Why Japan Surrendered
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 13 ต.ค. 2024
- A look at the strategic reasons Japan Finally surrendered in 1945.
Additional viewing, if you're inclined:
Richard Frank - Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire
• Richard Frank - Downfa...
Final Victory In The Pacific (WW2HRT_34-01) (Authors D.M. Giangreco and David Dean Barrett)
• Final Victory In The P...
Clips Used:
Operation Downfall (Every Day, 1945-1955) - SoulChester
• [OUTDATED] Operation D...
Thanks Lemming for the Amongus
You think the thumbnail is good? I like the idea, but I couldn't get it how I had it in my head. Ah well, it works.
We are very worried about you man. I'm glad you came back for us.
Exactly!
I thought Covid got Johnny , glad he's back as well.
NO I'M BATMAN
@@imbatman8040 wow, 2 Batmans...!!!
I only found this channel during the long hiatus and really liked it so I was kinda sad that I wouldn’t see any new vids. Felt quite happy to suddenly see a new vid in my recommendation feed
I cannot get over how positively bananas a thought it is: after 2 atomic bombings, an invasion by one superpower, and an imminent invasion by another superpower, Japanese officers staged a coup so they could _keep_ fighting.
"Your brain on honor culture"
You know that meme of "God' strongest soldier" and the guy looks completely deranged and tells Jesus "The fighting has become boring, give me something even worse" to which he replies "what the fuck is wrong with you"? Well, that was Japan
You should watch the english dub of 'The emperor in August'. You will be more confused
Well it is the cost fallacy so much had alreaddy been paid and the surrender would have made that pointless. Also there might also be some sense of justice behind it. Afther all the ppl deciding to surrender had dragged the nation trough hell but where not really going to pay for it afther the war. So maybe the felt betrayed by that.
Here is the biggest thing about the 2nd atomic bombing, something I had learned in my own research: the Big 6 were in the middle of a meeting. They were discussing whether or not to surrender, got news of the 2nd bombing during said meeting, and STILL had a split vote on surrender.
That is just...so hard to imagine. You know what nukes are, your homeland has been hit by one, you learn a second one has hit you shortly after a second world power invades your mainland gains, and you STILL can't agree to surrender?
Woah this dude sounds like Potential History but he actually uploaded something
must be a coincidence
He surrendered uploading.
Surely must have been a different person
Actually he kind of doesn't, he's a lot squeakier
Hah, next you'll tell me Internet Historian uploaded something
Pickett saying "I think the Yankees had something to do with it" is a really gracious, yet characteristically southern, smart-ass way of admitting defeat.
👏👏
Got to be frank the fact he called Pickett a war criminal is a bit unnecessary. The dude literally got pardoned for the accusation of the execution of the 22 prisoners by grant. At the same time he rationed they were deserters from North Carolina, which if were gonna be charitable killing deserters ain't exactly a war crime.
@Nick McDonald I never called him a war hero nor implied it. However fighting and operating in a war doesn't innately mean ya can call them criminal cause ya don't like them. Especially over elements with a bit more nuance to them again just seems a bit of a reach.
@@robosoldier11 well, in the aftermath of the war, a LOT of shit was forgiven for the sake of unity
@@haraldisdead So? Grant pardoning the guy doesn’t innately validate Pickett being a war criminal. In so far as you framing it was only done for political purposes.
Given that there were four Slave states (excluding West Virginia) fighting with the Union and the fact most of the soldiers desire to fight stemmed from preserving the Union and not abolishing slavery, your point is moot.
Another way you can put it is that there is no single ultimate reason for the Japanese Surrender because there was not a single Japanese Surrender, but two. One for the soldiers, another for the civilians and public. Neither of which could properly internalize the sufferings and struggles of the other camp.
the Home islands is what mattered. That is where the gov was, and that is where the final battle was to be fought. Nobody cares what military commanders thought in areas bypassed and ignored by the allies. The fact those in Japan say it was the bombs, means that is the best and most correct answer.
Russia had neither the means nor the intention to invade Japan.
@@SoloRenegade they had the intention but to be perfectly honest there was fuck all they could do to get there.
@@SoloRenegade well there is someone who cared what those commanders in areas outside the homelands thought, the thousands of soldiers under their command. If the mainland surrendered but the military didn’t, it would of created an increasingly messy situation where the war was officially over but the fighting never ended as the allies had to island by island, bunker by bunker, root out the remaining stragglers. The nuclear bombs and Russia taking of Manchuria was not the reason of surrender, it was more the excuse to placate both the civilian and military sides. Why did they really surrender? Maybe the allies had something to do with it.
@@SoloRenegade if the either home islands or the oversea holdings surrendered but the other one didn’t, the surrender wouldn’t happen. If Japan surrendered and army didn’t the war would continue, as none of the fighting was in Japan.
If the army surrendered but the government did not the Allie’s might have been able to take over their oversea holdings, but would need to invade Japan to occupy it.
@@SoloRenegade So you’re saying those commanders with about a million troops at their command don’t matter at all? Just admit you want a narrative and not real history
It's also worth noting the importance of the issue of the emperors position, an issue that often gets overlooked in the "bombs vs Soviet invasion" argument
The Emperor's decision to surrender was very likely motivated by the bombs.
@@GeraltofRivia22 Not remotely the point of the above comment.
Japan was terrified of the idea that a US occupation of Japan would be the death of the Emperor and the end of his office.
Single bombing of tokio had taken more lives than those bombing together. Most of the japanese xities were ruins by that monent of war so one more or one less wasnt much of an issue. But complete blitzkrieg destruction of the last capable army is a differebt thing, dont you think so?
The idea that the Soviets had anything to do with the Japanese surrender is revisionist post-war communist propaganda. The Soviets did invade one island, they took devastating losses. When Stalin insisted that they plan an invasion of the Japanese mainland zhukov informed him that they lacked the necessary naval power, the amphibious landings would get smashed, and best case scenario they would be required to beg the United States Navy to come save them. Due to that the invasion was canceled, there was never any chance of a Soviet invasion of japan. Nobody at the time had any illusions to the contrary, with the one possible exception of Stalin.
Did you all even watch the video?`Seriously, didn't the video explicitly say that it was a mixture of reasons, with each reason being more important for different parts of the population?
The idea of the Japanese being unable to comprehend just how terrible the atomic bombings were, reminded me of that episode of the Twilight Zone where the guy traveled back in time to warn the Japanese of the atomic bomb. They did not get it whatsoever. "A single B-29 isn't going to destroy an entire city with 1 bomb" "It's a really big bomb, you don't understand!" Something to that effect. I always thought that was fascinating to think about.
It reminds me of my mother's reaction when she heard that the WTC in America had been hit by a plane. Must have been someone in a Cessna who got lost in low clouds or something. It wasn't until seeing the televised footage when she finished her walk that it became clear that this was no small plane (or a freak accident, as by that time second tower had just been hit minutes ago).
Of course "a BIG plane crashed into it" is much easier to conceptualise than the effect of a nuclear bomb.
Japanese scientists (and not only physicists and stuff) totally knew what an atomic bomb (if it existed) was. Multiple countries worked on it. They were both terrified and in awe of the scientific achievement when it actually got dropped.
@@bobzeepl Though trying to communicate that terrifying fact to the people, who were ignorant of the science of an atomic bomb and also its effects is, makes it a rather ineffectual argument until they have actually seen the magnitude of the effects itself or have people who have gone through it re-account the incident, which even then can still be rather hard to convince them.
@@kalina7387 That is the basis of why, in a cruel way, the Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were necessary for the world at large not because it knocked Japan out of the war, but because it gave everyone an idea of what the atomic bomb could do. Imagine the Cold War but the general public didn’t have a good grasp on what the atomic bomb was capable of. The most they’ve seen is bomb test footage and first hand accounts of people who have witnessed bomb tests, but no one knows what the atomic bomb would do on a civilian target. The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was both an introduction and a wake up call, telling everyone that there’s a new greatest weapon and if it’s used again in war, the repercussions would be severe. If that didn’t happen, the Cold War would likely have gone hot, for the public and war hawks without a general concept of the devastation of the bomb would push to use it, only realizing their mistake when it’s too late. Those who died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were Martyrs, they died cruel deaths, but ensured that millions wouldn’t.
@@klobiforpresident2254 Yeah, I think most people (my father included) all thought it was a small plane hitting the WTC
Thanks for mentioning the Tokyo firebombing. There are a shocking number of people who don't know that Curtis LeMay had been firebombing Japan for months before the nukes were delivered, and the death toll from napalm was far higher than the death toll in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Every Japanese city of any consequence, with the lone exception of Kyoto, burned like mad. The real question is how much of a difference the nukes made when conventional incendiary munitions were working so well already.
I think the fire bombing probably lowered morale to rock bottom and then 2 atom bombings of 2 cities thought to be safe just did it in.
People have irrational hope in times like that and the average Japanese person probably thought something like "They haven't bombed those cities yet so they must not be able to. They are maybe on the ropes as well or at their limits."
Then those cities not only get bombed but get flattened by nukes. Instantly everyone who had hope knows that the US isn't on the ropes or wasn't able to bomb those cities. They are so strong and able that they left 2 cities unbombed to use as a test for a bigger bomb. Pretty much proving the US is not declining in power and is in fact still peaking.
Also the atomic bombs threatened their current Ketsu-go plan. The whole slogan and propaganda of which said "the sooner the Americans come the better as we will die proudly defending" but then the US just started bombing with bombers so high flying they couldn't be touched by flak or fighters.
The average person and especially top brass realized the Americans weren't coming soon. They would just wait it out and flatten cities.
So Ketsu-go kinda backfired on them because alot of the messaging was about a soon-coming invasion and bleeding the enemy. But the atomic bombs and other bombing made it clear that the invasion wasn't coming soon nor even needed. Then to top it off the new B29 meant they couldn't even shoot down the bombers to inflict casualties. So no bleeding the enemy.
This likely made 3 of the 6 side with surrender and Emperor to as well. The other 3 weren't even ready to fight to the last. They merely questioned the truth of the situation. Given a few more days and pieces of evidence to confirm it was atomic bombs those 3 might have also sided with surrender. Also given Japanese cultural views around surrender its likely the 3 vs 3 vote was a political move. Meant to make it ultimately the Emperor's choice so the 6 wouldn't receive dishonor and damnation from the public. Remember the vote at the time was anonymous as these were closed meetings because the big 6 feared army officers would commit assassinations of them if it was public that any of them were advocating peace.
Yeah, I read about the fire bombings in a book called "Japan's War."
The fire bombings mainly destroyed the old, wooden parts of the cities. The new, industrial centers in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were more intact and that's why they were chosen.
And they absolutely deserved all of it, maybe they shouldn't have attacked us first.
I only learned about the firebombings after I watched "Grave of the Fireflies" and noticed that incendiary bombings took place super often in Japan and that it only got worse as the war went on
The Japanese military really did not understand the concept of giving up back then. As late as the 1970s there was still a Japanese hold out in the Philippines who had lived in the jungle for 30 years, periodically raided nearby villages and *refused* to believe the war was over. The Japanese government eventually had to track down his old, retired commander to travel in person to order his surrender.
It's not as if there weren't Japanese PoWs.
The only reason they surrender was because the Emperor didnt want to die and he wasnt forced that Education
Based, the Japanese have truly achieved total triumph of spirit
I remember first hearing about the sole survivor of that squad from my Lola. There was rumor going around that one of the shootings started because they caught one of the soldiers Violating a Pig.
And he killed around 30 people and got pardoned for it
It is scary how close Japan came to basically rehashing the same situation as Germany did. Hitler held ultimate authority to end the war but refused, always expecting a turn of fortune to come. And when it never did he was resigned to see the country burn for failing *him* not the other way around.
He truly is the Typical HOI IV player
Issue is the soviets would have needed a proper navy to land a proper assault into Japan against a government and people who's entire ideology was to fight to the end. The mountainous environment would have made Afghanistan look like a cake walk
That's not to mention the soviets were also already heavily war exhausted and suffering from thousands of guerilla outbreaks
@@compatriot852 you forgot about the existence of a funny little thing called the United States Navy
Unlike Hitler, Hirohito didnt expected a turn of fortune. Japanese never expected they could win over the Americans, from the very beginning all they hope was Americans know how costly the victory would be so they might peace out white peace which certainly not in American mind at that time.
@@kylinslittlecorner8888 The united states navy would never have made it onto the shores of Japan. The japanese military size the weeks leading up to their surrender was 6 million infantry and almost 9,000 kamikaze planes. The Americans didn't even want to invade Taiwan due to the fact that it would have needed 2x the size of d-day to successfully land and take over the island.
The look on his face when he had yo talk about dropping the bomb is just sad, when he looks away you can tell he is deeply affected by the knowledge of what he and his fellow airmen did
Must be like a living nightmare
He did *not* look happy about it.
@aviation cat I mean, yeah, several hundred thousand innocent lives were lost. But if it didn’t happen, millions could’ve been lost from direct fighting
Must be thinking about his new chevrolet
@@benji37 excuse you?
For a moment i thought you touched grass, welcome back!
He did it? the madlad he is
I literally checked out this channel yesterday, wondering whether the man himself would upload soon.
And like magic, the notification that thousands have been waited for with baited breath finally arrived.
Welcome back Johnny.
My dude same to me!!!!
Hehe me too watched the Surigao strait vid yesterday
same, watched the Yamato
facking same, watched the reasons Germany couldn't have won and I wondered if this awesome channel would return
The most stupid thing i read on the internet was a comment in article about ww2. It was maybe 12 years ago. It goes something like that: Japan never surrender to US. Japan had secret fleet of military zeppelins loaded with anthrax, ready to wipe US population. so US and Japan struck a deal that looked like a surrender, but Japan keep the emperor. Ye...
Glad to have you back Johnny! Great content as always
I was doing a historiographical term paper on this exact topic a few semesters ago, and god is it such a fucking rabbit hole. One of the more interesting theories I think I read about was one that said that the Japanese essentially used the dropping of the bombs as a way to save face, as a way to say they had to give up in the face of overwhelming odds. Even though many elements of the wartime government may not have been impressed with the usage of atomic weapons as you mentioned in the video, it still allowed them to paint the bombs as a sort of scapegoat. Post-war, they embraced and to an extent propagated the idea that they surrendered after the bombs to almost make it seem like their nation was nobly ‘martyred’ as a way to show the world the dangers of potential nuclear warfare. It makes a lot of sense when you consider the completely different reaction to atomic weapons that the government and higher ups had from wartime to post-war, and how staunchly anti-nuke they’ve (outwardly) been since then. As morbid as it is, the dropping of the bombs is pretty much one of modern Japan’s founding myths, and it’s one that’s allowed them a lot of political and cultural clout in matters regarding nuclear weapons.
I read this too, some retired general said it gave an excuse for the usually shameful act of surrender, if not presented with such an excuse then they would've had to fight on.
And when the myth is built around the bomb, it becomes a taboo weapon to showcase. Kinda makes sense.
As someone who enjoys the idea of nations creating " Myths" to alter how a people think about certain things I like this theory. Especially when we have evidence of other nations doing similar things post war as well. From the Germans essentially shutting the book on WWII by declaring that everyone in WWII was bad and that we must now all as a nation rally in righting the wrongs, to De Gaul delcaring all french were resistance fighters and a major in order to prevent questions being raised ( They weren't all resistance fighter) to the soviets creating their myth that they fought the german bear all alone in order to justify casualty numbers. I really don't see why japan couldnt/ wouldnt have done the same.
That being said if this was really the case then the Atomic bombs did infact end the war.
@@reaperking2121 Eh, like PH indicated in the video, it was more or less a combination of several things at once. At home they emphasized the power of the bombs in forcing a surrender, and to their armies abroad, they cited the invasion of Manchuria by the Russians. I believe it was only after the war ended that they placed greater emphasis on the former. The question the Japanese were grappling with was which option allowed for the best chance for Japan to survive and thrive. Ultimately those in power believed that surrendering would be more beneficial than potentially ruling over an empire of ashes.
In a screwed up way, the same worked for East Germany and the Clean Wehrmacht Myth
The real reason why they surrendered is because one of their general said to the emperor: "This is our chance to create anime and cat girls." The emperor didn't really have to think twice on this.
He's a real one
The real reason behind the surrender : ANIME!
Redditors: *"I KNEW IT!"*
Finally somebody with the facts
Hello, based department?
I went to the Navy museum in Kure, Hiroshima. The telegraph sent by Naval specialists based in Kure to high command in Tokyo is preserved there. Ironically it's here and not in the Hiroshima peace museum. The telegraph says simply in katakana in Japanese that "the new bomb is an atomic bomb." This is in line with Potential History, the navy was aware of the atomic bomb. To add to Potential History, another reason the army denies the atomic bomb is that Hiroshima was navy town not army town.
Wow, that's so far beyond even nationalism. It's still a Japanese city!
@@abelq8008 yea but the army and navy had massive beef with each other
Yeah the Japanese army and Navy had a relationship like two estranged siblings who still won't talk to each other.
@@abelq8008 The IJNs opponent was the USN, its enemy was the IJA.
Man even after glassing two cities the worst enemy of the IJA was the IJN, and the worst enemy of the IJN was the IJA, not the U.S.
From what I’ve read, the tactical/strategic consequences of the Soviet invasion of Manchuria were less impactful in and of themselves, than the fact that said invasion signaled the death of Japanese hopes the USSR would mediate peace talks with the US. The Japanese had been holding out hope (completely unreasonably) for months that the Soviet Union could talk down the US, but the invasion was a clear unofficial middle finger.
Sort of but not really: since Japan was always betting on making America too exhausted to “win,” it was not the remote possibility of Soviet mediation, but the fact that the Soviets couldn’t be exhausted like a democracy presumably would be.
Half true
@@warlordofbritannia also half true. With a big spoon of ideology
@@warlordofbritannia Considering they just steamrolled Germany I can imagine the Japanese were hoping out that the Soviets were too exhausted to invade them in the near future.
And then the Soviets said "I'll fucking do it again."
@@GlamStacheessnostalgialounge I don't think the Soviets soldiers had that much rage towards japan like they had with Germany. Maybe the Soviets only politically had unfinished business but the soviet population just want to celebrate and can't be bothered with Japan.
In addition to the combination of atomic bombing, Soviet invasion of Manchuria and the Emperor's decision to surrender, there was also the aspect of the Chinese counter attack.
The Chinese nationalist army which had been decimated in Ichi-Go, had gone on the offensive with the Alpha force with the operation Carbonado in which the Japanese army in China planned to hold out at the Yangtze, while the Chinese Alpha force had reached the outskirts of Fort Bayard (the French port city in China north of Hainan).
When even the Chinese are defeating the Japanese after Ichi-Go, you know its bad for Japan.
The discussion of why Japan surrendered feels like asking which of the punches made the referee call a TKO. Given the fire (and nuclear) bombing campaign, Soviet invasion, and Chinese resurgence there were a lot of hits to Japan's nutsack at the time.
IIRC the only other country that the Chinese beat was China.
Didn't China had a victory against Japan in Wuhan?
@@jessnalulila5552 They were gonna march that through after halting the failed Japanese follow up of I Chi Go by defending the last territories of all the western parts of Hubei, Guizhou, and Henan. That the Japanese armies trying to snipe the airbases there implies that their momentum from their Hail Mary was gone and exhausted
@@jessnalulila5552 A strategic victory in hindsight cause the IJA failed to destroy the Chinese army in Wuhan but Japan won the battle of Wuhan.
ngl, "I think the [enemy] had something to do with it" is probably the funniest response anyone could give when asked why you lost a battle
The rising sun by John toland is a very interesting book as it's the pacific war from a mostly Japanese perspective. It goes into great detail about the politics from the Japanese side and especially the final days of the war. It does a good job of weaving individual Japanese soldier and civilian stories into the story between the narrative of political and military machinations. Very good book.
One thing people often forget is there was a third bomb basically completed and ready to be assembled and shipped to japan if they chose not to surrender. It’s express target was going to be Tokyo and decapitating the government, including the emperor, who at this point would have no longer been seen as a sane negotiating partner. As far as I know there was no fourth bomb in advanced stages of development and one would likely take several months at least.
After it was deemed surplus to requirements it was converted into a research subject, where it famously killed a few scientists in lab accidents and became known as “the demon core”. Something for which it’s more famous today than it’s origin as a potential Tokyo-leveling bomb.
There was a bunker in Tokyo and the government wouldn't have been decapitated. It would've been a massive statement though.
@@pax6833 The atomic bombing missions were only flown with 3-5 aircraft, not the swarms they were used to seeing. It’s unlikely that it would have triggered an air raid response and evacuating into a bunker, as otherwise they’d be living in a bunker, hitler style 24/7 every time a weather or recon b-29 flew by.
Nope, Tokyo was already gone at that point. The target was Kokura(the original target of the second bombing) with Nishinomiya on backup.
@@kalkuttadrop6371 Yeah at that point Tokyo had been hit so many times by firebomb raids i doubt they would have noticed a difference.
They had a bunch of bombs in production, but not made yet. There was some discussion about whether to keep dropping them as they were finished or to hold them all for the invasion in November and use them to facilitate the invasion. If the army had a say, they'd probably prefer the later so as to reduce their own casualties.
I'm sure it's been mentioned already, but I think the politics of the Cold War also played a role in how we understand and study the Japanese surrender.
@sword-swinging cat Probably. I bet alot of the same people who talk about how bad the US doing it is would also be more open to defending it if the Soviets did it.
@sword-swinging cat answer B is correct, also, the Japanese government would never think about surrending to the soviets
I think people overlook the resulting post-war power structure. Under Allied occupation your head of the family/figureheads may be killed but your family will retain power. Under Communism, your entire family is wiped out.
I think THAT is an overlooked motivation.
@@Tsuruchi_420 Yeah, the reason they wanted to surrender to the Americans was because they knew that the US would be more merciful. The Soviets would eliminate their culture, religion and everything else to make it communist according to their image.
@@valterfara5027 of course, because that obviously happened everywhere where socialism STILL exists
And of course, Japanese leadership totally cared about their people too
Although it wasn’t close to their capital like Berlin, the Japanese army+civilians did manage to hold off a Soviet invasion of Hokkaido by fighting in Sakhalin and Kuril islands AFTER their surrender.
May I get a source for this?
same with the dude above me, you have a source for it seems cool to read
@@joshuajoaquin5099 Battle of Shumshu, Battle of Sakhalin
@@curumipon7089 it’s all the proof needed to show that a Soviet invasion of the mainland of Japan would have ended in a disaster
They lost Sakhalin and the Soviet Union never had the ships for an invasion of Hokkaido. A Soviet invasion of the Japanese main islands would never have worked unless the US provided the transportation.
He has returned!!!
In a story I heard from the Japanese, the reason why Japan hated surrender and received kamikaze was neither forced by the military nor by the people. It was a shared obsession over the society that "we must not speak of surrender."
The excuse for them was that the emperor himself ordered surrender. They wanted to create a format that they didn't want to surrender but had to obey HIM's order. The video shows how he came to his decision.
Of course also like in the video, others would have followed their logics.
I personally think the invasion and atomic bomb were excuses that Hirohito seized upon to capitulate without losing too much face, as in 'okay, but this situation is completely new and changes everything, there is no shame in surrendering with the Soviets invading and new bombs that can flatten a city in one go falling on us'. I'm fairly sure if the Emperor had wanted war this would have been just another bit of bad new, but the way it was presented this was something new and therefore something that could be claimed to invalidate the suicide pact.
Which is why I think the bombs were perhaps not necessary, but definitely ended up doing good by allowing a way out of the conflict for Hirohito, and the same goes for the invasion of Manchuria.
One of the key aspects, and most advantageous aspects for the losing japanese side even, was exactly the perfect excuse that the nuclear bomb provided in fact.
It was the perfect block for both parties.
There was also the cultish worship of the Emperor and the fact that Japanese military officers admitting to any shortcomings would often be murdered by their subordinates.
Never forget that when asked, many surviving kamikazes don’t recall *anybody* volunteering
I had to stop everything to see this. I thought we had seen the end of Potential History but he has miraculously returned.
One of the things that historians are beginning to realize is that the firebombing raids where so utterly destructive they literally had no idea that anything new had happened. And when you compare the images of firebombing and nukes side by side they look shockingly similar.
I remember some nut on here who was talking about how all the cities were fire bombed and there was no nuke.
What the point of saying that was, lord knows.
You’ve managed to communicate a lot in just 11 minutes here. Tight script, good job
When the world needed him most
He uploaded.
He un-surrendered
Wondered what happened to his Patreons...
we all miss you so much man great to see you back. I believe in your unlisted star wars battlefront 2 Q&A you mentioned trying to do a "why the confederacy couldn't win" vid like with Germany, hopefully, that becomes a reality someday but honestly anything you release would be perfectly lovely. Never lose passion for this man, we're all with you when we say we appreciate your content to the highest ability.
A video about why the confederacy couldn’t win would sound interesting.
But for me if the confederates get a big ally like the British or French on their side they actually would have a decent chance.
It would be a lot easier to say when the confederacy couldn’t win. Gettysburg and Vicksburg happening basically back to back really crushed their chances
We need this!!
The confederates could win tho, they almost took Washington.
The Confederacy could have won, but the odds were increasingly stacked against them in any war lasting longer than a year and a half
01:56 If you look closely, the capt of the Enola Gay didn't liked to talk about the drop of the atomic bomb... It makes me remember a documentary that show a talk show in the 1950's that reunited some of the crew of the Enola Gay with survivors of the atomic bomb and where one of the crew of the B-29 talked about his reaction about the explosion on Hiroshima and he just quoted this phrase: "My god, what have we done?"
They saved the rest of Asia that's what they did. They are heroes to my country.
@@Slade951 only thing I want is that you don't get to experiance atom bomb in your life. Even when you say thing like this.
@@Slade951 i'm sure that sounds brave in your head, but the men who themselves did it were uncertain & tormented for the rest of their lives by it. you're essentially venerating them unwillingly.
its shame. he was interviewed to say it was a success and to brag about it and market it to the public as a victory but his face and eyes betray him. I hope he and others like him found peace in the later years of their lives.
@@GodsDumbLamb I will make a correction of the comment that I wrote, I got it wrong, it wasn't the captain of the Enola Gay that said the quote that I wrote in the first comment, the "my god, what have we done?", the quote was said by the co-pilot of the Enola Gay, Tibbets (the captain of the Enola Gay), he wanted the glory and criticize those who regretted dropping the Atomic bomb and even tried to disgrace them
You miss a few other elements that were going on internally. To begin the Big 6 we’re Army weighted. The Navy having been pretty much destroyed by this point. One Navy Admiral and the Foreign Minister did push for peace. This peace faction were the ones reaching out to the Soviets. The War faction. Principally the Army were hardcore fight on. There was a third rarely talked about faction, that had powerful influence, but little direct power in the government. The Imperial Household and the Emperor. Remember the Emperor was not simply the head of State. He was the center of the Japanese Shinto faith. Bound up part and parcel with the core of Japanese Identity. What it means to be Japanese. The goal of the Imperial Household was to preserve the institution of the Emperor, if not the person of Hirohito as Emperor. Ideally they looked at something like the British model. And they were very very worried, not as much about external threats as internal ones. On a recent rare trip outside the Palace grounds the crowds witnessing the Emperors car had been very very worrying to his security. They were not well behaved and respectful. The Imperial Household had dispatched a few of the Princes to investigate the true state of the nation following Hiroshima. And to investigate Hiroshima itself. The Emperor and his advisors no longer believing what the Big 6 was telling them. The reports they got back terrified them. Rising Communist Activities on the Northern Island of Hokkaido. And it told the Emperor of the looming famine. The nation would exhaust what bare food reserves they had by October. After which the government and the Emperor would fall to their own people. This wiped any of the Army’s Ketsuo-Go conceit from Imperial consideration. Communism and the Soviets were what the Imperial Household feared most. They saw what had happened to the Romanoff’s. The second atomic bombing at Nagasaki gave the Imperial House and the Emperor the leverage they needed to act. It gave the Emperor a pretense to instruct the Japanese people to ‘surrender with honor, in the face of an unstoppable weapon that cannot be fought”. There was no dishonor in surrendering to the Atomic Bomb. What their goal really was, was to choose who they surrendered to, in order to insure some hope of preserving the Imperial Institution as the cultural and Societal Heart of Japan. If not Hirohito himself. They saw the American’s as the best option for this. Mostly with the British pressing their Ally to preserve the Imperial Throne. (The British Crown having its own interests in seeing such institutions preserved at wars end. Rather than what happened at the end of WW1. Ie Romanoff’s.)
And the Emperor’s plan worked quite frankly, because the regular Japanese people were exhausted of war. Not the Army. The citizenry almost universally wanted what came next. Whatever came next. They had been at War since 1933. With every year growing worse. This more than anything was why the first American soldiers to land in Japan found an astonishingly curious, polite and cooperative people. Instead of the crazed ideological killers they were expecting.
That and it really helped that MacArthur told the emperor to go out and do public speeches to the people and taking a photo with him (MacArthur) foiled OSS (WW2 CIA) plans to have a "commie" assassinate the emperor/use the peace deal to completely de-power and humiliate him (Hirohito) and his position.
Emperor (2012) with Tommy Lee Jones playing MacArthur made him an icon to the Japanese all for the reason that MacArthur basically swaggered in and saved the emperor.
Eh still seems to be giving too muchncredit to the reds.
Any interesting sources on this? I’ve heard a lot about the absolute terror the Japanese senior command had of a Soviet occupation rather than an American one, which would obviously radically alter the monarchist tradition of the country, but would love to read something more in-depth.
The japanese diplomat to Germany at the time made lots of detailed reports about the atrocities committed by rampaging soviet soldiers. There was definitely a fear of the communists. Well written post.
This was better than the video haha
I think a lot of the single cause and effect thinking that is so prevalent is the results of how a lot of us, at least those in the US, where taught history. We were always taught in discreet parts, you only learn about events as if they happened in a vacuum with clear beginnings and ends, and rarely is the messily interconnected nature of multiple events occurring simultaneously, and feeding into each other, brought up. Probably because its not needed for the standardized test, as long as you fill in the right bubble you don't really need to understand.
I don't know where you were taught, but that wasn't the case in my school at all. We'd spend almost too much time going over why, say, the Revolutionary War started, all the reasons and events that led to it, and that was repeated at least 5 or 6 times. No, humans in general have a tendency for binary thinking and trying to simplify things down to one cause.
It's similar to the narrative that the USA committed no war crimes in WW2 and the war only turned once the USA got involved. Just boiling things down to generalizations and happenstance.
Standardized testing ruined education... Students are taught to the test with no additional depth added. We are taught little to nothing on what else historical figures did or why they did it.
I don’t know if it is just the US but the public education history curriculum is definitely geared towards simplifying concepts to make it more consumable to the average student, but to detriment of actual historicity. I remember how we learned about classical civilizations and trying to compare the fall of Rome and the fall of Han China, even though they were very different civilizations with their own unique systems and challenges. Instead we made broad generalizations that would make it easy to remember (barbarian invasions, internal corruption etc).
Same thing with the atom bombs. Simplifying the surrender by placing all of it on the bombs plays into our own stereotypes and cliches about the Japanese, viewing them as some monolithic, unfeeling and unyielding entity rather than the disjointed chaotic mess it really was and gives a nice, clean, definitive answer. By doing it this way, we give a lot of credence to historical determinism and ruin how people view history.
@@westrim My history lessons (by Christian nutjobs) about the Revolutionary War can be summed up as follows: War started because unfair taxes, Boston Teat Party happens, Green Mountain Boys capture a fort, Bunker Hill happens, and then nothing important happens for the rest of the war until Cornwallis's surrender. So nothing about: the Invasion of Quebec, George Washington's campaigns, the West, the Battle of Saratoga, the Southern States, privateers, Native involvement, the international character of the war, or anything else that was going on. Yours sounds a lot more interesting.
Awesome video. Glad to see you making one again. I'd love to see you take a deep dive into the nuclear bombing of Japan. You've talked about it in multiple videos to some extent. But a deeper historians perspective into what the american thinking was, what it meant and the moral debate surounding it still to this day. Seems a topic that very much deserves its own video.
I think it largely boils down to Hirohito. Without him breaking the deadlock and getting the ball rolling the government would have just sat there dysfunctional without being able to decide what to do. That need for Unanimity for a decision meant all it would take is one holdout to stall any attempt to surrender. So the question becomes, what convinced Hirohito? My impression is that he finally looses trust in his generals. "No way they have another bomb"-"BOOM". but even then, that's just the final straw. I would suspect all the lying and infighting previously in the war had something to do with it too.
The Russian invasion convinced the US to basically let them keep the emperor, so that Japan didn’t become more aligned to the soviets
I wonder what would’ve happened if the middle officers actually were able to take Control of the emperor
Some sort of civil war.
They would’ve handed the power to the higher ranked officers and the war would’ve continued as usual. This is actually very common practice in Japan at the time. Higher level officers would convince the lower level officers to act in “the nation’s best interest” in moment, but wouldn’t give any official orders. These officers would often get little to no prison time thanks to sympathy in both judges and the common people. It was seen as a coup against the government, not the will of the emperor. That’s why it was so important for him to get on the radio the second time and tell the army that he also explicitly wished for the war to end and was not just acting in his official duties to the government.
Japanese as an ethnicity wouldn't exist anymore on the home islands, and I'm not joking. Its estimated that most of Japans population would have died if the US and the Soviets had to invade the home islands.
@@iterationfackshet1990 I'm skeptical that the Soviet Navy had the capability to land a sizable force & support a land invasion of the Japanese Home Islands, & I doubt the islands that connect Hokkaido & Russia would have enough infrastructure to support a large enough land force to make headway inland.
I'd put more stock in Russia moving south and destroying the Japanese Army in China, finishing the job the Chinese did.
3rd bomb dropped on Tokyo, Japan would get blockaded and flattened is my guess
Hearing Fantasy by Meiko Nakahara as it cuts to footage of the the imperial army really knocked the wind out of me
Good or bad?
@@albertoandrade9807 funny, like a comedic flash-bang
It hit me like a bag of peeled grapes...
That shit had me rolling.
The fact the US had multiple bombs available is pretty horrifying though. Even if the total damage caused by the 2 bombs wasn't significant compared to what prior bombings were capable of, showing that multiple of these bombs could be produced in a short time gives horrifying implications if the US could just keep making more.
for the japanese, the damage brought to Hiroshima and Nagasaki was really no worse than to all the cities previously bombed by conventional means
in most cases the cities were effectively rased to the ground and a good chunk of their population dead or injured
the only notable thing to them was that only one plane came, but like explained in the video it changed nothing for the japanese
"they destroyed 2 cities, and?"
"they destroyed 5 just last month, whats your point?"
Japan had a plan, let the Americans come, and bleed them until they don't want to fight any more, then they'll sue for peace
they didn't know the US were expecting a bloody fight anyway (for Operation Downfall, the US minted nearly a million purple heart medals, only started running out of those recently) and the US leadership had calculated the losses expected, and were making preparation to the invasion, if only to put an end to this whole nonsense
@@quentintin1 This narrative has been addressed in the video, you are just repeating the same old narrative. It may have meant little to the army, but the government seriously considered surrender, and then Hirohito decided to surrender. Given that just a few days earlier they thought that they can follow through with the plan, it was significant, if your narrative was true, there wouldn't have been a tie when government considered surrender. Clearly they must have seen that the plan is not working out, USA could produce more bombs.
@@quentintin1 Big difference between conventionally levelling a city using tens of thousands of bombs carried out by hundreds of bombers and being able to level a city with a single bomb dropped by a single plane in an instant…
The USA could wipe out every major city on the island in a few hours using less than a dozen planes…
Doing the same damage conventionally would take weeks of bombing at least, using way more equipment and planning, and it can realistically be fought against by the Japanese.
@@quentintin1 I would argue that's why it was so successful to their morale. Soviets in the north and Chinese to the south were both advancing but had no way for an invasion. With bombs you then have a tangible affect on the population and administration, not just the army and navy.
Firebombs were still more effective and efficient.
Please don’t stop making videos man, I feel like you are on the verge of it, and I really love your videos
you were into something there, mate
I remember also hearing that just before surrendering, Hirohito had confirmed with the US that his life would be spared. So maybe another thing worth throwing on the "allies had something to do with it" pile.
Despite the fact that the Japanese army obviously didn't care about it's people, I do kinda understand them not caring so much about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If you have ever seen the aftermath pictures of the fire bombings vs the nukes, there isn't much difference. Both killed huge chunks of the local population, and both left basically nothing but ashes behind. One was slightly slower, but not by that much. People need to understand that, after a certain point, it doesn't matter if it was one bomb or a hundred bombs; they had almost the same effect. One was just a bit faster and more efficient. Does it matter if 90% of the city was vaporized in a fire tornado with 1000+ degree temperature, or a nuclear blast with a 1000+ degree temperature? I'm not saying that it wasn't unethical, I'm just saying that the nukes really weren't that much different than the fire bombings.
Firebombing and burning a city still took days or even weeks. Hiroshima and Nagasaki got most of their damage in the literal milliseconds after the blast. THATS what was terrifying about it. There’s no semblance of a fight or battle, just an instant destruction of a city
@@damonedrington3453 My good friend, I would hardly call a few airplanes piloted by amateur, malnourished teenagers vs a many full squadrons of fighters and bombers piloted by veterans and with superior equipment (the B-29s had radar assisted guns, and the Corsairs were vastly superior to the Zero), a fight; let alone a fair fight. Besides, the important question is which is the more ethical way to kill defenceless people; vaporized in an instance, or slowly burned to death? Now, I know that many people in the margins of the nuclear blast were burned to death, but having only some of them burn to death is a bit better than all of them I think. I also know that the question is a bit absurd, but I digress.
@@damonedrington3453 Also, if you are familiar with you WWII planes, you will know that none of the Japanese anti aircraft guns or fighters could even reach a B-29 at it's maximum altitude (if you Google it, the maximum altitude of a Zero was about 16,000 feet, and the maximum altitude of a B-29 is about 31,000 feet. They did often fly lower than their maximum altitude for increased accuracy, but that was not the case in the Bombing of Hiroshima or Nagasaki, as accuracy isn't exactly your top priority with a nuke. They were defenseless wither it was a firebombing raid or nuclear raid. Also, don't underestimate how deviating fire bombing raids were. Tokyo was burned to the ground in two days, not two weeks. I would do your research on the firebombing before I go out and say with confidence that the nukes were worse. I would watch the documentary "fog of war" by Errol Morris to get filled in on the details and nuances of this unfortunate situation.
Westerners have a very weird idea of what 'Caring about your people' means. They're genociding their own populations today, yet they still have the gall to say nonsense like this about countries that fought a war for sovereign survival.
@@damonedrington3453 so terrifying that they didn't surrender after one, and by 2 were already deadlocked down the same lines they were prior in a meeting over what surrender to pursue only this time it was called, not because of the bombs but because of the soviets joining closing off their last hope for them to mediate said surrender, and the second bomb was so terrifying that when the war council was informed mid meeting about it was brushed off because shocker dictatorial militant lunatics who have had millions of civilians die in bombing raids by now don't care about another couple thousand, by furthering this bollox that it was the bombs that ended the war is literally imperialist Japanese propaganda used to justify why they lost instead of properly admitting defeat
Nice upload💯
PS: I honestly *wish* we had more of an insight from the Japanese Soldier’s prospective.
@@Cordman1221 just soldiers involved in Nanking. I’ve never seen any book on it from a Japanese perspective
It’d be fascinating to see what went through their mind.
@@Cordman1221 "Nationalist hands (worse)" Nationalist China wasn't worse. Chiang Kai-shek, even though he didn't exactly like Japanese knew he was losing against Mao at this point, because Mao had backing of Soviet Union. What Chiang Kai-Shek ordered was for the surrendered Japanese soldiers to keep their weapons and hold their positions and fight against Mao's rebellion until Allied forces could arrive to relive them.
Nationalist China retuned almost all prisoners by 1946, except those who wanted to continue fighting with nationalists.
In contrast those who surrendered to soviets in Manchuria it was hard. They were sent to Siberia and last prisoners were returned ten years later. Those hundreds of thousands that didn't die that is.
@@festerbester7801 I remember reading a comment on TH-cam of this taiwanese guy saying that maos forces dressed up as Japanese soldiers and did the massacre. Sounds hard to believe, but if you think about it, it kinda makes sense.
I then asked him about where he got this information. He said he got it from some taiwanese books in a library.
It makes me think that we have been deceived by the communists, thinking that the Japanese committed such a horrible act. It all fits in with the Japanese “supposed“ mindset and stuff. However I wish i can view these books and the information that the Taiwanese have.
@@festerbester7801 It’s always been insane to me that the people that laughed as they slaughtered families in Nanking were let off and hold out until the Allies came. I read a book where a Japanese soldier were so shocked that the Chinese treated them good because they thought they were going to bayonet and brutally torture them as they did to China.
@@mikloridden8276 hence why I *wish* there was some memoir on it.
Yeah the Rape of Nanking is good *BUT* the author made a point not to chat to any Japanese soldiers.
*Why?*
The psychology of those soldiers would be so fascinating.
So glad every year when I get the notification this channel has uploaded. Always fantastic historical analysis on topics that are often mired in confusion and speculation
Damn, I'm mad at TH-cam for not showing this in my notification lists when it dropped. Glad to see a new post from ya!
Thanks for making a very concise video on the topic that I can point folks towards for discussion on Japan's surrendering. While Shaun's video is great and goes to great lengths, it focuses more on the morals behind dropping the bombs which is a bit more of an advanced discussion rather than a primer on the topic.
TH-cam doesn't want you to know history
Imagine believing that a country who was printing aircraft carriers and Uber-wonderweapon-strategic bombers out of angry spite wouldn’t just start mass-producing nukes.
Fair point. Even though the US didn’t get to that production point until the early 50s, I can absolutely guarantee you that the US would have rapidly increased production if the war continued. I mean, you are dealing with a country that has an entire population royally pissed at you for attacking first, and they want nothing less than to end the war with victory so their boys can come the hell home.
Right? It’s like come on, pay attention.
Believe it or not early on the Us couldn’t just build bombs willy nilly.
@@acceleration4443 while they certainly couldn’t at the time, it’s not like they couldn’t in the very near future. After the war the US decreased its production until they realized Russia and China were our new threats, and after that we started pumping them out like Model-Ts.
They had REALLY good reason to assume that. Before the Manhattan Project, all understanding of nuclear weapons involved enriching uranium, which was REALLY hard. From the start of the war, the US only produced enough enriched uranium for a single bomb, Little Boy. They didn't even get to test it. And in fact, they didn't even manage to get to what we'd call "weapons-grade" enrichment today. Plus, the weapon was extremely inefficient so it required huge quantities of the enriched uranium. Everyone who had dabbled with uranium knew about this limitation. Mass producing Little Boy weapons would have taken all the uranium ore production on Earth in order to crank out like 1 or 2 bombs a year.
What they didn't know is that the Americans had invented the atomic bomb TWICE. The Trinity Gadget and Fat Man were plutonium implosion type weapons, which were theorized entirely within the Manhattan Project. The method for breeding plutonium at scale was also entirely within the project and no one else had gone near that route. The Soviets were probably the only ones who knew about the plutonium route, thanks to their good buddy Claus Fuchs.
You're back! Thank you for your hard work! Hope to see more but if you needed the break I respect that as well if not more. Keep it up either way dude!
I always thought it was certifiably *_fucking insane_* that the Japanese somehow thought America was "weak-willed" and would eventually surrender, especially given Japan's own history with the United States; the entire reason Japan was even opened up to the West for trade was because we basically busted their fucking door down in the form of a Warship rolling up to one of their ports and threatening to bombard it unless they opened up negotiations.
Let me say that slower:
Japan, one of the countries *_most directly affected_* by America's Manifest Destiny, somehow thought we'd give up the will to fight. Really goes to show how much the Big 6 and the Nationalists in Japan were in denial of reality.
Personally i think its more defiance of reality than denial cause denial implies how bad you know the situation is defiance i think means being on a whole different reality where you simply live not in denial but peace and harmony in your fanatical ideology i think it shows more how fanatical the people were at the time
Japan: Hey, let's go to war with the nation that supplies most of our steel and petroleum.
I mean, it was astonishing what the Americans endured in the Pacific. Not to minimise the Western front, but there was a level of civility to the fighting there. The idea of some mild-mannered family man from Vermont diving into a no-surrender knife fight with an IJN soldier on Iwo Jima or Peleliu is something the Japanese probably didn't think they'd be quite so ready to do. The Japanese were raised from birth with the concept of honorable death in battle for the emperor and imperial Japan. Americans (and Australians etc) were raised to be normal people who did not feel obligated or motivated to die or fight to the death. I imagine it was quite a shock to the Japanese when they didn't back down.
@LethalJizzle Japan waged war against the one country in the world that was just as nationalistic (if not more) as itself.
One thing to also take into consideration when talking about Japan's insistence on the Emperor's position is that the Japanese likely viewed the Emperor's position as a proxy for the endurance of the Japanese nation and people, thinking that if their enemies would not let even the Emperor remain then they ran the risk of Japan losing its language, pride, and culture if they surrendered. Whereas if the Emperor remained then in their view the Japanese nation would not run the risk of extinction.
The Japanese Emperor had been the center of political, cultural, and religious life for centuries. Hirohito could trace his lineage back to Amaterasu the goddess of the sun and head of the Shinto pantheon. By at least the 1300s the Japanese Emperor was the physical representation of the Japanese state and nation. With all Japanese governments from this period until the end of WW2 claiming to rule on the Emperor's behalf. The Emperor was a direct descendant of the most honorable God and had a mythological status in Japanese society. The position of the Emperor was roughly equivalent to Jesus Christ if he had established a physical Kingdom on Earth. To remove the Emperor from power and try him for war crimes would have been unthinkable. And in the end leaving the Emperor in his position and exempting him from war crimes trials were the only conditions Japan surrendered with.
@@tycoughlin735 Not entirely true, he'd only been elevated beyond a figurehead in the last 80 years before WW2
The Emperor had taken a backseat for centuries before that.
@@tycoughlin735 My problem with the narrative of the Emperor being the focal point of Japanese society is that if that is the case why did the militarists, if Tojo's account is to be believed, then fragrantly ignore and sideline the Emperor in the decision to go to war, absolving him and the Imperial Household of responsibility. This is of course ignoring the previous centuries of Japanese politics before the Meiji Restoration where the Shogun held real power, ostensibly in the Emperor's name but none questioned who really held authority.
The Emperor in Japanese society is closer to how Christians view the Pope, an imperfect analogy to be sure but closer than the living god argument.
Also the reason the Japanese felt the dissolution of their race should they lose the war is that history up to that point told them how Anglo-Saxons treated the foes they conquered. With the fate of the vanquished ranging from the Colonialism of British Rule in India to the near annihilation suffered by the Comanche and Cherokee in their opposition to American Manifest Destiny. Looking at history the Japanese had no assurance they would get a Versailles Treatment rather than a Far Eastern Trail of Tears if they surrendered unconditionally, so the Emperor's position was a canary in the coal mine so to speak for Japanese political leadership.
Michael - The Emperor was considered a Divinity and the "Big Six" ruled through his authority .
The July 26th , 1945 Potsdam Declaration makes it clear Truman and his advisors intended to remove Japan's military gov for all time and bring in human and democratic rights .
The "Big Six " rejected the Potsdam Declaration with silence .
When the Emperor broke the stalemate of the " Big Six " on August 10th , 1945 , they agreed to the terms of the Potsdam declaration , providing the “declaration does not comprise any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as Sovereign Ruler.”
This trick meant the Emperor would have remained the supreme authority during the US occupation , and could have over ruled any attempts to amend Japan's Constitution .
While under US occupation , Japan's Constitution was changed in 1947 - it was modeled after Britain's Westminster system . The mistake made was that the Emperor became symbolic only - When in fact he should have been given the same small amount of executive authority Britain's monarch has .
.
@@michaelthayer5351 - Yes people debate the amount of authority or influence the Emperor actually had .
However , this is for certain
- The Emperor had the authority or influence to break the stalemate of the " Big Six " and influenced / instructed / directed them to agree to the terms of the Potsdam Declaration .
- The US wanted to maintain Hirohito as the Emperor to make sure there was Political , Cultural and Social cohesion in Japan with the new Constitution .
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I think that keeping the monarchy and current institutions was crucial for Japan, and it could be done only by signing a peace deal with the US, cause USSR would have completely change the entire structure of power.
Nice to see a Western youtuber talking about Manchurian invasion tho, bc my great grandfather participated in it. They crushed elite Japanese forces in just 2 weeks.
They were not elite in 1945. Japanese command took most of elite regiments to fight Americans in Pacific Theater.
Based soviet russian grandpa. He probably murdered so many chinese children.
Great video as usual. Love your perspectives on these long contested historical events.
Ketsu-go and the never surrender mindset in the army was so strong that one dude legit fought the war by himself until 1972 when his then retired commander finally relieved him of duty. Sure he didn't know that the home islands actually surrendered but at that point I don't think he (like much of the army) would have cared. (also there was one person who held out until 1974, but I couldn't find out as much on him)
I'm glad you're back and don't take this the wrong way, but the way I felt everything setting up, I thought there was some secret 3rd reason or so that made them surrender, but it turned into "You guys are half right, it was both, not one or the other". Then again, apparently there was a debate about this...
So what you'll notice about "HistoryTube" is that content creators don't really provide any added value that can't already be known from basic history 101 textbooks that everybody memorized in school, or a basic Wikipedia entry on a given topic. So in order to justify their own existence as a content source and compete for your precious attention, these people have to basically oversell the "mystique of new perspective" in how they present their thesis for their videos.
If you want to know about a topic from A to Z, soup to nuts, the forest down to the trees, leaves, roots and cellular/atomic level, you are way better off just doing a Wikipedia deep dive and ordering college-level textbooks and other university-printed source books on the topic of interest. I also highly recommend Oxford's "Very Short Introduction" series as an unbiased, concise yet comprehensive overview of interesting subject matter that covers what is worth knowing and leaves out the mostly irrelevant "fluff" material that video essays like this one stuff themselves with.
The point is that history is more complicated than "X happened therefore it caused Y". The point was to contextualize Japans surrender within its wargoals, otherwise it wouldn't make sense, which is what you should usually do. So many times, when people want to use history, they have a selection bias and take random quotes out of context and at face value.
@@TheDirtysouthfan I agree with your overall point, however the reason why official historical textbooks say "X happened therefore it caused Y" is because they already did the legwork of delving into the primary sources and gleaning the contextualized knowledge to arrive at that summarized point. Having all these amateur history buffs on youtube essentially subverting established academic understanding of history is counterproductive and feeds into the narrative of anti-intellectuals and modern conspiracy theorizers that there's always "more" ways of looking at events and phenomena than there really are.
Not to mention how self-serving this approach is for the amateur non-expert youtube history dabblers making these videos. And that's just speaking of the ones who only purport to focus on history, it gets way worse when you look at the youtubers like whatifalthist who blatantly cherrypick from various pseudo-historical sources to arrive at delusional interpretations of current society or draw fantastical predictions based on one or two oversimplified and de-contextualized factors.
@sword-swinging cat Those wouldn't be the kind of "coffee table" quality of large-paged books that often sell deeply discounted at Barnes & Noble, would they?
Smithshonian has put their name on a LOT of such intro-tier, non-academic quality books. Not good as a reference, not IMO ideal as an introduction to a topic as well. The publisher Dorling Kindersley (DK) had the same reputation and seems Smithsonian has been following the same approach.
They're decent books for "info-tainment", but they're not well organized and edited to help the reader develop a deep, cumulative understanding of the subject matter. I would still prefer you seek out the appropriate Oxford Short Introduction or see if there's an "MIT Press Essential Knowledge" book about to [X] topic.
Glad to see you back and I'm glad FINALLY a history channel on TH-cam pays attention to the Russo-Japanese theatre in China. Probably one of the most overlooked events in history.
To be honest Asia-Pacific front is hard to come by compared to European Theatre or more famous campaigns. Like I’m guessing there’s barely any books about Manchuria from Russian sources as like Aleutian and Philippine Campaign for the US. Tried finding, some are possibly inaccurate and not much sources or simplified. Being Filipino as well, rare to find one from Filipino sources that’s in stock or new
@@TheRandCrews there's plenty of sources I assume, however most of it would logically be in russian, with some chinese and japanese sources
Kings and Generals has the Pacific series currently running that'll span week by week of WWII in the Pacific.
No, there is an even more overlooked event. The Civil War in Russia. Otherwise, everyone will have to know WHO started it first.
@@TheRandCrews Dawg what? The pacific front is literally just as known as the European front? Like idk what your talking about
A very good recap of what happened in the endgame with Japan. And now that I think about it, when taking the relationship between the government and military in that period of Japanese history into account, it makes a lot of sense that the answer isn't straightforward.
Also, glad your back with another video!
Woah, crazy, multiple things can compound on each other to cause something? (a surrender in this case)
Anyway, great video! Honestly makes me wonder why we tend to often obsess so much over this idea of "what was the one thing that changed everything?" When there's often multiple factors and not just one main one
Wow, it’s been a year since you uploaded last.
Glad to see you again!
It's a great day in history when Potential History uploads a video.
It's an interesting take in this topic, to be honest, here in Mexico we learn at school that it was the bomb and the Soviet invasion is not even mentioned in our history books
It's like yeah Japan was one of the bad guys and the Soviets where there with the allies but they don't interacted between themselves
Calls itself "Land of the Rising Sun"
Gets upset when we provide extra sunrise.
It was getting kinda dark out that day and we thought we’d bring the sun up early for em to show our good will
Hi, thank you for all your hard work. Your videos are fun and informative. 👍
I dont know if I missed your videos or what, but I feel a huge upgrade in the production quality on top of your narration, which was always great. I love it!
HE'S BACK. ALL HAIL OUR LORD AND SAVIOR POTENTIAL HISTORY. BLESS US WITH YOUR GLORIOUS COMBO OF MEMES AND HISTORY.
Great to see you back and answering a question we all had
I'm really glad you made this video. I always was so frustrated with these stupid arguments that tried to pin it all to one side or another. Granted, I didn't have the full historical details, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out that both the nukes AND the Russians would've been fairly pressing concerns.
The main issue with the nukes is that their importance is overstated constantly.
Japanese cities were mostly made from wood, the fire bombing campaigns were devastating for this reason, loosing entire cities had become almost normal for the military government under these circumstances.
@@Arcaryon And noone mentions that Manchuria was the last stronghold of Japanese military industry, including fuel facilities. Nope. Army. Kwantung army. That's it. Not what this army was protecting.
@@worldoftancraft Exactly.
Ah, Johnny's yearly upload.
I see you also browse Non Credible Defense…missed you bro, glad to see you upload again
This is something I bring up in a lot of discussions about how certain events played. It’s never one way or another, it’s a collective of events that caused them to take certain actions. History is almost never that simple.
Even then, the Japanese military during this time actively worked against each other during the war. With that in mind, why would they unanimously agree on where and when to surrender, when they didn’t work well together during war itself?
Ty 😊
Simple: They didn't. Even after the official surrender, it took more than 2 months for every Japanese holdout to be occupied. It wasn't until September 2nd when Jpan itself was occupied, and the last holdout in Formosa wasn't occupied until October 25th.
Thank you for the new video! It's good to have you back! The factionalism in the leadership of Japan is a complicated subject, but this condensed a lot of it very nicely, I think.
God be with you out there everybody. ✝️ :)
Hope you're faring well, and thanks for coming back to us. Great "no bullshit" content, as always!
Taking into consideration how germans was more willing to surrender to the west, rather than the soviets. I think the same was happening in Japan. As you said that that Soviet invasion of Manchuria was also a big factor for them surrendering. I think Japans surrender was a strategic one to align themself with the americans, before it was to late. Basically denying the soviets any spoils of war from mainland Japan.
And to think of it, I do have a question. Was there no communication between the japanese goverment and the US goverment at all before the peace deal? Is there a potential that this is something these two goverments can hide for so long?
What Im thinking of is that the US goverment was telling the japanese goverment the horrors of the soviets, in order to make it more appeling to surrender to them, rather than letting this conflict go on.
Like, what “horrors of the Soviets”? Japan had fought against Russia twice in the previous decades. And they fought WITH them too. They knew pretty damn well what they were gonna get, and it was nothing to be scared of.
My secondary school teacher also did mention that Japan wasn't a country able to adapt to a long war and over expansion in Asia was difficult for Japan to deploy its troops during the US island hopping campaign. Resources wise was also stretched making productions of weapons harder. Though my point may not have been in the mindset of the Japanese during WW2, its worth pointing out the small factors tying to Japan's surrender.
This is very well made and insightful into how the combination of all factors together played a role. I would say indeed, "the Allies had something do with it" and go further and say it was the totality of defeat after defeat and destruction for Japan through the last months of war. So if I wanted to get really technical, perhaps if I wanted to say what was "the final thing that pushed it over the edge," then it would be the *second* atomic bomb being the very last thing that pushed the Emperor to order the surrender.
I do think that as the reality and sheer destruction of the atomic bombs set in, it contributed much more to the significant key effect in convincing the government and the Emperor to surrender - in the absence or delay of a Soviet invasion, it might well have "simply" meant a surrender after three or four bombs instead of two and some extra time getting the Kwantung Army to stand down.
1:07 that small clip was worth waiting a year for his next upload
Total using German children as canon fodder win
How in the ever-loving algorithm has your channel been hiding from me!?!?!??!?!
Better late than never.
1:53 "I cant show that I have mixed feelings on atomizing a city" type vibes
When you’re one of the biggest mass murders in history and all you did was press a button
THE MAN HAS RETURNED
Good to see you back again!
The U.S. by August 1945 was like a peak maxed out RPG protagonist that's fighting the final boss who only has like, less than 10 HP left. Only for his frienemy who is also maxed out to suddenly join in.
More than making the Japanese surrender, the Soviet advances seem to have made the US more hard pressed to accept an "unconditional" surrender with a lot more conditions, such as keeping the Emperor and many traditional institutions, no?
It makes sense with the start of the cold war tensions, and the rush up to parallel 38 as soon as the surrender happened seem to be a good indicative of this.
Yes, except for the 38th parallel rush. My understanding is that the Soviets waited 6 weeks for the Americans to show up.
Admittedly, they had further to travel.
Wow it's almost like the only obstacle to a Japanese surrender and therefore the prime guilty party for the war crime known as the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the United States. No wonder Amerikkkans to this day have to pull out neo-orientalist rhetoric about how the hiveminded asiatic hordes were ready to die for their god emperor so we were justified in dropping nukes on two civilian centers and killing thousands of innocent people.
Yeah, The US dropped it's "unconditional surrender" when we realized we were setting up for another "east and west Germany" situation on the home front.
Offering to leave Hirohito in power was a wise move, if Japan was invaded by the US and USSR, Japan would've lost most of its culture and wound up looking like Korea today.
Just had my 2nd kiddo this past month. The only thing that keeps me up at 2am while I'm feeding my son are Potential History videos. Now the King has returned!
Thank you for making an eleven minute video on the topic and still having more substance than some two hour long videos on the subject.
you finally posted something
Totally agree, I always figured it was both the USSR and the bombs, and after this video I'm gonna bet there were plenty of other factors involved, as well
A nation's defeat in war is almost always the sum of all events leading up to it. Some events are big, some are small, but they always add up.
The Man has returned
There's a movie titled "Japan's longest hour" that goes about how the Japanese army refused to surrender, going to the extent of committing terrorism.
Missed you Jonny, glad to see you making content again.
I just love Pickett's answer. I heard it years ago, and I still love it.
Richard B. Frank's _Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire_ is worth checking out for those who haven't read it yet.
Excellent analysis.
Great video! I was a firm subscriber to the "it was the bombs" theory, but this video explains things well enough that I realize that's incorrect. It now seems more like it was a bit of both.
Think about it in terms of cumulative effects: one bomb wasn’t enough, a Soviet invasion caused wavering, two bombs and the promise of more finally caused the Emperor to call it.
Each one of these events by themselves is insufficient, but taken together and in rapid succession…
I wouldn't mind hearing your opinion on Shaun's video since you mentioned. it. I thought his description of the diplomatic back-and-forths that took place, both during the requests to the Soviets for mediation, and the requests to the Americans to add conditions to their unconditional surrender, created a great picture of how fractured this all was. But, you know, in two hours.
The problem with the Shaun vid is that he lies about a very basic premise of his whole thesis-that America never actually intended to invade.
If you lie about something that simple yet fundamental, than your entire rationale falls apart. You can’t build a valid argument on a false premise.
@@warlordofbritannia Yeah it feels like some of Shaun's video is fair, but I think it's so rooted in a negative American Exceptionalism that you can't take it too seriously.
IE, Shaun says "people weren't talking about the bombs saving the lives of millions of Americans until years after as they try to justify their deliberate imperialism" but Churchill gave a speech like within a few days of the bombs dropping saying "if we didn't do this hundreds of thousands of brits and a million Americans would die in an extremely bloody ground invasion". When there's a lie in a point that central to the narrative of the video, I think it's fair to be extremely suspicious about the rest of it.
@@JosephF.
There’s other parts, of course, but yeah-the general thread is that he ignores contradicting evidence or presents gross misrepresentations just to fit his narrative.
The decision *has* to be made on racist grounds, not out of cruel pragmatism; Truman *has* to be a racist, not a surprisingly progressive man considering he was a late middle-aged dude from Missouri during the 1940s; anyone who disagrees is a PragerU shill, there’s no room for nuance or differing interpretations…it’s the dismissive arrogance mixed with lies that gets me-there’s nothing more infuriating than a self-righteous hypocrite.
@sword-swinging cat
Shaun has no grasp of the historical method and his video is a prime example of what it looks like when someone with no idea of how to do history already has a conclusion they want to find: ignore contradicting evidence, misrepresent other parts, get things blatantly wrong…
@sword-swinging cat It wasn't exactly "just because". I think people underestimate how difficult bureaucracy is to stop once it's in motion. The narrative Shaun presents of Truman focusing on other things and everyone just dropping the bomb because that's what they were told to do feels pretty sound to me. If you've ever worked for the government a lot of these decisions are slow to start and impossible to stop once you've budgeted time and resources to it. Manhattan was no exception.
Insightful perspective, soundly reasoned, seriously delivered, ending with subtlety embedded humor. ... Well done!
You just sounded like an doctor assisting when giving birth
A year later, I see this video as most accurate characterization of the reality at hand then - no one single issue shaped the surrender decision.
Honestly great video, fantastic opening and closer that you tied together
Glad you're back man! I always love how you make history so entertaining and memeable, you're really my door to new perspectives of history with a lot of laughs in between
I remember in freshman chemistry learning about 'necessary' and 'sufficient' conditions. In the study of human interactions it is very hard to determine all the necessary conditions you need to add up before they are sufficient.
Honestly I much prefer the "why" history questions over the "what ifs". There's just so much more to play with here. Rather than dealing with assumptions
Fair, though there is a certain charm to speculating what could have happened. How things could have gone differently if even one of the many moving pieces in geopolitics had been shifted.
Welcome back my dude!
This is some of the best WWII education I've seen. You should expand to more wars