EPISODE 61: Raiders in the Night

“We are all ghosts now. But once we were men.” — Anonymous POW from Cabanatuan camp

“Never in history had the United States Army been called on to rescue such a large number of POWs from so deep in enemy territory.” — William Breuer

“We were in the best shape of our lives, and with this mission we understood why he had driven us so hard.” — Alvie Robbins speaking about Henry Mucci’s physical training 

“As far as we were concerned, they were gods.” — Bob Body about the Rangers who rescued him and his fellow POWs. 

“Nothing in this entire campaign has given me so much personal satisfaction.” — General MacArthur

“I’ll be grateful for the rest of my life that I had a chance to do something in this war that was not destructive. Nothing for me can ever compare with the satisfaction I got from helping to free our prisoners.” — Robert Prince

This is the tale of one of the most daring missions in the history of WWII. After being defeated by the Japanese in 1942, by 1945 American forces were back in the Philippines ready to retake the islands. But their very success may have spelled doom for some survivors of the Bataan Death March, who had spent nearly three years as prisoners of the Japanese. Plenty of evidence, in fact, suggested that Japanese guards were ready to kill them all rather than letting them be freed. The only way to stop this imminent massacre was for a newly formed unit of Rangers, along with Filipino guerrilla fighters, to travel 30 miles behind enemy lines, face off with numerically superior forces, and rescue the POWs. By every logical metric, this had suicide mission written all over it. And ye, the Rangers and guerrilla, all volunteered. Rarely are war stories feel-good stories. But this may be the exception to the rule.   

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EPISODE 60: Fear and Loathing in Mongolia (Part 2)

“On these hills, where everywhere were rolling skulls, skeletons, and decaying body parts, Baron Ungern used to like to go to rest.” — Quote from one of Roman von Ungern-Sternberg’s officers

“Look at [Europe's] past full of fire and blood and the vicious, savage struggle of man against God. The West has given man science, wisdom, and power, yet it has also brought godlessness, immorality, treason, the abnegation of truth and goodness. There, in the West, the destruction of entire empires has begun. Whole nations are being led to their deaths.” — Roman von Ungern-Sternberg

“The Baron's soldiers had spent a desperate winter struggling to live off an alien landscape, and the last time any of them had been in a city was a year or more ago. They were veterans of two of the most brutalizing wars in history, they were led by a madman, and they had very little prospect for the future. They went berserk…” — James Plamer

“This is the product of someone suffering from megalomania and a thirst for human blood” — Admiral Kolchak commenting about Roman von Ungern-Sternberg’s writings

A recurring thread in History on Fire episodes is my soft spot for individuals who are mildly mentally deranged, but have something lovable about them. Today, thaqt thread doesn’t quite apply. The subject of our story gets an A+ in mental derangement (nothing mild about that), but is severely lacking in the lovable department. The man is a fascinating character—no doubt. But fascinating in the way Vlad the Impaler or Darth Vader or Walter White are. This series is a tale of insanity and bloodshed. It’s the story of a monster consumed by his love of warfare, a defender of monarchy in an age of revolutions, a bloodthirsty killer who took delight in persecuting Russian Jews, a soldier in both WW I and the Russian Civil War, an independent warlord who ended up riding at the head a multi-ethnic horde and conquered Mongolia. He is Baron Roman Nikolaus Maximillian Freiherr von Ungern-Sternberg, better known as the Bloody White Baron. In this episode, we follow the second life of his life, including his conquering the Mongolian capital, and his deadly showdown with Bolshevik authorities. 

EPISODE 59: Fear and Loathing in Mongolia (Part 1)

“My name is surrounded with such hate and fear that no one can judge what is the truth and what is false, what is history, and what is myth.” — Roman von Ungern-Sternberg

“Ungern had fused with the war, and equally, the war, in turn, had fused with him.” — Willard Sunderland

A recurring thread in History on Fire episodes is my soft spot for individuals who are mildly mentally deranged, but have something lovable about them. Today, thaqt thread doesn’t quite apply. The subject of our story gets an A+ in mental derangement (nothing mild about that), but is severely lacking in the lovable department. The man is a fascinating character—no doubt. But fascinating in the way Vlad the Impaler or Darth Vader or Walter White are. This series is a tale of insanity and bloodshed. It’s the story of a monster consumed by his love of warfare, a defender of monarchy in an age of revolutions, a bloodthirsty killer who took delight in persecuting Russian Jews, a soldier in both WW I and the Russian Civil War, an independent warlord who ended up riding at the head a multi-ethnic horde and conquered Mongolia. He is Baron Roman Nikolaus Maximillian Freiherr von Ungern-Sternberg, better known as the Bloody White Baron. In this episode, we will follow his life from his troubled childhood until the early days of the Russian Civil War. 

EPISODE 58 Sitting Bull: Wounded Knee (Part 5)

“There a papoose cries by its mother’s breast which, cold and insensible, can nourish it no more; there lies a young girl with her long hair sticky of blood, hiding her mutilated face… And here—here rests the beautiful young squaw whom yesterday I offered a cigarette—dying, with both her legs shot off. She lies there without wailing and greets me with a faint smile on her pale lips.” — First Sergeant Ragnar Ling-Vannerus

“The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extermination of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries, we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth.” — Frank Baum, author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz 

 “Who would have thought that dancing could make such trouble? We had no thought of fighting.” — Short Bull 

“When he went to the bottom of the ravine, he saw many little children lying dead… He was now pretty weak from his wounds. Now when he saw all those little infants lying there dead in their blood, his feeling was that even if he ate one of the soldiers, it would not appease his anger… The Indians all knew that Dewey was wounded, but those in the ravine wanted him to help them. So, he fought with his life to defend his own people.” — From The Dull Knifes of Pine Ridge 

“What we saw was terrible. Dead and wounded women and children and little babies were scattered all along there where they had been trying to run away. The soldiers had followed along the gulch, as they ran, and murdered them in there. Sometimes they were in heaps because they had huddled together, and some were scattered all along. Sometimes bunches of them had been killed and torn to pieces where the wagon guns hit them. I saw a little baby trying to suck its mother, but she was bloody and dead. There were two little boys at one place in this gulch. They had guns and they had been killing soldiers all by themselves. We could see the soldiers they had killed. The boys were all alone there, and they were not hurt. These were very brave little boys.” From Black Elk Speaks 

By 1890, the Ghost Dance religion was spreading like wildfire in many reservations across United States. At a time when most Natives were facing utter hopelessness, it gave them something to hope in. But the murder of Sitting Bull orchestrated by a reservation agent, and the political machinations of the Harrison administration initiated a military crackdown against an otherwise peaceful movement. The sequence of events thus started would end in bloodshed at Wounded Knee on December 29, 1890, as the 7th Cavalry massacred nearly 300 Lakota—mostly women and kids. In this final episode of the Sitting Bull series, we explore the dynamics that led to Wounded Knee, the insane story of Iron Hail (aka Dewey Beard), how the Yanktons dealt with a traitor, the genocidal fantasies of the author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and how Lakota culture endured—in spite of it all. 

EPISODE 57 Sitting Bull: Compulsory Civilization with a Side of Murder (Part 4)

“Sent to report on a story that wasn’t there, reporters invented one.” — Heather Cox Richardson  

“Lakota will kill you.” — A meadowlark speaking to Sitting Bull in a vision 

“If the white men want me to die, they ought not to put up the Indians to kill me… Let the soldiers come and take me away and kill me, wherever they like. I am not afraid. I was born a warrior.” — Sitting Bull 

In historical terms, it was just a blink of an eye ago. In the mid-1800s, the Great Plains in the United States were still firmly in the hands of nomadic, buffalo hunting tribes. The looming threat of American expansion was still barely noticeable. But things changed quickly, and soon the tribes were locked in an existential struggle with the U.S. for control of the heartland of North America. One man rose among these tribes to lead his people to resisting the inevitable for over two decades. By the time he was 10 years old, the boy who would become the Lakota leader Sitting Bull, had killed his first bison by running him down and putting an arrow through its heart. In the opinion of his fellow tribesmen, his ability as a hunter and as a warrior was only second to his generosity in taking care of widows and orphans. 

In this fourth episode of this series, we’ll see how incompetent government agents, unscrupulous journalists, corrupt politicians, and army officers blinded by their egos manufactured a crisis where there wasn’t one. We’ll also discuss Sitting Bull’s take on the Ghost Dance, Agent McLaughlin’s murderous plans, Buffalo Bill trying to save Sitting Bull, and a murder that sets in motion a much bigger tragedy. 

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Here is a link to the audiobook of my “Not Afraid”: http://www.danielebolelli.com/downloads/not-afraid-audiobook/ 

For those of you who may be interested, here is a lecture series I created about Taoist philosophy: http://www.danielebolelli.com/downloads/taoist-lectures/