. Kobe! There was one thing they did have going for them. For all of their flaws of which there are innumerable,

they did have a fanatical loyalty to Roman. And especially the cause, right? Who wouldn't? He's a babe. He's really not. He's actually quite an ugly man. I know. I figured he wasn't a babe joe it's one of those things everyone saw like a weird bloodthirsty monster it can be like charismatic and have like

that look i like someone said like rasputin had eyes that could like peer through you and like a weird ability to like never blink rasputin was a babe he looked like a homeless guy that just had a gigantic dick. Yeah, me too. Can I help you? I'm tired of being shamed on this show. Nobody ever remarked on Roman's charisma. Nobody ever remarked that actually, weirdly enough, he almost led a completely celibate life. A fucking dweeb.

Yeah, people remarked that he may have been gay or not entirely open with his sexuality. But other people that are close to him said that he'd never had sex with anybody. Like it didn't matter. Well, I'm into Tesla, so. Right. He led like a weird monk-like existence, keeping his dick solely to himself. So that's the one thing we can say about this guy. So at this point of the campaign, Roman had finally stopped listening to his soothsayers

and actually planned with officers instead. And he also cracked a history book, which is something that more leaders should do. To fool the Chinese into believing he had a much larger army than he actually had, he ordered thousands upon thousands of campfires to be lit in the distance, just like Khan had done back in the day, to trick them into thinking that there was hundreds of thousands of soldiers camped outside. Afterwards, he broke into a small force of four teams so they could attack everywhere at once,

further tricking the Chinese soldiers into believing they were fighting a massive horde, attacking them from every angle all at once. And as one of the groups attacked a Chinese trench, they fired off rockets, which were still mostly useless as a battlefield tool. They weren't doing a lot of damage.

Sure, they could be used to kill people, set fires, things like that. But they're a morale weapon. It was literally terror bombing. It's intimidating. Yeah. They screamed and shrieked as they flew through the air and glowing fireballs and shit. It's a terror weapon. Shriekers are scary. Yeah, they screamed and shrieked as they flew through the air and like glowing fireballs and shit. It's a terror weapon.

Shriekers are scary. Yeah, exactly. Now, while that happened, they all let out a loud Mongolian war cry. One of the soldiers remarked that even louder than their war cry was the screams of terror coming from the bug's personal zoo, because that's where the rockets landed. personal zoo because that's where the rockets landed oh now at this point the elephants broke out scared by the sounds of war and flashing lights they kicked open their cage and charged through the chinese lines stomping people to death and sending everyone else running for their lives nobody ever sees the personal zoo coming motherfuckers another one of roman's teams swooped in and rescued the Bogd Khan himself,

who had been under house arrest in his palace. His horsemen surprised the Chinese guards inside the palace, as the guys who were supposed to be keeping watch outside had been silently killed by bow and arrows by Tibetan infiltrators, which is just fucking awesome. That's sick. Despite the fact the defenders outnumbered Roman's rescue team, the Chinese soldiers spent most of their time trying to run rather than fight,

which meant they just died tired. The rescue team also brought a few horses with them so they could take the Bogd and his entourage with them as they ran back into the mountains just in case something went wrong in the rest of the battle. But, small problem. The Bogd had spent the last several years doing nothing but sitting in this palace and eating endlessly. He no longer fit on a horse.

Roll the log boys. Like that scene from Futurama where they have to roll Bender's body. Yeah. If they put me on a stamp, tell them to use the young Bender. Woo! Oh no, that's just air escaping folds of his skin

now small problem here remember not only is he huge he's also blind mostly he's like 99% blind at this point and he's lost his mind from like just uncontrolled syphilis and opium and opium yeah so they had the two biggest

guys in the team pick him up which I'm sure that meant that these guys were yoked load him onto two horses and then they would ride on either side of those two horses holding on to his shoulders to keep him upright as the horses strained under his weight oh my fucking god

and like I said this guy is legitimately Jabba the Hutt he just sits in a dungeon surrounding himself with food and like slaves I'm gonna get a cease and desist from Lucasfilms or Disney saying that you have to say that Jabba the Hutt did not fuck kids or something

now even though the Chinese held more than half of the city when word got out that the Mongolians had captured the bogged what little will they had to fight the Chinese held more than half of the city when word got out that the Mongolians had captured the Bogd. What little will they had to fight had broke. Officers grabbed whatever fuel they could and escaped in cars that they had stolen from the Bogd himself,

running north out of town, leaving their men whatever their fates were, just like, hey, you're on your own. Good luck. Good luck. I fucking hate you. You're terrible soldiers. Without leadership, Roman was able to easily surround them in secret, setting up machine gun nests

out in the mountains and behind them without them knowing. So when they attempted to run during the next battle, they fled north, attempting to follow where their officers had gone right into machine guns and they were slaughtered. The remnants of the Chinese force of the city ran

into the Russian quarter where their buildings were a bit sturdier and they could stop gunfire a little better. So Rome and the Chinese fought a house-to-house battle with swords, bayonets, and meat cleavers. Fuck. That's metal. Right? In the confusion of battle,

sometimes friendly soldiers would start stabbing, slashing, and shooting one another at close range. Nobody was taking any prisoners, and of the 3,000 or so Chinese who had fled into the Russian quarter, only 800 survived long enough to escape into the frozen countryside, where most of them died of exposure. Now, the Chinese quarter was then given a treatment that would make Genghis Khan himself blush. While the Mongolians got their revenge on the former Chinese oppressors, the worst violence was committed by the Europeans. Think about that for a second. These guys had all just survived World War I and the Russian Civil War and spent a year barely surviving out in the

Mongolian steppe. These guys knew even the best case scenario, they had no future. Not to mention that they were led by a bloodthirsty psychopath. Roman did not care about violence, and he just tried to limit it to the Europeans and the Chinese, rather than letting his Russians run wild against the Mongolian civilians. But, of course, it eventually spilled over. Anyone considered a communist was murdered on the spot, if they were lucky. This was allowed to go on for three days before Roman ordered to stop. And when that didn't work,

he simply started shooting his own soldiers until they listened. This rule also went for civilians, man, woman, or child. If anybody was caught looting or doing anything, they could be considered stealing to include simply taking food. They were shot.

He demanded what he called a quote, return of law and order, something that, you know, thankfully we don't hear anymore anymore you want to guess what that law and order meant uh executions in the streets killing jews of course it fucking god damn it we didn't even do anything man you're probably wondering why why the fuck like how did jews get to mongolia right i mean you know we go everywhere we keep getting banished from places yeah yeah again solidarity in that um now the mongolian jewish community was only a couple hundred and the reason why they'd ended up in mongolia is because they had run from previous cossack pogroms and the mongolian neighbors many of whom were related to Cossacks, had no hatred or anti-Semitism.

They had no reason to. So they were allowed to settle there. Nobody cared. But remember, while his army was Mongolians, he brought Cossacks. And the violence that they would inflict on the Jews of Mongolia, allies and believers alike were horrified by the Cossack warriors as they hunted Jews in the street for sport. They also committed horrific cases of sexual violence I will not go

into. Wow, I can't believe that someone would have done this to us. I honestly, this might be the first time in our podcast history that something was described so terribly that I am not going to repeat it. That's what they did.

And I have done multiple episodes about genocides. Yeah. Earlier this episode, we were talking about kid fucking. That's gruesome. It's only remarked about two pages in the book that I used for a source in this and I skipped

right past it. It is graphic. Yeah, great. Fantastic. Good thing there's no more anti-Semitism. It only exists on the right. Thankfully, the Jews did find an ally here and that was by Mongolians themselves and also missionaries. Mongolian civilians hid Jews in their home and in one instance

an Armenian Orthodox preacher claimed to a Cossack that he had baptized an entire village of people into the Orthodox faith which meant they were no longer Jews and he could not kill them which was a lie thanks guy

but he like confused the Cossack enough where he wandered off a tree whatever else you get it's honestly kind of shocking he's not righteous among nations meanwhile in the areas of Mongolia

not being pogromed the Chinese army was falling apart an entire division surrendered and was surprisingly not murdered but pressed into service just a change of uniform type thing from the south thousands of chinese soldiers completely unaware of the horrible orgy of violence and slaughter that was occurring in erga marched to fight them as like reinforcements now of course uh the mongolians which were much better scouts and knew the area saw them coming and immediately surrounded them with Roman's cavalry, and they were murdered without much of a fight. The Bogd returned to the throne, and Roman was made a Khan, given a double hereditary princedom named the Reincarnation of the Bongd Gengen, which is the Bogd Khan's predecessor, meaning that they were now both technically the same guy.

Oh, okay. They're both the same reincarnation. Sure. Why the hell not? The story's already fucking weird enough as it is. And given the title of Outstanding Prosperous State Hero. Now, while all of this is going on, the Bog Khan, who never really wanted to rule, remember, he just wanted to have an easy life where he could eat and

fuck, wrote to both the Chinese and Soviet governments. He told them that he had nothing against them, and he had been forced to take the throne by Roman, and he was not the king. He had no political power, and instead, Roman ran everything. And this was kind of true, though. This was the bogged trying to cop out of whatever happened next. He had a feeling that one of these two powers is going to sweep in, right? Yeah, he's going to get dick sandwich right? Yeah, he's going to get

dick sandwiched. Yeah, he's going to get fucked. But it is true. Roman did run everything, at least at first. He reestablished independent ministries, putting Mongolian princes in charge of them, but made sure he put Russian advisors close by, despite the fact he also did not trust Russians.

Money printed by the government was nicknamed barons and backed strangely enough by the mexican dollar what yep it's actually happened a lot um it was a weird weird part of history where a lot of currencies in the area were backed by the mexican dollar um completely out of left field here i had to include it somewhere now by this point roman was both a russian german, and Mongolian noble, a general, and in all practicality, the dictator and Khan of Mongolia.

Rather than live in a palace, he lived in a rickety, badly built two-room house from where he carried out all government business. Some people call it a yurt, which is a tent that he just erected in the middle of erga this is where

like a big gaddafi energy remember like whenever gaddafi traveled he lived in a giant tent but this is like a shitty tent that was drafty it made people sick uh like he was going for an aesthetic existence um which is by like all eyewitnesses like he never had sex with anybody it was like the weirdest thing because it's like the next thing on the dictator totem pole right world's shittiest warrior monk remember this is a guy that burned all paperwork that came near him so it was impossible for him to actually run the state in any effective matter he couldn't codify anything because he never wrote anything down there was no cops no judiciary no legal system's nothing. Law and order and pretty much every other aspect of state management was handled by on-the-spot punishments

by random officers and soldiers. But remember about the shit that they did before. That continued. Minor offenders were banished to live on rooftops for months at a time, relying on food people could simply throw up to them. You ever heard Charlie on the MTA? No.

All right. Well, go look up on that song. Yeah. All right. If someone didn't go by and like, I don't know, baseball up a piece of bread to him or whatever, these guys would all starve to death. Are you guys doing that scene from Breaking Bad? Hey, watch this. Hey, watch this.

Other people were executed on the spot via hanging on the street. And this happens so often that merchants filed a official complaint to the Khan because all the dead bodies were hurting business. I'm just asking you, please put it somewhere else. Despite his reputation with the bogged and, you know, all of the wild violence, the Mongolian people still loved him. His reputation as being a living God spread further and further. And during the bogs coronation, when Roman appeared on stage, he got more applause than the bogged did. Oh,

that's embarrassing. Yeah. Like in getting showed up by the warmup band. That's not how I want to go. Perhaps knowing this, Roman got even more violent. He had a feeling that Mongolia was just rife with communists,

which, to be fair, it was not. Through his Bureau of Political Intelligence, which is never a good sign, he instituted what is commonly known as a white terror. Anyone who was considered communist was kidnapped and tortured until they gave up other people that

kidnap and torture people. Lather, rinse, repeat. Kind of like the Khmer Rouge. World's worst pyramid scheme. Yeah. The vast majority of these people were not communists, and even if they were, Jesus Christ. The entire terror was ran by a man named Colonel

Sipiloff, a professional torturer who had worked for Romans since 1918. A man described as little more of a walking skeleton with sunken eyes who would jerk and spasm randomly and wildly whenever he was walking around due to what most people would think was Tourette's syndrome, but a diagnosis didn't exist yet. Sure.

Our main source for this dubs him a, quote, spasming psychopath. Right. Sipilov was also a sexual sadist and left unsupervised to carry out Roman's white terror throughout Mongolia. He was also a horrible alcoholic, something that normally Roman hated, but allowed Sipilov to get away with rumors of Sipilov's insanity spread

rapidly. And soon Russian refugees who fled into Mongolia would volunteer for Roman's army on the spot to try to escape any kind of suspicion and end up in Sipilov's grasps. Unfortunately for him, by that point, in Roman's eyes, simply being Russian was enough to think of someone being a communist. And not to mention, most of these people fleeing Russia at the time were the people that the Bolsheviks were trying to kill. So they weren't communists. They were fleeing for a reason. Sure. Now, like most mass murders, genocides, pogroms, etc., the main driving force for all of this was neighbor turning against neighbor.

And that's something that people generally don't like to talk about. Enthusiastic support for the rank and file, etc., was all personal gain. The same thing goes back to the Holocaust and people turning in their neighbors to the Gestapo and things like that. People turned in their neighbors so much to the Gestapo attempting to curry favor, political favor, or steal their property that the Gestapo had to ask them to stop because there's too many of them. But after a political execution, a third of the dead's property was given to the informer, assuming

of course they were not next in the chopping block. The rest would go to the government. That meant the white terror became the economy, which might be the first time that's ever happened. This of course had eventually trickled onto people like Sipilov in the form of bonuses per

execution. But despite all of this, there were some communists in Mongolia in the form of Red Army scouting parties. These parties would be brought to Roman personally, and he could claim that he could suss out which of these was a political officer or a commissar via mystic vision, at which point he would order them to be beaten to death with sticks.

Doesn't seem very mystic, but all right. No, it seems like the least mystic thing he's done so far. Just beating a guy to death. That doesn't take any skill. Now, of course, there were other revolutionaries, actual communists within Mongolia, mostly younger people who were intellectual by local standards who had studied elsewhere in college, and they had long ran from Urga. And as the terror reached out and swallowed up

pretty much the entire country, they reached out to the Soviets for help, claiming there was thousands of revolutionaries in Mongolia ready to take up the fight. In reality, there were like a dozen, but it still got them an invitation to Irkutsk, and they joined the various other minorities in the area that are asking the Soviets for support in their communist struggle. Noted support for independence, not support for invasion. There's a difference. Because this might shock you, a lot of people want to be liberated from their oppressors and colonial powers. In a lot of cases, that would say the Ottoman Empire or the Chinese or a psychotic Baltic German who declared

himself a reincarnated god, whichever happens to be coming to your neighborhood. Originally, the Soviets didn't care much about the plight of the Mongolians because, you know, there's a small group of revolutionaries didn't seem all that promising. However, that changed when they learned about Roman, the guy

they knew as the bloody white baron of the Civil War. By that point, it was no longer interest in the Mongolian Revolution as it was, we want to kill this motherfucker. By 1919, the Red Army victory in the Civil War was all but a for sure thing.

Various white warlords were still floating around, causing trouble. They were worried that these various surviving leaders would be able to whip up a kind of counter-revolution congeal together resistance against their secure state and the

first Red Army, the 5th, was ready to march towards Mongolia as soon as Roman had captured Urga the army was supposed to rush over the border and take out Roman immediately but food shortages and the horrible condition of the Trans-Siberian Railroad after years of war made that impossible. This is also right before the Soviet-Polish War that would kick off in 1919, so it would slow things down a little bit on the material front. But by 1921, Mongolia was in total chaos.

Outside of the capital of Urga, Roman's weird kind of sort of theological puppet government had no real power. Since the Chinese army had been broken, many of its soldiers simply turned to groups of bandits, raiding the countryside as they went. They were joined by Russian refugees, either trying to get to China or simply running away from the law and not wanting to be executed as communists. Understandable.

Yeah. Then in the north, the communist revolutionaries had slowly began to take territory, but acting much like the other two groups, killing and raiding and stealing is common in the area. Everybody was bastards in this case.

Some were just worse than others. Sometimes there are no good guys. It's crazy. There was also Roman's army, who, like everybody else, was running around killing and robbing people, but in the name of law and order this time. But by all accounts, Roman forces were the worst of the groups to do this. Yeah, not shocked. Go on.

The revolutionaries began to pick up steam, rightfully framing Roman's government as Russians who needed to be expelled. who needed to be expelled. Their violence had begun to drive people away from them and entire villages began immobilizing their men under the Mongolian banner system to join the revolution. So facing all this and unable to pay or feed his men, Roman did the only thing someone in his shoes can do. Wait.

No, he didn't give up. Step down. No, he didn't do that either. He decided to invade fucking Russia. Wow, that's bold This despite the fact his entire army was smaller than the division That the Soviets had parked on the border And prepared to invade him

Even funnier than that Roman who had been consulting And listening to fortune tellers again Went to get his fortune told At this point he was definitely Believing in his own bullshit There was no coming out of it Becoming a dictator was the worst thing he could have done for his mental well-being, and that

was already a very low bar. Very fragile. Now, right before he decided to go on this mission, he went to a fortune teller for one more time. For one more, one last go at the fortune telling cards or whatever. I don't know. This woman actually told him

he was going to die. She said exactly, quote, the god of war's life runs out and horribly. He simply ignored her. He's like, fuck you. I'm God. I don't need this shit. Some people have framed this in such a way that make it sound like Roman simply didn't care about dying.

But my theory is after years of acting like a literal god on Earth, he simply didn't think he could die anymore that was when you saw your own parts people yeah he he's he bought his own bullshit as his army marched north it was made up of 16 different nationalities and he issued order number 15 despite the fact there were no other written orders 1 through 14 he just wanted it to sound more important the thing is long and completely unhinged. I will not read the entire thing because it literally goes on for no shit. 10 pages of the book.

I don't need that. It begins with a strange history of the formation of Russia, how the revolution destroyed, quote, czar faith and fatherland. And it also quotes passages from the protocols of the elders of Zion. Oh, God. It all comes back to anti-semitism baby really fucking nuts also remember he's telling this to an army of mongolians they're like we don't give a fuck

about the czar and he also claimed that all hope for man not just russia man to defeat you know judeo-bolshevism rested in the emperor of all russia's Michael Alexandrovich, which is the brother of Nicholas II, a man who had been dead for three years. Scoreboard. Now, Roman knew this.

Everybody was vaguely aware that Michael was dead. He was missing. Nobody had found his body yet, but they're like, yeah, he's dead. This is common knowledge. He had either gone fully insane or he was going for the undying God Emperor angle from Warhammer 40k.

The order went on to blame the Jews for communism, as well as pretty much every other thing going wrong in Mongolia. You're welcome. but you know what this military order number 15 was actually missing expelling the jews military orders there wasn't a single one in it it's just a rant huh it was just it was a post he was posting through it now as loyal as many of roman supporters were this order scared the shit out of them and confused them. Because for the first time in a long time, they actually read his words.

Because he never wrote anything down. One man noted, quote, it's the product of someone suffering from megalomania and a thirst for human blood. And other people began to talk amongst themselves about how the Baron had lost his ever fucking mind. But his terror was so thorough that everybody kept writing. They didn't want to be the next guy to get executed for deserving against them was a hardened and cohesive Soviet force that out his Mongolian leaders, because he had forced all the Russians to kind of be subserving at this point other than himself, to leave the comfort of the train that they knew and drag them deeper into Russia. As the White Army charged against the Soviets, Roman held his machine guns and artillery in reserve, declaring that the omen wasn't right to deploy them yet. Oh, come on, guy. I've not deploy them yet. Oh, come on, guy. I've not even written

for you, but come on, guy. The most ironic part of this is that they were wiped out using an old Mongolian false retreat strategy where the center of the Soviet military pulled back, pulling the Mongolians further in, at which point they were surrounded.

And they were smashed with artillery for hours the rest of his army was caught in ambush in the woods of last for two days forcing them to abandon everything and run for their lives their only way out was to throw themselves in a river and float away from battle which as you can imagine drowned hundreds of people since a lot of them did not swim. The only reason why the Red Army wasn't able to pursue and crush them right then was that their commander was relying on a 50-year-old map and got

lost. While Roman's force was pretty much destroyed, the Soviets finally openly invaded on June 28, 1921. Lenin's official reason was to chase and kill Roman, with the not the not spoken part to simply take the country over so the Soviets would have a buffer zone against the Chinese and the Japanese

expansionism, which, if you remember, is the exact reason why the Russian Empire wanted to do the same thing. After Roman's stupid ass badly thought out invasion, nothing was left to stand in the way of the 10,000 man army as they walked calmly through Mongolia, pretty much unopposed, and came into the capital a few days later. Roman fled into the hills, sending letters to the Bogd Khan about how he could lead a popular resistance when the Bogd was more than fine with communists since they allowed him to stay in place, eating and fucking. He didn't give a shit. He just let me eat and fuck. Yeah. Of course, he had no political power, but he didn't care about that.

By August, Roman finally accepted this was simply never going to happen. His army had been reduced to fewer than 500 people, and the ones who were killed and deserted him when they realized they could finally escape did so. He decided he should go to Tibet, crossing the Gobi Desert without

food or water, at which point they would be forced to cross the brutal Tibetan mountains in winter. Okay. All right. This doesn't seem like it's going to work, but... Yeah, this was the breaking point. When he finally told his men what he was going to do, this broke them. It was clear that he had lost his goddamn mind and he was going to kill them.

So soon, they were planning on killing him. Dozens of officers and men began to plan his death. Roman eventually found out about the growing mutiny, and when he ordered his counterintelligence unit to round up people he thought were involved, they opened fire on him instead, shooting him in the leg and dropping him from his horse. He was tied up, and anyone still loyal to him

was taken out back and shot. While the mutineers were busy killing these men, Roman managed to escape, finding a horse and riding off. But as he rode back to the rest of his men, he found out that they had also turned against him. Though some detachments remained loyal, and this turned into a confusing shooting match

in the woods with everybody shooting at each other while Roman rode around egging them on. Now, he saw this as a plot of the Europeans. Clearly, his loyal Buddhist Mongol soldiers would never turn against him. He rode over to their camp, at which point he was tackled off his horse and tied up. Good. See how he likes it.

But unlike their European counterparts, they had no plans to execute him, at least not directly because there's the idea that it would have been bad for them spiritually if they would execute him because he was declared a reincarnated Khan. We can't shoot him, but we know

someone who will. As was custom, they simply tied him up and abandoned him on the Mongolian step to die from exposure or be eaten by wild animals and insects. The wolves have their revenge, baby.

And then the Soviet cavalry showed up. Oh boy. Now there are some versions of the story that the Mongolian who abandoned him, a guy named Sundai Gun, delivered him

to the Soviets personally. Or he left him on the step and then ran and told the Soviets where to find him. Either way, the Reds finally got their man. Roman had always planned for this and he had sewn a capsule of poison into his uniform, which would have given him enough time to

kill himself before he got interrogated. But he discovered that in the chaos of battle or whatever, it had fallen out. As the Red Army transported him back to Russia, he tried to kill himself two more times, knowing fully well what was about to happen to him, and he failed. I can just imagine being one of these

Bolshevik soldiers being like, come on, motherfucker. Stop it. Stop it. Come on, man. This looked bad in my evaluation. Could you fucking not? Come on. I'm up for my annual review soon. By the time he got back to russian territory leon trotsky noted that roman had all but stopped fighting accepting the fact that he was well and truly fucked but that did not mean he didn't get the ever-loving shit tortured out of him

for a good measure just to be sure and this is the one time i'm like you know what fine if anybody deserves it it's him yeah he was loaded on a train and sent ironically back to siberia getting there on september 1st 1921 soviet doctors noted that he was clearly mentally unwell and quote infected by mysticism yeah his trial began at the end of the month which was a show, as Lennon had actually sent a telegram ahead of time ordering him to be shot if and when he was found guilty. A Soviet news bulletin even announced his execution four days before the trial had started. So, yeah, this is predetermined. He was guilty.

He was fucking guilty. I don't give a shit. He was guilty. He was fucking guilty. I don't give a shit. He was guilty of everything. The only thing he was not guilty of was, I don't know, being a sex pest, but everybody else under his command was, so who gives a shit? The trial lasted for five hours and 20 minutes, and Roman didn't deny a single

thing he ever did, because what was the point? The court acknowledged that he was insane, but sentenced him to death anyway. When given a chance to say any last words, he simply said, I have nothing to say. That night, he was taken out back with a Soviet firing squad, at which point they took a selfie before shooting him. You can find the picture. It's fucking hilarious.

Like, without context, you don't understand what's going on. But, like, you realize that the firing squad literally took a selfie with this guy before capping him. Who could blame him? Do it for the Grand Maven. And so ended the Russian Khan, the Bloody White Baron. So, in closing, we do a thing on this show liam called questions from the legion yes now if you'd like to donate uh to the show you can ask us a question legion through dms uh discord patreon you name it give us a dollar ask us your money give us more than that give us your life savings

do it do it we're into the mysticism now. Yeah. Yeah. We're doing the wishing it into being by repeating it over and over again. Manifesting. Joe. What is an ingenious military tactic or strategy that you have talked on the show that you never thought would work? So I got two off the top of my head. One is the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps turning an entire swamp into an electrified death trap like Wile E. Coyote would. If you haven't listened to it,

go back and listen to the Iran Iraq War series. I think it's like part four or something like that. Yeah. And the other one is the Rwandan military hijacking civilian airliners to deploy their own soldiers into the Congo. We'll be taking this now. Thank you. I am commandeering this aircraft and then saying nope that wasn't us despite the fact there's like pictures of our uniform

rwandan soldiers on the aircraft it's like just a level of like i don't give a fuck fuck you level of energy that i can i can truly truly support the one that i'm always amazed uh they pulled off was the uh raid on uh what is the entebbe airport oh yeah the israeli raid on entebbe airport where they basically got super lucky that one of the hostages they released turned out was like ex-military and also had a photographic memory and they also were very very, very lucky that Idi Amin had a comically inept military. They got rolled up by Tanzania like in like a week. Well, like in terms of just like sheer,

sheer, uh, that's, that's pretty far up there for me. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's ballsy just flying.

It was like an ill Al jet. Wasn't it? Just roll up in there and spit out commandos. Just grab an Eichmann off the street. Oh, that one's absolutely my favorite. They drugged him and stuffed him in a first class seat. Like dressed him up as a doctor, yeah. The only thing wrong with that whole operation

is they're apparently like an hour away from catching mangala as well yeah but we'll talk about that at length at some point i'm assure you i love and i always love the the the last part of that which is argentina uh complaining about israel's violation of its sovereignty and i understand there are a lot of problems with israel as a jewish person i criticize israel frequently but like that's not what i have like if you have a chance to snatch eichmann you snatch eichmann no if you welcome nazis into your country as a form of like policy economic uh yeah development argentina soviet union the united states east germany western looking at you um then like you forfeited your economic development, Argentina, Soviet Union, United States, East Germany,

Western, we're looking at you. Then like you forfeited your sovereignty, like Jewish commandos can kick open the door and murder them. And you have to be like, well, so she goes. Cost of doing business,

like mopping up the blood. That is our two part series on the bloody white Baron Liam. It's been a pleasure as always plug your show. Uh, well, there's your problem. We're a leftist engineering disasters podcast with slides. Thank you for supporting the show.

You make everything you do possible by my books. If you have an extra dollar or two, uh, and by my books until next time, uh, declare yourself a God of war and invade the country. Don't, don't fuck kids though.

Don't do that.