*Germany and Japan team up desperate to not get the USSR and USA into their wars* Germany *Invades USSR* Japan *attacks the USA*' Truly one of the military alliances of the time
I can picture the conversations now. Japan "Okay so whatever happens let's make sure we don't get Russia involved in this war." Germany "Okay guys whatever we do let's make sure we don't get the US involved in this war." Then "Sir we have a telegram from Germany they just attacked Russia" and "Sir we have a telegram from Japan, they just attacked the United States." Both "Well Shit"
An interesting tidbit of information: In Nazi Germany, there was a regularly published journal called something to the effect of "Reports from the Reich", that also featured a lot of content regarding Imperial Japan. This publication praised Japan, their traditional culture, rich history, pure mythology, homogenous society, cult around their leader (Tenno) and (of course) their successful military conquest of Asia so much, the higher-ups told them to dial back their praise for Japan, otherwise it might have negative effects on the German self-perception. There was a note that told the writers to beware making the Japanese look like "Germanen im Quadrat" (verbatim: _Germans to the square,_ ie: more German than the Germans). Basically, Japan was everything Germany aspired to be: A unified, homogenous society with a strong mythology "untainted" by outside influence, tradition deeply woven into the everyday life, a strong military leadership with a cult of personality for a single "leader" and so on...
Nazi Germany had already been personifying the Fascist mythos much moreso than even Fascist Italy had been, which is kinda terrifying to consider that Japan had been neck deep in it without the analysis and extremely direct attempt to get there. They just already WERE there.
@@Sue_Me_Too It does take that understanding to get there with the support of everyone from a system prior to the people's benefit, and to maintain that. It's why the Nazi party called themselves "National Socialists" even though they despised socialism extensively. It wasn't just that they had the pointiest stick.
My father who is 100% Japanese, grew up in Japan during WWII. Came to the United states in 1949, finished high school and promptly got drafted into the Korean War. 3 years later met a Jewish woman, my mother. They spoke of a kinship and understanding that not many other people could understand. They were together until she died, 62 years
Both governments were incredibly racist. It was an alliance of convenience because their spheres of influence didn't really interact. It's interesting to speculate about how long they would have stayed allied, and if they would have eventually engaged in an actual conflict, if they had won.
I enjoy these comments. I know people will say they know all the countries were racist at the time. But it still doesn't account for the need to emphasize just how racist the Axis were even though they learned literally everything from the British and Americans etc. Up to the point that Nazis studied US race law when writing their own -and they even found the one drop rule too extreme. Imagine US race law being too extreme for Nazis yet we still view them as the epitome of a racist government and feel the need to point it out all the time but rarely to point it out about our own governments of the time even though they were so sooo similar - especially in the colonies. The allies were just lucky that they'd decided they were all the same race so their racism didn't affect the politics of their alliance (for the most part).
The German killed Jewish folks and the japanese murdered the Chinese and other Asian countries population. There is a deep resentment because of the Japanese and the history they have with lots of countries.
@@IshtarNike Look up 'The battle of Bamber bridge' in WW2, took place in Britain involving black GIs, US military police and the locals. The 1% will exploit everyone regardless of race, it was just easier for them back then to exploit on the grounds of colour, but it wasnt true for all of society here. These days the same 1% are doing the same, while staying obscenely rich at all of our expenses.
That's overstating it. The truth is the Japanese had known they were hugely outgunned by the West and particularly the US from the start, and had a bunch of researchers and think tank leaders that outright told them through the 1930s and the early 1940s. The Total War Research Institute in particular told Tojo that there was no material way that Japan could defeat the US in a war, regardless of any other factors. But what ultimately boiled down was textbook magical and double thinking. Tojo and the like acknowledged their conclusions were true, but then basically concluded that these factors were not accounting for "spiritual" or "Moral" factors, and so concluded that the research was not factoring in the X Factor and that Japan exploiting these would mean that it could somehow win the war they understood they couldn't win without it. And in what defense I can give, it isn't COMPLETELY deluded. By the time the TWRI had finished their research the world had seen what 1940 had, and NOBODY (not even the Nazis) had expected essentially all the Western European democracies to collapse as rapidly as they did due to (as was proven at the Riom Trial) morale matters rather than material ones. But Tojo etc. al. ignored how Britain didn't give up or give in and had been fighting throughout.
A great disservice was done when our concept of the Nazis became one if otherworldly, incomprehensible evil. We were left thinking that "it can't happen here" & completely overlooked the lesson of "the *banality* of evil."
People need to understand that becoming a fascist (and slipping a little further into Nazism) is a disturbingly easy process. If anything it takes effort not to.
100% agree. Because of this people do not understand how the exact same thing could happen in other countries. Especially now with our technology and the internet, all their surveillance and mental programming would have been so much easier.
@@hashimrahman51 It had also been firebombing cities to a still just as devastating effect. Japan's military had been committing terrible atrocities in China directly to civilians. Etc etc. Every single actor in WW2 did some really screwed up shit.
@Hashim Rahman It was a necessary evil, the nuclear detonations killed ~260,000 people, however, the statistical projections of the Pacific War showcased just how powerful Japanese forces were, as potential millions could of perished in a much less instantaneous manner
This is a lot of history condensed into one presentation, and likely there are a lot of details that will continue to be debated, but given the scope of the subject, it’s a great bit of stuff. Kudos to the presenter as well as what must be a number of supporting production staff.
I remember reading about the Japanese side of the war and how hotly debated a strike on the US had gone back and forth between the generals. Half understood that they didn't have the resources to weather an attack if they poked the sleeping bear, but the other half were more or less blinded by their own massive strength (they had been dominating their expansion efforts through a combination of overspending resources and going largely conquering underdeveloped islands and coastal regions) and believed that they couldn't be defeated. This came to a dangerous intersection when one of the generals suggested that the US would only respect Japan as an equal nation if Japan showed them a demonstration of strength first. "If you are walking down a path and you come up to an American, he will not respect you for stepping aside. He will look down on you because you are servile and apparently know your place. If you want respect from an American, you stand your ground and bloody his nose." In some messed up logic, the high brass thought that a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor would only help the negotiations with the US. Or at least that was the argument they used. It's telling how quickly they were being made when the Japanese Ambassador in Washington at the time only received news of the impending attack a few hours before it happened; he'd left with the assurance that the decision to attack would be made depending on how his talks went.
I doubt the decision making process was this simple. If your landlord threatens to turn off your gas, electricity and water, what would you do? What are the choices?
Japan would have never loss that war if it wasn't for atom bomb...USA has lost plenty of wars most recently being in the Afghanistan...so bomb is to be credited
@@rumba_tumba_zumba_kumba our goal wasnt to win there it was to destabilize the region and train our troops. in a total war scenario any country would fall beneath us. bombing civs buildings and shooting indiscriminately would instantly tackle any opposition.
@lootera not necessarily. I think it's general consensus that the US would have almost certainly still won without the big ones. The reality is that the US were driving the Japanese back and were prepared to do an invasion of Japan itself. It just would have been bloodier and taken longer. The official logic from President Truman behind using the bombs was that the options were to end it fast and decisively or draw it out and cause more damage. Dropping the bombs in a shock-and-awe move on key military targets would completely destroy Japan's ability to continue to wage war and save both the lives of American troops and Japanese lives, since Trunan wasn't particularly interested in wiping out the Japanese or destroying their culture. Going with a grueling D-Day style land invasion would have likely cost significantly more lives amd would have significantly drawn out the conflict. Ulterior motives, of course, were probably to get any smart ideas out of the heads of the Soviets since the coming Cold War was pretty much in everyone's minds about as soon as Berlin fell. (There are thise who I think rightly believed that after sacking Berlin, the Allies should have kept on marching to Moscow before the Soviets could get their bearings and develop nukes for themselves.) Regardless of any geopolitical motives, it does seem that the intent behind using the atom bombs was ultimately save lives with a decisive blow that would neutralize them militarily and shock them into submission, which does seem to be the end result. In their defense, I don't think they understood the potential longterm effects of nuclear radiation either. The fallout was an unintended consequence. Personally, I'm on the fence about whether dropping them was worth it in the grand scheme of things.
@@gabriellopez522 I didn't say it was I was joking about how a few years ago there was a ton of "far right" accounts with anime avatars posting offensive things. Anime Nazis were a thing
This. If Germany and Japan won, they'd have had a cold war of their own due to Japan getting a green light to go full send West into Korea and China. And eventually German held Russia.
The Soviet Union had a lot of people and a large industrial base. Making the Germans fight on two fronts and forcing the Japanese to be on the lookout in Manchuria and their own northern islands was a major factor in the war. Hitler made a huge mistake by invading the USSR but his plans depended on taking agricultural land and resources.
@@dg20120 I'm thinking he's talking about the fact that the west had decades earlier intervened with military expeditions into Russia to stop the communists in their Civil War. And the deep fear most western countries had for Communism.
Yeah, in short Stalin was just angry that 'Dolphie reneged on their deal (despite Stalin also having plans to invade Poland and parts of Germany), and sided with the Allies because of spite and his own ambitions. Frankly, I'm of the opinion that once Berlin was secured the Allies should have immediately betrayed the Soviets. Them being a blatant problem was evident for years, and it was only getting more and more obvious as the war went on that the Soviets were getting ready to pull shenanigans. Which is exactly what they did. The Soviet Union among the Allies was absolutely a case of "the enemy of my enemy is NOT my friend".
Lucy, I’m over 60:and as the man said, “Live is what happens when you are busy making other plans.” I’ll trade you looking back any time you want. You can’t go back, you can only go forward. The same goes for everyone. Your advice is good. Pick a direction and go for it. I got lucky years ago and took a job that I thought I’d maybe keep for a year or two. 25 years later it’s taken me around the world, I’ve met and worked with amazing people. But it’s not been the “normal” path. Ever once in a while I think about those other options. But then I look at what I’ve done and I’ve got sone great stories and experiences. Those are priceless. When it comes that time and my life passes before my eyes. I’m going to have a life worth watching.
I had a Catholic Japanese philosophy proff. in Collège. He explained why Christianity and Shinto could co exist in Japan. "Syncretism." He explained that Buddhism and Christianity posed no threat to Shinto, which was a pretty Pantheistic; the same theme that drove America's founders to think that all men are created equal. Syncretism suggests that all things can work together and interact; even support each other
The Japanese joke that they are Shinto when they are born, Christian when they get married, and Buddhist when they die. I think they just have a fetish for theatrical ceremonies on special occasions.
I distinctly remember Christianity getting heavily persecuted in Japan historically. And instead of syncretism, I'd call it more akin to apathy. The Japanese really seem to be more atheist as a society than anything else, where all the trips to temples and festivals are just going through the motions. And even with that apathy Christianity to this day is still clearly looked down on there when it comes to any serious inspection of it (as in ignoring how prominent Japan's pop culture uses depictions of Christian-esque religions in their Anime and Manga).
@@SockieTheSockPuppet The reason why Christianity was getting persecuted was due to their collusion with the spanish and Portuguese imperialists, threatening to invite them in to destabilize and possibly colonize Japan entirely. Thus the Shinto finally realized that the Buddhists were actually their natural allies when it came to unifying the nation from foreign threats that sought to destroy both of them. Before the, Shinto had originally invited the Christians in, to help counter the buddhists! Eventually though they realized just how wrong they were, as the Christians considered them both heathen to be converted or destroyed. Thus they 'martyred' the Christians, sure, but they actually saved their own culture and independence by doing this.
The decision to attack America and Britain by the Japanese is actually quite fascinating, as the whole nation sort of stumbled inexorably towards war despite many members of the government, Navy and army knowing it was a terrible idea. I quite recommend Toland's book The Rising Sun if you're interested. The negotiations themselves were fraught, with the moderates in Japan having to make concessions to the Army to even be allowed to conduct them. It didn't help that there was a good deal of miscommunication between the two parties, both due to cultural issues and Secretary Hull's preexisting dislike and suspicion of the Japanese, which to be fair wasn't that uncommon in the US at the time, as there was a major pro-china sentiment stirred up by reporting on atrocities in China. The two nations truly came incredibly close to reaching an agreement at various points.
World War 2 was set in motion at the end of WW1. It was twofold 1-Germany was blamed for the entire war and held accountable to pay war debt to the others! When you starve a country to the point of complete collaspe you are planting the seed of resentment into their society! That made it easy for a megalomaniac to be elected as leader!!! 2- Japan felt as if they had be ignored during these negotiations since they had contributed a good deal to it! They walked out of the negotiations! That and the and the embargoes the US and Britain placed on them forced their hand!
Toland has been long neglected. That is regrettable. The Army, the navy, the Emperor and the Emperors high council could have been better studied and understood by all of the western governments. The invasion of Manchuria was so obviously brutal and homicidal that the avenues of diplomacy were closed...by Japan
It's true that they could have come to a treaty, but a treaty was NEVER going to happen when you take into account two factors: First, a treaty of peace was going to progress the interests of NEITHER leader. The Japanese needed more resources to continue their war of expansion. While it can be argued that if they hadn't attacked Pearl Harbour the US may not have entered the war, the US probably would have still because peace was not in the political interest of Roosevelt, the leader of the US at the time. Roosevelt sensed a rising wave of support for his political opposition at the time and saw war abroad, with anyone who dared to attack the US, as the only way to maintain his power. He didn't want a treaty at all because a treaty would only really effect his own personal interests and not that of the US as a whole as the US had other trading partners at the time they could send those resources too. Thus the only treaty he would accept would be strong arming Japan into going back to the situation they were literally fighting the war to get out of and nothing less, which is the complete opposite of what Japan wanted, and he also intentionally antagonized them by refusing to compromise. He didn't want peace, he wanted to bait Japan into bringing the US into WW2 to maintain his own personal political power. He knew that the Japanese would fall into this trap because... Secondly, the incredible racism on BOTH countries sides at the time. At the time the Americans thought all races that aren't white were incredibly stupid, uncultured and generally inferior politically to the point of being savages. This is an attitude that persisted from the inception of the 13 colonies due to how easily the British conquered everyone by virtue of both having guns and being the first to adjust to war with that game changer. The simple fact that they had won victory after victory because of this with relative ease informed their belief that they must be superior and is what led to them treating the Japanese conquest as an after thought. This had the knock on effect of allowing the Japanese to fortify the regions they would liberate later, leading to American casualty counts for small islands so high that it forced them to Nagasaki and Hiroshima instead of going for an invasion of Nippon, Japan's biggest homeland island. The racism was, as discussed in this video, mutual though as Japan saw any outsides and especially western powers outsiders as being inferior by default and thus some generals probably legitimately believed that despite their overwhelming advantage the Americans would blunder into their own defeat like morons. So due to their mutual racism of each other neither side would have in good faith accepted a treaty that didn't heavily favour them and their short term interests. All that being said, had Japan not attacked Pearl Harbour and just invaded the Philippines and surrounding nations, it would've been a much harder sell for Roosevelt to enter WW2, but I imagine he still would've managed it by saying the massacres were now affecting US citizens when they invaded US holdings in South Easter Asia and Oceania.
Great video but a few points to note. There was no UN in 1936, you are referring to the League Of Nations. Also the Abyssinia Crisis (as Ethiopia was generally known at the time) was in 1935.
My mother and grandmother were passengers on the SS Tanda which was torpedoed off South West India in 1944. She always believed it was a Japanese submarine but once the internet came along I found out it was a German U Boat U181, one of two assigned to operate in the Japanese theatre. They also carried some token high value supplies between Asia and Germany. U181 survived because what would have been a suicidal last trip to Germany got delayed due to "engine trouble" and the U Boat was handed over to the Japanese in Singapore when Germany surrendered, then scuttled when Japan surrendered. There's a book by Otto Giese that pragmatically describes what it was like.
Both the germans and japanese had cultures that were built around perfectionism and nationalism. They both seen themselves as being the 'masters' of their race. It makes sense that the two respected each other. The japanese wanted to emulate what the great European empires had done and that meant there natural enemies would be those European empires who were still massively present around them, the british the fench and the dutch. Again this makes perfect sense why they would align with the germans in ww2
I would argue that the English, French, Russians were no different, even 'worse'. The difference was that Germany lost the first world war and around 40% of its population then came under the control of often hostile reconstituted new nations which tended to suppress the ethnic Germans. The percentage transfered was way to high and was driven by the idea to reduce Germany in size. Whole parts of of lands with German populations were suppressed the new nations. In 1919 Czech Police shot to death about 68 unarmed Germans protestors at council electrions. Such things leave a angry mark. There is a lot in the league of nations because Germans protested land seizures and other injustice. It's no surprise they reacted the way they did. It's more a suprise they didn't react stronger. -I don't think British, French, Russians or even Americans were better. It can be argue the Russians (Soviets) were worse. The difference was that Germany ended up under a dictatorship.
You miss huge differences between these two that just couldn't be reconciled . Japanese thought their boss was a god. The Nazis thought they had a genetic superiority not a religious one. Do this day Japan has restaurants that nobody but the Japanese purebred Japanese can eat at and I am proud that any one of those people can come here and eat one of our restaurants. I hate to say I'm from the superior culture, but at least we see everybody as a human being.
@@markmcgoveran6811 most things regarding race with the Nazis is complete propaganda! Blacks Arabs Muslims all lived in Nazi Germany and were treated great. They had SS Muslim divisions. Even the black Olympic runner Jesse Owens said he was treated much better by the Nazis than he was by American white.
These kinds of videos always reminds me of my grandfather. He fought in the Pacific in WW2. He refused to talk about the battles he fought in (aside from pointing himself out in a photo of an aftermath once), but he never held a grudge and made sure I knew it more complex than schools teach.
Just today I was reading an article that said that Major Gregory "Pappy" Boyington of VMA-214 Black Sheep fame and the pilot that claimed to have shot him down Masajiro "Mike" Kawato would do public appearances together and trade friendly barbs. :)
My mother and two uncles were in WW2 (all USN). I know neither of my uncles bore a grudge but my mother did. She stayed stateside until the war ended then went to Japan with civil service. She loved the culture but held a grudge against the people (but not the Japanese-Americans).
They don’t touch this part that much in any of the schools I went to. Then again, most people have a hard time getting it through their head the Nazi’s weren’t in WW1, might have been for the better lol.
All three of my grandfathers (long story) served in the Pacific in WWII, in different roles. They had varying attitudes towards the Japanese after the war that really depended on where they had been and what they had experienced. My Grandpa B was a Marine infantryman who fought on Guadalcanal and Okinawa, and he never really forgave or forgot. Got raging mad once at my uncle for buying a Toyota, wouldn't try Japanese food, etc. My Grandpa J was a flight deck officer on a carrier that got hit by Kamikazes. He really respected the Japanese as fighters, and even visited Japan after the war a couple of times to participate in "reunions". I only ever got them to talk about their experiences a few times, and they didn't really go into bloody details because they were talking to a young kid, but the stories they told me were still riveting. I miss those tough old guys.
Yes, this video is actually very good. It makes you consider the views of the Axis powers and in a way, the Axis powers had valid points as well - a different perspective. We also need to remember wars are the result of politicians and not people or the soldiers that fight the wars. The population and soldiers are pawns. The real bad guys are the politicians. The nazis were a political party. Not the German people. When the government tells soldiers to go to war, they obey. There is no choice to object, lest one has no value for his own life! There are plenty of 21st century examples: do all Russians truly believe in the war against Ukraine? Do all Americans truly believe in the invasion of Iraq? Probably not - the decisions to go to war, invade etc. are the product of idiot politicians.
From grade 8 to grade 13 that was all they taught in history class in Germany. 🤮 However we didn't cover Japan a lot, so I also learned something from this video.
Children have to be taught the basics of history so that they have the foundation for tackling more complex details, like what this video covers, later on. The fact that you're able to jump into this topic without difficulty is a testament to the efficacy of that 8th grade class.
I think skipping the Russo-Japanese War downplays the overconfidence of the Japanese military faction. The lesson they took from it was that superior tactics made it easy to obliterate Western navies. It also downplays the enmity between Russia and Japan. According to Sugihara: Conspiracy of Kindness, many of the Jews he helped ended up in Japan, where Jewish community leaders were consulted about a German request that the Japanese extradite the Jews to Germany. The argument was made that the Japanese were just as non-Aryan. Not all the Jews remained in Japan. Since Jews were considered to be skilled with their hands, a group was made to work in Manchurian factories, where they were fed enough to survive the war.
How? The Tripartite pact was an actual alliance both in reality and on paper. The Chinese and Russians aren't even allies on paper. They wouldn't go to war for each other because they don't want to and they don't have to as they're not bounded by any formal agreement. They are partners at best. Ironically it is the Allies who were a much more surface level alliance. The main powers of the Allies were of completely different ideologies, goals, and cultures in which they all immediately became enemies right after the war ended. Japan, Italy, and Germany were allies before, during, and after the war and continue to be to this very day. Despite Japan literally being on the other side of the world from Germany & Italy there was an extensive submarine trade, as outlined in the video. Simon however states that it rarely became useful when that is obviously not true since many aircraft and naval designs were shared this way, a whole Japanese fighter was based off the German plane. Japan also provided Germany with crucial resources, it is a miracle Germany and Japan even lasted as long as they did with how little natural resources they had.
@@christopherjones8448 Wich is pretty much how all propaganda is done. Whether it's left or right everyone picks the parts of truth that suites their goals.
@@christopherjones8448 Admittedly yes I do like to discuss important topics and details no one talks about. Im inviting discussion and you're trying to shut it down. Being close minded to your own worldview taught by one narrative is arguably much worse than any "propaganda"
An Arsenal of Democracy video would be interesting. How the U.S. industry was swung so quickly to war footing and a look at some of the smaller manufacturers contributions in addition to the big boys.
The switch over to an arsenal of Democracy started well before the Japanese attacked the US. Look at when most the Battleships and Aircraft Carriers construction started. Well before December 7th.
@Nancy Janzen absolutely!!! Or the adding machine company just outside Detroit that switched over to producing Norden bombsights. Every region has a ton of those stories to be told.
It's called we didn't regulate our businesses into the ground at that time, and we had not yet devalued our currency like we have today. 3 pennies in 1900 were worth more than a dollar today. This is what the government is trying to do today. They are destroying our currency and regulating our businesses into not being able to produce without government oversite.
This is a truly fascinating episode. The more I learn about the political and supply-sided considerations that revolved around nations' interests, the more I realize what a horrendous mess it all was. Every agreement was not only broken but sometimes fractured barely in the time it took the ink to dry. However, becoming more cynical about international politics and dreams of conquest, it helps me to deal with the current state of world affairs. Of course we don't have a comprehensive documentary like yours to enlighten us; I expect it will be many decades before the shananigans of this one are revealed, so will bumble our way along and hope to keep things as stable as possible as each crisis arrives and then fades away.
"Keeping what they liked and removing what they didnt like." This is all of human history and the future. History, religion, science, politics, ethics and other disciplines are all subject to this idea. Both the reason we progress and the reason we do not.
@@TheGallantDrake Refusing implies people meant to not learn. When in actuality most people are too stupid too learn from history. No big picture thinking, they think the bath water is bad, so they throw the baby out with it.
The Germans and Japanese had very similar mentalities when it came to ethnic superiority. They have a found respect for each other which is why they both agree on the alliances.
Even today, many Japanese schools (especially public middle schools) still have boys’ uniforms (the “gakuran”) patterned after the Prussian style, while the girls’ pattern after the Victorian Royal Navy. The Prussians helped modernize their Army, the Royal Navy their navy, even building some of their warships.
As a ww2 buff this video was incredible. So many things I didn't know and never heard of or only heard a few times. You see I've watched so much world War 2 content over the years I can literally tell you the entire war from 1937 to 1945 start to finish (not so good with the early Japan conquests that some historians point to as the true beginning of the war) or even for the people who say it was all one big war, 1914 to 1945. All the causes and effects, the turning points etc. All in order of when they happened, but this video has so much interesting stuff I didn't know. Love it gonna go binge some more
I don’t know if any of you guys watch the animated series “Archer” but there was this one episode where Archer is on a mission and he runs into an old Japanese holdout from World War 2 that didn’t know the war was over. One of the things he said struck me, since I had never in my life contemplated such a thing. I don’t remember exactly what he said but the gist was, he asked Archer why the United States would ever ally themselves with communists. Given the state of the world today, that question struck a chord within me and made me think about the war in a little different light.
you are wrong. do research about what Germany and Nippon thought of each other and you will see they were natural ally. but you are black so you always read jewish source about Nippon and germany
Its a stark contract to see the Axis and them not being an alliance in the same vein as the Central powers from World War 1, where those were allies, the Axis was more of 'we have a mutual potential enemy'. You can't even really call is the enemy of my enemy is my friend, it was pure convenience. I think the most interesting part of this was, of all things, learning how little the US actually allocated forces to the Pacific Theater, I always had this image in my head from what I learned about World War 2 being Britain and France's fight against Germany with the Americans helping to tip the scales after a stalemate after D Day, with the US's main focus being the Pacific. That probably came from the 3 nations fighting in Europe, and the Soviet's counterattack, not leaving as much room to let the US's force division sink in, where as with Pacific, The US campaign is really all I learned about.
@@Steven_Edwards That math checks out. Though arguably it was more true in world war 1 with how worn down all sides were at that time. I remember there was one anecdote I heard of world war 1 Germans when they went up against the Americans, and after they were captured by the Americans, they saw the quality of their gear, things like the quality of the leather, and their supplies, they knew they couldn't win. Not sure how true that is, but I do remember hearing that.
@@sulate1 Well the 99 Luft Balloons & Red Skies At Night know-it-all-cool-crowd was kinda wrong, yet like the Japanese with their atrocities, never admitted it.
I absolutely love your And Mark Felton's use of the "Why We Fight" footage. Frank Capra is a legend. The fact it was made during the War, with the outcome unknown makes it all the more, reel...
As an American living in Japan I have always found it fairly baffling that Japan joined with Germany in World War II. Today I found out some of the context behind that decision.
I'm also an American who lived in Japan. Japanese religion is also very much aligned with Nazism. Shinto-Buddhism is based on ethnocentric principles of Shintoism mixed with the Anti-black Aryanism of Hinduism and Mahayana Buddhism. "Reincarnated buddhas will never be black." - Lotus Sutra, Rejoicing in Merit & Virtue 18 It's even worse in the Manusmurti....
On the surface level it seems completely nonsensical like a writer who ran out of ideas to surprise the viewers. As one guy said in his pseudo review "And that’s not even counting the part where as soon as the plot requires it, they instantly forget about all the racism nonsense and become best buddies with the definitely non-Aryan Japanese."
Good video, I was familiar with a bunch of the points presented here, and you did nice work on keeping it focused. This could have easily spiraled into other subjects for a long time.
Never in my life have I heard anyone speak so swiftly....never....Thanks to you tube....I slowed to 50% for most of it...75% for some 😥 However...I sure learned a lot.....At 74 I still really enjoy being a life long learner....THANK YOU !
Happenstance brings people together really well. They both had mutual foes and similar goals that didn't overlap. Both were going to fight anyway, so may as well not fight each other.
That state, which many people make, isn’t entirely true. Really is should be something like “the senior members of the party did not fit the requirements of [joining the SS]” Because as far as the racial requirements to be part of “the master (aryan) race” the senior members most certainly did
There is some evidence, nothing absolutely proven, that Hitlers grandfather was the illegitimate child of the teenage son of a wealthy Jewish merchant family and their cook.
I would like a Biographics video on Chiune Sugihara, who as vice-consul in Lithuania saved at least 5,558 Jews and potentially many more from the Holocaust. Only recently learned about him, but definitely an interesting person who didn't get the credit he deserved in life for his bravery in the face of Nazism
actually Sugihara should be considered part of a team with dutch consul Jan Zwartendijk - who had help from the dutch Ambassador to Latvia L. P. J. de Decker - Zwartendijk provided the destination visas to Curaçao - and Sugihara provided the transit visas that would allow the holders to travel to japan - - while the jews sought transport out of japan - the japanese took good care of them - despite Nazi efforts to persuade the japanese to kill them
@@Ayaka_-wi3dm - thanks for the info - i had not heard of that before - it's called the "Otpor Incident" - Higuchi saved 18 jews with provisions and a route to Shanghai - but several thousand (its not known how many - guesses are between 4k to 20k) followed that route - so Higuchi saved those indirectly - he is revered by jews for that in terms of effort and cost - Sugihara's effort were immense - defying the orders of his higher ups - he signed a few thousand - visas (reputedly - his wife secretly signed some to take off some of the burden) - he even was still signing at the train station when he and his family were headed back to japan - his actions cost him his job - whereas Higuchi continued in the army
@@Ayaka_-wi3dmI'm not sure why you think he deserves recognition they were grabbing women and feeding them to their army like meat. Somehow this guy accidentally did a good thing. Joseph menglee was very good scientist and a lot of his research is still used to design life jackets and things like that for boat men like me. I don't think anybody wants a statue to Joe.
Another great video Simon! If anyone is looking for more content on the WW2 Japanese thought process and war effort, Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcast has a six part series on it called Supernova in the East. Excellent overview and detail.
I enjoy your deep dive of history. My only grip is that you show already old photos and sometimes add "coffee stains." I've seen it in a few photos. Sepia is fine as a gradient. It was just a graphical oddity. The research, explanation, and imagery all work. It was something I caught viewing.
I always wondered about that... I also get annoyed when the gamers/anime fans claim Japan doesn't understand racism or colorism ... Also, Japan had pretty rough views about their local neighbors...
@@Cookiemonsterhaschocolateballs do you mean correctly or incorrectly think that (talks about) because they are both Asian countries? A recent European example is Russia and Ukraine, where Russia claimed Ukrainians were discriminating against Russians (citing the laws promoting spoken Ukrainian over Russian in businesses in Ukraine). What did you mean?
I might be wrong but I thought Japan attacked the Philippines at the same time they attacked Pearl Harbor. It's only considered "the next day" because of the time difference between the two.
My grandmother and her family (mother, father, grandfather, aunts and several cousins) were living in Shanghai at the time of the Japanese invasion of China. I have scans of the documents recording their detention in Lunghwa camp. As all my family were European- my great grandmother was born in Kiev and was Jewish, her husband was born in Ireland- they were excluded from a lot of the travesties bestowed on the native Chinese people who were interred in the Lunghwa camp. My grandmother had nothing but praise for her captors and held Mr. Hyashi(spell check later) for making sure her family had enough to eat and medical care when needed.
Very interesting. I haven't heard that before. I've heard of people in Europe talking fondly of their captors, but not Chinese/Japanese. All I've heard is the terrible, terrible accounts of their war crimes, mainly from Japanese people.
@@sunwukong6917 I believe that since she was young she was sheltered from the worst of the atrocity that was committed. She only knows that her family was taken care of.
Another thing that is hard to understand is how the Japanese thought that they could succeed in building their "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" by treating the people they conquered far more cruelly and ruthlessly than any Westerner had ever done.
A few years ago I worked with a Filipino man who's father had suffered under the Japanese occupation His father said that the Japanese expected the local populations to support the Japanese as they were also Asian, and freeing them from their previous European colonial rulers But what the Japanese never understood was that although the Malays, Filipinos, and so on might not like the British and the Dutch, they absolutely hated the Japanese.
Yes… a tiny mistake! 😂 … since the UN was created after WWII. Otherwise, great video and it raises interesting points about who really were the good guys…
In point of fact, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor/Guam/the Phillipine, the USA joined the Sino-Japanese War of 1937. It wasn't until Germany declared war on the US did we joined WWII.
It’s crazy to think if this all would have happened two centuries before WWII, nobody would have thought what the Axis Powers were doing would be problematic because expansion was what everyone was trying to do no matter what it took
I think the colonized people and slaves had a problem with it (as well as anti-imperialists and abolitionists!) but like yeah, it sucks that people glorify or excuse "their" nations' ills while they rival other universally hated ones. The point of history isn't glory, but deconstruction and rebuilding with the "no-no" legacies it leaves.
There were two distinct waves of colonialism that had completely different motivations from each other. One was to establish colonies in which people could move to during the late 1600s early 1700s, mostly due to a need for religious freedom and practices that had been previously suppressed in Europe. The second happened as a result of resources needed for industrialization in the mid 1800s, notably the scramble for Africa, the suppression of the Barbary pirates and the French takeover of Algeria. These are two very different in ideology and scope as compared to WW2.
It's funny how when you lay out war history like this, you can actually see the chess moves on a big scale and turns out Hitler was not a very good chess player.
It’s not as romantic a story for those who feel some kind of nostalgia for the Third Reich. If he’s a visionary, he’s at least a compelling villain for a romantic summation of WWII, whereas an incompetent fool who never had a cohesive or functional view of the future is disappointing to read about.
I have a lot of German medals from WWII that my Grandfather brought back. One of them has a guy in the middle, a swastika on the top left and a rising sun on the top right. There's some German writing and it says 1940/41 on the right side by the rising sun. I thought it was interesting.
@WTF-vv8ic Oh wow, I'll have to look out for that! Thanks for sharing. My channel is mostly about cars and trucks but I've thought about doing a video on some of the stuff like this I have 🤔
"Brought back from Germany", Looted, stolen or what? We are all watching looted artwork being repatriated - are you planning to find out who's medals your family has?
The victors’ write history, so no, definitely not looted! Liberated! 😂 Interesting to find out how his grandfather directly / indirectly got into possession of these war trophies… probably not so fascinating…
Liberated off some POWs. I don't have any way to find out who it was before they lost. I some evidence it was from SS members so I really don't care what they don't have anymore. I think this based off of having silverware with the SS rune and comments my grandfather made about how good his relationship was with the regular Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe troops he was guarding at the end of the war was where the SS troops were, in his words, real bastards. I won't ever sell any of it. Now it's part of my family's history. I also won't display it, even in context having a Nazi flag hanging in my house is a little weird. It's all careful stored in a box in my gun safe and I'll get it out to show people that are interested in things like that.
22:00 that's not really the case. The negotiation did not fail because US was asking too high a price. US code breakers are already hard at work, while they can't read military codes yet they know for a fact Japan is planning big military operations, thus Roosevelt concluded that this negotiation is merely a stall tactic--the negotiation failed long before it actually concluded.
It has become clearer and clearer to me that the word 'alliance' has no definition to dictators. With them it's either full vassal like cooperation or conquest.
My great uncle H. McRary Jones, with his wife Helen Baker, daughter of Dean Baker of Baker Hall at UCBoulder, lived in Tokio(how my aunt wrote it), Japan pre-WWII for nine years. They lived in the "Foriegn" sector where ambassadors lived, as did all non-Japanese. My great uncle was an electrical engineer and was there to design and build electrical infrastructure, bringing power to factories and government buildings and training locals to operate and maintain. They lived across the street from the Russian Ambassador and threw dinner parties. I am reading my great aunts writings about it, only recently coming into possession after my mom passed. Fascinating seeing another side to the public histories.
its not irrelevant to note that Germany at the end of WW1 if I remember right, was so amazed and fascinated with Japan that their admiration led them to show respect to Japan in marching parades post-war after showing obvious disrespect to the British, because of how the Japanese conducted themselves in war and maybe otherwise.
Leaving China was unthinkable despite losing to them. Japan didn’t want to look like they lost if they left China. They needed oil that the US gave them most of, but got cut off because of their ongoing war in China. Oil in the Dutch indies provided some for them, but engaging with them meant war with the US anyway, so why not strike first?
It reminds me of a line from Jojo Rabbit. “All we have left are the Japanese and just between you and me, they don’t look very Ayran.” Ah, alliance of convenience.
Japan thought if they could cripple our Navy they could sue for peace quickly before it got to a full blown conflict. Though Yamamoto knew that logic flawed he followed his orders.
Simon's normally sped up speech tempo is especially accelerated here. And it's a 40 minute video. Yikes. I'm going to have to watch this many times before really "getting" it. Still, thanks to Simon for yet another great history lesson. Also, does anyone else hear an ice cream truck in the distant background? If I pause the playback I don't hear it.
The name "United Nations", coined by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt, was first used in the Declaration by United Nations of 1 January 1942, during the Second World War, when representatives of 26 nations pledged their Governments to continue fighting together against the Axis Powers. An "Honorary Aryan" was a term bestowed on those to certify them as part of the Aryan race, if they were not biologically so. Hitler granted the Japanese, "Honorary Aryans" and he believed that the racial superiority they believed for themselves was true. This greatly improved German-Japanese relations throughout the war.
Thank you for this video. This being said, I personally dislike when people say that the outcome of WWII was inevitable. It is a statement that does not bring us any closer to understanding, its dynamic, the risks faced by all parties, and so on. At the time of writing this comment, Russia is at war with Ukraine. One could say that the outcome of this war too is inevitable. Once it is over and that every events leading to its end have been played out, we will be able to look back and see the chain of actions-reactions that explains its outcome. And it will then seems so obvious that the mere thought of starting it (or resisting it, depending on who wins) will appear laughable. Does it help? Does it tell us which party should call it quit? No. Nations during WWII were in a similar position as we are today with current events. No one KNOWS what will happen. And IF one has the information to tell one what will happen, this information is lost amongst tons of other information. Germany and Japan believed that the will of a nation to fight is just as important as wealth and manpower when evaluating one’s chances to win a war. Both dismissed Western nations on that account as to soft minded. For a while, they seemed to be right. Fortunately in the end they were proven wrong. But it was close. Much closer than words like ‘inevitable’ give credit for. Thank you to all who gave their lives to save us.
The outcome was inevitable if the war ran long enough. The US produced more war materials than both Germany and Japan. Partly because of the different culture of industry and government.
@@nancyjanzen5676 That is what is usually said. The size of the US economy, its production capacity, etc. And in fact, it did play a major role in the outcome of the war. I do not dispute that. However, those same advantages failed to give the US the victory in Vietnam. And suppose the US had not been able to develop the nuclear bombs and had to invade Japan main islands: how many more casualties would the US been willing to accept in the name of the unconditional surrender policy? Anyway, all I am saying is that it is one thing to analyze what factors played a role in the outcome of this war (or in any other conflict for that matter). It is an entirely other to pretend that it was inevitable that it turned out the way it did.
@@mikemcmike6427 I don't know what country's school system you're referring to, in most of the developed world schools just teach straight government propaganda.
@@joemerino3243 lolll okay buddy/ let me guess you have no post secondary education on the topic? Elementary and high schools cover a simplified quick version. Depending on the country normally on wars or conflicts most important to their history. Soo Yaa believe it or not they don’t do a deep dive on the nuances of Nazis and Japanese relations in ww2. But in university they do. That’s how I know you are poorly educated
@@joemerino3243 and yet no actual rebuttal other than to sarcastically whine.. it’s harder to think critically and accurately describe reality rather than just parrot “daaa government propaganda”. I also see no denial however. So no degree in history? How did I know lol
If you read about eastern civilations history, the japanese were like the vikings of the east. They use to raid and terrorist the Chinese, korea etc. There is no love lost between lots of asian countries with japan. Why did you think the Mongols were literally willing to sail to japan just to invade them.
You can slow the video down yourself. Or if you're like me and can absorb information rapidly I tend to speed videos up. TH-cam has all the options you need.
My grandmother, her brother and their parents spent the war in a japanese internment camp in Indonesia, not because they were jewish, but because they were white, since Indonesia was a Dutch colony at the time.
They didn’t know they would lose. They didn’t expect the reaction we gave them because of depression era pain and the fact we were not on the cutting edge of military craft. They learned the hard way.
I remember hearing something about Hitler having respect for the Asian race (specifically Chinese, Japanese, and Korean people) and believing that Asians were the only race who could compare to the Aryan race. I'm not sure where exactly I had heard that, but for some reason, I'm pretty sure it was from a video that Simon was in lol Also, a huge misconception about Hitler is that he despised all other races and ethic groups, which is false. While he did believe that the Aryan race was superior to all others, the only ethic group he truly hated was the Jews. He didn't necessarily hate other races and groups, he just thought they were inferior. Hence why he respected Asians, but not other races
The event about Richard Sorge fascinated me the most about WW2. If it weren't for him, the Soviet Union would've never sent troops to Europe and ultimately defeated the Nazis. The most fascinating part was Stalin had absolute no trust in anyone about strategy and intelligence, involving the war. However, he implicitly trusted Sorge's information.
He successfully recruited IJA general’s son to recuperate documents that implied Japan would attack south and not west. Allowing reserve troops to move from eastern front to western front
According to historians Yoshiaki Yoshimi and Kentaro Awaya, during the Second Sino-Japanese War, gas weapons, such as tear gas, were sporadically used in 1937, but in early 1938, the Imperial Japanese Army resorted to the full-scale use of phosgene, chlorine, Lewisite and nausea gas (red), and from mid-1939, mustard gas (yellow) was used against both Kuomintang and Communist Chinese troops.
![[#2024MAMA] ROSÉ (로제), Bruno Mars - APT. | Mnet 241122 방송](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/dgGqD28J6aQ/mqdefault.jpg)
*Germany and Japan team up desperate to not get the USSR and USA into their wars*
Germany *Invades USSR*
Japan *attacks the USA*'
Truly one of the military alliances of the time
Ok
Edit it again bruv!
I can picture the conversations now. Japan "Okay so whatever happens let's make sure we don't get Russia involved in this war." Germany "Okay guys whatever we do let's make sure we don't get the US involved in this war." Then "Sir we have a telegram from Germany they just attacked Russia" and "Sir we have a telegram from Japan, they just attacked the United States." Both "Well Shit"
Excellent shout to Lindy Beige 👍 Loyd should have a show on the BBC Horrible Histories style.
Truly one of the most tired quips of all time.
They may not have had any problem with the Jews, but they had plenty of cruel disdain for Chinese.
And literally every region around them
...and Koreans and everyone else
Well said
Sooo they are the asain nazis?
Nothing as strange as folk , there is no accounting for the inhumanity of man.
An interesting tidbit of information: In Nazi Germany, there was a regularly published journal called something to the effect of "Reports from the Reich", that also featured a lot of content regarding Imperial Japan. This publication praised Japan, their traditional culture, rich history, pure mythology, homogenous society, cult around their leader (Tenno) and (of course) their successful military conquest of Asia so much, the higher-ups told them to dial back their praise for Japan, otherwise it might have negative effects on the German self-perception. There was a note that told the writers to beware making the Japanese look like "Germanen im Quadrat" (verbatim: _Germans to the square,_ ie: more German than the Germans).
Basically, Japan was everything Germany aspired to be: A unified, homogenous society with a strong mythology "untainted" by outside influence, tradition deeply woven into the everyday life, a strong military leadership with a cult of personality for a single "leader" and so on...
Nazi Germany had already been personifying the Fascist mythos much moreso than even Fascist Italy had been, which is kinda terrifying to consider that Japan had been neck deep in it without the analysis and extremely direct attempt to get there. They just already WERE there.
Bob on.
Not really. Propaganda to fix the pact. But in fact they thought of joining Chinese forces against Japan.
@@FarremShamist it takes zero understanding of political philosophy for the guy with the pointiest stick to decide that he's in charge.
@@Sue_Me_Too It does take that understanding to get there with the support of everyone from a system prior to the people's benefit, and to maintain that.
It's why the Nazi party called themselves "National Socialists" even though they despised socialism extensively. It wasn't just that they had the pointiest stick.
My father who is 100% Japanese, grew up in Japan during WWII. Came to the United states in 1949, finished high school and promptly got drafted into the Korean War. 3 years later met a Jewish woman, my mother. They spoke of a kinship and understanding that not many other people could understand. They were together until she died, 62 years
May be a stupid question but 62 years later or 62 years old?
Wow nice story
@@captainzach6226 I assume it means 62 years later
I would have loved to have met your family. Because they would have never ending stories of knowledge that I would try to soak up like a sponge
Does that make you Jewpanese?
Both governments were incredibly racist. It was an alliance of convenience because their spheres of influence didn't really interact. It's interesting to speculate about how long they would have stayed allied, and if they would have eventually engaged in an actual conflict, if they had won.
Don't a lot of Axis victory alt-history scenarios feature tensions between Germany and Japan?
I enjoy these comments. I know people will say they know all the countries were racist at the time. But it still doesn't account for the need to emphasize just how racist the Axis were even though they learned literally everything from the British and Americans etc. Up to the point that Nazis studied US race law when writing their own -and they even found the one drop rule too extreme. Imagine US race law being too extreme for Nazis yet we still view them as the epitome of a racist government and feel the need to point it out all the time but rarely to point it out about our own governments of the time even though they were so sooo similar - especially in the colonies.
The allies were just lucky that they'd decided they were all the same race so their racism didn't affect the politics of their alliance (for the most part).
The German killed Jewish folks and the japanese murdered the Chinese and other Asian countries population. There is a deep resentment because of the Japanese and the history they have with lots of countries.
@@IshtarNike Look up 'The battle of Bamber bridge' in WW2, took place in Britain involving black GIs, US military police and the locals. The 1% will exploit everyone regardless of race, it was just easier for them back then to exploit on the grounds of colour, but it wasnt true for all of society here. These days the same 1% are doing the same, while staying obscenely rich at all of our expenses.
That's overstating it. The truth is the Japanese had known they were hugely outgunned by the West and particularly the US from the start, and had a bunch of researchers and think tank leaders that outright told them through the 1930s and the early 1940s. The Total War Research Institute in particular told Tojo that there was no material way that Japan could defeat the US in a war, regardless of any other factors.
But what ultimately boiled down was textbook magical and double thinking. Tojo and the like acknowledged their conclusions were true, but then basically concluded that these factors were not accounting for "spiritual" or "Moral" factors, and so concluded that the research was not factoring in the X Factor and that Japan exploiting these would mean that it could somehow win the war they understood they couldn't win without it.
And in what defense I can give, it isn't COMPLETELY deluded. By the time the TWRI had finished their research the world had seen what 1940 had, and NOBODY (not even the Nazis) had expected essentially all the Western European democracies to collapse as rapidly as they did due to (as was proven at the Riom Trial) morale matters rather than material ones. But Tojo etc. al. ignored how Britain didn't give up or give in and had been fighting throughout.
A great disservice was done when our concept of the Nazis became one if otherworldly, incomprehensible evil. We were left thinking that "it can't happen here" & completely overlooked the lesson of "the *banality* of evil."
People need to understand that becoming a fascist (and slipping a little further into Nazism) is a disturbingly easy process. If anything it takes effort not to.
100% agree. Because of this people do not understand how the exact same thing could happen in other countries. Especially now with our technology and the internet, all their surveillance and mental programming would have been so much easier.
@@DasAntiNaziBroetchen Not even other countries, but yet our own countries we live within.
@@hashimrahman51 It had also been firebombing cities to a still just as devastating effect. Japan's military had been committing terrible atrocities in China directly to civilians. Etc etc. Every single actor in WW2 did some really screwed up shit.
@Hashim Rahman It was a necessary evil, the nuclear detonations killed ~260,000 people, however, the statistical projections of the Pacific War showcased just how powerful Japanese forces were, as potential millions could of perished in a much less instantaneous manner
It just hit me-- the number of flags that had to be destroyed after WWII was truly monumental
Wait till you find out about how many books were destroyed. The allies put the nazi book burnings to shame.
Or sold to dubious collectors/admirers :P
The Japanese flag stayed the same
Yeah, It’s a real shame. Who the hell wants a Swastika banner made in China?
@@colonelcorn9500no it lost its rays
This is a lot of history condensed into one presentation, and likely there are a lot of details that will continue to be debated, but given the scope of the subject, it’s a great bit of stuff. Kudos to the presenter as well as what must be a number of supporting production staff.
There will be no debate soon.
All truth is being disclosed
I remember reading about the Japanese side of the war and how hotly debated a strike on the US had gone back and forth between the generals. Half understood that they didn't have the resources to weather an attack if they poked the sleeping bear, but the other half were more or less blinded by their own massive strength (they had been dominating their expansion efforts through a combination of overspending resources and going largely conquering underdeveloped islands and coastal regions) and believed that they couldn't be defeated. This came to a dangerous intersection when one of the generals suggested that the US would only respect Japan as an equal nation if Japan showed them a demonstration of strength first.
"If you are walking down a path and you come up to an American, he will not respect you for stepping aside. He will look down on you because you are servile and apparently know your place. If you want respect from an American, you stand your ground and bloody his nose." In some messed up logic, the high brass thought that a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor would only help the negotiations with the US. Or at least that was the argument they used. It's telling how quickly they were being made when the Japanese Ambassador in Washington at the time only received news of the impending attack a few hours before it happened; he'd left with the assurance that the decision to attack would be made depending on how his talks went.
I doubt the decision making process was this simple. If your landlord threatens to turn off your gas, electricity and water, what would you do? What are the choices?
Japan would have never loss that war if it wasn't for atom bomb...USA has lost plenty of wars most recently being in the Afghanistan...so bomb is to be credited
Thank you for posting these insights👍
@@rumba_tumba_zumba_kumba our goal wasnt to win there it was to destabilize the region and train our troops. in a total war scenario any country would fall beneath us. bombing civs buildings and shooting indiscriminately would instantly tackle any opposition.
@lootera not necessarily. I think it's general consensus that the US would have almost certainly still won without the big ones. The reality is that the US were driving the Japanese back and were prepared to do an invasion of Japan itself. It just would have been bloodier and taken longer. The official logic from President Truman behind using the bombs was that the options were to end it fast and decisively or draw it out and cause more damage. Dropping the bombs in a shock-and-awe move on key military targets would completely destroy Japan's ability to continue to wage war and save both the lives of American troops and Japanese lives, since Trunan wasn't particularly interested in wiping out the Japanese or destroying their culture. Going with a grueling D-Day style land invasion would have likely cost significantly more lives amd would have significantly drawn out the conflict. Ulterior motives, of course, were probably to get any smart ideas out of the heads of the Soviets since the coming Cold War was pretty much in everyone's minds about as soon as Berlin fell. (There are thise who I think rightly believed that after sacking Berlin, the Allies should have kept on marching to Moscow before the Soviets could get their bearings and develop nukes for themselves.) Regardless of any geopolitical motives, it does seem that the intent behind using the atom bombs was ultimately save lives with a decisive blow that would neutralize them militarily and shock them into submission, which does seem to be the end result. In their defense, I don't think they understood the potential longterm effects of nuclear radiation either. The fallout was an unintended consequence. Personally, I'm on the fence about whether dropping them was worth it in the grand scheme of things.
"We're allies with the Japanese now, but between you and me, they don't look very aryan." Yeah, Jojo Rabbit summed it up pretty well
Insert animé joke here
@Michael that's not an anime, it's a pretty good movie. I'd recommend watching. It's pretty funny 😂
@@gabriellopez522 I didn't say it was I was joking about how a few years ago there was a ton of "far right" accounts with anime avatars posting offensive things.
Anime Nazis were a thing
@@gabriellopez522 also top 10 anime betrayals imaginary Hitler and the kid who made him up
*Our only friends are the Japanese
Germany’s and Japan’s alliance of convenience wasn’t nearly as bizarre as the Western allies alliance with The Soviet Union.
This. If Germany and Japan won, they'd have had a cold war of their own due to Japan getting a green light to go full send West into Korea and China. And eventually German held Russia.
The Soviet Union had a lot of people and a large industrial base. Making the Germans fight on two fronts and forcing the Japanese to be on the lookout in Manchuria and their own northern islands was a major factor in the war. Hitler made a huge mistake by invading the USSR but his plans depended on taking agricultural land and resources.
@@dg20120 I'm thinking he's talking about the fact that the west had decades earlier intervened with military expeditions into Russia to stop the communists in their Civil War. And the deep fear most western countries had for Communism.
Yeah, no. Once Germany declared war on the US, all three were officially at war with Germany. An alliance was the most logical course of action.
Yeah, in short Stalin was just angry that 'Dolphie reneged on their deal (despite Stalin also having plans to invade Poland and parts of Germany), and sided with the Allies because of spite and his own ambitions.
Frankly, I'm of the opinion that once Berlin was secured the Allies should have immediately betrayed the Soviets. Them being a blatant problem was evident for years, and it was only getting more and more obvious as the war went on that the Soviets were getting ready to pull shenanigans. Which is exactly what they did. The Soviet Union among the Allies was absolutely a case of "the enemy of my enemy is NOT my friend".
Lucy, I’m over 60:and as the man said, “Live is what happens when you are busy making other plans.” I’ll trade you looking back any time you want. You can’t go back, you can only go forward. The same goes for everyone. Your advice is good. Pick a direction and go for it. I got lucky years ago and took a job that I thought I’d maybe keep for a year or two. 25 years later it’s taken me around the world, I’ve met and worked with amazing people. But it’s not been the “normal” path. Ever once in a while I think about those other options. But then I look at what I’ve done and I’ve got sone great stories and experiences. Those are priceless. When it comes that time and my life passes before my eyes. I’m going to have a life worth watching.
I had a Catholic Japanese philosophy proff. in Collège. He explained why Christianity and Shinto could co exist in Japan. "Syncretism." He explained that Buddhism and Christianity posed no threat to Shinto, which was a pretty Pantheistic; the same theme that drove America's founders to think that all men are created equal. Syncretism suggests that all things can work together and interact; even support each other
The Japanese joke that they are Shinto when they are born, Christian when they get married, and Buddhist when they die. I think they just have a fetish for theatrical ceremonies on special occasions.
@@StockyDude Not so much a fetish but: practicality (hey if ti works it works right) and harmony (yeah we can fight but working together is easier)
Only nowadays, syncretism has never been a thing before the 21st century!
I distinctly remember Christianity getting heavily persecuted in Japan historically. And instead of syncretism, I'd call it more akin to apathy. The Japanese really seem to be more atheist as a society than anything else, where all the trips to temples and festivals are just going through the motions. And even with that apathy Christianity to this day is still clearly looked down on there when it comes to any serious inspection of it (as in ignoring how prominent Japan's pop culture uses depictions of Christian-esque religions in their Anime and Manga).
@@SockieTheSockPuppet The reason why Christianity was getting persecuted was due to their collusion with the spanish and Portuguese imperialists, threatening to invite them in to destabilize and possibly colonize Japan entirely. Thus the Shinto finally realized that the Buddhists were actually their natural allies when it came to unifying the nation from foreign threats that sought to destroy both of them. Before the, Shinto had originally invited the Christians in, to help counter the buddhists! Eventually though they realized just how wrong they were, as the Christians considered them both heathen to be converted or destroyed. Thus they 'martyred' the Christians, sure, but they actually saved their own culture and independence by doing this.
The decision to attack America and Britain by the Japanese is actually quite fascinating, as the whole nation sort of stumbled inexorably towards war despite many members of the government, Navy and army knowing it was a terrible idea. I quite recommend Toland's book The Rising Sun if you're interested. The negotiations themselves were fraught, with the moderates in Japan having to make concessions to the Army to even be allowed to conduct them. It didn't help that there was a good deal of miscommunication between the two parties, both due to cultural issues and Secretary Hull's preexisting dislike and suspicion of the Japanese, which to be fair wasn't that uncommon in the US at the time, as there was a major pro-china sentiment stirred up by reporting on atrocities in China. The two nations truly came incredibly close to reaching an agreement at various points.
World War 2 was set in motion at the end of WW1. It was twofold
1-Germany was blamed for the entire war and held accountable to pay war debt to the others! When you starve a country to the point of complete collaspe you are planting the seed of resentment into their society! That made it easy for a megalomaniac to be elected as leader!!!
2- Japan felt as if they had be ignored during these negotiations since they had contributed a good deal to it! They walked out of the negotiations! That and the and the embargoes the US and Britain placed on them forced their hand!
Toland has been long neglected. That is regrettable. The Army, the navy, the Emperor and the Emperors high council could have been better studied and understood by all of the western governments. The invasion of Manchuria was so obviously brutal and homicidal that the avenues of diplomacy were closed...by Japan
If the Japanese were actually humane in China…
That is a great book. I’ve read it maybe 5 or 6 times.
It's true that they could have come to a treaty, but a treaty was NEVER going to happen when you take into account two factors:
First, a treaty of peace was going to progress the interests of NEITHER leader. The Japanese needed more resources to continue their war of expansion. While it can be argued that if they hadn't attacked Pearl Harbour the US may not have entered the war, the US probably would have still because peace was not in the political interest of Roosevelt, the leader of the US at the time. Roosevelt sensed a rising wave of support for his political opposition at the time and saw war abroad, with anyone who dared to attack the US, as the only way to maintain his power. He didn't want a treaty at all because a treaty would only really effect his own personal interests and not that of the US as a whole as the US had other trading partners at the time they could send those resources too. Thus the only treaty he would accept would be strong arming Japan into going back to the situation they were literally fighting the war to get out of and nothing less, which is the complete opposite of what Japan wanted, and he also intentionally antagonized them by refusing to compromise. He didn't want peace, he wanted to bait Japan into bringing the US into WW2 to maintain his own personal political power. He knew that the Japanese would fall into this trap because...
Secondly, the incredible racism on BOTH countries sides at the time. At the time the Americans thought all races that aren't white were incredibly stupid, uncultured and generally inferior politically to the point of being savages. This is an attitude that persisted from the inception of the 13 colonies due to how easily the British conquered everyone by virtue of both having guns and being the first to adjust to war with that game changer. The simple fact that they had won victory after victory because of this with relative ease informed their belief that they must be superior and is what led to them treating the Japanese conquest as an after thought. This had the knock on effect of allowing the Japanese to fortify the regions they would liberate later, leading to American casualty counts for small islands so high that it forced them to Nagasaki and Hiroshima instead of going for an invasion of Nippon, Japan's biggest homeland island. The racism was, as discussed in this video, mutual though as Japan saw any outsides and especially western powers outsiders as being inferior by default and thus some generals probably legitimately believed that despite their overwhelming advantage the Americans would blunder into their own defeat like morons. So due to their mutual racism of each other neither side would have in good faith accepted a treaty that didn't heavily favour them and their short term interests.
All that being said, had Japan not attacked Pearl Harbour and just invaded the Philippines and surrounding nations, it would've been a much harder sell for Roosevelt to enter WW2, but I imagine he still would've managed it by saying the massacres were now affecting US citizens when they invaded US holdings in South Easter Asia and Oceania.
Great video but a few points to note. There was no UN in 1936, you are referring to the League Of Nations. Also the Abyssinia Crisis (as Ethiopia was generally known at the time) was in 1935.
@Jernaumg Well it did last until 1936 because the Italian military was so incompetent.
@@dennisweidner288 Insert joke about tank gearboxes here ;)
My mother and grandmother were passengers on the SS Tanda which was torpedoed off South West India in 1944. She always believed it was a Japanese submarine but once the internet came along I found out it was a German U Boat U181, one of two assigned to operate in the Japanese theatre. They also carried some token high value supplies between Asia and Germany. U181 survived because what would have been a suicidal last trip to Germany got delayed due to "engine trouble" and the U Boat was handed over to the Japanese in Singapore when Germany surrendered, then scuttled when Japan surrendered.
There's a book by Otto Giese that pragmatically describes what it was like.
Both the germans and japanese had cultures that were built around perfectionism and nationalism. They both seen themselves as being the 'masters' of their race. It makes sense that the two respected each other.
The japanese wanted to emulate what the great European empires had done and that meant there natural enemies would be those European empires who were still massively present around them, the british the fench and the dutch. Again this makes perfect sense why they would align with the germans in ww2
I would argue that the English, French, Russians were no different, even 'worse'. The difference was that Germany lost the first world war and around 40% of its population then came under the control of often hostile reconstituted new nations which tended to suppress the ethnic Germans. The percentage transfered was way to high and was driven by the idea to reduce Germany in size. Whole parts of of lands with German populations were suppressed the new nations. In 1919 Czech Police shot to death about 68 unarmed Germans protestors at council electrions. Such things leave a angry mark. There is a lot in the league of nations because Germans protested land seizures and other injustice. It's no surprise they reacted the way they did. It's more a suprise they didn't react stronger.
-I don't think British, French, Russians or even Americans were better. It can be argue the Russians (Soviets) were worse. The difference was that Germany ended up under a dictatorship.
The USSR was worse by far. Read the Gulag Archipelago. Read The Black Book of communism.
You miss huge differences between these two that just couldn't be reconciled . Japanese thought their boss was a god. The Nazis thought they had a genetic superiority not a religious one. Do this day Japan has restaurants that nobody but the Japanese purebred Japanese can eat at and I am proud that any one of those people can come here and eat one of our restaurants. I hate to say I'm from the superior culture, but at least we see everybody as a human being.
@@markmcgoveran6811 most things regarding race with the Nazis is complete propaganda! Blacks Arabs Muslims all lived in Nazi Germany and were treated great. They had SS Muslim divisions. Even the black Olympic runner Jesse Owens said he was treated much better by the Nazis than he was by American white.
@@markmcgoveran6811 Yes, I'm sure that there are no racism against japanese in your country at all.
These kinds of videos always reminds me of my grandfather. He fought in the Pacific in WW2. He refused to talk about the battles he fought in (aside from pointing himself out in a photo of an aftermath once), but he never held a grudge and made sure I knew it more complex than schools teach.
Just today I was reading an article that said that Major Gregory "Pappy" Boyington of VMA-214 Black Sheep fame and the pilot that claimed to have shot him down Masajiro "Mike" Kawato would do public appearances together and trade friendly barbs. :)
My mother and two uncles were in WW2 (all USN). I know neither of my uncles bore a grudge but my mother did. She stayed stateside until the war ended then went to Japan with civil service. She loved the culture but held a grudge against the people (but not the Japanese-Americans).
They don’t touch this part that much in any of the schools I went to.
Then again, most people have a hard time getting it through their head the Nazi’s weren’t in WW1, might have been for the better lol.
All three of my grandfathers (long story) served in the Pacific in WWII, in different roles. They had varying attitudes towards the Japanese after the war that really depended on where they had been and what they had experienced. My Grandpa B was a Marine infantryman who fought on Guadalcanal and Okinawa, and he never really forgave or forgot. Got raging mad once at my uncle for buying a Toyota, wouldn't try Japanese food, etc. My Grandpa J was a flight deck officer on a carrier that got hit by Kamikazes. He really respected the Japanese as fighters, and even visited Japan after the war a couple of times to participate in "reunions". I only ever got them to talk about their experiences a few times, and they didn't really go into bloody details because they were talking to a young kid, but the stories they told me were still riveting. I miss those tough old guys.
Yes, this video is actually very good. It makes you consider the views of the Axis powers and in a way, the Axis powers had valid points as well - a different perspective.
We also need to remember wars are the result of politicians and not people or the soldiers that fight the wars. The population and soldiers are pawns. The real bad guys are the politicians.
The nazis were a political party. Not the German people. When the government tells soldiers to go to war, they obey. There is no choice to object, lest one has no value for his own life! There are plenty of 21st century examples: do all Russians truly believe in the war against Ukraine? Do all Americans truly believe in the invasion of Iraq? Probably not - the decisions to go to war, invade etc. are the product of idiot politicians.
We studied WW2 in 8th grade social studies, but in this video alone, more information was conveyed than an entire school year gave us.
From grade 8 to grade 13 that was all they taught in history class in Germany. 🤮 However we didn't cover Japan a lot, so I also learned something from this video.
@@IreneWY maybe you two simply didnt listen properly, history in german schools also covers areas as the french revolution...
And just by his title, it's full of shat. Watch Europa: The last battle, if you want real history. Not this zionist garbage from this guy.
Children have to be taught the basics of history so that they have the foundation for tackling more complex details, like what this video covers, later on. The fact that you're able to jump into this topic without difficulty is a testament to the efficacy of that 8th grade class.
@@Arbidarb even in 8th grade, the entire class felt it was a waste of time.
Italy and Japan both fought against Germany during the Great War.
I think skipping the Russo-Japanese War downplays the overconfidence of the Japanese military faction. The lesson they took from it was that superior tactics made it easy to obliterate Western navies. It also downplays the enmity between Russia and Japan.
According to Sugihara: Conspiracy of Kindness, many of the Jews he helped ended up in Japan, where Jewish community leaders were consulted about a German request that the Japanese extradite the Jews to Germany. The argument was made that the Japanese were just as non-Aryan.
Not all the Jews remained in Japan. Since Jews were considered to be skilled with their hands, a group was made to work in Manchurian factories, where they were fed enough to survive the war.
It's a lot like the relations between Russia and China today. They are very loosely associated, but with a common enemy.
How? The Tripartite pact was an actual alliance both in reality and on paper. The Chinese and Russians aren't even allies on paper. They wouldn't go to war for each other because they don't want to and they don't have to as they're not bounded by any formal agreement. They are partners at best.
Ironically it is the Allies who were a much more surface level alliance. The main powers of the Allies were of completely different ideologies, goals, and cultures in which they all immediately became enemies right after the war ended.
Japan, Italy, and Germany were allies before, during, and after the war and continue to be to this very day. Despite Japan literally being on the other side of the world from Germany & Italy there was an extensive submarine trade, as outlined in the video. Simon however states that it rarely became useful when that is obviously not true since many aircraft and naval designs were shared this way, a whole Japanese fighter was based off the German plane. Japan also provided Germany with crucial resources, it is a miracle Germany and Japan even lasted as long as they did with how little natural resources they had.
@@user-pn3im5sm7k You just cherry pick the parts of history that suite you best to try to start arguments on youtube huh?
@@christopherjones8448 Wich is pretty much how all propaganda is done. Whether it's left or right everyone picks the parts of truth that suites their goals.
@@christopherjones8448 Admittedly yes I do like to discuss important topics and details no one talks about. Im inviting discussion and you're trying to shut it down. Being close minded to your own worldview taught by one narrative is arguably much worse than any "propaganda"
@@GodofGamesss
you are the same user as christopher and you don't know what a suite is.
An Arsenal of Democracy video would be interesting. How the U.S. industry was swung so quickly to war footing and a look at some of the smaller manufacturers contributions in addition to the big boys.
The switch over to an arsenal of Democracy started well before the Japanese attacked the US. Look at when most the Battleships and Aircraft Carriers construction started. Well before December 7th.
You mean like the little boat company in Wisconsin that suddenly began making submarines instead of small pleasure boats.
@Nancy Janzen absolutely!!! Or the adding machine company just outside Detroit that switched over to producing Norden bombsights. Every region has a ton of those stories to be told.
@Nancy Janzen with your mention of submarines, I don't want to forget the Higgins boats down there in the Louisiana swamps.
It's called we didn't regulate our businesses into the ground at that time, and we had not yet devalued our currency like we have today. 3 pennies in 1900 were worth more than a dollar today. This is what the government is trying to do today. They are destroying our currency and regulating our businesses into not being able to produce without government oversite.
This is a truly fascinating episode. The more I learn about the political and supply-sided considerations that revolved around nations' interests, the more I realize what a horrendous mess it all was. Every agreement was not only broken but sometimes fractured barely in the time it took the ink to dry. However, becoming more cynical about international politics and dreams of conquest, it helps me to deal with the current state of world affairs. Of course we don't have a comprehensive documentary like yours to enlighten us; I expect it will be many decades before the shananigans of this one are revealed, so will bumble our way along and hope to keep things as stable as possible as each crisis arrives and then fades away.
"Keeping what they liked and removing what they didnt like." This is all of human history and the future. History, religion, science, politics, ethics and other disciplines are all subject to this idea. Both the reason we progress and the reason we do not.
Sounds like the Democrats today....
@@ruffxm sounds like humanity dude
Sounds like refusing to learn from mistakes.
@@TheGallantDrake
Refusing implies people meant to not learn.
When in actuality most people are too stupid too learn from history.
No big picture thinking, they think the bath water is bad, so they throw the baby out with it.
@@ruffxmOh, shoosh.
Nice shout out to Lindybeige.
Simon, you are a class act.
The Germans and Japanese had very similar mentalities when it came to ethnic superiority. They have a found respect for each other which is why they both agree on the alliances.
And how did that "ethnic superiority" work out for them in the end? Must have been a bit salty, being bested by their inferiors
@@rorychivers8769 Well it take everybody to fight against the Japanese and the Nazi’s. They were very close to taking over the world.
Even today, many Japanese schools (especially public middle schools) still have boys’ uniforms (the “gakuran”) patterned after the Prussian style, while the girls’ pattern after the Victorian Royal Navy. The Prussians helped modernize their Army, the Royal Navy their navy, even building some of their warships.
As a ww2 buff this video was incredible. So many things I didn't know and never heard of or only heard a few times. You see I've watched so much world War 2 content over the years I can literally tell you the entire war from 1937 to 1945 start to finish (not so good with the early Japan conquests that some historians point to as the true beginning of the war) or even for the people who say it was all one big war, 1914 to 1945. All the causes and effects, the turning points etc. All in order of when they happened, but this video has so much interesting stuff I didn't know. Love it gonna go binge some more
Russia killed more Ukrainians than the Nazis killed jews by 1935.
"When the Nazis start looking like the good guys..." Brilliant writing!
Worst thing is Japan's never even admitted to anyyhing let alone apologized. Most japanese don't even know about what they're predecessors did
@@ThaGr1m Based
@@dwaynebronson870 bruh
I don’t know if any of you guys watch the animated series “Archer” but there was this one episode where Archer is on a mission and he runs into an old Japanese holdout from World War 2 that didn’t know the war was over. One of the things he said struck me, since I had never in my life contemplated such a thing. I don’t remember exactly what he said but the gist was, he asked Archer why the United States would ever ally themselves with communists.
Given the state of the world today, that question struck a chord within me and made me think about the war in a little different light.
The enemies of my enemies are my friends.
This channel has absolutely top-notch scripts. Well done.
The "alliance" of Germany and Japan during WW II boiled down to the axiom, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." Nothing less. Nothing more.
you are wrong. do research about what Germany and Nippon thought of each other and you will see they were natural ally. but you are black so you always read jewish source about Nippon and germany
slave
They had respect for each other, but I still somewhat agree
You gloss over the intense internal rivalry in Japan between the Army and Navy. The former opposed a naval attack on the US.
Its a stark contract to see the Axis and them not being an alliance in the same vein as the Central powers from World War 1, where those were allies, the Axis was more of 'we have a mutual potential enemy'. You can't even really call is the enemy of my enemy is my friend, it was pure convenience.
I think the most interesting part of this was, of all things, learning how little the US actually allocated forces to the Pacific Theater, I always had this image in my head from what I learned about World War 2 being Britain and France's fight against Germany with the Americans helping to tip the scales after a stalemate after D Day, with the US's main focus being the Pacific. That probably came from the 3 nations fighting in Europe, and the Soviet's counterattack, not leaving as much room to let the US's force division sink in, where as with Pacific, The US campaign is really all I learned about.
There is a common joke among certain Europeans about how arrogant the US is showing up late to two world wars and thinking it did all the work.
@@Steven_Edwards That math checks out.
Though arguably it was more true in world war 1 with how worn down all sides were at that time.
I remember there was one anecdote I heard of world war 1 Germans when they went up against the Americans, and after they were captured by the Americans, they saw the quality of their gear, things like the quality of the leather, and their supplies, they knew they couldn't win. Not sure how true that is, but I do remember hearing that.
@@Steven_Edwards Back in the 1980s the joke was that the US had been late for the last two world wars but were going to be early for the next one...
@@sulate1 Well the 99 Luft Balloons & Red Skies At Night know-it-all-cool-crowd was kinda wrong, yet like the Japanese with their atrocities, never admitted it.
Wonderful broadcast thank you for sharing.
I absolutely love your And Mark Felton's use of the "Why We Fight" footage. Frank Capra is a legend. The fact it was made during the War, with the outcome unknown makes it all the more, reel...
Ha, punny
I see what you did there 😂
Ahhhh, another Dr Felton fan in the wild!
The soviet offer to join the Axis reminds me of their post-WWII offer to join NATO. Probably some similar calculations were involved with both.
As an American living in Japan I have always found it fairly baffling that Japan joined with Germany in World War II. Today I found out some of the context behind that decision.
I'm also an American who lived in Japan. Japanese religion is also very much aligned with Nazism. Shinto-Buddhism is based on ethnocentric principles of Shintoism mixed with the Anti-black Aryanism of Hinduism and Mahayana Buddhism.
"Reincarnated buddhas will never be black." - Lotus Sutra, Rejoicing in Merit & Virtue 18
It's even worse in the Manusmurti....
@@MiguelDLewis oh ho ho, be prepared my friend for Indian daytime. You are about to witness a terrible wrath I fear.
@@goodpol5022 Nasrani Indians would actually agree.✝
@Miguel D Lewis Thank-you for this interesting context!
On the surface level it seems completely nonsensical like a writer who ran out of ideas to surprise the viewers. As one guy said in his pseudo review "And that’s not even counting the part where as soon as the plot requires it, they instantly forget about all the racism nonsense and become best buddies with the definitely non-Aryan Japanese."
This is a very informative video. I wish the host/speaker would slow it down though.
You can slow down the video if you want in the settings.
That you can forget, sadly
Agreed. I actually think this was sped up in post production. Great content but too fast
Some real good facts on this one Simon, and real good writing who ever wrote it.
Good video, I was familiar with a bunch of the points presented here, and you did nice work on keeping it focused. This could have easily spiraled into other subjects for a long time.
Some of your best written work. Keep that writer's number on speed dial.
Or chained up in the basement!
@@egosumabbas “allegedly” he “allegedly” does that 😉
Never in my life have I heard anyone speak so swiftly....never....Thanks to you tube....I slowed to 50% for most of it...75% for some 😥 However...I sure learned a lot.....At 74 I still really enjoy being a life long learner....THANK YOU !
Happenstance brings people together really well. They both had mutual foes and similar goals that didn't overlap. Both were going to fight anyway, so may as well not fight each other.
Ironically, the senior members of the party did not fit the requirements for the master race.
Nazi ideology is a fuckin doozy, I'll tell you what.
That state, which many people make, isn’t entirely true.
Really is should be something like “the senior members of the party did not fit the requirements of [joining the SS]”
Because as far as the racial requirements to be part of “the master (aryan) race” the senior members most certainly did
That statement**
There is some evidence, nothing absolutely proven, that Hitlers grandfather was the illegitimate child of the teenage son of a wealthy Jewish merchant family and their cook.
🙈🙉🙊 🙄 serious mental perambulations, at the very least.
Fantastic video, Simon. I'm a fuge fan of all of your channels and this has to be one of the five best videos you have done, in my opinion. Thanks.
very brilliant, with little nuggets of insight I had never read about.
I would like a Biographics video on Chiune Sugihara, who as vice-consul in Lithuania saved at least 5,558 Jews and potentially many more from the Holocaust. Only recently learned about him, but definitely an interesting person who didn't get the credit he deserved in life for his bravery in the face of Nazism
actually Sugihara should be considered part of a team with dutch consul Jan Zwartendijk - who had help from the dutch Ambassador to Latvia L. P. J. de Decker - Zwartendijk provided the destination visas to Curaçao - and Sugihara provided the transit visas that would allow the holders to travel to japan - - while the jews sought transport out of japan - the japanese took good care of them - despite Nazi efforts to persuade the japanese to kill them
Actually there is a man called Kiichiro Higuchi too and he also saved over 20k Jews which was more then Sugihara did. He deserves more recognition…
@@Ayaka_-wi3dm - thanks for the info - i had not heard of that before - it's called the "Otpor Incident" - Higuchi saved 18 jews with provisions and a route to Shanghai - but several thousand (its not known how many - guesses are between 4k to 20k) followed that route - so Higuchi saved those indirectly - he is revered by jews for that
in terms of effort and cost - Sugihara's effort were immense - defying the orders of his higher ups - he signed a few thousand - visas (reputedly - his wife secretly signed some to take off some of the burden) - he even was still signing at the train station when he and his family were headed back to japan - his actions cost him his job - whereas Higuchi continued in the army
@Ayaka_-wi3dm I had never heard of him. Thanks for the information, so two new videos, instead of one
@@Ayaka_-wi3dmI'm not sure why you think he deserves recognition they were grabbing women and feeding them to their army like meat. Somehow this guy accidentally did a good thing. Joseph menglee was very good scientist and a lot of his research is still used to design life jackets and things like that for boat men like me. I don't think anybody wants a statue to Joe.
Another great video Simon!
If anyone is looking for more content on the WW2 Japanese thought process and war effort, Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcast has a six part series on it called Supernova in the East. Excellent overview and detail.
A man with exquisite podcast taste I see
Giving it a second listen over the last few weeks, it really is worth the listen. To say Japans involvement in WW2 was complex is an understatement.
EndQUOTE
You and Lindybeige are my favorite youtubers. I like that you recomended him.
I enjoy your deep dive of history. My only grip is that you show already old photos and sometimes add "coffee stains." I've seen it in a few photos. Sepia is fine as a gradient. It was just a graphical oddity. The research, explanation, and imagery all work. It was something I caught viewing.
Also, I'm sorry to the person who worked on them. I'm not trying to be mean it was just visually confusing.
I always wondered about that...
I also get annoyed when the gamers/anime fans claim Japan doesn't understand racism or colorism ...
Also, Japan had pretty rough views about their local neighbors...
Doesn't understand racism...freely bans non Japanese from businesses, housing, and even entering areas of some cities
Try living in Japan for more than 2 years coming from any other countries. Asians are extremely racist, it's true, factual.
The Japanese are extremely xenophobic to this day. I call that racism, maybe not as extreme as the KKK. But still racism.
People think this way because they’re both Asian countries. Nobody talks about racism when two European countries invade each other
@@Cookiemonsterhaschocolateballs do you mean correctly or incorrectly think that (talks about) because they are both Asian countries?
A recent European example is Russia and Ukraine, where Russia claimed Ukrainians were discriminating against Russians (citing the laws promoting spoken Ukrainian over Russian in businesses in Ukraine).
What did you mean?
I might be wrong but I thought Japan attacked the Philippines at the same time they attacked Pearl Harbor. It's only considered "the next day" because of the time difference between the two.
You are correct and Simon is wrong. December 7 in Hawaii was December 8 in the Philippines.
You are right, the international date line made it the next day
My grandfather was From the Philippines, and from what he said the Japanese were very brutal in their invasion.
Well done. It’s interesting how as you learn about the lead up to the war, how many things sometimes little things had huge outcomes and consequences.
I have to slow the videos down to hear the words clearly. What a wonderful, speedy accent!
My grandmother and her family (mother, father, grandfather, aunts and several cousins) were living in Shanghai at the time of the Japanese invasion of China. I have scans of the documents recording their detention in Lunghwa camp. As all my family were European- my great grandmother was born in Kiev and was Jewish, her husband was born in Ireland- they were excluded from a lot of the travesties bestowed on the native Chinese people who were interred in the Lunghwa camp. My grandmother had nothing but praise for her captors and held Mr. Hyashi(spell check later) for making sure her family had enough to eat and medical care when needed.
The name is undoubtedly "Hayashi".
Very interesting. I haven't heard that before. I've heard of people in Europe talking fondly of their captors, but not Chinese/Japanese. All I've heard is the terrible, terrible accounts of their war crimes, mainly from Japanese people.
Your grandma had no heart
@@sunwukong6917 I believe that since she was young she was sheltered from the worst of the atrocity that was committed. She only knows that her family was taken care of.
@@sunwukong6917cringe. What would you do if your family was spared?
You have this largely right. Well done. Carry on.
Another thing that is hard to understand is how the Japanese thought that they could succeed in building their "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" by treating the people they conquered far more cruelly and ruthlessly than any Westerner had ever done.
They treated Western Asians as slaves or animals. Where is it not cold?
A few years ago I worked with a Filipino man who's father had suffered under the Japanese occupation
His father said that the Japanese expected the local populations to support the Japanese as they were also Asian, and freeing them from their previous European colonial rulers
But what the Japanese never understood was that although the Malays, Filipinos, and so on might not like the British and the Dutch, they absolutely hated the Japanese.
@@geoffreyboyling615 Well, I wish the Philippines would be my favorite American colony again.
😂
Thanks!
Do you mean the League of Nations sanctioned Italy for the invasion of Ethiopa? I'm pretty sure The UN wasn’t a thing at that point.
You are correct, it was the League of Nations.
That confirmed my impressions on the subject and filled in some gaps. Thanks for the presentation!
4:59: 1936 - United Nations not in existence. I think you meant the League of Nations?
I caught that too.
Right.
I was giggling a bit too.
@@kaltaron1284nerds
Yes… a tiny mistake! 😂 … since the UN was created after WWII. Otherwise, great video and it raises interesting points about who really were the good guys…
Excellent information… thanks!
The Axis was based on the idea of "The enemy of my enemy is my friend", it was pretty much a Anti-UN and Anticommunist alliance.
The UN didn't exist at the time so no it wasn't an Anti-UN alliance. It was anti-communist and anti-democratic.
The UN wasn't formed until after WW2.
In point of fact, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor/Guam/the Phillipine, the USA joined the Sino-Japanese War of 1937. It wasn't until Germany declared war on the US did we joined WWII.
It’s crazy to think if this all would have happened two centuries before WWII, nobody would have thought what the Axis Powers were doing would be problematic because expansion was what everyone was trying to do no matter what it took
I think the colonized people and slaves had a problem with it (as well as anti-imperialists and abolitionists!) but like yeah, it sucks that people glorify or excuse "their" nations' ills while they rival other universally hated ones. The point of history isn't glory, but deconstruction and rebuilding with the "no-no" legacies it leaves.
There were two distinct waves of colonialism that had completely different motivations from each other. One was to establish colonies in which people could move to during the late 1600s early 1700s, mostly due to a need for religious freedom and practices that had been previously suppressed in Europe. The second happened as a result of resources needed for industrialization in the mid 1800s, notably the scramble for Africa, the suppression of the Barbary pirates and the French takeover of Algeria. These are two very different in ideology and scope as compared to WW2.
Always interesting.
It's funny how when you lay out war history like this, you can actually see the chess moves on a big scale and turns out Hitler was not a very good chess player.
I've always found it funny that people don't point out more that Hitler was a complete and utter moron at war strategy
It’s not as romantic a story for those who feel some kind of nostalgia for the Third Reich. If he’s a visionary, he’s at least a compelling villain for a romantic summation of WWII, whereas an incompetent fool who never had a cohesive or functional view of the future is disappointing to read about.
all you need to know about hitler's strategic IQ is attack on the USSR
@user-wj6dt5bq3w - i didn't say anything about Russia's plans - only that Hitler's decision to attack would be fatal
@user-wj6dt5bq3w - i distrust people who think in absolutes - it was his "only"? - sorry - you are obviously not a historian
I have a lot of German medals from WWII that my Grandfather brought back. One of them has a guy in the middle, a swastika on the top left and a rising sun on the top right. There's some German writing and it says 1940/41 on the right side by the rising sun. I thought it was interesting.
You should see the coin from the transfer agreement. It has a swastika on one side and the star of David on the other.
@WTF-vv8ic Oh wow, I'll have to look out for that! Thanks for sharing. My channel is mostly about cars and trucks but I've thought about doing a video on some of the stuff like this I have 🤔
"Brought back from Germany", Looted, stolen or what? We are all watching looted artwork being repatriated - are you planning to find out who's medals your family has?
The victors’ write history, so no, definitely not looted! Liberated! 😂
Interesting to find out how his grandfather directly / indirectly got into possession of these war trophies… probably not so fascinating…
Liberated off some POWs. I don't have any way to find out who it was before they lost. I some evidence it was from SS members so I really don't care what they don't have anymore. I think this based off of having silverware with the SS rune and comments my grandfather made about how good his relationship was with the regular Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe troops he was guarding at the end of the war was where the SS troops were, in his words, real bastards. I won't ever sell any of it. Now it's part of my family's history. I also won't display it, even in context having a Nazi flag hanging in my house is a little weird. It's all careful stored in a box in my gun safe and I'll get it out to show people that are interested in things like that.
3-30 million people?? That’s a 27 million war crime gap.
The H man respected any homogeneous traditionalist society. He wanted the same thing for his country. Wrote a book about it and everything.
Great vid. Had to listen at .75 the speed.
😂🤣😅
22:00 that's not really the case. The negotiation did not fail because US was asking too high a price. US code breakers are already hard at work, while they can't read military codes yet they know for a fact Japan is planning big military operations, thus Roosevelt concluded that this negotiation is merely a stall tactic--the negotiation failed long before it actually concluded.
It has become clearer and clearer to me that the word 'alliance' has no definition to dictators. With them it's either full vassal like cooperation or conquest.
My great uncle H. McRary Jones, with his wife Helen Baker, daughter of Dean Baker of Baker Hall at UCBoulder, lived in Tokio(how my aunt wrote it), Japan pre-WWII for nine years. They lived in the "Foriegn" sector where ambassadors lived, as did all non-Japanese. My great uncle was an electrical engineer and was there to design and build electrical infrastructure, bringing power to factories and government buildings and training locals to operate and maintain. They lived across the street from the Russian Ambassador and threw dinner parties. I am reading my great aunts writings about it, only recently coming into possession after my mom passed. Fascinating seeing another side to the public histories.
That is so interesting, thank you for sharing!
its not irrelevant to note that Germany at the end of WW1 if I remember right, was so amazed and fascinated with Japan that their admiration led them to show respect to Japan in marching parades post-war after showing obvious disrespect to the British, because of how the Japanese conducted themselves in war and maybe otherwise.
Leaving China was unthinkable despite losing to them. Japan didn’t want to look like they lost if they left China. They needed oil that the US gave them most of, but got cut off because of their ongoing war in China. Oil in the Dutch indies provided some for them, but engaging with them meant war with the US anyway, so why not strike first?
When hasn’t Japan attacked before they declared war. Not surprising all the crimes on humanity they did
It reminds me of a line from Jojo Rabbit. “All we have left are the Japanese and just between you and me, they don’t look very Ayran.” Ah, alliance of convenience.
You are surprisingly honest about FDR and his desire for war at any cost. I’m impressed!
Apparently one Japanese official called Yōsuke Matsuoka insane and another remarked that insanity would be an improvement.
Japan thought if they could cripple our Navy they could sue for peace quickly before it got to a full blown conflict.
Though Yamamoto knew that logic flawed he followed his orders.
He put his loyalty to his nation before common sense
Simon's normally sped up speech tempo is especially accelerated here. And it's a 40 minute video. Yikes. I'm going to have to watch this many times before really "getting" it. Still, thanks to Simon for yet another great history lesson. Also, does anyone else hear an ice cream truck in the distant background? If I pause the playback I don't hear it.
It's probably some low-key background music. I doubt that an ice cream truck would hang out in one spot for 40 minutes.
This documentary revealed answers to so many questions I’ve had since I was kid some 50 years ago. I am eternally grateful.🍎
The name "United Nations", coined by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt, was first used in the Declaration by United Nations of 1 January 1942, during the Second World War, when representatives of 26 nations pledged their Governments to continue fighting together against the Axis Powers.
An "Honorary Aryan" was a term bestowed on those to certify them as part of the Aryan race, if they were not biologically so. Hitler granted the Japanese, "Honorary Aryans" and he believed that the racial superiority they believed for themselves was true. This greatly improved German-Japanese relations throughout the war.
Thank you for this video. This being said, I personally dislike when people say that the outcome of WWII was inevitable. It is a statement that does not bring us any closer to understanding, its dynamic, the risks faced by all parties, and so on. At the time of writing this comment, Russia is at war with Ukraine. One could say that the outcome of this war too is inevitable. Once it is over and that every events leading to its end have been played out, we will be able to look back and see the chain of actions-reactions that explains its outcome. And it will then seems so obvious that the mere thought of starting it (or resisting it, depending on who wins) will appear laughable. Does it help? Does it tell us which party should call it quit? No. Nations during WWII were in a similar position as we are today with current events. No one KNOWS what will happen. And IF one has the information to tell one what will happen, this information is lost amongst tons of other information. Germany and Japan believed that the will of a nation to fight is just as important as wealth and manpower when evaluating one’s chances to win a war. Both dismissed Western nations on that account as to soft minded. For a while, they seemed to be right. Fortunately in the end they were proven wrong. But it was close. Much closer than words like ‘inevitable’ give credit for. Thank you to all who gave their lives to save us.
The outcome was inevitable if the war ran long enough. The US produced more war materials than both Germany and Japan. Partly because of the different culture of industry and government.
@@nancyjanzen5676 That is what is usually said. The size of the US economy, its production capacity, etc. And in fact, it did play a major role in the outcome of the war. I do not dispute that. However, those same advantages failed to give the US the victory in Vietnam. And suppose the US had not been able to develop the nuclear bombs and had to invade Japan main islands: how many more casualties would the US been willing to accept in the name of the unconditional surrender policy? Anyway, all I am saying is that it is one thing to analyze what factors played a role in the outcome of this war (or in any other conflict for that matter). It is an entirely other to pretend that it was inevitable that it turned out the way it did.
The story of WWII is, to a significant extent, the story of oil resources.
Shout out to Lindybeige... nice.
Well done, this is up to the quality of the course work I had both in my undergrad days and my Masters course work at thw Air War College.
Astonishingly good video, I didn't expect such insight and accuracy from such a popular channel. If only the schools could teach at this level.
They do.,…what are you talking about….
@@mikemcmike6427 I don't know what country's school system you're referring to, in most of the developed world schools just teach straight government propaganda.
@@joemerino3243 lolll okay buddy/ let me guess you have no post secondary education on the topic? Elementary and high schools cover a simplified quick version. Depending on the country normally on wars or conflicts most important to their history. Soo Yaa believe it or not they don’t do a deep dive on the nuances of Nazis and Japanese relations in ww2. But in university they do. That’s how I know you are poorly educated
@@mikemcmike6427 Wow bud your deductive powers saw through me in an instant, truly you are one of the intellectuals of all time.
@@joemerino3243 and yet no actual rebuttal other than to sarcastically whine.. it’s harder to think critically and accurately describe reality rather than just parrot “daaa government propaganda”. I also see no denial however. So no degree in history? How did I know lol
Apparently, the human capacity for hate has no limits. Good thing we rarely live beyond 100 years, so we can occasionally forget our cruelty.
Thanks again! TH-cam so often leaves me feeling brain damaged. Not the case with your material 😊
The empire have and have-nots is the best way to frame the pre-war situation. Good work.
"The enemy of your enemy is your friend" in the end. Seeing Chinese soldiers in Wehrmacht uniform fight the Japanese is even more bizarre.
If you read about eastern civilations history, the japanese were like the vikings of the east. They use to raid and terrorist the Chinese, korea etc. There is no love lost between lots of asian countries with japan. Why did you think the Mongols were literally willing to sail to japan just to invade them.
The mongol invasion was part of a wider expansionist policy. It wasn’t directed solely at Japan.
Love your videos but would please slow your narration?
You can slow the video down yourself. Or if you're like me and can absorb information rapidly I tend to speed videos up. TH-cam has all the options you need.
My grandmother, her brother and their parents spent the war in a japanese internment camp in Indonesia, not because they were jewish, but because they were white, since Indonesia was a Dutch colony at the time.
They didn’t know they would lose. They didn’t expect the reaction we gave them because of depression era pain and the fact we were not on the cutting edge of military craft. They learned the hard way.
I rewound it twice before I realized that you meant 1861, and not 1961.
I remember hearing something about Hitler having respect for the Asian race (specifically Chinese, Japanese, and Korean people) and believing that Asians were the only race who could compare to the Aryan race. I'm not sure where exactly I had heard that, but for some reason, I'm pretty sure it was from a video that Simon was in lol
Also, a huge misconception about Hitler is that he despised all other races and ethic groups, which is false. While he did believe that the Aryan race was superior to all others, the only ethic group he truly hated was the Jews. He didn't necessarily hate other races and groups, he just thought they were inferior. Hence why he respected Asians, but not other races
I mean, he killed a fair few Romani and Slavs. He probably hated them less than Jews, but he did hate them
Add Slavs to the list of the truly hated. He thought well of the Japanese, but is there evidence that this feeling extended to Asians generally?
The event about Richard Sorge fascinated me the most about WW2. If it weren't for him, the Soviet Union would've never sent troops to Europe and ultimately defeated the Nazis. The most fascinating part was Stalin had absolute no trust in anyone about strategy and intelligence, involving the war. However, he implicitly trusted Sorge's information.
Richard Sorge aka “Ramsay”
He successfully recruited IJA general’s son to recuperate documents that implied Japan would attack south and not west. Allowing reserve troops to move from eastern front to western front
According to historians Yoshiaki Yoshimi and Kentaro Awaya, during the Second Sino-Japanese War, gas weapons, such as tear gas, were sporadically used in 1937, but in early 1938, the Imperial Japanese Army resorted to the full-scale use of phosgene, chlorine, Lewisite and nausea gas (red), and from mid-1939, mustard gas (yellow) was used against both Kuomintang and Communist Chinese troops.