Comment for mistakes and nuance: For all the military affectionados. I know the b-29 is called a SUPERfortress. Noticed it too late in the editing game. My bad. At 10:04 I say Guernica was the first city bombed by airplanes. This is incorrect. Depending on your definition this happened in 1911 in Libya during the Italian-Ottoman war. Or in 1914 in Liege during WW1. Nuance: Some of you feel I glossed over Japanese war crimes. In the video I mention the axis power inflicted atrocities on a scale not seen before. I could have put more weight on the extent of war crimes by the Japanese army in China and Asia. As these are maybe less well known. However, personally I am not convinced that if the army perpetrates war crimes of any extent, that the civilian population of that nation deserves to suffer as result of that. Even if their nation is the aggressor. Do Russian civilians need to suffer for the current war in Ukraine? I don't think so. But you are welcome to disagree with that sentiment.
@@joshuataylor3550 Ah, not so. War is an extension of politics. It's purpose is, arguably, to get them back to the table. With the Laws of Armed Conflict (LOAC), Geneva Convention, etc., we would be no better than the raiding hordes of the Mongols.
There was manufactured 500.000 purple hearts in the months leaning up to the invasion of mainland Japan. This should be a good estimate of the US military worst case scenario.
@@Ballin4Vengeance The large estimate is 1,5mil, and the conservative estimate is 500k. So yeah, it really gives a good picture of how many casualies they were expecting
It's crazy that the city of Kokura made the list and was originally one of the two intended targets. Heavy cloud cover prevented the allies from bombing it and instead they diverted the raid to Nagasaki. The fate of thousands of people sealed by a weather system.
My much beloved dad was a Navy Lieutenant in WW2. He served as the gunnery officer on a destroyer. His ship was in the East Atlantic (European theater) when Germany surrendered. He told me he thought: "Wonderful - now I get to go home." Much to his dismay, however, his ship went back across the Atlantic, through the Panama Canal, and kept going west. He was in the Pacific while the Japanese were using kamikaze suicide pilots on our ships when the 2 atomic bombs were dropped and Japan surrendered. His ship then anchored in Nagasaki Harbor 2 weeks after the bomb was dropped there. He said they were not allowed to go ashore, but he went up in the top of the ship and could see what was left of the city. I asked him what it looked like, and he described it in one word "Flat". He died of cancer in 1991 after a couageous 5 year fight. I always wondered if his exposure to the Nagasaki radiation may have contributed to his death.
God bless your father. Ordinary servicemen seemed to be utilized as human guinea pigs during the early years of nuclear weapons and of course, just followed orders.
You haven't said how old your dad was when he died but above 65, it's very hard to tell if radiation had any impact on his life spam. My own educated guess would be very little since it was an air detonated bomb and there'd had been very little radioactive particles in the air even a day after the detonation. Moreover, USA suffered a lot worse from industrial chemical pollution in the coming years, just all the leaded gasoline and lenient limits on heavy metals in agriculture produce (still an issue to this day btw) or even as simple thing as smoking and stress would be larger factors.
My grandfather was a cannon cocker, artiller, in Africa fighting Rommel. Two of my unles were Vietnam vets that lost their live to agent orange. God bless your father. I not only appreciate your fathers service but your father, just as my grandfather and my uncles, your father and them are my heroes!
@@every1665 Thank you, and I agree with your comments. At least Dad survived and came home to live out his life. A lot of good people didn't. I was born in 1948, after he returned from the war. If they hadn't dropped the bombs and the war hadn't ended when it did, there is a good chance I wouldn't be here today.
It's crazy to me how the Japanese can get firebombed and lose 100k people, have dozens of cities razed to the ground, with tens, or hundreds of thousands of additional deaths, and they STILL wouldn't surrender.
The Japanese people wanted to surrender, the Japanese elite (who weren’t being firebombed or razed) didn’t want to surrender. They were holding out hope that the Russians would come support them.
I was born shortly after the War. What you say is exactly what the WWII generation said - they were astounded by that fact. In Europe German resistance grew progressively weaker as the end grew nearer. But with Japan the war only became more intense. In fact, the worse U.S. casualties occurred in battles near the end of the Pacific War in places like Okinawa and Iwo Jima.
There were a number of Japanese cities that were never targeted. Nara, Kyoto and Kanezawa. They were deemed cultural sites important to the Japanese people and would be important in their rehabilitation.
Pure bullshit, killed millions of civiliand and razed millons of buildings, but take care of cultural sites? No one gonna believe that bullshit. The important thing about the rehabilitation of Japan was they forgvige all Japan's war crimes and never talk about it. Also forgiving the emperor itself
TLDW: Tokyo was already destroyed by firebombs. They wanted to nuke cities that were mostly still intact because that would better showcase the nukes' insane power. Edit: The video is still worth watching imo.
Additionally, it was feared that decapitation and eliminating the Emperor and leadership would delay a surrender. You need them to make and enforce a decision.
Yes. It appears Japan was mostly "toast" these were the remaining high populated locations . Once America had a presence/ residence in Japan, they started up programs that merely analyzed the human wounds from the A bombs. Not to provide medical assistance .
The Japanese were hated. Americans were incredibly racist at the time. Even racist against American Minorities fighting for America. They had no problem experimenting both versions. Today America is the greatest because of TODAY'S Americans. Americans back then were racist murderers. These bombings are a dark stain in American history, no different from the gas chambers in Germany. Nothing worth Celebrating.
I watched Oppenheimer and there's a scene of them deciding which japanese cities they would drop the bomb, one of the guys reportedly spare Kyoto because he spent his honeymoon there. its insane how things are random, due to his personal connection Kyoto wasn't destroyed.
The once of prevention is worth the pound of cure. The prevention is don't go to war with the United States, and the randomness never has to get pondered or addressed.
That was Secretary of War Henry L. Stimpson, and yes, he intervened with Truman to take Kyoto off the list because he spent his honeymoon there so knew that it was an important cultural center.
My late grandfather was in bomber command and involved in the fire bombing of Dresden. This was a much needed perspective on the motivation of the allies and one that needs to be discussed honestly. I do know this - those who flew those missions might have believed in the justness of their cause, but they also knew the hell and the horror they were inflicting with those fire bombs, because it haunted my grandfather for the rest of his life. Thank you.
My grandfather was a tail gunner on a B-17 before being shot down and captured. He always said remember, we didn’t know at the time what the outcome was going to be. We were in the present looking at the future. You’re in the present looking at the past.
@@captnjd I don’t wanna crush your hopes and dreams but there was a heck of a lot of b17’s produced, and so bombers getting shot down is not really that unusual. So yes they knew each other :)
I live in Berlin in that 8km radius. And it just shook me to the core, because it made me realize not only how I am literally sitting on history, but also how the area you take for granted for your daily life, where most of the things you do on a daily basis are located is just...a map to a military leader. I mean we all played video games before and it is not about killing, but rather winning with skill and tactics against an opponent. But this is what real war is - playing games with people's lives. Just imagine you find out your home area is now targeted for carpet bombing. I just felt vulnerable immediately.
Imagine how more vulnerable you would be without America and the protection she provides. Would you feel safe if Germany had only itself to rely upon in a war?
My father was a marine at just 17 and fought in the south Pacific then ended up landing in Japan. He then went to China and was the personal body guard for General Marshall and General Mitchell during the negotiations between Mao and Chiang Kai Shek. He then went to Korea. May he rest in peace.
Historical questions of morality aside, it's interesting to consider that without the atom bomb, the US may have rained an equal amount of destruction on Hiroshima and Nagasaki with fire bombing, with little to no effect on Emperor Hirohito's intransigence. In effect, it's not the actual deaths of Japanese civilians that won the war; rather it was BRANDING. Prior to the atom bomb, the US military was seen as a formidable, but costly force to be reckoned with. Capable of overpowering Japanese forces, but doing less damage per dollar than the Japanese could do - despite the fact that Japan had little defense about the carpet bombing. Fire is fire... its been used in warfare since the earliest warfare. The Atom bomb didn't actually take more lives than could have been claimed by fire, but the nature of it... the unleashing of new forces of nature never before seen on the battlefield, the almost godlike demonstration of not just financial might and military strength, but also technical dominance rebranded what it meant to go head to head with the US, what the stakes could be. It is a bit like the iPod effect. Digital music players had existed for years already, but they were never presented in such a way as to fundamentally change how people thought about listening to music. The atom bomb didn't fundamentally change the might of the US military or it's destructive capacity (that came later with the cold war arms race) - what it did to is fundamentally change how people saw the difference between the military might of a large nation and one of a small nation. It was the rewriting of David vs Goliath. It was the eradication of the idea that an underdog has any reason to fight. Of course, then there was Vietnam, which proved that in order for Goliath to win, the objective has to be a military objective. It cannot be a social, economic, or political objective.
@@tjen7929 studies were made, or more like of course the US would observe the results while they were in control of the country during the post war occupation. The US monitored the pregnant women who came from nagasaki and hiroshima while handing out rations, only less than 10% experienced birth defects, around 1% was correlated to radiation (rerf.or.jp). Birth defects is surprisingly pretty common, especially in poor countries, which post-war occupation Japan used to be. Don't mix up the bombs which just caused a big ass explosion, where the dangerous radiation levels only lasted for a couple months at most, to disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima.
@@madensmith7014 according to Columbia University studies, there were dramatic and long lasting effects. Aside from the nearly 200k people that died within the first few months after the bombing (as per the Radiation Effects Research Foundation) leukaemia rates skyrocketed over the next 6yrs, predominantly in children. For all other cancers, the effects from the bombing were noticed 10 years later. The problems facing the generation after the bombing (in utero during the bombing) include small head size, mental disability, and physical growth impairment.
IF THE BOMB WAS TO STOP THE JAPANESE FROM FIGHTING WHY WAS IT USED ON INNOCENT CIVILIANS? IT WAS A EXPERIMENT AGAINST A NON-WHITE POPULATION AND HAD LITTLE TO DO WITH WAR!!! COMPARED TO AMERICA THE NAZIS WERE ANGELS!
According to National Geographic: "U.S. Secretary of War Henry Stimson wanted Kyoto removed from the target list, on the grounds that the city was too culturally significant to the Japanese to be destroyed. Some say his personal fondness for the city-he visited in the 1920s and may have honeymooned there-was the real reason he appealed to President Harry Truman to remove Kyoto from the list."
**Arnold Schwarzenegger voice** you son of a b*tch… that was actually a really good read. Self scribed or could you sight your sources and or a reading list. Interested to read more on the subject. Never read a persons comment ( and one so long) and obligingly continued 👏🏾
Skipping this fact was a huge miss for the video. And he actually states the opposite, claiming that the decision makers didn’t care about the shrines.
The point was to make an ordinary firebombing look like an atomic bomb. So you had to pick a city that was mostly made of wood and paper, with as few concrete structures as possible. Ergo the two that were chosen. Then simulate radiation sickness using chemical weapons.
I've got it, but still can't bring myself to watch it. I will, one day, but I have to be in a really good place before I do. The first five minutes are sublime brilliance.
For anyone interested in learning about Imperial Japan's colonization and plans for complete obliteration of Korean language and culture read ''When My Name Was Keoko'' by Linda Sue Park. (2002) It's a well written and researched novel from the perspective of a young Korean girl and her family. Complete with academic references. Try to read it and not cry. I can't.
Well. Of all the videos I've watched regarding air raids and bombing of Japanese cities during the latter part of WWII, this is actually the first video I've watched where the narrator talks not only about the bombings, but FIRE bombings. It's interesting how this fact is rarely brought up as firebombing is the worst kind for the victims to deal with and extremely difficult to put out due to the chemicals used in these bombs. I rate this video with high scores for It's presentation and narrative.
@MatAK49 What he does not mention is that Japan began bombing civilians in 1931 and did not stop killing civilians until the two atomic bombs were dropped. In all the Japanese killed some 20m million Asian civilians more than 20 times the number of Japanese civilians killed. The Japanese killed to conquer and enslave. The American bombing was to stop Japnese aggression.
@@imonit4272 There is no doubt that the bombing was horrific and the photographic images show that. Unfortunately, there are no photographs of the millions of Japanese who were saved by forcing the Japanese to surrender. War is a terrible thing, but it was not America that began the War. The important fact is that America fought the war and forced Japan to surrender with only one goal in mind, to end Japanese aggression and brutal murder of civilians throughout Asia. Once the Germans and Japanese launched the War, it could only be won by the application of American industrial power on a massive scale. This was Germany's and Japan's choice, not America's choice to go to war.
respectfully, any discussion of whether or not to drop the bomb that ignores the 1944-1945 situation of firebombing entire cities into the ground is simply intentionally incomplete. I'm not saying who is right or wrong, I do lean on one side, and I believe that if we hadn't used them in 1945, we probably destroy civilization in the 1950s once everyone has enough nukes and nobody knows how bad an actual (very low-yield, btw) nuke is.
@@imonit4272 have some empathy. Yes, those bombs ended the war.. But they were literally designed to kill civilians. They weren't even made to kill the Japanese military or government because they weren't in a centralised location. They were literally made only to kill Japanese civilians. And they damn near didn't work. I'd say, anything created purely for civilian deaths deserves apologies, no matter how much good they did. You can do something good and still be apologetic for it. I'd bet the soldiers then did feel sorry. Unless you're a psychopath, you'd feel sorry for civilian deaths.
2:35 An often overlooked or ignored point, overlooked in this video too, is that the Pacific War was one of Japan's making. And it didn't start in 1941. Japan had been on the make since the late 19th century and started its conquest and subjugation of Asia in 1905 when it acquired Korea. Thirty six years later it was Japan that brought the war to U.S. shores. Again, a war wholly of Japan's making. And what a war! Here in Indonesia, the real bitter memories of foreign oppression is not 300 of Dutch colonization, but rather the four years of Japanese occupation.
It is estimated that 4 million Indonesians died as a result of forced labor, food extortion, and logistical failures by the Japanese military. Food shortages were particularly severe on the island of Java, where 2.4 million people died of starvation. Having caused so much damage, it is only natural that the Japanese should be resented by the Indonesians. I personally can only pray for the repose of the souls of the victims.
@@abc0to1 Thanks For That Post. Many Here Have NO Concept How Ruthless And Evil Imperial Japan Was. Most Know Of Rape Of Nanking, But Few Know About Unit 731, Started Years Before Pearl Harbor. UNIT 731 Was a Highly Secret Bio-Weapons War Project In China, That China (To It's Credit) Stil Remembers, And Has a Museum Dedicated To.
You portrayed Operation Downfall somewhat poorly. Saying estimates range in the TENS of thousands to a quarter million is INSANE. Okinawa alone was around 50,000. A better estimate is a quarter million on the absolute low end to a couple million on the high end for Americans. Japan would also lose millions of men, children and women. Hard to believe since it's cruel af, but the atomic bombs actually saved Japan
@@hxhdfjifzirstc894 But America is a strong nation, and is very powerful, and since Japan is now much smaller that subconsciously makes people go against the US. It’s psychology. If a grown up and a kid are fighting people will usually side with the kid, pretty stupid but that’s how things are unfortunately.
One forgets another reason why Tokyo was not targeted. In order for the Japanese to surrender, they needed some leadership to survive to effect the surrender. If Tokyo was destroyed then there would not have been anyone to make the decision to give up. Then the full invasion would have been required to bring and end to the war (which really is what happened in Germany). Yes the firebombing had a tremendous effect, but it did not bring about surrender.
Specifically, they really wanted to keep the Emperor alive, as they knew it was primarily the military leadership around him that was ultra gung-ho and would encourage fighting to the last man. They really did not want the country under such ultranationalist rule.
It was different with the Germans. The US didn't want anyone from the NSDAP to make peace outside of inconditional surrender, since they would keep the party in charge. In fact, when Hitler was bombed, US generals deemed his survival more benefitial for the German defeat, since they wouldn't have to deal with the OKW as "The good guys who killed Hitler", while they also were pretty bad (throwing Rommel under the bus due to envy and trying countless times to get Manstein removed from command, in addition to general incompetence, for example)
@@MitchHawkes Additionally, the US didn't "start with the firebombing of Japan". The first B-29 missions over the Japanese mainland were conventional HE bombs dropped in daylight from high altitude. Only when these missions had a significantly worse outcome than daylight bombing in Europe (due to the effects of the then-unknown jet stream) did LeMay come in and change tactics.
A superb analysis. I wish I had the ease of talking to a camera like you do. From historian to historian, your work is of perfect historiographic content. And it demonstrates very well, in a short amount of time, how history is an interdisciplinary discipline and, above all, human.
History is remembered threw the Victor's eyes This will not be the real reason just the reason 2 justify American tyranny like every other country they invade My grandfather was there after the bomb to help japan recover His words don't align with anything America has 2 say
A lot is left out tho. 1 year ahead of the bombing. Spies traveled across the country to find the most suitable cities. Hiroshima was chosen coz of its historical military meaning in Japan but above all of.... it was the perfect target because the city is surrounded by mountains so the blast will have the most impact. Nothing about this bomb was left to coincidences. As an example the bomb was designed to go of 60feets above ground. Nagasaki is also surrounded by mountains and have in many ways the same topography.
High quality as usual, I appreciate the perspective you took in this video. also wasn't expecting to be reminded of my time playing battlefield 1943 back in the day.
The strategy used by the allies was known as one of "Total War". Its always easy for those looking back on history to pick and choose the history they want to remember in order to justify what they believe. In Japan, you spoke of the fact that Tokyo had been fire bombed and 100,000 people were killed. When you add up all those minus those killed in the two atomic bombings, one thing that isn't discussed is that Tojo and the military that was ruling Japan still would not surrender. They wanted a warriors death. It took the atomic bombings to prompt Emperor Hirohito to force the military leaders to unconditionally surrender. My Mother remembers when the Emperor addressed the people of Japan after it's capitulation. For them it was the first time they had heard the voice of the Emperor. To them, he was a God. The fire bombings killed many Japanese and destroyed their cities, but it was the atomic bombs that forced them to accept defeat.
Indeed. My coworker's mother is Japanese and has memories of being trained at 4 years old (!) to use sharpened stick weapons to kill any Allied soldier that would land on the island.
@@gus91343 If someone else has done something similar, is it ok for other people to do it too? Is it okay to judge the war crimes of the Japanese people while not judging the war crimes of the victorious people? If international law protects only the winners and not the losers, how can there be justice? If justice is not about upholding international law but about winning wars, why are the attack on Pearl Harbor and the use of weapons of mass destruction condemned?
My grandfather was a bomber pilot who flew a Lancaster over Dresden. Despite receiving a prestigious medal, the guilt destroyed him. It's the darkest moment in my family's history, and echoes of its impact still persist.
My father was young enough to be in the Army in time to stage in California for what would have been the invasion of Japan. He ended up as an occupation troop. He said they were told one million casualties. Now that I'm old and get to watch history shows a lot, one on the war in the Pacific said a goal of the Japanese general on Okinawa was to create a river of American blood so large that we would not invade the Japanese main island.
The Japanese general as well as the leaders of Japan got their wish. When Truman considered the river of blood the Japanese would inflict, he chose not to invade and dropped the bomb instead.
whats crazy is that its 1million casualties for just a beach head and a bit more. The entire island would be about 2-3million, the japanese would've lost 6+million too.
I read a book which estimates the overall casualties on both sides including Japanese civilians could have possibly gone as high as 15 MILLION! The Japanese were insanely fanatical at the time. They were planning to arm women even elementary kids with spears or whatever they could provide and send them to their deaths. Whenever someone tries to guilt trip someone over the US nuking of Japan, I always bring this up. The casualties would have been exponential and the war could have possibly dragged on for another year or two. To make matters worse, the subsequent occupation and rehabilitation of the country would have been bloody and extremely difficult. Guerrilla warfare and terrorism would have gone on for decades or so. Nuking them into submission and forcing the Emperor to sought for peace and having him acquitted of responsibilities and allowing him to retain his position greatly helped the occupation of the country.
German here. Thanks for tackling these ambiguities within the rationale behind warfare. Sadly these topics are taught with an intentional aura of taboo (say false dichotomy) here. In the end the question remains: war, what is it good for?
It's good for stopping pricks like Hitler and Tojo. Unfortunately, INNOCENT people get caught up in it. Unfortunately, unless the ENTIRE worlds stands up tp Putin and Xi, it will be repeating history all over again.
@@personman8404 Where to begin... I'll try summarizing to my best ability, for what it's worth. The good: the core principle of all lessons being the sentiment "Never again!". The bad: no acknowledgement of the anti-semitic zeitgeist as a global phenomenon. The ugly: no matter the particular epoch (be it antiquity or industrial revolution) every year from 5th grade on there will be at least one chapter about the Reich... after the 10th it's all there ever will be. tl;dr: the curriculum commands a collective responsibility of vigilance yet fails to illuminate the underlying human condition. Thus it regrettably renders itself another - admittedly rather civilized - dogma.
Really enjoyed this. I've read about Dresden a long time ago but had no idea about Tokyo's state and how that influenced the nuclear bomb drops. Good and nuanced too - nobody comes out of a war without dirty hands.
@@ThePresentPast_ - Tokyo was not bombed because it is a bad idea to cut the head off the chicken... with No leader you will have a crazy war with small groups and never get control.
My biological father was a Gopher (go get the coffee etc) at Hanford. They were making plutonium for the bomb. He really didn't know what they were doing, but knew that it was top secret. Later he knew and realized that he was a part of that, but really a very small part. He went to College in Walla Walla and later went back, but this time more involved as an engineer and realized that the next step was the Hydrogen bomb. He left with my Mother, my sister and me (1 was 1 year old) and went to Concord ca. where they were working on developing computers. My mother and father divorced in 1955 and my mother remarried in 1959 to my step-dad. my step-dad was on one of the ships (airforce) and witnessed the testing of the bomb on Bikini island. I am a nuclear child and not the better for it. History is told in all its glory by the winners, the real truth is that there are no winners. As George Carlin said- the earth is going to be fine- it will heal eventually- the rest of us will be gone.
I remember in a lot of japanese documentaries and books they told stories of the tokyo bombing being way more destructive and killed way more than the nukes they experienced, the civilians told of the 'fire tornados'. I was wondering why it was so bad but now it makes sense.
"The Firebombing of Tokyo." The same method was used in hundreds of cities across Japan. Almost every prefecture has a memorial to people lost to these incendiary bomb raids. My grandfather's house in Utsunomiya was burned to the ground.
The 9-10 March 1945 firebombing raid may have killed over 100,000 people because the city was still at that time mostly made of wooden structures. The combination of the fires plus the onshore winds that spread the fires in a deadly flame conflagration leveled 16 square miles of central Tokyo.
My father in law boarded a ship headed to Japan to be part of the invasion force. Fortunately by the time it arrived the war was over and he became part of the occupation force. He wound up liking his time in Japan.
@@patrickbrady519 Oh Yeah! And Soon 🔜 American GIs Were Bringing 🔙 Back Cute Japanese War Brides. Japan Was a Soldier's Paradise For At Least 25 Years.
Your comments on the morality of firebombing are definitely worthy of more discussion. I would guess that when you have entered Total war (as opposed to a limited conflict), then all the population are considered combatants. It would also have been almost impossible for any US president to argue that a more humane way to end the war was to sacrifice US men's lives in hand to hand combat. That would be an even more insane solution.
right, thats the thing. They pretty much attacked civilians and attacked our soil initially. We gave them that same venom they had for everyone else lol, why keep sending teens on boats
@cunninr2 The simple fact usually not mentioned is that there was not a more humane way to end the War, Those that criticize Trumn's decision never provide a possible alternative.
@@dennisweidner288 Agreed - war is inhumane. We sit here at our computers with running water and air conditioning and hand-wring about two bombs dropped towards the end of a world-wide war (OK except Antarctica maybe), judging people from what happened 80 years ago.
Not just the UK and US that did above total war and firebombing, Q Germany Airforce destroying lot of Poland, UK, Norway cities - this Video is tainted in this regard only considering Allies of doing wrong
@cunninr2 Absolutely correct. It is important that it was the Axis which1) started the War and 2) started bombing civilians. It is absurd to think that the Allies should not respond when the Axis did these two things. It is also important to note that killing civilians was a major Axis war goal. And as a result, over 90 percent of the civilians killed in the War were killed by Axis forces. Focusing on the bombing is misleading. The bombing was responsible for a relatively small proportion of World War II civilian deaths.
The bombing of Dresden was a military experiment to see if fire bombs would destroy the fire fighting capabilities of the locals. In this it exceeded expectations because the fire storm melted fire hydrants and destroyed fire fighting equipment as well as all the cities fire fighters.
It was also due to the fact that the russians had just lost hundreds of thousands of men to take budapest so the allies were just trying to stop casualties on both sides.
@brucesummers7448 Nonsense. The Dresden raids were a response to a Soviet request to restrict the movement of German troops and supplies. Dresden was a transportation hub. And by the way, just who began the war, who killed 10s of millions of civilians, and who began bombing civilians?. Harris was absolutely correct. "The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They have sown the wind, and so they shall reap the whirlwind."
@@chipsawdust5816 I am not sure that the Soviets requested that Dresden be leveled, but they certainly did request the Allies prevent German troop movements through Dresden. There is much that the critics of America and Britain in their rush to condemn simply ignore. 1. While the NAZIs were defeated, Western and Soviet forces were still taking substantial casualties. 2. There was no city in NAZI Germany and Imperial Japan that was not supporting the war effort. 3. The NAZIs and Japanese Militarists had caused America and Britain to ramp up their military power to an unprecedented level. It is not easy to change such a development on a dime. And the responsibility for this rests firmly on German and Japanese shoulders. 4. By the time of Dresden, knowledge of NAZI atrocities had begun to become more fully understood. And this was far beyond the military atrocities such as bombing Rotterdam and English cities. Protecting German civilians was not high up on the Allies' list of priorities, largely because of German and Japanese conduct of the War. No thinking person wishes that Dresden had not occurred. But only the mathematically challenged make it a huge issue. World War II death tolls probably reached 70 million people, even low-ball estimates are about 50 million. And 90 percent of the civilian deaths were the work of the Axis powers. Killing civilians was actually a PRIMARY Axis goal. Read about the NAZI Generalplan Ost. The Allied strategic bombing campaign was hardly the major factor in the Civilian death toll.
I think one important factor that needs to be remembered is that Japanese culture didn't allow for surrender as an easy option. Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast series, "Supernova in the East", provides some excellent context for understanding both sides.
Exactly. It’s one thing to fight a military that fights to the death, but it’s another to fight an entire civilization willing to do the same. Japanese civilians would’ve taken up arms to fight Americans with as much ferocity as their military. Especially since the idea that bombing a population would weaken the populous’ resolve was false. Add boots on the ground to mainland Japan, and the entirety of Japan would feel like their entire existence was at stake. As much as I hate that it took the atomic bombings and countless lives being lost leading up to that decision, I feel ultimately the decision to use the atomic bombs weren’t just a means of preemptively saving American lives, but also that of countless Japanese civilians who would’ve defended their homeland. It’s almost a question of would you rather take 100,000 lives to end the war, or have 100s of thousands, if not millions of lives be taken.
Supernova in the East does a much better job approaching this subject than this video. This video isn't bad but there are a lot of small inaccuracies and things left unmentioned that paint a somewhat distorted picture of the circumstances the allies were in, ie how it came to the point where nuclear weapons and strategic bombing were seen as the best course of action to end the war as soon as possible
My grandfather served as a doctor on the Pacific stage. He said that there was so much hatred and suffering between and among the Japanese and Americans during the war that when the decision was made to drop the two big bombs, the American soldiers thought Truman was a hero. They were just so focused on ending the war. Good and bad is all a matter of perspective.
After 20 years in the US Army, the death and destruction I had seen keeps me awake at night. I have found that there are 3 sides of the truth in every war, there is our side, their side and then there is the truth. The truth is only found after all the death and destruction of wars. We need more history channels like this to help us to understand what the truth is. As always, thank you for posting another amazing video
@@damiencook3423I think the correct phrase is "the victor writes history", few historical naratives seem to care about individual survivors, that the power and reach of winning nations and peoples makes their narrative far stronger
@@cbuzz2371 "the victor writes history" Ironically Japan is the one counterexample to this. Sort of. They lost the war and yet no one really remembers their war crimes. Although that's in large part thanks to their being anti-Communist allies with the US. So I guess you could say the victors helped them whitewash their own history, indirectly.
I think this is a good analysis, but I think Germany's conduct during the war can quite reasonably be characterized as pure, undiluted 100% evil. Also, It is not commonly discussed, but Japan killed over 20 million human beings in China during the war, the vast majority of them civilians. Far short of Chairman Mao, but still, very dark deeds were committed by the Japanese armies in Asia. The allies brought the usual high percentage of human cruelty and stupidity to their conduct of the war, but the conduct of their forces do not bear equivocal comparison to that of either Germany or Japan. WWII was one of several occasions in history which involved a straightforward contest between good and evil. There are messy details to be sure, but that shouldn't obscure the true nature of the conflict.
Definitely. Also it’s not like precision munitions existed at the time. A war was forced on us and our allies at the time and trying to create a moral equivalence between the two sides is simply wrong. Also had Japan not been totally defeated and we ended up with a negotiated peace, Japan would probably look more like North Korea today. Japan basically had a military first policy just like North Korea does.
The claim that those monstrous acts were to "save" American lives and put an end to the war, is a fraud, as during the whole war up to 1945, only a paltry 100,000 US servicemen died in the Pacific war, far less than in Europe. And Japan was close to surrender. "Far short of Chairman Mao, ..."😂😂😂😂
Firebombs are crazy. My great grandmother told me that the front neighboring building was bombed and it burnt for two weeks. Also my grandma was born in the middle of the siege of Budapest and the hospital was in the middle of the front lines so she had to sneak across both sides.
This video is incredible levels of whataboutism. Not only was dresden, a city with massive arms factories employing 150000 people, and the last large railyard before the eastern front, a valid military target, the atomic bombs prevented much larger losses, both military and civilian, occuring should the invasion happen.
You made SEVERAL excellent points. The most important one was firebombing killed more people and in an indiscriminate and horrific way. The A-bomb was an effective way to convince Japanese leaders that they wouldn't have any Japanese lives left to throw away in their lust for power. Human life meant nothing to them. The A-bomb ended up saving both Japanese and American lives by ending the rule of Tojo and his generals. It would have been great if it could have been done without any loss of life. Nagasaki was bombed in a way that deliberately minimized deaths and destruction. To this day, Japan has never admitted to its people their hideous war crimes or even how the army murdered Japan's civilian government and then rampaged through Asia. The Japanese should hear the truth about what their government did throughout Asia.
The claim that those monstrous acts were to "save" American lives and put an end to the war, is a fraud, as during the whole war up to 1945, only a paltry 100,000 US servicemen died in the Pacific war, far less than in Europe. And Japan was close to surrender.
You should see how the Japanese GOVERNMENT lies. Japanese civilians are in fact quite polite and nice. In many American textbooks, they actually state that Japan helped grow the Korean economy. If you know how history truly went down, however, it would be quite different.
Thank you for this documentary. I actually learned something today. Sure, I knew about Dresden, but I had no idea how widespread firebombing was at the time in both Germany and Japan. This is a real eye-opener.
@@dafyddthomas7299 The counter-argument, which is not mine incidentally, is that the demise of the Nazi regime was certain when Dresden was bombed and it was not a militarily important city.
Just imagine... if the Japanese had bombed Washington D.C., New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Dallas, Austin, Miami, St. Louis, Denver, Seattle... they bomb and destroy 50% or more of most of your cities and you don't surrender. Would you then care if they bomb and destroy Boston and Philadelphia? Those last two really broke the camel's back and made you want to surrender?
I think I have to respectfully disagree on some points here. I understand that the Allies were not perfectly innocent, but I think we can see a general black and white dichotomy here. Germany systematically slaughtered millions of people, killing 6 million Jews in the largest genocide the world has ever seen, and it is still the world's most deadly intentional mass-killing. Japan engaged in horrific brutality, with the rape of Nanking, and the one that comes to my mind, the atrocities in unit 731 (Very interesting read, but don't google if it's too late at night). The allies did what they had to do
The allies were purely interested in protecting their own colonial interests, the holocaust and other atrocities were just a convenient story post war to make the west seem like benevolent forces for good, ignoring of course the horrible crimes committed before and since by the US, UK, France etc all over the world (the nazis were literally inspired by the American concept of manifest destiny with their Lebensraum program) not to mention how many nazi and japanese war criminals got pardoned and hired by the allies to develop weapons technology for them and installed into their governments and companies, then theres the whole thing about the CIA literally being created as an american gestapo.
@@zimriel That’s unfortunately just not how bombing worked back then. You were aiming just to get your bomb within a few kilometers of the target. You either sent in light bombers with little chance of them coming back, let alone completely destroying the target AND coming back. Or you just wiped a whole area off the map.
Dresden absolutely did have military targets that were of value, but the thing is British bombers literally firebombed the residential areas. And that is not because they missed the military targets.
@@zimrielnot only is it a myth, it's literal nazi propaganda. The words that dresden isn't a milotary target, but s cultural centre was said dsys after the bombing by himmler himself
@jakegreen2409 This video is hardly objective. It glosses over the 20 million Asians the Japanese butchered in their war of aggression including the use of weapons of mass destruction. And he fails to explain just how America could have ended the war in a more humane way with fewer civilian casualties.
@@corbinjehl6563 Yep, also: Was Guernica really the first city ever bombed??? I have absolutetly no idea but some quick googling tells me bomber planes were first created around 1913
That is completely wrong. The cause of the surrender was the Soviet Union's entry into the war against Japan, and the purpose of the atomic bombs was simply human experimentation. Can't you see that when the US dropped two of them?
"We were at war, and it was total war, and we HAD to win, because heaven known what would have happened if we hadn't" - british bomber crew member from Ewan McGreggor's bomber documentary
My cousin twice removed was a POW in the mines at Nagasaki when the bomb dropped. He recalled coming out of the mine and all the coal lit on fire and seeing charred corpses everywhere.
The last Japanese solider to surrender was in 1974. One can simply not imagine how fanatical they were. Even after two nuclear bombs they almost didn't surrender.
When the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and invaded a Japanese held area, Japan was convinced that between the atomic bombs and the Soviet Union's declaration of war, that surrender was the only option.
Your information is simply incorrect, Onoda, who surrendered in 1974, was an intelligence agency man, like the CIA, and was simply trained to carry out his mission as long as his life lasted. He was loyal to his mission, not a fanatic. Or would a CIA man abandon his mission without orders from his superiors?
But it might be a real progress, that we are aware of this while on the winning side. I believe in former centuries the citizens of the large empires were 100% convinced the world is black and white and they are the good guys. On the other hand, I am sitting here in Germany, so can someone from a WW2-winning location confirm this for me? :) PS.: Of course this applies also to other conflicts with western alliances, where I can see Germany on the winning-side. I just think that if the nazis would have won, I would probably be convinced that the nazis were good guys, while I can easily find critics on allies tactics on the internet right now - so that might be good :)
The production of historical narratives is always a fascinating topic. If anyone wants to read more about this, I'd recommend Michel-Rolph Trouillot's book "Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History"
It's wild seeing a city I live close to in Germany represented on the German map because it's never mentioned even though it was heavily bombed and very historical.
They bombed those cities because Tokyo and Osaka have been bombed by raids And the nuclear team feared that when the bomba made the impact japan would think that the damage was not done by the atomic bombs but by the raids The point was to see the full damage of a single atomic bomb
The claim that those monstrous acts were to "save" American lives and put an end to the war, is a fraud, as during the whole war up to 1945, only a paltry 100,000 US servicemen died in the Pacific war, far less than in Europe. And Japan was close to surrender.
Whichever point of view they took, they would not have surrendered. Because it was the Soviet Union's entry into the war against Japan that caused the surrender.
Firebombing could leave cities ablaze or smouldering for weeks, not just days. There’s cases of smouldering rubble reigniting nearly 2 weeks after the initial bombing (depending on local weather/season and humidity) although most of these small fires where generally contained quickly, some of them would start to spread again. For me it goes to show how terrifying living in a city where you could step through rubble and into a pit of embers days or weeks after you thought it was safe to walk around.
Imagine having been just outside the instant death zone of the bomb and you saw that bomb go off. And you have no idea what a nuke is, you would think the bomb was the sun
Imagine being in Hiroshima on the 6th (less than two miles from ground zero), surviving the blast and despite your injuries, traveling home to Nagasaki and returning to work on the 9th. Tsutomu Yamaguchi was one of the luckiest and unluckiest people I have ever heard about.
Interesting! I thought it was a slow move towards Tokyo to pressure the government to surrender before they reached the city. I had no idea that Tokyo was 51% destroyed already. I learned something today.
I was born in 1957. From the time of about 6th grade, we learned about WWII. I don't recall ever hearing that 'black and white argument' of "Allies Good, AXIX EVIL". From about the age or 10 I became an avid student, and I started reading all I could on WWII and I DO remember reading a book about the firebombings of Dresden and Hamburg. Today we have the internet and a thousand documentaries on it. But Hitler had the populace so completely brainwashed and convinced, as was the case with Tojo in Japan (which had been a militaristic society for hundreds of years) that they were not going to easily go down. Look, you barely mentioned the fact that the Soviets declared war on Japan, and had invaded Manchuria and were well on their way to invading Japan - and it's one thing the Japanese feared more than the Americans, it was the Russians. Even with the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japanese communications was in a shambles - there was no "BOOM" and instant surrender. The full extent of the power wasn't known, but the extent of the Soviet cruelty was known and that's what really prompted them to surrender SO quickly, and to US. You can never 'armchair quarterback' the decision to drop the bomb and you certainly cannot retcon today's morality and thinking into the past. I've stood in that blast crater that was created by the first atomic explosion at the White Sands Trinity site. I also loved in Honolulu for nearly 7 years in the 80's and had the opportunity to meet and speak to Japanese pilots who participated in the attack on Pearl Harbor. Its certainly not black and white, and it's certainly impossible to fully analyze the situation as we were not there, though there are many who try to do just that. We know that the truth lies somewhere in the middle. The truth about the war isn't LIED about here, and all it takes to find out more is to do your own research. Haw we allowed the Soviets to 'intervent' and invade, we'd very well be looking at N.Japan and S.Japan today...
truth is that the Japanese recognized the Americans as being far closer in them in terms of ideology than the soviets, they knew the soviets would not have whitewashed their crimes and pardoned their war criminals to work for major American companies, the exact same thing happened with the Nazi, America was not concerned about the rise of fascism or genocide or any of that nonsense(Germany was heavily inspired by the US treatment of Natives and was supported by many US industrialists such as Ford), they were simply concerned about the expansion of the axis into their own colonial territories
The problem with historians is that they rarely look at the future from the viewpoint of the participants. In 1942 the Allies did not know the eventual outcome of the war. Despite brave talk of the Allies, the Axis powers had many victories. It is much easier to pontificate now.
My Mother was 12 when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and living in Kentucky. She said when the news broke there wasn't a man in the area that didn't go down to join the service that very day. She said from that point on there was great fear of an invasion by Japan, whose atrocities were well known, that never really eased up throughout the war. There is no doubt in her mind that the bombs were necessary to end the war. Thus was the climate and thinking of the day.
@@jz55859 there were many incidents of suicide when men were told that they were 4F and unsuitable for military service. Which is tragic, because they could have become welders or essential workers helping the war effort.
My father was on a troop ship for operation downfall. There is a pretty good chance I wouldn't be writing this now if the bombs where not used. Though I do think Japan was more interested in surrendering to the US than the Soviet Union
My father was a glider pilot sitting in Okinawa waiting for the attack on Japan when the Bombs were dropped. Like you, I wouldn't have come to this earth by the same father if not for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I get the sentiment but I would be cautious to start justifying such things simply for the fact that you wouldn't have been here. Think of the people who would have been saying similar things who never got the chance because of these same actions. It's better to recognize the full consequences of these horrible decisions made in the past so that we ensure that they are not repeated.
@@TanukiDigital See, we differ in the term "horrible decisions." It would have been a far worse decision to launch an amphibious assault on the Japanese homeland. Far, far worse. For both sides.
Kokura was the primary target for the 2nd bomb I believe, cloud cover wouldn’t allow visual targeting so Nagasaki was bombed instead, I think the Japanese saying for being lucky is “the luck of Kokura “
Nagasaki was cloudy too. The pilots said there was an hole in the clouds. So they said. If they hadn't dropped the bomb they would have run out of fuel and wouldn't have made it back to the base. That could have been motivating.
A book I read many years ago, the author fought the Pacific war all the way to the end. So inspite his personal involvement, I was surprised his opinion was the bomb wasn't necessary to effect a surrender. But Russia had just started fighting Japan and a quick surrender was needed to keep Russia from occupying Japan. In fact some of Japan's home island were not returned to Japan until the 1960s. We were already preparing for the next war with Russia
bro a random soldiers opinion of a theater wide war encompassing millions of people and deep cultural differences is not an especially reliable source of how necessary the bomb was in effecting surrender.
@@f556784q3 the navy captain ( I forget his name now) said we controlled the air and sea around the home islands and that they were dependant on inter island commerce to just survive. That we could have waited them out. We needed to rush the surrender to keep Russia from taking any more control than they did. This seems credible, we were concerned about Russia in Europe. Results on both fronts was the iron curtain across eastern Europe and some of Japan's home islands were not returned to Japan from Russia until the 1960s. I think the actions of Russia validates this navy Captain's assessment. I was just surprised because he had such a personal involvement .
My brother in law's father was on one of those other planes on that mission. Not sure which one. He was an officer. He died of a heart attack at age 50. I happened to be in Seattle in 1982. I was taken down to the docks. There I boarded the Battleship Missouri and stood within a few feet of where the Japanese signed the surrender. Off in the distance was the aircraft carrier Hornet. It plucked the Apollo 11 crew out of the Pacific.
@@dennisweidner288 I understand that. But nevertheless, the Missouri and aircraft carrier Hornet were witness of and present to probably the top two events of the 20th Century? Top 5? What was greater?
@@Downsdddgh Hornet was not present at the surrender ceremony. Interesting question, I would not rank the Japanese surrender that high. I would put Pearl Harbor up there and then the dissolution of the Soviet Union and for the top 5 I would probably choose the 3) Moon landing, 4) dropping of the atomic bomb, and 5) Henry Ford's introduction of the Model-T, but here are many other contenders such as the discovery of the double helix,
When estimating the casualties that would result from an invasion of Japan, we cannot forget to include the number of Japanese soldiers AND civilians. The civilian population, men, women, and children, was being trained trained to resist an invasion. Civilian mass suicides at Saipan and Okinawa would very likely have been replicated if/when resistance proved unsuccessful. The body count would have dwarfed the casualties from the A-bombs.
@milwaukeejt7483 Absolutely correct. Notice those that who criticize Truman's decision, never provide a creditable alternative that would have resulted in fewer Japanese casualties.
Civillans did not believe in suicide. They were fed propaganda about rapacious Americans. The first US soldiers they saw handed out chocolate bars and made friends.
I think it's odd that the estimates of invasion casualties were sort of glossed over. There were estimates of up to 10 million if I remember right. That was based on the projections from Iwo Jima, and it brought on a logistical nightmare. They would need an invasion force of over a million men and Japanese casualties would be calculated in the millions as well, billions in bonds (that they already struggled to sell), food for that amount of men and those employed to get them to the island (it was possible they would have to resort to farming cat tail weeds for their starch content just to feed everyone), another year or two of war that everyone was mortally sick of, and somehow keep their holdings they were negotiating with the Reds in Germany. Ultimately, it was a numbers game, and they even ruled out Kyoto knowing that it would fortify their resolve. So they opted for Kokura as the primary target with Nagasaki as secondary. That wouldn't indicate the target were civilians primarily, but they were trying to get a surrender before USSR intervention, so they wouldn't have to split Japan like Germany. Imagine a traditional invasion between the US and the USSR, and half of Japan was subjugated to the Communist atrocities like China or East Germany. Things could have been a lot worse for the Japs, especially given what they had done. I honestly wish they hadn't been so stupid and attacked the US Navy in the first place.
Check out the changes in what Truman said about those estimates. In the President's own words, after the war, they vary significantly. Some figures are astronomically high, others much more moderate.
It's against the video's narrative. "sure the nazis did some bad things but..." sure they were trying to wipe another population off the face of the earth but... It's like self defense, neither option is preferable but once you cross the line its the better of two evils
The estimate is based on the US pkan to throw Americans at Japanese kamikaze defenders as cannon fodder. A SMART invasion would have done a feint on Kyushu, but focused the real invasion on Sendai in the northeast wherr defenses were thin. Sendai is closer to the US mainland than Kyushu. It could be supported by B-17s launched from Okinawa and planes from hundreds of carriers plus battleships. Stupid, unimaginative US planners were careless about US soldiers' lives.
I'm hearing a lot of people say "Well, The Allies were just as bad as The Axis" which in some cases, were true. However, it's not like the Axis were being nice in the war and the Allies decided to employ some harsh tactics that were "Evil". People need to understand that the Allies had to return fire in the same order or more as the Axis did to them FIRST. At the end of the day, World War 2 was considered a Total War. Meaning all hands on deck, all resources, all people, are in this together to continue pushing and pumping out weaponry to the front, as well as MAXIMIZING as much damage as possible to the other enemy. It was literally kill or be killed, no conditional surrender but unconditional surrender.
Yes, trying to blame the Allied forced is actually evil (the twisting of reality, into the opposite of the truth). All moral blame must be placed on those that STARTED THE WAR. And when you look into the Rape of Nanking, or see film of prisoners in Dachau or Buchenwald, you really must be an evil dimwit to blame America.
My grandfather and my grandmother (at the time kids) lived trough the night of the bombing in dresden. My Grandpa told me, that the asphalt was literally melting, that there was no cover in air raid shelters because the air was sucked out by the fire storm. The people that tried to flee the heat by jumping in a well or something like that were boiled alive, there is even storys, that american fighterjets equiped with machine guns flew low over fleeing crowds shooting the helpless people down. I have to say, that Dresden is now a really beautiful city, but when I look at old pfotos it is hard to believe, that this was once my hometown.
American fighter jets? Americans didn't have jets yet. German would by the end of the war. To little to late. The British a few but not operational yet.
@@maxwellcrazycat9204 Sorry, I have to clarify my bad english, we are not talking about fihter jets but about "Tiefflieger" - low flyer planes. My gandpa told me about them. The media says, they never existed but there are a lot of eyewitnesses telling storys about them.
@@cameronchewning6516 Your barbaric ignorance is astonishing. You may one day receive the same heartless treatment by people who claim to be human beings. I assume you could be classified as an "American Supporter" and boiled alive without a second thought by a nation that disagrees with all that America does.
@Granatosaurus Interestingly enough, there's only a few civilian eye witness accounts. The US has no reports of having them, and the Japanese officials/media never said a word about them. I'm inclined more towards them not existing, if for nothing else that they wouldn't be worth the risk to use.
Rather interesting take on the subject matter. It's nice to hear something refreshing that it wasn't all as easy and rosy as historybooks make it seem. Lekker bezig Jochem, ga zo door jongen!😉
In retrospect 2 nukes to avoid an invasion was a good trade off. I know it wasn't just the nukes - the Soviets invading Manchuria played just as large part in the surrender. The Japanese did not want Soviets occupying their Home Island - they hated Americans but they also knew Stalin would be a much worse fate than Truman and MaCarthur.
imagine if the soviets got to japan first, socialist japan would be interesting to see, maybe there wouldn't be such a high rate of suicide amongst salarymen
That is completely wrong. The cause of the surrender was the Soviet Union's entry into the war against Japan, and the purpose of the atomic bombs was simply human experimentation. Can't you see that when the US dropped two of them?
I’ve also heard one of the main reasons Tokyo wasn’t nuked is because killing the leadership would mean there’s no one who could officially surrender. Very informative video. I take issue with the implication that there was some kind of moral parity (not black and white). Sure there’s no complete black and white in war, but ww2 is pretty close in the history of wars.
The war had to be won, but it’s only that “black and white” because almost everything we know about it came from the Allied powers. Is burning millions of men, women, and children to death in their own homes for being trapped in a certain country really that much better?
Absolutely. Like I'm not gonna sa Allies were perfect, but to say there was no black and white is like saying "a jaywalker and a child rapist are both criminals"
@@WelcomeBackMeHere yes, and Stalin was terrible towards his people causing thousands of unnecessary deaths. But does that make you think, "well, Stalin was evil, so I guess the Holocaust and the rape of Nanking wasn't so bad"
I could listen to you talk all day, with that particularly beautiful soothing German accent! But the history lesson that you gave in this video was phenomenal and I learned some things. Thank you. I lived in your beautiful country for over a decade in the 80's/90's and miss it still to this day. Thus, the complete enjoyment of your accent.
@@ThePresentPast_ Oh,dear god, I am so very sorry! I truly couldn't hear the difference, but that would explain why it was so enjoyable to listen to. While living in Germany, I did learn not to make the mistake of assuming that Dutch and German were the same. But, on a lighter note, I visited your beautiful country, as well. Thank you so much for letting me know of my error so I can hopefully try not to make it again! 😔
16:35 It should also be noted that even if the bombing of civilians would work in that they would start to put pressure on their governments instead of start hating the people who are bombing them, we talk about german and japanese citizens of WW2. These people lived in dictatorships, not democracies. They wouldn't even have the power to put pressure on their governments.
Hiroshima was a city of considerable military importance. It contained the 2nd Army Headquarters, which commanded the defense of all of southern Japan. The city was a communications center, a storage point, and an assembly area for troop. The city of Nagasaki had been one of the largest sea ports in southern Japan and was of great war-time importance because of its many and varied industries, including the production of ordnance, ships, military equipment, and other war materials. The narrow long strip attacked was of particular importance because of its industries. And to put it plainly as an American, you started it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
nukes are off the table. what made it any better then? you started it? they started a conventional war we started a nuclear war if we did that in todays time the entire world would be destoryed.
The video is informative for sure, but I can’t help but get the impression that he wants to paint the US as the bad guy while glossing over a lot of the bullshit the Japanese did
sure but you cannot bomb and kill thousands of civilians for no reason and then turn around and call yourself the good guy, can we at least agree on that
@@dariomladenovski7047 Yes you can. Unless you believe that the Allies were evil the entire war - USAF and RAF destroyed Italian and German cities (and civilians with them) as the Western Allies advanced, the Soviets did the same to German cities with their own artillery and bombers. It was a total war on a modern industrial level, Axis civilians wete bound to die no matter what.
@@dariomladenovski7047what do you mean for no reason ? The Japanese had not lost a war in 3,500 years and they were going to fight to the last man and it is estimated that US casualties would have approached 1M. War is the stupidest endeavor mankind has ever invented, but if you find yourself in one, you kill every damn one of them until they surrender or the next bullet or bomb might have your name on it.
I have always wondered if Hiroshima was targeted for the first atomic bomb not only due to strategic reasons, but also because this was where the fleet that attacked Pearl Harbor sailed from.
1:50 - Yes, both cities were left relatively untouched unlike Tokyo which was firebombed earlier in March but Nagasaki was and is still one of the largest seaports in Southern Japan. Hiroshima had a huge naval base. If that's not military significant to you then I don't know what is.
Dad was Combat Camera (not the same as photo recon, think more like newsreel footage) with the B29s flying from Saipan, Guam, and Tinian. Along with all the photos of bombers' nose art and the people living on the islands he brought back a couple of aerial photos of Tokyo after it was firebombed. Just as grim as Hiroshima.
My grandfather was the navigator of a B-29 Superfortress at Tinian..The 500th bomber group...I've seen alot of pics of the flight crews and planes at Tinian....I wonder if your father took some of the pics of my grandfather at Tinian.?
@@jessallen7756 Landscapes, planes, and natives are all that I've seen, sorry. If you know what nose art was on the plane I can try to find that, there's probably about 20 of those. Not much considering how many planes there were, but you never know.
Both cities were significant war targets, especially Nagasaki which launched the largest capital ships. Keeping the Japanese on-island was a priority, so cutting off their fuel and their capability to build ships was consistent.
This is the first video of yours that I have watched and I must say that I really like how you emphasize that everything wasn't/isn't black or white. I think that is a very important distinction that a lot of people don't understand or utilize in our very often polarized world and viewpoints. It's "good" when this group of people do x but "bad" when that group of people do x. It was very enlightening to see McNamara make this exact point as I had never heard that quote from him before. As I haven't seen anything else of yours and that you are a newer channel, I hope that you keep up using this narrative device (for a lack of a better phrase as I am not sure what to call it) in your future content. We can't ever begin to understand one another as people and to work together to create a better future if we continue to look at the world, each other and events, as strictly good or bad, with no shades in-between. Sure people might do "bad things" or "good things" but the reasons behind the decisions are just as important as the actions themselves. Anyways, enough ramblings from me on a dreary Saturday. You have earned a new subscriber. I can't wait to see what you create in the future. Thank you.
McNamara’s got tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands if not millions of people’s blood on his hands. His policies, that had this sentiment on them, led to the direct death of thousands to tens of thousands of people, and the eventual fall of south Vietnam, and the surrounding areas. There is nothing dignified about warfare. Winning is all that matters.
Fun fact there was supposed to be a third nuclear bomb dropped on Osaka but the Japanese surrendered. The core of that bomb is now known as the demon core and that has a whole story in it self that I’ll leave you guys to read into.
this is a really fantastic companion piece for shaun's video on hiroshima and nagasaki. similar moral questions, but coming at it from a new angle. this was such a great vid!
Thank you for the video. I do remember briefly hearing about firebombing in Japan during WW2 lessons, but there was little detail and most of the focus was on the atomic bomb and the fights on the pacific islands, including okinawa & iwojima. I've lived in Japan for 10 years, been to both hiroshima and nagasaki multiple times, visited the atomic bomb museums, talked to japanese peopl about this topic, and even they seem to only remember the atomic bomb. So this was a really interesting topic. Cheers
I also lived in Japan for several years and occasionally spoke with Japanese about the war. Several in their 20's and 30's said, and I paraphrase, that it wasn't taught in school and all they know is that they were minding their own business and the US up and dropped two atomic bombs on them. I felt really sad for them as they were missing such an important piece of their history. Edit : I am not suggesting those experiences are indicative of the attitude of all Japanese or even that age group.
Really goes to show how such a powerful bomb can completely overshadow any other tiny but far more numerous bomb. We basically nuked Japan off the map already with napalm firebombs already destroying much of their wooden cities.
Comment for mistakes and nuance:
For all the military affectionados. I know the b-29 is called a SUPERfortress. Noticed it too late in the editing game. My bad.
At 10:04 I say Guernica was the first city bombed by airplanes. This is incorrect. Depending on your definition this happened in 1911 in Libya during the Italian-Ottoman war. Or in 1914 in Liege during WW1.
Nuance:
Some of you feel I glossed over Japanese war crimes. In the video I mention the axis power inflicted atrocities on a scale not seen before. I could have put more weight on the extent of war crimes by the Japanese army in China and Asia. As these are maybe less well known. However, personally I am not convinced that if the army perpetrates war crimes of any extent, that the civilian population of that nation deserves to suffer as result of that. Even if their nation is the aggressor. Do Russian civilians need to suffer for the current war in Ukraine? I don't think so. But you are welcome to disagree with that sentiment.
"US ALMOST nuked Tokyo" would be a better title imo
It's fine.
Always bizarre to me that war should develop any morals or ethics. Fees like you already left that behind by declaring war.
@@joshuataylor3550 Ah, not so. War is an extension of politics. It's purpose is, arguably, to get them back to the table. With the Laws of Armed Conflict (LOAC), Geneva Convention, etc., we would be no better than the raiding hordes of the Mongols.
There is no solution, pain, and suffering is reality. I don't know anymore.
There was manufactured 500.000 purple hearts in the months leaning up to the invasion of mainland Japan. This should be a good estimate of the US military worst case scenario.
Yeah that's an insane stat
In fact, the US Military is still giving out purple hearts from that massive order today, since they haven't given 500,000 since WW2.
It was used in later U.S. military conflicts and recently saw use in Iraq 20 years ago.
Conservative estimate
@@Ballin4Vengeance The large estimate is 1,5mil, and the conservative estimate is 500k. So yeah, it really gives a good picture of how many casualies they were expecting
It's crazy that the city of Kokura made the list and was originally one of the two intended targets. Heavy cloud cover prevented the allies from bombing it and instead they diverted the raid to Nagasaki. The fate of thousands of people sealed by a weather system.
"How clouds saved a city"
@@Exocool "...and doomed another"
@@RaviKBT98-fu6bkwhat the name of the cities you've mentioned? Is it still a good vacation until present?
@@danielwijoyoI think the spared city was Kyoto
@@RaviKBT98-fu6bk this was referenced in the Oppenheimer movie
My much beloved dad was a Navy Lieutenant in WW2. He served as the gunnery officer on a destroyer. His ship was in the East Atlantic (European theater) when Germany surrendered. He told me he thought: "Wonderful - now I get to go home." Much to his dismay, however, his ship went back across the Atlantic, through the Panama Canal, and kept going west. He was in the Pacific while the Japanese were using kamikaze suicide pilots on our ships when the 2 atomic bombs were dropped and Japan surrendered. His ship then anchored in Nagasaki Harbor 2 weeks after the bomb was dropped there. He said they were not allowed to go ashore, but he went up in the top of the ship and could see what was left of the city. I asked him what it looked like, and he described it in one word "Flat".
He died of cancer in 1991 after a couageous 5 year fight. I always wondered if his exposure to the Nagasaki radiation may have contributed to his death.
God bless your father. Ordinary servicemen seemed to be utilized as human guinea pigs during the early years of nuclear weapons and of course, just followed orders.
How many german women your father r@ped..... its karma he died due to cancer...
You haven't said how old your dad was when he died but above 65, it's very hard to tell if radiation had any impact on his life spam. My own educated guess would be very little since it was an air detonated bomb and there'd had been very little radioactive particles in the air even a day after the detonation. Moreover, USA suffered a lot worse from industrial chemical pollution in the coming years, just all the leaded gasoline and lenient limits on heavy metals in agriculture produce (still an issue to this day btw) or even as simple thing as smoking and stress would be larger factors.
My grandfather was a cannon cocker, artiller, in Africa fighting Rommel. Two of my unles were Vietnam vets that lost their live to agent orange.
God bless your father. I not only appreciate your fathers service but your father, just as my grandfather and my uncles, your father and them are my heroes!
@@every1665 Thank you, and I agree with your comments. At least Dad survived and came home to live out his life. A lot of good people didn't.
I was born in 1948, after he returned from the war. If they hadn't dropped the bombs and the war hadn't ended when it did, there is a good chance I wouldn't be here today.
This was the funniest ad in a video. Basically he said "if you want to be like those guys who invented the atom bomb, use Brilliant"
Einstein must be rolling in his grave over that genius idea. 😂
E=mc^2. Speaking of squared, our sponsor is squarespace
Pretty insensitive 🙃
It's crazy to me how the Japanese can get firebombed and lose 100k people, have dozens of cities razed to the ground, with tens, or hundreds of thousands of additional deaths, and they STILL wouldn't surrender.
Is a pride thing.
The Japanese people wanted to surrender, the Japanese elite (who weren’t being firebombed or razed) didn’t want to surrender. They were holding out hope that the Russians would come support them.
I was born shortly after the War. What you say is exactly what the WWII generation said - they were astounded by that fact. In Europe German resistance grew progressively weaker as the end grew nearer. But with Japan the war only became more intense. In fact, the worse U.S. casualties occurred in battles near the end of the Pacific War in places like Okinawa and Iwo Jima.
@@michaelliu8196 As proud as the Nazi
Culture they prefer to kill themselves instead of deshonnor
There were a number of Japanese cities that were never targeted. Nara, Kyoto and Kanezawa. They were deemed cultural sites important to the Japanese people and would be important in their rehabilitation.
Pure bullshit, killed millions of civiliand and razed millons of buildings, but take care of cultural sites? No one gonna believe that bullshit. The important thing about the rehabilitation of Japan was they forgvige all Japan's war crimes and never talk about it. Also forgiving the emperor itself
There were a few military figures at the Pentagon who had classical educations, and knew where NOT to drop the bombs. God bless America.
And LeMay liked Nara. Seriously, he visited there and loved it
Charles Burnham , ??? rehabilitation ??? Do you really believe that the Japanese have forgotten and forgiven Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
@@faccebookk3704 they have not forgotten but they have forgiven, japans atrocities towards china however, may never
TLDW: Tokyo was already destroyed by firebombs. They wanted to nuke cities that were mostly still intact because that would better showcase the nukes' insane power.
Edit: The video is still worth watching imo.
Additionally, it was feared that decapitation and eliminating the Emperor and leadership would delay a surrender. You need them to make and enforce a decision.
Yes. It appears Japan was mostly "toast" these were the remaining high populated locations . Once America had a presence/ residence in Japan, they started up programs that merely analyzed the human wounds from the A bombs. Not to provide medical assistance .
The Japanese were hated. Americans were incredibly racist at the time. Even racist against American Minorities fighting for America. They had no problem experimenting both versions. Today America is the greatest because of TODAY'S Americans. Americans back then were racist murderers. These bombings are a dark stain in American history, no different from the gas chambers in Germany. Nothing worth Celebrating.
And they wanted to showcase it to their friend Russia. One for the effect, two to show there was more.
Klaus Fuchs made a world saving decision.
Thank you. Holy f*** this guy took 20 minutes to talk about something that could have been said in 5
I watched Oppenheimer and there's a scene of them deciding which japanese cities they would drop the bomb, one of the guys reportedly spare Kyoto because he spent his honeymoon there. its insane how things are random, due to his personal connection Kyoto wasn't destroyed.
är du svensk
He also said Kyoto was an important cultural site before he mentioned the honeymoon thing
The once of prevention is worth the pound of cure. The prevention is don't go to war with the United States, and the randomness never has to get pondered or addressed.
@@reguluscorneas3046yeah but the reason he knew it was a cultural site is because he went there
That was Secretary of War Henry L. Stimpson, and yes, he intervened with Truman to take Kyoto off the list because he spent his honeymoon there so knew that it was an important cultural center.
My late grandfather was in bomber command and involved in the fire bombing of Dresden. This was a much needed perspective on the motivation of the allies and one that needs to be discussed honestly. I do know this - those who flew those missions might have believed in the justness of their cause, but they also knew the hell and the horror they were inflicting with those fire bombs, because it haunted my grandfather for the rest of his life. Thank you.
To bomb Germany was totally uneccesary & stupid of the americans.
Thank you for sharing
In 1945 Japan's Council of War wanted to continue fighting to the last man. Japan left the Allies no other option but to destroy whole nation!
Allies view of Dresden was of disgusted how could there bomber plans be cause this must damaged in non military zone
My great grandma made b29s so there's a chance she helped make the enola gay
My grandfather was a tail gunner on a B-17 before being shot down and captured. He always said remember, we didn’t know at the time what the outcome was going to be. We were in the present looking at the future. You’re in the present looking at the past.
Woah that kit hit heavy…the greatest generation truly was the greatest!
My grandfather piloted a B-17 and it was shot down too! I wonder if they knew each other.
Very intelligent take from your grandpa, a wise hero
My grandfather was the one who captured your grandfather
@@captnjd I don’t wanna crush your hopes and dreams but there was a heck of a lot of b17’s produced, and so bombers getting shot down is not really that unusual. So yes they knew each other :)
I live in Berlin in that 8km radius. And it just shook me to the core, because it made me realize not only how I am literally sitting on history, but also how the area you take for granted for your daily life, where most of the things you do on a daily basis are located is just...a map to a military leader.
I mean we all played video games before and it is not about killing, but rather winning with skill and tactics against an opponent.
But this is what real war is - playing games with people's lives.
Just imagine you find out your home area is now targeted for carpet bombing. I just felt vulnerable immediately.
I realised just now that if anything happens to new delhi, my city would also be devastated.....
scary thought brother
Grow some balls
Imagine how more vulnerable you would be without America and the protection she provides. Would you feel safe if Germany had only itself to rely upon in a war?
@@saintburnsy2468russia would've ruled all of Europe after 1945 had the us not existed
My father was a marine at just 17 and fought in the south Pacific then ended up landing in Japan. He then went to China and was the personal body guard for General Marshall and General Mitchell during the negotiations between Mao and Chiang Kai Shek. He then went to Korea. May he rest in peace.
That’s actually cool as fuck
Historical questions of morality aside, it's interesting to consider that without the atom bomb, the US may have rained an equal amount of destruction on Hiroshima and Nagasaki with fire bombing, with little to no effect on Emperor Hirohito's intransigence. In effect, it's not the actual deaths of Japanese civilians that won the war; rather it was BRANDING. Prior to the atom bomb, the US military was seen as a formidable, but costly force to be reckoned with. Capable of overpowering Japanese forces, but doing less damage per dollar than the Japanese could do - despite the fact that Japan had little defense about the carpet bombing. Fire is fire... its been used in warfare since the earliest warfare. The Atom bomb didn't actually take more lives than could have been claimed by fire, but the nature of it... the unleashing of new forces of nature never before seen on the battlefield, the almost godlike demonstration of not just financial might and military strength, but also technical dominance rebranded what it meant to go head to head with the US, what the stakes could be. It is a bit like the iPod effect. Digital music players had existed for years already, but they were never presented in such a way as to fundamentally change how people thought about listening to music. The atom bomb didn't fundamentally change the might of the US military or it's destructive capacity (that came later with the cold war arms race) - what it did to is fundamentally change how people saw the difference between the military might of a large nation and one of a small nation. It was the rewriting of David vs Goliath. It was the eradication of the idea that an underdog has any reason to fight. Of course, then there was Vietnam, which proved that in order for Goliath to win, the objective has to be a military objective. It cannot be a social, economic, or political objective.
The atom bomb was more than just 'fire'. It's radiation had lasting, generational, genetic effects that were felt for decades.
@@tjen7929 studies were made, or more like of course the US would observe the results while they were in control of the country during the post war occupation.
The US monitored the pregnant women who came from nagasaki and hiroshima while handing out rations, only less than 10% experienced birth defects, around 1% was correlated to radiation (rerf.or.jp). Birth defects is surprisingly pretty common, especially in poor countries, which post-war occupation Japan used to be.
Don't mix up the bombs which just caused a big ass explosion, where the dangerous radiation levels only lasted for a couple months at most, to disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima.
@@madensmith7014 according to Columbia University studies, there were dramatic and long lasting effects. Aside from the nearly 200k people that died within the first few months after the bombing (as per the Radiation Effects Research Foundation) leukaemia rates skyrocketed over the next 6yrs, predominantly in children. For all other cancers, the effects from the bombing were noticed 10 years later. The problems facing the generation after the bombing (in utero during the bombing) include small head size, mental disability, and physical growth impairment.
Damn right!
IF THE BOMB WAS TO STOP THE JAPANESE FROM FIGHTING WHY WAS IT USED ON INNOCENT CIVILIANS?
IT WAS A EXPERIMENT AGAINST A NON-WHITE POPULATION AND HAD LITTLE TO DO WITH WAR!!!
COMPARED TO AMERICA THE NAZIS WERE ANGELS!
According to National Geographic: "U.S. Secretary of War Henry Stimson wanted Kyoto removed from the target list, on the grounds that the city was too culturally significant to the Japanese to be destroyed. Some say his personal fondness for the city-he visited in the 1920s and may have honeymooned there-was the real reason he appealed to President Harry Truman to remove Kyoto from the list."
**Arnold Schwarzenegger voice** you son of a b*tch… that was actually a really good read. Self scribed or could you sight your sources and or a reading list. Interested to read more on the subject. Never read a persons comment ( and one so long) and obligingly continued 👏🏾
@8866 Panda have this known somewhere that is more accessible than a youtube comment. Like the other person said, you include sources. Good read
Skipping this fact was a huge miss for the video. And he actually states the opposite, claiming that the decision makers didn’t care about the shrines.
Our planet is a place of desperation; yet, we're still here hoping for happiness. Well, some of us are...
The point was to make an ordinary firebombing look like an atomic bomb. So you had to pick a city that was mostly made of wood and paper, with as few concrete structures as possible. Ergo the two that were chosen. Then simulate radiation sickness using chemical weapons.
Thanks!
For anyone interested in seeing how harsh WWII was from Japanese civilians' side, watch the movie "Grave of the Fireflies" (1988).
The craziest and most difficult to watch Ghibli film I've seen.
Thanks man, will do !
barefoot gen
I've got it, but still can't bring myself to watch it.
I will, one day, but I have to be in a really good place before I do. The first five minutes are sublime brilliance.
For anyone interested in learning about Imperial Japan's colonization and plans for complete obliteration of Korean language and culture read ''When My Name Was Keoko'' by Linda Sue Park. (2002) It's a well written and researched novel from the perspective of a young Korean girl and her family. Complete with academic references. Try to read it and not cry. I can't.
Well.
Of all the videos I've watched regarding air raids and bombing of Japanese cities during the latter part of WWII, this is actually the first video I've watched where the narrator talks not only about the bombings, but FIRE bombings. It's interesting how this fact is rarely brought up as firebombing is the worst kind for the victims to deal with and extremely difficult to put out due to the chemicals used in these bombs. I rate this video with high scores for It's presentation and narrative.
@MatAK49 What he does not mention is that Japan began bombing civilians in 1931 and did not stop killing civilians until the two atomic bombs were dropped. In all the Japanese killed some 20m million Asian civilians more than 20 times the number of Japanese civilians killed. The Japanese killed to conquer and enslave. The American bombing was to stop Japnese aggression.
@dennisweidner - Thank you! The apologist tone of the clown who made this video makes me sick.
@@imonit4272 There is no doubt that the bombing was horrific and the photographic images show that. Unfortunately, there are no photographs of the millions of Japanese who were saved by forcing the Japanese to surrender. War is a terrible thing, but it was not America that began the War. The important fact is that America fought the war and forced Japan to surrender with only one goal in mind, to end Japanese aggression and brutal murder of civilians throughout Asia. Once the Germans and Japanese launched the War, it could only be won by the application of American industrial power on a massive scale. This was Germany's and Japan's choice, not America's choice to go to war.
respectfully, any discussion of whether or not to drop the bomb that ignores the 1944-1945 situation of firebombing entire cities into the ground is simply intentionally incomplete. I'm not saying who is right or wrong, I do lean on one side, and I believe that if we hadn't used them in 1945, we probably destroy civilization in the 1950s once everyone has enough nukes and nobody knows how bad an actual (very low-yield, btw) nuke is.
@@imonit4272 have some empathy. Yes, those bombs ended the war.. But they were literally designed to kill civilians. They weren't even made to kill the Japanese military or government because they weren't in a centralised location. They were literally made only to kill Japanese civilians. And they damn near didn't work. I'd say, anything created purely for civilian deaths deserves apologies, no matter how much good they did. You can do something good and still be apologetic for it. I'd bet the soldiers then did feel sorry.
Unless you're a psychopath, you'd feel sorry for civilian deaths.
2:35 An often overlooked or ignored point, overlooked in this video too, is that the Pacific War was one of Japan's making. And it didn't start in 1941. Japan had been on the make since the late 19th century and started its conquest and subjugation of Asia in 1905 when it acquired Korea. Thirty six years later it was Japan that brought the war to U.S. shores. Again, a war wholly of Japan's making. And what a war! Here in Indonesia, the real bitter memories of foreign oppression is not 300 of Dutch colonization, but rather the four years of Japanese occupation.
It is estimated that 4 million Indonesians died as a result of forced labor, food extortion, and logistical failures by the Japanese military. Food shortages were particularly severe on the island of Java, where 2.4 million people died of starvation.
Having caused so much damage, it is only natural that the Japanese should be resented by the Indonesians. I personally can only pray for the repose of the souls of the victims.
@@abc0to1
Thanks For That Post.
Many Here Have NO Concept How Ruthless And Evil Imperial Japan Was.
Most Know Of Rape Of Nanking, But Few Know About Unit 731, Started Years Before Pearl Harbor.
UNIT 731 Was a Highly Secret Bio-Weapons War Project In China, That China (To It's Credit) Stil Remembers, And Has a Museum Dedicated To.
@@abc0to1 In many ways, the Japanese people were also victims of their emperor and his cabinet. Too much power in too few hands.
Woke Americans seem to forget what the Japanese did to millions of people.
And even today, ask the average Korean how they feel about Japan. When I was stationed there in the 70's and 80's there was still real hatred for them
You portrayed Operation Downfall somewhat poorly. Saying estimates range in the TENS of thousands to a quarter million is INSANE. Okinawa alone was around 50,000. A better estimate is a quarter million on the absolute low end to a couple million on the high end for Americans. Japan would also lose millions of men, children and women.
Hard to believe since it's cruel af, but the atomic bombs actually saved Japan
Yeah, this guy has his own agenda and has many flaws in his video
The bottom line is that a Total War cannot be civilized, and a Total War on one can only be defended by a Total War on the other.
That is the sad truth
We didn't start the fire...
@@hxhdfjifzirstc894 But America is a strong nation, and is very powerful, and since Japan is now much smaller that subconsciously makes people go against the US. It’s psychology. If a grown up and a kid are fighting people will usually side with the kid, pretty stupid but that’s how things are unfortunately.
That would be very thoughtful and poetic if it weren't complete horseshit.
Especially in the 40s
One forgets another reason why Tokyo was not targeted. In order for the Japanese to surrender, they needed some leadership to survive to effect the surrender. If Tokyo was destroyed then there would not have been anyone to make the decision to give up. Then the full invasion would have been required to bring and end to the war (which really is what happened in Germany). Yes the firebombing had a tremendous effect, but it did not bring about surrender.
Specifically, they really wanted to keep the Emperor alive, as they knew it was primarily the military leadership around him that was ultra gung-ho and would encourage fighting to the last man. They really did not want the country under such ultranationalist rule.
You make a good point. I'll look into it.
It was different with the Germans. The US didn't want anyone from the NSDAP to make peace outside of inconditional surrender, since they would keep the party in charge.
In fact, when Hitler was bombed, US generals deemed his survival more benefitial for the German defeat, since they wouldn't have to deal with the OKW as "The good guys who killed Hitler", while they also were pretty bad (throwing Rommel under the bus due to envy and trying countless times to get Manstein removed from command, in addition to general incompetence, for example)
@@MitchHawkes Additionally, the US didn't "start with the firebombing of Japan". The first B-29 missions over the Japanese mainland were conventional HE bombs dropped in daylight from high altitude. Only when these missions had a significantly worse outcome than daylight bombing in Europe (due to the effects of the then-unknown jet stream) did LeMay come in and change tactics.
It sure helped with the surrender
A superb analysis. I wish I had the ease of talking to a camera like you do. From historian to historian, your work is of perfect historiographic content. And it demonstrates very well, in a short amount of time, how history is an interdisciplinary discipline and, above all, human.
Thanks Gustavo, that means a lot!
If I was someone who wants to see the sensational, this is great. As a historian, a piece of crap.
History is remembered threw the Victor's eyes
This will not be the real reason just the reason 2 justify American tyranny like every other country they invade
My grandfather was there after the bomb to help japan recover
His words don't align with anything America has 2 say
A lot is left out tho. 1 year ahead of the bombing. Spies traveled across the country to find the most suitable cities.
Hiroshima was chosen coz of its historical military meaning in Japan but above all of.... it was the perfect target because the city is surrounded by mountains so the blast will have the most impact.
Nothing about this bomb was left to coincidences. As an example the bomb was designed to go of 60feets above ground.
Nagasaki is also surrounded by mountains and have in many ways the same topography.
😂😂😂
When citizens can't elect their own representatives, people are always expendable.
High quality as usual, I appreciate the perspective you took in this video. also wasn't expecting to be reminded of my time playing battlefield 1943 back in the day.
Twas a quality game
@@ThePresentPast_what about Nazi Chi Na ?
That theme got me
Playing Resident Evil and Evil Within reminds me of Unit 731.
The strategy used by the allies was known as one of "Total War". Its always easy for those looking back on history to pick and choose the history they want to remember in order to justify what they believe. In Japan, you spoke of the fact that Tokyo had been fire bombed and 100,000 people were killed. When you add up all those minus those killed in the two atomic bombings, one thing that isn't discussed is that Tojo and the military that was ruling Japan still would not surrender. They wanted a warriors death. It took the atomic bombings to prompt Emperor Hirohito to force the military leaders to unconditionally surrender. My Mother remembers when the Emperor addressed the people of Japan after it's capitulation. For them it was the first time they had heard the voice of the Emperor. To them, he was a God. The fire bombings killed many Japanese and destroyed their cities, but it was the atomic bombs that forced them to accept defeat.
Yeah I guess don’t think of your “Emperor” as a “God” 😂
Then, if there is an enemy that does not surrender easily, we can use nuclear weapons.
Indeed. My coworker's mother is Japanese and has memories of being trained at 4 years old (!) to use sharpened stick weapons to kill any Allied soldier that would land on the island.
@@abc0to1 As opposed to what? The Japanese army used biological weapons in Manchuria in the 1930s against an enemy that wouldn't surrender easily.
@@gus91343 If someone else has done something similar, is it ok for other people to do it too? Is it okay to judge the war crimes of the Japanese people while not judging the war crimes of the victorious people? If international law protects only the winners and not the losers, how can there be justice? If justice is not about upholding international law but about winning wars, why are the attack on Pearl Harbor and the use of weapons of mass destruction condemned?
My grandfather was a bomber pilot who flew a Lancaster over Dresden. Despite receiving a prestigious medal, the guilt destroyed him. It's the darkest moment in my family's history, and echoes of its impact still persist.
😢
As it should, scum
so your grandpa is the man who nuked japan?
@@rajveerkanojiya2985 Dresden is in Germany. He wasn't even told it was a civilian town when heading in.
They don't teach about Dresen in history class... Unless the teacher was free styling the lessons.
Fantastic video. Thought-provoking questions. Unbiased discussion. Awesome work!
My father was young enough to be in the Army in time to stage in California for what would have been the invasion of Japan. He ended up as an occupation troop. He said they were told one million casualties. Now that I'm old and get to watch history shows a lot, one on the war in the Pacific said a goal of the Japanese general on Okinawa was to create a river of American blood so large that we would not invade the Japanese main island.
The Japanese general as well as the leaders of Japan got their wish. When Truman considered the river of blood the Japanese would inflict, he chose not to invade and dropped the bomb instead.
@@kirkbrown2605
2 A-Bombs, With #3., On The Way, Target 🎯 Tokyo!
Lol; don’t wanna get nuked? Don’t join Hitler and launch a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor!
whats crazy is that its 1million casualties for just a beach head and a bit more. The entire island would be about 2-3million, the japanese would've lost 6+million too.
I read a book which estimates the overall casualties on both sides including Japanese civilians could have possibly gone as high as 15 MILLION! The Japanese were insanely fanatical at the time. They were planning to arm women even elementary kids with spears or whatever they could provide and send them to their deaths. Whenever someone tries to guilt trip someone over the US nuking of Japan, I always bring this up. The casualties would have been exponential and the war could have possibly dragged on for another year or two. To make matters worse, the subsequent occupation and rehabilitation of the country would have been bloody and extremely difficult. Guerrilla warfare and terrorism would have gone on for decades or so. Nuking them into submission and forcing the Emperor to sought for peace and having him acquitted of responsibilities and allowing him to retain his position greatly helped the occupation of the country.
German here. Thanks for tackling these ambiguities within the rationale behind warfare. Sadly these topics are taught with an intentional aura of taboo (say false dichotomy) here. In the end the question remains: war, what is it good for?
As I get older, the words of John Lennon's songs get more and more poignant...
Yes
It's good for stopping pricks like Hitler and Tojo. Unfortunately, INNOCENT people get caught up in it. Unfortunately, unless the ENTIRE worlds stands up tp Putin and Xi, it will be repeating history all over again.
How is it taught?
@@personman8404 Where to begin... I'll try summarizing to my best ability, for what it's worth.
The good: the core principle of all lessons being the sentiment "Never again!".
The bad: no acknowledgement of the anti-semitic zeitgeist as a global phenomenon.
The ugly: no matter the particular epoch (be it antiquity or industrial revolution) every year from 5th grade on there will be at least one chapter about the Reich... after the 10th it's all there ever will be.
tl;dr: the curriculum commands a collective responsibility of vigilance yet fails to illuminate the underlying human condition. Thus it regrettably renders itself another - admittedly rather civilized - dogma.
Really enjoyed this. I've read about Dresden a long time ago but had no idea about Tokyo's state and how that influenced the nuclear bomb drops. Good and nuanced too - nobody comes out of a war without dirty hands.
It was a new topic for me too, super interesting
@@ThePresentPast_ - Tokyo was not bombed because it is a bad idea to cut the head off the chicken... with No leader you will have a crazy war with small groups and never get control.
My biological father was a Gopher (go get the coffee etc) at Hanford. They were making plutonium for the bomb. He really didn't know what they were doing, but knew that it was top secret. Later he knew and realized that he was a part of that, but really a very small part. He went to College in Walla Walla and later went back, but this time more involved as an engineer and realized that the next step was the Hydrogen bomb. He left with my Mother, my sister and me (1 was 1 year old) and went to Concord ca. where they were working on developing computers. My mother and father divorced in 1955 and my mother remarried in 1959 to my step-dad.
my step-dad was on one of the ships (airforce) and witnessed the testing of the bomb on Bikini island. I am a nuclear child and not the better for it. History is told in all its glory by the winners, the real truth is that there are no winners. As George Carlin said- the earth is going to be fine- it will heal eventually- the rest of us will be gone.
Eareaeareaeareaeareaeareaeareacool.era
I remember in a lot of japanese documentaries and books they told stories of the tokyo bombing being way more destructive and killed way more than the nukes they experienced, the civilians told of the 'fire tornados'. I was wondering why it was so bad but now it makes sense.
hello thank you for sharing, can you share some of those documentaries? I always saw the pove of the allies but never the Japanese pov.
"The Firebombing of Tokyo." The same method was used in hundreds of cities across Japan. Almost every prefecture has a memorial to people lost to these incendiary bomb raids. My grandfather's house in Utsunomiya was burned to the ground.
The 9-10 March 1945 firebombing raid may have killed over 100,000 people because the city was still at that time mostly made of wooden structures. The combination of the fires plus the onshore winds that spread the fires in a deadly flame conflagration leveled 16 square miles of central Tokyo.
We now can bomb Moscow and Beijing.
There were no civilians left in the two nuked cities to "tell" about their "experience".
My father in law boarded a ship headed to Japan to be part of the invasion force. Fortunately by the time it arrived the war was over and he became part of the occupation force. He wound up liking his time in Japan.
Well makes sense, I bet downtown was lit up at night, for the next 50 th yrs
@@patrickbrady519
Oh Yeah!
And Soon 🔜 American GIs Were Bringing 🔙 Back Cute
Japanese War Brides.
Japan Was a Soldier's Paradise For At Least 25 Years.
Your comments on the morality of firebombing are definitely worthy of more discussion. I would guess that when you have entered Total war (as opposed to a limited conflict), then all the population are considered combatants. It would also have been almost impossible for any US president to argue that a more humane way to end the war was to sacrifice US men's lives in hand to hand combat. That would be an even more insane solution.
right, thats the thing. They pretty much attacked civilians and attacked our soil initially. We gave them that same venom they had for everyone else lol, why keep sending teens on boats
@cunninr2 The simple fact usually not mentioned is that there was not a more humane way to end the War, Those that criticize Trumn's decision never provide a possible alternative.
@@dennisweidner288 Agreed - war is inhumane. We sit here at our computers with running water and air conditioning and hand-wring about two bombs dropped towards the end of a world-wide war (OK except Antarctica maybe), judging people from what happened 80 years ago.
Not just the UK and US that did above total war and firebombing, Q Germany Airforce destroying lot of Poland, UK, Norway cities - this Video is tainted in this regard only considering Allies of doing wrong
@cunninr2 Absolutely correct. It is important that it was the Axis which1) started the War and 2) started bombing civilians. It is absurd to think that the Allies should not respond when the Axis did these two things. It is also important to note that killing civilians was a major Axis war goal. And as a result, over 90 percent of the civilians killed in the War were killed by Axis forces. Focusing on the bombing is misleading. The bombing was responsible for a relatively small proportion of World War II civilian deaths.
Your videos are really interesting and informative. Thank you!
The bombing of Dresden was a military experiment to see if fire bombs would destroy the fire fighting capabilities of the locals. In this it exceeded expectations because the fire storm melted fire hydrants and destroyed fire fighting equipment as well as all the cities fire fighters.
Hamburg had already taught that lesson in 1943. Look up Operation Gomorrah.
It was also due to the fact that the russians had just lost hundreds of thousands of men to take budapest so the allies were just trying to stop casualties on both sides.
@brucesummers7448 Nonsense. The Dresden raids were a response to a Soviet request to restrict the movement of German troops and supplies. Dresden was a transportation hub. And by the way, just who began the war, who killed 10s of millions of civilians, and who began bombing civilians?. Harris was absolutely correct. "The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They have sown the wind, and so they shall reap the whirlwind."
@@dennisweidner288 My understanding as well, the Soviets requested Dresden to be leveled. So the Allies did.
@@chipsawdust5816 I am not sure that the Soviets requested that Dresden be leveled, but they certainly did request the Allies prevent German troop movements through Dresden. There is much that the critics of America and Britain in their rush to condemn simply ignore.
1. While the NAZIs were defeated, Western and Soviet forces were still taking substantial casualties.
2. There was no city in NAZI Germany and Imperial Japan that was not supporting the war effort.
3. The NAZIs and Japanese Militarists had caused America and Britain to ramp up their military power to an unprecedented level. It is not easy to change such a development on a dime. And the responsibility for this rests firmly on German and Japanese shoulders.
4. By the time of Dresden, knowledge of NAZI atrocities had begun to become more fully understood. And this was far beyond the military atrocities such as bombing Rotterdam and English cities. Protecting German civilians was not high up on the Allies' list of priorities, largely because of German and Japanese conduct of the War.
No thinking person wishes that Dresden had not occurred. But only the mathematically challenged make it a huge issue. World War II death tolls probably reached 70 million people, even low-ball estimates are about 50 million. And 90 percent of the civilian deaths were the work of the Axis powers. Killing civilians was actually a PRIMARY Axis goal. Read about the NAZI Generalplan Ost. The Allied strategic bombing campaign was hardly the major factor in the Civilian death toll.
I think one important factor that needs to be remembered is that Japanese culture didn't allow for surrender as an easy option. Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast series, "Supernova in the East", provides some excellent context for understanding both sides.
Exactly. It’s one thing to fight a military that fights to the death, but it’s another to fight an entire civilization willing to do the same. Japanese civilians would’ve taken up arms to fight Americans with as much ferocity as their military. Especially since the idea that bombing a population would weaken the populous’ resolve was false. Add boots on the ground to mainland Japan, and the entirety of Japan would feel like their entire existence was at stake. As much as I hate that it took the atomic bombings and countless lives being lost leading up to that decision, I feel ultimately the decision to use the atomic bombs weren’t just a means of preemptively saving American lives, but also that of countless Japanese civilians who would’ve defended their homeland. It’s almost a question of would you rather take 100,000 lives to end the war, or have 100s of thousands, if not millions of lives be taken.
Considering what japan did to countries which surrendered maybe they were just expecting the same treatment.
Supernova in the East does a much better job approaching this subject than this video. This video isn't bad but there are a lot of small inaccuracies and things left unmentioned that paint a somewhat distorted picture of the circumstances the allies were in, ie how it came to the point where nuclear weapons and strategic bombing were seen as the best course of action to end the war as soon as possible
dan is the man
My grandfather served as a doctor on the Pacific stage. He said that there was so much hatred and suffering between and among the Japanese and Americans during the war that when the decision was made to drop the two big bombs, the American soldiers thought Truman was a hero. They were just so focused on ending the war. Good and bad is all a matter of perspective.
After 20 years in the US Army, the death and destruction I had seen keeps me awake at night. I have found that there are 3 sides of the truth in every war, there is our side, their side and then there is the truth.
The truth is only found after all the death and destruction of wars. We need more history channels like this to help us to understand what the truth is.
As always, thank you for posting another amazing video
History is written by the survivors, if none of the *enemy* survive, then history/ or the truth can be whatever they want.
@@damiencook3423I think the correct phrase is "the victor writes history", few historical naratives seem to care about individual survivors, that the power and reach of winning nations and peoples makes their narrative far stronger
Family member was an RI and worked in DC, a free republic will do vicious shit to stay a free republic
But our side did not hide the fact that civilians were killed or targeted. Its in all the history books and documentaries...
@@cbuzz2371 "the victor writes history"
Ironically Japan is the one counterexample to this. Sort of. They lost the war and yet no one really remembers their war crimes.
Although that's in large part thanks to their being anti-Communist allies with the US. So I guess you could say the victors helped them whitewash their own history, indirectly.
Excellent video!!! Congrats!!!
Thank you so much for this video. I am really shocked at how perspective and narrative can change history.
How about how perspective and narrative ARE history?
I think this is a good analysis, but I think Germany's conduct during the war can quite reasonably be characterized as pure, undiluted 100% evil. Also, It is not commonly discussed, but Japan killed over 20 million human beings in China during the war, the vast majority of them civilians. Far short of Chairman Mao, but still, very dark deeds were committed by the Japanese armies in Asia.
The allies brought the usual high percentage of human cruelty and stupidity to their conduct of the war, but the conduct of their forces do not bear equivocal comparison to that of either Germany or Japan. WWII was one of several occasions in history which involved a straightforward contest between good and evil. There are messy details to be sure, but that shouldn't obscure the true nature of the conflict.
Definitely. Also it’s not like precision munitions existed at the time. A war was forced on us and our allies at the time and trying to create a moral equivalence between the two sides is simply wrong. Also had Japan not been totally defeated and we ended up with a negotiated peace, Japan would probably look more like North Korea today. Japan basically had a military first policy just like North Korea does.
The claim that those monstrous acts were to "save" American lives and put an end to the war, is a fraud, as during the whole war up to 1945, only a paltry 100,000 US servicemen died in the Pacific war, far less than in Europe. And Japan was close to surrender.
"Far short of Chairman Mao, ..."😂😂😂😂
There was evil done by both sides, agreed
Great comment.
no way, youre saying there are evil people in war!!! 😱
Firebombs are crazy. My great grandmother told me that the front neighboring building was bombed and it burnt for two weeks. Also my grandma was born in the middle of the siege of Budapest and the hospital was in the middle of the front lines so she had to sneak across both sides.
This video is incredible levels of whataboutism. Not only was dresden, a city with massive arms factories employing 150000 people, and the last large railyard before the eastern front, a valid military target, the atomic bombs prevented much larger losses, both military and civilian, occuring should the invasion happen.
You made SEVERAL excellent points. The most important one was firebombing killed more people and in an indiscriminate and horrific way. The A-bomb was an effective way to convince Japanese leaders that they wouldn't have any Japanese lives left to throw away in their lust for power. Human life meant nothing to them. The A-bomb ended up saving both Japanese and American lives by ending the rule of Tojo and his generals. It would have been great if it could have been done without any loss of life. Nagasaki was bombed in a way that deliberately minimized deaths and destruction. To this day, Japan has never admitted to its people their hideous war crimes or even how the army murdered Japan's civilian government and then rampaged through Asia. The Japanese should hear the truth about what their government did throughout Asia.
The claim that those monstrous acts were to "save" American lives and put an end to the war, is a fraud, as during the whole war up to 1945, only a paltry 100,000 US servicemen died in the Pacific war, far less than in Europe. And Japan was close to surrender.
You should see how the Japanese GOVERNMENT lies. Japanese civilians are in fact quite polite and nice. In many American textbooks, they actually state that Japan helped grow the Korean economy. If you know how history truly went down, however, it would be quite different.
China will remind them
Yea kinda like the American government 🤷🏾♂️
I wish they would have dropped the bomb on Iwo Jima first.
I know . I know. The bomb wasn't ready yet. But that would have been a better target.
Thank you for this documentary. I actually learned something today. Sure, I knew about Dresden, but I had no idea how widespread firebombing was at the time in both Germany and Japan. This is a real eye-opener.
Apply that to UK, Polish, Norweagan cities as well - widespread destruction and death + also V1-V2 program conducted by Germans
@@dafyddthomas7299 The counter-argument, which is not mine incidentally, is that the demise of the Nazi regime was certain when Dresden was bombed and it was not a militarily important city.
@@TheNelster72 ahh well... pay-back is a bitch.
"Bombing doesnt work to make your enemy surrender". Seemed to work pretty well
Just imagine... if the Japanese had bombed Washington D.C., New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Dallas, Austin, Miami, St. Louis, Denver, Seattle... they bomb and destroy 50% or more of most of your cities and you don't surrender. Would you then care if they bomb and destroy Boston and Philadelphia? Those last two really broke the camel's back and made you want to surrender?
Hats off man what a video 💯🙌🏼.
I think I have to respectfully disagree on some points here. I understand that the Allies were not perfectly innocent, but I think we can see a general black and white dichotomy here. Germany systematically slaughtered millions of people, killing 6 million Jews in the largest genocide the world has ever seen, and it is still the world's most deadly intentional mass-killing. Japan engaged in horrific brutality, with the rape of Nanking, and the one that comes to my mind, the atrocities in unit 731 (Very interesting read, but don't google if it's too late at night).
The allies did what they had to do
finally someone who makes some fucking sense
The allies were purely interested in protecting their own colonial interests, the holocaust and other atrocities were just a convenient story post war to make the west seem like benevolent forces for good, ignoring of course the horrible crimes committed before and since by the US, UK, France etc all over the world (the nazis were literally inspired by the American concept of manifest destiny with their Lebensraum program) not to mention how many nazi and japanese war criminals got pardoned and hired by the allies to develop weapons technology for them and installed into their governments and companies, then theres the whole thing about the CIA literally being created as an american gestapo.
@@sierra1513 Fair enough, but I'm saying I'm happier the allies won than the axis
@@sierra1513 How does the Allied governments being amoral change the fact that Germany and Japan were objectively worse than all of them?
@@obligatoryusername7239 it doesn't but just because something is a lesser evil doesn't mean we should neglect to oppose it
Dresden had a MASSIVE rail yard. The notion that Dresden wasn’t an important military target is a myth.
well yeah but they could have dumped some bombs around the rails and knocked off back to base for a pint, yeh?
@@zimriel That’s unfortunately just not how bombing worked back then. You were aiming just to get your bomb within a few kilometers of the target.
You either sent in light bombers with little chance of them coming back, let alone completely destroying the target AND coming back.
Or you just wiped a whole area off the map.
Dresden absolutely did have military targets that were of value, but the thing is British bombers literally firebombed the residential areas. And that is not because they missed the military targets.
@@zimrielnot only is it a myth, it's literal nazi propaganda. The words that dresden isn't a milotary target, but s cultural centre was said dsys after the bombing by himmler himself
I wish history was always presented in such an easy to understand and objective way. Thank you for this video
It is not objective, he does not really explain the other side very much at all
There’s like nothing objective at all about this video? The literal point of this video is just to see one angle of the moral question of the bombings
@jakegreen2409 This video is hardly objective. It glosses over the 20 million Asians the Japanese butchered in their war of aggression including the use of weapons of mass destruction. And he fails to explain just how America could have ended the war in a more humane way with fewer civilian casualties.
@@corbinjehl6563 Yep, also: Was Guernica really the first city ever bombed??? I have absolutetly no idea but some quick googling tells me bomber planes were first created around 1913
The BS presented by the degenerate in this video may have been easy to understand, but it’s about as far from objective as it gets.
The amount of moronic statements you managed to say in a video less than 20 minutes is honestly impressive
WW2 wasn't about who was the good guys and the bad guys, it was about choosing the lesser of 2 evils.
The "lesser" one being the US terror regime, of course.😂😂😂
That is completely wrong. The cause of the surrender was the Soviet Union's entry into the war against Japan, and the purpose of the atomic bombs was simply human experimentation. Can't you see that when the US dropped two of them?
"We were at war, and it was total war, and we HAD to win, because heaven known what would have happened if we hadn't" - british bomber crew member from Ewan McGreggor's bomber documentary
My cousin twice removed was a POW in the mines at Nagasaki when the bomb dropped. He recalled coming out of the mine and all the coal lit on fire and seeing charred corpses everywhere.
excellent points mate thank you.
The last Japanese solider to surrender was in 1974. One can simply not imagine how fanatical they were. Even after two nuclear bombs they almost didn't surrender.
When the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and invaded a Japanese held area, Japan was convinced that between the atomic bombs and the Soviet Union's declaration of war, that surrender was the only option.
True.
@@sirridesalot6652 It almost didn't happen, Army took steps to overrule the emperor and were close to keeping the war going.
@Midget Yt idk about that mate
Your information is simply incorrect, Onoda, who surrendered in 1974, was an intelligence agency man, like the CIA, and was simply trained to carry out his mission as long as his life lasted.
He was loyal to his mission, not a fanatic. Or would a CIA man abandon his mission without orders from his superiors?
History is written by the victors.
I literally said the same thing
But it might be a real progress, that we are aware of this while on the winning side.
I believe in former centuries the citizens of the large empires were 100% convinced the world is black and white and they are the good guys.
On the other hand, I am sitting here in Germany, so can someone from a WW2-winning location confirm this for me? :)
PS.: Of course this applies also to other conflicts with western alliances, where I can see Germany on the winning-side. I just think that if the nazis would have won, I would probably be convinced that the nazis were good guys, while I can easily find critics on allies tactics on the internet right now - so that might be good :)
Good because the axis would probably just destroy it
The production of historical narratives is always a fascinating topic. If anyone wants to read more about this, I'd recommend Michel-Rolph Trouillot's book "Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History"
This sounds like 100% what I love to read, thanks!
Anyone knows what music was playing at 12:20 ?
It's wild seeing a city I live close to in Germany represented on the German map because it's never mentioned even though it was heavily bombed and very historical.
They bombed those cities because Tokyo and Osaka have been bombed by raids
And the nuclear team feared that when the bomba made the impact japan would think that the damage was not done by the atomic bombs but by the raids
The point was to see the full damage of a single atomic bomb
They didn’t bomb Tokyo because if they did they wouldn’t have anyone to negotiate with to end the war
For Russia to see the full damage of an atomic bomb.
The claim that those monstrous acts were to "save" American lives and put an end to the war, is a fraud, as during the whole war up to 1945, only a paltry 100,000 US servicemen died in the Pacific war, far less than in Europe. And Japan was close to surrender.
Whichever point of view they took, they would not have surrendered. Because it was the Soviet Union's entry into the war against Japan that caused the surrender.
Firebombing could leave cities ablaze or smouldering for weeks, not just days. There’s cases of smouldering rubble reigniting nearly 2 weeks after the initial bombing (depending on local weather/season and humidity) although most of these small fires where generally contained quickly, some of them would start to spread again. For me it goes to show how terrifying living in a city where you could step through rubble and into a pit of embers days or weeks after you thought it was safe to walk around.
WWIII with the new nukes in service will cause the extinction of mankind.
Fires can burn underground for a very long time.
That has to be a very controversial ad for brilliant I suppose
Imagine having been just outside the instant death zone of the bomb and you saw that bomb go off. And you have no idea what a nuke is, you would think the bomb was the sun
Imagine being in Hiroshima on the 6th (less than two miles from ground zero), surviving the blast and despite your injuries, traveling home to Nagasaki and returning to work on the 9th.
Tsutomu Yamaguchi was one of the luckiest and unluckiest people I have ever heard about.
Interesting! I thought it was a slow move towards Tokyo to pressure the government to surrender before they reached the city. I had no idea that Tokyo was 51% destroyed already. I learned something today.
stupid
I was born in 1957. From the time of about 6th grade, we learned about WWII. I don't recall ever hearing that 'black and white argument' of "Allies Good, AXIX EVIL". From about the age or 10 I became an avid student, and I started reading all I could on WWII and I DO remember reading a book about the firebombings of Dresden and Hamburg. Today we have the internet and a thousand documentaries on it. But Hitler had the populace so completely brainwashed and convinced, as was the case with Tojo in Japan (which had been a militaristic society for hundreds of years) that they were not going to easily go down. Look, you barely mentioned the fact that the Soviets declared war on Japan, and had invaded Manchuria and were well on their way to invading Japan - and it's one thing the Japanese feared more than the Americans, it was the Russians. Even with the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japanese communications was in a shambles - there was no "BOOM" and instant surrender. The full extent of the power wasn't known, but the extent of the Soviet cruelty was known and that's what really prompted them to surrender SO quickly, and to US. You can never 'armchair quarterback' the decision to drop the bomb and you certainly cannot retcon today's morality and thinking into the past. I've stood in that blast crater that was created by the first atomic explosion at the White Sands Trinity site. I also loved in Honolulu for nearly 7 years in the 80's and had the opportunity to meet and speak to Japanese pilots who participated in the attack on Pearl Harbor. Its certainly not black and white, and it's certainly impossible to fully analyze the situation as we were not there, though there are many who try to do just that. We know that the truth lies somewhere in the middle. The truth about the war isn't LIED about here, and all it takes to find out more is to do your own research. Haw we allowed the Soviets to 'intervent' and invade, we'd very well be looking at N.Japan and S.Japan today...
Well said
truth is that the Japanese recognized the Americans as being far closer in them in terms of ideology than the soviets, they knew the soviets would not have whitewashed their crimes and pardoned their war criminals to work for major American companies, the exact same thing happened with the Nazi, America was not concerned about the rise of fascism or genocide or any of that nonsense(Germany was heavily inspired by the US treatment of Natives and was supported by many US industrialists such as Ford), they were simply concerned about the expansion of the axis into their own colonial territories
great video, Johnny
The problem with historians is that they rarely look at the future from the viewpoint of the participants. In 1942 the Allies did not know the eventual outcome of the war. Despite brave talk of the Allies, the Axis powers had many victories. It is much easier to pontificate now.
These moralistic people who review history from their moral high ground are really sickening!
My Mother was 12 when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and living in Kentucky. She said when the news broke there wasn't a man in the area that didn't go down to join the service that very day. She said from that point on there was great fear of an invasion by Japan, whose atrocities were well known, that never really eased up throughout the war. There is no doubt in her mind that the bombs were necessary to end the war. Thus was the climate and thinking of the day.
Very few people do and "Woke" types NEVER do. It's called "Presentism".
@@jz55859 there were many incidents of suicide when men were told that they were 4F and unsuitable for military service. Which is tragic, because they could have become welders or essential workers helping the war effort.
@@Conn30Mtenor Wow! I did not know this. Tragic indeed.
My father was on a troop ship for operation downfall. There is a pretty good chance I wouldn't be writing this now if the bombs where not used. Though I do think Japan was more interested in surrendering to the US than the Soviet Union
My father was a glider pilot sitting in Okinawa waiting for the attack on Japan when the Bombs were dropped. Like you, I wouldn't have come to this earth by the same father if not for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
As the saying goes, "If your parents didn't have any children, chances are you won't either."
I get the sentiment but I would be cautious to start justifying such things simply for the fact that you wouldn't have been here. Think of the people who would have been saying similar things who never got the chance because of these same actions. It's better to recognize the full consequences of these horrible decisions made in the past so that we ensure that they are not repeated.
@@TanukiDigital See, we differ in the term "horrible decisions." It would have been a far worse decision to launch an amphibious assault on the Japanese homeland. Far, far worse. For both sides.
Surrendering to us turned out to be the best thing the Japanese could do.
Kokura was the primary target for the 2nd bomb I believe, cloud cover wouldn’t allow visual targeting so Nagasaki was bombed instead, I think the Japanese saying for being lucky is “the luck of Kokura “
Nagasaki was cloudy too. The pilots said there was an hole in the clouds. So they said. If they hadn't dropped the bomb they would have run out of fuel and wouldn't have made it back to the base. That could have been motivating.
A book I read many years ago, the author fought the Pacific war all the way to the end. So inspite his personal involvement, I was surprised his opinion was the bomb wasn't necessary to effect a surrender.
But Russia had just started fighting Japan and a quick surrender was needed to keep Russia from occupying Japan. In fact some of Japan's home island were not returned to Japan until the 1960s.
We were already preparing for the next war with Russia
bro a random soldiers opinion of a theater wide war encompassing millions of people and deep cultural differences is not an especially reliable source of how necessary the bomb was in effecting surrender.
@@f556784q3 the navy captain ( I forget his name now) said we controlled the air and sea around the home islands and that they were dependant on inter island commerce to just survive. That we could have waited them out.
We needed to rush the surrender to keep Russia from taking any more control than they did.
This seems credible, we were concerned about Russia in Europe.
Results on both fronts was the iron curtain across eastern Europe and some of Japan's home islands were not returned to Japan from Russia until the 1960s. I think the actions of Russia validates this navy Captain's assessment.
I was just surprised because he had such a personal involvement .
My brother in law's father was on one of those other planes on that mission.
Not sure which one.
He was an officer.
He died of a heart attack at age 50.
I happened to be in Seattle in 1982.
I was taken down to the docks.
There I boarded the Battleship Missouri and stood within a few feet of where the Japanese signed the surrender.
Off in the distance was the aircraft carrier Hornet. It plucked the Apollo 11 crew out of the Pacific.
@@BetterCallSamuel offend?
What are you talking about?
I was in Seattle in 1982 . My Dad was on the Minesweeper USS Implicit
@gregjackson-ks1gh It was not the original 'Hiornet' that the Japanese sank.
@@dennisweidner288 I understand that.
But nevertheless, the Missouri and aircraft carrier Hornet were witness of and present to probably the top two events of the 20th Century? Top 5?
What was greater?
@@Downsdddgh Hornet was not present at the surrender ceremony. Interesting question, I would not rank the Japanese surrender that high. I would put Pearl Harbor up there and then the dissolution of the Soviet Union and for the top 5 I would probably choose the 3) Moon landing, 4) dropping of the atomic bomb, and 5) Henry Ford's introduction of the Model-T, but here are many other contenders such as the discovery of the double helix,
This is not just a history story, it’s a story about history
When estimating the casualties that would result from an invasion of Japan, we cannot forget to include the number of Japanese soldiers AND civilians. The civilian population, men, women, and children, was being trained trained to resist an invasion. Civilian mass suicides at Saipan and Okinawa would very likely have been replicated if/when resistance proved unsuccessful. The body count would have dwarfed the casualties from the A-bombs.
2 million Japanese casualties was the estimate.
@milwaukeejt7483 Absolutely correct. Notice those that who criticize Truman's decision, never provide a creditable alternative that would have resulted in fewer Japanese casualties.
Civillans did not believe in suicide. They were fed propaganda about rapacious Americans. The first US soldiers they saw handed out chocolate bars and made friends.
Great work and video, your country is beautiful. Greetings from Mexico.
I think it's odd that the estimates of invasion casualties were sort of glossed over. There were estimates of up to 10 million if I remember right. That was based on the projections from Iwo Jima, and it brought on a logistical nightmare. They would need an invasion force of over a million men and Japanese casualties would be calculated in the millions as well, billions in bonds (that they already struggled to sell), food for that amount of men and those employed to get them to the island (it was possible they would have to resort to farming cat tail weeds for their starch content just to feed everyone), another year or two of war that everyone was mortally sick of, and somehow keep their holdings they were negotiating with the Reds in Germany. Ultimately, it was a numbers game, and they even ruled out Kyoto knowing that it would fortify their resolve. So they opted for Kokura as the primary target with Nagasaki as secondary. That wouldn't indicate the target were civilians primarily, but they were trying to get a surrender before USSR intervention, so they wouldn't have to split Japan like Germany. Imagine a traditional invasion between the US and the USSR, and half of Japan was subjugated to the Communist atrocities like China or East Germany. Things could have been a lot worse for the Japs, especially given what they had done. I honestly wish they hadn't been so stupid and attacked the US Navy in the first place.
Check out the changes in what Truman said about those estimates. In the President's own words, after the war, they vary significantly. Some figures are astronomically high, others much more moderate.
It's against the video's narrative. "sure the nazis did some bad things but..." sure they were trying to wipe another population off the face of the earth but... It's like self defense, neither option is preferable but once you cross the line its the better of two evils
The estimate is based on the US pkan to throw Americans at Japanese kamikaze defenders as cannon fodder. A SMART invasion would have done a feint on Kyushu, but focused the real invasion on Sendai in the northeast wherr defenses were thin. Sendai is closer to the US mainland than Kyushu. It could be supported by B-17s launched from Okinawa and planes from hundreds of carriers plus battleships. Stupid, unimaginative US planners were careless about US soldiers' lives.
I'm hearing a lot of people say "Well, The Allies were just as bad as The Axis" which in some cases, were true. However, it's not like the Axis were being nice in the war and the Allies decided to employ some harsh tactics that were "Evil". People need to understand that the Allies had to return fire in the same order or more as the Axis did to them FIRST. At the end of the day, World War 2 was considered a Total War. Meaning all hands on deck, all resources, all people, are in this together to continue pushing and pumping out weaponry to the front, as well as MAXIMIZING as much damage as possible to the other enemy. It was literally kill or be killed, no conditional surrender but unconditional surrender.
Yes, trying to blame the Allied forced is actually evil (the twisting of reality, into the opposite of the truth). All moral blame must be placed on those that STARTED THE WAR. And when you look into the Rape of Nanking, or see film of prisoners in Dachau or Buchenwald, you really must be an evil dimwit to blame America.
My grandfather and my grandmother (at the time kids) lived trough the night of the bombing in dresden. My Grandpa told me, that the asphalt was literally melting, that there was no cover in air raid shelters because the air was sucked out by the fire storm. The people that tried to flee the heat by jumping in a well or something like that were boiled alive, there is even storys, that american fighterjets equiped with machine guns flew low over fleeing crowds shooting the helpless people down. I have to say, that Dresden is now a really beautiful city, but when I look at old pfotos it is hard to believe, that this was once my hometown.
American fighter jets? Americans didn't have jets yet. German would by the end of the war. To little to late. The British a few but not operational yet.
@@maxwellcrazycat9204 Sorry, I have to clarify my bad english, we are not talking about fihter jets but about "Tiefflieger" - low flyer planes. My gandpa told me about them. The media says, they never existed but there are a lot of eyewitnesses telling storys about them.
They were nazi supporters not helpless people. I would say they got off easy compared to how the nazi's killed civilians.
@@cameronchewning6516 Your barbaric ignorance is astonishing. You may one day receive the same heartless treatment by people who claim to be human beings. I assume you could be classified as an "American Supporter" and boiled alive without a second thought by a nation that disagrees with all that America does.
@Granatosaurus Interestingly enough, there's only a few civilian eye witness accounts. The US has no reports of having them, and the Japanese officials/media never said a word about them. I'm inclined more towards them not existing, if for nothing else that they wouldn't be worth the risk to use.
Victory gives you the reward of history.
Rather interesting take on the subject matter. It's nice to hear something refreshing that it wasn't all as easy and rosy as historybooks make it seem. Lekker bezig Jochem, ga zo door jongen!😉
In retrospect 2 nukes to avoid an invasion was a good trade off. I know it wasn't just the nukes - the Soviets invading Manchuria played just as large part in the surrender. The Japanese did not want Soviets occupying their Home Island - they hated Americans but they also knew Stalin would be a much worse fate than Truman and MaCarthur.
imagine if the soviets got to japan first, socialist japan would be interesting to see, maybe there wouldn't be such a high rate of suicide amongst salarymen
No, the Soviets were determined to invade within three months.
That is completely wrong. The cause of the surrender was the Soviet Union's entry into the war against Japan, and the purpose of the atomic bombs was simply human experimentation. Can't you see that when the US dropped two of them?
I’ve also heard one of the main reasons Tokyo wasn’t nuked is because killing the leadership would mean there’s no one who could officially surrender.
Very informative video. I take issue with the implication that there was some kind of moral parity (not black and white). Sure there’s no complete black and white in war, but ww2 is pretty close in the history of wars.
The war had to be won, but it’s only that “black and white” because almost everything we know about it came from the Allied powers. Is burning millions of men, women, and children to death in their own homes for being trapped in a certain country really that much better?
Yeah this video sorta leaves out the whole "murderous dictatorships butcher millions while trying to conquer country after country after country..."
Absolutely. Like I'm not gonna sa Allies were perfect, but to say there was no black and white is like saying "a jaywalker and a child rapist are both criminals"
@@stansman5461 You know the soviet union was a part of the allies, right?
@@WelcomeBackMeHere yes, and Stalin was terrible towards his people causing thousands of unnecessary deaths. But does that make you think, "well, Stalin was evil, so I guess the Holocaust and the rape of Nanking wasn't so bad"
I could listen to you talk all day, with that particularly beautiful soothing German accent! But the history lesson that you gave in this video was phenomenal and I learned some things. Thank you. I lived in your beautiful country for over a decade in the 80's/90's and miss it still to this day. Thus, the complete enjoyment of your accent.
Thats a very generous comment, thank you! It is a Dutch accent however ;)
@@ThePresentPast_ Oh,dear god, I am so very sorry! I truly couldn't hear the difference, but that would explain why it was so enjoyable to listen to. While living in Germany, I did learn not to make the mistake of assuming that Dutch and German were the same. But, on a lighter note, I visited your beautiful country, as well. Thank you so much for letting me know of my error so I can hopefully try not to make it again! 😔
16:35 It should also be noted that even if the bombing of civilians would work in that they would start to put pressure on their governments instead of start hating the people who are bombing them, we talk about german and japanese citizens of WW2. These people lived in dictatorships, not democracies. They wouldn't even have the power to put pressure on their governments.
Hiroshima was a city of considerable military importance. It contained the 2nd Army Headquarters, which commanded the defense of all of southern Japan. The city was a communications center, a storage point, and an assembly area for troop.
The city of Nagasaki had been one of the largest sea ports in southern Japan and was of great war-time importance because of its many and varied industries, including the production of ordnance, ships, military equipment, and other war materials. The narrow long strip attacked was of particular importance because of its industries.
And to put it plainly as an American, you started it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
nukes are off the table. what made it any better then? you started it? they started a conventional war we started a nuclear war if we did that in todays time the entire world would be destoryed.
'Merica, PHUQ YEAH
The video is informative for sure, but I can’t help but get the impression that he wants to paint the US as the bad guy while glossing over a lot of the bullshit the Japanese did
@@teclishighloremasterofhoet7488of courae lol
It's very sad that this had to happen. As bad as this was, the alternative was far, far worse.
No it wasn't. Civilian deaths are always the worse of the alternative.
sure but you cannot bomb and kill thousands of civilians for no reason and then turn around and call yourself the good guy, can we at least agree on that
@@dariomladenovski7047 Yes you can. Unless you believe that the Allies were evil the entire war - USAF and RAF destroyed Italian and German cities (and civilians with them) as the Western Allies advanced, the Soviets did the same to German cities with their own artillery and bombers. It was a total war on a modern industrial level, Axis civilians wete bound to die no matter what.
@@obligatoryusername7239 no you can't, you are not the good guy once you start killing civilians, you are just as bad as them
@@dariomladenovski7047what do you mean for no reason ? The Japanese had not lost a war in 3,500 years and they were going to fight to the last man and it is estimated that US casualties would have approached 1M.
War is the stupidest endeavor mankind has ever invented, but if you find yourself in one, you kill every damn one of them until they surrender or the next bullet or bomb might have your name on it.
Love your balanced approached to history
I have always wondered if Hiroshima was targeted for the first atomic bomb not only due to strategic reasons, but also because this was where the fleet that attacked Pearl Harbor sailed from.
I doubt it.
A little of column A, a little of column B
@ronkluwe4875 Notice that both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were important military centers on or near Kyhshu that the Americans were planning to invade.
Except this is not where the fleet that attacked Pearl Harbor sailed from. It sailed from the Kuril Islands, which are now Russian.
@@benhamin84 The Kuril Islands were their final departure point. Hiroshima was the main base of the Imperial Fleet.
1:50 - Yes, both cities were left relatively untouched unlike Tokyo which was firebombed earlier in March but Nagasaki was and is still one of the largest seaports in Southern Japan. Hiroshima had a huge naval base. If that's not military significant to you then I don't know what is.
Dad was Combat Camera (not the same as photo recon, think more like newsreel footage) with the B29s flying from Saipan, Guam, and Tinian. Along with all the photos of bombers' nose art and the people living on the islands he brought back a couple of aerial photos of Tokyo after it was firebombed. Just as grim as Hiroshima.
My grandfather was the navigator of a B-29 Superfortress at Tinian..The 500th bomber group...I've seen alot of pics of the flight crews and planes at Tinian....I wonder if your father took some of the pics of my grandfather at Tinian.?
@@jessallen7756 Landscapes, planes, and natives are all that I've seen, sorry. If you know what nose art was on the plane I can try to find that, there's probably about 20 of those. Not much considering how many planes there were, but you never know.
Tokyo had more devastation (casualties) than both atomic bombs combined
Quality video. Good job 👍 you speak well and your are good to listen to and smart analysis.
Both cities were significant war targets, especially Nagasaki which launched the largest capital ships. Keeping the Japanese on-island was a priority, so cutting off their fuel and their capability to build ships was consistent.
Ok so in WW3 don't complain when Houston gets destroyed it's a military Target because that's where all the satellites get launched.
@shea455 Also note that they were on or near Kyshu where the Americans planned to invade.
This is the first video of yours that I have watched and I must say that I really like how you emphasize that everything wasn't/isn't black or white. I think that is a very important distinction that a lot of people don't understand or utilize in our very often polarized world and viewpoints. It's "good" when this group of people do x but "bad" when that group of people do x. It was very enlightening to see McNamara make this exact point as I had never heard that quote from him before.
As I haven't seen anything else of yours and that you are a newer channel, I hope that you keep up using this narrative device (for a lack of a better phrase as I am not sure what to call it) in your future content. We can't ever begin to understand one another as people and to work together to create a better future if we continue to look at the world, each other and events, as strictly good or bad, with no shades in-between. Sure people might do "bad things" or "good things" but the reasons behind the decisions are just as important as the actions themselves.
Anyways, enough ramblings from me on a dreary Saturday. You have earned a new subscriber. I can't wait to see what you create in the future. Thank you.
McNamara’s got tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands if not millions of people’s blood on his hands. His policies, that had this sentiment on them, led to the direct death of thousands to tens of thousands of people, and the eventual fall of south Vietnam, and the surrounding areas.
There is nothing dignified about warfare. Winning is all that matters.
@@1982nsu yup
Fun fact there was supposed to be a third nuclear bomb dropped on Osaka but the Japanese surrendered. The core of that bomb is now known as the demon core and that has a whole story in it self that I’ll leave you guys to read into.
Nuclear edging
My gaming rig few years back had a couple "demon cores".
Excellent insights and commentary
"The plane, named after the pilot's mother"
The plane: Enola Gay
Wait in a damn minute
this is a really fantastic companion piece for shaun's video on hiroshima and nagasaki. similar moral questions, but coming at it from a new angle. this was such a great vid!
I forgot about that video! Thank you for sharing and reminding me of it
Thank you for the video. I do remember briefly hearing about firebombing in Japan during WW2 lessons, but there was little detail and most of the focus was on the atomic bomb and the fights on the pacific islands, including okinawa & iwojima. I've lived in Japan for 10 years, been to both hiroshima and nagasaki multiple times, visited the atomic bomb museums, talked to japanese peopl about this topic, and even they seem to only remember the atomic bomb. So this was a really interesting topic. Cheers
I also lived in Japan for several years and occasionally spoke with Japanese about the war. Several in their 20's and 30's said, and I paraphrase, that it wasn't taught in school and all they know is that they were minding their own business and the US up and dropped two atomic bombs on them. I felt really sad for them as they were missing such an important piece of their history.
Edit : I am not suggesting those experiences are indicative of the attitude of all Japanese or even that age group.
@@fenrir309 I can't believe the japanese govt didn't tell the truth to their young people maybe theyll be afraid of the result
@@fenrir309 Crazy how each country whitewash their history when teaching their young.
Really goes to show how such a powerful bomb can completely overshadow any other tiny but far more numerous bomb. We basically nuked Japan off the map already with napalm firebombs already destroying much of their wooden cities.
@@fenrir309 so why did you comment this?
Love the delivery style and nicely fit background sounds!