Part One: Basil Zaharoff: The Man Who Sold World War One

Robert is joined by Teresa Lee to discuss Basil Zaharoff, The First Great Arms Dealer.

FOOTNOTES:

1. Man of Arms: The Life and Legend of Sir Basil Zaharoff
2. Men Of Wealth: The Story Of Twelve Significant Fortunes From The Renaissance To The Present Day 
3. Arms Race prior to 1914, Armament Policy
4. A scandal of international proportions comes out of the vaults
5. The Mysterious Mr. Zedzed: The Wickedest Man in the World
6. The Soviets and Tsarist Debt
7. ZACHARIA BASILIUS ZACHAROFF

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hello, America and the rest of the world. I'm Robert Evans,
and this is yet another terrible introduction for the podcast
that exists that you're listening to. And it's called Behind
the Bastards and About Bad People. And that's the introduction, Sophie,
do you think that's a keeper? I mean, honestly better
than some of the ones you've done the last couple
of weeks, Like, well, I'll have to I'll have to

(00:25):
correct that and make it worse in the episode, he
just goes hitl oh my god. Well, you know my
guest today who you're hearing from is Teresa Lee. Teresa,
what's up? How's it going? But you're not I can
see you, and I am not. I'm in the East Coast,

(00:48):
which is terrible. Um, and it knows it in general.
You just hate the East Coast. Yeah, I mean the
West Coast, like the Yeah, exactly, We're we're we're all
West Coast elites on this podcast. Yes, elite, the three
how do they do the hacks or hacks? Are elite?

(01:10):
L No seven three three whatever? Don't at me? Okay,
not Teresa. You and I worked together, we did a
number of years at a website called Cracked where we
were we were East or West Coast elites together. Um
and uh and now uh. You have a podcast called
you Can Tell Me Anything, which I've guessed it on once. Um,

(01:33):
is there anything else you'd like to announce right now?
You also are professionally funny, um, which I think is
a cute dog named woo Shoe whose friends with it.
She has an adorable dog. I do have a dog. Um. Sure.
I besides being uh, professionally funny, I'm not never funny
if you're not paying me. By the way, but UM,

(01:54):
I have a short film, so yeah, if you guys
want check outs called I Think She Likes you It.
It came out like about a month ago, but you
know it's still out there and you can never spread
the word too much considering we have no marketing money.
But it's on YouTube, YouTube dot com slash. I think
she likes you. Well, we're going to I'm gonna ask
my listeners right now to do guerilla marketing for your show.

(02:14):
Go spray paint an m T a station, UM, burned
down house. Do you have some problem with me urging
people to do commit crimes on your behind? Teresa? Is
that something you don't like please uh please do not
commit crimes on my behalf. Not commit crimes on anyone's behalf.

(02:34):
And uh, you know, just stay in school. Cool, Teresa
saying that to be polite. This podcast is very pro crime. Okay,
get out there, break some laws, break some random laws.
Go jaywalking. It's a good time. It's safe. Yeah, blind,
definitely do that. Yes, yeah, that's that's the competitive version

(02:58):
of jaywalking. Competitive. Yeah. Yeah, the judge, the judges, the
e R doctor who sees you. Um, Teresa, have you
ever heard of Basil Zaharov? I don't think so. It
the last name again h A R O F F. No,

(03:22):
that was me bying time to try to think of
an answer. But no, I'm going to just go with no.
And you know what if that sounds like that's okay,
it's not im did. I had never heard of this
guy until I started researching until like right before I
started researching him. Um, he's a fascinating figure. Um. He
has more nicknames than I think almost any historical figure

(03:44):
I've ever studied. Um. He was called the Merchant of Death,
the Armament's King, the mystery Man of Europe, a whole
bunch of her those through. The Mystery Man of Europe
really just doesn't hold up to the others. It's just
that sounds like like a drafts nickname. Yeah, like it
was in somebody's like Google. Uh, like like like like

(04:06):
a saved email. They're just like it sounds like when
you text your friends to be like what do you
think and they're like no, yeah, Well he didn't choose
his nicknames, but he didn't choose his career. Um, and
the things he did in his life are wive. So
this guy was the the inspiration behind one of James
Bond's early villains, the Head of Specter, So like one

(04:27):
of the first Bond villains, Like it was directly inspired
by this guy, and he was basically a Bond villain. Um,
this is going to be a different episode than a
lot because a lot of what I'm gonna tell you
today are lies because there are so this guy told
so many lies about his background that nobody knows for
certain a lot of things. Um. The dude we're talking

(04:50):
about today, UM is, in short, the guy who invented
the international arms industry. Um. Yeah, so he this is
like the guy who figured out like selling guns to
multiple like different countries as like an international business. He's
like one of the very first, like there were a
couple of other people at the same time, but like
he's the he's the brilliant mind behind the arms industry.

(05:14):
You could call him like the father of the military
industrial complex. So that's our dude today. Are you a
fan of the international arms trade? Teresa? Um? You know,
I'm usually fan of international things, but in this case
I have to say hard no. So your podcast is

(05:35):
not currently sponsored by Raytheon. Um. You know, I I
haven't checked, but I'm going to guess no, um that
I don't think we're sponsored by a mass weapons a distributor,
but you know, I guess we can still. I mean,
I don't know. If you're listening ray theon opportunity here

(05:56):
you could you could reach a lot of drones, a
small group of body slash therapy fans who might be
interest in buying mass weapons of mass destruction. I mean,
I I happen to know, Teresa, that your podcasts have
a lot of fans who are the potentates of small
Eastern European nations. So yeah, that's a there there might

(06:19):
be some sales in there. Um yeah, so uh Prince
Zacharias Basilius Zacharov was born in a small town in Anatolia,
which is like Turkey, on October six. There are very few.
Yeah he's there, you go, that's two in a row

(06:41):
they love. Yeah, we got um. So there aren't a
whole lot of set facts about his early life. Um.
But I called him a prince at the start, and
he absolutely was not a prince. We know for a
fact that he was in no way a prince. But
he would lie about being a prince's entire life, not
even by marriage, not not even by marriage. Um. Yeah.

(07:02):
His parents were Greeks um, and they'd spent most of
the mid eighteen forties fleeing political instability as Greece fought
for its independence from the Ottoman Empire. Um. Since they
were living in the Ottoman Empire for most of their lives,
identifying as Greek was not an entirely safe move. So
they changed the family last name from Zachariah DCS to

(07:24):
Zacharov um so that they could pretend to be Russians. Um.
So from an early age, his parents are like, tell everybody,
we're fucking Russian. Don't let him know where Greek? Yeah,
so that's cool. Um. Hidden as Russians, the Zakarov's wound
up living in a town named Mugla in the Anatolian Peninsula. Um.
Today we would call it Turkey, but they didn't. Then.

(07:45):
Zacharias was named after his grandfather, and he lived in
Mugla until he was three, when his family decided Constantinople
was a safe enough city to move to. Um. All
of this part is probably pretty accurate, but Zacharov would
spend the rest of his life trying to obscure even
these very basic details of his upbringing. As an old man,
he told a teenage girl that he wanted to fuck
this quote. Also he yeah, he's that guy. Okay. Um.

(08:10):
Quote my father was Russian. It's one of these episodes. Okay, cool.
Well he's I mean, he's a rich old arms dealer.
Of course he's gonna try to have sex with children. Uh. Um.
Quote my father was Russian and my mother was Greek,
of the Byzantine family of des Brassinos Um. In another

(08:32):
interview published around the same time, though, he told a journalist,
I was born in Anatolia. My father was a Polish origin,
my mother was French with a Levantine Strain. So everyone
who talked him, he would tell a different story about
where his parents came from, what his his upbringing was. Um,
he was just like one of those people who lied
habitually about every single aspect of their lives. I feel like,

(08:53):
what that A lot of times you think, oh, there
must be some massive secret, but in general, is just
because the truth is so boring or so uninteresting that
they're just trying to obscure it. Yeah, you know, I
think it, And I think it often starts with people
who just like because the truth is so boring and
they don't want to be boring. Um, but some of
those people wind up living very interesting lives. And I

(09:16):
guess if you, if you have this combination of lying
about everything, uh and having an interesting life, that's what
it takes to be an international man of mystery. I
can see that. Yeah. And also, which is what I
lied about my upbringing? Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I
mean I've I've followed this blueprint in my entire life. Um.
So yeah, like none of you even know I'm Canadian.

(09:39):
I kept that, Yeah, I've I've never even seen your face.
It's a I don't know what you look like. No,
I always wear a mask. It's one of those president masks. Um.
So those zak are off would later claim we've grown
up poor. Uh, he did not. That was another lie.
His family was comfortably middle class and he attended very
good schools. His mother was blind and after school she

(10:02):
made her son repeat all of his lessons for that
day to her, which he claimed is how he sharpened
his memory. Um. His dad was in the business of
importing something called attar of roses, which I think is
basically a fancy rose into essential oil. He had to
boil like two or fifty pounds of rose pedals to
get a single ounce of the liquid, so it was
very valuable. Um. He traveled a lot for work, and

(10:23):
his family traveled with him. One of Zaharov's sisters was
born in England at the time. Abroad gave him an
early experience with foreign languages and cultures. So he again
lies about the number of languages he can speak the
rest of his life and says it's like fourteen or
something ridiculous. But he was a polyglot um, and he
gets experienced around the world from a young age. So
there are rumors that when Zaharov was young a wealthy

(10:46):
family offered to pay his tuition to an English school
in the capital. Um. These rumors usually end with allegations
of that wealthy family's Masonic connections, because this guy shows
up in a lot of conspiracy theories. You'll find him
in a lot of anti Semitic conspiracy theories. Even he
was not Jewish, um, because a lot of people are
convinced he was Jewish because he was an arms dealer
that spoilers helped lead the world into World World War One.

(11:08):
So yeah, that's a fun one. Yeah, it sounds like
these other people have to work through their issues. Yeah.
I mean, if you're any kind of important and any
kind of shady, racists will decide that you must secretly
be Jewish. Um. Yeah, it is cool. That's exactly what

(11:29):
it is, Teresa. It's it's cool. Um. So yeah, the
there's rumors that like, yeah, this wealthy Masonic family paid
for him to go to a fancy school for shady reasons.
The reality is that he probably had attended this English
school in Constantinople for free because all of the English
schools in the city were run by churches, um, And
people didn't like the churches because they were Muslim and

(11:52):
not Christian um, and so the churches were always empty
and would give free schooling to people just to keep
it full. So that's probably how he was able to
go to a good school. So um Zaharrof nursed an
early love of England, regarding it from the beginning as
the one nation that could help him establish the kind
of career that he wanted to have. One version of
his background suggests that as an adolescent, he made his

(12:12):
way over to England and attended a mid level British
boarding school. Um. He claimed the other boys made fun
of him for his foreign sounding name, and so he
adopted his middle name, Basil as his new first name.
He also says that he learned how to box so
he could punch anyone who made fun of him. Um,
so that's yeah, it's like a healthy way to cope
with anger. Yeah, I mean, people make fun of you,

(12:36):
you learn how to punch. That's uh healthy, Yeah, that's
the word for it. Phillips write this guy's life, Now,
I think it was an inspiration for time. Yeah, yes, yeah,
this is this is actually this is like the opposite
of that story. So I'm totally disputing. Yeah, so there

(13:00):
are some reasons to believe this version of the story, Um,
because he did know a lot about English culture, and
like knew a lot about boarding school culture in England.
But like people who later like looked through the records
of all of those schools, Uh, there's like no evidence
that he actually attended any of them. Um. The other
more legendary version of this guy's life story is that
when he was an adolescent, his family fell on hard

(13:22):
times and he was forced to take to the streets
of Constantinople to hustle his way to get enough money
to pay for an education. Um. These rumors will claim
that he worked as a brothel tout was the term
at the time. You know what a brothel tout is,
I can guess. Is it a guy who goes Is
it like a person who barks people into a brothel, like, hey,
we got we got we got sex tonight, come on

(13:44):
in you know where sex like that? Yeah? Okay, yeah,
you know that's exactly what it is. Yeah, do that.
You know a lot about brothels? Yeah, they have people,
that's what if? That's so sad? Barking into comedy shows
is like the worst thing, and then to do it
for a brothel sounds just like do they need that?

(14:05):
I feel like people like sex, right, yeah, but they
don't always know where the sex true true, and they
don't know what time, at what time the doors open
for the sex. You don't want to, you know, for
you know, that was not meant to be pun but
that now it is okay, No, but it was okay. Yeah.

(14:30):
So he's a brothel town and like you'll find a
lot of like kind of poorly written and poorly researched
articles about him that will claim he got to start
as a pimp and it's just because people haven't heard
of a brothel town. Like it was way lower level
than a pimp. Like he was not getting a cut
of these girls money. He was getting paid to basically
stand on the street and shout out the prices of
different women in the brothel. Um, you can bug this, Yeah,

(14:52):
a dollar to I don't know, I don't know what
brothel prices were like in Constant, I don't know. I
mean that was a lot of money back then. Sure,
hard working person not to be able to afford a
bravl um. So yeah, it was the kind of job
that probably would have made a lot of sense for
someone like Basil um because he was very cultured. Um.

(15:14):
He spoke a lot of languages. He was very charming,
tall and handsome. He's the kind of person you would
want to be doing that job. Um. He was good
at talking people into things. Um. He worked as a
money changer too, and as a tourist guide. But he
didn't find his first true calling until he got involved
in the noble profession of firefighting. Now that sounds like

(15:37):
it's normally a great thing to do, right, Working as
a firefighter one of the one of the most noble
professions you can embark upon. Um. That was not his
job in the fire department. His job was starting fires. Um.
So in this period of time, the Constantinople Fire Brigade
UM was basically a mafia and in order to make money,

(15:59):
they would burned down the houses of rich people and
then basically solicit bribes to go get their valuables out.
So they'd be like, oh, your house is on fire,
that's a shame. Be good if somebody win in there
and rescued your nice ship and get paid. Yeah, it's
pretty cool. That's dark where firefighters not provided, Like were

(16:20):
these bribes away? Like like you bribe police. But it's
not it's still a shady or we're firefighters the type
like private industry where you have to pay them to
come there. These were industry. Yeah, this would happen again,
that's what you don't do that. That's the thing that's
that with all the fires that were going on in California,

(16:43):
like rich people hired fire firefighters. So this is like
there's a long history of this. Like Marcus Licinius Crassus,
who was a Roman and one of the like considered
to be like the one of the wealthiest men in
the ancient world um made a lot of his fortune
by operating the fire department in ancient Rome, which was
a private enterprise, and charging people while their houses were

(17:06):
on fire to put the fires out. Um. Yeah, so
like this is like like fire like running firefighting like
companies was like a thing that you would do if
you were a real piece of ship for a very
long time because like the governments didn't do funk All. Yeah,
it's awesome. But his job, so Basil was not putting
out fires. He would start them, um, which is like

(17:28):
the easiest part of that gig. Really, Like I think
I would have been very good at this job. Um. Yeah.
In eighteen sixty five, a major fire tour through Constantinople,
destroying eight thousand homes, twenty mosques, five churches, and numerous businesses.
Roughly a quarter of the city was burned down, twenty
people were rendered homeless, and an unknown number were killed.

(17:49):
The Ottoman government responded with a vicious crackdown, arresting and
trying and hanging numerous perpetrators. It is impossible to know
of Zaharov had anything to do with this, but his
friends on the Iyer Brigade later noted that he fled
the city immediately afterwards and stayed away for five full years. Um. Maybe.
So here's the thing. There's again, as I said, there's

(18:12):
different versions of all of this, and it's entirely possible
that he fled the city because he committed a totally
different series of crimes. M because he was, yeah, always criming, um,
And I'm gonna read you to you about what those
crimes were. In this quote from the book Man of Arms,
which is a biography of Zaharov in his late teens,

(18:32):
that is generally accepted, a maternal uncle, Sebastopolis offered him
a job in his cloth business and the busy Galada
district by the port. The merchant was delighted with his
astute and aspiring relation, and for two or three years
everything went well. Then suddenly and mysteriously, the young man vanished,
and for several years all trace of his career vanished
with him, conveniently creating one of those vacuums in his
life which legends so avidly filled. One tale had it

(18:54):
that he absconded with his uncle's cash, was caught and
sent to a prison, from which he made his escape.
It was even hinted that he taken the life of
a warder of a guard in this bid. The least
sensational view was that he had committed some misdemeanor but
had managed to flee abroad with the proceeds to embark
on a new career under another name. So either he
got in trouble for burning down a quarter of the

(19:14):
city and had to flee um or he stole all
of his uncle's money and had to flee. And it's
also possible that he went to jail for stealing his
uncle's money and then murdered a cop and had to flee.
All of those things are possible. We don't know which
is true, if it or any of them, it might
have been something totally different. That's the fresh dri anything
about writing about this guy. Um yeah, it's like really

(19:36):
impossible to know what actually happened. And Basil himself only
deepened the mystery by saying ship like this to interviewers
later in life. Quote, I have been lucky all my life.
If I hadn't been, I should have been murdered long
ago or else serving a life sentence in some prison. Um.
So he would drop little lines like that just to
keep the mystery alive. Um. So, there's some buried bodies

(19:59):
in his past that have not been found. There were,
There are a lot of buried bodies in his past
that everybody saw, because that's kind of the benefit of
being an arms dealer is you can get a lot
of people buried and you're just doing your job. So yeah,
he's just boosting those Q four numbers, you know, Yeah,
yeah four numbers for me is all her jokes, Robert,

(20:28):
aren't you a Funnies three? And I think it's because
he's on a screen, so then I feel more compulsion
to say things. But then they feel more Um, what's
the call non sequitur, so I will. And then Sophie
across from me, so she's laughing at me, but I
am paying. I'm paying wrapped attention. You're paying very close attend.
So he lied, okay, And I don't know everything he

(20:52):
ever said is a lie, and we don't know what
he did. These are the different stories. He may have
been a prostitute barker and then an arsonist who fled
the country. He may have stolen all of his uncle's money,
might have murdered a cop. Who knows. By the early
eighteen seventies, though, we know that Zaharov had made it
to Great Britain, and we know this to a point
of certainty because he almost immediately got arrested in a

(21:16):
massive legal troubical over there, and there are thankfully court records.
So this is the ship we absolutely know happened. During
his travels to England, he met a young woman named
Emily Burrows, who was the daughter of a Bristol based businessman.
And depending on which version of history you believe, Basil
was either living off money stolen from his uncle or
living there off money given to him for commodity speculation
by a number of businesses. Back in Constantinople. Either way,

(21:39):
when he meets this woman, Emily, he succeeds in passing
himself off as a very wealthy foreign man, which he
was not. Um but he was charming, and he had
a nice suit, and no one had the Internet, so
he was able to get away with yeah, these lies.
Emily falls in love with Basil. He proposed to her,
and in short order the couple were married in Paris.
They quickly returned back to England to repeat the marriage

(22:00):
ceremony in front of her family. Years later, Emily's niece,
Henriette recalled that this second ceremony was quote planned in
a great rush. My aunt seemed agitated about something. She
wanted to wait a little longer, but Basilius was pressing
her to marry him. So. Anthony Alfrey, one of Basil's biographers,
suspects that she might have been nervous because she hadn't
told her parents about the first marriage that they had

(22:21):
had in Paris. But it's also possible that she'd started
to suspect that her new bow might be a con artist,
because he absolutely was. On the marriage register, he listed
his name as Zacharias Gortzakov, which was a reference to
Prince Michael Gortzakov of Russia. So he was claiming to
be a Russian prince to this woman. That's why he's yeah. Um.

(22:41):
He claimed that his dad, a Rose oil salesman, was
a high ranking Russian general. Um, and Basil himself claimed
to be a general. And it's entirely possible that Emily
didn't even know of that her new husband had like
grown up in Constantinople and believed him to be a
full blooded member of the Russian nobility. For his part,
Basil's interest in Emily probably he had less to do
with love than real estate. She was four years older

(23:03):
than him, and her wealthy father was somewhat desperate to
marry her off, so he'd set her up in a
fashionable apartment right off of Belgrave Square in Bristol. Now.
Basil was very much taken with her high class home,
and he wanted to live there himself. Unfortunately, once the
two were wed, Emily's father started pushing for them to
move back to the family home in the country. Basil
resisted this because he was marrying this woman for her

(23:24):
nice apartment. Yeah so um yeah. For a little while
they lived very well together in that nice apartment. Um,
but that was not to last very long. And in
a little bit, Teresa, I'm gonna tell you what happened next,
how Zaharov got arrested, and how his first time in
court went. But first, you know who won't lie to

(23:47):
women and claim to be a Russian prince? Who Raytheon? No,
they will make a missile that's nothing but vibes to
assassinate people in Afghanistan and Yemen. But they will not
pretend to be a Russian prince to romance British woman.

(24:10):
I mean they would if they could. But Raytheon is
notoriously bad at faking a Russian accent. That's one thing
everyone knows. So we're off two ads. Uh, there, here
we go, We're back. The podcast returns. The ads are done,

(24:34):
so um, I'm gonna read another quote from the Bookman
at Arms about the early days of Basil's ill fated
marriage to miss Emily. Um quote In Hill Street, they
remained the bogus boyer ms Greenslade recalled who is this
woman's like niece? Years later, accompanying himself on the piano
and entertaining his wife and her niece with talk of
life on the steps and the gay goings on in

(24:55):
the court of St. Petersburg. The idol lasted little more
than a month, then sending trouble, perhaps a lit by
news from Constantinople, Zaharov uh persuaded his wife that it
was imperative they leave the country. He gave the impression
that he was engaged in important diplomatic missions for the
Russian government and had acquired enemies who are vetted by
the police. Were on his tail, accompanied always by the

(25:16):
woman relating the story this woman's niece. They moved to Brussels,
where they were royally treated. But unfortunately for Zaharov and
his new bride, the news of a wedding between this
Russian prince and the high society englishwoman had made international news,
and businessmen in Constantinople who sent him over to England
to make investments were really pissed to see this guy
that they knew was a Greek businessman living the high

(25:37):
life in England pretending to be a Russian prince. These
people he stole from basically see him in the paper
and are like, that's not a fucking Russian prince. Um. Yeah,
So these businessmen had sent Zaharov over to England with
about seven thousand pounds and merchandise and securities, which was
somewhere in the ballpark of one and a half million
U S dollars. Yeah, so he stole steals a lot

(25:58):
from these people. Um. They immediately sent a representative over
to London to file charges, which is why Zaharov had
felt the need to flee Britain in the first place.
Unfortunately for him, England and Belgium had just signed one
of the world's first extradition treaties, and Prince Zaharov quickly
became the very first person arrested and extradite it under it.
So that's cool, Yeah, breaking new ground now. The new Princess,

(26:23):
his new wife, was not happy with this, but Zaharov
assured her it was all a terrible misunderstanding, just a
case of mistake and identity, and promised he would take
care of it very quickly if only her wealthy father
would help him with some of the legal bills in
the short term while he put matters to write and
got in touch with his royal family members back in Russia.
In December, he went to court charged with stealing twenty

(26:44):
cases of gum and a hundred and nine bags of
gall along with the theft of seven Yeah, that's not
what I expected. And yeah he stole like these were
like products they sent over as like samples that he
took with him and just sold in England, along with
seven thousand pounds worth of securities. Upon arrest, he had
been found with the securities in the form of twenty

(27:04):
four Turkish bonds and a loaded revolver. The court asked
Basil if he was often in the habit of traveling
with thousands of dollars of other people's money and a
loaded gun. He assured them that he had been traveling
with a revolver regularly since the age of seven, which
is a weird thing to brag to a court about
money and guns. Yeah, I don't, don't worry. I've had

(27:25):
a gun since I was a child, so you don't
have to worry. No, No, I got a gun when
I was a baby. It's fine, Yeah, don't don't. Don't
freak out. Um, And there's a court artist depiction of
him giving his deposition and it's pretty fucking great. Um.
I'm gonna have Sophie show it to you now so
you can get a look at how the court artists
thought of this guy. Okay, let's see it. It looks

(27:52):
like he was like in a therapist office. Yeah, yeah,
I mean he's it's weird. Yeah, that waste is very thin.
His mustache and like beard or like pointed and like
very vibe. Yeah. Kind of like a cross between Captain
Hook and a New Yorker caricature of a fancy British person.

(28:14):
Yeah yeah. So uh. There are again two stories as
to hold how this whole court case was resolved. Zaharov
would go to his grave claiming that he settled the
matter in court when he found a lost letter from
his uncle, the head of the firm that had hired him,
stating that he should take the bond money as payment
for his travel expenses and services rendered. Um and it
does seem to be true that the aggrieved party who

(28:35):
sued him was his uncle, but the rest of the
story is probably a lie. Court records note that Prince
Zaharov was declared guilty of embezzlement, but only sentenced to
pay about a hundred pounds and fines. This is likely
because he agreed to pay restitution to the people he
had robbed, or rather he got his new wife to
pay back the people he had stolen from. His biographer
notes quote. All that is clear is that Zaharov had

(28:58):
made a promise of at least partial rested Usian and
there is little doubt parental indulgence so recently overtaxed of
its probable source. Miss Zacharov, the late Princess Gortzakov knee Burrow.
So like his his his wife, who was pretending like
using the name Gortzakov, which was the fake name that
this guy used. Um, this in her husband's legal expenses.
According to her niece, swallowed up her aunt's money. UM.

(29:20):
So basically he has her pay the payback the people
he stole from, so he gets to keep the money. Um.
And then as soon as he's released from jail, he
flees England and abandons his wife. Uh and also abandoned
the contents. Well yeah, I mean, you're not really a
grifter if you don't abandon at least one wife. Yeah.

(29:42):
It's crazy that she I feel like she almost got
out of it before that, or you said she had
doubts before the second marriage. Yeah, it seems like that
that she was starting to realize this guy was shady
and then it's almost she had to just keep going
because it's like, well, at this point, I wanted to
see it through. The sunk cost fallacy is a like
the romance. It makes fools of us all. So. Um, Now, obviously, today,

(30:06):
if you've got a grifter who gets in trouble in
one country and caught in a grift and tried in court,
you're gonna flee to Mexico. That's just where you're gonna
go if you're a grifter in the modern era. But
Mexico was not the place for grifters in the late
eighteen hundreds, and so instead Prince Zaharov left for the
United States, which was the Mexico of the eighteen hundreds,

(30:29):
um in terms of being a place for grifters to
go and absolutely be able to get away with anything.
So yeah, he gets on a boat fox off to
North America. He never divorced Emily. He basically just abandoned
her to her family after taking all of their money.
Um so, uh, yeah, that's that's cool. Well sorry, I
should say he went to Cyprus, Like yeah, it's it's

(30:51):
cool stuff. Um so yeah, like it's very complicated. This
guy is like the the mo the movements. This guy
goes through. But after like some time in North America,
he goes to Cyphrus, this tiny Grecian island, and he
found a business. And he starts a series of small enterprises,
operating a gradually expanding number of shops and importing exotic

(31:14):
food stuffs. Um And as his finances gradually improved, he
started going back and forth to England again. Um and
he never met with his wife um like like he
like would hide from her every time he was back
in England on business. Um. By the early eighteen hundreds,
he took on a few small jobs selling rifles to
the government um and like he didn't like at this

(31:37):
point really like take up arms dealing as a major trade,
but it was certainly something he was willing to do
a little bit of. Um. He sold Linen's too. He
catered barracks is for the British Army. His company laid
down telegraph poles and train tracks. He got involved with
shipping and was constantly investing in different markets during his
trips to London. He lived pretty well off of this,
but his businesses were constantly in one sort of debt

(31:58):
or another, and his profits were already always in the
process of being reinvested into a new enterprise, he hatched
a scheme to get the British government to let him
run the development of Cypherus, which they controlled thanks to
a shaky treaty deal with Russia and the Ottoman Empire
government let him develop this island he was trying to.

(32:18):
He was trying to he failed out. Um. So England
was kind of like in control of Cypherus due to
these like weird series of political events, and he was
trying to get them to like develop the island and
let him run it. Um. But that didn't end up working. Um.
Neither did a series of like business ventures in Alexandria
and then France and then back to the Mediterranean coast. Um.
And trying to keep track of all his businesses and

(32:40):
plots in this period is like impossible. Um, there's just
so much ship going on and like so much doubt
about it. What matters is that he was a serial entrepreneur.
He's one of these guys that always has an angle,
always has a business he's trying, always has an investment
going on. Um. And yeah, he was successful enough at
this that he was able to dress well and live
come doably and put on the image of being wealthy,

(33:02):
but he was also always on the edge of disaster
and always had most of his assets invested into the
next big thing. Um have you seen Uncut Gems? No,
this reminds me of that movie. Yeah, he's just constantly
Adam sand there's characters like constantly just like getting in
higher stakes gambling debt and he'll like finally get it

(33:24):
back to pay someone, but instead of paying it back,
he's like, I'm gonna gamble this on this new game
and then I'll make even more and you we'll both
get paid. And he's just doing it more and more,
and then at the end, well, I won't give it away,
but you know, gambling, you can you can assume that
it's how gambling happens, what happens when Yeah, generally this
is kind of that story. But for him, when he

(33:47):
gambles too much, it helps start World War One. Um,
so a little bit more high stakes. Wow, Okay, so
we're going there. Okay, cool, Yeah, that's where this ship goes.
Um So, Basil built a reputation as a man of scandal,
and he left behind a constant stream of sobbing women
and outraged families. Um, I'm gonna read you now a
letter that he sent while he was in a hotel

(34:07):
in Paris to one of his business partners. And this
letter kind of gives you some insight into the way
he conducted his relationships. Um. And he's talking in this
about like two women he met at the hotel and
and slept with. Quote, Uh, Miss Jehren, whom I was
fool enough to poke a few times immediately after my
arrival at the hotel, had her knife in me and

(34:28):
Miss mccraith from my giving her up with the ladder.
You appear to be under the impression that Miss mccraith
was divorced and I might marry her. You were wrong.
I would not do so if she had millions. I
poked her because it was my caprice. I poke her still,
and when I want to change, I shall give her up.
I'm under no obligations to her family, as she cost
me what an average whore would do, and I pay
her in one way or another. And I have no

(34:48):
doubt that if another man chose to court her and
pay for it, he could have her if he paid
more than me, and she would turn me up. This
is the guy way this guy talks about, Oh my god, yeah,
he's pretty gross. So shortly after yeah, I didn't even
realize that I don't know people. It just seems very
current to be like a poked her. Yeah, it's weird

(35:13):
to hear in like an eight you expect people to
be like, I don't know, what's a fancy way to
say fuck, I lay with you know, stooped. It's not
fancy at all. So shortly after writing this, Zaharov fell ill.
He was diagnosed with anemia, and it's impossible to know
what ailment he actually had because eighteen seventies medicine was

(35:34):
basically drunk guessing. His description of his doctor's orders for
how to treat this ailment as entertaining, though quote I
am to avoid the least excitement, to take gentle exercise
and avoid all stairs. And if I want to kill myself,
I am to have a woman. This last is strictly enforced.
I am to give up women altogether, and in fact
avoid them so as to not get excited. His doctor
says he's got to stop sucking after you. So it's

(35:55):
a dick disease. He probably go on STD because they
were like and they said he can't. He can't get excited,
not because of the heart, but because of his dick.
Because so maybe his burns and he when it gets
hard it hurts, might have gotten some of that chlamydias.

(36:15):
I don't know. Poke disease. Yeah, he was poking too much,
and his doctor said he had to stop it with
the poke in. So whatever illness actually affected him, Basil
Zaharov eventually recovered and continued his unsuccessful bouncing around the
Mediterranean in search of a big score. By eighteen eighty four,
he'd given up on this quest and decided to take

(36:37):
leave of the continent for good and try his luck
in the United States of America. Um, and I'm not
going to kill myself by giving you an itemized list
of every con and legitimate business that he dipped his
fingers into. The Smithsonian magazine gives a pretty good overview
of Basil's time in the United States. Quote it appears
that he was the Count Zaharov who in Utah in
eighteen eighty four claimed to be in possession of four

(36:57):
black diamonds that played a celebrated part in Turko Russian War,
and who a year later caused a small scandal in
Missouri by associating it with the notorious Madam Pearl Clifford,
one of the most beautiful soiled doves ever known in St.
Louis were working as a superintendent of a local railway
sleeping car company. He was certainly the Count Zaharov who
hastily promoting himself to the imminence of Prince Zacharias Basilia

(37:19):
Saharov married the New York heiress Genie Billings for her
hundred and fifty thousand dollars and her expectations later in
eighteen eighty five. So he bounces around like sells like
like gets involved in some sort of scheme pretending that
he has like these historic diamonds. Um, like runs a
railway sleeping car company at some point. Like he's just

(37:42):
constantly involved in these like weird little get rich quick schemes. Um.
And then he marries this New York heiress uh and
steals her money. UM. So yeah, um, he definitely has
a pattern. UM. And I found a like a quote
from the Maha Daily b Um like an article at

(38:02):
the time, like written about him at the time that
describes his modus operandi during this period. Quote, he maintained
a high social position by means of letters from prominent
society people which purported to be genuine, and had a
library full of documents which he claimed were written to
him by European dignitaries. He claimed to be a nephew
of Prince Gortchakov, and told a remarkable story of his
banishment by the Tsar. At one point, he created a

(38:24):
considerable commotion among the set here in which he moved
by threatening to go abroad and fight a duel with
a Prussian prince who dared to insult his mother. So
it's the same kind of lie, Like I mean, there's
no Internet, so you just go over to America and
just try a new set of lies on a new
set of people. So that's pretty cool. Yeah, it's almost
like the bigger the lie, the less like he thinks, like,
the less likely. It's like you think, like, oh, someone

(38:45):
wouldn't lie about something that big, Like you could easily
find out if he was a prince so capitalized, so
let's not look and do it at all. Yeah, exactly, Like, well,
if he was a prince, we would know that. If
he wasn't really a prince, it would be someone was saying, yeah,
I do feel like in that period of time in America,
if you had an accent that was vaguely European, most
people would believe that you were royalty as long as

(39:07):
long as you wore a suit. I think even like
when I studied abroad with in college, it was like
the girls weren't crazy for accents. It's like, you know,
just have an accent. You could still be a bad,
bad person. The Gauls still be mean to you, but
they're like, no, the European accent, they're perfect and you know,
can do no wrong better than American man. Oh yeah,

(39:28):
I mean you can get away with anything if you
have the right kind of British acts. If you have
the wrong kind of British accent, you can't get away
with anything. Um real crapshoot being English. So um yeah.
Basil's scamming in America worked out well for a while,
but as always, he was eventually found out. Uh. This
time it was by a Philadelphia businessman who happened across

(39:51):
another newspaper article announcing his marriage in New York. Like
that this woman in New York was getting married to
this Russian prince. Um. So this wedding between in the
Russian prince and a wealthy socialite was once again big news. Uh.
And unfortunately for Basil. The businessman who came across this
was originally from Bristol and was like, didn't I read
a news article about a Russian prince marrying a rich
woman and then that guy got arrested for like stealing

(40:13):
a shipload of money. Um. So this guy reaches out
to Basil's first wife over in England and her family
starts an international manhunt to arrest this bigamist um. And yeah,
so Basil has to flee the United States for again.
So he's now fled two countries um for marrying rich
woman and stealing their money while pretending to be a

(40:34):
Russian prince. Um. But he got out just ahead of
the authorities. He managed to make it back to Europe
as the law was closing in on him. Um. He
left behind his wife and a pile of debts once again,
and by eighty five he was back in the Balkans
working for an old employer of his named Thorsten nordon Felt.
Now norton Felt ran a sizeable arms company. He was

(40:56):
a weapons manufacturer and he was one of a number
of up and coming business is that we're selling ever
deadlier guns to the armies of Europe. Norton Felt had
employed Basil as a salesman briefly back in eighteen seventy seven,
but the two had fallen out of touch over the years,
as Basil had fucked and scammed his way across multiple continents.
But now that Zaharov was back and looking for work,
Norton felt arms seemed as good a place to make

(41:17):
money as any And it's here we should talk a
little bit about the global armaments industry. Um, it didn't
really exist for most of history. Early firearms were like
artisanal tools. Each one was made by hand by like
an artisan um and so like you couldn't really have
gigantic gun companies in the same way you do now
because you needed like some some dude like manufacturing. Yeah,

(41:41):
it wasn't really possible with like early arms. Um, you know,
some firearms makers were like larger and more successful and
like hired a lot of these artisans. But like international
arms conglomerates the way we know them did not exist
at the time, which is a shame because it means
that the good people of the late eighteen hundreds couldn't
enjoy the fine products that the Raytheon Corporation makes. Like

(42:04):
that knife missile I told you about. I bet there's
a thousand things you could use a knife missile for.
To reason weapons person, you know, I like to get
my weapons at the farmer's market. I just think I
like to look someone in the eyes when I'm buying
a killing machine. You know, I want to be like,
I want to know the hands, you know, I want

(42:25):
to touch the hands that that made it. I like
twine guns, you know that makes sense. Farm to table drones, Yeah,
like I see me where these drones free range. I
want my drones to be played classical music while they're

(42:45):
being made. I I only local bullets. I am not
going to like yeah, I'm not. I don't want to
murder the environment, just these random people I've decided to
my enemies. Yeah, well, if you and joy artisanal killing machines,
then will enjoy the fine products and services that support
this podcast. We're back so talking about the arms industry

(43:16):
in the late eighteen hundreds. I'm going to read a
quote from Smithsonian magazine kind of laying out the state
of the industry at the time. It was not then
a huge industry. Best known was perhaps Alfred Krupp, the
cannon maker of sen at Ten. He inherited a modest
iron foundry from the old Frederick Krupp, who had started
in in eighteen three. At fourteen, Alfred went into the
business and slowly took over its direction. Cannon were made

(43:38):
of copper. Alfred perfected a solid, crucible steel block from
which he made cannon, but he had not yet perfected
any projectile capable of penetrating the transigent mentality of military bureaucrats.
Cannon were made of copper had always been it must
always be hair. Krupp learned from the start that the
way to sell cannon to the Prussian king was to
sell them also to Prussia's neighbors and enemies. He made

(43:59):
his first sales to Egypt, then to Austria. When the
Austria Prussian War began, both armies fired crups cannonballs at
each other, and his guns would have been working in
both armies in the Franco Prussian War, but for Napoleon
the Third's refusal to buy them crups cannon made bismarck
swift victory possible. Um So this is like the first
big armed manufacturers Krupp Um, and by the mid eighteen hundreds,

(44:23):
like the industry was starting to grow. In part because
of Krupp, Modern firearms made by companies like Winchester and
Martini had also started to sweep into the world's wars. Yeah, yeah, exactly,
Barrier company. See shot. Shoot the houses right by the
Winchester mystery house. Shout out to San Jose is right
by women, Shout out to San Jose. And if if

(44:43):
you're in California and you're going to kill people, make
sure it's with a Winchester rifle. No, no, no, don't
don't listen to that. Just don't kill people. Cool, But
if you do kill local Roberts As a Texan, I

(45:04):
use Raytheon because it's made outside a plane, Oh Texas.
So I know that if I'm gonna drone strike somebody,
I'm gonna drone strike them with a drone made right
down the road by the same artisans that I meet
in line at the Trader Joe's before they go build
missile guidance systems. That's good, you know, It's like, yeah,
keep keep killing local. That's what we want in our community. Yeah,

(45:28):
kill lot, wan't no, this is too dark a line effect.
Um So, yeah, like the the American Civil War had
been impacked on the growth of the arms industry at
this time because like we start to make like you
start to see mass produced weapons that are like way
deadlier than guns had ever been before, and suddenly all
these these nations in Europe start wanting to buy them.

(45:50):
Um there's fighting in between Greece and Russia and Serbia
and Turkey and the Balkans, and like this spreads the
development of new cannons and new firearms and spreads their
adoption by the armies of Europe. Um so yeah, uh,
this is kind of the state of the industry in
eighteen eighty five when Basil gets involved in it. So
like it is starting to explode, but you're still at

(46:12):
this point where like the idea of massive international arms
companies is kind of weird and new. Um and Zaharov
was initially commissioned to act as the Norton Felt Arms
corporate representative for the Balkans. He received five pounds a
weekend salary plus commissions. Basil being an entrepreneur, and it
instantly realized that selling a handful of guns at a
time to a single country was not going to earn

(46:33):
him the kind of money he desired to make, so,
taking a leaf out of Krup's book, he decides that
he should start selling guns by triggering arms races. That like,
this is the way to make fucking money. If you're
gonna if you want to sell a lot of guns,
you make an arms race. Um. Norton Felt was not
a large manufacturer, but they traded in some very novel
weapons systems, including a brand new submarine that had just

(46:55):
been invented. Now, submarines were really new at the time,
and they weren't very well understood, and they usually killed
the people inside of them. You wouldn't want to be
a submarine person in this time. Um. But there were
also like this, the new sexy weapons system like uh
so they represented a huge opportunity because like, no one
really had them yet. Um. And here's how the biography

(47:15):
Man of Arms describes what basiled it. Next quote. Many
years later, zaharof Re counted his part in opening up
this market. I sold a submarine to the Greeks, and
then he added with a conventional chuckle, and went to
the Turks and sold them a couple Russia presented the
next obvious target. From a less reliable source, we learned
that Zaharov, with bland impudence, expounded the situation as he
saw it to the navy minister in St. Petersburg. My

(47:37):
firm is the agent of no one power. The Turks
have brought two submarines from my firm. In the event
of war, the Turkish navy can, thanks to these submarines,
minister ships in the Black Sea and strike you where
you least expect them. What the Turks possess you two
can have in greater numbers if you wish. I proposed
that while two submarines are sufficient for the local needs
of a small power like Turkey, four should be necessary

(47:58):
for your own great security. Is a great power. Legend
relates that Russia fell for this logic that was, this
would have made a total of seven submarines, which is
a lot of money for him. So he sparks like
a minor submarine arms race between three countries. He's like
a high school girl. That's like trying to start drama
where you go up to like one two best friends.
You're like, oh, I heard so and so I heard

(48:18):
Becky's you know, say that she didn't like you, and
then they're like, Becky's a bit and then you go
to Becky and you're like, I heard Kelsey while and
now they're like fighting, but they weren't if it wasn't
for him. I mean, that makes me think that teenage
girls would actually be incredible arms dealers. I think teenage
girls would make excellent UM intelligence officers because all of

(48:41):
the CIA and intelligence companies, companies, you know, organizations do
is they're just gossiping. That's all they're doing. They're meeting up,
just exchange secrets and make little alliances, and we should
use teenage Well no, let's never mind. I take that back.
Let's not use teenage girls for anything. But let's harness
He does listen to this podcast a lot, so maybe

(49:02):
they'll take you up on that. Yeah, harnessing teenage girls
and teenage crops. Not literally, not so. The submarines that
Zaharov sold were notoriously shitty and basically death traps um
and they were they were renowned as being death traps
by the standards of late eighteen hundred submarines. So like

(49:23):
in the era where all submarines are death traps, everyone's like,
but don't get in those fucking submarines because they're terrible.
Um but he makes a lot of money selling them.
Um So. Uh. This, this fact that he sold seven
submarines and got a cut of the commissions obviously generated
him a tidy prophet and turned him instantly into one
of the most influmential minds within the Norton Felt Arms company.

(49:45):
Zaharov basically coined this codified his strategy of selling arms
to one country to panic another, to then panic another
so we could sell arms to them all. Uh. He
came to like basically turned this into like he called
it the system Zahara off. So he like he like
names this thing he did to spark arms right, No,

(50:07):
like system with an ether, like the zach a masterpiece. No,
it's he is kind of naming it like a masterpiece.
He's like when he goes into court meetings, he's like,
the thing you gotta do is sparking arms race. That's
how you fucking make bank with this ship. And like,
I'm the guy who invented even though he's kind of
stealing that from Krupp because he's, you know, a scammer.

(50:30):
Um So, having cornered the Mediterranean submarine market, Zaharov next
set his sights in a more ambitious goal, the European
machine gun industry. Here In Maxim, the American arms maker
who invented the Babe Ruth of weaponry meant to kill
large numbers of European teenagers, had just arrived on the continent.
Maxim was demonstrating his new quick firing Maxim gun, which
worried Norton Felt since their own quick firing gun was

(50:52):
really shitty. Zaharov knew at once that Maxim single barreled
machine gun was way better than the one that Norton
Felt made, and in the tradition of all gray businessman,
he decided that if you can't beat them, join them.
No one is certain how Basil convinced Hiram Maxim to
merge his company with Norton Felt Um, but H. G.
Wells wrote out one of the explanations of this. So

(51:12):
this is H. G. Wells talking about how Zaharov achieved
this coup quote. Maxim exhibited his gun in Vienna. When
he fired his gun at a target and demonstrated its powers,
Zaharov was busy explaining to expert observers that the whole
thing was an exhibition of skill, that only Maxim could
fire the gun, it would take years to train men
to use it, that these new machines were delicate and

(51:33):
difficult to make and could not be produced in quantities,
and so forth. Maxim, after tracing the initials of the
Emperor upon a target, prepared to receive orders, they were
not forthcoming. He learned that Norton felt was simple and strong.
This gun of his was a scientific instrument, unfit for
soldierly hands. His demonstration went for nothing. What had happened?
He realized he was visa v with a salesman, a

(51:54):
very formidable salesman. In the end, he amalgamated with a salesman.
So Zaharov is like, I can't beat this guy's guns.
We'll light everyone about him until he realizes he's basically
just gotta work with me, otherwise he's not going to
succeed in selling any guns. That's such a classic manipulation move,
because he's like, that gun sucks, don't buy that gun.
And then once they join, he's like, now I have
your gun, and now he's like it's good again. Now

(52:15):
we're selling it. So no, this is the best, guys,
super easy to use. You can kill so many teenagers
with this gun. You want to kill teenage British people.
This is the gun, so stop the killed so many
teenage British people. This is World War One, Sophie. Yes,
but but don't say if you want to I mean

(52:38):
the domestic. If you want to kill the most European
conscript soldiers possible, you want a Maxim machine gun. And
they do sponsor this podcast. Jesus. So this happened in
six and over the next couple of years, Norton Felt
himself increasingly bowed out of the company he'd found, did

(53:00):
while Basil Zaharov took control of much of the enterprise.
And it's hard to overstate what a big deal this is.
So Maxim Norton Felt Arms quickly becomes maxim Um like
like it's just known by the name Maximum because their
gun is like the is like the defining weapon of
the age. Um and Maxim under Zaharov becomes one of

(53:20):
the very very first massive international gun companies uh international
arms companies, and they sold a huge variety of weapons
to parties in multiple hemispheres. The additional reach the merger
gave Zaharof meant it was even easier for him to
spark arms races all over the world. And I'm gonna
quote from the Smithsonian again here. The next step was
a condembination with Vickers, Thomas Vickers, the second largest English

(53:42):
manufacturer of arms. Maxim became a member of the Vickers
board of directors. Zaharov's name did not figure into the
organization at all, but he and Maxim and some proportion
unknown to history, got for their company from Victors one
point three million pounds over six and a half million dollars,
partly in cash and partly in stock. For the Vickers company,
Zaharrof became a substantial stockholder and Vickers and would one

(54:02):
day be the largest of all. He also became the
chief salesman of Vickars, which, unlike Krup and Schneider, had
remained up to this point, out of the international market.
But Zaharov showed the way in this bountiful field, and
therefore he got moving about Europe with a card announcing
himself as the delegate of Thomas Vickers and Sons. So
the period from eighteen seventy seven to nineteen fourteen, when
he's the chief representative of like the big one of

(54:26):
the probably the biggest arms company in the world. Was
also the period where the world went through the most
significant arms build up that has ever happened. New technologies
were being constantly invented and refined, and every nation in
Europe was like worried about fighting every other nation in Europe.
So they all were buying up piles of Maxim guns
and Krupp cannons and like all of the weaponry they
could possibly get. And Zaharov himself drove this trend. In

(54:49):
eighteen ninety his Vickers Guns became the sole supplier of
naval weaponry for the British Empire. Uh they bought a
controlling interest in beard More shipbuilding firm in Glasgow, which
gave the Gigantic arms concern. Zaharov managed a cut of
the fortune that Britain spent building up her navy. Now,
Britain's naval build up was driven largely by Kaiser Wilhelm's
obsessive need to grow the German navy, which was steadily

(55:10):
encouraged by Krupp. So like the German Arms Company, Krupp
is telling the leader of Germany, like, you got to
build more ships, and Basil's being like, hey, the Germans
are building more ships. We gotta build more ships, and
it just so happens that I get a cut of
every ship built. So both corporations profited massively from this
naval build up, which also ratcheted up tensions between Imperial
Germany and Great Britain the world before where planes invented here?

(55:35):
Or is this all of your boat? Like? Okay, so
he because I'm just imagining, like because when you say
like he went to this country and said this, I
went to this country, I'm imagining like him getting on
a boat, taking a long time to get there, and
then being like, here's some gossip by this thing, and
then like getting back on It's it's very slow. It's
very slow. He's not taking plane. There are planes in

(55:57):
this period and he a little later we'll talk about
how he started convincing countries to buy air forces. How
does a submarine like once it's bought, like, does someone
drive it over to Germany? I think they were probably
built in the Mediterranean and then just like sailed over
to where they were going. Amazon delivery your U boats

(56:18):
are here, Yeah, I mean Amazon will get a U
boat to you way faster. I mean, they've gotten so
much better at delivering submarines. Um so um, yeah do
do do Yeah. Both Krupp and Uh and Uh Maxim
or Yeah profited massively from the naval build up that
just you know, also ratcheted up tensions in Europe and

(56:40):
got both countries closer to fighting each other. Um and
Zahrov continued to sell arms to both sides of conflicts
and wars all over the world, using the cynical tactics
of the system he had designed to ensure ever growing
profits while the world lurched closer and closer to cataclysm.
I found a really interesting book called Men of Wealth
by a guy named John Flynn, that is a good
job of ill straining how this web came together. Quote

(57:02):
Evince favored them the Spanish American War, the Chinese American War,
the English Bower War, in which the Tommy's armed with
Vickers rifles were scientifically mowed down with Maxims machine gun
or quick filing in cannon supplied to the Bowers by
Mr Zakharov of Vickers. But the greatest opportunity was the
Russo Japanese War, when it ended all of Europe's war
ministries awoke. The war had been a great proving ground

(57:23):
for guns and ships, a laboratory for militarists. Above all,
Russia had to start at the bottom and completely rebuilt
her shattered armies. The Czar provided over six d and
twenty million dollars for rearming. All the armament makers in
the world flocked to St. Petersburg. Zaharof representing Vickers, arrived
first on scene. So like, he's the official arms manufacturer
of the British army and he's selling guns to the

(57:44):
Bowers who were murdering British soldiers. Um. And then he
sells a bunch of weapons to the Japanese, who then
beat the Russians in a very surprising war. And the
fact that Japan, this like third rate power in the
eyes of Europeans, beats Russia in this war leads to
all these nations buying in more guns because they're like, oh, ship,
Japan can do that stuff to Russia, they might be
able to do it to us. We gotta buy more weapons,

(58:05):
and the Russians are like, we need to buy way
more fucking weapons. So like, he's very successful in getting
everybody to continue buying way the funk more guns. Um.
And what Basil Zaharov did in St. Petersburg would establish
him as the greatest arms dealer of his era and
perhaps of all time. It would also help make the
horrible blood letting of the First World War completely inevitable.

(58:26):
But that story, Teresa, we're gonna have to talk about
in part two. How are you feeling so far? Well,
I mean, like, you know, I I know how, I
know part of how it ends because I know I
know we're getting up to the war, so so I'm
just like I want to put those dots together. Can't wait. Yeah,
it is good. It's a good time. We're at the

(58:47):
part right now where um, I don't know, he's helped
spark a couple of wars, but um, not nearly as
much as he's gonna do. Um. But for now, it's
time for all of you to go off and try
to provoke your own wars. In he means it's time

(59:09):
to plug your plugables. Teresa, Yeah, it is time to
plug your plug doubles. Oh my plugables. I was like,
wait what sorry? I thought this was like I thought
you were doing a sponsored ad for Glade plugables. Um, no,
my plugables. Oh well, you know you can listen to
my podcast. You can tell me anything where comedians like Robert,

(59:31):
who's been on before, um confess something they've never told
anyone before. I guess if this this guy Basil was
on and be all lies, but generally speaking, people tell truths.
And then we talked it's fun. You know what else
is fun? Teresa? What the fine products produced by great
companies like Raytheon. What what Robert means to say to tables? What? Okay?

(59:59):
What Robert means the say is that he's doing a
live show with Billy Wayne Davis in Los Angeles on
March three at Dannisy Typewriter. You should get tickets and
we will be saving selling our teas and a arms there.
We will not be doing anything of that nature. You
can follow Robert on Twitter. I'm saying you can follow
our podcast at at Bastard's pod on Twitter, Instagram, and

(01:00:21):
if your grease or turkey and you want to buy
some submarines, will have a couple of we're listening Chris
and it