Around this time of year faces get hairy.
Maybe it's some hipster celebrating 'Movember'.
Maybe it's winter closing in, and it's for warmth.
Maybe it's just laziness because of lack of sunlight. But whatever it is, faces get hairy.
And since our show lives 100 years in the past, here's a tribute to the hairy faces of 1915.
♪ 'The Great War' short theme ♪
I'm indy Neidell—welcome to a bizarre 'Great War' special about mustaches of the First World War.
If you regularly watch our show, you'll see that some of the officers in the old war footage
have pretty extreme facial hair. But it wasn't just officers.
The British army for example actually required a mustache for all soldiers.
Command Number 1695 of the King's Regulations read:
You could face disciplinary action —including prison—for not having a mustache,
if you were a soldier in Her Majesty's army.
This regulation began in the 1860s and lasted until 1916—specifically October 6, 1916
when General Sir Neville Macready, who personally hated mustaches, signed the abolition of the regulation.
The main two reasons for ending the regulation were that such a superficial requirement
was often ignored in the trenches, and facial hair could get in the way of the seal on a gas mask.
And nobody really wanted to preserve their mustache at the expense of inhaling poison gas.
But I digress—this is no lecture on facial hair and its history. Instead, today
I'm going to show you some of the awesome whiskers that the mighty leaders of war sported 100 years ago.
Let's call it, just for fun: The Top Ten Whiskers of 1915.
#10: German General August von Mackensen
Look at that. Mackensen also had that crazy Death Head hat. That's one guy you did not want to mess with.
And it was he who overran both Poland and Serbia in 1915.
On cold nights in Poland, when the wind is just right, you can actually hear it whistling
through the ghost of Mackensen's giant mustache.
As long as I'm talking about Germans, we may as well look at the head honcho himself,
#9: Kaiser Wilhelm II
Now that's a spiky one. Wilhelm actually used to roast sausages over the tips of his mustache.
True story.
#8: Russian General Paul von Rennenkampf
Rennenkampf served in the Russian army for over 40 years, even though his name certainly sounds German.
He was in fact of Baltic German extraction, and was born in what is now Estonia.
He resigned from the Army October 6, 1915, but when the Bolsheviks offered him a command
in the Red Army in 1918, and he refused, he was executed … along with his mustache.
#7: Ismail Enver Pasha, Ottoman Minister of War
His mustache is a little tighter. You see that?
I think he was probably a bit more fussy about his appearance than most men.
He was so powerful within the Ottoman Empire that many Europeans called the empire "Enverland"
—which actually is a true story, not to be confused with Never Land where Peter Pan lived,
and there were pirates, crocodiles, and little boys who could fly.
And how about number six, the Grand Poobah of the Austro-Hungarian Empire,
Emperor Franz Joseph I, himself.
Yes, old FJ.
He was 74 when the war began, and had been in power since 1848.
That's longer than Queen Elizabeth has sat currently on the throne of the UK [as of 2015],
and I wonder if she is going to catch him. Time will tell.
And what list about anything related to the First World War would be complete without number five?
Ladies and gentlemen, Franz Joseph's Chief of Staff,
Conrad von Hötzendorf!
I think I've already said everything about Conrad von Hötzendorf that needs to be said in the regular episodes,
except for the fact that whatever else you thought of him, dude had a fine 'tache.
Here's a guy who wasn't actually a soldier in the war, but I want to throw him in anyhow.
Number four is the Mayor of Brussels who refused to cooperate with the invading Germans,
was arrested and then escaped, eventually returning as a hero: Adolphe Max!
How about number three: Serbian Chief of Staff, Petar Bojović!
Those are some fine whiskers, Petar. It's no wonder you were eventually promoted to field marshal.
Now this one is perhaps my personal favorite because it's just crazy.
#2: French Senior Officer Étienne de Villaret!
He achieved fame at the Battle of the Aisne, and was subsequently promoted to major general,
but his facial hair should definitely have made it all the way up to Field Marshal like Bojović's.
I'll make this a list of ten with one more.
I don't want to call it a "top ten" because I think pretty much everyone wins in one category or the other,
but you can choose winners in whichever category you like and tell me in the comments below.
For example, I think de Villaret wins according to me in the "What the — ?!" category.
Okay, all right. Ready? Here's the last one for you.
#1: Russian General Nikolai Ivanov
Ivanov had his moments during his command, but he was eventually replaced
and became a military advisor to the Tsar.
He was a royalist, and during the revolutionary days formed the anti-Bolshevik Cossack Army,
but was defeated in the civil war.
So there you have it. Ten men whose facial hair
will definitely see you through the month and comfort you at night when you sleep.
Of course, there were other leaders who sported big whiskers:
Cadorna, Haig,
Todorov did the Bulgarians proud with his.
But the ones above are a few of my real favorites, and we'll cover, definitely, ten more of them next year.
I imagine there will be some bizarre discussions in the comment section below, so let the games begin!
And if you'd like to see our last top list about the top 10 stupid moves,
or top *11* stupid moves at the first year of the war, you can click right here.
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See you next time!