A Brief History of Molotov Cocktails

We sit down with James Stout to learn the history of Molotov Cocktails.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Oh, welcome to it could happen here. I'm Robert Evans,
recording from a deeply unsettling airbnb right near the border
of Texas and Mexico. UM. I'm here with my good
friend James Stout. Say hello to the people. Hi everyone,
and we're gonna talk about well, let me let me
introduce briefly. You'll you'll see the episodes soon enough. We're

(00:28):
down here reporting on um a mixture of of of
right wing militancy, government militarization of the border, and the
attempts by people trapped in the middle to survive and
avoid those authoritarian structures. So today, James and they're going
to talk about molotov cocktails. Um, but first, James, you

(00:49):
want to talk about this airbnb. We're in for a
second because you book this motherfucker deeply. Yeah yeah yeah.
So what happens when you have like less than twenty
four hours before you arrive and need a place for
more than two people is uh you really get into
the depth of Airbnb And I've found this place, which
how to describe it? Um? Yeah, yeah, unsettling? Yeah yeah,

(01:13):
it it just feels wrong. I can't put my finger
quiet on whe there is a basement which definitely has
like murder vibes, and there's not basements in Texas normally,
and it's it's it's crumbling and unsettling. There's a some
pump that doesn't appear connected to anything. There's puddles of
standing water. Um. I think there's like nine bedrooms in

(01:34):
this house. Yeah, but only one like is upstairs, and
it seems to have like like to be designed to
command an arqui fier around the house. Then there are
other bedrooms which are like kind of in this stable block.
What else is weird? Like three of the bedrooms are
separate from the main house and in a built in

(01:54):
a way that it looks like a roadside motel. And
then there's a main house that has like four living
room for We're sitting at a large kitchen table right now,
which spins around a central access. For some inexplicable reason,
we have the overwhelming feeling that something horribly wrong was
done in this space because it doesn't everything is a

(02:15):
little off. None of the decorations look like people. This
is some sort of trap house, but we cannot identify
the kind. I think you desc it best when you
said it's like one of those this person does not
exist photos but of a home and you can't work
out what's wrong. But it's not human and it's not right.
So we just had to get that out of our
systems because it's been deeply unsettling the last couple of days.

(02:36):
We're here now, James, you wrote an article about Molotov
cocktails that got you in a bit of a fascinating situation.
I want to just kind of walk me through what
happened there and what the fallout was. Yeah, well, the
one that started it was about how to tear down statues,
and that was for popular mechanics. In In that article,
I interviewed a couple of experts and one of them

(02:57):
explained how to make something called firm um Thermite's like
an exothermic reaction. You mix a couple of things, they
get hot, They get hot enough to melt some metal.
So if you were interested in bringing down a statue
of a bigot, that might be helpful to you. By
the way, it's legal basically all of the US to
possess their might, and pretty simple to make. Not that

(03:18):
you know, you can google it. You can figure that
out yourself. Yeah, I'm not telling you how to make it.
I'm telling you that it exists, exists, and is surprisingly legal. Yes,
and if you need to weld some ship underwater or
join together some train tracks, it's the right tool for
the job. Yeah, if you happen to be I know
a lot of the Russian Army in Ukraine listens to
this podcast. If you happen to be in the process
of abandoning hundreds of millions of dollars in armor, thermite

(03:40):
can allow you to stop Ukrainian farmers from towing it
back to their homes. Yeah, but don't do that if
you're a Russian soldier. Just just run um go to
the Ukrainians. So I'll let you call your mom. They're
nice and okay. So I write the story for pop
Mac Right. It's it's just a useful guide to people
who are looking to safely disposed of a racist statue. Right.

(04:02):
And when I write it, I think their readership might
lean pretty conservative, or they felt like that was a
safe space. Anyway, It immediately became like the epicenter of
the culture war for like a week, including triggering one
Benjamin Shapiro, who then sub tweeted me like a coward

(04:27):
and asked when I'll be writing my story about Molotov cocktails,
which I subsequently wrote. So that that gets us to
the Molotov cocktail story. I was in Russia today as well,
now banned media outlet No No No. I wrote it
for a British magazine called Huck. I've described like Hucker

(04:48):
is like like Vice, but less tragic, like after Vice
went bad Huck School. Um, and so yeah, Ben Ben
was upset. Ben orchestrated this kind of right way panic
around the story. Uh, they canceled pop Mac for a while,
and I wrote a piece about the history and I
guess chemistry of moloto and they're rolling democratization movements. That

(05:12):
was really fascinating to me. So yeah, that's how we
got to the Molotov story. And you want to give
me kind of some cliffs notes on the history of
the Molotov and it's rolling because what I know about
Molotov cocktails, I assume it's named after Molotov, of the
Molotov ribbon trop packed, right, Lav Molotov? Yeah, um, And
I know I have been near a couple of them
going off. I nearly got lit on fire by one,

(05:33):
and I watched a colleague get let on fire by another.
So I am aware of what they do. Um. But yeah,
why don't you walk us through kind of the close
notes of the history of molotovs. Yeah, absolutely, so. Um.
A lot of times you'll go on the Internet and
you're reading about history and it will turn out not
to be right, and that that's often the case with
Molotov cocktails. So, yes, they named after Lav Molotov. We

(05:56):
can get to why they named that way in a second.
But their origin is actually with Franco's nationalist fascist, national fascists,
whatever you want to call them, national Catholic troops in
the Spanish Civil War. So early on in the Spanish
Civil War nineties seven ish, the Republic had some Soviet
tanks and they were using these against the ABRO. They

(06:20):
were using these against the nationalists, and nationalists were throwing
what they then called petrol bombs at the tanks too.
Great effect is those old tanks had rubber on the
wheels that turned the tracks and those would melt. So
that's when they were first used. And if you're not
familiar with what a Molotov cocktail is, it's an improvised
incendiary device. It's a glass thing filled with a flammable

(06:42):
thing topped with some kind of cloth with a flame
that the goth is burning. And when you throw it,
obviously the glass thing breaks, the flammable liquid comes out,
and the flame catches a liquid and you have a fireball.
Uh So, the first time we kind of see them
is used it in Spanish War. We see references to
them in like British media in the nineteen thirties when

(07:04):
British reporters were going out to watch the Spanish Civil
War and they were like, Wow, what a development, what
a technology, and so they used there. But where they
get their names in Finland, right when the Soviets invade Finland.
Why they got their name is that Molotov claimed that
his planes were not dropping bombs. You'll see like a

(07:24):
history of gas lighting in Russian Foreign Polo Soviet foreign
policy here. Um he claimed they weren't dropping bombs. He
claimed that they were bringing aid to the people of Finland, right,
And Finland was like, this is ridiculous. So they kind
of started calling the bombs Molotov's bread baskets, and pretty
soon everything that was shipped was associated with Molotovs. Bombers

(07:44):
were Molotov's chickens. Blackout curtains were Molotov's curtains, And so
the they switched many of their state alcohol factories to
making Molotov cocktails, and so they started calling these these
pets what work called petrol bombs Molotov cocktails, and that's
how the names duck. It is neat that Russia has
such a long history of causing other nations to retool

(08:07):
their domestic liquor production towards making bombs to throw a
Russian soldiers and like how what we now adas on
from from nineteen se like it's it's not always Russian tanks,
but it's nearly always Russian tanks, right like Spain, and
the Russian tanks are obviously like in Republic in Spain

(08:27):
is much preferable to Franco Finland hungry in nineteen fifty six, right, um,
and today in Ukraine you see people throwing bottles of
petrol with flames on top of Russian tanks. Yeah, they
have a long history, yeah, I mean, and it's it's
among other things like especially if you don't have easy

(08:48):
access to firearms and and no access to explosives and
stuff like, it's it's not a force equalizer, but it
does allow you to to do certain things in militarily
that that would be harder to do, um if you
were like trying to manufacture something a little bit more
like it's easier than making a grenade, right, Like, yeah,

(09:08):
and it does much more damage than a rock, but
it's not much harder to come by for most people. Right.
And one really interesting thing I read about them was
by this academic who I really like his work. It's
called Ali Cadiva, and he's Iranian, and he's looked at
like democratization movements all over the world. Right, so, how
do authoritarian regimes collapse? And his research suggested that like

(09:30):
peaceful extreme like extreme like quote unquote peaceful protests tend
not to work, and insurgencies hadn't had that high of
a success rate. But his papers called stick stones and
Molotov cocktails and like, his research suggested, like, if you're
prepared to do violence against property by hitting it with
a stick, throughing stone, throwing a Monotov cocktail, then you
are more likely to have success in toppling a regime.

(09:52):
So like, because they're accessible to people who don't necessarily
have guns, aren't doing insurgencies. They've had this really interesting
role in arming non state actors or arming liberation movement
throughout history. I mean, that's really interesting because it would
seem to suggest, like a reading of that paper would
seem to suggest that, yeah, it's not so much like
being willing to carry out like a militant movement, but

(10:15):
being willing to destroy things as one of the primary
signs that like you have a chance of actually overthrowing
an authoritarian regime is like your your ability to prepare
to to do damage, um, like of a financial nature.
Like is that kind of the argument is making. I
think the argument he's making is that, like, and it's
an argument that can't be made enough. Right, the damage
to property is not the same as damage to people,

(10:36):
and violence against property in the name of liberation or
justice is okay and tends to work. And but yeah,
you have to have some skin in the game. You
have to be prepared to fund some ship up if
you if you want to bring down a regime which
is prepared to use violence against you. That's kind of
talking about the use of these tools within liberatory struggles.

(10:57):
But they're not I guess they're liberate Restril isn't I
have the beholder that's talking about the use of these
tools and kind of like street movements that are agitating
for change. But we also have this military history UM,
which I think is much more muddled in terms of
its actual efficacy as a as a weapon, its ability
to deny area, it's ability to destroy UM or damage

(11:18):
like enemy uh like combat ability. Do you do you
have any kind of sense of like how effective Like
we're seeing all these people in Ukraine arming themselves with
cocktails UM, evidence of of of you know, the efficacy
of these in combat is a lot murkier UM, at
least within the present conflict. Do you have a sense
of how historically they useful they tend to be for that? Yeah,

(11:38):
I think depending on the age of the and and
then the type of the vehicle you're attacking. Right, So
like these old Russian tanks, UM, what they would do
a lot was make something which is not quite what
we would see if the monotor of cocktails, I had
a whole blanket that was soaked in petrol, and that
would get caught up in the track and then it
would destroy that. There was a bit of rubber on

(11:59):
on the wheel interface with the tracks that it would
melt and that would immobilize the tank and then folks
could to swarm it from all angles. That was kind
of the move there, and then I think they've been
more useful in Ukraine than one might have expected. Because
of the nature of some of the Russian military vehicles.
They tend to carry their fuel on the outside. They

(12:19):
also because of the mud, they'll carry lots of pieces
of wood that they can use to put under their
wheels like you would you know, like sand ladders on
the truck, so those tend to catch fire more easily.
I know the b MPs also have fuel storage on
the back door, which is is pretty optimal for if
you want to walk up behind someone and set something
on fire. So that they've worked pretty well there. In

(12:40):
other places, yeah, they seem to be more of annoyance,
Like I know, I've spoken to people who have been
in the military in the UK and like the big
thing in Northern Ireland right again right, you have a
sort of a liberatory movement there, and so they were
very popular, but they didn't seem to do much of them,
cause people distress, cause people personally jury sometimes but not

(13:01):
particularly too They weren't game changing in terms of like
the monopoly on violence there. But yeah, they seem to
be very very I think they're better when you have
a ton of people throwing them. I think you have
a lot of people setting things on fire, that tends
to be it causes people to stop. And I think
with Russia being lacking in excellent leadership, it seems like

(13:23):
we could say in Ukraine and some of their soldiers
maybe lacking in training, and with the fact that they
tend to carry fuel externally so their vehicles catch fire.
If you can just convince some conscripts that their vehicle
is on fire, they are going to get out, run away.
And we've seen that a lot, right, a lot of
people running away. Yeah. I think when I think about,
like outside of military uses, where I've seen molotovs be

(13:44):
most effective in like the time I've been covering conflict
that the first thing that comes up is the Maidan
Revolution Ukraine, where people were throwing some of the same
people throwing mollotops at Russian troops. Now we're through a
mix of throwing by hand and like catapult devices were
launching sometimes hundreds of molotovs in a couple of minutes
and like melting tank treads to the ground, which is

(14:06):
definitely like that's a that's obviously it was affected. It's
also almost a different kind of weapons system when you're
when you're dealing with that kind of volume grad molotov launcher. Yeah. Yeah,
but then I can think about, like, there's this really
amazing video that you can find if you look of
Greek anarchists on bicycles swarming past a Greek police station

(14:28):
and throwing it looked like about a dozen molotovs at once,
and and just like sacking a police station that way
and then biking right the funk off and like disappearing
into the city um, which is which you know, seemed
like a more effective tactic than some of the ways
I've seen them use where it's like a person throwing
a molotov um and then the cops get really fucking angry,
but it doesn't really do that much damage to them,

(14:49):
and then people get or they hit the wrong person.
Like it is, it is a tool with a high
degree of chance for error if you don't know what
you're doing. Yeah, it's there's a decent skill requirement. You
also really don't want to have anything flammable on your
hands or shirt or anything like that. Like I've seen
people really end up badly after trying to make a
molotov and just hurting themselves trying to light it or

(15:10):
throw it. Yeah, it's it's not. It's not one of
those things that like you want to casually suggest people
use because the odds of actually injuring yourself with it
are pretty high if you're not being careful, um, and
if you if you're going into a situation where you
think people might have molotov's natural fibers. People natural fibers,
not synthetics. Yeah, well is your friend welding gloves? Your friend? Like, yeah,

(15:34):
you don't want to be caught on fire. So let's
talk a little bit about how, like what are the
different kinds of constructions of molotops you've seen people using
and how they changed over time. You talked a little

(15:55):
bit about kind of the early Spanish ones where like
full blankets and stuff. Yeah, I think one of the
interests where we go from Spain to to Finland right
where we're seeing the same thing basically petrol or maybe
ethanol or something like that inside a bottle with with
just a wig or a something sort of. I know
in Spanish Civil War they were using jars a lot
like jam jars. But when things started to develop, I

(16:19):
think is in the UK, so in Britain, and you
actually have this guy called Tom Wintringham who went to
Spain as a walk correspondent and decided to become a
soldier and then returned to the UK and tried to
share what he'd learned with British people right in this
article he wrote for a Picture Post, and he was
very much into Monotov cocktails is a great way of

(16:39):
fighting an invasion, much like actually the old guy you heard,
did you hear the guy who called into NPR recently? Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah,
he was outstanding, just just turning NPR into our how
to do gorilla warfare. And so what they did they
made this thing called the number seventy six grenade, and
they made six million of them. I think Jesus Christ,
and they still in them. It's funny, they'll still find

(17:01):
them in like when they'll be digging the foundation for
a building, they'll be like, oh shit, this is not
a box of beer. And what those had was a
strip of rubber that they dropped in it. It was
in a bottle with a cap, and it had a
phosphorus ignitor actually, so you didn't have to light it,
you just hosted it. And yeah, and those are extremely effective.
The rubber dissolves and then that allows the flaming liquid

(17:24):
to adhere better to the person or thing that is hit. Right,
and you're almost like making a napalm bark, yes exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah,
and the phosphorus will last for a long time. It's
much less risky to the thrower. And you can also
have the whole box of them and just keep throwing them, right.
You don't have to light each one, you don't have
to have someone else like each one. So those seem

(17:45):
pretty effective. I don't know if they were ever really
used in anger, because obviously the Nazis never landed in
the UK, but yeah, that was that was a pretty
big development, and that kind of set the tone for
the other developments which I've seen, at least. I'm not
like a molotov expert. But people put sugar in them,

(18:05):
people put polystyrene in them, or what do you call that?
What does sugar in them do? I think it gives
it a higher viscosity and I think they sort of
it maybe melts when they are like sticks, and it
creates like a sticky kind of hot like like if
you're making toffee. I would imagine, Um, the big thing

(18:25):
I've seen people putting in them is various like plastics. Right,
So when you look at the you've seen these videos
of old ladies in Ukraine with cheese graters just grating
like packing styrofoam, and they put that in there, and
that that does the same thing, right, creates a more
viscous kind of napalm which adheres to the thing that
you throw it at. And that I think if you're

(18:46):
talking about persuading someone that their tank is on fire,
if it keeps burning for ten twenty seconds, you know
you don't have a very long time to get out
of a BMP, so you're going to start getting out.
I would imagine. Well, that does point to like interesting
reality of like not just this war all war, but
like specifically in the context of territorial kind of volunteers

(19:08):
who are on paper terribly out gunned. Um. But the
psychological dimension is that, like you said, if you can
convince people they may be in an armored vehicle that
has unquestioned supremacy over the partisans attacking them. But if
you can convince them they are on fire, they will
make decisions that lead them to no longer have the
advantage in terms of firepower. It's not impossible to do. Yeah,

(19:30):
I think you saw that. I think there's some footage
from my dad of them sort of ambushing some armored vehicles.
And yet once you throw half a dozen molotov cocktails
from above at windows, you can only get as people
to abandon their vehicle and run away. That's the goal.
If they get out, there are a lot more vulnerable
to further attacks from molotov cocktails or anything else. Right,
So yeah, I think it. It really plays into that

(19:50):
kind of guerrilla or sort of like underdog side of conflict. Yeah.
One of the things that's interesting to them about me.
I mean, you and I just finished this series that
ould heavily with like three D printed weapons, homemade guns
and stuff. But you know, there's a lot that you,
as the state can do to reduce people's access to firearms,
or even to reduce people's access to like knives that

(20:11):
are bigger than kitchen knives. A lot you can do
to reduce people's access to conventional arms, but everywhere has
got liquor. Yeah, exactly, it's almost impossible to stop people
having them. Right. If you have gasoline, diesel, alcohol and
glass things and fabric and lighter, you have access to these.
So yeah, they're accessible to everyone, and they are incredibly effective.

(20:34):
Like they're probably the most effective thing that you could
make in your home if you were doing an insurgency.
You're fighting Russian invaders in this case. Yeah, well, James,
was there anything else you wanted to get into on
the subject of molotobs or other forms of cocktails? Yeah,
let me think I should probably say that it's probably

(20:55):
illegal to make them in the United States. I mean,
there are specific ways you legally hand but you you
need a number of different permits. Yeah. Yeah, you do
have to ask the government. So I probably wouldn't suggest
to do Yes, you have to I probably wouldn't suggest
doing that, But no, I think it's always interesting to
look at these like, if we want to move towards

(21:18):
a world where there is less authority more freedom, then
these things which take away the state's monopoly on the
ability to do violence should always be and not necessarily
like things that we want that it's interesting. Yeah, that's
one of the things that's fascinating to me. Obviously, Ukraine
is a pretty standard government within the global or at
least up until this point, has been like they are.

(21:40):
They are a state that has done a number of
ugly things in its past, and we'll do them in
the future. But they're in this fascinating moment where the
government has really set down any claim to a monopoly
on force in a lot of fascinating ways, the kind
of widespread here's how to make a molotov, here's how
to disabled And one of the things that's ascening the

(22:00):
Ukrainian government very famously sent around sheets which are like,
here is where to throw molotovs to do the most damage.
Different Russian vehicles are also Ukrainian vehicles. Yeah, yeah, and
also those vehicles now belong to random farmers Like I
saw that. It was a thing with the Ukrainian equivalent
of the I R S who said, like, don't worry,
you don't need to declare this tank on your income tax. Right,

(22:21):
how does one tax a person who has a tank? Yeah,
or in the case of some of them, has a
twenty million dollar anti aircraft system, who is the tax
man who is willing to go and collect that, Like
they have become ungovernable, right, Yeah, I mean it's we're
they are in the thick of it, and maybe for
the rest of all of our lives. Nobody knows how

(22:42):
long this thing is going to last. But if if
the war does end in any kind of reasonable time frame,
the what's Ukraine going back to. I don't know how
they go back to being a normal state when they
have when they have opened the floodgates to everyone. Is
the army now? Well, I think it's a Yeah, it
calls into question number things, right, like that maybe you

(23:03):
don't necessarily always need is very strict disciplinary and structure
to fight very effectively. But also yeah, that like do
you need the state? Right? People are just doing their
own thing right now, and I yeah, I don't know
how you really take that back, Like how do you
go and collect the tanks from people? They know how
to kill tanks, that's what they've been doing. Yeah, the

(23:24):
Ukrainian government in the future, if we imagine a time
of people piece, it will be quite a while before
there's any chance of like, well we better send in
the riot troops to crack down on this protest. It's like, no,
you're not going to get those riot troops to go
anywhere near there. Yeah, Like, yeah, it's testing out this
armed society as a polite society thesis. Right. But yeah,

(23:44):
I don't know how the police return to a country
which is seemingly at least holding off, if not defeating,
a military superpower. Yeah. It is a fascinating question, and
and no one really has a clear answer, but I
do think it's interesting. Of course they have embraced the
molotov as you've kind of made the case here that's
it really has this history as this great kind of

(24:08):
democratizing force within the conflicts between people and governments and
governments and governments. Yeah, and and people in capital, right,
Like if you're prepared to destroy capital goods like people
have done for centuries, and that that seems to be
the way to make change, right. It's kind of interesting,
I think, to reflect on from our me and my podcast,
I thought was that they had very strict gun ownership

(24:28):
laws before this, very very strict, apart from from one
ethnic group called the June. But what they've promised to
do afterwards, at least according to our sources, is to
allow people to keep and bear arms, right, because I
guess they kind of have to write because A they
can't stop them anymore. These people are three D printing
guns and be the only way they got freedom or

(24:50):
if this is if they if they're able to defeat
the Tapmador, then the only way they've they've become free
is through fighting for their freedom, and it seems that
they're not going to be willing to give that up,
especially for the ethnic groups there. So Yeah, it's really
interesting to see, like what kind of a state emerges
from a sort of uh, what's the sort of word? Like,

(25:10):
like it's it's not an authoritarian structure, right, the militaries
are not, like a lot of people in Ukraine are
not necessarily authoritarian instructures. So what emerges for the state
when we've had this horizontal resistance? Yeah, these are These
are fascinating questions and ones that I think we'll all
be continuing to ask and answer for for the foreseeable future.
For now, do you have anything you want to plug
before we were all out? James M No, You should

(25:33):
listen to our podcast on MIMMA. You can follow me
on Twitter. That's my name at James Stout Patreon. I
write some other things. I teach at the community college.
If you want to take some history courses, we can
learn about molotovs. Have a lecture about that. But otherwise, no,
that's about all. Well, that's going to do it for
us here until next time. Don't make a molotov if

(25:54):
it's illegal where you live. But but do think about
molotovs because, as the last couple of weeks have shown us,
you could buy next week be living in a state
where it's very legal to make molotov cocktails. That could
happen to any of us. You never know, you know,
you never know, so you know, do some reading online,
use a use of VP a VPN to do that

(26:14):
reading browser. If you're gonna be how to make molotov,
do some very careful reading, and um, you know, keep
an eye on the world. It could happen here as
a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from
cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com,

(26:34):
or check us out on the I Heart radio app,
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cool Zone media, dot com, slash sources, thanks for listening.