A Brief History of Molotov Cocktails

introduce briefly. You'll you'll see the episodes soon enough. We're 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 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, 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 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

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 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. 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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,

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 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.

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 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, 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. 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

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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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

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 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

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,

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

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

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. 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 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 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. 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 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,

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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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

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 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, or check us out on the I Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It could Happen here, updated monthly at cool Zone media, dot com, slash sources, thanks for listening.