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

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, 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? 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, 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, 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. 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. 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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. 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. 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 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, 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 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.

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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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?

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. 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, 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. 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 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, 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

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, 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

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 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. 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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. 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 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

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 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. 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, 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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

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 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 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. 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 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 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. 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. 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, 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, 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 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

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 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 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.

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

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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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. 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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

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, 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.

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, 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. 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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

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 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

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?

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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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. 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 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 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, 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? 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 if your grease or turkey and you want to buy some submarines, will have a couple of we're listening Chris and it