Mania for Subjugation IV

Dan Carlin (0:00)

What you're about to hear is part four of a multi-part series on Alexander the Great, a subject I've talked about since the very first Hardcore History show, and I've finally tried to get the definitive version down.

And that would, of course, include a long conversation about his father, the military, his father built the connection between the two. And so there's quite a bit of backstory, which is why we're on part four now. If you've heard the other parts and are ready to get started, we'll get right to it. If you've missed parts one through three and you want to know what happened to get to this point, well, check them out. And if you haven't heard those and don't care at all, well, here we go, part four of Mania for Subjugation.

SPEAKER_2 (0:39)

December 7th, 1941

It's history. A date which will live in infamy. It's one small step for man. The events.

SPEAKER_3 (1:32)

I welcome this kind of examination because people have got to know whether or not their presidents have come.

Dan Carlin (1:38)

The deep questions.

SPEAKER_3 (1:39)

Well, I'm not a croc. If we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men.

Dan Carlin (1:47)

It's hardcore history.

I was thinking the other day about when the role of army commander, war leader, general, whatever we want to refer to it as, when that started.

What was the first one of them? And I guess we would have to sort of lay down some parameters of what we were talking about. But in the way I'm framing it in my head, I gotta think Neanderthals had war leaders.

And you think about the relationship when the military force that one of these people is commanding is small.

And I think of these Apache leaders like Mangas Colorado's, or Cuchillo Negro, or Pizago Cabezon. These guys would have known all their warriors. And part of the reason they are who they are is because there's this bond between them and trust and a whole bunch of other things. Easy to understand the relationship when it's amongst a small group like that, where everyone knows one another. But as armies get larger, it's not hard to see that that might be more difficult to maintain that relationship when you have 60,000 troops or something.

I mean, and if you're Dwight Eisenhower commanding the allied forces in Europe in the after D-Day, I mean, hard to have a personal relationship with the troops. Even when you meet with them, when you have these photo opportunities and they trust you to win battles for them and keep them safe and all these kinds of things. I mean, so there's one level of connection there, but it's not the same as when you have this really special thing going on. And you see this in the great commanders when the armies get very large because they're rarer. I mean, look at Napoleon's relationship with his army. I mean, I don't know if it really happened this way because it's so fricking dramatic. It's hard to believe. But I mean, remember when Napoleon comes back from his first exile, from the island of Elba, and he lands in France with his small little bodyguard, and they start marching, and you can almost feel the worm turning now. And he's back, and he's confronted on the road by, I think it's a battalion of French troops whose orders are to stop him. And they're there, and they're armed, and at one point, they're pointing their guns. Instead of a battle breaking out, he gets off his horse famously, and let's hope truthfully, and walks up to the line of men who are aiming at him, and says, don't you recognize your emperor? Something like that.

And there's this silence, and instead of firing, they start yelling, Viva la Emperor, and it's on. But I mean, that's a special relationship where he's got this connection. And none of those troops, I think they were all recent recruits too. It's not like they knew him from the long wars in Russia or whatever. I mean, that's an institutional loyalty to a general or a emperor in this case.

But you develop that.

I said earlier in the story where we are in this Alexander the Great tale, that you could have won with his army if you just let it go on autopilot. Well, up to this point. Remember, even though he's fought with this army a bunch now, we're a year into his command basically of his dad's army. And he's really beginning to put his stamp on it. And I don't know if you believe Arian or not, but after the Battle of the River Granicus, he's got Alexander sitting down with the troops afterwards. And he says some famous things about him listening to their stories and letting them brag all they want and asking them about their injuries and their tales. And you can see a data point here where the relationship that's going to propel this army to do amazing things for this man, where this relationship is growing. As I said, it's only been a year, but if you look at a timeline of this guy's career, I mean, he had all those battles already against the so-called barbarians north of Macedonia. He had the destruction of Thebes. Now he's got this in a battle of the River Granicus under his belt, and he and this army are beginning to know one another. And unlike a giant modern force, you're not having people coming and going all the time in terms of people being recycled through the forces so that new people are arriving all the time. Alexander is going to get reinforcements from time to time and send troops back home from time to time. But the majority of this corps, this army is going to stay the same. So the relationship that he's developing with these people gets deeper and deeper because it's the same people. And as we move on in this story, this sort of tug of war between Alexander's father's generals, especially Parmenio and Alexander and his new cabal of underlings that are his people, is going to start to show. I mean, up till now, one could make a case that there was almost an equal amount or 60-40 relationship between Alexander and Parmenio with Alexander at the 60 and Parmenio at the 40 But this is going to change, and you can see it develop with a big victory like this, right? The credibility goes way up when you've done this.