America Plans to Incinerate Japan - War Against Humanity 107
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- čas přidán 7. 08. 2023
- The Allied Strategic bombing campaign has claimed hundreds of thousands of civilian lives across Europe and has made little real impact on the Axis war machine. Even so, the United States is determined to extend the campaign to Japan. Until now, the vast distances of the Asia-Pacific theatre have protected the imperial enemy. That all changes when the USAAF unleashes the Superfortress.
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Hosted by: Spartacus Olsson
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Marek Kamiński
Community Management: Will Tkacs II
Written by: James Newman & Spartacus Olsson
Research by: James Newman
Color grading and editing by: Simon J. James
Artwork and color grading by: Mikołaj Uchman
Colorizations by:
Mikołaj Uchman
Source literature list: bit.ly/WW2sources
Archive footage: Screenocean/Reuters - www.screenocean.com
Image sources:
© IWM HU 63075 Buildings on fire in Hamburg following the RAF Bomber Command raids in July 1943
Soundtracks from Epidemic Sound:
41 clicks from the sun - Hampus Naeselius
A Far Cry - Flouw.mp3
A Single Grain Of Rice - Yi Nantiro
Disciples of Sun Tzu - Christian Andersen
The Twelve Spies - Silver Maple
The Unexplored - Philip Ayers
Walk With Legends - Bonnie Grace
Additional sound effects provided by Zapsplat.com
A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
Fired by vengeance, the United States abandoned any adherence to FDR’s 1939 call to refrain from the bombardment of civilian populations. Even now in 2023, we see attacks on civilians justified as punishment for the crimes of military forces. Join us here at the Timeghost Army as we work to uncover history and build a world where respect for innocent human life is the fundamental principle even in wartime. Never forget.
Bro please add subtitles
@@rajashashankgutta4334they'll probably be added in a bit
Great episode Spartacus, I've been really looking forward to your take on this campaign. You gave a very thought-provoking response a few weeks back to an earlier comment I made on the Mengele/Harris WAH episode. I mentioned that unlike most of the bombing of Germany, this campaign eventually will cause serious damage to Japan's ability to wage war, but at the cost of truly unspeakable misery for the civilian population of Japan.
You agreed with this, but said in the end it would still not matter and I am really curious to find out more. Without spoiling things, I suspect it has to do with the reason for Japan's eventual surrender, which may not be the reason most people think of.
On some further info, the B-29 was actually the most expensive weapon system of World War II. Its development cost even more than the Manhattan project. It also featured many long-standing issues, as the engines kept overheating, which caused significant losses. It was also completely ineffective until Curtis Lemay instituted his changes. Lemay himself would also go on to say that if he had been on the loosing side, he would have most certainly been tried for war crimes.
Not "vengeance", it was reciprocity.
If you wage war on a nation, are you not waging war against the people? A nation is simply geography if there's no people to mark the borders 🤔
Carpet bombing is an atrocity, yet I can't think of another way for an aggressor to punish their target.
Nobody wants to be carpet bombed but everyone would justify using it against their own enemies
My late wife was born amid the firestorms in Tokyo during this time. Her mother wrote an autobiographical story that became a best-seller in the genre of war memoirs that followed in Japanese society. In her account, she was entombed for days with others in a subway station under the rubble while rescuers dug an escape route. My future wife, Yuko, was reported to have been born in the underground during this time even as the bombing continued.
Born amongst perhaps the deadliest bombardments in human history
I'm... not sure I can come up with words that really express my feelings reading this story, but thank you for sharing. :(
My uncle in Belgium mentioned the 1000 B17 raids would come really low altitude over Belgium on the route to Germany. The noise was so much that it rattled the stone roof tiles, while he cheered them to hit the Bosch…
For context, the refractory (the heat resistant bricks) within a coke oven, are destroyed (by some thermo-chemical/physical mechanism) once they cool down again. Thus, once you heat-up and start a coke oven, you can't turn it off. Furthermore, coking plants are huge, which means they aren't easily or speedily replaced. In central Europe, some coking plants ran all through the bombing of WW2. Hence, taking out a coking plant is indeed an effective target. Once the coking plant is taken offline, the blast furnaces and steel plants downstream are taken down by lack of fuel respectively raw iron.
Sparty, you and everyone else who works at “Time Ghost” are doing a great service to the world. You in particular, because of this “War Against Humanity” series, regularly wade into the facts of one of the worst periods in history. You have to research and report the most heinous acts performed by people against other people. For that reason, this series must have an impact on you mentally, and emotionally. I just wanted to let you know that you and your efforts (and the efforts of you research team & editors) are having a massive impact on everyone who sees them. I truly believe that this is the finest WW2 documentary ever conceived of. I hope you are proud of yourselves. You should be. Thank you so much for doing what you do. 👏🏼
I was recently at an air show and saw FIFI, a surviving B-29 and she roared overhead, and all I could think was, wow, what did hundreds of these flying over you sound like? The sheer terror of just the sound knowing what followed must've been horrendous for the Japanese.
Yeah; a distance of at least 10 kilometers between them and the super bombers' engines makes a difference, tho.
During Desert Storm I heard am airliner passing over me in Saudi Arabia, headed north to Iraq's 25th Infantry Division. They were dug in, facing the US 1st Infantry Division. When I looked up, it was a three plane cell of B-52 Stratofortress bombers. Maybe three minutes later i could hear/feel a low rumble like a washing machine nearby. It was literally the "rolling thunder" of our bombers dropping hundreds of 750 pound iron bombs (two planes) and cluster bombs (one plane). Glad the B-52s were on my side.
The Iraqis we captured said their troops usually had little or no warning, so they stayed in their foxholes as long as they could stand it. Carpet bombing them and covering their surroundings in cluster bombs destroyed much of their morale.
That's must have been quite the sight, I can't imagine it. I've seen a few 1940s aircrafts at the RAF museum in London but nothing ever in the sky, but still seeing the sheer size of some aircrafts up close can be quite intimidating. Thanks for sharing and thanks for watching.
- Jake
They sound different at 45,000 feet. Sort of like a mouse pissing on cotton.
Oh no those poor Japs.....poor them
It is fascinating to watch the sliding scale of who counts as a legitimate Target and who is an innocent bystander. The longer a war goes on it seems the more people are pulled into it. You can see echoes of this in Ukraine right now
Not really. The Ukraine war has had, proportionally, one of the lowest civilian casualty rates in the history of warfare. A few thousand have died in a war with well over a million total casualties.
Compare that to WWI/WWII, where millions of innocents died via starvation or malnutrition, or through deliberate bomber attacks, respectively.
@@_ArsNova all true. I'm not saying it's anywhere near the same scale. I am saying that Russia already targets civilians indiscriminately, and Ukraine is increasing their odds of causing civilian casualties via their new drone offensive. Which is also an echo to strategic bombing and vengeance weapons.
Something that I heard about recently and was really sad to hear: eastern Ukraine is now littered with (a possibly record breaking number of) landmines. The counter-argument being that this would make it morally acceptable to deploy cluster bombs from the US's otherwise derelict and partially illegal arsenal... All that loss of life...! For what?!? 😭
Fk Putin... Slava Ukraine!
@@joeyyemelyanov1019The two years of the hot war is what's being counted there.
I guess it depends on the war. Civilians were targeted from the start when Japan invaded China.
My father was a WWII Vet flying 52 missions in B17 bombers and his two brothers were with Gen. Patton fighting on the ground, one of them was killed after the D-day landings. Thanks for the history, Mike
What year did he fly? My grandfather flew a B-17 in late 44-45.
Patton, the mad one who feed his nice and appointed Nazi to run Germany.
Great battlefield commander but thought it was his personal army and sacrificed many men to try and free a family member.
Respect and gratitude to your father and uncles.
@@evancrum6811 I think it was at the same time. One of his pilots was Cal Worthington of Worthington Ford. My Dad and Cal were both from Texas. 8th Air Force Bomb Group, B17s Triangle G Tail Markings, one of his planes named Pistol Packin Mama.
Decent episode. One glaring map error from 14:30 to 14:40: Spartacus describes the first 1944 bombing raid on Japan from China-based B-29s as targeting the Yawata Iron and Steel Works. This city of Yawata and the associated Steel Works were located near the city of Kita-Kyushu, on the southern-most main island of Kyushu. However, the map highlights the target as the city of Kyoto on the main island of Honshu, which is near a different Japanese city named Yawata. (According to the narration, the Yawata on Honshu would have been out of range of the China-based B-29s in any case). BTW my father-in-law and his class were among the children evacuated from Tokyo during this period.
I thought that was a little to far for them. Ty for making this correction. Nice to know there is at least one native here. I tried google mapping it. Not luck on that instillation Yawata Metal working has so many sites, This one may not be operating any more for I could not find it. Goy 6 other for it.
Thanks for pointing that out. We’ve got a fixed version of the map in the works! Thanks for sharing your personal connection to the events too. Did your father in law speak about his wartime experiences much in later life?
@@WorldWarTwo Great that it will be fixed! Thank you. Both my father-in-law and mother-in-law are still around, pushing 90. After over 30 years of being married to their daughter, only very recently has the war been mentioned, partly due to a Japanese document my father-in-law sent me that had been prepared by his late older brother. The document describes the family and their experiences - including during the war years. Have heard a few things from my mother-in-law's side as well.
My Uncle flew B24 from China against Japan. P47 escorts.
The B24 was the most mass produced bomber of the war
@@firingallcylinders2949 Yep, it was used by the AAF, Navy and Marine Corps.
@@UncleJoeMedia He was born 1923. He's gone now.
"You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out." William Tecumseh Sherman
Sherman had the right idea.
Even so, the Union was far too lenient on the confederates.
@@BlessedAreTheCheesemakers Not if your goal is to create one country. It would be different if the purpose of the North was conquer the South but it's purpose was to re-unite.
Exactly.
@@penultimateh766 The problem with a conquered country is that they tend to want to become un-conquered... sort of like sleeping with a spouse who has already tried to kill you. You're familiar with the example of Britain and the US?
@@BlessedAreTheCheesemakers agreed, as evidenced by the continued existence of white southerners
Another great and sobering WAH episode Spartacus and Time Ghost Crew! I volunteered at NARA (US National Archives) about ten years ago and I had a chance to look at the maps used for strategic bombing of Japan as well as notes of target sites and was quite impressed at how comprehensive they were.
That's really interesting, must have been quite a learning experience. Care to share a little more? Thanks for sharing and thanks for the kind comment.
- Jake
@WorldWarTwo Hi Jake, you're welcome, and thank you. Certainly. I volunteered at NARA's Rocky Mountain branch in Broomfield, Colorado, which is a bit north of Denver in its geneology lab. One time, when we had no visitors (which tended to happen a lot), I looked around on their comprehensive online database open to visitors. In one section, they have several documents related to military affairs (others included official investigation statements from the Gulf of Tonkin Incident in 1965). The maps for the bombing campaigns were incredibly detailed. For instance, you would see Tokyo, and each targeted district had corresponding lists of businesses, factories, shipping ports, property values, company financial figures, etc. All were designed to cripple the economy as well as wartime production.
My uncle a POW of Japan, suffered until 15 Aug 1945 and was looking death in the eye, when for him the A bomb became his saviour.
In his post war business life he did quite well as a sales agent for Japanese companies.
My father was a British soldier, 1st Middlesex, and was captured in Hong Kong and shipped to Japan, spending the remainder of the war in Kobe, which was hit by a number of B 29 raids. Sometime in the 1990s he received $20,000 from the British government. I guess unofficially from the Japanese government for his time and efforts while in captivity. He went out and bought a Toyota Camry. He died 2 years ago at the age of 101.
@@davebeningfield When I was a schoolboy I had a summer job working with a guy who had been taken prisoner in Singapore. After working on the Burma Railway he was shipped to Japan where he was put to work in a coal mine. He was physically broken by his ordeal.
Hello from Warsaw, Poland!!!
Hello from Pennsylvania, US.
If you don't mind me asking, are you nervous about Russia?
Just curious.
Hello Warsaw.
Much love from Texas.❤
🤠👍🇨🇱
Hello from Just Another Texan.
Howdy from Texas! Pierogies for Liberty!
Hello there!
Has there ever been an attack against a civilian population that has actually "broken the will to resist?" I can't think of any.
The atomic bombs.
@@dylans8198Debatable
@@dylans8198
Wrong.
Yes, the French readily changed sides to the Allie’s after being bombed.
Short answer: Very few, because draining an enemy of all hope to the point of surrendering is extremely hard to achieve, but it can be done. After all, there have been many surrenders throughout history. The level of precision and dedication required is insanely high, and efforts must be managed and sustained extremely careful for a long time. After all, this is a form of winning hearts and minds... through the elimination of any opposing hearts and minds to leave only the compliant hearts and minds, but winning hearts and minds does require much more effort than simply destroying everything, which would include compliant hearts and minds with the opposing hearts and minds.
Long answer...
Off the top of my head, I can only think of the Mongols, at least under their first five khans (Genghis Khan through Kublai Khan). Breaking an enemy population's will to resist requires precision and dedication. The Mongols would only slaughter people who had resisted, and they would be thorough by doubling back to hunt down any survivors who snuck back. The only times they left survivors would be ensure news of the massacres would spread and exaggerate like wildfire. Sometimes, the Mongols themselves would spread and exaggerate these news to magnify the impact of psychological warfare. However, everyone who immediately submitted (often because they heard about the scale and thoroughness of the slaughters) would be spared and governed leniently.
Air raids usually cannot achieve this level of precision, but we can argue that we only had to break Hirohito's will to resist. He had previously used his imperial authority to put down a rebellion (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_26_incident#The_imperial_command) that had been launched in a misguided attempt to protect the emperor (their password was "Revere the Emperor, Destroy the Traitors"), then he used his authority to transition Japan into the country we know today. The difference was forcing him to surrender to the possibility the throne, which was prevented by his ministers taking the blame to sacrifice themselves and by MacArthur recognizing it would be much better to pacify Japan by sparing Hirohito. Once Hirohito realized the atomic bombs would destroy all of Japan, he felt it made no sense to sacrifice more Japanese civilians and lost all hope of even trying to negotiate for his throne. That's when he accepted Japan's surrender to the Allies and America's occupation.
Thinking ahead, the WAH episode that's exactly 1 year away at this point will probably be the most important of the entire series.
Will it? Having studied WWII, especially Japan's side of of things, pretty extensively, I'd say the initial firebombings of Tokyo were just as bad, if not worse, than the nuclear bombing. Carnage on a scale unimaginable. Women, children, and entire families being boiled alive in canals and wells trying to escape the flames.
Be it one bomb or a million, it makes little difference, the level of destruction wrought by nuclear and conventional bombings of Japan were very similar.
@@_ArsNova The bombing of Tokyo was more destructive than either atomic bombing individually. The long-term feelings among the general population about nuclear weapons was far more significant.
Besides, it might be their last WAH episode.
@@JustSomeCanuck*together not individually
That’s gonna end up being a 24 hour episode
@@JustSomeCanuck Not the last WAH episode. There will still be a little matter of some document to sign on the deck of the battleship USS Missouri.
It is interesting to know about the Allied bombing campaign on Japan, as this part is now slowly to start up in scale compared to the bombing of Germany, which has been ongoing for a long while. I would believe that soon one day, B-29 Superfortresses from those bases in India may soon appear over the skies of Japanese-occupied Singapore (where I'm from) to perhaps target the naval base there as well. Thank you Sparty & team as always. Never forget.
The range of the B29 is quite impressive for being a 1944 bomber 😮
The B-29 was never used in Europe. I find that interesting. It was also state of the art for the time
@@firingallcylinders2949Its huge range wasn't needed there.
@@firingallcylinders2949What's interesting about it? It was overkill. We had a plague of B-17s in Europe already, that had more than sufficient range, even before we had bases on the continent. Seems pretty matter of fact.
@@_ArsNova am I not allowed to say something is interesting? Calm down
@@firingallcylinders2949Never said you weren't. I just asked a question, and gave the reasoning why.
"It's a crime if we lose. If we win, it isn't." - Mark Anthony to Ceasar
It becomes clear why was this humanity's darkest time, when the "good guys" see extermination of cities as a normal military act. Gives Warhammer 40k vibes a little bit.
It was of dubious justification or effectiveness against Germany, but ultimately a pragmatic necessity again Japan. Geography, the nature of Japanese cities and industry, and the expectation of fanatical resistance by mobilized civilians when the invasion came in 1946 were serious issues.
In WW1 both Germany and Britain bombed enemy cities from the air. The German navy shelled coastal towns on Britain's east coast. Before that, almost every army in the world had shelled cities during sieges. That stretches back thousands of years before gun powder was used in firearms. Aerial bombardment is just an updated technology of catapult shelling of walled cities and castles. Such progress???
My father, after participating in the invasion of Guam as a Combat Engineer, stayed and commanded a construction company in the building of a B-29 air strip that is now Anderson Air Force Base. He wore the 20th Air Force patch on his right (combat service) arm until retirement from the Army in the 1960's. I still have that patch.
Blimey, this war just gets worse. The amount of death is just increasing week by week. Absolutely horrid for everyone.
Look up the casualties for Germany in the last weeks fighting the Red Army into Berlin. Thousands a day.
This is the point of the war where the WAH series will have more "content" than the regular series.
This is the first episode of WAH I am able to see in a long time. The last ones were age restricted pretty fast. Which I think is totally unjust.
People and also young people should not be restricted in finding out the truth. Being able to freely find out the truth is essential for a democratic and just society.
Never forget!
The shorter range from the Marianas to Japan was noted.
The other factor was the _much_ shorter supply line from the US. Instead of the long trip to the air bases in China, via the Atlantic and Indian oceans, then flights from India over the Hump to China, stuff could be shipped from the West Coast straight to the Marianas.
That whole thing about the airfield in Szechuan is made all the more horrible when it turns out the new airbases on captured Pacific islands made the Szechuan airbase obsolete a few months later.
A comment to show my support for the channel, and to boost it's CZcams algorithm
Thank you very much and thanks for watching!
A career hi-point, I was Camera assistant on a documentary. We interviewed novelist Kurt Vonnegut & Joe Heller, of” catch 22” fame. The overall thesis, called “ Death from above” made the point that the idea of humane precision bombing was a myth! Despite the illusion of accuracy and precision, bombing quickly became indiscriminate. I recall Joseph Heller relating the story that operations in Greece had been so brutal, if you were shot down , you were told to find the Germans and surrender immediately. The Greeks were so hated,if you were captured by the Greeks, your life was at risk! POWs would be protected by the Germans, not the Greeks! ( The interviews were fascinating. I regret that I was too” professional “ to ask Joe to sign my book! (Slaughterhouse 5, too.)
Hi Sparty
Both side commited crime against humanity.
So many innocenet people died.
Never forget.
Thank you for the lesson.
And thank you for watching!
By mid '42 no one was even pretending to be civilized anymore.
Nous sommes tous des sauvages.
I'm so glad there's at least one place that just states "killing civilians is wrong" and ends the conversation there.
Agreed. No qualifiers, no comparisons, just a straight up statement that it is, in fact, atrocious.
Thank you.
My great grandmother was living in Nagoya during this time.
There is something terrifying in the very sound of the word "napalm". Even more with Spartacus' delivery.
“May you walk through the ashes of Tokyo.”
- A toast by General Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr., US Army
Another excellent video.
Thank you!
You’re excellent!
Great Video as always ❤
Thank you ❤
Usually dont watch this series because there is a limit to what I can take in and remain sane. But this episode was good and important
The real moral problem with killing civilians through air raids is the assumption that war is an honorable endeavor that must be kept that way through rules and prohibitions on killing innocents. The illusion of a legal order guiding all states The truth is that whatever side you're on war is simply getting what you want by killing people and breaking things is the real historical norm. There's no honor in warfare, just the cruel logic that a monopoly on violence is the ultimate key to getting what you want regardless of whether you're the good guy or the bad guy..
Yep. It's just standard practice since ice ages.
What I always wonder is why, in a total war like WW2, some people consider it completely fair to bomb a teenager who's been drafted against his will and put in uniform with a rifle shoved into his hands, but a crime to bomb civilians who make the uniforms, rifles, and bullets. The draftee never had any more say in the process than the factory worker or even the factory worker's wife and kids. Even in democracies like the US and UK half the draftees were too young to vote.
In a war where the entirety of the effort of the civilian population is put into supporting the war machine, there are no noncombatants.
"Rules? ... we don't need no stinky rules!" ... 😔
3:31 - Yay! My home city of Bristol just got a mention.
Wonderful historical coverage video through humanity prospectives... Thank you for sharing with higher 🙏 respect for you 16:05
Thank you for the kind comment and thanks for watching.
Thanks!
Thank you so much ❤️
The base in Bengal was in kharagpur which now houses one campus India s top institute of technology while on a internship there I had the opportunity to see the airfield it's abandoned and off limits now it's a place for college couples to hang out and picnic and you know
I saw Grave of the Fireflies for the first time last October (and was completely devastated by it) and figured you guys were going to eventually cover bombings of Japanese cities sooner or later. I am ready to be reminded of the gut punch! 😭
A very poignant film that really is heart wrenching, one of my favourite Studio Ghibli films despite only having seen it a few times due to how sad I find it.
Thank you for watching and thanks for sharing.
- Jake
thank you for a riveting & frightening video, i fear the next one. i notice that when Standard Oil is mentioned so is slave labor. Henry Morgenthau wanted them prosecuted for war crimes for collaborating with the Germans. Standard Oil developed a vulcanizing process for tires to aid truck movement in sand. according to Charles Higham's book "Trading With The Enemy", Standard Oil gave the process to Germany, helping Irwin Rommel's desert operations.
A great video.
Thanks Predrag!
I will argue that the fire bombing campaign against Japan, while horrendous and criminal. Was effective in its goal
Excellent video. (par for the course) No matter which side you're on: soldier or civilian: WAR JUST PLAIN SUCKS!
Thanks for the kind comment, we appreciate it!
There is a documentary called "Fog of War" with Robert McNamara (former US Defence secretary) who was with Curtis LeMay and helped refine the fire bombing of Japan.
The carnage on Japanese cities from fire bombing was unbelievable.
McNamara was on LeMay's staff during this time. He quoted Lemay as saying they would be found guilt of war crimes if they lost the war.
To foreshadow a bit, my dad was in the occupation force after the war. He described the devastation in Yokohama -- a stretch of 14 miles with nothing left except the occasional chimney. He also described the experience of a friend he made there, who had lived in that area before the war. There were regular air raid drills, in which every good Japanese homeowner would run outside with a bucket of sand in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. The generals would drive past in their cars and review the preparations approvingly. However, this homeowner one day heard one say to the other, "As if that would stop it...". The next day he sold his house and moved to the mountains. When the huge raid burned down the area in March '45, he could read newspaper by the light of the inferno.
@@mattmckrell5544Thanks for sharing. So many horrific anecdotes that I've read from this era. If it weren't for the photos, you could scarcely imagine that level of destruction being deliberately wrought by man against fellow man.
@mattmckrell5544 The breakdown in Fog of War of the destruction to the various Japanese cities was surreal.
My knowledge of the extent of the fire bombing on Japanese cities prior to watching the McNamara documentary was pretty limited, although I did know that Tokyo lost more civilian lives from it than Hiroshima, or Nagasaki did from the atomic bombs.
The US military by 1945 was truly a giant awoken.
McNamara was a war criminal.
@@noName-kn1lx Found the war crime apologist.
LeMays name made me shiver if y’all didn’t know he was Mr Segregations Wallace’s running mate so his attitude seems to track early
Thanks for the info.
International law, especially the law of war, is largely self-enforcing. They are enforced by the threat of retaliation for breach. It's far from an ideal system, but it's the only one we have. Both the Germans and Japanese launched aggressive wars and then committed every war crime and crime against humanity under the sun. It was only a matter of time before their enemies retaliated in kind, once they had the means to do so.
To quote Bomber Harris..."The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everybody else and nobody was going to bomb them.
At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put that rather naive theory into operation.
They sowed the wind and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.
Cologne, Lubeck, Rostock-Those are only just the beginning.
We cannot send a thousand bombers a time over Germany every time, as yet.
But the time will come when we can do so.
Let the Nazis take good note of the western horizon.
There they will see a cloud as yet no bigger than a man’s hand.
But behind that cloud lies the whole massive power of the United States of America.
When the storm bursts over Germany, they will look back to the days of Lubeck and Rostock and Cologne as a man caught in the blasts of a hurricane will look back to the gentle zephyrs of last summer.
It may take a year. It may take two.
But for the Nazis, the writing is on the wall.
Let them look out for themselves. The cure is in their own hands.
There are a lot of people who say that bombing can never win a war.
Well, my answer to that is that it has never been tried yet, and we shall see.
Germany, clinging more and more desperately to her widespread conquests and even seeking foolishly for more, will make a most interesting initial experiment.
Japan will provide the confirmation.
But the time is not yet. There is a great deal of work to be done first, and let us all get down to it."
By that standard of measure, you are also implying the Allies were just as bad as the Axis. Yet I saw no tribunals for Allied war criminals.
Also, there was no such thing as a "crime against humanity" in 1944. That was a crime invented solely to prosecute Axis leaders.
Can you really call bombing German/Japanese cities a war crime, considering the manufacturing of war materials in those cities?
He even mentioned they said anyone not involved in war things should leave Tokyo.
@@lordgarion514 Following that moral logic cities in the UK and in the US and elsewhere would also be legitimate targets if an enemy could reach them.
@@dpeasehead
Yep. At least you're paying attention. 👍
Or were you trying to make some argument against city bombing?
Fact is, during war, attacking manufacturing is valid.
Now, a moral argument could be made for the original aggressor, Germany in this case, to not bomb cities, since the other country is just defending itself.
But really, once war has started, cities where war goods are made, are valid targets
What's scary is not it being a war crime but it was effective at ending the war.
Robert McNamara spoke at length on this subject in the "Fog of War" production. His service during WWII was on the staff of Bombs Away LeMay doing bombing damage assessment. This gave him a very real look at the terrible things happening to civilians.
That outro gave me chills
I would highly recommend reading the book 'A Torch to the Enemy', by Martin Caidin. A factual account of the B-29 strategic bombing campaign on Japan, and specifically Operation Meetinghouse, the single most destructive bombing raid in history. Note, it was more destructive than Hiroshima or Nagasaki
I have this book and "The Night Hamburg Died" about Operation Gormorrah.
@@martinricardo4503 same author. Brilliant book too.
War is hell - General Sherman.
Awesome tie, Sparty.
I'll pass that onto him, thanks for watching! - Jake
I alwasys think of Firestorm by Sabaton when I hear of strategic bombing.
“The development of armaments by modern science has immeasurably magnified the horrors and wickedness of war. Warfare conducted with these weapons can inflict immense and indiscriminate havoc which goes far beyond the bounds of legitimate defense. … Every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation” (Second Vatican Council “Gaudium et Spes,” No.80)
And to think what will happen this month, but next year...
War unleashes evil on a scale hard to imagine
The intro of this episode is great and horrifying.
That comment from General LeMay is, frankly, chilling.
Most things said by LeMay tend to be that. I will at least give him credit for acknowledging that had been on the losing side, he would have been tried for war crimes.
For further reading on this subject I strongly recommend "Whirlwind" by Barrett Tillman.
As an aside, I am the proud custodian of a signed lithograph titled "The Rover Boys Express", which depicts a B-29 of the same name over Japan. It was brought down by a ramming-attack from a Japanese fighter. The piece I possess is signed by the navigator on that aircraft, "Hap" Halloran, who is quoted in the book.
He spent the rest of the war in a POW camp, where he met and became lifelong friends with Marine Corps Lt. Col. Gregory "Pappy" Boyington. I also have a signed lithograph from him entitled "A Wolf In Sheep's Clothing" depicting him in his F4U-1D Corsair.
These are coveted pieces that I intend to bequeath to my local historical society upon my death.
I'm not saying this to justify anything; My uncle was of draft/enlistment age in early 1945. He told me that the sentiment of he and his peers was that they would be sent to Japan to fight and would likely die there. The belief was that the allies would lose one million people to conquer the home islands. People of the time welcomed the bombings.
500,000 Purple Hearts were created for just the start of Operation Downfall.
@@retiredbore378 Clearly, you would be okay if more Chinese, Koreans, Filipinos, Indonesians, Malaysians, Singaporeans had continued dying under Japanese occupation because that's what would have happened.
@@retiredbore378Ever heard of the phrase "war weariness"? What about "perpetual war"? Or "mass starvation"? Truman would LOVE to choose any option other than invading the Japanese Home Islands but when they run simulations those "alternatives" end up being more hassle than actual invasion...
My father and grandfather might have been at risk in 1946.
Strong video: 💪
Also excellent on this topic are the relevant sections in FOG OF WAR documentary abt Robert McNamara, who worked w LeMay on the bombing campaign against Japan.
I was gonna mention that... little known and excellent documentary. Fascinating to hear from someone who worked directly with LeMay, how essentially the systematic destruction of whole cities by fire just became a production line of destruction that, in some senses, they simply forgot to turn off and it just kept getting more efficient. Or how LeMay brought the b29s down to below 10,000 feet even though they were more vulnerable there, just to increase the intensity of firestorms. Firebombing of Tokyo was more deadly and effective than the atom bombs. Macnamara was a piece of work too though. Ever heard of Macnamara's morons?
Arthur Harris said at the end of his post-war interview (you can find it on youtube) something like "I only hope this helps to prevent getting into these kinds of riots in future. They never do anyone any good in the end." A somewhat melancholy way to look at your contribution to victory. Even LeMay said "if we lost we'd all be tried as war criminals". They weren't under any illusions. They just wanted the bloody thing over as quickly as possible with as few allied casualties as possible. There is no moral justification. Trying to justify it morally is irrelevant and asinine. For these men at that time, it was simply a case of Them or Us and they preferred that it was Them and not Us.
His book In Retrospect is worth a look, if you have the time.
@@throwback19841 The one good thing I can say about Harris and LeMay is, as you said, they were at least self-aware about this... unlike a fair number of people around here supporting similar ideas.
As described by McNamara in Errol Morris superb 2003 documentary.
Fog of War
Excellent as always 👍
Thanks for the kind comment 👍
@@WorldWarTwo as always you are welcome.👍
Yet again its Disheartening to see how little changes in Mankinds Nature.The technology advances but the Base instinct to lash out and smash still remains How readily it seems is the justification for going back on Principles when it is in the National Interest and the only way to physically hit back at your opponents!
One thing I'd like to mention. Is the muddy waters of historical presentism. We have the luxury of sitting in air conditioned comfortable houses, most of us on this website living in liberal democracies which only survived due to the allied victory. Almost a century away from these events were all the men and women who planned, organized and fought them are dead. We have the opportunity to moralize, debate, discuss and condemn the actions of the allied air forces. An opportunity that the actions of those air forces provided.
To a westerner, the bombing of Japan seems a cruel, horrific and unnecessary act. To a Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese, Laotian, Cambodian, Malayan. It means their freedom from a regime that was conducting settler colonialist genocides against their people. And we have a tendency to leave that out of the conversation.
That’s not a discussion about effect and cost though. That’s a discussion about justice meted out with bombs. To boot a justice not against the directly guilty, but punishment on those guilty by association. And it gets worse… it’s justice without due process, without the assumption of innocence, and without being afforded a chance to defense in fair trial. Finally, it’s final - it’s capital punishment in an unusual and cruel form.
In summary, revenge in this form is the opposite of the values the Western Allies stood for and fought for against these aggressors. That’s why we historians don’t have that discussion, because it has a foregone conclusion: understandably people felt the aggressors needed to be punished, but if bombing was the punishment, then we failed by becoming the monsters we aspired to defeat.
Already in 1944 there were loud conceal voices pointing this out. In the post war world the family of nations, the entire world sharpened the language of laws and conventions to clarify that punishment on people based on their identity or nationality is unacceptable. Full stop. It doesn’t matter what was done in their name - we only go after the perpetrators, and the decision makers as individuals.
Agreed. It was a necessary evil.
"Joint incendiary committee" is one of the most nefarious sounding committees ever..
I gotta say, Sparty: Your English has gotten SO much better. The accent is almost gone. I still love when you're covering the war in and over Germany, because I love hearing native Germans speak German!
That’s very kind of you to say, but a bit confusing. I’m a native English speaker - I’m bilingual English and Swedish by birth and English is my first language. German is only my fourth language, after French.
@@spartacus-olsson Huh. Wow. I guess it’s just much less accented? I didn’t know! Well, oops on me for assuming.
Love this series. Thank you for presenting topics that while difficult are so necessary.
@@Ekehart nah, I was just really bad at hosting in the beginning, which probably made me sound weird… still learning, but my delivery is less awkward.
Was the development cost of the B29, greater than the Manhatan project ?
Yes. B-29 was $3B and the Manhattan cost $1.9B
Heh. I've been playing Tom Clancy's The Division 2 for years, and in one of the raids one of the bosses is named Fieser. He wields a flamethrower; meaningful name, that one.
14:39 The graphic shows the B29 bombing Kyoto in Honshu, not Yawata (Yahata) in Kyushu. The Imperial Steel Works of Yawata are at the top left corner of the smaller island to the left, just below where it says Shimonoseki. Great video. Ya know, that 7 B-29s were lost in the first raid is kind of notable. I don't think the Japanese managed to shoot down much more than 100 B-29s for the entire war. They were practically immune.
Great to see this after watching Oppenheimer
Thanks for watching.
Like Sherman said. War is hell.
Has there ever been a case where bombing of cities ever actually broke the will of a people to fight? I'm pretty certain air power won in Kosovo but that wasn't that more on account that the Serbs couldn't do anything without have their hardware destroyed. I'm just saying the whole concept of breaking will is going to backfire. Far more likely your enemy's civilian population is going to have their resolve strengthened, make them more determined to win so that their suffering was not in vain. If you're going to bomb cities, bomb factories, infrastructure and cripple you enemy's ability to fight back. It'll be more productive.
This American bomber is my very favorite bomber from any country. The looks of it is just amazing.
Never forget.
Never forget!!!!
Bombing civilians was also a waist of resources.
Is that why they called the atomic bomb Fat Man?
In WW1, soldiers were sent to die in futile massive trench warfare by the millions, while the war supporters at home were almost completely unharmed. Since civilian populations at home became vulnerable to air attack, wars have been undertaken with much more reluctance.
Love the suit tie and hanky it really looks quite smart on you Spartacus clearly people don’t know how to dress these days thanks for showing us how.
Good job appearance is everything.
I was thinking the same thing. Frankly, I wouldn't mind meeting his tailor!
Mr Olsson has fabulous taste.
He's looking quite dapper isn't he? Thanks for watching!
"As ye sow, so shall ye reap"
I just recently watched that new movie Oppenheimer and it was well interesting.
The Army and Navy disagreeing on defence did not help matters, that dysfunction made the Americans' job a lot easier
While every human live lost is a tragedy, the upside is that the Japanese were able to rebuild a better city with amazing train connectivity for both local and national travel. So at least there was that eventually.
And the ancestors of Shunka Ayami survived the war.
Yeah. I wish somebody would burn my hometown to a cinder.
We could finally build more roundabouts.
@@kirbyculp3449 :3
What I never understand is how the Allies could on the one hand show how little bombing did to places like London, in terms of morale, and yet assume that the same actions against Japan and Germany would "obviously" break enemy morale.
agree! But then, the destruction the Allies brought to Germany and later to Japan were way harsher, than anything the Axis powers could inflict on the British or Australians. And it was the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that broke the spirit of Japanese leadership.
I sometimes wonder how much of it was spite and anger. In other words I wonder if of the bombing was literally "because we can, watch this Japan". It sounds terrible but even if shown that the bombing wasn't really having an effect that some in High Command wouldn't say it doesn't matter, level their cities anyways.
The bombing of London was deeply flawed. The Allies worked out what the Germans did wrong and greatly improved their tactics, with the chief goal of causing firestorms when hitting cities.
Part of it was revenge and also a large part was that they thought they could do it better than the Axis. But I am also sure they wanted the enemy leaders and peharps the population to know that they will be defeated because they (allies) had the military might that was better than theirs.
@@firingallcylinders2949 Partly. The USA has a history of ... really wanting to revenge an early defeat. "Remember the Alamo". We take half of Mexico (really an area they were going to colonize from the Natives). "Remember the Maine" we take Spain's overseas empire. "Remember Pearl Harbor" we bomb Japan. Remember 9/11 we do what we did to the middle east. That is a pattern... the one ones we haven't gotten around to are the Canadians. Soon though.... SOOOON.
Rules of war get thrown out of a window in war just look at the war rn going on, not saying it gives them an excuse to target civilians
I like that suit and tie.
He's looking snazzy!
I recommend thus video to those who insist that the atomic bomb wouldn't have been dropped had FDR lived.
Humanity is the first casualty of war...
So it begins.
As Samuel Jackson once said, "Hold on to your butts".
And then, as many other war criminals, LeMay was not only treated as a war hero, but also respected for having us all at the border of extermination in the cold war...
Human beings have wicked hearts.
When you let loose the dogs of war, many innocents will get bit.
I am sorry to ask, but I noticed Majdanek was not mentioned in the liberation of it. Even when it was in July 22nd.
If I am not mistaken, this was one of the first camps to be liberated and show the Industrial scale of the Holocaust.
Support you Sparty, I am not trying to give the wrong impression again like the Treblinka video in 1943.
See the Ep.108 published yesterday. Liberation of Majdanek is in it.