Show 73 - Mania for Subjugation III

Dan Carlin (0:00)

What you're about to hear is part 3 of a multi-part series on the life of Alexander the Great.

If you missed the first two parts, and you are, like I am, addicted to context, you might want to catch those first. If you don't care about anything like that, well, no worries. And if you already heard the first two parts, well, here we go. Part 3 of Mania for Subjugation.

SPEAKER_2 (0:21)

December 7th, 1941 It's history. A date which will live in infamy.

SPEAKER_3 (0:31)

That's one small step for man.

SPEAKER_2 (1:19)

The deep questions.

SPEAKER_3 (1:21)

If we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men.

Dan Carlin (1:28)

It's hard core history.

The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters.

I love that quote. Allegedly, and I only say that because every quote in my famous quotations book seems to have been debunked, but allegedly penned by Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci from prison in Italy during the Mussolini years. And it obviously works so well for that era, but I think what gives it its enduring timelessness is the fact that one of those phrases, and of course he would have said it if he said it in Italian, and there have been some questions about the translation, but it's a phrase that when translated into English anyway, works for a lot of different eras in human history, doesn't it? For the simple reason that we can all think of, lots of times when figuratively speaking, the old world was dying and a new world was struggling to be born, and it was fertile ground for the rise of monsters, right? No shortage of monsters in human history.

We should recall though in the same way that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, one people's monster is another's founding father, so you have to be careful. Some of these monsters are on the currencies of modern nations today. But how many of these, you know, in air quotes, monsters was 21?

I mean, what if, you know, Mao or George Washington or Hitler had been 21?

Not of course to include Washington on the list of monsters, but had he lost the Revolutionary War, who knows what the British history books would have said about him? But Alexander, who certainly was living in a time period that, with hindsight, we can say, and it's been said for a long time, the old world was dying, a new world was struggling to be born. And it was, you know, a good possible time period for a monster. And Alexander has just done the functional equivalent of drop a nuclear bomb on the great Greek city of Thebes, as we recounted in the last part of this conversation. So, you know, possible monster territory there. But how many of these guys are 21 years old, just barely able to drink alcohol in a bunch of countries today?

And I was trying to figure out how one might decide to weigh this. Because there's, you know, on one hand, we all understand 21 We can think of 21 now and go, can you imagine? You just think of all the holes in their game, so to speak, at 21 through no fault of their own. You just haven't lived long enough to accrue, you know, you haven't experienced, you're 21 And on one hand, you say, well, that's why he's Alexander, right? Because he doesn't fit the mold. You're not like any 21-year-old you've ever run into, although it's worth pointing out that if you think about it, a lot of the people doing some pretty heavy stuff in even relatively recent history were all younger than you think. I mean, look at the soldiers now, but look at the enlistment men in the Second World War. Those guys are all like 17 to 21

So, let's not forget that during difficult times, human beings tend to level up. Maybe tough times make monkeys eat red peppers, as boxing legend Ray Arcel once said, allegedly.

But I gotta believe that the Alexander, had he lived to be an old man, think about what that life experience added on to the natural abilities we're seeing as a 21-year-old. What sort of an interesting character that would have made.

I went and looked at some of the ages of people that we might call historical comparisons. And it's stark in most cases. I mean, look at some of the recent people. I mean, Stalin was in his mid-40s when he first came to the leadership. Hitler was also in his mid-40s, 43, something like that. Franklin Roosevelt was in it. I think he was just 50 or somewhere right around 50 Churchill was in his mid-60s. Caesar, late 40s, I think. Napoleon now, he was only about 30 or something when he became first consul in like 33, 45 when he became emperor. And Napoleon, like Stalin, like Hitler, came from nothing. He had no, there was no nepotism going on in his situation. So when you get to the top job at 30, that's impressive. Alexander, as we had said earlier, I mean, he's sort of a military nepo baby that starts on third base and gets the greatest army of the age. A good comparison for him might be like Frederick the Great, who also inherited a fantastic army and military state. And he was like 28 or something, 7, 8, 9, but 21