He must be a competent leader, he's got medals, and a sword!
Lions Led By Donkeys is a weekly history podcast largely devoted to laughing at military blunders, incompetent leadership, and generally covering wild stories from the front lines. Hosts Joe Kassabian and Nick Cassanova, along with part-time hosts Rich and Liam, plus a cast of guest-hosts, also cover subjects such as animals in war, the history of the T-55 and the M-16; taste some MREs, and review movies related to military history, however tenuous their connection to reality.
This show provides examples of:
- Armchair Military: This is a podcast full of stories about military ineptitude, after all.
- Artistic License – History: Someone the show calls out and tries to correct. Particularly in bonus episodes based on movies.
- Berserk Button:
- All of the hosts hate Nazis, racists and Rhodesians, but Liam in particular will get audibly mad when the subject comes up.
- Lampshaded in the Wilkes Expedition episode where Joe asks Liam if there is any European nation he doesn't hate. When Liam cites France, he hits Joe with a "Not So Different" Remark given Joe's Napoleon fanboyisms.
- Chest of Medals: The podcast's mascot is modeled after a real-life example, specifically Idi Amin, and several have shown up.
- Historical In-Joke: The show's title is a phrase used to describe the state of British troops and their commanders during World War One, though according to the Other Wiki, the concept, if not the exact phrase, is Older Than Feudalism.
- Mirthless Laughter: While ostensibly a comedy podcast, many episodes veer off in this direction due to the subject matter.
- Oh, No... Not Again!: The repeated involvement of the CIA in episodes taking place after World War Two, to the point that the Agency is jokingly referred to as an additional host of the podcast.
- Also invoked whenever the show deals with the Russian or Soviet military, as it inevitably features horrible conditions.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Joe is the blue to Nick's red. Inverted when other hosts are on, as they're more prone to Deadpan Snarker. Liam is usually the blue to Joe's red, unless Nazis are involved, and Liam goes off.
- Running Gag: The aforementioned idea that the CIA is the 3rd host, "It gets worse!" Sign-offs with the format of "Remember, don't [action related to the content of the episode]." "And then [person from the topical episode] hit them with the Uno reverse card." "You do not, in fact, 'have to hand it to' [insert historical villain]." Also Joe's hatred for Ohio.
- The fact that the first live show will be held in an Albanian bunker.
- Whenever Ghaddafi is brought up, Joe mentions how he tried to sell surface-to-air missiles to a street gang in Chicago.
- Blasting the air horn ironically, or in moments of Russian Guy Suffers Most, playing the opening notes of the Soviet national anthem.
- Referring to people tripping over their own dicks. Usually commanders or entire countries.
- "This podcast is now banned in [insert country and/or group they just made fun of]."
- Explaining Nick's absence (in reality due to his work) through increasingly absurd reasons.
- Pointing out that most deaths prior to WWI in war were due to disease.
- Referring to soldiers dying as "getting connected to [specific god]'s Wi-Fi."
- Liam and his actionable threats. note
- Various forms of Corpse Infrastructure.
- The co-host noting that something bad/worse is about to happen because Joe just gave a more specific date/time.
- Russian Guy Suffers Most: With at least four series so far involving Soviet/Russian troops and their misery, it's a running thread in the show.
- Self-Deprecation: Joe was a tanker, so whenever they appear in a story expect plenty of jokes like this (usually regarding how they smell or get into fights).
- Testosterone Poisoning: Referred to with the ironic phrase "Dudes rock!"
Episodes of this series provide examples of:
- Aesop Amnesia: It's noted that despite the Russians being directly involved, and dozens of multi-national military attaches observing the battles of the Russo-Japanese War, sometimes characterized as a rehearsal for World War One, nobody in Europe bothered to avoid using practically the same tactics nearly ten years later.
- Archaic Weapon for an Advanced Age: "Mad" Jack Churchill carried out most of his more famous exploits while brandishing a Scottish claymore and a longbow. In World War II.
- Attack! Attack! Attack!: All over the place, but the World War Two-era Soviets are particularly of note for their repeated human wave attacks.
- Also of note is Luigi Cadorna, whose philosophy of warfare is summed up in his episode using the trope name almost word-for-word, and the troops under his command had one of, if not the highest operations tempo in World War One.
- Breather Episode: Joe tries to include "palette-cleansers" after particularly nasty and/or depressing stories.
- Discussing the Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet ("The Rocket Plane That Melted Its Pilots") was considered a welcome change of pace by Joe because it came after 4 episodes in a row related to genocide, and the majority of people harmed by it were literal Nazis.
- In the series on genocide, particularly the one on the Cambodian Genocide, Joe initiated a rule for "Animal Facts" for all genocide-related episodes whenever things get too heavy.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: If the subjects of an episode aren't horrible people, they tend to fall under this due eccentricities but effectiveness, such as Mad Jack Churchill or Digby Tatham-Warter.
- The Cavalry
- Closest Thing We Got: Rwanda didn't have an air force to invade the Congo in Operation Kitona, but it did have a civilian air fleet. So the military hijacked the planes.
- In Operation Red Dog, the weird group of American and Canadian KKK members had a plan to invade Grenada and do a coup. When Grenada's politics changed, they used the same plan to go after Dominica.
- Conscription: Several stories involve the Soviet Union, so this goes without saying, but they're not the only ones who've engaged in it.
- Control Freak: Napoleon Bonaparte and Saddam Hussein are particularly noteworthy for being the overall leaders of their respective nations, with general staffs and entire officer corps...that they refused to delegate to.
- Crazy Enough to Work: Cited as a major reason for the success of "Mad" Jack Churchill since he intimidated a German bunker into surrendering after having his troops run forward while yelling "Commando!" (so they wouldn't accidentally shoot each other) and threatened them while holding a 4 foot Scottish claymore.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: The long, drawn out death of President James Garfield.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: All over the place, but special mention goes to the Toyota War.
- The Great Emu War is a cross between this and a Pyrrhic Victory. As Joe and Nick noted, the Australians didn't lose any men and some emus were killed, but the emus and Birdolini stopped the Aussies from a strategic success.
- Death Notification: Subverted HARD by the Soviets during their war with Afghanistan. Not only were families not informed of how their loved ones died, their first indication that something had happened was a zinc coffin being unceremoniously dropped at their front door; and it was never 100% certain you had even received the right corpse because said coffins were welded shut.
- Desecrating the Dead: British troops thought the Zulus were performing a malicious form of this with their practice of "washing the spears," but in reality the act of stabbing corpses in the gut was a pragmatic one, as it prevented bloating.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Inverted with the backstory for the Silmido Mutiny. After North Korea sent highly trained commandos to attack the Blue House, South Korea recruited criminals who they trained for years for retribution....who were never deployed, then broke out and attacked the Blue House.
- Enemy Mine: The hosts regularly discuss this, or as they call it, "The Grand Unifying Theory of 'Fuck That Guy.'"
- Discussed at length in the Castle Itter episode, where American soldiers, mostly French prisoners of war in Austria, and the Wehrmacht teamed up to fight a Waffen SS death squad.
- Joe hammers this home in the Toyota War, Libya pissed off Chad so much that they stopped their infighting to kick out the invaders. Joe notes that didn't even happen in Iraq or Afghanistan against the United States.
- Gambit Pile Up: Everyone involved in Operation Red Dog planned to use the planned KKK/Neo Nazi-controlled Republic of Dominica as a base for drug smuggling. Dominica is only 290 square miles. They were all arrested before they could compete over turf.
- General Failure: Luigi Cadorna and Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf got their own episodes dedicated to their failures as strategic and tactical commanders. Enver Pasha was fingered as the sole cause of not only the Ottomans' entrance into World War 1 but also the titanic mess-up that was the Caucasian Front, which (amongst other things) proved a justification for the Armenian Genocide.
- Giver of Lame Names: Geoffrey Spicer-Simson wanted to name his motorboats the HMS Cat and HMS Dog, but when the Admiralty shot this down he instead called them the Mimi and Toutou, which respectively mean "meow" and "bow wow."
- Hold the Line: During Operation Kitona, when the Zimbabwean SAS covered the retreat at an airport, they held off overwhelming numbers while fielding aircraft, many of which literally fired on the runways they just took off from due to the advancing enemy.
- Hollywood Tactics: Given that it's a history podcast, many stories include some truly bizarre strategic and tactical choices due not only to lack of development in those fields, but also the foibles of micromanaging dictators and incompetence of the nobility, among other things.
- Improbable Weapon User: During Operation Kitona, a Zimbabwean SAS member killed a soldier with a brick.
- In the Iran-Iraq War, the Iraqi army uses power cables to electrocute Iranian soldiers in marshes. As horrified as they are, Nick and Joe note the Loony Tunes nature of it all.
- Just Following Orders
- Brutally refuted in the "Myth of the Clean Wehrmacht" episode.
- Laser-Guided Karma: The Russians were so racist toward the Japanese during the Russo-Japanese War that not only did they guard only the most obvious crossings of the Yalu River (apparently thinking the enemy was too stupid to attempt a crossing anywhere else), but were easily duped when the Japanese army began building a bridge across in full view of them as a distraction from the nine other bridges being built elsewhere along the river, allowing the Russian army to later be easily flanked, taking more than twice the number of Japanese casualties in the ensuing battle.
- Magicians Are Wizards: In the Iran-Iraq War series, Nick learns that Saddam had a personal magician, which he assumes is a wizard, and he keeps bringing it up for the rest of the series.
- Man in a Kilt: Discussed at length when talking about Bill Millin, the famous bagpiper during D-Day who wore a full Scottish piper uniform the entire time.
- Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: Soldiers—and some officers!—of the Italian army under Luigi Cadorna's command ended up shooting some of their own officers after being pushed too far by Cadorna's operations tempo and disciplinary methods.
- The Neidermeyer: Luigi Cadorna basically hated the common soldier, and believed that any and all problems with his army's performance and morale could be solved by some kind of punishment or another, from withholding rations and denying soldiers leave or rotation off the front lines, to literal Roman-style decimation.
- Noble Confederate Soldier: Deconstructed by their episode on Robert E. Lee, which opens up with a discussion on the "Lost Cause" mythology and the reason this trope existing in the first place. They then go on to show that the real Lee was nothing of the sort, particularly by contrasting him with Ulysses S. Grant (who is frequently vilified by the same mythology that elevates Lee) and his history with slavery.
- Occupiers Out of Our Country
- Obstructive Code of Conduct: British supply officers around the time of the Anglo-Zulu War were not allowed to open a new box of ammunition until the previous one had been completely emptied, due to how quickly the rounds of the day would succumb to the elements, and could only supply those men assigned to them. Supply officers refused to deviate from these rules even as their camp was surrounded by thousands of Zulu warriors.
- One-Man Army: Leo Major.
- Patriotic Fervor
- The Pig-Pen: Name dropped when discussing the Russian 2nd Pacific Squadron and how the crews were constantly covered in coal dust and sweat because they didn't have enough fresh water to bathe in.
- Precision F-Strike: Nick's "holy fuck" in response to something truly bad.
- Prisoner Exchange: Failed to happen for nearly two years after the Iran-Iraq war, due to ongoing territorial disputes, and some POWs were not released until the US military invaded Iraq in 2003. The war ended in 1988.
- Recruiting the Criminal: What led to the Silmido Mutiny.
- The Siege: What the Battle of Jadotville boils down to.
- Suicide Attack: Done unintentionally by the crew of the CSS Hunley when their "torpedo" (essentially a bomb on a stick) went off immediately on contact instead of giving the submarine time to escape.
- In the Iran-Iraq War series, Iranian recruits charged Iraqi lines without weapons to open a hole, in essentially a human wave suicide attack. Joe found a quote from someone who survived.
- We Have Reserves:
- Luigi "There were twelve Battles of the Isonzo River" Cadorna is basically the show's patron saint of this trope, even with the USSR's penchant for human wave attacks.
- Invoked during the Iran-Iraq War series, where after several years Iran starts to run out of reserves.
- Winter Warfare: Napoleon's invasion of Russia; Russia's invasion of Finland. The Carpathian Mountains campaign of World War I.
- Worst Aid: The entirety of the medical "care" President James Garfield got at the hands of Dr. Doctornote Willard Bliss. The fact he didn't wash his hands was honestly the least of it.
- Zerg Rush: Once again, the Soviets are involved in several stories, so this goes without saying, but they are again not the only people who do this, though the Zulus at least used it as a distraction from their real maneuvers, rather than the main plan of attack against the British during the Battle of Isandlwana.
