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A Simple Kiss · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
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  Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
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  Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
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  Speaker 1: of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
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  Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: Smedley Butler was an American hero, one of the greatest
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  Speaker 1: military leaders in its history. Born in eighteen eighty one,
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  Speaker 1: he came from a high class family in Philadelphia, then
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  Speaker 1: joined the Marines at a young age. From eighteen ninety
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  Speaker 1: eight to nineteen thirty one, he served with distinction. Butler
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  Speaker 1: foughts on multiple continents, too, always furthering America's interests. He
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  Speaker 1: installed new governments in Mexico, Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic,
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  Speaker 1: and Honduras. He was awarded multiple medals of honor, and
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  Speaker 1: the Marines even incorporated his name into a song. By
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  Speaker 1: nineteen thirty three, Butler had retired and consigned himself to
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  Speaker 1: furthering the interests of veterans in the United States. He
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  Speaker 1: felt the Veterans Administration was poorly run and that the
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  Speaker 1: veterans deserved greater compensation for their service. Well. One day,
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  Speaker 1: Butler was contacted by a member of the American Legion,
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  Speaker 1: a guy named Gerald McGuire. The American Legion is an
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  Speaker 1: organization of veterans who advocate for themselves, so Butler was
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  Speaker 1: happy to meet with McGuire. But their meeting went differently
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  Speaker 1: than Butler expected. McGuire offered him tens of thousands of
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  Speaker 1: dollars to recruit more members to the Legion and to
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  Speaker 1: give speeches speaking out against the presidency of FDR. Butler
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  Speaker 1: was shocked at his proposal and turned it down right away.
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  Speaker 1: He didn't believe in speaking out against the president like that.
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  Speaker 1: He felt he owed him his loyalty. Butler's goal was
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  Speaker 1: to try and work with the government to do right
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  Speaker 1: by veterans, not to cause animosity between them. Maguire accepted
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  Speaker 1: that the speech wasn't going to happen, and then he
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  Speaker 1: spent the next few months traveling in Europe. Butler was
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  Speaker 1: surprised to receive postcards from him. It was strange that
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  Speaker 1: this man that he barely knew was so adamant about
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  Speaker 1: keeping in touch. When McGuire returned from Europe, he reached
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  Speaker 1: out again and asked for another meeting with Butler. Butler
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  Speaker 1: was either trying to be nice or was genuinely curious
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  Speaker 1: why McGuire was so desperate to work with him, so
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  Speaker 1: he agreed to the meeting, and this time McGuire laid
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  Speaker 1: out his cards on the table. He revealed that he
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  Speaker 1: was being funded by an organization of powerful business interests,
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  Speaker 1: with members including executives from the likes of JP Morgan,
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  Speaker 1: General Motors, Phillips Petroleum, and General Foods. They had sent
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  Speaker 1: him to Europe to learn what he could about how
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  Speaker 1: the veterans' organizations in those countries were able to influence
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  Speaker 1: their governments. But this wasn't simply because these businessmen wanted
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  Speaker 1: to help veterans in America. No, they wanted to use
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  Speaker 1: those veterans to over throw President Roosevelt. They didn't like
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  Speaker 1: Roosevelt's socialist New Deal policies. They felt that he cared
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  Speaker 1: too much about the common man and not enough about
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  Speaker 1: big business. They believed that the veterans were an untapped
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  Speaker 1: private militia who could be used to carry out their desires.
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  Speaker 1: During his time in Europe, McGuire learned how veteran militias
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  Speaker 1: in France, Germany, and Italy had overthrown their presidents and
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  Speaker 1: helped to install right wing and outright fascist leaders. McGuire
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  Speaker 1: and his bosses wanted Butler to lead the American Legion
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  Speaker 1: in doing the same thing in the United States. Maguire
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  Speaker 1: was sure the Butler, who had spent his whole life
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  Speaker 1: furthering the cause of a strong America, would help the
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  Speaker 1: businessmen in their coup. He couldn't have been more wrong, though. Butler,
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  Speaker 1: in fact, harbored immense guilt for what he had already
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  Speaker 1: done in the Marine Corps. All those countries that he
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  Speaker 1: supposedly helped, he would later write that he actually destroyed
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  Speaker 1: their democracies and installed dictators. He even enslaved some of
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  Speaker 1: their people to work on American building projects. He said
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  Speaker 1: that the American government claimed to be furthering democras in
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  Speaker 1: these countries, but it was actually destroying them so that
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  Speaker 1: American banks, oil companies, and food companies could profit. Butler
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  Speaker 1: was not about to help those same companies instigate yet
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  Speaker 1: another fascist coup in the place that he had supposedly
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  Speaker 1: spent his life defending. He went to the press first,
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  Speaker 1: then Congress, telling them everything but this time he wasn't
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  Speaker 1: hailed as a hero. The press was owned by many
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  Speaker 1: of the business men he was blowing the whistle on,
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  Speaker 1: and they all said that his story was ridiculous. And
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  Speaker 1: while Congress investigated and agreed that there had been a plot,
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  Speaker 1: they refused to prosecate any of the prominent men involved.
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  Speaker 1: Gerald Maguire, by the way, mysteriously died the following year.
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  Speaker 1: It took decades before historians started to lend more credence
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  Speaker 1: to Butler's story, but even today, the powers that be
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  Speaker 1: have an interest in keeping the story hidden. The plotter's
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  Speaker 1: descendants remained powerful and influential. Banks like JP Morgan are
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  Speaker 1: making more money than ever, and one plotter raised a
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  Speaker 1: political dynasty, with both his sons and grandson becoming President
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  Speaker 1: of the United States. That banker, Prescott Bush. Coup or not,
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  Speaker 1: it's hard to disagree with Butler's ultimate goal. Our soldiers
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  Speaker 1: are heroes deserving of honor and support, not ponds in
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  Speaker 1: a game of power, especially when that game is played
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  Speaker 1: at home. Once upon a time, there was a city
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  Speaker 1: split straight down the middle, literally sliced in io by
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  Speaker 1: a wall of concrete and barbed wire. On one side,
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  Speaker 1: you had state surveillance, brutalist apartment blocks, and the relentless
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  Speaker 1: hum of authoritarian control. On the other, a sprawling, chaotic
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  Speaker 1: urban jungle where rules and social norms were flaunted, where
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  Speaker 1: basic utilities rarely worked, and where anything was possible. I'm talking,
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  Speaker 1: of course, about Berlin during the nineteen seven these the
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  Speaker 1: city was the epicenter of the Cold War. It stood
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  Speaker 1: like a scar across the heart of Europe, divided between
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  Speaker 1: the democracy loving West and the Soviet controlled east. When
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  Speaker 1: you walked in its streets, you could feel the tension
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  Speaker 1: of the whole world pressing in. Armed soldiers manned the
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  Speaker 1: wall at all hours, prepared to shoot anyone who tried
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  Speaker 1: crossing from east to west. Families that had called the
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  Speaker 1: city home for generations were split up, separated not by
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  Speaker 1: distance but by ideology and steel. But despite all of that,
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  Speaker 1: or maybe because of that, Berlin had a strange allure
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  Speaker 1: that you couldn't find anywhere else. There was an honesty
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  Speaker 1: to its ugliness, almost like the conflict that normally existed
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  Speaker 1: beneath the surface had been made tangible. It had a
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  Speaker 1: magnetic energy, and soon West Berlin became a haven for artists, punks, poets,
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  Speaker 1: and painters, all crammed into squat houses, chasing meaning and
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  Speaker 1: beauty against the backdrop of oppression and tragedy. And that's
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  Speaker 1: the kind of place was when Dave arrived. Dave was
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  Speaker 1: a music loving thirty year old, soft spoken Englishman with
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  Speaker 1: sharp cheekbones and a quiet intensity. He kept mostly to himself,
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  Speaker 1: renting a small apartment above a car repair shop and
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  Speaker 1: walking the cities for hours by day or by night.
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  Speaker 1: He looked like a tourist, but Dave wasn't just passing
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  Speaker 1: through like so many creatives. He had come to Berlin
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  Speaker 1: looking for inspiration and a place to think. He wound
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  Speaker 1: up finding more than he bargained for. Though. When he
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  Speaker 1: wasn't out walking, Dave spent his days writing music, sometimes
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  Speaker 1: alone in his apartment, sometimes in a grand, eerie recording
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  Speaker 1: studio that had once been a Nazi ballroom, now repurposed
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  Speaker 1: into a creative sanctuary. The studio sat just five hundred
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  Speaker 1: yards from the Berlin Wall, and when Dave looked out
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  Speaker 1: its window, he could see the soldiers on the other
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  Speaker 1: side working there, walking the streets every day and seeing
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  Speaker 1: the impact of a cold war filled Dave with a
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  Speaker 1: melancholy and that was a big problem because Dave was
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  Speaker 1: right in the middle of a new song and it
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  Speaker 1: was meant to be anything but brooding. The music was
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  Speaker 1: already finished, and it was powerful, stirring and uplifting in
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  Speaker 1: a way that would demand a triumphant story to match.
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  Speaker 1: The chords rang like a declaration, but the words would
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  Speaker 1: not come. He stared at the blank page for hours,
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  Speaker 1: but every time he tried to imagine something hopeful or inspirational,
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  Speaker 1: it just struck him as false. Well, one afternoon in
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  Speaker 1: mid nineteen seventy seven, Dave just locked himself away in
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  Speaker 1: the studio determined that for better or for worse, he
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  Speaker 1: was going to finish that song. After crumbling up yet
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  Speaker 1: another sheet of paper, he happened to glance out the window.
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  Speaker 1: The view was the same as it always had been,
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  Speaker 1: but this time something different caught his eye. Across the street,
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  Speaker 1: just in front of the wall, he saw a man
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  Speaker 1: and a woman locked in a kiss. The guards stood
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  Speaker 1: a short distance away, armed and watching, but the lovers
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  Speaker 1: didn't care. And that's when it clicked. Dave sat back down,
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  Speaker 1: picked up his pen, and started to write. The lyrics
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  Speaker 1: that flowed out of him weren't about overthrowing government or
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  Speaker 1: storming barricades. Instead, he imagined two lovers, one from East
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  Speaker 1: Berlin and one from the West, meeting in secret and
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  Speaker 1: spending a single day together. It was hardly a revolution,
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  Speaker 1: just the story of two ordinary people living their lives.
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  Speaker 1: But after his time in Berlin, Dave thought that that
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  Speaker 1: kind of simple humanity carried its own kind of heroism.
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  Speaker 1: Once he got started, the words came quickly. The lyrics
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  Speaker 1: didn't quite match the triumphant music, but to Dave, that
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  Speaker 1: just made it better. It felt honest, like the city
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  Speaker 1: he had come to love. He finished his album and
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  Speaker 1: left Berlin soon after, but a decade later, in nineteen
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  Speaker 1: eighty seven, he came back to play a concert right
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  Speaker 1: next to the wall. The Cold War was still very cold,
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  Speaker 1: but the city felt different. Thousands gathered in West Berlin, dancing,
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  Speaker 1: shouting and singing, and just across the divide, people in
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  Speaker 1: East Berlin gathered to listen. They huddled against fences and
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  Speaker 1: climbed on the rooftops, straining to hear the music. And
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  Speaker 1: when Dave sang that song, the one Born from a
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  Speaker 1: Stolen Kiss, it was like all the heartache the city
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  Speaker 1: had been feeling was let loose. That night's riots broke
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  Speaker 1: out on the eastern half of the city. East berlinners
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  Speaker 1: clashed with the police while chanting the Wall must fall.
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  Speaker 1: The Soviets moved swiftly to crush the disobedience, arresting over
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  Speaker 1: two hundred people, but the spark had been lit. Over
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  Speaker 1: the two years that followed, the riots and protests continued
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  Speaker 1: to escalate until November of nineteen eighty nine, when the
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  Speaker 1: Berlin Wall was finally torn down. The song, of course,
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  Speaker 1: did not bring it down on its own, but it
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  Speaker 1: did create a crack, one of many that eventually broke through.
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  Speaker 1: And in case you're wondering, that song was called Heroes
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  Speaker 1: and Dave. Will you know him better as David Bowie.
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  Speaker 1: I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet
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  Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn
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  Speaker 1: more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com.
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  Speaker 1: The show was created by me Aaron Manke in partnership
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  Speaker 1: with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show
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  Speaker 1: called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show,
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  Speaker 1: and you can learn all about it over at Theworldoflore
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  Speaker 1: dot com. And until next time, stay curious,