For all those that ask "why invade at all - why not blockade?": watch this video: th-cam.com/video/f9raqHGJH4Q/w-d-xo.html Correction - it should be "Formosa (Taiwan)" NOT "Formosa (Korea)" thanks to ColHoganGer90 If you like in-depth military history videos, consider supporting me on PayPal, Patreon or SubscribeStar or PayPal: paypal.me/mhvis --- patreon.com/mhv/ --- www.subscribestar.com/mhv
No reason to invade Japan when a nice U.S. Navy blockade from submarines and a naval fleet would have caused FAMINE and an industrial implosion. Remember the Allied naval and air forces, especially Allied submarines, had sunk 8.5 MILLION TONS of Japanese merchant shipping during the war. Japan had almost NO merchant marine shipping left in March, 1945 the last time any fuel tanker made it through to the home Japanese islands. A blockade would have taken into 1946 but Japan was doomed to FAMINE and ECONOMIC IMPLOSION from a lack of foodstuffs, fuel and raw materials. A country that can't feed its own people is a country that can't continue to fight a major war effort. This reality isn't rocket science. militaryhistorynow.com/2016/07/25/americas-submarine-war-how-the-silent-service-quietly-brought-about-the-downfall-of-japan/
@是邪恶的习近平 You make several points that are rather flimsy. Aside from a part of China, Manchuria and Korea, Japan had no more occupied territories where they would be fighting and/or committing atrocities. As for feeding itself, Japan could not feed itself exclusively and hadn't been doing so since the 1930's. Much of the Korean rice harvests were imported to Japan. This point is made again and again in historical sources describing the Japanese annexation and occupation of Korea from 1910 until 1945. A blockade would likely have reduced significantly any further imports from Korea. Bombing of railways in Korea and a submarine blockade of the East Sea and Tsushima Straight would be two ways in which grain shipments could/would be reduced to Japan.
@@rexfrommn3316The US Government and military high command determined that an extended blockade would result in a negotiated settlement with Japan due to war weariness back in the States. This was which was unacceptable to Roosevelt, Truman and Marshall, as in their collective view the war would have to be then refought in twenty years which is what happened with Germany after WWI. This is also what the Japanese Imperial Command was hoping for so that Japan would be able to retain at least Korea, and possibly Formosa and other possessions they had held from pre- WWI years.
i think one of the most telling thing about operation downfall is that the stockpile of purple hearts the US built up in anticipation of the operation still last until this day
Even if true, that the supply lasted for 50 years - and wars in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq, it shows the scope of the expected casualties from Operations Olympic and Cornet.
I knew a man who had served in the First Marine Division. He fought on Guadalcanal, Peleliu and Okinawa. He was training for the invasion of Japan. Many of his cohorts were very cynical about their chances of survival.... When the heard about the Atomic Bombs, Russia joining the War and then the surrender....it was cathartic. Men who he saw as granite cried like little girls. He told me how stunned he was not to face death on another Battlefield. He then realized he was going home and he would marry the proverbial girl waiting back home...that he would have a life...
@@randbarrett8706 That's easy to say with 70 years of separation, in 21st century comfort, anonymity and the bravery of being a keyboard warrior. Perhaps I should just call it stupidity, so that you have a chance of understanding the word. Flush out your headgear. Denigrating the integrity and valor of any fighting man of history, doing his duty as he saw it, from the comfort of the modern world is doing them and yourself dishonor.
@@randbarrett8706, three things for you to consider: 1-How much brainwashing each army was subjected to. I'm willing to bet the Americans had less. 2-The better you perceive life, and the more you got going for you back home, the more likely you are to fear battle. 3-As a Soviet you would have grow up in a country in civil war, lived through purges, and fought a bloody war where millions died. Overexposure to death desensitizes you. The Americans did not see as much blood, it's not the man, it's war front. Almost any untrained soldier, short of a psychopath, would not deal well with the realities of war. Important to remember as well that America was not at real risk, their homeland was more than secure and they did not see American civilian massacres. So overall, comparing the "courage" of each army, on top of a very presumptions judgement coming from someone so far removed we might as well be judging biblical figures, is also like comparing apples to oranges. Yeah, maybe the willingness to go to battle for the soviets was higher and their fear of battle was lower, but that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the particular braveness level of the personality of each soldier, as there is a whole context behind it.
It would have been..,.the outcome would still be the same though. You don't understand determination US had to win that war till unconditional surrender. Nothing would have stopped them
@CKS1949 Having studied WW II to degree level and looked at several of the planning documents concerning Operation Olympic. I have always suspected that it would have been a disaster for the allies and a catastrophe for the Japanese. If the experience of Iwo Jima and Okinawa was anything to go by. The defending troops and civilians would have stopped at nothing to prevent the successful allied invasion. As a result I suspect that the allies would have had to withdraw. But it would have been a pyhrric victory for Japan. As all the allies would have done was to completely blockade and isolate the various Japanese islands. Certainly it would have been extremely messy and probably would have gone for years if not decades regardless of allied resolve (Dalton Morgan's comments accepted). I have even wondered if it would still be going on now in a low level form like the situation with the DPRK. A war ravaged Japan completely isolated from the rest of the world. What ever the arguments over the atom bombs they brought it all to an abrupt end. Thus saving hundreds of thousands of allied lives and as Hirohito noted the Japanese nation itself.
My grandfather served with the marines in the Pacific- graduating HS shortly after the attack of Pearl Harbor. When he was finally allowed to join by the recruiters, he arrived at Pearl and Midway after the attacks and was- for lack of a better term- "part of the clean up crew". Bodies, wreckage, salvage, repairs, he did it all. Before he died in 2012, he told me he was sent home in summer 1945 to San Francisco- he and his platoon believed they were some of the first to go home.. To their surprise, they underwent vigorous training- much more difficult than basic. Looking back, he realized he was training for the invasion of the home islands of Japan and would be one of the first on the beach. Although it hurts to know those bombs were dropped, if it weren't for that my mom and her 8 siblings wouldn't be here and nor would my brother or I. I am grateful my grandpa never knew the actual numbers of defenders and his odds.. This makes me miss and appreciate him and our military that much more for their sacrifices.
Nick Stemberger so instead of you not existing,all those Japanese people never got the chance to live a life.Both ways it's bad,but the Americans did what's best for them,I can respect that.
That's the point I'm making.. The effects are still being felt by citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to this day. My family was just one of many that were impacted. My grandfather just happened to know more about the operation than his fellow marines. You saw the video; Over 650,000 soldiers were going to be part of the invasion force. My grandpa lived with terrible PTSD the rest of his life and I found out just before he died all this information. He lived knowing all this and kept it to himself.
If you don't want to suffer, don't rape and murder hundreds of thousands of chinese civilians, experiment on them with biological weapons, and attack by surprise first. And don't initiate "total war" unless you want your civilian population to be killed too.
Dima S You can bet that more Japanese civilians would have died had there been an invasion. It would have involved brutal urban combat which is never nice on the civilian population and considering that at Okinawa 8000 Japanese civilians comitted suicide you could expect millions to do the same. Okinawa was hell on Earth and a tradgedy, and invasion of Japan would have been a daily repeat of that.
Another deterrent to the Allied invasion of Japan was the loss of life to the Japanese themselves. Okinawa demonstrated that the Japanese would fight to the very death and the Allies had no desire to systematically exterminate the Japanese people. The Allied forces slaughtered the Japanese defenders at a rate of something like 10 to 1 and the Allies estimated that prosecuting the campaign in Japan would cost upwards of 1 million Allied lives. So, if the ratio held true, 10 million Japanese would be killed. And the ratio likely wouldn't hold true because the Japanese army was virtually crippled by this point--they were training school kids to charge the Allied lines with sharpened bamboo sticks. Japanese casualties would have been closer to 30-50 to 1 by the end of it. For all the horror of the atomic bomb, it was actually the more humane choice by far.
Nonsense.... a negotiated settlement was the best option. Of course the allies insisted on unconditional surrender making it nearly impossible. Japan was willing to take negotiated settlement, even accept unfavourable terms as long it didn't include the humiliation of unconditional surrender.
@@dawatitest1dawati286 "negotiated settlement" lol You mean a "treaty"? Like the treaty with China that Japan ignored in order to wage an undeclared war on them? Like the treaties which ended World War I which Japan ignored in order to expand her empire at the expense of all her neighbors? Like the treaty she had with the United States that she summarily ignored to sucker punch the Americans without any declaration of war? Of course, the Japanese didn't want the humiliation of unconditional surrender. So... to avoid that they train children to take up sharpened bamboo spears and charge American and British machine guns? Yeah... real "reasonable" people there. Sounds like they totally learned their lesson.... You're right. There was a third option. The third option was to leave the rapists of Nanking in possession of the Japanese political power. The third option was to leave the perpetrators of Pearl Harbor as leaders of the empire. The third option was to leave the executors of the Bataan Death March in command of Japan and her military. The third option was to leave the mass-murdering psychopaths responsible for the deaths of 10 million innocent people as the heads of the Japanese Empire. The third option was for the consequences of the racist ethnic cleansing done by the Japanese to be winked at and overlooked even as we brought the Germans to total destruction for exactly the same thing. Uh... no. If these are my options... 1) Let the Japanese get away with everything they did from 1931 - 1945 2) Systematically butcher the entire Japanese race and take millions of casualties while doing so. 3) Drop atomic bombs on them until they surrender. ...then #3 remains--BY FAR--the best option. There was no reason to believe the Japanese would honor any treaty it made with the Allies and there was no way the West was going to tolerate going through another hellish nightmare trying to fight those fanatics. And even were those two things not so, any sense of justice for the heinous acts of sheer barbarity on the part of the Japanese DEMANDED unconditional surrender.
dawatitest1 Dawati japan had a history of disregarding treaties and their leaders had to pay and be humiliated for the crimes against humanity they unleashed upon the nations they conquered.
Very good video - too bad you did not have a chance to talk with my uncle, he was going to be in the invasion forces. Instead, he was part of the teams that dismantled the defenses surrounding the beach areas. He related that the defenses were much more in-depth and well situated than the planners originally envisioned.... the casualties would have been enormous.
MHV, let me congratulate you on your ability to address a difficult, detailed subject in a foreign language. English is not an easy language to learn, and military history is a complicated subject... probably one of the most complicated subjects discussed in 'common language', without the jargon of the sciences or law. You are clear, concise, and apply simple comparisons to your points that almost anyone can understand. GREAT work. [google-translate version into German] Ich gratuliere Ihnen zu Ihrer Fähigkeit, ein schwieriges, detailliertes Thema in einer Fremdsprache anzusprechen. Englisch ist keine leicht zu erlernende Sprache, und Militärgeschichte ist ein kompliziertes Thema ... wahrscheinlich eines der kompliziertesten Themen, die in der "gemeinsamen Sprache" diskutiert werden, ohne die Fachsprache der Wissenschaften oder des Rechts. Sie sind klar und präzise und wenden einfache Vergleiche auf Ihre Punkte an, die fast jeder verstehen kann. Gute Arbeit.
@@Idras74 The swordfish jamming Bismarck's rudder was a lucky hit. Also, Prinz Eugen had been ordered to detach and run for safety after the sinking of the Hood, else PE could have taken the Bismarck under tow for the relatively short distance to get under land based air cover. It's debatable whether this is true, but the British fleet was badly out of position due to a bad guess(the swordfish strikes were desperation).
After serving in Europe, my Dad was on his way to be part of the invasion of Japan. He was on 30 days leave in the States when Japan surrendered. He said you could not imagine how relieved he was. Sept. 15, 1945 he was a free man! Also he was very surprised.
Probably the invasion of Hokkaido, the first island is the climb (Olympic), the big island is the jewel (Coronet), and the last is the end (Sunset) If there is a name for a hypothetical invasion of Hokkaido idk what it is
@sushanalone - The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki could have killed ten times as many as they actually did, and still would have saved several times as many as they killed. What's more, most of the lives saved by the atomic bombs were Japanese. Most of the rest were civilians in Japanese-occupied portions of the Asian mainland. One thing not touched upon in the video is that by August 1945 most US commanders were quietly backing away from the idea of an invasion, precisely because of their excellent intelligence on the Japanese buildup in southern Kyushu (which IS described very nicely in the video). The only other alternative was an extended siege: blockade and bombardment. If the Japanese government had managed to hold on to power through the winter (another 6 months, say), tens of millions of Japanese civilians - at least 1 person in 3 from the total civilian population, because that was the proportion the IJA was planning to totally cut off in order to hoard supplies for the remainder - would have starved to death. (It almost happened anyway - one of the big post-VJ Day challenges for the Allied occupation forces was trying to provide & distribute enough food to keep the starving civilian population alive).
That is true , but i will not associate that with race or ethnicity, considering how many German and Italian civilians were killed by such bombings. But yes ethnicity was used crudely in war-time propaganda in US and UK.
same for my grandfather he was in the 25th infantry and saw action in Philippines early 1945. His division was set to land at Miyazaki as part of US I Corps
It is difficult to say, even more gruesome to understand that the casualties of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the kindest way to get Japanese to surrender. How dark is that reality?
Transylvanian, and yet the USA was particularly benevolent to Japan after the war. Amazing that if the USA’s goal was to humiliate Japan they did not colonize Japan, and allowed them to retain their autonomy. I would have much rather lived in post war Japan than post war East Germany!
Apparently you are unaware of what a sick society Japan had then. There was NO CHANCE we were going to leave that intact any more than we were going to allow the NAZI's to survive unmolested. Nor should we have. The Bushido system had to be dismantled.
+Transylvanian ---- "Is is disgusting what US propaganda has made you believe. The bombs were a choice not a necessity. The invasion was NOT the only other option. The japanese were willing to negotiate a peace, any peace that was not unconditional surrender. The US demand for unconditional surrender was sadistic. They knew the Japanese would never accept such a humiliation so they used this as an excuse to commit one of the worst atrocities and war crimes of the war." The false propaganda is coming from you. The use of the atomic bombs were a military necessity due to the ongoing Japanese threats to kill as many Allied and Japanese people as possible while they attempted to force the Allies to accept their unacceptable Japanese terms for a negotiated armistice that would have left their lethal threat intact and immune from attack for the future. The Japanese war faction in the Supreme War Council rejected any form of surrender whatsoever in favor of the entire Japanese nation committing suicide. When Japan's leaders planned the war in December 1940, their adopted plan was to conquer as much territory as possible and then seek a negotiated armistice and settlement that would allow Japan to retain all or most of the conquered territories and a number of trade concessions from the Allies. By the Summer of 1945, the war faction of the Supreme War Council continued to insist upon using the same plan for a negotiated armistice, except the terms were to allow Japan to keep only a fraction of the territories it conquered, no Allied occupation of Japan, and few other concessions to the Allies. That war faction expected to perfect their biological and nuclear weapons of mass destruction in preparation for a renewal of their war of aggression at a future date, when their circumstances for success were not so unfavorable as they were in 1945. The Allies could not allow the war faction to succeed in such a plan, so a prompt and unconditional surrender by Japan was necessary to deny the war faction the capability to pose a future threat to the Allies and the rest of the world. The use of the atomic bombs was an urgent military necessity and was not a war crime. The Japanese had already killed upwards of one-half million men, women, and children with the use of biological weapons of mass destruction in China. The Japanese Army and Navy attempted to build their own Japanese atomic bombs, and the United States captured some of the German enriched Uranium being shipped by submarine to Japan in 1945. So, the United States had good reason to know Japan was trying to produce weapons of mass destruction that posed a threat to the safety of tens of millions of Americans in the Continental United States. Japan had already conducted the world's first intercontinental air bombardment campaign when it bombarded North America with balloon bombs. The United States was concerned that the Japanese balloon bombs could attack Americans with the same or worse biological weapons that were used to kill a half-million people in China. The United States was also concerned about the potential threat of attack by other biological and atomic weapons by submarines. It was an urgent military necessity to compel an immediate Japanese surrender and Occupation of Japan to eliminate the threat of any potential Japanese use of weapons of mass destruction in 1945 and the future. The Japanese OPERATION CHERRY BLOSSOMS AT NIGHT was a plan to attack San Diego and other American cities in the Continental United States with biological weapons launched from the world's largest submarines, the I-400 Class that were designed and built to deliver Japanese atomic bombs against New York City and other American port cities. The attacks were scheduled to begin on 22 September 1945. The use of the American atomic bombs and surrender of Japan ended those Japanese plans. The Japanese Imperial General Headquarters had already ordered the murder of more than 123,000 Allied prisoners of war and civilian internees beginning on 17-18 August 1945. The atomic bombs and subsequent Japanese surrender on 15 August 1945 saved those 123,000 and more Allied lives, which is more than the lives lost at Hiroshima. The atomic bombs also saved the lives of the Allies and Japanese who would otherwise been lost had the atomic bombs not been used and the war continued to a conclusion by invasion and/or by continued air and sea bombardment, naval blockade, and starvation of Japan. The loss ratio in the Battle of Okinawa had been about one American for every ten Japanese combatants. An American defeat of the 2 million regular Japanese troops and 2 million to 28 million Japanese conscripts in the Volunteer Fighting Corps would calculate out to possible American losses of 400,000 to 3 million men and Japanese losses of tens of millions of combatant and non-combatant men, women, and children. The continued naval blockade of Japan would have cost the lives of thousands of American aircrew and surface fleet sailors along with most of the entire population of Japan, with the Okinawa experience implying potential Japanese non-combatant losses of greater then 50 to 95 percent and combatant losses of 95 to 99 percent. Such equivalent or worse than Okinawa loss rates calculate out to 37 million to 67 million Japanese killed. The atomic bombs that forced Japan to stop waging war and killing the Allied and Japanese people cost Japan fewer people than would have been killed in only a few weeks of a continued war. Also, the atomic bombs did not kill any person who complied with the enemy warnings to evacuate the target areas in the cities scheduled to be attacked by air bombardments. Every person who was injured or killed by the atomic bombs assumed personal responsibility for their fates by their failures to heed he warnings of the impending air bombardments. None of the casualties resulting from the air bombardments with the atomic bombs, combatant and non-combatant, were immune from military attack; because they were lawfully forewarned to evacuate the military targets.
73% of Japans land mass is jagged, snaking, mountain ranges and every single, able bodied, Japanese citizen would have taken part in the defence. It would have been Americas Stalingrad if Stalingrad spanned 378,000 kilometres. It’s so fortunate that this invasion Never took place. It would have made Stalingrad look like a quick skirmish by comparison.
@@jacksonpalmer8955 well speaking about the moon, in 1969 US astronauts actually brought guns with them to the moon. Why? To kill Nazis that had bases up there. Intriguing right? I just made that up but it sounds cool.
My father was in the 5th Marine Division (see division patch) and was on Iwo Jima. He said they were prepping for the invasion of Japan and that they expected casualties of up to a million.
I read that the casualty estimations for the campaign were so high that the War Department made a massive amount of Purple Heart Medals. So many were made that production of new medals wasn't needed untill the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
I remember a professor of mine saying that after the liberation of the Philippines, Filipino soldiers began reorganizing and training as they were eager to volunteer to fight in the invasion of Japan, mainly to pay the Japanese back for their brutal occupation (he's interviewed a lot of Filipino veterans of the war). Of course, they didn't need to in the end, but using USAFFE/Philippine Army troops (who were still officially under the US Army at the time) was nowhere in the actual invasion plan. Maybe it was considered, but decided against during the creation of the plans. Given the casualty projections, I find it interesting that MacArthur and other American generals didn't involve troops from other countries aside from the British Forces in the invasion plan.
Maybe the number Filipino troops was too few to be mentioned or maybe that they were integrated with the US Army that distinguishing who the Filipinos are was not needed.
The Philippine Army wasn't in great shape at this point - it was still less than a year after liberation - and there were still major Japanese forces fighting in the mountains of northern Luzon. It was probably felt the reconstituted Philippine units were still too raw to make a meaningful contribution, and in any case they would be more useful in combat against the Japanese remnants in the Philippines, rather than trying to find a role for them (with all the logistical and organizational issues that may have involved) in the invasion of Japan.
I think you're right. I didn't consider the severity of the Japanese resistance still in the archipelago up to the end of the war (not to mention smaller units that refused to surrender until the 1970s). Still, it's interesting that there are oral accounts of Filipino units training for the invasion of Japan.
Yes, the fear of retribution against the Japanese populace was actually what made the Allies prevent Filipino troops, as well as soldiers from all other countries who experienced Japanese occupation, from being part of the post-war occupation forces. For an invasion, though, I doubt the US would consider possible war crimes a factor in banning Filipinos from combat considering their own troops were committing war crimes against the Japanese as well.
US trained/equipped Filipino troops by 1945 were chiefly support personnel (interpreters etc) or small reconstituted units of the pre War Philippine Constabulary regiments and those were small b/c of losses taken under the Japanese occupation. While VERY motivated, their use in the invasion would have denied the US military/Philippine civil government their use as stand ins for the civil police etc which was a far more critical issue at the time. Simply put, no allied nation except for the Brits had much in man or naval power to help in the invasion and the Brit role was to be naval & some air. The Kiwis & Aussies had lost hugely (as a percentage of a much smaller population base) and neither had the large scale unit experience of fighting the Japanese so they were also largely out. The Chinese had the manpower but had lost most of their best troops earlier and were still fighting the Japanese on their own soil. The Russians had the manpower but no real amphibious experience on this scale NOR naval assets. It made no sense in any manner or form to risk US naval assets to go around Japanese territory to pick up Russian troops for such a mission when American troops were far more capable and resources weren't that plentiful in context of the scale of the mission.
What I always say is, the Purple Hearts being awarded today date back to 1945. They were made to be awarded for the invasion of Japan. Think about that. Since then we haven't ran out of them since the war and they were made for the few invasions
not really, because annotations and the "end screen" are mutually exclusive now, if I use an annotation, the other stuff goes away... also annotations are not visible on smart phone (I think)... seems the guys who made that choice never really needed to use annotations.
At the beginning of implementation it was but a combination of revised tactics by the Navy and lack of planes fast and maneuverable enough to evade AA guns before reaching their target made them less effective.
Good overview, and you should also mention the civilian militias the Japanese started to form in mid 45 to combat Allied landings with guerrilla warfare and the like. They would not have been overly effective but they would have caused casualties and slowed down progress. Plus you should talk about what the Japanese population would have done and how it would have most likely been similar to what we saw on Saipan with the mass suicides and all that. It would have been an absolute nightmare all around. Getting the Japanese to surrender after the two bombs saved hundreds of thousands of American lives and Japanese culture.
My father served on an escort carrier that was part of the fleet slated to support the invasion and I remember him saying that when they heard that the invasion was not going to happen you could practically hear the sigh of relief from every crew member on board. He said that he truly believed he would never see home again prior to the announcement ( he had witnessed the invasion of Okinawa and saw several ships get hit). His main assignment was damage control party.
Hey, that was a very interesting topic. I have researched the war heavily academically but I never knew that such detailed planning had taken place for a planned invasion. Great work, very enjoyable.
That's actually my bad. I shoulda specified. lol It'd be interesting if they got Matthew Perry to play Matthew Perry in a movie, though. It'd probably be awful, but interesting.
And Japan is still not open to trade, at least not fair and open trade, but they will sell their goods in your country if you let them. Just don't expect them to open their markets to your goods.
I was told by a professor in my college senior world history class that in the plan after 2 weeks the logistics estimate for the USMC was only for 2 divisions. They figured that after that time an entire division worth of men would have been killed or evacuated. Ugh.
There was the Commonwealth Corps also involved, which was British and mostly Aussie/Kiwi veterans who had been fighting since Greece in 1940. The Royal Australian Navy had been part of the bombarding force for island hopping. Not a huge part - but a part. Would've been nice to get a mention.
The British Pacific Fleet, numbering ten carriers and four battleships (not including a small French fleet centered on the battleship Richelieu) was also involved. The British carriers were far more resilient to kamikaze attacks than the American carriers, while British Seafires were also very effective in the fleet CAP. The Commonwealth Corps was mostly unnecessary, I suspect, and was a political decision so that the British were involved in that final battle. The BPF, by contrast, would've been a crucial part of Downfall. As huge as the Allied armada was, they needed every ship and plane they had for that final invasion.
Transylvanian, why do you think it would have been better to allow the Imperial Japanese Army to control Japan? Do you have no compassion for the people that the Imperial Army enslaved? Do you think Japan would just quit and leave all of their colonized land if some asked them to?
But haven't you heard? " We didn't need to drop the atom bombs because the Japanese were about to surrender anyways." To which I respond, no. The Japanese resistance was getting more and more ferocious the closer we got to Japan. Were they a beaten country at this point in the war? Pretty much as most of their fleet was destroyed and their cities were being burned to the ground from strategic bombing. But that doesn't mean they were about to surrender.
@@judychurley6623 The Japanese government offered to surrender after the first bomb, but wouldn't agree on the Allies' 'unconditional' part of the terms. After the second bomb, the emperor, made the decision for them, by having a recording he had secretly made, broadcast on the radio which [implied] surrender.
My Dad had been in Europe in the 28th Army. In late July or early August they were sent back to the States, given leave there and then scheduled to go to the Pacific and be part of the invasion force. He said when Japan surrendered, it was like a miracle and totally unexpected. He knew this would be much more deadly than Europe was. When his leave was up, he reported for duty and was discharged I think the next day as he had enough points.
Certainly this grim scenario matches what I was taught growing up in the United States, namely that the atomic bomb droppings were trying to force a surrender without an invasion. The reaction of soldiers (end of video) also agrees with other comments I've heard and read, such as by Paul Fussell (author of Thank God for the Atom Bomb and other essays). Nice video. Thanks.
Transylvanian, why do you think it was reasonable to allow the same people who stared the war to maintain power after the war? America was, over all benevolent to post war Japan. Certainly much more benevolent than the Russians or Chinese would have been. This whole thing about humiliation is nonsense. If America started a heavy strategic bombing campaign with conventional weapons Japan would have ended up far worse off than after the atom bombs. A conventional invasion of Japan would have been even worse yet, with far more casualties than the atomic bombs. Why do you advocate for more violence, death, and war?
This one subject that revisionists love to argue. They deny this operation was ever seriously considered b/c starvation and raw material deprivation was going to cause the collapse of the Imperial government w/in weeks. They also tend to claim the use of nukes was not properly discussed b4 their use b/c the starvation theory was not given proper consideration. They underestimate by a large factor the resources (aircraft/armor/manpower/submarines) the defenders were accumulating and act as if the technological superiority of the US would be the largest single factor during the fight forgetting the fight would be largely an infantry fight once ashore. Given all the available data that is there if one cares to look it up and as you point out, the likely costs of an actual invasion--the whole convoluted argument falls apart. The hundred k plus of Japanese civil deaths due to the nukes is horrible while the alternative multi hundreds of thousands of them from starvation/disease/air/naval bombardments waiting for government collapse is a lesser evil? Then you have the anti nuke crowd claiming an invasion would have been better than nukes too....ugh Thanks for doing this vid, I plan on sending it to some of the fools who won't take a grasp of reality in these matters. Once again, your attention to detail and use of easily understood graphics is awesome
I heard that the allies had talks with Godzilla to request his aid in invading japan. he was meant to invade right into Tokyo bay after the first allied landing.
@@gabrielarquillo3331 My favorite piece of Alternate History with Godzilla was a Desert Storm War Game. To give the Iraqi a fighting chance , the game designer included a giant lizard with radioactive fire breath on their side.
Very very well made and interesting video. The notion of ending silently is something I can fully support as well. It was weird the first time, but I do like it now :)
One factor that often goes missing would have been the effect on the US long term of what would have been one of the most psychologically devastating invasions in history. The Japanese were training children to throw themselves under tanks and women and old men to charge lines with bamboo spears. Given what happened on Saipan it is very likely that a large number of these civilians would have done just that - forcing US troops to kill them. The results, first on the occupation of Japan and then on the US itself when large number of US troops came back from a campaign that would have made Vietnam look clean, can only be imagined, but would not have been the fifties and sixties we knew. Not sure a blockade (which the Navy was already advocating) would have been any better - occupying a country filled with starving people would have likely caused a similar trauma. In either case, Japanese culture would have been thoroughly destroyed (good with the bad), and Japan would be a totally different place. Using the Bomb (and getting the USSR to invade Manchuria) was by far the best way out, and not just because my dad would have sitting in one of the LSTs off shore for Olympic (and probably wouldn't have come home as "Ts" were like number 2 of the Kamikaze priority list...) .
They'd still have their culture and be the same today (although there could well be a Communist People's Republic of Japan/North Japan) but yeah a lot of people would definitely die on both sides.
Sorry, don't agree - Japanese culture is significantly different today from before the war, and that is at least in part due to a relatively benign US occupation. With the invasion and losses to the US, that occupation would have been much less benign and major efforts would have been made to repress what the US would have considered a "violent" culture - the results of which probably would NOT be what was expected, but would definitely been different from what happened. The bigger impact may have been in the US - With a significant number of US soldiers/marines returning with PTSD I don't think we would remember the 50s the same, nor would the US have been as willing to put its troops at risk for others - no Korean war, perhaps no NATO - that's a bit more than "a lot of people would be killed" - doubling or tripling US casualties for WW2 would have had consequences beyond just more dead.
Transylvanian, Why are you preaching apologetics for Imperial Japan? Do you really think that it would have been better for Asia if the Imperial Army still had power in Japan? Do you feel the same way about Europe? Would it have been better if the Nazis were still in control of Germany?
transylvanian - a "white peace" from Japan's side, which dictated that the imperial Japanese could maintain their current government, and allowed to keep their possessions in the pacific, meaning occupied China, Korea, while they would give compensation for all the damages on the U.S side without asking for anything on their side. If we Americans agreed to that "white peace" after the unprovoked attack in Pearl harbor, not only will our dignity of the nation be lost, but we would also have set the Koreans and Chineses in the worst possible fate. Mass murder is always a choice, but sometimes you only have limited choices, and that's when you have to choose the lesser devil among the choices - the A-bomb. Stop being an apologist.
Reviewing this in 2021 while looking into Operation Downfall I even more appreciate how very well done this video is than when I first saw it. Tip of the hat.
People are screaming this and that about atrocities and how "unjustifiable" the atomic bombs were how they killed thousands of people but don"t you realize with a land invasion those numbers would be in the millions and countless other atrocities would have happened on both sides, on another note look at japan after the war US stepped in and helped rebuild japan into the economic super power it is now with warm relations with the US.
Doesn't matter who started it, by sinking to their level you make yourself no better than them. And I don't care if you murder women and children with a bayonet or with a bomb dropped from an Airplane, it still makes you a murderer. If we hold the people who committed the Rape of Nanking responsible then we need to take a look at ourselves and hold ourselves responsible for "strategic bombing"
@dernwine ok, you can start with yourself since by enjoying the post war peace you are complicit in the atrocities and thus a murderer. Murders deserve death, so how you want to do it?
Robert Wilke. If I had ordered the bombings, or commited them then I would deserve death (though personally I favour life in prison over the death penalty. However there is a considerable difference between having been born into a now peacefull world and trying to make sure we never relive those years and being the person dropping the bombs, or ordering the bombs be dropped. The fact you can't tell the difference makes me seriously worried about your intellect. *edit* Let me guess you are also the kind of person who believes we should continue to shame and guild and punish the Germans and Japanese for their actions in the war too?
Truman did the right thing. My grandpa would have been going in to carry this out I am glad he did not have too. I might not be here if Truman had not dropped the bombs.
Great video and indeed great channel. I just discovered this in my recommended videos and have subsequently gone on a binge of your videos. You've earned yourself another subscriber. Cheers.
My father H. Burke Horton was a Navy lieutenant aerology (meteorology) officer in WWII. Armed with a degree in mathematical statistics, he was perhaps the Navy's top weather forecaster after finishing first in his class at their aerology school. He was designated to make the weather forecast for the invasion of Japan. Imagine the pressure that would have entailed! After the war he became a senior executive at Sperry Rand. His Sperry Rand staff included Grace Hopper and J. Presper Eckert, and he often ate lunch with General Leslie Groves in the Sperry Rand executive dining room. He also served on President Eisenhower's executive staff as director of the National Damage Assessment Center, a predecessor to FEMA.
Operation Downfall would’ve made Operation Overlord look like a picnic ride in a school bus in comparison. Imagine being a US soldier expecting Japanese resistance armed with rifles and machine guns instead a bunch of school kids charged at your squad with sharpen bamboo sticks and grenades while planes start diving from the sky right into the landing crafts.
Good lord, 300 kamikaze an hour? and this is just kyushu, imagine if they attacked kyoto or toyko. Ten of Thousand of suicide attacks of all kinds would be done per hour.
Then, the rest of the mainland. No total destruction of enemy forces, but, they could pull back, reform, and attack again. Ultimately Vietnam/Afghanistan civilian or are they soldiers situations. Very sobering.
I know the way people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki suffered was absolutely gruesome and terrifying. Logically though, we must look back and realize that the atomic bombs ultimately saved lives on both sides of the war.
Transylvanian, the Japanese Imperial Army was perfectly happy bombing civilians and turning Chinese cities to rubble. The only way to stop them was to destroy Japan’s ability to make war. To do this one has to blow up factories, and factories are located in cities. Your support of Japan’s warmongering is heartbreaking. Have you no compassion to all of the people the Imperial Army murdered, raped, and enslaved?
Doktor Skeletor, from what I have read in the comments on this page they are not enough to justify invading Imperial Japan, or dropping bombs on it. I guess everyone will have to accept that the Imperial Army can not be stopped, because blowing up the factories where the Imperial Japanese Army makes its ships, tanks, planes, guns, and mortars is immoral. What the Japanese carried off your fourteen year old daughter to force her to be a sex slave? Gee that is a bummer, but you know it would be immoral to go to "invade" Japan and attack any civilian brothel owners to get your daughter back. I guess you will just have to learn to cower in fear and live in a cave hiding from Japanese air raids. It would be immoral to fight back and drop bombs on Japan. Sorry Korea, Manchuria, China, Philippines, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Burma, Indonesia, USA, and all the other Pacific islands (and other nations that Japan invaded). It would be immoral to invade Japan and destroy their means to fight wars, a Japanese civilian might get hurt. It is much better to accept that your new Japanese landlords will kill your grandparents, impress you and your sons into labor camps and force your wife and daughters to be sex slaves. According to some on this video's comments that is the only moral thing to do.
transylvanian look mate, let's make a comparison of S.korea and N.korea okay? First of all S.korea is a constitutional democracy and N.korea is a communist now look at these two living conditions for the North , millions of civillians died bcuz of starvation and the south living conditions are better than those of the North . And if the US " mind " their own business well you wouldn't have the south Korea today but good thing the US were involved.
transylvanian you probably supported Hitler and his government as well. I’ve read a few of your comments and man, you’ve been brainwashed by someone. It’s not the Russians, because even they helped invade Japan, it can’t be anyone in Europe or Asia, because they had suffered at the hand of Japan as well. So you’re either a distant relative of the warmongering rulers of Japan, or you’re an entitled American just trolling for attention on TH-cam. I’m gonna go with the American one. Solid trolling lol.
Thanks for the informative video! Now I want to pay attention more in school and even do my own research to verify the things. Seeing the process by which you personally assessed the numbers with "raw" ish data is inspiring, and reminds me that behind every book or analysis I view, there is real thought, consideration, and room for error performed by the authors and re-tellers. It is very refreshing to see this. Thank you!
WW2 was an atrocious and bloody affair, I have nothing but respect for anybody civilian or soldier who had suffered through it. Hard decisions were made, many died I can't imagine what it felt to know no matter what choice you make millions can and will suffer not just for days but years after and yet if you don't choose millions will suffer and have suffered anyway it's maddening a true horror story taken place in real life. I hope we never see any war near that scale ever again.
I never said that Truman did not act in the best interests of the ChiComs and the Soviets. On the contrary, I have always said he DID at the expense of US interests.
Gregory Wade You said "Only an imbecile would charge a machine gun nest to swap Hitler and Tojo for Stalin and Mao". Considering that Hitler was actively trying to kill and displace the Russian out of Russia, and Tojo was actively trying to kill and displace the Chinese from China, I think it is logical for the Russians and Chinese to fight against their enemies, which was the point of my reply. Your next reply is nonsensical, and has nothing to do with your first reply. Or mine. I hope you don't take the the wrong way, but are you off your meds Gregory?
And I would never expect an imbecile to be aware of how many Russians Stalin had murdered nor how many Chinese Mao had murdered. Jump out of the Higgins boat, hero!
I had read that it was not just the two atomic bombs but the fact that a short time before the Soviets had declared war on Japan and were devastating them on the mainland. Recent wars between the two countries had meant that the Soviets had a score to settle.
i remember a time in highschool when i was a sophomore, about 2014, when our social studies teacher had the class write persuasive essays on whether or not the nuclear bomb should have been used against Japan in the second world war and then present said essay to the class. I found that I may have been the only one in the class to argue for the nuclear bomb, which was somewhat disconcerting considering I had done research into what the cost of lives might have been had we invaded. Around that time I began to think about where were headed as country, and as a race of men.
My grandfather was with the 1st cavalry division during the war and it was one of the divisions assigned to attack Kyushu. Im confident that I wouldn't be here today, if it wasn't for the atom bomb.
I definitely agree! My uncle was on a ship heading towards Okinawa when they received word that the Japanese had surrendered. Two of his brothers had been fighting in Europe, and had gotten orders to go to the San Francisco for "further training". Thankfully they were on a ship coming back from Europe when they heard the Japanese had surrendered.
To be honest, the Japanese auto industry builds more cars in America then American Auto makers. In way they kind of do have an empire. You can even surmise in a way, they really did win the war.
Destroyers were armed, not armoured. The British Empire and Commonwealth was going to provide 1/4 to 1/3rd of the invasion force against Japan, including the British Pacific Fleet (Task Force 57) that included 10 Aircraft Carriers and up to 4 Battleships by VJ Day.
It's a seemingly impossibility but it's true. It doesn't prevent war, but it (so far) has stopped World Wars from breaking out. By now, we should have had 2 more, WWIII and WWIV, and with the advancements in conventional weapons, the death toll would have been 3 to 10 times that in WWII, which cost over 50 million lives. So we are talking anywhere from 150 to 500 MILLION dead in a world without nuclear weapons. Our problem now is the acquisition of these weapons by rogue states and stateless terrorists.
Transylvanian, yes, because it would have been much better if a million Americans and ten million Japanese had died during a coventional invasion, and then America’s strategic bombing campaign burned down every last city in Japan. That would have been much better!
i remember when you had a few 100 subs and now you reached over 200k man your channel is growing fast and you really deserve it Beste Grüße an dich aus dem Mühlviertel Ich weis du fokussierst dich zurzeit nicht so sehr auf auf die Operation der Wehrmacht gegen die Sowjetunion, aber was ich von dir immer schon einmal in einem Video haben wollte war, warum du der Meinung bist dass ein Abdrehen der Panzerguppen der HG Mitte im Spätsommer 1941 die richtige Entscheidung war da sich hierbei Historiker ja immer noch nicht einigen können. Klar war es wenn man sich den Frontverlauf ansieht notwendig Kiew im Süden schnell zu nehmen aber Generäle etc. sagten man hätte Moskau nehmen können....
hey :) hehe, war heute im "Mühlviertel" essen, also in Urfahr. Wird jetzt wieder einiges mehr Wehrmacht Content geben. Für das Thema werd ich mir wohl vorher Kiew von Stahel (glaub ich) zulegen, aber ich will mal einige der ganzen neuen Bücher "abarbeiten". Hab auch was zur Bismarck bestellt und das ging heut beim amazon raus.
Benutzt du eine E-Reader? Anonsten müssen wir anfangen für einen Anbau für deine Privatbibliothek zu spenden. Ich habe bei mir zu Hause noch ein Büchlein von Joseph Engelmann über die Operation Zitadelle, das ich nicht mehr brauche, wenn du das haben willst lass es mich wissen. Welche Bücher würdest du einem interessiertem Laien empfehlen?
Thank you for the visualization. Excellent work. I’ve read D.M. Gangreco’s excellent “Hell to Pay: Operation Downfall” and it’s packed with exceptional information. This helps put it all in perspective.
I still have one burning question unanswered: What were the likely costs and risks of not invading and instead blockade and pound the island from the sea? If I was commander for US forces in the Pacific, I would have avoided the mainland and invaded Korea and smaller islands all around the country, maybe including Hokkaido, set up a blockade and kept up the pressure from the air. The goal would be to weaken Japanese forces further, increasing probability of surrender and intercept Russian occupation of Asian territory (as was done in Korea). In the meantime, an expeditionary force could be sent to rout the Japanese from China. If the Japanese don't surrender within a year, they would be severely weakened from lack of supplies, and mass famine could even erode the ability of the chain of command to enforce their decisions as local commanders would start to look out for themselves. Fill some of those amphibious assault ships with Chinese troops combined with weakened Japanese resistance, and US losses could likely be reduced by 50% or more. Also, several feints could be ordered with fake invasion fleets featuring heavy AA cover and doll "soldiers" to absorb limited Japanese aircraft numbers. This last part could be possible even without waiting a year, just one week before actual invasion in November would work as well. Am I missing something?
Oh, and just so nobody misunderstands: I don't think this would be a more humanitarian option than nuclear bombing, as civilians would likely be the ones to run out of food first and firebombings could be repeated throughout the blockade period.
Castles stood blockade for months, cities for years, Cuba for a generation. Yes the military situation was different, but sit and wait would be hard for 600,000 invasion troops.
Cuba wasn't being bombed round the clock by allied bombers Cuba wasn't being strafed to hell by allied fighters. Japan will if the Starvation option is used I expect any Japanese city with a pre-war population of over 50000 to be destroyed strafing anything remotely of military value such as oxcarts. Expect mass starvation maybe 4 million casualties until someone surrenders. It will utterly obliterate Japan as a nation state.
Your videos are excellent: based on hard facts. Heavy on fact, light on invective. Well done. I was a lawyer for 30 years, so I am well-used to encountering submissions from persons who rely on emotion over fact. You sir, are a very credible witness.
For a long time I have been of the opinion, that the two nuclear bombs did not only save countless American lives, but an even greater number of Japanese lives (soldiers and civilians alike that would have died in the fight for their home lands - see Okinawa for reference). Additionally, the sudden end to the war prevented the Soviet Union from getting involved, and prevented Japan from being occupied and separated into a western and a communist half - like Germany and Korea. (and look at the Kuril islands that are still occupied by Russia today) So no matter how you look at it - I think the A-bombs in the end were the much better choice for Japan. Sadly, many historians today do not agree with this point of view.
These videos are great! I have a question and request for a topic video. I used to play Axis and Allies fairly seriously when I was younger. One of the strategies I used playing Japan was to land infantry at Hawaii as part of attacking the U.S. Navy in the game there, usually on the first turn. In the game it forces the U.S. to defend its coast and ultimately takes pressure off of Germany on the other end of the board. However, a board game is not real life. Which bring me to the question and the topic video. Would Japan have been better off invading Hawaii with an amphibious assault as part of the Pearl Harbor attack? If so, what chance would the attack have to succeed? Why wasn't it done? Would it have altered the course of the war? Thanks much for taking the time to make and share these videos! I've learned so much from them.
Regardless of a Japanese continuation of the war it is highly unlikely that OLYMPIC could go ahead in it's meticulously planned form. The Soviet entry into the war utterly undermines the Japanese diplomatic and strategic position. Firstly, many of the elements of negotiated peace which were in the japanese inventory disappear- how can they negotiate about mainland Asian possessions, ie manchuria, korea, if in fact the soviets have taken them? How can they negotiate home island occupation if the Soviets are in Hokkaido? Secondly, the strategic position has radically changed. The easy fall of Japanese Korea gives the US a potential base much closer than Okinawa from which to launch an invasion. The fall of the Kurils and Korea also open the sea of Japan and it's western ports/beaches as invasion options. The 'correct' Japanese assumption of US invasion of Kyushu is overturned. Thirdly, through the lens of the Cold War a putative allied strategy against a hold out Japan might be premised on minimal US/Soviet co-operation. But what if Stalin were to ask for some USN support for landings, or simply to borrow some dumb commercial hulls to amplify his deployments? He sure didn't need US air support. Fourthly, If Stalin could get some level of co-operation from the UK and other western allies in the Far East, even as little as Lancasters flying out of Vladivostok instead of Okinawa, then I think the Japanese would capitulate, or the 'invasion' proceeds on axes other than those envisaged in OLYMPIC
MHV - Thanks for a great video about one of the most horrible "almost Histories". You do a great job with these. Best short discussion on Olympic I've seen since article (and war game) came out in Strategy and Tactics Magazine back in the late seventies/early eighties.
Trying to stop the Allies on the beaches of Kyushu would have been more of the stupid insanity that characterized much of Japan's waging of war in the Pacific theater. It would have resulted in more miserable failure for the hopelessly inept Japanese high command. Surprised the video did not mention that the Japanese made zero effort to stop the invaders on the beaches of Okinawa. Saving the worst for the American troops as they pushed inland worked out well if you believe inflicting the highest American casualties of the war constitutes success. I was expecting a repeat on Kyushu, but the Japanese considered their home islands sacred ground, so trying to cling to the beaches fits with their culture. However, I think it would have been an exceedingly stupid military choice, like too much of Japanese doctrine and tactics throughout the war. Consider "banzai attacks", three plane vics in 1945 - dropped by the Germans in the Spanish Civil War, not completing the Yamato and Musashi as aircraft carriers like their sister ship the Taiho - when carriers dominated Pacific warfare, throwing away air fleets in the "Great Marianas Turkey Shoot", allowing the precious core of highly trained pilots to fly without parachutes, failure to improve cryptography even after Yamamoto's death from codebreaking was published in the Chicago Tribune in 1943, failure to build up any high altitude air defenses (not even high altitude antiaircraft guns) while the B-29 threat from China and then Saipan became increasingly apparent, and so on. Look at the Japanese Navy's numerous failures to "finish the job" when they had victory in their grasp as they did after sinking four American cruisers at the Battle of Savo Island (1942), just days after the Marines landed on Guadalcanal Island. Admiral Mikawa might have added months more to the Solomon Islands campaign if he had pressed his advantage. He might even have forced Nimitz to start the island hopping campaign in some other part of the Pacific Ocean. In the Battle off Samar during the larger Battle of Leyte Gulf (1944) Admiral Kurita broke off the fight after penetrating the defensive screen around the troop transports and landing craft that were landing the US Army in the Philippine Islands. It was stupidity on an epic scale. Japanese soldiers fought like lions, but their high command was completely outclassed in waging modern war against an overwhelming foe. Admiral Yamamoto had understood Japan's only hope of reaching a peace deal with the Allies was to win great victories that entailed taking great risks. Risk averse Japanese commanders left themselves at the mercy of attrition and time was not on their side. As the Japanese Imperial General Staff, you look at your lightly armed militias combined with whatever regular forces haven't been chewed up on the islands or in China, your tremendous lack of food and ammo, then decide the best place to fight is right on the beaches with mobile forces to supplement. This would play perfectly into the Allies' hands, much like the Anglo-French move into Belgium allowed the Germans to split the seam at Sedan and dash to the English Channel in 1940. American doctrine and tactics from the American Civil War to the present day has emphasized heavy firepower and keeping the guns resupplied continuously. Those beaches of Kyushu would have been shooting galleries, just like all the previous amphibious landings since at least Tarawa. Lightly armed and barely trained militias in earthworks near the beaches would just be exposed targets for battleships, cruisers, rockets, and all manner of aircraft flying from aircraft carriers and Okinawa. Add in hundreds of Sherman tanks splashing ashore with high explosives and flamethrowers and I would expect 20:1 casualty rates. The 100 series and 300 series "divisions" (more like barely armed mobs) would have been annihilated while the 200 series divisions would have been the ones really hurting the Allies. I expect that the American casualty projections for Operations Olympic and Downfall presupposed a repeat of Okinawa, not the Japanese squandering their men on exposed beach positions or trying to execute maneuver warfare under clouds of rocket-firing Hellcats, Corsairs, Thunderbolts, and Mustangs. Ask Rommel how maneuver warfare played out in France after D-Day. Toss in the XXIst Army Air Force B-29's carpet bombing Japanese strongholds like the 8th Air Force had at the Falaise Gap in 1944 and things get even grimmer for the Japanese on Kyushu. Instead of throwing away their manpower on beaches and maneuver warfare, the Japanese high command should have considered possible war fatigue in the USA and concluded that dragging the war out longer, running up the casualty score, and frightening the Allies with suicide tactics at every turn might just get them a conditional surrender in 1946 or 1947. This would entail a repeat of Okinawa with the regular soldiers and the militia fighting from inland cave complexes, using guerrilla tactics on every street corner, and relying on civilian support to force the Allies into something like the Vietnam War (1964 - 1975) or Afghanistan (2001 - present). In a conventional war using opposing industrial bases and a great deal of attrition, Japan had no chance, as Yamamoto had understood in 1941. It's getting to where the comments on these videos are nearly as informative as the videos themselves. This is a tribute to their creator. Well done!
A guerrilla war only works if the "invader" or "foreign power" is supposedly there to "protect" the local indigenous government and population. In Vietnam, the USA supposedly protect the government of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) from the National Liberation Front (the insurgents in the South) who in turn was supported by the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam). American troops walked among South Vietnameses who might or might not be insurgents and they might or might not plan IEDs, shoot a rifle or rockets at them. A USA invasion of Japan will be the classic invasion plan. Any Japanese who carry as much as a sharpened stick, will be shot by nervous soldiers. Fraternisation with the locals will be avoided, except raping them. Contrast that with American GIs going to brothels in South Vietnam. That will not be a very difficult "guerrilla war". Civilian support is vital in a true guerrilla war, since the civilian economy is still functioning, generating enough supplies for the insurgents. In a conventional war with guerrilla tactics, civilian support is not going to be any more effective than being meatshield or cannon fodder. Will be traumatising on the troops having to shoot at Japanese womens running at them with sharpened bamboo sticks, but it's not going to be as difficult as any "real" guerrilla war.
There is no way the Soviets were going to stage a successful invasion of the Japanese home islands of Hokkaido and Honshu in any part of 1945. Other than the Kurile Islands, name a Soviet amphibious operation of WWII larger than a few islands in the Baltic Sea. According to the Wikipedia (grain of salt as always) article on the Pacific Fleet (Russia), in August 1945, they had 2 cruisers, 1 destroyer leader, 10 destroyers, 2 torpedo boats, and 19 patrol boats. When compared to the Anglo-American mega-armadas aimed at Kyushu in 1945, the Soviet Pacific Fleet was a rounding error. Note the complete absence of aircraft carriers. I expect a few hundred kamikazes would indeed have provided a "divine wind" that would have turned the Soviet invaders back to Vladivostock. I really wish people would stop this ridiculous speculation on a Soviet invasion of the Japanese home islands. It was not going to happen. Amphibious invasions are some of the most complex and intensive operations to plan and execute. The Soviets had little in the way of doctrine, equipment, or personnel to take on an island nation with millennia of seafaring experience, defended with suicidal tenacity. This dirty job fell primarily to the US Army and US Marine Corps, spared the task by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
One correction: IJN Taiho was purpose-built; the Yamato class conversion was the Shinano. It would've been a huge job to rebuild them as effective carriers (and equip them with good planes and crews, maintainers, etc). They entered service In 1941-2, when battleships were still part of every navy's strategic plan, including the RN and USN (who completed 10 battleships in 1941-4!).
My Father's LST (officially Landing Ship Tank, but also known as Large Slow Target) was going to be in the 1st Wave on the South-Eastern Bay. He was relieved when he heard about the first A-bomb being dropped!
I wonder if the Soviets had the ability to invade the Japanese Home Islands? I once heard that if we invaded Japan the Soviets would have invaded from the north and we would have had a split post war Japan, but I wonder if they had the ability to transport a large army.
Yes, but how would they get from Sakhalin to Hokkaido? (It takes quite a naval infrastructure and training regimen to make successful amphibious assaults.)
Wonderful video. May I ask if you plan to do any videos on the Northern Japanese defense preparations? There has been much debate on the 80,000 Japanese on the Kuril Islands.
When the holdout Onoda Hiroo returned to Japan in the fifties he was flabbergasted that Japan had surrendered and was occupied. So yeah, they would have fought.
I think that people see the unimaginable suffering caused by the bombs and are understandably horrified. Then they feel the need to defend innocent victims. However, they are either misled or just don't know about the alternatives. As horrible as the bombs were, the alternatives were definitely worse. Additionally, these people tend to apply modern mindsets retroactively to the war. But no modern way of thinking comes near to approximating the Imperial Japanese mindset in WWII
Am enjoying these informative vids and since I am watching these I can make an assessment of my own. I am predicting that in your next video you are going to atleast say the following once and if we are lucky a few more times: "Take the following saying with a grain of salt"
And just think, This would have been just one part of the invasion of Japan. Sure the atomic bombs were terrible but just think about how many people on both sides would have been lost. The Japanese would fight until they physically couldn't fight anymore. Civilians would be sacrificed so the army could be fed or to charge with spears and bombs. There may very well have been less than 100,000 Japanese people after such a battle.
Excellent vid :) Number of ships on D-Day seemed a bit low if landing craft were included on the other side of the ledger, but that's a minor point :).
![[Barbarossa] The Major Errors and Blunders - Or why Barbarossa Failed](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/A_3R-Rkn_98/mqdefault.jpg)
For all those that ask "why invade at all - why not blockade?": watch this video: th-cam.com/video/f9raqHGJH4Q/w-d-xo.html
Correction - it should be "Formosa (Taiwan)" NOT "Formosa (Korea)" thanks to ColHoganGer90
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No reason to invade Japan when a nice U.S. Navy blockade from submarines and a naval fleet would have caused FAMINE and an industrial implosion. Remember the Allied naval and air forces, especially Allied submarines, had sunk 8.5 MILLION TONS of Japanese merchant shipping during the war. Japan had almost NO merchant marine shipping left in March, 1945 the last time any fuel tanker made it through to the home Japanese islands. A blockade would have taken into 1946 but Japan was doomed to FAMINE and ECONOMIC IMPLOSION from a lack of foodstuffs, fuel and raw materials. A country that can't feed its own people is a country that can't continue to fight a major war effort. This reality isn't rocket science.
militaryhistorynow.com/2016/07/25/americas-submarine-war-how-the-silent-service-quietly-brought-about-the-downfall-of-japan/
@@rexfrommn3316 4,000 Chinese were dying each week.
@是邪恶的习近平 You make several points that are rather flimsy. Aside from a part of China, Manchuria and Korea, Japan had no more occupied territories where they would be fighting and/or committing atrocities.
As for feeding itself, Japan could not feed itself exclusively and hadn't been doing so since the 1930's. Much of the Korean rice harvests were imported to Japan. This point is made again and again in historical sources describing the Japanese annexation and occupation of Korea from 1910 until 1945. A blockade would likely have reduced significantly any further imports from Korea. Bombing of railways in Korea and a submarine blockade of the East Sea and Tsushima Straight would be two ways in which grain shipments could/would be reduced to Japan.
@@rexfrommn3316The US Government and military high command determined that an extended blockade would result in a negotiated settlement with Japan due to war weariness back in the States. This was which was unacceptable to Roosevelt, Truman and Marshall, as in their collective view the war would have to be then refought in twenty years which is what happened with Germany after WWI. This is also what the Japanese Imperial Command was hoping for so that Japan would be able to retain at least Korea, and possibly Formosa and other possessions they had held from pre- WWI years.
i think one of the most telling thing about operation downfall is that the stockpile of purple hearts the US built up in anticipation of the operation still last until this day
Wrong. They still have plenty on hand in 2017.
Wow...holy shit.
Source? And we think 4,000 deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan are a lot...
Please, do tell where your sources come from. I would like to read more
Even if true, that the supply lasted for 50 years - and wars in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq, it shows the scope of the expected casualties from Operations Olympic and Cornet.
I knew a man who had served in the First Marine Division. He fought on Guadalcanal, Peleliu and Okinawa. He was training for the invasion of Japan. Many of his cohorts were very cynical about their chances of survival.... When the heard about the Atomic Bombs, Russia joining the War and then the surrender....it was cathartic. Men who he saw as granite cried like little girls. He told me how stunned he was not to face death on another Battlefield. He then realized he was going home and he would marry the proverbial girl waiting back home...that he would have a life...
Gosh compared to the Soviets the Americans were so incredibly cowardly
@@randbarrett8706 That's easy to say with 70 years of separation, in 21st century comfort, anonymity and the bravery of being a keyboard warrior. Perhaps I should just call it stupidity, so that you have a chance of understanding the word. Flush out your headgear. Denigrating the integrity and valor of any fighting man of history, doing his duty as he saw it, from the comfort of the modern world is doing them and yourself dishonor.
@@randbarrett8706, three things for you to consider:
1-How much brainwashing each army was subjected to. I'm willing to bet the Americans had less.
2-The better you perceive life, and the more you got going for you back home, the more likely you are to fear battle.
3-As a Soviet you would have grow up in a country in civil war, lived through purges, and fought a bloody war where millions died. Overexposure to death desensitizes you. The Americans did not see as much blood, it's not the man, it's war front. Almost any untrained soldier, short of a psychopath, would not deal well with the realities of war. Important to remember as well that America was not at real risk, their homeland was more than secure and they did not see American civilian massacres.
So overall, comparing the "courage" of each army, on top of a very presumptions judgement coming from someone so far removed we might as well be judging biblical figures, is also like comparing apples to oranges. Yeah, maybe the willingness to go to battle for the soviets was higher and their fear of battle was lower, but that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the particular braveness level of the personality of each soldier, as there is a whole context behind it.
Wow, luckiest man on earth fighting in the worst of the Pacific and surviving.
Wouldn’t be here... am alive cuz if the “a bomb”...
The Japanese resistance on the mainland would probably have made Okinawa and Iwo Jima look like kid stuff.
It would have been..,.the outcome would still be the same though. You don't understand determination US had to win that war till unconditional surrender. Nothing would have stopped them
It would be a meat grinder with US Army having superior tanks.
@CKS1949 Having studied WW II to degree level and looked at several of the planning documents concerning Operation Olympic.
I have always suspected that it would have been a disaster for the allies and a catastrophe for the Japanese. If the experience of Iwo Jima and Okinawa was anything to go by.
The defending troops and civilians would have stopped at nothing to prevent the successful allied invasion. As a result I suspect that the allies would have had to withdraw. But it would have been a pyhrric victory for Japan. As all the allies would have done was to completely blockade and isolate the various Japanese islands.
Certainly it would have been extremely messy and probably would have gone for years if not decades regardless of allied resolve
(Dalton Morgan's comments accepted).
I have even wondered if it would still be going on now in a low level form like the situation with the DPRK.
A war ravaged Japan completely isolated from the rest of the world.
What ever the arguments over the atom bombs they brought it all to an abrupt end. Thus saving hundreds of thousands of allied lives and as Hirohito noted the Japanese nation itself.
My grandfather served with the marines in the Pacific- graduating HS shortly after the attack of Pearl Harbor. When he was finally allowed to join by the recruiters, he arrived at Pearl and Midway after the attacks and was- for lack of a better term- "part of the clean up crew". Bodies, wreckage, salvage, repairs, he did it all. Before he died in 2012, he told me he was sent home in summer 1945 to San Francisco- he and his platoon believed they were some of the first to go home.. To their surprise, they underwent vigorous training- much more difficult than basic. Looking back, he realized he was training for the invasion of the home islands of Japan and would be one of the first on the beach. Although it hurts to know those bombs were dropped, if it weren't for that my mom and her 8 siblings wouldn't be here and nor would my brother or I. I am grateful my grandpa never knew the actual numbers of defenders and his odds.. This makes me miss and appreciate him and our military that much more for their sacrifices.
Nick Stemberger so instead of you not existing,all those Japanese people never got the chance to live a life.Both ways it's bad,but the Americans did what's best for them,I can respect that.
That's the point I'm making.. The effects are still being felt by citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to this day. My family was just one of many that were impacted. My grandfather just happened to know more about the operation than his fellow marines. You saw the video; Over 650,000 soldiers were going to be part of the invasion force. My grandpa lived with terrible PTSD the rest of his life and I found out just before he died all this information. He lived knowing all this and kept it to himself.
If you don't want to suffer, don't rape and murder hundreds of thousands of chinese civilians, experiment on them with biological weapons, and attack by surprise first.
And don't initiate "total war" unless you want your civilian population to be killed too.
heard the subjugated civilian population and POWs alike in occupied Southeast Asia cheered when they read or heard Japan was bombed
Dima S You can bet that more Japanese civilians would have died had there been an invasion. It would have involved brutal urban combat which is never nice on the civilian population and considering that at Okinawa 8000 Japanese civilians comitted suicide you could expect millions to do the same. Okinawa was hell on Earth and a tradgedy, and invasion of Japan would have been a daily repeat of that.
Another deterrent to the Allied invasion of Japan was the loss of life to the Japanese themselves. Okinawa demonstrated that the Japanese would fight to the very death and the Allies had no desire to systematically exterminate the Japanese people. The Allied forces slaughtered the Japanese defenders at a rate of something like 10 to 1 and the Allies estimated that prosecuting the campaign in Japan would cost upwards of 1 million Allied lives. So, if the ratio held true, 10 million Japanese would be killed. And the ratio likely wouldn't hold true because the Japanese army was virtually crippled by this point--they were training school kids to charge the Allied lines with sharpened bamboo sticks. Japanese casualties would have been closer to 30-50 to 1 by the end of it.
For all the horror of the atomic bomb, it was actually the more humane choice by far.
Nonsense.... a negotiated settlement was the best option. Of course the allies insisted on unconditional surrender making it nearly impossible. Japan was willing to take negotiated settlement, even accept unfavourable terms as long it didn't include the humiliation of unconditional surrender.
@@dawatitest1dawati286 "negotiated settlement" lol
You mean a "treaty"? Like the treaty with China that Japan ignored in order to wage an undeclared war on them? Like the treaties which ended World War I which Japan ignored in order to expand her empire at the expense of all her neighbors? Like the treaty she had with the United States that she summarily ignored to sucker punch the Americans without any declaration of war?
Of course, the Japanese didn't want the humiliation of unconditional surrender. So... to avoid that they train children to take up sharpened bamboo spears and charge American and British machine guns? Yeah... real "reasonable" people there. Sounds like they totally learned their lesson....
You're right. There was a third option. The third option was to leave the rapists of Nanking in possession of the Japanese political power. The third option was to leave the perpetrators of Pearl Harbor as leaders of the empire. The third option was to leave the executors of the Bataan Death March in command of Japan and her military. The third option was to leave the mass-murdering psychopaths responsible for the deaths of 10 million innocent people as the heads of the Japanese Empire. The third option was for the consequences of the racist ethnic cleansing done by the Japanese to be winked at and overlooked even as we brought the Germans to total destruction for exactly the same thing.
Uh... no. If these are my options...
1) Let the Japanese get away with everything they did from 1931 - 1945
2) Systematically butcher the entire Japanese race and take millions of casualties while doing so.
3) Drop atomic bombs on them until they surrender.
...then #3 remains--BY FAR--the best option. There was no reason to believe the Japanese would honor any treaty it made with the Allies and there was no way the West was going to tolerate going through another hellish nightmare trying to fight those fanatics. And even were those two things not so, any sense of justice for the heinous acts of sheer barbarity on the part of the Japanese DEMANDED unconditional surrender.
dawatitest1 Dawati japan had a history of disregarding treaties and their leaders had to pay and be humiliated for the crimes against humanity they unleashed upon the nations they conquered.
@@dawatitest1dawati286 "unconditional surrender", like how the Allies didn't allow the Japanese to keep their emperor?
Oh wait...
@@johnbabylon7626 ...YOU'RE DOGGONE RIGHT- YOU REALLY TOLD THAT BUM WHERE TO GET OFF-!!!
"200 - 300 kamikazes per hour with 4,000 - 6,000 planes"
OH MY FUCKING GOD
See Birdemic and Birdemic 2 for an idea of the carnage
Goy Provat That'd be one hell of a killstreak.
Not quite, since you have to die before you get any kills.
Birdemic 3
Birdemic 4
Very good video - too bad you did not have a chance to talk with my uncle, he was going to be in the invasion forces. Instead, he was part of the teams that dismantled the defenses surrounding the beach areas. He related that the defenses were much more in-depth and well situated than the planners originally envisioned.... the casualties would have been enormous.
MHV, let me congratulate you on your ability to address a difficult, detailed subject in a foreign language. English is not an easy language to learn, and military history is a complicated subject... probably one of the most complicated subjects discussed in 'common language', without the jargon of the sciences or law. You are clear, concise, and apply simple comparisons to your points that almost anyone can understand.
GREAT work.
[google-translate version into German]
Ich gratuliere Ihnen zu Ihrer Fähigkeit, ein schwieriges, detailliertes Thema in einer Fremdsprache anzusprechen. Englisch ist keine leicht zu erlernende Sprache, und Militärgeschichte ist ein kompliziertes Thema ... wahrscheinlich eines der kompliziertesten Themen, die in der "gemeinsamen Sprache" diskutiert werden, ohne die Fachsprache der Wissenschaften oder des Rechts. Sie sind klar und präzise und wenden einfache Vergleiche auf Ihre Punkte an, die fast jeder verstehen kann.
Gute Arbeit.
12:07
Everyone:Bi-planes are old and aren’t scary
KMS Bismarck: I fear no ship but that plane terrifies me
Only because of lucky stop plue Eugen sail away for her...usually cruiser would tow the battleship away.
@@WadcaWymiaru can you write that shit again in a comprehensible language
@@Idras74 The swordfish jamming Bismarck's rudder was a lucky hit. Also, Prinz Eugen had been ordered to detach and run for safety after the sinking of the Hood, else PE could have taken the Bismarck under tow for the relatively short distance to get under land based air cover.
It's debatable whether this is true, but the British fleet was badly out of position due to a bad guess(the swordfish strikes were desperation).
@@Grimmwoldds there we go
Josefie Krakowski the last ship sunk by kamikaze was sunk by a biplane (DD-792)
After serving in Europe, my Dad was on his way to be part of the invasion of Japan. He was on 30 days leave in the States when Japan surrendered. He said you could not imagine how relieved he was. Sept. 15, 1945 he was a free man! Also he was very surprised.
My Fatheg was assigned to be on the First wave of the invasion for if it was going to happen .
You know you missed an opportunity to to call it "operation sunset"
Probably the invasion of Hokkaido, the first island is the climb (Olympic), the big island is the jewel (Coronet), and the last is the end (Sunset)
If there is a name for a hypothetical invasion of Hokkaido idk what it is
So this is why my grandfather introduces himself with "the nucular bomb saved my life"
Destroyed a lot more.
@sushanalone - The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki could have killed ten times as many as they actually did, and still would have saved several times as many as they killed. What's more, most of the lives saved by the atomic bombs were Japanese. Most of the rest were civilians in Japanese-occupied portions of the Asian mainland.
One thing not touched upon in the video is that by August 1945 most US commanders were quietly backing away from the idea of an invasion, precisely because of their excellent intelligence on the Japanese buildup in southern Kyushu (which IS described very nicely in the video). The only other alternative was an extended siege: blockade and bombardment. If the Japanese government had managed to hold on to power through the winter (another 6 months, say), tens of millions of Japanese civilians - at least 1 person in 3 from the total civilian population, because that was the proportion the IJA was planning to totally cut off in order to hoard supplies for the remainder - would have starved to death. (It almost happened anyway - one of the big post-VJ Day challenges for the Allied occupation forces was trying to provide & distribute enough food to keep the starving civilian population alive).
That is true , but i will not associate that with race or ethnicity, considering how many German and Italian civilians were killed by such bombings. But yes ethnicity was used crudely in war-time propaganda in US and UK.
You can also argue that the Bombs saved the Japanese culture. The fanatics would have seen the entire nation destroyed.
same for my grandfather he was in the 25th infantry and saw action in Philippines early 1945. His division was set to land at Miyazaki as part of US I Corps
It is difficult to say, even more gruesome to understand that the casualties of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the kindest way to get Japanese to surrender. How dark is that reality?
Transylvanian, and yet the USA was particularly benevolent to Japan after the war. Amazing that if the USA’s goal was to humiliate Japan they did not colonize Japan, and allowed them to retain their autonomy. I would have much rather lived in post war Japan than post war East Germany!
AWDASDlkj, fucking vomits. oh god, the cringe. I'd like to see you pull your sources other than getting shit out of your ass.
Apparently you are unaware of what a sick society Japan had then. There was NO CHANCE we were going to leave that intact any more than we were going to allow the NAZI's to survive unmolested. Nor should we have. The Bushido system had to be dismantled.
+Transylvanian ---- "Is is disgusting what US propaganda has made you believe. The bombs were a choice not a necessity. The invasion was NOT the only other option. The japanese were willing to negotiate a peace, any peace that was not unconditional surrender. The US demand for unconditional surrender was sadistic. They knew the Japanese would never accept such a humiliation so they used this as an excuse to commit one of the worst atrocities and war crimes of the war."
The false propaganda is coming from you. The use of the atomic bombs were a military necessity due to the ongoing Japanese threats to kill as many Allied and Japanese people as possible while they attempted to force the Allies to accept their unacceptable Japanese terms for a negotiated armistice that would have left their lethal threat intact and immune from attack for the future.
The Japanese war faction in the Supreme War Council rejected any form of surrender whatsoever in favor of the entire Japanese nation committing suicide. When Japan's leaders planned the war in December 1940, their adopted plan was to conquer as much territory as possible and then seek a negotiated armistice and settlement that would allow Japan to retain all or most of the conquered territories and a number of trade concessions from the Allies. By the Summer of 1945, the war faction of the Supreme War Council continued to insist upon using the same plan for a negotiated armistice, except the terms were to allow Japan to keep only a fraction of the territories it conquered, no Allied occupation of Japan, and few other concessions to the Allies. That war faction expected to perfect their biological and nuclear weapons of mass destruction in preparation for a renewal of their war of aggression at a future date, when their circumstances for success were not so unfavorable as they were in 1945. The Allies could not allow the war faction to succeed in such a plan, so a prompt and unconditional surrender by Japan was necessary to deny the war faction the capability to pose a future threat to the Allies and the rest of the world.
The use of the atomic bombs was an urgent military necessity and was not a war crime. The Japanese had already killed upwards of one-half million men, women, and children with the use of biological weapons of mass destruction in China. The Japanese Army and Navy attempted to build their own Japanese atomic bombs, and the United States captured some of the German enriched Uranium being shipped by submarine to Japan in 1945. So, the United States had good reason to know Japan was trying to produce weapons of mass destruction that posed a threat to the safety of tens of millions of Americans in the Continental United States. Japan had already conducted the world's first intercontinental air bombardment campaign when it bombarded North America with balloon bombs. The United States was concerned that the Japanese balloon bombs could attack Americans with the same or worse biological weapons that were used to kill a half-million people in China. The United States was also concerned about the potential threat of attack by other biological and atomic weapons by submarines. It was an urgent military necessity to compel an immediate Japanese surrender and Occupation of Japan to eliminate the threat of any potential Japanese use of weapons of mass destruction in 1945 and the future.
The Japanese OPERATION CHERRY BLOSSOMS AT NIGHT was a plan to attack San Diego and other American cities in the Continental United States with biological weapons launched from the world's largest submarines, the I-400 Class that were designed and built to deliver Japanese atomic bombs against New York City and other American port cities. The attacks were scheduled to begin on 22 September 1945. The use of the American atomic bombs and surrender of Japan ended those Japanese plans.
The Japanese Imperial General Headquarters had already ordered the murder of more than 123,000 Allied prisoners of war and civilian internees beginning on 17-18 August 1945. The atomic bombs and subsequent Japanese surrender on 15 August 1945 saved those 123,000 and more Allied lives, which is more than the lives lost at Hiroshima. The atomic bombs also saved the lives of the Allies and Japanese who would otherwise been lost had the atomic bombs not been used and the war continued to a conclusion by invasion and/or by continued air and sea bombardment, naval blockade, and starvation of Japan. The loss ratio in the Battle of Okinawa had been about one American for every ten Japanese combatants. An American defeat of the 2 million regular Japanese troops and 2 million to 28 million Japanese conscripts in the Volunteer Fighting Corps would calculate out to possible American losses of 400,000 to 3 million men and Japanese losses of tens of millions of combatant and non-combatant men, women, and children. The continued naval blockade of Japan would have cost the lives of thousands of American aircrew and surface fleet sailors along with most of the entire population of Japan, with the Okinawa experience implying potential Japanese non-combatant losses of greater then 50 to 95 percent and combatant losses of 95 to 99 percent. Such equivalent or worse than Okinawa loss rates calculate out to 37 million to 67 million Japanese killed. The atomic bombs that forced Japan to stop waging war and killing the Allied and Japanese people cost Japan fewer people than would have been killed in only a few weeks of a continued war. Also, the atomic bombs did not kill any person who complied with the enemy warnings to evacuate the target areas in the cities scheduled to be attacked by air bombardments. Every person who was injured or killed by the atomic bombs assumed personal responsibility for their fates by their failures to heed he warnings of the impending air bombardments. None of the casualties resulting from the air bombardments with the atomic bombs, combatant and non-combatant, were immune from military attack; because they were lawfully forewarned to evacuate the military targets.
More Japanese died in the Tokyo raids than both of the atomic attacks.
73% of Japans land mass is jagged, snaking, mountain ranges and every single, able bodied, Japanese citizen would have taken part in the defence. It would have been Americas Stalingrad if Stalingrad spanned 378,000 kilometres. It’s so fortunate that this invasion Never took place. It would have made Stalingrad look like a quick skirmish by comparison.
378000 km is over halfway to the moon iirc 😅 but your point still stands
@@jacksonpalmer8955 sorry, I mean’t square kilometres, lol.
@@jacksonpalmer8955 well speaking about the moon, in 1969 US astronauts actually brought guns with them to the moon. Why? To kill Nazis that had bases up there. Intriguing right? I just made that up but it sounds cool.
Japan would be a theater by itself
@@thediaz07 There were Nazi bases on the moon?!?
My father was in the 5th Marine Division (see division patch) and was on Iwo Jima. He said they were prepping for the invasion of Japan and that they expected casualties of up to a million.
I heard up to 4 million
But maybe that included the Japanese and it's citizens
I read that the casualty estimations for the campaign were so high that the War Department made a massive amount of Purple Heart Medals. So many were made that production of new medals wasn't needed untill the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Ian Babcock It's true
Afaik they havent manufactured new ones since WW2.
@@VineFynn IIRC they still giving out ones created for that invasion.
I remember a professor of mine saying that after the liberation of the Philippines, Filipino soldiers began reorganizing and training as they were eager to volunteer to fight in the invasion of Japan, mainly to pay the Japanese back for their brutal occupation (he's interviewed a lot of Filipino veterans of the war).
Of course, they didn't need to in the end, but using USAFFE/Philippine Army troops (who were still officially under the US Army at the time) was nowhere in the actual invasion plan. Maybe it was considered, but decided against during the creation of the plans. Given the casualty projections, I find it interesting that MacArthur and other American generals didn't involve troops from other countries aside from the British Forces in the invasion plan.
Maybe the number Filipino troops was too few to be mentioned or maybe that they were integrated with the US Army that distinguishing who the Filipinos are was not needed.
The Philippine Army wasn't in great shape at this point - it was still less than a year after liberation - and there were still major Japanese forces fighting in the mountains of northern Luzon. It was probably felt the reconstituted Philippine units were still too raw to make a meaningful contribution, and in any case they would be more useful in combat against the Japanese remnants in the Philippines, rather than trying to find a role for them (with all the logistical and organizational issues that may have involved) in the invasion of Japan.
I think you're right. I didn't consider the severity of the Japanese resistance still in the archipelago up to the end of the war (not to mention smaller units that refused to surrender until the 1970s). Still, it's interesting that there are oral accounts of Filipino units training for the invasion of Japan.
Yes, the fear of retribution against the Japanese populace was actually what made the Allies prevent Filipino troops, as well as soldiers from all other countries who experienced Japanese occupation, from being part of the post-war occupation forces. For an invasion, though, I doubt the US would consider possible war crimes a factor in banning Filipinos from combat considering their own troops were committing war crimes against the Japanese as well.
US trained/equipped Filipino troops by 1945 were chiefly support personnel (interpreters etc) or small reconstituted units of the pre War Philippine Constabulary regiments and those were small b/c of losses taken under the Japanese occupation. While VERY motivated, their use in the invasion would have denied the US military/Philippine civil government their use as stand ins for the civil police etc which was a far more critical issue at the time.
Simply put, no allied nation except for the Brits had much in man or naval power to help in the invasion and the Brit role was to be naval & some air. The Kiwis & Aussies had lost hugely (as a percentage of a much smaller population base) and neither had the large scale unit experience of fighting the Japanese so they were also largely out. The Chinese had the manpower but had lost most of their best troops earlier and were still fighting the Japanese on their own soil. The Russians had the manpower but no real amphibious experience on this scale NOR naval assets. It made no sense in any manner or form to risk US naval assets to go around Japanese territory to pick up Russian troops for such a mission when American troops were far more capable and resources weren't that plentiful in context of the scale of the mission.
What I always say is, the Purple Hearts being awarded today date back to 1945. They were made to be awarded for the invasion of Japan. Think about that. Since then we haven't ran out of them since the war and they were made for the few invasions
Around 11:17 you've written "Formosa (Korea)" while it should read "Formosa (Taiwan)". Just kind of a typo, I guess.
yes, thanks, sadly I can't correct it with annotations.
You sort of can correct it. Put an annotation overtop of it with the correct designation.
not really, because annotations and the "end screen" are mutually exclusive now, if I use an annotation, the other stuff goes away... also annotations are not visible on smart phone (I think)... seems the guys who made that choice never really needed to use annotations.
mentally it was highly effective way more then conventional.
At the beginning of implementation it was but a combination of revised tactics by the Navy and lack of planes fast and maneuverable enough to evade AA guns before reaching their target made them less effective.
"If it wasn't for those damn Yanks, we could have kept the war going another 10 years!"
Indeed the could have.
Soviets
@@lif3andthings763 nope captain "mad" Jack Churchill (no relation to the prime minister) on hearing of the Japanese surrender
Good overview, and you should also mention the civilian militias the Japanese started to form in mid 45 to combat Allied landings with guerrilla warfare and the like. They would not have been overly effective but they would have caused casualties and slowed down progress. Plus you should talk about what the Japanese population would have done and how it would have most likely been similar to what we saw on Saipan with the mass suicides and all that.
It would have been an absolute nightmare all around. Getting the Japanese to surrender after the two bombs saved hundreds of thousands of American lives and Japanese culture.
My father served on an escort carrier that was part of the fleet slated to support the invasion and I remember him saying that when they heard that the invasion was not going to happen you could practically hear the sigh of relief from every crew member on board. He said that he truly believed he would never see home again prior to the announcement ( he had witnessed the invasion of Okinawa and saw several ships get hit). His main assignment was damage control party.
Hey, that was a very interesting topic. I have researched the war heavily academically but I never knew that such detailed planning had taken place for a planned invasion. Great work, very enjoyable.
Last time I was this early, Matthew Perry was forcefully opening Japan to foreign trade.
what movie?
That's actually my bad. I shoulda specified. lol It'd be interesting if they got Matthew Perry to play Matthew Perry in a movie, though. It'd probably be awful, but interesting.
Fuzzy Dunlop Wow I'm feeling so stupid right now...
could Japan BE open to trade?
And Japan is still not open to trade, at least not fair and open trade, but they will sell their goods in your country if you let them. Just don't expect them to open their markets to your goods.
I was told by a professor in my college senior world history class that in the plan after 2 weeks the logistics estimate for the USMC was only for 2 divisions. They figured that after that time an entire division worth of men would have been killed or evacuated. Ugh.
I'm a combat veteran. That quote at the end made me cry.
There was the Commonwealth Corps also involved, which was British and mostly Aussie/Kiwi veterans who had been fighting since Greece in 1940. The Royal Australian Navy had been part of the bombarding force for island hopping. Not a huge part - but a part. Would've been nice to get a mention.
Canadians and Indians too.
Well as you say, they weren't a very large contribution.
@@KillerKane0 They were a footnote.
The British Pacific Fleet, numbering ten carriers and four battleships (not including a small French fleet centered on the battleship Richelieu) was also involved. The British carriers were far more resilient to kamikaze attacks than the American carriers, while British Seafires were also very effective in the fleet CAP. The Commonwealth Corps was mostly unnecessary, I suspect, and was a political decision so that the British were involved in that final battle. The BPF, by contrast, would've been a crucial part of Downfall. As huge as the Allied armada was, they needed every ship and plane they had for that final invasion.
Your presentations are excellent. Well researched, well organized and well presented. Sehr gut!
@ 14:44 "For all our manhood, we cried" as a Veteran and Sailor (of the Gulf War) I can feel my enemy's pain and I weep for him.
that was actually a quote of a US Veteran.
ok.. that just floored me.
Transylvanian, why do you think it would have been better to allow the Imperial Japanese Army to control Japan? Do you have no compassion for the people that the Imperial Army enslaved? Do you think Japan would just quit and leave all of their colonized land if some asked them to?
@transylvanian It is not fair if you were the aggressor and now losing to demand whitepeace.
But haven't you heard? "
We didn't need to drop the atom bombs because the Japanese were about to surrender anyways."
To which I respond, no. The Japanese resistance was getting more and more ferocious the closer we got to Japan. Were they a beaten country at this point in the war? Pretty much as most of their fleet was destroyed and their cities were being burned to the ground from strategic bombing. But that doesn't mean they were about to surrender.
They believed we only had one bomb and didn't surrender until after he 2nd one was detonated.
@@judychurley6623 The Japanese government offered to surrender after the first bomb, but wouldn't agree on the Allies' 'unconditional' part of the terms.
After the second bomb, the emperor, made the decision for them, by having a recording he had secretly made, broadcast on the radio which [implied] surrender.
@@stephenarbon2227 So, the surrender didn't happen until after the 2nd bomb.
glad to see this video is still monitized.
I like how your "overflights on other islands" icon is the UK
That would have been quite a deception
I noticed this as well. LOL
My Dad had been in Europe in the 28th Army. In late July or early August they were sent back to the States, given leave there and then scheduled to go to the Pacific and be part of the invasion force. He said when Japan surrendered, it was like a miracle and totally unexpected. He knew this would be much more deadly than Europe was. When his leave was up, he reported for duty and was discharged I think the next day as he had enough points.
Certainly this grim scenario matches what I was taught growing up in the United States, namely that the atomic bomb droppings were trying to force a surrender without an invasion.
The reaction of soldiers (end of video) also agrees with other comments I've heard and read, such as by Paul Fussell (author of Thank God for the Atom Bomb and other essays). Nice video. Thanks.
Transylvanian, why do you think it was reasonable to allow the same people who stared the war to maintain power after the war? America was, over all benevolent to post war Japan. Certainly much more benevolent than the Russians or Chinese would have been. This whole thing about humiliation is nonsense. If America started a heavy strategic bombing campaign with conventional weapons Japan would have ended up far worse off than after the atom bombs. A conventional invasion of Japan would have been even worse yet, with far more casualties than the atomic bombs. Why do you advocate for more violence, death, and war?
The quality of this video is next level!!
This is one of your best videos! And solid ending.
This one subject that revisionists love to argue. They deny this operation was ever seriously considered b/c starvation and raw material deprivation was going to cause the collapse of the Imperial government w/in weeks. They also tend to claim the use of nukes was not properly discussed b4 their use b/c the starvation theory was not given proper consideration. They underestimate by a large factor the resources (aircraft/armor/manpower/submarines) the defenders were accumulating and act as if the technological superiority of the US would be the largest single factor during the fight forgetting the fight would be largely an infantry fight once ashore.
Given all the available data that is there if one cares to look it up and as you point out, the likely costs of an actual invasion--the whole convoluted argument falls apart. The hundred k plus of Japanese civil deaths due to the nukes is horrible while the alternative multi hundreds of thousands of them from starvation/disease/air/naval bombardments waiting for government collapse is a lesser evil? Then you have the anti nuke crowd claiming an invasion would have been better than nukes too....ugh
Thanks for doing this vid, I plan on sending it to some of the fools who won't take a grasp of reality in these matters. Once again, your attention to detail and use of easily understood graphics is awesome
Just see what happened in Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Those are isolated garrisons with no chance of relieve. Now multiply that by thousands.
Thanks
thank you!!!
I heard that the allies had talks with Godzilla to request his aid in invading japan. he was meant to invade right into Tokyo bay after the first allied landing.
But according to one of the movies, Godzilla help the Japanese on one of the islands defeat the Americans .
@@unclepatrick2 Look That before Godzilla saw the money the Americans where offering on the table and a film deal.
@@gabrielarquillo3331 My favorite piece of Alternate History with Godzilla was a Desert Storm War Game.
To give the Iraqi a fighting chance , the game designer included a giant lizard with radioactive fire breath on their side.
@@gabrielarquillo3331 To be fair though Ghidorah is no push over though and is normally stronger than Godzilla in most films anyway.
Very very well made and interesting video. The notion of ending silently is something I can fully support as well. It was weird the first time, but I do like it now :)
One factor that often goes missing would have been the effect on the US long term of what would have been one of the most psychologically devastating invasions in history. The Japanese were training children to throw themselves under tanks and women and old men to charge lines with bamboo spears. Given what happened on Saipan it is very likely that a large number of these civilians would have done just that - forcing US troops to kill them. The results, first on the occupation of Japan and then on the US itself when large number of US troops came back from a campaign that would have made Vietnam look clean, can only be imagined, but would not have been the fifties and sixties we knew. Not sure a blockade (which the Navy was already advocating) would have been any better - occupying a country filled with starving people would have likely caused a similar trauma. In either case, Japanese culture would have been thoroughly destroyed (good with the bad), and Japan would be a totally different place. Using the Bomb (and getting the USSR to invade Manchuria) was by far the best way out, and not just because my dad would have sitting in one of the LSTs off shore for Olympic (and probably wouldn't have come home as "Ts" were like number 2 of the Kamikaze priority list...) .
They'd still have their culture and be the same today (although there could well be a Communist People's Republic of Japan/North Japan) but yeah a lot of people would definitely die on both sides.
Sorry, don't agree - Japanese culture is significantly different today from before the war, and that is at least in part due to a relatively benign US occupation. With the invasion and losses to the US, that occupation would have been much less benign and major efforts would have been made to repress what the US would have considered a "violent" culture - the results of which probably would NOT be what was expected, but would definitely been different from what happened. The bigger impact may have been in the US - With a significant number of US soldiers/marines returning with PTSD I don't think we would remember the 50s the same, nor would the US have been as willing to put its troops at risk for others - no Korean war, perhaps no NATO - that's a bit more than "a lot of people would be killed" - doubling or tripling US casualties for WW2 would have had consequences beyond just more dead.
Transylvanian, Why are you preaching apologetics for Imperial Japan? Do you really think that it would have been better for Asia if the Imperial Army still had power in Japan? Do you feel the same way about Europe? Would it have been better if the Nazis were still in control of Germany?
"Soldiers are never 'forced' to kill civilians. They can simply choose not to."
I'm sorry, WHAT?
transylvanian - a "white peace" from Japan's side, which dictated that the imperial Japanese could maintain their current government, and allowed to keep their possessions in the pacific, meaning occupied China, Korea, while they would give compensation for all the damages on the U.S side without asking for anything on their side.
If we Americans agreed to that "white peace" after the unprovoked attack in Pearl harbor, not only will our dignity of the nation be lost, but we would also have set the Koreans and Chineses in the worst possible fate.
Mass murder is always a choice, but sometimes you only have limited choices, and that's when you have to choose the lesser devil among the choices - the A-bomb.
Stop being an apologist.
Reviewing this in 2021 while looking into Operation Downfall I even more appreciate how very well done this video is than when I first saw it. Tip of the hat.
People are screaming this and that about atrocities and how "unjustifiable" the atomic bombs were how they killed thousands of people but don"t you realize with a land invasion those numbers would be in the millions and countless other atrocities would have happened on both sides, on another note look at japan after the war US stepped in and helped rebuild japan into the economic super power it is now with warm relations with the US.
Doesn't matter who started it, by sinking to their level you make yourself no better than them. And I don't care if you murder women and children with a bayonet or with a bomb dropped from an Airplane, it still makes you a murderer. If we hold the people who committed the Rape of Nanking responsible then we need to take a look at ourselves and hold ourselves responsible for "strategic bombing"
@dernwine ok, you can start with yourself since by enjoying the post war peace you are complicit in the atrocities and thus a murderer. Murders deserve death, so how you want to do it?
Robert Wilke. If I had ordered the bombings, or commited them then I would deserve death (though personally I favour life in prison over the death penalty. However there is a considerable difference between having been born into a now peacefull world and trying to make sure we never relive those years and being the person dropping the bombs, or ordering the bombs be dropped. The fact you can't tell the difference makes me seriously worried about your intellect.
*edit* Let me guess you are also the kind of person who believes we should continue to shame and guild and punish the Germans and Japanese for their actions in the war too?
Truman did the right thing. My grandpa would have been going in to carry this out I am glad he did not have too. I might not be here if Truman had not dropped the bombs.
Some people are just good at complaining rather than solving real problems.
Thank you for a very thorough and insightful overview of what could have been one of the most bloody and hotly contested battles of WWII.
Great video and indeed great channel. I just discovered this in my recommended videos and have subsequently gone on a binge of your videos. You've earned yourself another subscriber. Cheers.
Thank you! Be sure to also check out my second channel: military history not visualized
“If we are prepared to sacrifice 20 million Japanese lives in kamikaze effort, victory will be ours!”
Admiral Takijiro Onishi
8/10,1945
after this video I became a patron. We should support this guy, he's objective and really tries to get his facts right.
My father H. Burke Horton was a Navy lieutenant aerology (meteorology) officer in WWII. Armed with a degree in mathematical statistics, he was perhaps the Navy's top weather forecaster after finishing first in his class at their aerology school. He was designated to make the weather forecast for the invasion of Japan. Imagine the pressure that would have entailed! After the war he became a senior executive at Sperry Rand. His Sperry Rand staff included Grace Hopper and J. Presper Eckert, and he often ate lunch with General Leslie Groves in the Sperry Rand executive dining room. He also served on President Eisenhower's executive staff as director of the National Damage Assessment Center, a predecessor to FEMA.
Operation Downfall would’ve made Operation Overlord look like a picnic ride in a school bus in comparison.
Imagine being a US soldier expecting Japanese resistance armed with rifles and machine guns instead a bunch of school kids charged at your squad with sharpen bamboo sticks and grenades while planes start diving from the sky right into the landing crafts.
Good lord, 300 kamikaze an hour? and this is just kyushu, imagine if they attacked kyoto or toyko.
Ten of Thousand of suicide attacks of all kinds would be done per hour.
"Formosa (Korea)" at 11:40
Isn't Formosa Taiwan?
yes
Best video yet. Very sobering.
Then, the rest of the mainland. No total destruction of enemy forces, but, they could pull back, reform, and attack again. Ultimately Vietnam/Afghanistan civilian or are they soldiers situations. Very sobering.
Man. That last quote. Love your work.
I know the way people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki suffered was absolutely gruesome and terrifying. Logically though, we must look back and realize that the atomic bombs ultimately saved lives on both sides of the war.
Transylvanian, the Japanese Imperial Army was perfectly happy bombing civilians and turning Chinese cities to rubble. The only way to stop them was to destroy Japan’s ability to make war. To do this one has to blow up factories, and factories are located in cities. Your support of Japan’s warmongering is heartbreaking. Have you no compassion to all of the people the Imperial Army murdered, raped, and enslaved?
Doktor Skeletor, from what I have read in the comments on this page they are not enough to justify invading Imperial Japan, or dropping bombs on it. I guess everyone will have to accept that the Imperial Army can not be stopped, because blowing up the factories where the Imperial Japanese Army makes its ships, tanks, planes, guns, and mortars is immoral.
What the Japanese carried off your fourteen year old daughter to force her to be a sex slave? Gee that is a bummer, but you know it would be immoral to go to "invade" Japan and attack any civilian brothel owners to get your daughter back. I guess you will just have to learn to cower in fear and live in a cave hiding from Japanese air raids. It would be immoral to fight back and drop bombs on Japan. Sorry Korea, Manchuria, China, Philippines, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Burma, Indonesia, USA, and all the other Pacific islands (and other nations that Japan invaded). It would be immoral to invade Japan and destroy their means to fight wars, a Japanese civilian might get hurt. It is much better to accept that your new Japanese landlords will kill your grandparents, impress you and your sons into labor camps and force your wife and daughters to be sex slaves. According to some on this video's comments that is the only moral thing to do.
transylvanian look mate, let's make a comparison of S.korea and N.korea okay? First of all S.korea is a constitutional democracy and N.korea is a communist now look at these two living conditions for the North , millions of civillians died bcuz of starvation and the south living conditions are better than those of the North .
And if the US " mind " their own business well you wouldn't have the south Korea today but good thing the US were involved.
cookiefamilyof5 Pearl harbor
transylvanian you probably supported Hitler and his government as well. I’ve read a few of your comments and man, you’ve been brainwashed by someone. It’s not the Russians, because even they helped invade Japan, it can’t be anyone in Europe or Asia, because they had suffered at the hand of Japan as well. So you’re either a distant relative of the warmongering rulers of Japan, or you’re an entitled American just trolling for attention on TH-cam. I’m gonna go with the American one. Solid trolling lol.
Thanks for the informative video! Now I want to pay attention more in school and even do my own research to verify the things. Seeing the process by which you personally assessed the numbers with "raw" ish data is inspiring, and reminds me that behind every book or analysis I view, there is real thought, consideration, and room for error performed by the authors and re-tellers. It is very refreshing to see this. Thank you!
WW2 was an atrocious and bloody affair, I have nothing but respect for anybody civilian or soldier who had suffered through it.
Hard decisions were made, many died I can't imagine what it felt to know no matter what choice you make millions can and will suffer not just for days but years after and yet if you don't choose millions will suffer and have suffered anyway it's maddening a true horror story taken place in real life.
I hope we never see any war near that scale ever again.
Only an imbecile would charge a machine gun nest to swap Hitler and Tojo for Stalin and Mao
Gregory Wade
There are a lot of Chinese and Russians who would disagree with you.
I never said that Truman did not act in the best interests of the ChiComs and the Soviets. On the contrary, I have always said he DID at the expense of US interests.
Gregory Wade
You said "Only an imbecile would charge a machine gun nest to swap Hitler and Tojo for Stalin and Mao".
Considering that Hitler was actively trying to kill and displace the Russian out of Russia, and Tojo was actively trying to kill and displace the Chinese from China, I think it is logical for the Russians and Chinese to fight against their enemies, which was the point of my reply.
Your next reply is nonsensical, and has nothing to do with your first reply. Or mine. I hope you don't take the the wrong way, but are you off your meds Gregory?
And I would never expect an imbecile to be aware of how many Russians Stalin had murdered nor how many Chinese Mao had murdered. Jump out of the Higgins boat, hero!
Had the Tenno ordered a defense to the last, you could also add a couple million civilians to the defenders listing.
I believe you mean heika
@Imperial Japan Ball
Tenno Heika BANZAI
BANZAI
BANZAI
BANZAI
Dropping those atomic bombs did two things.
1: It saved blood and treasure short term.
2: It stopped ww3.
Glad cold war is just a massive staring contest with a chess game instead of a fistfight
@@OlOleander I was making a sarcastic comment. I do know about many right wing dictatorships vs communist civil wars in other countries.
I had read that it was not just the two atomic bombs but the fact that a short time before the Soviets had declared war on Japan and were devastating them on the mainland. Recent wars between the two countries had meant that the Soviets had a score to settle.
i remember a time in highschool when i was a sophomore, about 2014, when our social studies teacher had the class write persuasive essays on whether or not the nuclear bomb should have been used against Japan in the second world war and then present said essay to the class. I found that I may have been the only one in the class to argue for the nuclear bomb, which was somewhat disconcerting considering I had done research into what the cost of lives might have been had we invaded. Around that time I began to think about where were headed as country, and as a race of men.
My grandfather was with the 1st cavalry division during the war and it was one of the divisions assigned to attack Kyushu. Im confident that I wouldn't be here today, if it wasn't for the atom bomb.
I definitely agree!
My uncle was on a ship heading towards Okinawa when they received word that the Japanese had surrendered.
Two of his brothers had been fighting in Europe, and had gotten orders to go to the San Francisco for "further training".
Thankfully they were on a ship coming back from Europe when they heard the Japanese had surrendered.
Excellent video and very interesting. Thank you for your hard work!
Last time I was this early Japan had an empire
+Cs go giveaway Guy Last time I was here your last time I was here comment wasn't here.
Mech Tasker it's my first time here.
Man that dropped harder then the atomic bombs
To be honest, the Japanese auto industry builds more cars in America then American Auto makers. In way they kind of do have an empire. You can even surmise in a way, they really did win the war.
@@wrongway1100 Being a leader in the automotive industry does not make any kind of empire.....
Outstanding. As good as anything seen on the history Channel on this subject. I take that back - better!
Destroyers were armed, not armoured.
The British Empire and Commonwealth was going to provide 1/4 to 1/3rd of the invasion force against Japan, including the British Pacific Fleet (Task Force 57) that included 10 Aircraft Carriers and up to 4 Battleships by VJ Day.
they were better armored then lets say any civilian boat.
99IronDuke For Coronet in 1946.
Great video dude
The Atomic Bomb was the greatest instrument of peace of the 20th Century.
It's a seemingly impossibility but it's true. It doesn't prevent war, but it (so far) has stopped World Wars from breaking out. By now, we should have had 2 more, WWIII and WWIV, and with the advancements in conventional weapons, the death toll would have been 3 to 10 times that in WWII, which cost over 50 million lives. So we are talking anywhere from 150 to 500 MILLION dead in a world without nuclear weapons. Our problem now is the acquisition of these weapons by rogue states and stateless terrorists.
Transylvanian, yes, because it would have been much better if a million Americans and ten million Japanese had died during a coventional invasion, and then America’s strategic bombing campaign burned down every last city in Japan. That would have been much better!
Probably a gigantic conventional war in Europe with the USSR vs NATO also.
Nope. The USA has been at war every year since they got it
The stabiliy-instability paradox
MMmmm, lovin' these semi-frequent uploads.
Kyushu would've made Normandy look like a nice trip to the beach.
Great video.One of your best thank you
Isn't Formosa Taiwan?
200k subs, congratulations!
i remember when you had a few 100 subs and now you reached over 200k
man your channel is growing fast and you really deserve it
Beste Grüße an dich aus dem Mühlviertel
Ich weis du fokussierst dich zurzeit nicht so sehr auf auf die Operation der Wehrmacht gegen die Sowjetunion, aber was ich von dir immer schon einmal in einem Video haben wollte war, warum du der Meinung bist dass ein Abdrehen der Panzerguppen der HG Mitte im Spätsommer 1941 die richtige Entscheidung war da sich hierbei Historiker ja immer noch nicht einigen können.
Klar war es wenn man sich den Frontverlauf ansieht notwendig Kiew im Süden schnell zu nehmen aber Generäle etc. sagten man hätte Moskau nehmen können....
hey :)
hehe, war heute im "Mühlviertel" essen, also in Urfahr. Wird jetzt wieder einiges mehr Wehrmacht Content geben. Für das Thema werd ich mir wohl vorher Kiew von Stahel (glaub ich) zulegen, aber ich will mal einige der ganzen neuen Bücher "abarbeiten". Hab auch was zur Bismarck bestellt und das ging heut beim amazon raus.
Military History Visualized hast den Schnee wahrscheinlich gerade noch verpasst (;
vorfreude auf das zukünftige Content ist jetzt noch größer
Benutzt du eine E-Reader? Anonsten müssen wir anfangen für einen Anbau für deine Privatbibliothek zu spenden.
Ich habe bei mir zu Hause noch ein Büchlein von Joseph Engelmann über die Operation Zitadelle, das ich nicht mehr brauche, wenn du das haben willst lass es mich wissen.
Welche Bücher würdest du einem interessiertem Laien empfehlen?
Thank you for the visualization. Excellent work. I’ve read D.M. Gangreco’s excellent “Hell to Pay: Operation Downfall” and it’s packed with exceptional information. This helps put it all in perspective.
I still have one burning question unanswered: What were the likely costs and risks of not invading and instead blockade and pound the island from the sea? If I was commander for US forces in the Pacific, I would have avoided the mainland and invaded Korea and smaller islands all around the country, maybe including Hokkaido, set up a blockade and kept up the pressure from the air. The goal would be to weaken Japanese forces further, increasing probability of surrender and intercept Russian occupation of Asian territory (as was done in Korea). In the meantime, an expeditionary force could be sent to rout the Japanese from China. If the Japanese don't surrender within a year, they would be severely weakened from lack of supplies, and mass famine could even erode the ability of the chain of command to enforce their decisions as local commanders would start to look out for themselves. Fill some of those amphibious assault ships with Chinese troops combined with weakened Japanese resistance, and US losses could likely be reduced by 50% or more. Also, several feints could be ordered with fake invasion fleets featuring heavy AA cover and doll "soldiers" to absorb limited Japanese aircraft numbers. This last part could be possible even without waiting a year, just one week before actual invasion in November would work as well.
Am I missing something?
Oh, and just so nobody misunderstands: I don't think this would be a more humanitarian option than nuclear bombing, as civilians would likely be the ones to run out of food first and firebombings could be repeated throughout the blockade period.
Castles stood blockade for months, cities for years, Cuba for a generation. Yes the military situation was different, but sit and wait would be hard for 600,000 invasion troops.
Cuba wasn't being bombed round the clock by allied bombers Cuba wasn't being strafed to hell by allied fighters. Japan will if the Starvation option is used I expect any Japanese city with a pre-war population of over 50000 to be destroyed strafing anything remotely of military value such as oxcarts. Expect mass starvation maybe 4 million casualties until someone surrenders. It will utterly obliterate Japan as a nation state.
good point but you should factor USSR in you're war cause they roflstomped Main Japanese army in Manchuria.
This will be the navy's job and the job of the strategic bombers the soviets don't have either
Your videos are excellent: based on hard facts. Heavy on fact, light on invective. Well done. I was a lawyer for 30 years, so I am well-used to encountering submissions from persons who rely on emotion over fact. You sir, are a very credible witness.
The US didn't nuke Japan just to be mean.
it was to intimidate the Soviets.
Roger R that’s just icing on the cake
@@rogerr.8507 The Soviets that already knew about the nukes and were making their own to knowledge of the United States government?
It was a science experiment.
Excellent video as usual. :)
Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved the lives of hundreds of thousands if not millions, Japanese and American.
Also Chinese, Russian, Thai, British, Australian, etc.
Excellent presentation!
You want statistics?
United States 5,000,000
British Army: 1,000,000
Japanease Army: 4,300,000
Japanese conscripts: 31,000,000
Lolicon?
@@DakotaofRaptors yEAAAAA
@@bubbletea8306 I would judge you, but that'd make me a hypocrite :P
@@DakotaofRaptors fucking judge me papi
@@bubbletea8306 maybe we can play together?
Very well done! Thank you
11:14 Formosa is not Korea. It is an island off Chinese coast currently inhabited by Taiwan govt.
you is people 's republic of china ?
what do you mean?
"Taiwan govt" implies they are the government of a province. The correct term is Republic of China. One side in a civil war.
Excellent video, well done!
At 4:07 you said 47,239 but then wrote 74,239
German flavor, we say certain numbers in a "different direction" sometimes it passes on to other languages.
Great video! Very informative.
For a long time I have been of the opinion, that the two nuclear bombs did not only save countless American lives, but an even greater number of Japanese lives (soldiers and civilians alike that would have died in the fight for their home lands - see Okinawa for reference). Additionally, the sudden end to the war prevented the Soviet Union from getting involved, and prevented Japan from being occupied and separated into a western and a communist half - like Germany and Korea. (and look at the Kuril islands that are still occupied by Russia today)
So no matter how you look at it - I think the A-bombs in the end were the much better choice for Japan. Sadly, many historians today do not agree with this point of view.
Transylvanian, the whole point of Japan’s terms was to keep the people who caused the war in power. Why should that be allowed?
These videos are great! I have a question and request for a topic video. I used to play Axis and Allies fairly seriously when I was younger. One of the strategies I used playing Japan was to land infantry at Hawaii as part of attacking the U.S. Navy in the game there, usually on the first turn. In the game it forces the U.S. to defend its coast and ultimately takes pressure off of Germany on the other end of the board. However, a board game is not real life. Which bring me to the question and the topic video.
Would Japan have been better off invading Hawaii with an amphibious assault as part of the Pearl Harbor attack? If so, what chance would the attack have to succeed? Why wasn't it done? Would it have altered the course of the war?
Thanks much for taking the time to make and share these videos! I've learned so much from them.
Regardless of a Japanese continuation of the war it is highly unlikely that OLYMPIC could go ahead in it's meticulously planned form. The Soviet entry into the war utterly undermines the Japanese diplomatic and strategic position.
Firstly, many of the elements of negotiated peace which were in the japanese inventory disappear- how can they negotiate about mainland Asian possessions, ie manchuria, korea, if in fact the soviets have taken them?
How can they negotiate home island occupation if the Soviets are in Hokkaido?
Secondly, the strategic position has radically changed. The easy fall of Japanese Korea gives the US a potential base much closer than Okinawa from which to launch an invasion. The fall of the Kurils and Korea also open the sea of Japan and it's western ports/beaches as invasion options. The 'correct' Japanese assumption of US invasion of Kyushu is overturned.
Thirdly, through the lens of the Cold War a putative allied strategy against a hold out Japan might be premised on minimal US/Soviet co-operation. But what if Stalin were to ask for some USN support for landings, or simply to borrow some dumb commercial hulls to amplify his deployments? He sure didn't need US air support.
Fourthly, If Stalin could get some level of co-operation from the UK and other western allies in the Far East, even as little as Lancasters flying out of Vladivostok instead of Okinawa, then I think the Japanese would capitulate, or the 'invasion' proceeds on axes other than those envisaged in OLYMPIC
Soviets has weak navy during WW2.
MHV - Thanks for a great video about one of the most horrible "almost Histories". You do a great job with these. Best short discussion on Olympic I've seen since article (and war game) came out in Strategy and Tactics Magazine back in the late seventies/early eighties.
Trying to stop the Allies on the beaches of Kyushu would have been more of the stupid insanity that characterized much of Japan's waging of war in the Pacific theater. It would have resulted in more miserable failure for the hopelessly inept Japanese high command.
Surprised the video did not mention that the Japanese made zero effort to stop the invaders on the beaches of Okinawa. Saving the worst for the American troops as they pushed inland worked out well if you believe inflicting the highest American casualties of the war constitutes success. I was expecting a repeat on Kyushu, but the Japanese considered their home islands sacred ground, so trying to cling to the beaches fits with their culture. However, I think it would have been an exceedingly stupid military choice, like too much of Japanese doctrine and tactics throughout the war.
Consider "banzai attacks", three plane vics in 1945 - dropped by the Germans in the Spanish Civil War, not completing the Yamato and Musashi as aircraft carriers like their sister ship the Taiho - when carriers dominated Pacific warfare, throwing away air fleets in the "Great Marianas Turkey Shoot", allowing the precious core of highly trained pilots to fly without parachutes, failure to improve cryptography even after Yamamoto's death from codebreaking was published in the Chicago Tribune in 1943, failure to build up any high altitude air defenses (not even high altitude antiaircraft guns) while the B-29 threat from China and then Saipan became increasingly apparent, and so on. Look at the Japanese Navy's numerous failures to "finish the job" when they had victory in their grasp as they did after sinking four American cruisers at the Battle of Savo Island (1942), just days after the Marines landed on Guadalcanal Island. Admiral Mikawa might have added months more to the Solomon Islands campaign if he had pressed his advantage. He might even have forced Nimitz to start the island hopping campaign in some other part of the Pacific Ocean. In the Battle off Samar during the larger Battle of Leyte Gulf (1944) Admiral Kurita broke off the fight after penetrating the defensive screen around the troop transports and landing craft that were landing the US Army in the Philippine Islands. It was stupidity on an epic scale. Japanese soldiers fought like lions, but their high command was completely outclassed in waging modern war against an overwhelming foe. Admiral Yamamoto had understood Japan's only hope of reaching a peace deal with the Allies was to win great victories that entailed taking great risks. Risk averse Japanese commanders left themselves at the mercy of attrition and time was not on their side.
As the Japanese Imperial General Staff, you look at your lightly armed militias combined with whatever regular forces haven't been chewed up on the islands or in China, your tremendous lack of food and ammo, then decide the best place to fight is right on the beaches with mobile forces to supplement. This would play perfectly into the Allies' hands, much like the Anglo-French move into Belgium allowed the Germans to split the seam at Sedan and dash to the English Channel in 1940. American doctrine and tactics from the American Civil War to the present day has emphasized heavy firepower and keeping the guns resupplied continuously. Those beaches of Kyushu would have been shooting galleries, just like all the previous amphibious landings since at least Tarawa. Lightly armed and barely trained militias in earthworks near the beaches would just be exposed targets for battleships, cruisers, rockets, and all manner of aircraft flying from aircraft carriers and Okinawa. Add in hundreds of Sherman tanks splashing ashore with high explosives and flamethrowers and I would expect 20:1 casualty rates. The 100 series and 300 series "divisions" (more like barely armed mobs) would have been annihilated while the 200 series divisions would have been the ones really hurting the Allies.
I expect that the American casualty projections for Operations Olympic and Downfall presupposed a repeat of Okinawa, not the Japanese squandering their men on exposed beach positions or trying to execute maneuver warfare under clouds of rocket-firing Hellcats, Corsairs, Thunderbolts, and Mustangs. Ask Rommel how maneuver warfare played out in France after D-Day. Toss in the XXIst Army Air Force B-29's carpet bombing Japanese strongholds like the 8th Air Force had at the Falaise Gap in 1944 and things get even grimmer for the Japanese on Kyushu.
Instead of throwing away their manpower on beaches and maneuver warfare, the Japanese high command should have considered possible war fatigue in the USA and concluded that dragging the war out longer, running up the casualty score, and frightening the Allies with suicide tactics at every turn might just get them a conditional surrender in 1946 or 1947. This would entail a repeat of Okinawa with the regular soldiers and the militia fighting from inland cave complexes, using guerrilla tactics on every street corner, and relying on civilian support to force the Allies into something like the Vietnam War (1964 - 1975) or Afghanistan (2001 - present). In a conventional war using opposing industrial bases and a great deal of attrition, Japan had no chance, as Yamamoto had understood in 1941.
It's getting to where the comments on these videos are nearly as informative as the videos themselves. This is a tribute to their creator. Well done!
A guerrilla war only works if the "invader" or "foreign power" is supposedly there to "protect" the local indigenous government and population. In Vietnam, the USA supposedly protect the government of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) from the National Liberation Front (the insurgents in the South) who in turn was supported by the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam). American troops walked among South Vietnameses who might or might not be insurgents and they might or might not plan IEDs, shoot a rifle or rockets at them.
A USA invasion of Japan will be the classic invasion plan. Any Japanese who carry as much as a sharpened stick, will be shot by nervous soldiers. Fraternisation with the locals will be avoided, except raping them. Contrast that with American GIs going to brothels in South Vietnam. That will not be a very difficult "guerrilla war". Civilian support is vital in a true guerrilla war, since the civilian economy is still functioning, generating enough supplies for the insurgents. In a conventional war with guerrilla tactics, civilian support is not going to be any more effective than being meatshield or cannon fodder. Will be traumatising on the troops having to shoot at Japanese womens running at them with sharpened bamboo sticks, but it's not going to be as difficult as any "real" guerrilla war.
There is no way the Soviets were going to stage a successful invasion of the Japanese home islands of Hokkaido and Honshu in any part of 1945. Other than the Kurile Islands, name a Soviet amphibious operation of WWII larger than a few islands in the Baltic Sea. According to the Wikipedia (grain of salt as always) article on the Pacific Fleet (Russia), in August 1945, they had 2 cruisers, 1 destroyer leader, 10 destroyers, 2 torpedo boats, and 19 patrol boats. When compared to the Anglo-American mega-armadas aimed at Kyushu in 1945, the Soviet Pacific Fleet was a rounding error. Note the complete absence of aircraft carriers. I expect a few hundred kamikazes would indeed have provided a "divine wind" that would have turned the Soviet invaders back to Vladivostock.
I really wish people would stop this ridiculous speculation on a Soviet invasion of the Japanese home islands. It was not going to happen. Amphibious invasions are some of the most complex and intensive operations to plan and execute. The Soviets had little in the way of doctrine, equipment, or personnel to take on an island nation with millennia of seafaring experience, defended with suicidal tenacity. This dirty job fell primarily to the US Army and US Marine Corps, spared the task by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
One correction: IJN Taiho was purpose-built; the Yamato class conversion was the Shinano.
It would've been a huge job to rebuild them as effective carriers (and equip them with good planes and crews, maintainers, etc). They entered service In 1941-2, when battleships were still part of every navy's strategic plan, including the RN and USN (who completed 10 battleships in 1941-4!).
Search, destroy, rebuild. The first two happened the third did not.
My Father's LST (officially Landing Ship Tank, but also known as Large Slow Target) was going to be in the 1st Wave on the South-Eastern Bay. He was relieved when he heard about the first A-bomb being dropped!
I wonder if the Soviets had the ability to invade the Japanese Home Islands? I once heard that if we invaded Japan the Soviets would have invaded from the north and we would have had a split post war Japan, but I wonder if they had the ability to transport a large army.
Well, they can come from Sakhalin -> Hokkaido -> Honshu
No, they didn't have the shipping.
Yes, but how would they get from Sakhalin to Hokkaido? (It takes quite a naval infrastructure and training regimen to make successful amphibious assaults.)
La Pérouse Strait is 42 km at it's narrowest.
Will it be hard? Sure. But that's still closer than coming from Oki
It's impossible if you don't have the vast quantities of equipment needed for an amphibious invasion (much less the experience required).
Excellent!
Just before the video started an ad for tourism in Japan played. XD
Wonderful video.
May I ask if you plan to do any videos on the Northern Japanese defense preparations?
There has been much debate on the 80,000 Japanese on the Kuril Islands.
I can hear it now, "B-b-but nukings were bad and Japan was about to surrender!".
When the holdout Onoda Hiroo returned to Japan in the fifties he was flabbergasted that Japan had surrendered and was occupied. So yeah, they would have fought.
Lmao thats exactly what dumbasses are saying
I think that people see the unimaginable suffering caused by the bombs and are understandably horrified. Then they feel the need to defend innocent victims.
However, they are either misled or just don't know about the alternatives. As horrible as the bombs were, the alternatives were definitely worse.
Additionally, these people tend to apply modern mindsets retroactively to the war. But no modern way of thinking comes near to approximating the Imperial Japanese mindset in WWII
Am enjoying these informative vids and since I am watching these I can make an assessment of my own. I am predicting that in your next video you are going to atleast say the following once and if we are lucky a few more times: "Take the following saying with a grain of salt"
And just think, This would have been just one part of the invasion of Japan.
Sure the atomic bombs were terrible but just think about how many people on both sides would have been lost. The Japanese would fight until they physically couldn't fight anymore. Civilians would be sacrificed so the army could be fed or to charge with spears and bombs. There may very well have been less than 100,000 Japanese people after such a battle.
Excellent vid :) Number of ships on D-Day seemed a bit low if landing craft were included on the other side of the ledger, but that's a minor point :).