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Speaker 1: Also media, I was just doing the atonal screaming for you, Robert.

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Speaker 2: Now now you fucked up the introduction. So he doesn't

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Speaker 2: feel good now, does it. It's bad. It's harder than

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Speaker 2: it sounds.

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Speaker 1: You know, I'm honestly kind of fun.

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Speaker 2: I'm just hoping that the listeners here will appreciate how

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Speaker 2: much work goes into my atonal screeches, because, to be polite,

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Speaker 2: they sound a lot better than your atonal screeches. That's

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Speaker 2: all I'm saying.

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Speaker 1: I absolutely agree, So give the listeners one.

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Speaker 2: No, no, no, I think they've gotten enough atonal screeches. Okay, Instead,

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Speaker 2: let's talk about I don't know. I'm not We're not

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Speaker 2: on video this week, folks. I'm not feeling well. I

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Speaker 2: just had a vasectomy, which I debated on because I

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Speaker 2: don't like talking about my private life on the show

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Speaker 2: too much. But I also think it's a good thing

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Speaker 2: to encourage. So guys out there, if you're thinking about

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Speaker 2: getting the visectomy, if you're like, should I get a vasectomy?

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Speaker 2: Go do it or do it yourself. You know, it

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Speaker 2: doesn't look that hard. The doctor wasn't down there very long.

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Speaker 2: You could figure it out, you know. Pruners sure, you

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Speaker 2: know whatever, it takes a rubber band. That's how we

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Speaker 2: do it on the sheep anyway, Margaret, Okay, how are

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Speaker 2: you doing.

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Speaker 3: I'm good. I didn't have surgery this week.

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Speaker 2: That's also good. That's better than having surgery, is a.

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Speaker 1: General I love that for you, Magpie.

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Speaker 2: I certainly prefer the weeks when I don't have surgery,

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Speaker 2: even if it's minor surgery. It's never very fun. Margaret.

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Speaker 2: How often do you think about the fact that, at

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Speaker 2: any given moment we're at the most thirty minutes away

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Speaker 2: from the entire planet being wiped out?

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Speaker 3: Well more recently was depressed?

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Speaker 4: Yeah, it's I watched a movie about this recently.

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Speaker 2: It is a lot of them will have a lot,

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Speaker 2: which is kind of why I haven't actually seen that

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Speaker 2: movie yet. But this is always on my mind. It's

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Speaker 2: a special The whole nuclear doomsday planetary nuclear doomsday device

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Speaker 2: that we largely co created with Russia is on my

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Speaker 2: mind a lot. I'm just interested in the facts of

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Speaker 2: how it came together and who made it. And I'm

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Speaker 2: interested in because our subjects this week are broadly speaking,

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Speaker 2: all of the people in the US at least who

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Speaker 2: built that. Because we don't have quite as much granular

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Speaker 2: detail on their counterparts in the Soviet Union, you can

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Speaker 2: generally assume a version of everything we're talking about. This

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Speaker 2: we happened over there too, right, Like, they didn't not

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Speaker 2: create a planetary killing doomstate device. We both just kind

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Speaker 2: of built one that was heavily based on our game

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Speaker 2: theory understanding of how the other side would respond in

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Speaker 2: like an escalating nuclear scenario, And the end result of

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Speaker 2: that was both countries were ready perpetually and are still

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Speaker 2: today ready at all times to wipe out more or

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Speaker 2: less all of human civilization. But in roughly fifteen to

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Speaker 2: thirty minutes, that's about how long it would take.

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Speaker 4: Do you ever think about quantum immortality? Sorry, I'm just

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Speaker 4: going to go straight into wig that shit.

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Speaker 2: That's a nice thing to think about. It's comforting at

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Speaker 2: least the idea that like will never experience the worst

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Speaker 2: case scenario because our consciousness doesn't persist in those moments.

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Speaker 4: Except kind that's okay, that is, And I think about

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Speaker 4: that specifically around nuclear destruction because I think about how

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Speaker 4: often the people of the generation ahead of mine are like,

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Speaker 4: they almost seem silly, how worried they were about nuclear

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Speaker 4: apocalypse because it didn't happen during the Cold War, So

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Speaker 4: we're like, oh, obviously humanity would never do that, But

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Speaker 4: it would be impossible for me to be alive now

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Speaker 4: if the world had been destroyed. So even if nine

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Speaker 4: times out of ten we destroyed the world, we're stuck

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Speaker 4: being alive.

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Speaker 3: In the one out of ten.

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Speaker 4: So it actually makes me more fearful because I'm like, well,

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Speaker 4: it might just be pure raw luck that we didn't

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Speaker 4: annihilate ourselves.

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Speaker 2: Yes, and unfortunately, I think that is if you're trying

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Speaker 2: to look at this from an educated and accurate perspective,

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Speaker 2: that is the only reason we're all alive, because it

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Speaker 2: we nearly wiped out. Like the number of times that

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Speaker 2: the whole world nearly got wiped out in atomic hell

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Speaker 2: fire is like you have too many to count on

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Speaker 2: all of our fingers and toes in this podcast combined, right, God,

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Speaker 2: it happened so many times, and the amount of resistance

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Speaker 2: whenever someone pointed out, oh, hey, the way this was

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Speaker 2: built could kill us all at any moment. Accidentally, that

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Speaker 2: happened so many times. We'll be talking about the fucking

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Speaker 2: minute Men missiles and how they were initially set up

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Speaker 2: But what's interesting about this week is that our subjects

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Speaker 2: are kind of like Schrodinger's bastards, where some of these

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Speaker 2: guys do have big body counts, especially the folks who were,

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Speaker 2: you know, responsible for getting the new like Leslie Groves right,

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Speaker 2: who was the general whoever saw Manhattan Project right, You

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Speaker 2: can put a lot of deaths under his his name,

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Speaker 2: But most of the people who built this system never

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Speaker 2: killed anybody, even indirectly, really, but they could at any moment. Guys,

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Speaker 2: in fact, guys whose last bit of work was in

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Speaker 2: the sixties, could fifteen minutes from now, if the right

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Speaker 2: things had started happening fifteen minutes ago, or a couple

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Speaker 2: of seconds ago, fifteen minutes from now, all of these

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Speaker 2: guys could become the biggest murderers in world history right collectively.

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Speaker 3: But they won't be remembered.

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Speaker 2: But they won't. No one will be nothing will be right.

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Speaker 2: That's the beauty of atomic hell fire.

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Speaker 3: History is written by the victors. That there's no victor.

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Speaker 2: There's going to be no victors of a nuclear war,

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Speaker 2: simply no history written. But they are interesting in that

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Speaker 2: because a lot of them are not like bad, and

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Speaker 2: some of them are even deeply sympathetic. There's a guy

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Speaker 2: we're going to talk about who may have saved all

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Speaker 2: of human life but also helped still did help build

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Speaker 2: the machine that could at any moment end at all. Right,

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Speaker 2: because it's and I need to correct this from the start,

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Speaker 2: all of this is still relevant because absolutely nothing has

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Speaker 2: been done to make the system safer since the end

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Speaker 2: of the Cold War, and in fact, it's significantly more

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Speaker 2: dangerous than it was at the end of the Cold War,

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Speaker 2: in part because Russia's no longer pretending to not be

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Speaker 2: in a launch on warn situation, which is where both

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Speaker 2: both Russia and the United States are today is launch

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Speaker 2: on warn, which means that the policy of both governments

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Speaker 2: is to start shooting everything they have when they have

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Speaker 2: a credible warning that they're being nuked. Right, and our

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Speaker 2: best case scenario would be like one crazy country like

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Speaker 2: North Korea decides to fire a single ICBM at the

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Speaker 2: United States, but that would still trigger a massive nuclear response.

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Speaker 2: And if for some reason we couldn't get in touch

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Speaker 2: with the Russian government, And as a heads up, there

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Speaker 2: have been times where we've been out of touch with

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Speaker 2: them for as much as forty eight hours when there's

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Speaker 2: been like critical things to like like that happens, the

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Speaker 2: gaps and comms like that, especially since Ukraine happened. And

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Speaker 2: if we started launching missiles the way that most of

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Speaker 2: our missiles would work, a lot of them would go

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Speaker 2: through or at least appear to be going towards Russi

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Speaker 2: aspace or Chinese airspace for a while. And none of

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Speaker 2: these radar systems are perfect, So there's a very good

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Speaker 2: chance even if we weren't didn't have it set up

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Speaker 2: to Crossrustner Chinese airspace, they would think that for a

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Speaker 2: period of time that is longer than the amount of

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Speaker 2: time they know they have to choose to launch their

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Speaker 2: arsenals in response. As per the way to Terrence theory works,

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Speaker 2: this could happen at any moment. This could have started

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Speaker 2: happening seconds ago. Right. So that's what we're talking about

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Speaker 2: this week, is how we got to this point that

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Speaker 2: we have not ever stepped back from. We are just

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Speaker 2: as close as we were during the Cold War. That's

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Speaker 2: very important for people to understand. So these next couple

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Speaker 2: of weeks we're going to talk about how this all

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Speaker 2: came to be. Right, because all of the men were

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Speaker 2: talking about this week most of whom again have no

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Speaker 2: body count and probably lived otherwise decent lives. All of

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Speaker 2: these guys put the work in to make this machine

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Speaker 2: knowing that they were building a system that, if used,

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Speaker 2: would lead to planetary genocide, and they built it anyway.

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Speaker 2: They built it because they knew it would work that way. Right,

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Speaker 2: So we're gonna talk about why we're gonna talk about

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Speaker 2: because they thought they were doing the morally right thing,

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Speaker 2: and up until now you could make a case, up

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Speaker 2: until the missiles fly, you could continue making a case

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Speaker 2: that it was the right thing to do, which is

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Speaker 2: part of one of the fucked up things about it, right, Right,

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Speaker 2: So this is this is a complicated topic, but I

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Speaker 2: do think these people are worth discussing in part because

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Speaker 2: these are all people who sat down and had conversations

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Speaker 2: about like, Okay, we do this and that'll kill about

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Speaker 2: six hundred million people. Yeah, build it, you know, like

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Speaker 2: the these are the talks that they were having. There's

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Speaker 2: a joke that gets made online today a lot, a

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Speaker 2: meme about a tech company building the Torment Nexus, an

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Speaker 2: imitation of classic sci fi novel Don't Create the Torment Nexus.

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Speaker 2: It's kind of a joke about the way a lot

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Speaker 2: of tech broke, a lot of tech projects. Feel now

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Speaker 2: where it's like, this is exactly what the sci fi

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Speaker 2: that inspired you was warning against, right, But that really

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Speaker 2: is the reality of the atom bomb. And this is

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Speaker 2: not something I knew until I read the book Command

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Speaker 2: and Control by Eric Schlasser, which is one of the sources,

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Speaker 2: one of several books that I used to sources for

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Speaker 2: these episodes. And at the start of his book, Schlosser

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Speaker 2: points out that the first person to conceive directly of

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Speaker 2: an atomic bomb was HG. Wells, who wrote a nineteen

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Speaker 2: fourteen novel titled The World Set Free. I was not aware,

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Speaker 2: and now there's some other candidates, but this is like

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Speaker 2: the first. I'll tell you why this is I think

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Speaker 2: the best candidate for like the first guy to imagine

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Speaker 2: an accurate, semi accurate conception of an atomic bomb. In it,

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Speaker 2: Wells puts together a story that is weirdly like the

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Speaker 2: backstory of the Federation. In Star Trek, scientists create the

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Speaker 2: ultimate explosive, a radioactive bomb that allowed someone to carry

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Speaker 2: in a purse or suitcase quote an amount of latent

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Speaker 2: energy sufficient to wreck half a city. As Schlosser writes,

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Speaker 2: these atomic bombs threaten the survival of mankind as every

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Speaker 2: nation seeks to obtain them and use them before being attacked.

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Speaker 2: Millions die, the world's great capitals are destroyed, and civilization

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Speaker 2: nears collapse. But the novel ends on an optimistic note,

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Speaker 2: as fear of a nuclear apocalypse leads to the establishment

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Speaker 2: of world government. And this is Wells. The catastrophe of

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Speaker 2: the atomic bombs, which shook men out of cities, shook

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Speaker 2: them also out of their old established habits of thought.

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Speaker 2: Wells wrote full of hope, and yeah, I think that's fascinating.

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Speaker 2: I didn't know any of that.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, well, he also he is really into wargaming.

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Speaker 2: He also he would have he would have been so

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Speaker 2: into Warhammer if he was.

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Speaker 4: He genuinely was into wargaming. I know, yeah, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 4: yeah him as Warhammer man.

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Speaker 3: I like that idea.

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Speaker 2: He would have been. Also another war big wargaming nerd

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Speaker 2: who would have been into Warhammer was the guy who

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Speaker 2: played Grand Moth tarkan early Napoleonic wargamer. Anyway, Yeah, Wells's

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Speaker 2: nukes didn't work quite like the real things. They went

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Speaker 2: off slowly and they lot of huge amounts of radiation

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Speaker 2: over years of time. But Wells came pretty close to

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Speaker 2: foreseeing that the real thing, close enough to foreseeing the

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Speaker 2: real thing that in nineteen twenty nine, a Hungarian physicist

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Speaker 2: named Leo Sillard sz I l r d. Met with

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Speaker 2: Wells to try and purchase the literary rights to publish

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Speaker 2: his novel in Central Europe. This is relevant ter of

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Speaker 2: like who was the closest to a nuke? Because Leo

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Speaker 2: Zillard is one of the fathers of the Adam Baum.

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Speaker 2: A decade or so after trying to buy the rights

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Speaker 2: to this this is true, he comes to the US

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Speaker 2: and he's he becomes one of the architects of the

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Speaker 2: Manhattan Project, and he's a guy. You can't really blame Sillard,

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Speaker 2: right again, if we're talking about where does the moral

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Speaker 2: blame lay. He has the most understandable reason for wanting

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Speaker 2: to help the US build a nuke of anybody. And

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Speaker 2: it's kind of good to talk about him because it

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Speaker 2: does make the point that it's a little unfair to

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Speaker 2: judge these men without talking about the circumstances in the

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Speaker 2: world that formed them. Sillard was a Jewish refugee. He

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Speaker 2: fled Nazi Germany, and he wound up in the United States.

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Speaker 2: Because he was a physicist, and because he was a

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Speaker 2: refugee of the Holocaust, he knew not only the threat

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Speaker 2: that fascism represented, but he knew that Hitler had a

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Speaker 2: bomb program going. In nineteen thirty nine, he sends a

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Speaker 2: letter to Albert Einstein laying out his fears, and Einstein

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Speaker 2: is the guy who've sent the letter to Einstein. And

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Speaker 2: then yeah, Einstein helps him write a letter to FDR.

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Speaker 2: Yeah please, Yeah, like the Einstein helps him craft this

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Speaker 2: letter and he sends it to FDR. And this letter

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Speaker 2: warns about bombs of a new type, and FDR takes

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Speaker 2: the warning seriously that he keeps exploring the idea, which

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Speaker 2: helps lead to the establishment of the Manhattan Project in

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Speaker 2: nineteen forty two. Like, that's Leo Zillard and he ties

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Speaker 2: directly back to the Wells idea.

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Speaker 3: That's awful.

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Speaker 4: Let's so the fact that we could like literally say,

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Speaker 4: not only don't build the tournament nexus, but maybe don't

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Speaker 4: write the tournament maybe.

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Speaker 2: Don't read about the tournament nexus. I mean it's I

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Speaker 2: think Sillard probably was. I think he probably was into

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Speaker 2: Wells because he, like people had theorized before Wells that

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Speaker 2: something like an Adam bomb might be feasible on like

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Speaker 2: like the physicists had and I think Sillard was impressed

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Speaker 2: that Wells had gotten something so close. And also he

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Speaker 2: clearly wanted to warn the world about this thing, which

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Speaker 2: I think is why he was interested in purchasing the

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Speaker 2: rights to this. And we'll talk a little bit more

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Speaker 2: about him later, but is it is so tragic because

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Speaker 2: you can't blame him, like he's like his attitude is like,

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Speaker 2: we need, we need to have this because Hitler might

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Speaker 2: have it, right, yeah, which like, yeah, maybe I don't know,

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Speaker 2: but that's the same logic that like, and you know,

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Speaker 2: the USSR is not Nazi Germany, obviously we can the

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Speaker 2: proof of that is as simple as what happened in

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Speaker 2: the Cold War. Right, And to be fair, neither is

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Speaker 2: the United States. Neither country use the damn things on

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Speaker 2: the scale that would have ended civilization.

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Speaker 3: Right.

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Speaker 2: You know, we'll talk about Heroshima and Nagasaki too, but

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Speaker 2: it's you understand, like Sillard's motivations are deeply sympathetic, right,

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Speaker 2: And a number of scientists behind the Manhattan Projects, some

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Speaker 2: of them are refugees, right, But the ones that aren't

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Speaker 2: still get into it because they're reading the news they see,

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Speaker 2: they're aware of how dangerous the US, like the US's

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Speaker 2: enemies are during World War Two, and it's a legitimate

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Speaker 2: threat that Germany in particular might get the bomb before

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Speaker 2: we do, right, And those stories are like half the

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Speaker 2: reason this happened, because a lot of people of goodwill

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Speaker 2: got involved with the Manhattan Project because they were like, well,

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Speaker 2: this is probably the lesser It's probably better that the

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Speaker 2: US has this than that a fascist country is the

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Speaker 2: only one with a nuke, right, right, Like that's their

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Speaker 2: logic here, and they they had to operate on. We

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Speaker 2: know that the Nazis were never going to get a nuke, right,

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Speaker 2: just based on the choice because they didn't, right, they

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Speaker 2: went in different directions. They did not make the choices

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Speaker 2: ultimately that would have given you have.

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Speaker 3: You heard this thing?

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Speaker 4: Maybe it's in the script or maybe I'm like wrong

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Speaker 4: about this, that there was a work slow down of

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Speaker 4: the Nazi the Nazi bomb program where they were like

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Speaker 4: and they went and they tried to tell their US

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Speaker 4: counterparts like, hey, we're slowing down this bomb. You all

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Speaker 4: need to slow it down too. But the person that

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Speaker 4: they told didn't believe them and was like, oh shit,

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Speaker 4: they're trying to lie to us. They must be like

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Speaker 4: right about to build this bomb. Have you heard this story?

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Speaker 2: No, ipant, actually no, no, no, it's not.

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Speaker 3: Okay.

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Speaker 4: I can never remember the name of the book because

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Speaker 4: I found it in a trash can twenty years ago.

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Speaker 4: It was about the social history of building of the

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Speaker 4: bomb and I read this and and it like changed

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Speaker 4: the way that I was perceiving this stuff.

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Speaker 3: But I've since read.

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Speaker 4: More about this and research more about this, and I

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Speaker 4: think it's like messier than that. But I think again

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Speaker 4: just from memory, that there was like a work slowdown

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Speaker 4: in the Nazi program because it was all of these

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Speaker 4: physicists who used to work with Jews because before all

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Speaker 4: the Jews got kicked out of the physicist programs.

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Speaker 3: I don't know. I don't know if that's sure or not.

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Speaker 2: Uh maybe do I so check on that, But I

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Speaker 2: want to believe. Yeah, I mean, there's a couple, there's

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Speaker 2: some good. There's some stories, I mean, and the espionage

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Speaker 2: is heavily baked into the whole story of how this

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Speaker 2: all happened, right, Yeah, And it's the spies in the

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Speaker 2: US who bring bomb information to the USSR. Are people

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Speaker 2: working on a similar logic to Zillard, where they're like, well,

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Speaker 2: the US is obviously not a good actor, and if

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Speaker 2: they're the only ones with the nuke, they're going to

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Speaker 2: kill everyone in the Soviet Union, right? Oh?

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Speaker 3: Yeah?

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Speaker 2: Like and maybe you know we talked about it any

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Speaker 2: you guys talked about it. We had a plan to

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Speaker 2: do it, you know, so you're not and maybe by

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Speaker 2: by the way, it's if it's arguable that building this

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Speaker 2: doomsday device stopped a war that would have killed hundreds

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Speaker 2: of millions and was ultimately the right thing to do,

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Speaker 2: and a lot of people argue that to this day,

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Speaker 2: then it was certainly morally right for scientists to leak

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Speaker 2: information to the Soviet Union because otherwise the US would

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Speaker 2: have killed six hundred or so million people, right, right,

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Speaker 2: We know that because we talked about doing it a lot.

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Speaker 3: You're really right with the like Schrodinger's bastards.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.

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Speaker 4: People are heroes or bastards and we will never know.

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Speaker 4: And then half the timelines.

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Speaker 3: They're one, and then half for the other.

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Speaker 2: I guess part of why I'm doing this is that

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Speaker 2: if this happens like fifteen minutes after you finished listening

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Speaker 2: to this podcast, you'll know who to be angry at

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Speaker 2: and your last couple seconds of consciousness, assuming you're not

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Speaker 2: near ground zero for one of these things, yeah, you know,

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Speaker 2: and you probably want to be at ground zero. It's

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Speaker 2: the least painful option available. The road is optimistic in

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Speaker 2: terms of like the aftermath of thermonuclear war and a

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Speaker 2: planetary scale anyway, So those guy, but guys with that

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Speaker 2: logic basically that like, well, this is a messy thing.

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Speaker 2: I don't really want to be building a giant bomb,

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Speaker 2: but it might save a lot of lives in the

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Speaker 2: long run. That's like a sizeable chunk of the Manhattan Project. Right.

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Speaker 2: That's like a big amount of the logic behind the

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Speaker 2: reason individual people got involved. Right. The other half, though,

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Speaker 2: is and this is largely on the military side of things.

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Speaker 2: It's not exclusively military thinkers, but this is how the

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Speaker 2: military thinks of these weapons, both when we're starting to

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Speaker 2: plan one and then immediately after we start using them. Right.

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Speaker 2: And the military logic for why this is, why building

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Speaker 2: this system, why getting as many of these things as

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Speaker 2: possible is a good idea is based on a military

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Speaker 2: theory that starts to take hold after the end of

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Speaker 2: the First World War, and this is ultimately the theory

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Speaker 2: that leads us to the system of internet national usually

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Speaker 2: assured destruction that we live in today. Right, And there's

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Speaker 2: an element of historical rhyming here that we build this

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Speaker 2: global real literal global doomsdaate device as a result of

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Speaker 2: a theory that takes off in the end of World

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Speaker 2: War One, based on what happened in World War One,

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Speaker 2: because World War One is itself the result of a

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Speaker 2: doomsday device going off, a device that was never supposed

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Speaker 2: to go off, and a device that a lot of

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Speaker 2: people a lot if you right up until the start

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Speaker 2: of World War One, if you talked about this, this

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Speaker 2: system of alliances and military build up, right and like

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Speaker 2: an arms build up that like you've got all these munitions,

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Speaker 2: refit schedules and whatnot and interlocking alliances was meant to

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Speaker 2: ensure that there wasn't going to be a colossal European war,

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Speaker 2: Right That was the people who would defend it would

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Speaker 2: say that, like, well, if everyone's really well armed, and

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Speaker 2: if everybody's always and if we have all these alliances

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Speaker 2: between different powers that make it an unwinnable situation, we

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Speaker 2: won't have this war. Right, people would make that argument.

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Speaker 2: You know now obviously the technology at the time, they

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Speaker 2: didn't have access to ICBMs and nuclear submarines, so they

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Speaker 2: had to make do with defensive alliances that promised one

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Speaker 2: country would enter a theoretical war on another's behalf. And

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Speaker 2: these do work like a machine, right, and that's that

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Speaker 2: is what happens. You know, you have Austria declares war

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Speaker 2: on Serbia that brings France and Germany into it. The

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Speaker 2: German plan that they had built meant that like, well,

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Speaker 2: the only way we can possibly win this war is

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Speaker 2: we have to do this specific kind of invasion that

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Speaker 2: takes us through Belgium that brings Great Britain into the

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Speaker 2: you know, and so on and so forth, right, and

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Speaker 2: a maxim gun and they've got that. Everyone's got a

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Speaker 2: version of the maxim gun, and everyone's got your Everyone's

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Speaker 2: also thinking, well, I just re like we just refurbished

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Speaker 2: and upgraded our artillery, and France is France has just

401
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Speaker 2: upgraded this thing, but they haven't upgraded this thing. And

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Speaker 2: if we go now, they won't have the new version

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Speaker 2: of this thing, and ours will still be Like that's

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Speaker 2: a big part of the thinking too, right, And this

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Speaker 2: is like always the case and it had been for

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Speaker 2: decades prior to World War and prior to World War One,

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Speaker 2: the fact that it would be so costly and it

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Speaker 2: was so like everyone's plan for victory rested on so

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Speaker 2: many like assumptions and was sketchy enough, no one really

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Speaker 2: wanted to do this, right. I mean, with the exception

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Speaker 2: of the military thinkers who had spent their entire lives

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Speaker 2: building and planning out the system of like, this is

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Speaker 2: how we're going to activate our troops, this is the

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Speaker 2: order at which we'll get the marching, and this is

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Speaker 2: where they'll move in. They really So you have this

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Speaker 2: mix of nobody on the civilian side of governance wants

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Speaker 2: to think about this seriously because it would be a

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Speaker 2: calamity and they know it, and everyone in the military

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Speaker 2: is thinking about it constantly. So the instant you start

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Speaker 2: having leaders need to make a decision as to whether

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Speaker 2: or not they're going to go to war, the loudest

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Speaker 2: voice in the ear is this general who's thought of

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Speaker 2: nothing else's entire professional life. And by the way, in

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Speaker 2: the six minutes a US president would have to decide

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Speaker 2: whether or not to launch the nukes, the loudest voice

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Speaker 2: in his ear is going to be a guy who

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Speaker 2: thinks about using the nukes NonStop.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like his job, it's his job.

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Speaker 4: This is like the you know, the whole like an

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Speaker 4: armed society is a polite society, logical fallacy. Yeah, you know,

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Speaker 4: Like it's it's just so interesting that's this written large

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Speaker 4: where we have Yeah, we have data that shows that

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Speaker 4: an armed society is not a polite society.

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Speaker 2: It sure isn't.

435
00:21:21,840 --> 00:21:21,919
Speaker 1: Not.

436
00:21:22,520 --> 00:21:26,720
Speaker 4: I pro Second Amendment for complicated reasons, but very complicated,

437
00:21:27,040 --> 00:21:29,440
Speaker 4: but like it's just not It's like you could watch

438
00:21:29,480 --> 00:21:31,240
Speaker 4: all the videos of people being like you parked in

439
00:21:31,280 --> 00:21:33,440
Speaker 4: my space and now they're shooting at each other. Yeah,

440
00:21:33,480 --> 00:21:35,840
Speaker 4: and they would have been punching each other in a

441
00:21:35,840 --> 00:21:36,400
Speaker 4: different world.

442
00:21:36,520 --> 00:21:39,760
Speaker 2: Yes, And it's one of those things I have had.

443
00:21:39,960 --> 00:21:43,159
Speaker 2: I've literally had the exact situation of, like, I had

444
00:21:43,160 --> 00:21:45,760
Speaker 2: a situation that would have been violent, but we all

445
00:21:45,840 --> 00:21:48,960
Speaker 2: had guns and knew it and so nobody started shit, right.

446
00:21:49,040 --> 00:21:51,159
Speaker 2: And I'm also more than aware of the fact that

447
00:21:51,280 --> 00:21:53,840
Speaker 2: like the United States is more violent than a lot

448
00:21:53,840 --> 00:21:55,360
Speaker 2: of unarmed societies, right.

449
00:21:56,920 --> 00:21:59,080
Speaker 4: And yeah, because if you carry a gun, you have

450
00:21:59,080 --> 00:22:01,440
Speaker 4: to have an entirely mindset where you kind.

451
00:22:01,240 --> 00:22:02,400
Speaker 2: Of changes everything.

452
00:22:02,520 --> 00:22:04,960
Speaker 3: Yeah, you actually can't stand up to you for yourself.

453
00:22:05,080 --> 00:22:09,640
Speaker 4: You kind of have to take possibly even the first punch, right,

454
00:22:09,720 --> 00:22:14,520
Speaker 4: You have to do everything, possibly literally everything to avoiding

455
00:22:15,400 --> 00:22:18,840
Speaker 4: taken a couple hits. Yeah, because you know that you're

456
00:22:18,920 --> 00:22:22,399
Speaker 4: capable of an overwhelming capacity of violence. Yeah, and it

457
00:22:23,200 --> 00:22:26,000
Speaker 4: people don't do that. Instead they're like, isn't this sick?

458
00:22:26,080 --> 00:22:27,960
Speaker 4: I've got overwhelming capacity of violence?

459
00:22:28,160 --> 00:22:30,439
Speaker 2: And that's one of the worries with like the nukes,

460
00:22:30,520 --> 00:22:32,879
Speaker 2: is when they go from because prior, one thing I

461
00:22:32,920 --> 00:22:35,399
Speaker 2: will say, and this is something I'll even give Nixon.

462
00:22:35,840 --> 00:22:38,760
Speaker 2: Basically all of our leaders and all of the Soviet leaders, right,

463
00:22:38,800 --> 00:22:40,840
Speaker 2: it's it's a mistake to leave them out too. This

464
00:22:40,920 --> 00:22:42,560
Speaker 2: is the thing that would only have worked if both

465
00:22:42,600 --> 00:22:45,320
Speaker 2: sides were similar. For all of the flaws of all

466
00:22:45,359 --> 00:22:47,760
Speaker 2: of the men running both countries the duration of the

467
00:22:47,760 --> 00:22:50,080
Speaker 2: Cold War, all of them had one thing in common,

468
00:22:50,080 --> 00:22:51,520
Speaker 2: which is they were guys who were like, no, that

469
00:22:51,520 --> 00:22:54,000
Speaker 2: would be fucked up. Yeah, that that'd be fucked up.

470
00:22:54,000 --> 00:22:55,640
Speaker 2: We're just not gonna do that. Yeah.

471
00:22:55,720 --> 00:22:55,920
Speaker 3: Right.

472
00:22:56,240 --> 00:22:58,280
Speaker 2: There's some great I mean fucking Reagan has some really

473
00:22:58,280 --> 00:23:01,040
Speaker 2: good quotes of like, oh, like where he's like having

474
00:23:01,080 --> 00:23:03,560
Speaker 2: this conscience of like, I can't believe we as human

475
00:23:03,600 --> 00:23:06,960
Speaker 2: beings created this nightmare system. This is so much worse

476
00:23:07,040 --> 00:23:10,040
Speaker 2: than I ever knew it was. What's wrong with people?

477
00:23:10,720 --> 00:23:12,760
Speaker 2: Raygan had those moments.

478
00:23:12,440 --> 00:23:14,439
Speaker 4: Right, because he wants to punch people. Yeah, you know

479
00:23:14,480 --> 00:23:18,919
Speaker 4: he wants that. Yeah, he's want the lower level of violence, like, and.

480
00:23:19,160 --> 00:23:21,080
Speaker 2: There's some good there's a good JFK quote when this

481
00:23:21,160 --> 00:23:23,280
Speaker 2: all got explained to him for the first because JFK

482
00:23:23,440 --> 00:23:25,639
Speaker 2: one of the things he did is he took away

483
00:23:25,680 --> 00:23:28,320
Speaker 2: the military's control of the nukes right and made it

484
00:23:28,400 --> 00:23:32,440
Speaker 2: because the military used to be have a basically theoretically

485
00:23:32,520 --> 00:23:34,920
Speaker 2: could have made the call to launch the missiles, went

486
00:23:34,960 --> 00:23:39,040
Speaker 2: without presidential authority. It wasn't mechanically necessary the way it

487
00:23:39,080 --> 00:23:41,400
Speaker 2: is now, right, like the way the code system works now,

488
00:23:41,640 --> 00:23:44,480
Speaker 2: you mechanically have to have the president looped in. Right,

489
00:23:45,680 --> 00:23:48,800
Speaker 2: although there will talk about that it's not a perfect

490
00:23:48,880 --> 00:23:52,720
Speaker 2: system either, but that that became the way we do

491
00:23:52,800 --> 00:23:55,639
Speaker 2: it during JFK's administration. And when he when all of

492
00:23:55,640 --> 00:23:57,520
Speaker 2: this got explained to him how this works, I think

493
00:23:57,520 --> 00:23:59,399
Speaker 2: his exact quote was like, can we call ourselves the

494
00:23:59,480 --> 00:24:00,000
Speaker 2: human race?

495
00:24:00,600 --> 00:24:00,760
Speaker 3: Like?

496
00:24:01,080 --> 00:24:07,280
Speaker 2: What the fuck? Yeah, are you fucking kidding me? Yeah,

497
00:24:07,320 --> 00:24:08,840
Speaker 2: and they all like, there's a lot. You get a

498
00:24:08,840 --> 00:24:11,080
Speaker 2: lot of reactions like that from presidents, and that's the

499
00:24:11,119 --> 00:24:12,959
Speaker 2: only reason we're all alive to this day. And that's

500
00:24:13,000 --> 00:24:15,080
Speaker 2: the thing, not just with the US and Russia, but

501
00:24:15,119 --> 00:24:17,920
Speaker 2: with any country that gets a nuclear power, is maybe

502
00:24:17,920 --> 00:24:19,840
Speaker 2: you get someone at the head of that country who

503
00:24:19,960 --> 00:24:22,720
Speaker 2: can think about that, and who can think about for

504
00:24:22,800 --> 00:24:26,560
Speaker 2: whom it's not an unthinkable, right, And that changes everybody's

505
00:24:26,600 --> 00:24:28,960
Speaker 2: calculus to a startling degree. Right, This is why a

506
00:24:29,000 --> 00:24:31,200
Speaker 2: lot of people there's a good book called Nuclear War

507
00:24:31,240 --> 00:24:33,639
Speaker 2: by Annie Jacobson that lays all of this out in

508
00:24:33,680 --> 00:24:36,959
Speaker 2: a pretty unsparing term, and she provides like a theoretical

509
00:24:37,000 --> 00:24:41,320
Speaker 2: and her theoretical is North Korea's mad king launches missiles

510
00:24:41,320 --> 00:24:45,200
Speaker 2: for unclear reasons, right. And what I don't like about

511
00:24:45,200 --> 00:24:47,840
Speaker 2: it is I don't really agree with the whole the

512
00:24:48,640 --> 00:24:51,800
Speaker 2: Kim family are like crazy thing. I think they're pretty

513
00:24:51,920 --> 00:24:55,159
Speaker 2: rational actors. I just don't think they're thinking about the

514
00:24:55,200 --> 00:24:57,720
Speaker 2: same things that other countries aren't. Entirely.

515
00:24:58,000 --> 00:25:00,240
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're back to the wall, Like I'm not trying

516
00:25:00,280 --> 00:25:01,480
Speaker 3: to apologize for him, but.

517
00:25:02,200 --> 00:25:04,120
Speaker 2: I see a logic in what they're doing. I don't

518
00:25:04,119 --> 00:25:08,199
Speaker 2: think they're crazy, right, and which is there's a what

519
00:25:08,280 --> 00:25:10,320
Speaker 2: I think is I don't think his book is as good.

520
00:25:10,320 --> 00:25:11,879
Speaker 2: But there was another book that came out a year

521
00:25:11,920 --> 00:25:16,800
Speaker 2: or two previously, by another like a scholar interested in

522
00:25:16,840 --> 00:25:20,320
Speaker 2: the nuclear mutually shared destruction system that was also a

523
00:25:20,359 --> 00:25:24,560
Speaker 2: North Korea US exchange hypothetical, but that didn't rely on

524
00:25:24,840 --> 00:25:28,880
Speaker 2: North Korea being crazy. In fact, everyone was performing logically right.

525
00:25:28,920 --> 00:25:34,919
Speaker 2: It like, basically the premise was North Korea does something

526
00:25:34,920 --> 00:25:37,440
Speaker 2: that kills some South Korean civilians, right. I think that's

527
00:25:37,480 --> 00:25:39,480
Speaker 2: they either shoot or they fire a missile and it hits,

528
00:25:39,480 --> 00:25:41,840
Speaker 2: which has happened before. Right, North Korea has in fact

529
00:25:41,920 --> 00:25:45,920
Speaker 2: killed South Korean civilians, not all that long ago. Right.

530
00:25:46,960 --> 00:25:49,479
Speaker 2: And as a result, the North Korean present, without seeking

531
00:25:49,600 --> 00:25:54,000
Speaker 2: US approval, fires missiles at military targets non nuclear missiles

532
00:25:54,000 --> 00:25:59,760
Speaker 2: at military targets in North Korea. But the leader of

533
00:25:59,800 --> 00:26:03,960
Speaker 2: North Korea doesn't know that the US didn't approve of

534
00:26:04,000 --> 00:26:07,400
Speaker 2: the firing of missiles, and their system can't entirely tell

535
00:26:07,480 --> 00:26:11,879
Speaker 2: what's incoming and what's not, and they see one. Once

536
00:26:12,280 --> 00:26:14,359
Speaker 2: North or South Korea fires missiles into North Korea, the

537
00:26:14,440 --> 00:26:17,359
Speaker 2: US starts raising its alert level and North Korea becomes

538
00:26:17,400 --> 00:26:20,280
Speaker 2: aware and anyway, it's this whole it's this whole cycle

539
00:26:20,400 --> 00:26:23,199
Speaker 2: of escalation that doesn't require anyone being crazy. It just

540
00:26:23,240 --> 00:26:24,720
Speaker 2: requires And by the way, one of the things we

541
00:26:24,760 --> 00:26:28,720
Speaker 2: found at very recently is that the currently imprisoned former

542
00:26:28,720 --> 00:26:30,840
Speaker 2: president of South Korea, who is being charged with I

543
00:26:30,840 --> 00:26:34,360
Speaker 2: believe insurrection at the moment, actually did send drones into

544
00:26:34,359 --> 00:26:37,920
Speaker 2: North Korea illegally without getting US approval or anything while

545
00:26:37,920 --> 00:26:41,080
Speaker 2: he was president as part of some boondoggle to basically

546
00:26:41,160 --> 00:26:44,479
Speaker 2: get to declare martial law. Right, So, like this stuff,

547
00:26:44,520 --> 00:26:47,040
Speaker 2: like shit like that happens all the time. It just

548
00:26:47,160 --> 00:26:50,280
Speaker 2: hasn't escalated. But like we have had the first couple

549
00:26:50,320 --> 00:26:53,480
Speaker 2: stages of a few different apocalypses occur. This is not

550
00:26:53,520 --> 00:26:55,640
Speaker 2: a crazy This is not crazy, and it doesn't require

551
00:26:56,040 --> 00:26:59,160
Speaker 2: any power Russia, the United States, North Korea with nukes

552
00:26:59,359 --> 00:27:02,440
Speaker 2: to be like mustache twirling mad man. It just requires

553
00:27:02,440 --> 00:27:06,840
Speaker 2: them to all be have incomplete, imperfect information and focused

554
00:27:06,840 --> 00:27:11,040
Speaker 2: on their own survival. Right, Yeah, it's it's good.

555
00:27:11,320 --> 00:27:13,520
Speaker 4: I'm like, while you're talking, I'm thinking about all the

556
00:27:13,560 --> 00:27:15,600
Speaker 4: other countries that also have nukes and like their own

557
00:27:15,680 --> 00:27:18,760
Speaker 4: things going on, Like yeah, you know, like like I mean,

558
00:27:18,880 --> 00:27:21,600
Speaker 4: Israel and North Korea are like comparable entities in my

559
00:27:21,680 --> 00:27:25,040
Speaker 4: mind in terms of being like small powers with that

560
00:27:25,119 --> 00:27:30,159
Speaker 4: are like pariah states. Yeah that probably aren't going to

561
00:27:30,240 --> 00:27:33,800
Speaker 4: do something to get themselves. Like I actually could see personally,

562
00:27:34,119 --> 00:27:37,240
Speaker 4: I could see a big state feeling more confident to

563
00:27:37,359 --> 00:27:38,440
Speaker 4: do it, you know.

564
00:27:38,840 --> 00:27:43,360
Speaker 2: But yeah, uh, anyway, we'll keep talking about this, Margaret.

565
00:27:43,400 --> 00:27:54,840
Speaker 2: But uh, first, here's some ads. We're back. Yeah, so

566
00:27:55,640 --> 00:27:57,119
Speaker 2: we got off on a little bit of a tangent.

567
00:27:57,160 --> 00:27:58,600
Speaker 2: But I wanted to get back to a point I

568
00:27:58,680 --> 00:28:03,040
Speaker 2: was making, which is the history rhyming between the system.

569
00:28:03,400 --> 00:28:06,399
Speaker 2: Like the mutually assured destruction is a product of a

570
00:28:06,440 --> 00:28:09,960
Speaker 2: military theory that gets born at the This this theory

571
00:28:09,960 --> 00:28:12,359
Speaker 2: of strategic bombing that gets born at the end of

572
00:28:12,359 --> 00:28:15,520
Speaker 2: World War One, Right, And that theory only exists because

573
00:28:15,520 --> 00:28:17,680
Speaker 2: World War One happens, and World War One is the

574
00:28:17,720 --> 00:28:20,080
Speaker 2: result of a doomsday device that wasn't supposed to go

575
00:28:20,119 --> 00:28:23,600
Speaker 2: off going off. Right, You have all these treaties and

576
00:28:23,640 --> 00:28:28,280
Speaker 2: stuff that basically guarantee that if one of a couple

577
00:28:28,320 --> 00:28:32,520
Speaker 2: of different powers goes to war against basically anyone around them,

578
00:28:32,840 --> 00:28:35,199
Speaker 2: it will start a chain reaction that leads to a

579
00:28:35,280 --> 00:28:39,080
Speaker 2: general European war, right, and because of the way that

580
00:28:39,240 --> 00:28:42,840
Speaker 2: armies work in this period, right and all basically all

581
00:28:43,080 --> 00:28:46,640
Speaker 2: military wisdom at this point is based on the last war,

582
00:28:46,680 --> 00:28:49,080
Speaker 2: as it always is, and the last war for Europe

583
00:28:49,080 --> 00:28:51,080
Speaker 2: is the Franco Prussian War of eighteen seventy to eighteen

584
00:28:51,120 --> 00:28:54,600
Speaker 2: seventy one. That's not literally the last conflict in Europe

585
00:28:54,640 --> 00:28:56,200
Speaker 2: during this period, but it's the last big one that

586
00:28:56,240 --> 00:28:59,120
Speaker 2: people are generally concerned with when they're making their predictions, like.

587
00:28:59,080 --> 00:29:01,560
Speaker 4: This versus France, is the only way to have a

588
00:29:01,600 --> 00:29:02,800
Speaker 4: European war, right, It's like.

589
00:29:03,440 --> 00:29:05,280
Speaker 2: Ah, man, I mean, we have not had a good

590
00:29:05,360 --> 00:29:07,800
Speaker 2: European war since those two got their shit together, and

591
00:29:07,800 --> 00:29:09,880
Speaker 2: that's why I think we should start tweaking them both.

592
00:29:10,040 --> 00:29:12,440
Speaker 2: You know, just just start see who we can make

593
00:29:12,480 --> 00:29:14,840
Speaker 2: angrier at the other. You know, Germany, I hear France

594
00:29:14,880 --> 00:29:16,560
Speaker 2: has been talking hell of shit. You know, just set

595
00:29:16,640 --> 00:29:19,000
Speaker 2: the radiant a little bit, yeah, shit, set the right

596
00:29:19,080 --> 00:29:22,840
Speaker 2: on Firefuck it, let's see what happens. Only France has nukes,

597
00:29:22,840 --> 00:29:27,160
Speaker 2: so we should be fine. Anyway. The great land powers

598
00:29:27,200 --> 00:29:30,240
Speaker 2: of Europe, namely France, Russia, Germany, and to a lesser extent,

599
00:29:30,240 --> 00:29:32,920
Speaker 2: Austro Hungary knew that the instant war was declared. There

600
00:29:32,960 --> 00:29:35,800
Speaker 2: was this clock ticking, right, because most of your army

601
00:29:36,000 --> 00:29:38,600
Speaker 2: is reserves, right, The largest amount of manpower you have

602
00:29:38,720 --> 00:29:41,200
Speaker 2: isn't your active duty. It's this this mass of like

603
00:29:41,280 --> 00:29:44,440
Speaker 2: reserve troops, these guys who when they're eighteen or whatever,

604
00:29:44,720 --> 00:29:47,840
Speaker 2: they're basically drafted. They sometimes serve like a year and

605
00:29:47,880 --> 00:29:49,520
Speaker 2: then for a period of time they have to do.

606
00:29:49,760 --> 00:29:51,800
Speaker 2: It's basically they're all in the national guard, right, that's

607
00:29:51,840 --> 00:29:53,760
Speaker 2: the norm. In most of these states. You have some

608
00:29:54,320 --> 00:29:57,560
Speaker 2: version of that, and so it takes a period of

609
00:29:57,600 --> 00:30:00,240
Speaker 2: time to call these guys up from civilian life, to

610
00:30:00,320 --> 00:30:03,479
Speaker 2: issue them their gear, to get them moved into their units,

611
00:30:03,520 --> 00:30:05,400
Speaker 2: and then to get them moved to the front. So

612
00:30:05,480 --> 00:30:07,640
Speaker 2: everyone is working not just not only do have this

613
00:30:07,720 --> 00:30:12,120
Speaker 2: interlocking series of alliances, but once war starts, every side

614
00:30:12,200 --> 00:30:15,360
Speaker 2: knows I have to be able to get my reserves

615
00:30:15,680 --> 00:30:19,920
Speaker 2: ready for active duty before the enemy can. Otherwise they're

616
00:30:19,960 --> 00:30:22,440
Speaker 2: going to invade before I have my army, which means

617
00:30:22,960 --> 00:30:25,400
Speaker 2: I have a ticket like I. Once the Archdeoke of

618
00:30:25,440 --> 00:30:28,320
Speaker 2: Austria Hungary is assassinated, and then people start to realize

619
00:30:28,360 --> 00:30:30,800
Speaker 2: that generally European war is in play. It's not just

620
00:30:30,840 --> 00:30:34,320
Speaker 2: a matter of diplomatically, can we smooth this, It's that

621
00:30:34,840 --> 00:30:36,520
Speaker 2: all of my generals are shouting that, like, if we

622
00:30:36,560 --> 00:30:39,840
Speaker 2: don't mobilize now, we don't know that France isn't mobilizing, right,

623
00:30:40,000 --> 00:30:43,120
Speaker 2: we can't tell they might be mobilizing, and if they're mobilizing,

624
00:30:43,320 --> 00:30:45,480
Speaker 2: we only have this period of time to start mobilizing

625
00:30:45,480 --> 00:30:48,480
Speaker 2: in turn. Right, that's a big part of everybody's thinking here.

626
00:30:48,880 --> 00:30:51,200
Speaker 2: And that's the same with nuclear war, right, where you

627
00:30:51,280 --> 00:30:54,120
Speaker 2: don't know entirely what the other side is doing. We

628
00:30:54,320 --> 00:30:56,480
Speaker 2: the US have pretty good data on when people are

629
00:30:56,720 --> 00:31:00,480
Speaker 2: because we have this nuts insane like level of life spice,

630
00:31:00,520 --> 00:31:03,640
Speaker 2: satellites and shit like that, although all of it has errors,

631
00:31:03,680 --> 00:31:05,760
Speaker 2: all of it has things that can go wrong. Right,

632
00:31:05,840 --> 00:31:08,280
Speaker 2: none of it's perfect Today, I will run it.

633
00:31:08,280 --> 00:31:09,000
Speaker 3: It'll be fine.

634
00:31:09,160 --> 00:31:12,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, So everyone's acting off of imperfect information, and everybody

635
00:31:12,440 --> 00:31:15,200
Speaker 2: has a very limited timeframe, and they're being shouted at

636
00:31:15,240 --> 00:31:18,240
Speaker 2: by their generals that if we don't move in time,

637
00:31:18,320 --> 00:31:22,200
Speaker 2: were fucked, right, the whole country could be fucked. And

638
00:31:22,280 --> 00:31:25,120
Speaker 2: you have x amount of time now they have it's

639
00:31:25,200 --> 00:31:27,080
Speaker 2: days and weeks, you know, in the case of these

640
00:31:27,080 --> 00:31:32,680
Speaker 2: European monarchs, right, but that's still a ticking clock. Right. Anyway,

641
00:31:32,840 --> 00:31:35,560
Speaker 2: we all know how World War One goes not great

642
00:31:36,080 --> 00:31:40,840
Speaker 2: at least for everyone. European power is seriously hobbled worldwide

643
00:31:42,000 --> 00:31:44,240
Speaker 2: and basically all of the one of the things that's

644
00:31:44,280 --> 00:31:46,440
Speaker 2: fascinated to me, and this is the case in a

645
00:31:46,440 --> 00:31:49,400
Speaker 2: lot of wars. Everyone's planning at the start of World

646
00:31:49,400 --> 00:31:51,479
Speaker 2: War One is based on how the last war had gone,

647
00:31:51,600 --> 00:31:55,360
Speaker 2: and everyone's planning is wrong. Germany. Germany's plan to knock

648
00:31:55,440 --> 00:31:57,000
Speaker 2: France out of the war in the first couple of

649
00:31:57,040 --> 00:31:59,880
Speaker 2: months doesn't work. France and Russia have this plan where

650
00:32:00,400 --> 00:32:03,560
Speaker 2: we'll both hit Germany on either side, right, if Germany

651
00:32:03,560 --> 00:32:06,080
Speaker 2: starts some shit, we'll come in on both flanks and

652
00:32:06,480 --> 00:32:08,200
Speaker 2: we'll be able to knock out their ability to prosecute

653
00:32:08,240 --> 00:32:11,160
Speaker 2: the war pretty quickly. Doesn't work that way. Great Britain

654
00:32:11,240 --> 00:32:14,600
Speaker 2: has this fairly small, really highly trained army that they're like, well,

655
00:32:14,600 --> 00:32:18,280
Speaker 2: we can insert this into the continent if something brushes up,

656
00:32:18,320 --> 00:32:21,040
Speaker 2: and it'll probably be fine, right, And they realize, oh no,

657
00:32:21,160 --> 00:32:24,120
Speaker 2: actually we're kind of you have to have actually millions

658
00:32:24,120 --> 00:32:26,640
Speaker 2: of guys with guns, you know, how fast can we

659
00:32:26,720 --> 00:32:29,600
Speaker 2: draft all the coal miners, all of these and Germany

660
00:32:29,720 --> 00:32:32,040
Speaker 2: or Great Britain's plans are based in part on like, well,

661
00:32:32,040 --> 00:32:34,760
Speaker 2: we've got this great navy, that's probably all we'll need, right,

662
00:32:35,440 --> 00:32:38,320
Speaker 2: And they have a Tolkien and they got Jero Tolkien

663
00:32:38,400 --> 00:32:41,480
Speaker 2: somewhere in there. You know, surely will be okay. Anyway,

664
00:32:41,520 --> 00:32:44,280
Speaker 2: everyone's plans are basically wrong at the start of the war,

665
00:32:44,480 --> 00:32:47,120
Speaker 2: and it leads to disaster. And so after the carnage

666
00:32:47,120 --> 00:32:49,880
Speaker 2: a bunch of military leaders around the world started studying

667
00:32:49,880 --> 00:32:52,719
Speaker 2: what had happened to try to make predictions about what

668
00:32:52,760 --> 00:32:55,320
Speaker 2: would happen in the next war, which is the same

669
00:32:55,440 --> 00:32:57,960
Speaker 2: thing that did happened after eighteen seventy one. And they'd

670
00:32:57,960 --> 00:33:00,840
Speaker 2: made the wrong predictions. But they're sure this time we'll

671
00:33:00,840 --> 00:33:02,920
Speaker 2: get it. Wal we're smarter than that. Last generation of

672
00:33:02,920 --> 00:33:06,880
Speaker 2: military thinkers will make conclusions from the last war that

673
00:33:06,960 --> 00:33:09,720
Speaker 2: are right, you know. And one of these guys, among

674
00:33:09,760 --> 00:33:12,480
Speaker 2: the most influential of these fuckers, is an Italian general

675
00:33:12,640 --> 00:33:16,360
Speaker 2: named Guilio Duhey. Now. He had been born in Caserta,

676
00:33:16,440 --> 00:33:19,640
Speaker 2: Italy in eighteen sixty nine, but his family were refugees

677
00:33:19,680 --> 00:33:22,560
Speaker 2: from Savoy, which was a former Italian possession that had

678
00:33:22,600 --> 00:33:25,560
Speaker 2: been ceded to the perfidious French. As a young man,

679
00:33:25,600 --> 00:33:28,880
Speaker 2: he'd attended a military academy and became an artillery officer

680
00:33:28,920 --> 00:33:31,960
Speaker 2: in the Italian Army. He continued his formal education by

681
00:33:31,960 --> 00:33:35,600
Speaker 2: studying engineering at a university in Turin. Du Haey rose

682
00:33:35,600 --> 00:33:37,959
Speaker 2: steadily through the ranks, and by the early nineteen hundreds

683
00:33:37,960 --> 00:33:40,440
Speaker 2: he was a member of the Italian General Staff, basically

684
00:33:40,480 --> 00:33:43,640
Speaker 2: their joint chiefs. Right, that's kind of the idea. He

685
00:33:43,680 --> 00:33:47,000
Speaker 2: had been an early advocate for dirigibles, initially used as

686
00:33:47,000 --> 00:33:49,680
Speaker 2: spots for artillery and the like, and once the first

687
00:33:49,720 --> 00:33:53,160
Speaker 2: aircraft started taking off, he became an immediate advocate for

688
00:33:53,200 --> 00:33:55,840
Speaker 2: aircraft as a weapons system. Right now, this on its

689
00:33:55,880 --> 00:33:58,520
Speaker 2: own is a noteworthy He was right, obviously aircraft are

690
00:33:58,520 --> 00:34:02,160
Speaker 2: pretty important in modern war. Yeah, but very a lot

691
00:34:02,160 --> 00:34:04,640
Speaker 2: of people, I'm not. It wasn't universal. There were certainly

692
00:34:04,720 --> 00:34:07,760
Speaker 2: some guys being like, no, the infantryman with a rifless

693
00:34:07,960 --> 00:34:10,600
Speaker 2: will be the always be the core of any war

694
00:34:10,640 --> 00:34:13,560
Speaker 2: fighting effort. We don't need planes. There were some nuts,

695
00:34:13,800 --> 00:34:17,120
Speaker 2: but most intelligent people were like, obviously planes are going

696
00:34:17,200 --> 00:34:19,839
Speaker 2: to be useful, you know, being able to have the

697
00:34:19,880 --> 00:34:24,279
Speaker 2: sky seems helpful in the event of a conflict and

698
00:34:24,560 --> 00:34:26,640
Speaker 2: do Hay. But one thing that did make him noteworthy

699
00:34:26,680 --> 00:34:28,480
Speaker 2: where he was kind of seeing far ahead, was that

700
00:34:28,560 --> 00:34:31,600
Speaker 2: he suggested air power shouldn't entirely be the purview of

701
00:34:31,600 --> 00:34:34,160
Speaker 2: ground commanders, right, it would effectively need to be its

702
00:34:34,160 --> 00:34:36,160
Speaker 2: own kind of service, you know. And this is something

703
00:34:36,200 --> 00:34:38,600
Speaker 2: even during World War Two. There's not an air force

704
00:34:38,680 --> 00:34:40,920
Speaker 2: in the US. We have the Army Air Corps, right,

705
00:34:40,960 --> 00:34:43,920
Speaker 2: it's a part of the Army, do Hay ahead of

706
00:34:43,920 --> 00:34:47,000
Speaker 2: times it's like, no, the air power should be its

707
00:34:47,719 --> 00:34:50,840
Speaker 2: own independent branch. It's different enough, right, it's like the navy.

708
00:34:51,640 --> 00:34:53,560
Speaker 2: In nineteen eleven, he got a chance to act on

709
00:34:53,600 --> 00:34:55,760
Speaker 2: some of his theories when Italy went to war again

710
00:34:55,800 --> 00:34:58,600
Speaker 2: in Libya against the Ottomans, because an awful lot of

711
00:34:58,640 --> 00:35:01,120
Speaker 2: Italians had never really gotten over Roman Empire. That's the

712
00:35:01,160 --> 00:35:05,600
Speaker 2: gist of why we keep fucking with Ethiopia. Du Hay's

713
00:35:05,640 --> 00:35:08,080
Speaker 2: conclusion from this was and this was like the first

714
00:35:08,200 --> 00:35:10,920
Speaker 2: real world use of air combat power for Italy. And

715
00:35:10,960 --> 00:35:13,839
Speaker 2: his conclusion is that in the future planes will get

716
00:35:13,880 --> 00:35:16,560
Speaker 2: better and high altitude bombing will become the number one

717
00:35:16,560 --> 00:35:20,960
Speaker 2: battlefield role of planes. Right, this is not true for

718
00:35:21,120 --> 00:35:25,560
Speaker 2: World War Two entirely. I mean it's debatable, right, but

719
00:35:25,600 --> 00:35:27,560
Speaker 2: there's a lot of argument that that that that's not

720
00:35:27,760 --> 00:35:30,120
Speaker 2: entirely that high altitude bombing was not the number one

721
00:35:30,160 --> 00:35:31,640
Speaker 2: battlefield use of air power.

722
00:35:32,239 --> 00:35:36,280
Speaker 4: It wasn't high altitude bombing more like bombing civilians civilians.

723
00:35:36,320 --> 00:35:39,319
Speaker 2: But close air support is less high altitude because you

724
00:35:39,320 --> 00:35:41,759
Speaker 2: can't do it as accurately, right, Like you need to

725
00:35:41,760 --> 00:35:44,160
Speaker 2: be closer to not hit your own guys as much.

726
00:35:45,080 --> 00:35:48,040
Speaker 2: This is one of those things technologies made this kind

727
00:35:48,040 --> 00:35:49,799
Speaker 2: of true because like even a lot of what we'd

728
00:35:49,840 --> 00:35:52,320
Speaker 2: call close air support today is still pretty high altitude

729
00:35:52,480 --> 00:35:56,080
Speaker 2: because you can fire a missile from pretty high altitude, right,

730
00:35:57,120 --> 00:36:00,520
Speaker 2: like if like modern like modern weapon systems, you can

731
00:36:00,560 --> 00:36:04,160
Speaker 2: shoot from higher up. But he's wrong in spirit, right,

732
00:36:05,040 --> 00:36:07,960
Speaker 2: which is that like this is not the way most

733
00:36:08,120 --> 00:36:10,719
Speaker 2: effective combat use of airpower in World War two is

734
00:36:10,719 --> 00:36:14,160
Speaker 2: not high altitude bombing, right, And even if you look

735
00:36:14,200 --> 00:36:16,719
Speaker 2: in the Pacific theater, right, like, it's a lot of

736
00:36:16,840 --> 00:36:19,920
Speaker 2: naval aviation being used to knock out other ships, but

737
00:36:19,960 --> 00:36:23,440
Speaker 2: it's not really high altitude bombing. You know, Pearl Harbor

738
00:36:23,480 --> 00:36:27,640
Speaker 2: isn't high altitude bombing, right, Like it's a different kind

739
00:36:27,719 --> 00:36:31,440
Speaker 2: of use of aircraft. But dou Haey is certain that

740
00:36:31,520 --> 00:36:33,799
Speaker 2: high altitude bombing is going to be like almost the

741
00:36:34,000 --> 00:36:37,440
Speaker 2: not just like critical, but basically the only thing that

742
00:36:37,520 --> 00:36:42,640
Speaker 2: airpower will be used for. Right, And he's he's so

743
00:36:42,680 --> 00:36:44,560
Speaker 2: certain of this that he becomes kind of an asshole

744
00:36:44,560 --> 00:36:47,680
Speaker 2: about it, right, Like he illegally orders the construction of

745
00:36:47,719 --> 00:36:50,600
Speaker 2: bombers without getting like approval to actually spend the money,

746
00:36:50,800 --> 00:36:53,160
Speaker 2: and it burns out his career. He gets forced into

747
00:36:53,160 --> 00:36:55,479
Speaker 2: the infantry, and he spends the early stages of World

748
00:36:55,480 --> 00:36:58,600
Speaker 2: War One basically screaming that Italy can win. We can

749
00:36:58,680 --> 00:37:01,160
Speaker 2: break this deadlock, you know, in the mountains and make

750
00:37:01,200 --> 00:37:03,120
Speaker 2: the enemy harmless if we could just gain command of

751
00:37:03,120 --> 00:37:05,319
Speaker 2: the air. And he calls for the construction of five

752
00:37:05,400 --> 00:37:07,680
Speaker 2: hundred bombers to drop one hundred and twenty five tons

753
00:37:07,680 --> 00:37:10,160
Speaker 2: of bombs on Austria daily in order to break the

754
00:37:10,160 --> 00:37:13,920
Speaker 2: stalemate of trench warfare. Now, yeah, so this is the

755
00:37:13,960 --> 00:37:16,279
Speaker 2: kind of thing It seems ahead of its time, right,

756
00:37:16,400 --> 00:37:21,279
Speaker 2: because this is sort of where military thinking went, right, Like,

757
00:37:21,560 --> 00:37:24,160
Speaker 2: it was certainly the way military thinkers were thinking World

758
00:37:24,160 --> 00:37:27,680
Speaker 2: War two because of dou Hay. But it's not correct

759
00:37:27,800 --> 00:37:31,480
Speaker 2: ahead of its time in part like Italy simply couldn't

760
00:37:31,480 --> 00:37:34,359
Speaker 2: have built five hundred high altitude bombers to drop that

761
00:37:34,480 --> 00:37:37,400
Speaker 2: kind of tonnage on Austria daily. They did not have

762
00:37:37,440 --> 00:37:40,920
Speaker 2: the capacity, like the Italian industry, the Italian military in

763
00:37:40,920 --> 00:37:42,920
Speaker 2: the middle of World War One was not going to

764
00:37:42,920 --> 00:37:44,759
Speaker 2: be able to do that. Right, It's just not a

765
00:37:44,800 --> 00:37:46,720
Speaker 2: realistic ask of the country.

766
00:37:46,960 --> 00:37:50,360
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is not getting slaughtered in the war already.

767
00:37:50,719 --> 00:37:53,720
Speaker 2: Yeah, they don't have at the spare resources. And also

768
00:37:53,920 --> 00:37:57,040
Speaker 2: bombers aren't that good yet right, like they will be

769
00:37:57,200 --> 00:37:59,680
Speaker 2: by World War two. But do Hay is not saying

770
00:37:59,719 --> 00:38:01,960
Speaker 2: this is what I mean. He will eventually say this

771
00:38:02,000 --> 00:38:03,879
Speaker 2: is how the future should work, But he is also

772
00:38:04,000 --> 00:38:06,000
Speaker 2: arguing we should be trying to do this right now,

773
00:38:06,080 --> 00:38:08,560
Speaker 2: and Italy just doesn't have the resources or technical know

774
00:38:08,640 --> 00:38:11,440
Speaker 2: how to create the bomber fleet he wants in nineteen fifteen,

775
00:38:11,640 --> 00:38:14,000
Speaker 2: when he's shouting about it to everybody who will listen,

776
00:38:14,200 --> 00:38:16,080
Speaker 2: and he is such an asshole about this that he

777
00:38:16,120 --> 00:38:19,160
Speaker 2: is imprisoned for a year for not shutting up about

778
00:38:19,160 --> 00:38:22,520
Speaker 2: how because he's calling his superiors incompetent for not following

779
00:38:22,560 --> 00:38:24,239
Speaker 2: through with this impossible plan.

780
00:38:24,520 --> 00:38:26,879
Speaker 3: Like Yeah, you don't get away with that during a war.

781
00:38:27,120 --> 00:38:29,799
Speaker 2: No, they lock him up for a while, but he

782
00:38:29,880 --> 00:38:32,279
Speaker 2: keeps writing about his ideas while he's in jail, and

783
00:38:32,320 --> 00:38:34,680
Speaker 2: the war gets worse and worse for Italy, and he's

784
00:38:34,680 --> 00:38:37,480
Speaker 2: eventually brought back and given command of the Aviation Bureau,

785
00:38:37,480 --> 00:38:40,160
Speaker 2: which shows you how desperate Italy is. After the end

786
00:38:40,160 --> 00:38:43,160
Speaker 2: of hostilities, he starts work on his magnum opus, a

787
00:38:43,239 --> 00:38:46,600
Speaker 2: manifesto on the future of strategic air power. In nineteen

788
00:38:46,640 --> 00:38:49,240
Speaker 2: twenty one, it was published under the title The Command

789
00:38:49,320 --> 00:38:53,200
Speaker 2: of the Air. Now, some of his arguments are pretty strong, right.

790
00:38:53,320 --> 00:38:54,879
Speaker 2: One of the things he's saying is that, like, look

791
00:38:54,880 --> 00:38:57,200
Speaker 2: at what happened in this fucking First World War. It

792
00:38:57,239 --> 00:39:01,160
Speaker 2: was a shit show. Bomber aircraft aren't blocked by trenches, right,

793
00:39:01,239 --> 00:39:03,320
Speaker 2: You can get right over them. You can hit targets

794
00:39:03,320 --> 00:39:06,640
Speaker 2: behind the trenches like their artillery, right, and you could

795
00:39:06,680 --> 00:39:09,320
Speaker 2: maybe knock infantry out of trenches. Now, this is actually

796
00:39:09,400 --> 00:39:11,600
Speaker 2: something One of the things will be proved wrong on

797
00:39:11,640 --> 00:39:14,200
Speaker 2: that is that infantry and trenches are a lot less

798
00:39:14,280 --> 00:39:17,879
Speaker 2: vulnerable to aerial bombing than everybody wants them to be. Right.

799
00:39:18,080 --> 00:39:22,320
Speaker 2: Turns out trenches are pretty good at protecting people, especially

800
00:39:22,360 --> 00:39:24,319
Speaker 2: with the kind of technology they're going to have by

801
00:39:24,320 --> 00:39:27,800
Speaker 2: World War two, it's better than just shelling them endlessly.

802
00:39:27,960 --> 00:39:30,399
Speaker 2: But it is not the get out of trench free card.

803
00:39:30,880 --> 00:39:34,480
Speaker 2: Do Hey pretends it is right now? Du Hay is

804
00:39:34,560 --> 00:39:37,160
Speaker 2: also he's one of a number of growing military theorists

805
00:39:37,160 --> 00:39:40,040
Speaker 2: who had learned from the last war that these huge

806
00:39:40,120 --> 00:39:44,080
Speaker 2: conscript armies that everybody has moved towards. Like, if that's

807
00:39:44,120 --> 00:39:48,160
Speaker 2: how war works, if the whole male civilian population is

808
00:39:48,200 --> 00:39:50,920
Speaker 2: potentially part of the military, and the whole country is

809
00:39:50,920 --> 00:39:54,080
Speaker 2: being mobilized to support the military, then you can't limit

810
00:39:54,120 --> 00:39:57,440
Speaker 2: yourself to just striking troops in the field. In future

811
00:39:57,480 --> 00:40:02,200
Speaker 2: wars civilian populations. Do hey attitude is, civilian populations make

812
00:40:02,280 --> 00:40:06,719
Speaker 2: continued resistance possible, and thus civilians participating in the infrastructure

813
00:40:06,719 --> 00:40:11,719
Speaker 2: of war must be attacked, right yeap. Oops.

814
00:40:13,560 --> 00:40:16,440
Speaker 4: You know it's funny whenever there's these things that are

815
00:40:16,440 --> 00:40:19,040
Speaker 4: technologically developed that I just would have assumed or older,

816
00:40:19,239 --> 00:40:21,480
Speaker 4: like I would have just assumed somehow that like bombing

817
00:40:21,480 --> 00:40:24,440
Speaker 4: civilian populations is somehow older than this as a like,

818
00:40:24,520 --> 00:40:25,440
Speaker 4: I mean tactic.

819
00:40:25,640 --> 00:40:27,840
Speaker 2: You know, it is like this duet is not the

820
00:40:27,880 --> 00:40:31,040
Speaker 2: first military leader to be like civilians are a valid This,

821
00:40:31,200 --> 00:40:34,480
Speaker 2: in fact, is the norm in a lot of ancient warfare, right, Like,

822
00:40:34,880 --> 00:40:37,240
Speaker 2: fucking a lot of times in ancient Greece, one city

823
00:40:37,239 --> 00:40:39,560
Speaker 2: state goes to war against another. The one that loses

824
00:40:40,560 --> 00:40:42,880
Speaker 2: does not get to keep being a city state. You

825
00:40:42,960 --> 00:40:49,239
Speaker 2: inihilate them, right, you kill the men, you rape the women, right, Like,

826
00:40:49,320 --> 00:40:51,799
Speaker 2: That's not every war, but a lot of wars in

827
00:40:51,960 --> 00:40:53,560
Speaker 2: classical history go that way.

828
00:40:53,640 --> 00:40:56,239
Speaker 4: So I've been reading that for my show recently, and

829
00:40:56,280 --> 00:40:58,600
Speaker 4: I suddenly like had to realize. I was like, oh,

830
00:40:58,760 --> 00:41:01,959
Speaker 4: the concept of surren under yeah, is sort of new.

831
00:41:02,160 --> 00:41:06,759
Speaker 4: It's a new technology, is to actually like let people

832
00:41:06,840 --> 00:41:09,040
Speaker 4: go home after you beat That's.

833
00:41:08,960 --> 00:41:11,440
Speaker 2: It's more that it had stopped being the norm to

834
00:41:11,520 --> 00:41:15,480
Speaker 2: consider the whole country to be enemies. But even during

835
00:41:15,480 --> 00:41:19,280
Speaker 2: World War One, right, Great Britain starves a million Germans

836
00:41:19,280 --> 00:41:21,960
Speaker 2: to death by by blocking ports Germany. We know they

837
00:41:21,960 --> 00:41:25,280
Speaker 2: can't grow, they don't have the ability to produce sufficient

838
00:41:25,280 --> 00:41:28,040
Speaker 2: food stuffs on their own. That's part of the military effort. Right.

839
00:41:28,160 --> 00:41:31,000
Speaker 2: It's not as direct as bombing civilians, but it would be.

840
00:41:31,040 --> 00:41:33,200
Speaker 2: It would be very inaccurate to pretend Duhey is the

841
00:41:33,200 --> 00:41:36,120
Speaker 2: first guy who is like civilians are on the table, right.

842
00:41:36,160 --> 00:41:39,879
Speaker 4: No, totally, but specifically the idea of this standard ice, Yeah,

843
00:41:40,120 --> 00:41:42,120
Speaker 4: exactly exactly, it's meaningful.

844
00:41:42,440 --> 00:41:46,439
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Like I think that that is important that

845
00:41:46,520 --> 00:41:48,359
Speaker 2: he is the guy writing in a book this is

846
00:41:48,560 --> 00:41:51,879
Speaker 2: the this is a logical strategy for how modern war

847
00:41:51,920 --> 00:41:54,920
Speaker 2: ought to be pursued, is the systematic destruction of civilian

848
00:41:54,960 --> 00:41:58,560
Speaker 2: populations through strategic bombing, Right, it is does matter that

849
00:41:58,600 --> 00:42:01,480
Speaker 2: he's the first guy to write that, you know, like

850
00:42:02,120 --> 00:42:06,440
Speaker 2: that's that's upon his soul. Yeah, yeah, Which is not

851
00:42:06,480 --> 00:42:08,320
Speaker 2: to say that nobody would have thought to do stuff

852
00:42:08,360 --> 00:42:10,120
Speaker 2: like this if he hadn't been around, right.

853
00:42:10,080 --> 00:42:12,040
Speaker 4: No, But I mean just because someone else will invent

854
00:42:12,080 --> 00:42:13,920
Speaker 4: the torment nexus is not a reason to invent the

855
00:42:13,920 --> 00:42:15,080
Speaker 4: torment nexis.

856
00:42:14,840 --> 00:42:17,680
Speaker 2: And no, nor does it erase your culpability and making

857
00:42:17,719 --> 00:42:20,160
Speaker 2: it now. One of my sources for this episode is

858
00:42:20,200 --> 00:42:23,160
Speaker 2: an article by Colonel Everest Rascioni of the One of

859
00:42:23,160 --> 00:42:25,200
Speaker 2: the more who's one of the more influential pilots in

860
00:42:25,320 --> 00:42:28,960
Speaker 2: US combat aviation history, is an interesting guy. He was

861
00:42:29,000 --> 00:42:31,640
Speaker 2: a key member of what became known as the Fighter Mafia,

862
00:42:31,840 --> 00:42:33,920
Speaker 2: which is a group of guys in the Air Force

863
00:42:34,200 --> 00:42:35,839
Speaker 2: who argue and this is in like the latter half

864
00:42:35,840 --> 00:42:39,080
Speaker 2: of the twentieth century, they argue that like the branch's

865
00:42:39,160 --> 00:42:41,640
Speaker 2: bureaucracy was corrupt and lying about the This is like

866
00:42:41,719 --> 00:42:43,280
Speaker 2: right before the birth of I think the F sixteen.

867
00:42:43,680 --> 00:42:46,480
Speaker 2: They're they're they're saying the Air Force bureaucracy is corrupt

868
00:42:46,480 --> 00:42:49,319
Speaker 2: and it's lying about how well certain weapons systems work

869
00:42:49,440 --> 00:42:52,719
Speaker 2: for corrupt reasons. And as a result, they have all

870
00:42:52,760 --> 00:42:55,880
Speaker 2: these complaints about like hybrid role fighters as opposed to

871
00:42:56,000 --> 00:42:58,239
Speaker 2: dedicated anti aircraft fighters. There's a lot of debatus to

872
00:42:58,280 --> 00:43:00,600
Speaker 2: whether or not the fighter mafia was right bringing this up,

873
00:43:00,600 --> 00:43:02,480
Speaker 2: because this is a guy who has a history of

874
00:43:02,520 --> 00:43:05,840
Speaker 2: being on controversial sides of arguments right, and he wrote

875
00:43:05,920 --> 00:43:09,080
Speaker 2: an interesting article about the history of strategic bombing for

876
00:43:09,160 --> 00:43:11,040
Speaker 2: the Air Force right where he is kind of laying

877
00:43:11,080 --> 00:43:15,040
Speaker 2: out his thinking as to why do Hay was wrong,

878
00:43:15,640 --> 00:43:18,439
Speaker 2: and he summarizes do Hay's arguments this way. He also

879
00:43:18,520 --> 00:43:21,319
Speaker 2: believed that air forces would dominate surface forces on land

880
00:43:21,360 --> 00:43:23,600
Speaker 2: and at sea, and that an enemy's ability to sustain

881
00:43:23,640 --> 00:43:26,200
Speaker 2: a war could be eliminated. He preached the destruction of

882
00:43:26,280 --> 00:43:28,759
Speaker 2: enemy airpower in the air and on the ground. The

883
00:43:28,840 --> 00:43:31,480
Speaker 2: need is not only to kill the enemy's eagles, but

884
00:43:31,520 --> 00:43:34,560
Speaker 2: also to destroy their eggs and their nests. Hay wrote

885
00:43:34,800 --> 00:43:38,000
Speaker 2: enemy aircraft production plants were defined as prime strategic targets.

886
00:43:38,120 --> 00:43:40,600
Speaker 2: He believed that bomber attacks were inevitable and that defenses

887
00:43:40,600 --> 00:43:43,400
Speaker 2: against them were useless. He believed that attacking populations with

888
00:43:43,440 --> 00:43:47,120
Speaker 2: relatively small amounts of explosives, incendiary and gas weapons would

889
00:43:47,160 --> 00:43:50,000
Speaker 2: make populations force their leaders to sue for peace. He

890
00:43:50,080 --> 00:43:53,240
Speaker 2: believed that a powerful strategic bombing force could deter potential

891
00:43:53,320 --> 00:43:57,160
Speaker 2: enemies from attacking. Now, a lot of this is the

892
00:43:57,160 --> 00:44:00,239
Speaker 2: way very influential people in military plannings still think to

893
00:44:00,320 --> 00:44:03,520
Speaker 2: this day. Do Hayes thinking is incredibly common, or at

894
00:44:03,600 --> 00:44:07,440
Speaker 2: least a descendants of do Hayes thinking is incredibly common

895
00:44:07,520 --> 00:44:10,279
Speaker 2: within military planners to this day. And this is the

896
00:44:10,400 --> 00:44:14,520
Speaker 2: root of mutually assured destruction. It starts with these ideas, right,

897
00:44:14,840 --> 00:44:17,080
Speaker 2: particularly the idea, yeah.

898
00:44:16,800 --> 00:44:19,880
Speaker 4: That people won't put up with it from their leaders.

899
00:44:19,800 --> 00:44:22,840
Speaker 2: That people won't put up with it that well, and

900
00:44:23,040 --> 00:44:26,960
Speaker 2: that a powerful strategic bombing force can deter an attack,

901
00:44:27,640 --> 00:44:31,240
Speaker 2: right right, Okay, because your ability because they can't be stopped.

902
00:44:31,360 --> 00:44:34,960
Speaker 2: You can't stop a bombing run right, it's impossible. Part

903
00:44:35,000 --> 00:44:37,160
Speaker 2: of his attitudes that the sky is too big, right,

904
00:44:37,200 --> 00:44:39,719
Speaker 2: you can't actually stop bombers from getting to where they're

905
00:44:39,719 --> 00:44:41,680
Speaker 2: going to go. So if you have a powerful enough

906
00:44:41,680 --> 00:44:45,320
Speaker 2: bombing fleet, like no one will attack you because they

907
00:44:45,400 --> 00:44:49,360
Speaker 2: know they're doomed in that instance, right, And this is

908
00:44:49,719 --> 00:44:52,880
Speaker 2: basically how we think about near peer nuclear warfare to

909
00:44:52,920 --> 00:44:56,000
Speaker 2: this day, right, and that knowledge deters those soda of wars.

910
00:44:56,000 --> 00:44:57,560
Speaker 2: So this is part of why people will argue to

911
00:44:57,680 --> 00:44:59,880
Speaker 2: Hey round up being right even though he did not.

912
00:45:00,040 --> 00:45:02,479
Speaker 2: We're seeing nuclear weapons right in any way, shape or form.

913
00:45:02,640 --> 00:45:05,279
Speaker 2: And to be clear, he's not right right.

914
00:45:05,280 --> 00:45:07,560
Speaker 4: He was wrong about bombers, but he was right for

915
00:45:07,680 --> 00:45:09,000
Speaker 4: now about nukes.

916
00:45:09,360 --> 00:45:11,320
Speaker 2: Well. This is kind of the theme of our episodes

917
00:45:11,360 --> 00:45:13,200
Speaker 2: is that a lot of people buy into do Hayes's

918
00:45:13,239 --> 00:45:16,200
Speaker 2: theories and base their careers in the Air Force on

919
00:45:16,320 --> 00:45:18,640
Speaker 2: believing that this is more or less right. And once

920
00:45:18,760 --> 00:45:23,040
Speaker 2: nukes come around, that's the thing that makes that they're

921
00:45:23,080 --> 00:45:25,520
Speaker 2: the things they had already believed true and as part

922
00:45:25,520 --> 00:45:29,000
Speaker 2: of why they become such advocates for nuclear warfare. Right now,

923
00:45:29,080 --> 00:45:31,560
Speaker 2: I want to really emphasize how wrong Duhey is here,

924
00:45:31,560 --> 00:45:34,560
Speaker 2: because he is not making grand predictions about the distant future.

925
00:45:34,640 --> 00:45:37,880
Speaker 2: Nor is he theorizing about twenty first century nuclear warfare

926
00:45:38,120 --> 00:45:41,360
Speaker 2: or even late twentieth century warfare. He is discussing the

927
00:45:41,400 --> 00:45:43,360
Speaker 2: war he expected to break out in the next twenty

928
00:45:43,440 --> 00:45:46,319
Speaker 2: years or so, and on basically every technical point, du

929
00:45:46,320 --> 00:45:49,160
Speaker 2: Haey was desperately wrong. Again. He argues, the sky is

930
00:45:49,200 --> 00:45:53,200
Speaker 2: so big that airpower should only be offensive because airpower

931
00:45:53,239 --> 00:45:56,400
Speaker 2: cannot defend territory, and the only way to protect the

932
00:45:56,440 --> 00:45:58,359
Speaker 2: homeland is to build an air force that can bomb

933
00:45:58,360 --> 00:46:00,640
Speaker 2: the enemy into the ground before you're opponent can do

934
00:46:00,719 --> 00:46:04,680
Speaker 2: the same. He makes really specific predictions, arguing in nineteen

935
00:46:04,719 --> 00:46:06,920
Speaker 2: twenty eight that dropping a payload of just three hundred

936
00:46:06,960 --> 00:46:09,400
Speaker 2: tons of bombs over a capital city and under a

937
00:46:09,440 --> 00:46:11,719
Speaker 2: month would be enough to end a war. This would

938
00:46:11,840 --> 00:46:15,600
Speaker 2: all be proven catastrophically wrong, but for the later period

939
00:46:15,640 --> 00:46:17,839
Speaker 2: of his life do Hay as effectively the first air

940
00:46:17,880 --> 00:46:21,200
Speaker 2: power influencer. His book doesn't sell quickly at first, but

941
00:46:21,400 --> 00:46:24,120
Speaker 2: it becomes the bible of how to make an air

942
00:46:24,160 --> 00:46:26,120
Speaker 2: force for basically all of the men who were in

943
00:46:26,200 --> 00:46:29,319
Speaker 2: charge of the air forces in World War Two. Like

944
00:46:29,400 --> 00:46:34,240
Speaker 2: on every side, he's super influential, and that's not entirely accurate.

945
00:46:34,280 --> 00:46:38,279
Speaker 2: He has his detractors, obviously, but he's massively influential, and

946
00:46:38,600 --> 00:46:40,719
Speaker 2: I'm sure to Hay would have been thrilled to have

947
00:46:40,960 --> 00:46:43,840
Speaker 2: had such an influence because everyone in World War Two

948
00:46:43,960 --> 00:46:46,560
Speaker 2: tries out his ideas, but he never gets a chance

949
00:46:46,560 --> 00:46:49,719
Speaker 2: to see that. Shortly after Benito Mussolini makes him the

950
00:46:49,760 --> 00:46:52,640
Speaker 2: Italian chief of Aviation, he dies of a heart attack

951
00:46:52,680 --> 00:46:55,200
Speaker 2: in nineteen thirty. So, by the way, ends's life is

952
00:46:55,200 --> 00:46:55,960
Speaker 2: a fascist two.

953
00:46:56,400 --> 00:46:58,200
Speaker 3: Yeah, couldn't happen to a worse guy.

954
00:46:58,800 --> 00:47:01,759
Speaker 2: Really tragic. You know who else died of a heart

955
00:47:01,760 --> 00:47:04,960
Speaker 2: attack in nineteen thirty after being made the Fascist Minister

956
00:47:05,000 --> 00:47:07,200
Speaker 2: of Aviation by Benita Mussolini.

957
00:47:08,080 --> 00:47:08,840
Speaker 3: His twin brother.

958
00:47:09,520 --> 00:47:21,399
Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, or these sponsors, I don't know. Great, and

959
00:47:21,520 --> 00:47:24,000
Speaker 2: we're back. I was an awkward ad pivot. I'm not

960
00:47:24,000 --> 00:47:26,719
Speaker 2: gonna lie, Margaret. I'm not gonna lie. But I think

961
00:47:26,719 --> 00:47:27,880
Speaker 2: the audience will forgive us.

962
00:47:28,160 --> 00:47:30,400
Speaker 4: I think they will. I think they'll be able to

963
00:47:30,400 --> 00:47:32,080
Speaker 4: find it in their heart attack to do it.

964
00:47:32,440 --> 00:47:32,720
Speaker 2: Yeah.

965
00:47:32,800 --> 00:47:34,640
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's actually what I'm trying to do is make

966
00:47:34,640 --> 00:47:37,600
Speaker 4: you feel better by making a terrible joke. So those

967
00:47:37,600 --> 00:47:40,400
Speaker 4: people have already forgotten about your bad ad pivot.

968
00:47:40,719 --> 00:47:44,719
Speaker 2: Thank you, Thank you, Margaret. Let's continue talking about this

969
00:47:44,760 --> 00:47:47,560
Speaker 2: guy's stupid ideas about how planes work. Right.

970
00:47:49,680 --> 00:47:54,719
Speaker 4: Three hundred bombs, Yeah, three hundred tons of bombs all

971
00:47:54,760 --> 00:47:56,959
Speaker 4: you need that'll wipe out any cities, will to fight.

972
00:47:58,120 --> 00:48:00,960
Speaker 2: So, German war planners, influenced by dou Haye, built a

973
00:48:01,000 --> 00:48:04,080
Speaker 2: bomber fleet that was tailored for the attack, not operations

974
00:48:04,080 --> 00:48:06,720
Speaker 2: on enemy cities, but providing close support to their advancing

975
00:48:06,760 --> 00:48:08,719
Speaker 2: infantry and armour. And this is you could call this

976
00:48:08,760 --> 00:48:11,200
Speaker 2: an adaptation of some of de Haetes, certainly influenced by it,

977
00:48:11,239 --> 00:48:14,799
Speaker 2: this idea that like air power should just be for

978
00:48:14,840 --> 00:48:19,160
Speaker 2: the offense, right, like that that's its primary purpose. And

979
00:48:19,239 --> 00:48:22,880
Speaker 2: so it's kind of an adaptation, right. England also dou

980
00:48:22,920 --> 00:48:25,799
Speaker 2: Hayes attitudes have a lot of influence on how the

981
00:48:25,880 --> 00:48:28,440
Speaker 2: Royal Air Force is constructed in the inter war period,

982
00:48:28,680 --> 00:48:31,280
Speaker 2: and England spins a lot of resources creating a bomber

983
00:48:31,320 --> 00:48:33,719
Speaker 2: command that was meant to deter German action on the

984
00:48:33,760 --> 00:48:37,560
Speaker 2: continent without requiring another painful mass conscription for British kids.

985
00:48:37,640 --> 00:48:41,000
Speaker 2: You know, that does not exactly work out. Here's how

986
00:48:41,040 --> 00:48:44,840
Speaker 2: Colonel Risioni describes what happened next. Germany then turned to

987
00:48:44,840 --> 00:48:46,640
Speaker 2: the invasion of England and its first test of dou

988
00:48:46,680 --> 00:48:49,319
Speaker 2: Hayes's theories. The Battle of Britain was engaged to gain

989
00:48:49,360 --> 00:48:52,960
Speaker 2: air superiority for operations Sea Lion. Britain's bomber command had

990
00:48:52,960 --> 00:48:55,200
Speaker 2: failed to deter the war and the attacks on England,

991
00:48:55,280 --> 00:48:57,759
Speaker 2: but Germany's bomber fleets also failed to bring England to

992
00:48:57,800 --> 00:49:01,480
Speaker 2: its knees. The Luftwaffa tried to gain superiority over England.

993
00:49:01,680 --> 00:49:04,200
Speaker 2: The initially frail fighter force of the Royal Air Force,

994
00:49:04,280 --> 00:49:06,760
Speaker 2: under the competent command of Air Marshal Sir Hugh Doubting

995
00:49:06,960 --> 00:49:09,480
Speaker 2: and using the nascent technology of radar, was able to

996
00:49:09,480 --> 00:49:13,360
Speaker 2: inflict unacceptable losses on the German bombers and their fighter escorts.

997
00:49:13,560 --> 00:49:16,000
Speaker 2: After the Battle of Britain was won by England, Hitler

998
00:49:16,000 --> 00:49:18,600
Speaker 2: turned his aerial weapons on London to bring the population

999
00:49:18,680 --> 00:49:22,680
Speaker 2: to its knees. Churchill cheered quietly. The bombing only stiffened

1000
00:49:22,680 --> 00:49:24,960
Speaker 2: the morale of Londoners and brought England's war effort to

1001
00:49:24,960 --> 00:49:28,680
Speaker 2: a higher pitch. So from the start do hay has

1002
00:49:28,719 --> 00:49:32,880
Speaker 2: proven wrong, just immediately on boccounts about yes, yeah, the

1003
00:49:32,960 --> 00:49:36,359
Speaker 2: having a big bomber fleet does not deter enemy action. Also,

1004
00:49:36,880 --> 00:49:40,520
Speaker 2: you can defend from a bombing attack, and aircraft are

1005
00:49:40,600 --> 00:49:45,120
Speaker 2: great on the defense. Having fighters to intercept bombers works

1006
00:49:45,160 --> 00:49:46,240
Speaker 2: really fucking well.

1007
00:49:48,440 --> 00:49:52,480
Speaker 4: It's funny because like this is the Europe gave medieval

1008
00:49:52,480 --> 00:49:55,120
Speaker 4: warfare was a big part of medieval Europe, right, and

1009
00:49:55,200 --> 00:49:58,239
Speaker 4: like the development of armor until.

1010
00:49:57,960 --> 00:49:58,720
Speaker 3: You get to guns.

1011
00:49:58,960 --> 00:50:01,840
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like really it's the development of armor that

1012
00:50:01,960 --> 00:50:03,600
Speaker 4: is the new technology that's changing.

1013
00:50:03,640 --> 00:50:03,839
Speaker 3: Shit.

1014
00:50:04,080 --> 00:50:07,319
Speaker 4: You put a fucking armored knight against anybody and they're

1015
00:50:07,360 --> 00:50:09,080
Speaker 4: just like, yeah, you kind of can't do anything unless

1016
00:50:09,080 --> 00:50:10,600
Speaker 4: you get a dagger to my throat, you know.

1017
00:50:10,680 --> 00:50:13,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, that's it. Like it is. It is

1018
00:50:13,719 --> 00:50:15,640
Speaker 2: the same. It takes place over a shorter period of

1019
00:50:15,640 --> 00:50:18,719
Speaker 2: time with airpower because shit moves faster now, right, But

1020
00:50:18,800 --> 00:50:21,600
Speaker 2: it is the I mean this it's the it's the

1021
00:50:21,600 --> 00:50:25,000
Speaker 2: the red Queen hypothesis, right, like everyone is constantly moving

1022
00:50:25,040 --> 00:50:27,040
Speaker 2: as fast as they can just to stay in place,

1023
00:50:27,200 --> 00:50:29,560
Speaker 2: you know, like you were you you build up this

1024
00:50:29,600 --> 00:50:33,600
Speaker 2: great bomber fleet just in time to get attacked by

1025
00:50:33,640 --> 00:50:35,400
Speaker 2: a bomber fleet of your own and realize, actually, we

1026
00:50:35,400 --> 00:50:38,720
Speaker 2: probably should have had more fighters that might have been handier.

1027
00:50:38,719 --> 00:50:41,560
Speaker 2: It's to jump right, yeah, But also the Germans are

1028
00:50:41,600 --> 00:50:43,680
Speaker 2: learning all you need is a bunch of bombers. We've

1029
00:50:43,680 --> 00:50:46,399
Speaker 2: got a bunch of bombers. Oh shit, fighter aircraft really

1030
00:50:46,440 --> 00:50:50,080
Speaker 2: fuck up bombers. Oh no, all our pilots are gone.

1031
00:50:50,280 --> 00:50:52,439
Speaker 4: Who'd have thought Mussolidi would have named a guy who

1032
00:50:52,480 --> 00:50:54,520
Speaker 4: wasn't actually as good at things as he said he was.

1033
00:50:54,920 --> 00:50:58,360
Speaker 2: Would have thought the Italian fascist Minister of Aviation was

1034
00:50:58,400 --> 00:51:03,120
Speaker 2: wrong about some important points right now. One of the

1035
00:51:03,120 --> 00:51:05,200
Speaker 2: things that is important for what will come next is

1036
00:51:05,840 --> 00:51:09,600
Speaker 2: it is true air power is great on the defensive,

1037
00:51:10,000 --> 00:51:15,480
Speaker 2: and it's actually very possible to interdict and damage bombers

1038
00:51:15,600 --> 00:51:19,240
Speaker 2: before they can hit their targets. But not a single

1039
00:51:19,760 --> 00:51:22,600
Speaker 2: group of bombers on any side during the war is

1040
00:51:22,680 --> 00:51:27,320
Speaker 2: turned back right entirely without being able to drop any bombs.

1041
00:51:27,440 --> 00:51:31,399
Speaker 2: That doesn't happen, which for nuclear planning. This again, one

1042
00:51:31,400 --> 00:51:34,960
Speaker 2: of these things nuclear warfare retroactively makes do Hey correct

1043
00:51:35,000 --> 00:51:37,040
Speaker 2: on is that like, well, once you've got nukes, if

1044
00:51:37,040 --> 00:51:40,920
Speaker 2: you have a thousand bombers flying towards London with conventional bombs,

1045
00:51:41,360 --> 00:51:43,960
Speaker 2: then yeah, fighters can kill a bunch of those bombers

1046
00:51:44,000 --> 00:51:47,200
Speaker 2: and do enough damage that it renders like, you know,

1047
00:51:48,080 --> 00:51:50,000
Speaker 2: the Germans will drop some bombs in response, but you

1048
00:51:50,040 --> 00:51:52,239
Speaker 2: can make it be more costly for the Germans than

1049
00:51:52,239 --> 00:51:54,760
Speaker 2: it is for Great Britain. Right, if a thousand bombers

1050
00:51:54,800 --> 00:51:57,600
Speaker 2: each have a nuke, you're not stopping every nuke from

1051
00:51:57,680 --> 00:52:00,880
Speaker 2: hitting and all they need is one, right, Right, That

1052
00:52:01,040 --> 00:52:04,439
Speaker 2: is an important point about this is another lesson that's

1053
00:52:04,480 --> 00:52:06,160
Speaker 2: being learned right at the same time as we're learning

1054
00:52:06,200 --> 00:52:09,520
Speaker 2: how wrong dou Hay is. Once nukes come into the picture,

1055
00:52:09,520 --> 00:52:11,120
Speaker 2: people are going to be looking at this data and

1056
00:52:11,120 --> 00:52:14,799
Speaker 2: seeing something different, which is that you can't stop a

1057
00:52:14,880 --> 00:52:18,880
Speaker 2: nuclear attack of sufficient size even before ICBMs.

1058
00:52:19,080 --> 00:52:19,440
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1059
00:52:19,560 --> 00:52:21,920
Speaker 4: Yeah, the scale of destructiveness of a nuke is just

1060
00:52:22,000 --> 00:52:26,000
Speaker 4: so different. Yeah yeah, it's huh yeah.

1061
00:52:26,080 --> 00:52:29,120
Speaker 2: Now, I do want to really emphasize the wrongness that

1062
00:52:29,200 --> 00:52:32,040
Speaker 2: do Hay was because again he said that about three

1063
00:52:32,120 --> 00:52:34,400
Speaker 2: hundred tons of explosives in a month dropped over an

1064
00:52:34,440 --> 00:52:36,919
Speaker 2: enemy capital would be enough to break any people's will

1065
00:52:36,960 --> 00:52:39,320
Speaker 2: to fight. During a single night, during the Battle of

1066
00:52:39,320 --> 00:52:41,840
Speaker 2: Britain May tenth to May eleventh, nineteen forty one, Germany

1067
00:52:41,880 --> 00:52:44,400
Speaker 2: dropped more than seven hundred tons of high explosives on

1068
00:52:44,480 --> 00:52:49,600
Speaker 2: London as well as eighty six thousand incendiary devices. England

1069
00:52:49,680 --> 00:52:50,200
Speaker 2: kept fighting.

1070
00:52:51,000 --> 00:52:53,840
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, they came up with the whole crazy slogan

1071
00:52:53,920 --> 00:52:58,920
Speaker 4: about it. Yeah, everyone pulled together of like orwell like

1072
00:52:59,120 --> 00:52:59,840
Speaker 4: organizing in the home.

1073
00:53:00,400 --> 00:53:05,279
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of people felt better. Yeah yeah, which

1074
00:53:05,320 --> 00:53:06,160
Speaker 2: is a fun story.

1075
00:53:06,400 --> 00:53:08,640
Speaker 3: Gives us punk rock that people grew up out of.

1076
00:53:08,560 --> 00:53:12,560
Speaker 2: That gives us punk rock. Sure. Yeah, but yeah, that

1077
00:53:12,640 --> 00:53:15,200
Speaker 2: is an important point again just to how wrong dow

1078
00:53:15,239 --> 00:53:17,360
Speaker 2: Hay is, Like, yeah, we took more than twice as

1079
00:53:17,440 --> 00:53:19,640
Speaker 2: much as he said would break any city in a

1080
00:53:19,640 --> 00:53:22,919
Speaker 2: month and a night. London did, and people don't break

1081
00:53:23,000 --> 00:53:26,040
Speaker 2: under bombing, you know, which is also going to influence

1082
00:53:26,120 --> 00:53:29,000
Speaker 2: nuclear thinkers because then the attitude becomes, well you just

1083
00:53:29,040 --> 00:53:30,200
Speaker 2: have to kill all of them then.

1084
00:53:30,600 --> 00:53:30,920
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1085
00:53:31,200 --> 00:53:35,520
Speaker 2: Yeah. So despite the fact that do Hay is right

1086
00:53:35,560 --> 00:53:39,040
Speaker 2: out the gate proven wrong, war planners on the Allied

1087
00:53:39,040 --> 00:53:41,000
Speaker 2: side continue to give a great deal of credence to

1088
00:53:41,040 --> 00:53:44,640
Speaker 2: his now badly marred theories. One advocate was Sir Arthur Harris,

1089
00:53:44,680 --> 00:53:47,000
Speaker 2: also known as Bomber Harris, who became head of the

1090
00:53:47,120 --> 00:53:51,280
Speaker 2: RAF's Bomber Command. He was a huge advocate of area

1091
00:53:51,360 --> 00:53:54,920
Speaker 2: bombing precision bombing, which is another thing people are. The

1092
00:53:54,960 --> 00:53:57,960
Speaker 2: strategic bombing side also breaks down to a couple of

1093
00:53:58,000 --> 00:54:00,320
Speaker 2: broad schools, and as is always the case, most people

1094
00:54:00,320 --> 00:54:03,080
Speaker 2: are you know, have are a little take some from

1095
00:54:03,080 --> 00:54:06,600
Speaker 2: column as from Colum b. But there's you've got area

1096
00:54:06,640 --> 00:54:09,560
Speaker 2: bombing and precision bombing, right, And the idea behind precision

1097
00:54:09,600 --> 00:54:12,080
Speaker 2: bombing is that you can hit just the target you want.

1098
00:54:12,320 --> 00:54:15,320
Speaker 2: That is, like the factory making bombs or the factory

1099
00:54:15,360 --> 00:54:18,960
Speaker 2: making planes, right, or a barracks, and not hit the

1100
00:54:19,040 --> 00:54:22,680
Speaker 2: high rise apartment structure near it. Now, precision bombing is

1101
00:54:22,719 --> 00:54:25,799
Speaker 2: a lie, right, it's especially it's it's not all that

1102
00:54:25,880 --> 00:54:28,799
Speaker 2: true today, but it's especially a lie in World War Two. Right,

1103
00:54:29,040 --> 00:54:31,600
Speaker 2: it's a lot. Now you can kind of do it,

1104
00:54:31,680 --> 00:54:34,120
Speaker 2: although it never works as well as planners like to

1105
00:54:34,160 --> 00:54:36,080
Speaker 2: claim it does. But in World War Two it's just

1106
00:54:36,120 --> 00:54:40,319
Speaker 2: a fantasy, right, And so there's a lot of that

1107
00:54:40,320 --> 00:54:43,800
Speaker 2: that gives a lot more push to people like Bomber Harris,

1108
00:54:43,800 --> 00:54:47,839
Speaker 2: who are like, well, fuck precision bombing, just bomb desaturate

1109
00:54:47,880 --> 00:54:51,600
Speaker 2: an area with bombing, right, you accept greater civilian casualties

1110
00:54:51,719 --> 00:54:54,680
Speaker 2: so that you can cripple their industrial capabilities. Right, that's

1111
00:54:54,680 --> 00:54:57,719
Speaker 2: the public argument. In private, they're saying something different, But

1112
00:54:57,840 --> 00:54:59,400
Speaker 2: the public argument is that this is just the way

1113
00:54:59,440 --> 00:55:02,120
Speaker 2: it has to work. The first area bombings by the

1114
00:55:02,280 --> 00:55:05,480
Speaker 2: RAF on German cities was in nineteen forty one, in

1115
00:55:05,520 --> 00:55:09,279
Speaker 2: nineteen forty two, and they did not work very well. Right.

1116
00:55:09,320 --> 00:55:12,240
Speaker 2: They's spun as wins, but on an actual strategic level,

1117
00:55:12,520 --> 00:55:14,520
Speaker 2: they're not huge hits. They caused some shock to the

1118
00:55:14,520 --> 00:55:17,919
Speaker 2: German citizenry, but they don't accomplish the stated goal, which

1119
00:55:17,960 --> 00:55:21,280
Speaker 2: is to damage war production. Right, and the RAF suffers

1120
00:55:21,320 --> 00:55:24,080
Speaker 2: high casualties because German air defenses are excellent. You know,

1121
00:55:24,160 --> 00:55:26,680
Speaker 2: do Hay continues to be very wrong about air defense.

1122
00:55:26,719 --> 00:55:30,480
Speaker 2: It is popular possible. I mean in Vietnam, North Vietnam.

1123
00:55:30,560 --> 00:55:31,960
Speaker 2: Part of why the war goes the way it does

1124
00:55:32,000 --> 00:55:35,200
Speaker 2: is that North Vietnam has excellent, very advanced air defenses. Right,

1125
00:55:36,040 --> 00:55:37,799
Speaker 2: something gets lost in the whole. It was just some

1126
00:55:37,880 --> 00:55:40,680
Speaker 2: farmers in the jungle that beat the US. No, they

1127
00:55:40,719 --> 00:55:44,920
Speaker 2: had an army, they had radar guided missiles and everything.

1128
00:55:45,040 --> 00:55:49,719
Speaker 2: You know. When Arthur Harris took over bomber command for

1129
00:55:50,120 --> 00:55:54,360
Speaker 2: Great Britain, he immediately organized a much bigger area bombing campaign,

1130
00:55:54,920 --> 00:55:58,480
Speaker 2: Operation Millennium. On May thirtieth of nineteen forty two, nearly

1131
00:55:58,520 --> 00:56:02,160
Speaker 2: eleven hundred Allied bombers hit Cologne, annihilating some six hundred

1132
00:56:02,200 --> 00:56:05,200
Speaker 2: acres of the city and rendering one hundred thousand people homeless.

1133
00:56:05,600 --> 00:56:09,000
Speaker 2: Harris declared the raid a success. The British press did too,

1134
00:56:09,040 --> 00:56:11,880
Speaker 2: but they focused on the destruction of war industry, not

1135
00:56:11,960 --> 00:56:15,920
Speaker 2: the civilian cost, and this frustrated Harris, in part because

1136
00:56:15,960 --> 00:56:18,880
Speaker 2: it was inaccurate. While dozens of factories had been damaged

1137
00:56:19,000 --> 00:56:21,239
Speaker 2: or destroyed, the city only lost the equivalent of a

1138
00:56:21,280 --> 00:56:25,360
Speaker 2: month's war production. The real cost to Germany, as bomber

1139
00:56:25,400 --> 00:56:28,520
Speaker 2: Harris saw it, was human. Here's how he later described

1140
00:56:28,520 --> 00:56:31,600
Speaker 2: the purpose of bomber Command. In his eyes, the aim

1141
00:56:31,719 --> 00:56:34,560
Speaker 2: is the destruction of German cities, the killing of German workers,

1142
00:56:34,560 --> 00:56:37,920
Speaker 2: and the disruption of civilized community life throughout Germany. It

1143
00:56:37,960 --> 00:56:41,000
Speaker 2: should be emphasized that the destruction of houses, public utilities,

1144
00:56:41,200 --> 00:56:44,000
Speaker 2: transport and lives, the creation of a refugee prob an

1145
00:56:44,080 --> 00:56:47,120
Speaker 2: unprecedented scale, and the breakdown of morale both at home

1146
00:56:47,160 --> 00:56:49,239
Speaker 2: and on the battlefronts by the fear of extended and

1147
00:56:49,280 --> 00:56:53,680
Speaker 2: intensified bombing are acceptable and intended aims of our bombing policy.

1148
00:56:53,840 --> 00:56:56,759
Speaker 2: They are not by products of attempts to hit factories.

1149
00:56:58,000 --> 00:57:02,040
Speaker 4: Yeah, that makes sense. So does the same stealing the reserve.

1150
00:57:02,160 --> 00:57:05,000
Speaker 4: Like I've I've met someone whose family I think it

1151
00:57:05,040 --> 00:57:08,080
Speaker 4: was Colne or Cologne. I just did the ass whole

1152
00:57:08,120 --> 00:57:09,960
Speaker 4: thing where I've been to a city, so I'm like, let.

1153
00:57:09,800 --> 00:57:10,640
Speaker 3: Me use the whatever.

1154
00:57:11,360 --> 00:57:13,960
Speaker 4: Yeah. But you know, it's like I've met someone who

1155
00:57:14,000 --> 00:57:15,920
Speaker 4: was like, oh, yeah, my whole family was like staunch

1156
00:57:15,920 --> 00:57:18,160
Speaker 4: anti Nazis, and then eighty percent of the family was

1157
00:57:18,200 --> 00:57:20,920
Speaker 4: wiped out in one night by an by a bombing,

1158
00:57:20,960 --> 00:57:23,120
Speaker 4: and then they all join the army And I'm like, yeah,

1159
00:57:23,160 --> 00:57:25,040
Speaker 4: they still joined the Nazi army, so fuck them. But

1160
00:57:25,160 --> 00:57:28,200
Speaker 4: like also like, yeah, I couldn't tell you that anyone

1161
00:57:28,200 --> 00:57:29,200
Speaker 4: I've ever met would do anything.

1162
00:57:29,320 --> 00:57:31,720
Speaker 2: That's just how people work when their family gets killed

1163
00:57:31,720 --> 00:57:34,280
Speaker 2: in a bombing. Yeah, if they get pissed, they don't

1164
00:57:34,320 --> 00:57:38,360
Speaker 2: always they're not their best selves, you know exactly. That's

1165
00:57:38,520 --> 00:57:41,040
Speaker 2: that's just how people be. Homie, I don't know what

1166
00:57:41,080 --> 00:57:43,520
Speaker 2: to tell you. They don't like having their families killed

1167
00:57:43,520 --> 00:57:47,880
Speaker 2: by bombs. Yeah, And there's as we'll talk about a

1168
00:57:47,920 --> 00:57:50,400
Speaker 2: lot of debate as to the influence of strategic bombing

1169
00:57:50,440 --> 00:57:53,040
Speaker 2: on the German civilian population, but what we can say

1170
00:57:53,080 --> 00:57:57,080
Speaker 2: is that it's not why they lose. However, however, whatever

1171
00:57:57,120 --> 00:57:59,200
Speaker 2: it does to morale doesn't in the war. You know,

1172
00:58:01,440 --> 00:58:05,600
Speaker 2: So Bomber Harris is wrong in his primary attitude right

1173
00:58:05,640 --> 00:58:07,959
Speaker 2: as to like what would work to actually in the war,

1174
00:58:08,120 --> 00:58:10,400
Speaker 2: and he doesn't. He never gets called on that because

1175
00:58:10,440 --> 00:58:13,360
Speaker 2: we win the war anyway, and everyone kind of thinks,

1176
00:58:13,400 --> 00:58:17,120
Speaker 2: fuck those guys, low key a high key but and

1177
00:58:17,320 --> 00:58:21,560
Speaker 2: you know, fuck them, but it doesn't work. That is important. Now.

1178
00:58:21,880 --> 00:58:24,640
Speaker 2: There's not agreement and in fact a huge a lot

1179
00:58:24,720 --> 00:58:27,720
Speaker 2: of conflict between the US and Great Britain over the strategy. Initially,

1180
00:58:28,200 --> 00:58:30,640
Speaker 2: the guys in the US Army Air Command do not

1181
00:58:30,800 --> 00:58:34,040
Speaker 2: all agree with Harris, and in fact we keep conducting

1182
00:58:34,320 --> 00:58:37,200
Speaker 2: the Brits are doing night time raids, which allows you

1183
00:58:37,280 --> 00:58:39,800
Speaker 2: to lose the least aircraft while killing the most civilians

1184
00:58:39,880 --> 00:58:42,520
Speaker 2: or killing the most people. We do daytime raids for

1185
00:58:42,560 --> 00:58:45,400
Speaker 2: a long time, which are way more dangerous because the

1186
00:58:45,480 --> 00:58:48,760
Speaker 2: idea is it gives these civilians more of a chance

1187
00:58:48,800 --> 00:58:51,240
Speaker 2: to get away, right, that's part of why you're doing it.

1188
00:58:51,000 --> 00:58:54,560
Speaker 2: It's more honorable basically, right, which it is, but it

1189
00:58:54,600 --> 00:58:56,840
Speaker 2: also means you lose a lot more guys right, like,

1190
00:58:56,920 --> 00:59:00,840
Speaker 2: it's way more dangerous. Yeah, it's very dnerable thing I

1191
00:59:00,840 --> 00:59:02,960
Speaker 2: think that we're doing for a while. We're not always

1192
00:59:03,000 --> 00:59:08,080
Speaker 2: going to be that way. So yeah, this debate really

1193
00:59:08,080 --> 00:59:10,120
Speaker 2: starts to erupt after this point. And on one end

1194
00:59:10,160 --> 00:59:14,440
Speaker 2: you've got these area bombing strategic bombing advocates saying like,

1195
00:59:15,120 --> 00:59:18,520
Speaker 2: you know, I know it hasn't quite worked yet, right, Like,

1196
00:59:18,840 --> 00:59:20,760
Speaker 2: we haven't knocked Germany out of the fight. They're not

1197
00:59:20,760 --> 00:59:23,200
Speaker 2: giving up yet, but if we just get more bombers, bro,

1198
00:59:23,480 --> 00:59:24,040
Speaker 2: it'll work.

1199
00:59:24,400 --> 00:59:24,560
Speaker 1: Right.

1200
00:59:25,240 --> 00:59:27,320
Speaker 2: And on the other side, and again a lot of

1201
00:59:27,320 --> 00:59:29,560
Speaker 2: people do kind of wind up in the middle here,

1202
00:59:29,600 --> 00:59:32,040
Speaker 2: but the other side broadly are like, well, close air

1203
00:59:32,080 --> 00:59:35,680
Speaker 2: support is what's most important, right. Airpower's primary use is

1204
00:59:35,680 --> 00:59:40,200
Speaker 2: its ability to augment conventional forces in taking and holding territory, right,

1205
00:59:40,480 --> 00:59:44,600
Speaker 2: And it works really well. It had proved to be

1206
00:59:44,720 --> 00:59:47,880
Speaker 2: tantalizingly potent in North Africa, and guys in the US

1207
00:59:47,880 --> 00:59:50,840
Speaker 2: like General Pete Cassada were bullish about its potential in

1208
00:59:50,880 --> 00:59:53,640
Speaker 2: a future invasion of France. An early test for the

1209
00:59:53,680 --> 00:59:56,800
Speaker 2: strategic bombing advocates, on the other hand, came prior to

1210
00:59:56,840 --> 01:00:01,520
Speaker 2: the invasion of Sicily. There's this island called Antillaria, which

1211
01:00:01,560 --> 01:00:04,120
Speaker 2: is garrisoned with about eleven thousand Italian troops that we

1212
01:00:04,160 --> 01:00:07,240
Speaker 2: need to take before we invade Sicily and then invade Italy.

1213
01:00:07,960 --> 01:00:09,680
Speaker 2: And I'm going to quote for an article in National

1214
01:00:09,720 --> 01:00:13,160
Speaker 2: Interest by James Stevenson here. The bombing of Pantelleria became

1215
01:00:13,200 --> 01:00:16,400
Speaker 2: an experiment when anticipated to demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt

1216
01:00:16,440 --> 01:00:18,720
Speaker 2: that bombing would ratify what up to then had been

1217
01:00:18,720 --> 01:00:20,960
Speaker 2: a matter of faith, but would soon offer proof through

1218
01:00:21,000 --> 01:00:24,600
Speaker 2: bombing alone, surrender was a certainty. All these forces were

1219
01:00:24,600 --> 01:00:26,920
Speaker 2: assembled to test the assertion that if you destroy what

1220
01:00:26,960 --> 01:00:29,240
Speaker 2: a man has and remove the possibility of his bringing

1221
01:00:29,280 --> 01:00:31,400
Speaker 2: more in, then in due course of time it becomes

1222
01:00:31,400 --> 01:00:35,200
Speaker 2: impossible for him to defend himself. Major General Jimmy Doolittle said,

1223
01:00:35,520 --> 01:00:37,920
Speaker 2: if bombing alone did not force a surrender, the Allies

1224
01:00:37,920 --> 01:00:40,240
Speaker 2: planned to invade the island by June eleventh. In an

1225
01:00:40,280 --> 01:00:42,720
Speaker 2: attempt to avoid the need for an invasion, the Allies

1226
01:00:42,800 --> 01:00:45,600
Speaker 2: generated five two hundred and eighty four sorties, dropping a

1227
01:00:45,600 --> 01:00:48,880
Speaker 2: total of twelve point four million pounds of bombs on Pantelleria.

1228
01:00:49,160 --> 01:00:56,120
Speaker 2: Jesus did it work kay After a month of unopposed

1229
01:00:56,200 --> 01:00:59,960
Speaker 2: round the clock bombing. The Italians surrendered after Allied ground

1230
01:01:00,040 --> 01:01:04,040
Speaker 2: troops had approached the island. Right, They did surrender on

1231
01:01:04,040 --> 01:01:07,000
Speaker 2: their own from the bombing. They surrendered before ground troops

1232
01:01:07,000 --> 01:01:11,120
Speaker 2: came in. Now you can still say, but that still worked. Right. However,

1233
01:01:11,160 --> 01:01:13,960
Speaker 2: there's a couple of other issues. For one, Italian defenses

1234
01:01:14,000 --> 01:01:17,400
Speaker 2: were remarkably intact still given the force deployed against them,

1235
01:01:17,480 --> 01:01:21,480
Speaker 2: because nearly every bomb missed. The B seventeens were most accurate,

1236
01:01:21,520 --> 01:01:24,360
Speaker 2: with a twenty two percent hit rate. That's defined as

1237
01:01:24,440 --> 01:01:26,360
Speaker 2: landing a bomb within one hundred yards of its target.

1238
01:01:26,400 --> 01:01:29,200
Speaker 2: So the B seventeens hit twenty two percent of the time,

1239
01:01:29,240 --> 01:01:30,800
Speaker 2: and that's our best bomber.

1240
01:01:30,640 --> 01:01:33,120
Speaker 3: And that's within a football field, because that's still within

1241
01:01:33,160 --> 01:01:34,000
Speaker 3: a football field.

1242
01:01:34,160 --> 01:01:39,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, and our medium bombers hit rate is about six percent. Now,

1243
01:01:39,760 --> 01:01:42,720
Speaker 2: this is a problem because we had been claiming very

1244
01:01:42,760 --> 01:01:45,360
Speaker 2: different things about the accuracy of our bombs. Back at

1245
01:01:45,400 --> 01:01:47,680
Speaker 2: the start of nineteen forty three, we'd had something called

1246
01:01:47,680 --> 01:01:50,920
Speaker 2: the Casablanca Conference, in which Winston Churchill sat down with

1247
01:01:51,040 --> 01:01:54,160
Speaker 2: the eighth Air Force Commander Ira Eaker, who promised the

1248
01:01:54,160 --> 01:01:57,320
Speaker 2: British Prime Minister that the B seventeen flying fortress. That's

1249
01:01:57,360 --> 01:02:00,000
Speaker 2: fancy knew. We had these things called the Norden bomb Site,

1250
01:02:00,120 --> 01:02:02,520
Speaker 2: which was like, this is the shit. This makes precision

1251
01:02:02,560 --> 01:02:06,040
Speaker 2: bombing possible. It's like almost it's like a little computerized

1252
01:02:06,520 --> 01:02:09,240
Speaker 2: bombing system that like, we can do things with bombs

1253
01:02:09,240 --> 01:02:11,480
Speaker 2: we never could do before. You can drop a bomb

1254
01:02:11,520 --> 01:02:13,480
Speaker 2: for twenty five thousand feet and hit a target the

1255
01:02:13,520 --> 01:02:16,080
Speaker 2: size of a pickle barrel. Right, that's the promise Iri

1256
01:02:16,200 --> 01:02:19,280
Speaker 2: Echer makes Winston Churchill when he's like they're sitting there,

1257
01:02:19,280 --> 01:02:20,919
Speaker 2: He's like, we can hit a pickle barrel at twenty

1258
01:02:20,920 --> 01:02:23,680
Speaker 2: five thousand feet. Now in combat. A few months later,

1259
01:02:23,720 --> 01:02:25,920
Speaker 2: these things would hit within a football field only twenty

1260
01:02:25,920 --> 01:02:29,280
Speaker 2: two percent of the time. Yeah, so you're getting this.

1261
01:02:29,280 --> 01:02:31,880
Speaker 2: This is going to be also a theme with all

1262
01:02:31,920 --> 01:02:34,240
Speaker 2: of the nuke stuff that the Air Force builds. They

1263
01:02:34,240 --> 01:02:36,680
Speaker 2: will make all these claims about yes, you know, it'll

1264
01:02:36,720 --> 01:02:39,440
Speaker 2: it's it's this accurate, and it's this safe, and it

1265
01:02:39,440 --> 01:02:42,160
Speaker 2: can only be activated if this and this and this happens,

1266
01:02:42,160 --> 01:02:44,200
Speaker 2: so it like could never be accidentally fired. And they're like,

1267
01:02:44,320 --> 01:02:46,280
Speaker 2: oh wait, but what if this thing happens that happens

1268
01:02:46,320 --> 01:02:48,520
Speaker 2: every day, Oh yeah, that could accidentally launch all of

1269
01:02:48,520 --> 01:02:51,280
Speaker 2: our missiles. Yeah, are you guys gonna fix it? We

1270
01:02:51,360 --> 01:02:54,440
Speaker 2: actually don't wanna. That's the story of the minute Man

1271
01:02:54,480 --> 01:02:58,320
Speaker 2: in a nutshell, but we'll talk more about that later. Anyway,

1272
01:02:58,440 --> 01:03:01,280
Speaker 2: with a fleet of these eager price we can disembowel

1273
01:03:01,280 --> 01:03:04,040
Speaker 2: the German Reich and destroy its industrial capacity with no

1274
01:03:04,120 --> 01:03:07,000
Speaker 2: need for ground forces. Right, we can just get the

1275
01:03:07,040 --> 01:03:11,120
Speaker 2: Reich entirely through precision bombing. Now, Churchill has some direct

1276
01:03:11,160 --> 01:03:14,600
Speaker 2: experience with aerial warfare, and he does not believe Eger, right,

1277
01:03:14,680 --> 01:03:17,320
Speaker 2: he doesn't believe about the accuracy. And the other thing

1278
01:03:17,320 --> 01:03:20,000
Speaker 2: that iri Eker is saying is we don't need fighter

1279
01:03:20,120 --> 01:03:22,560
Speaker 2: escorts for our B seventeens because they have all these

1280
01:03:22,600 --> 01:03:25,040
Speaker 2: guns on them that will that'll be enough to deter attack.

1281
01:03:25,240 --> 01:03:29,600
Speaker 2: We can send the fortress. Yeah, that's basically the idea

1282
01:03:29,800 --> 01:03:33,480
Speaker 2: behind that title. But like, yeah, because these B seventeens

1283
01:03:33,480 --> 01:03:37,200
Speaker 2: are surrounded in machine guns, fighters won't be able to

1284
01:03:37,480 --> 01:03:39,240
Speaker 2: if they attack us, they won't be able to penetrate.

1285
01:03:39,600 --> 01:03:41,920
Speaker 2: And that that's necessary because the bombers can fly a

1286
01:03:41,960 --> 01:03:44,240
Speaker 2: lot further than the fighters. So what Eker is saying

1287
01:03:44,280 --> 01:03:46,520
Speaker 2: is we can send these bombers into the heart of

1288
01:03:47,120 --> 01:03:49,600
Speaker 2: enemy territory. We don't need to worry about the range

1289
01:03:49,600 --> 01:03:51,920
Speaker 2: of the fighters, and they'll be fine. And he's going

1290
01:03:52,000 --> 01:03:55,800
Speaker 2: to be wrong about that too. So one result of

1291
01:03:55,800 --> 01:03:58,479
Speaker 2: this the Casablanca Conference, is that the Allies put together

1292
01:03:58,520 --> 01:04:01,720
Speaker 2: a list of military assets they want prioritize destroying or

1293
01:04:01,760 --> 01:04:04,960
Speaker 2: disabling a task that would overwhelmingly fall on air power.

1294
01:04:05,200 --> 01:04:10,120
Speaker 2: These included submarine bases, train lines, fuel storage, aircraft production facilities,

1295
01:04:10,160 --> 01:04:12,720
Speaker 2: and other crucial war industry sites. One of the first

1296
01:04:12,760 --> 01:04:16,440
Speaker 2: of these targets was a ball bearing production facility in Regensburg.

1297
01:04:17,200 --> 01:04:20,400
Speaker 2: Ball bearings were critical for constructing aircraft and number of

1298
01:04:20,440 --> 01:04:24,440
Speaker 2: other important military vehicles. Operation Double Strike was launched by

1299
01:04:24,480 --> 01:04:27,720
Speaker 2: Major General Ekers eighth Army Air Force on August seventeenth,

1300
01:04:27,840 --> 01:04:31,080
Speaker 2: nineteen forty three. Three hundred and seventy six bombers plowed

1301
01:04:31,120 --> 01:04:34,040
Speaker 2: deep into German territory, beyond the range of any fighters

1302
01:04:34,120 --> 01:04:37,160
Speaker 2: to escort them. Per the website code names operations of

1303
01:04:37,160 --> 01:04:39,880
Speaker 2: World War II, The mission inflicted heavy damage on the

1304
01:04:39,960 --> 01:04:43,200
Speaker 2: Regensburg target, but only at catastrophic loss to the force

1305
01:04:43,280 --> 01:04:46,000
Speaker 2: inasmuch as sixty bombers were lost and many more damaged

1306
01:04:46,040 --> 01:04:49,320
Speaker 2: beyond economical repair. As a result, the Eighth Air force

1307
01:04:49,400 --> 01:04:52,520
Speaker 2: was incapable of immediately following double strike with a second

1308
01:04:52,560 --> 01:04:56,440
Speaker 2: attack that might have seriously crippled German industry when Schweinfert,

1309
01:04:56,480 --> 01:04:59,360
Speaker 2: that's the industrial facility was attacked again two months later.

1310
01:04:59,560 --> 01:05:01,800
Speaker 2: The lack of long range fighter escorts still had not

1311
01:05:01,840 --> 01:05:04,800
Speaker 2: been addressed, and losses were even higher. As a consequence,

1312
01:05:04,840 --> 01:05:07,880
Speaker 2: the US deep penetration strategic bombing effort was curtailed for

1313
01:05:07,920 --> 01:05:08,560
Speaker 2: five months.

1314
01:05:09,560 --> 01:05:11,840
Speaker 4: Could you imagine going on a thing where you're like, well,

1315
01:05:11,920 --> 01:05:15,400
Speaker 4: last time we did this about uh, you know, one

1316
01:05:15,440 --> 01:05:20,440
Speaker 4: in six of us died anyway, so we didn't change anything.

1317
01:05:20,640 --> 01:05:24,560
Speaker 2: Are we so different? Yeah? Are we doing anything new? Yeah? No,

1318
01:05:24,640 --> 01:05:29,160
Speaker 2: same plan huh okay, yeah. I mean you talk to

1319
01:05:29,160 --> 01:05:31,680
Speaker 2: anyone who saw heavy combat and they have stories like

1320
01:05:31,720 --> 01:05:33,680
Speaker 2: that where it's like, well this was this went really badly.

1321
01:05:34,120 --> 01:05:37,280
Speaker 2: We're just doing the same thing. Huh yeah, okay, yeah,

1322
01:05:37,320 --> 01:05:41,720
Speaker 2: that is that is how armies work. Now, this was

1323
01:05:41,760 --> 01:05:44,960
Speaker 2: a double failure, not just for Eager but for douheyes theories.

1324
01:05:45,160 --> 01:05:47,880
Speaker 2: Once again, the vastness of the sky didn't stop a

1325
01:05:47,960 --> 01:05:51,560
Speaker 2: defending military for women inflicting severe casualties on a farmer fleet,

1326
01:05:51,920 --> 01:05:54,800
Speaker 2: and that despite the damaged under the Regensburg Plant. German

1327
01:05:54,840 --> 01:05:58,480
Speaker 2: industrial capabilities were not seriously harmed. As Reich Minister of

1328
01:05:58,520 --> 01:06:01,440
Speaker 2: Supply Albert Spear stated at after the war, no plane

1329
01:06:01,480 --> 01:06:04,000
Speaker 2: or tank failed to be built for lack of ball bearings.

1330
01:06:04,520 --> 01:06:09,240
Speaker 2: Colonel Yeah, it just didn't work. Colonel Rassioni noted in

1331
01:06:09,280 --> 01:06:11,960
Speaker 2: his article the Allies failed in their choice of a

1332
01:06:12,040 --> 01:06:15,480
Speaker 2: target because they hadn't learned their intelligence was bad. Germany

1333
01:06:15,520 --> 01:06:18,240
Speaker 2: was importing ball bearings from Sweden and Switzerland by this point,

1334
01:06:18,320 --> 01:06:21,480
Speaker 2: and it also stop. They had foreseen this and stockpiled

1335
01:06:21,560 --> 01:06:25,000
Speaker 2: pre war. They had also redesigned a bunch of aircraft

1336
01:06:25,000 --> 01:06:27,200
Speaker 2: and shit to not see as many ball bearings.

1337
01:06:27,400 --> 01:06:29,400
Speaker 4: This was for like a home alone style plan they

1338
01:06:29,440 --> 01:06:31,520
Speaker 4: had that was actually the stockpile was unrelated.

1339
01:06:31,800 --> 01:06:33,400
Speaker 2: It was they were dropping it down the stairs.

1340
01:06:33,600 --> 01:06:33,840
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1341
01:06:33,960 --> 01:06:37,800
Speaker 2: Did a horrible damage to the Third Army. Yeah, yeah,

1342
01:06:38,000 --> 01:06:41,360
Speaker 2: so yeah. Rassioni writes this was a failure both in

1343
01:06:41,400 --> 01:06:44,680
Speaker 2: target definition and target priority. Worse, because it was vulnerable,

1344
01:06:44,760 --> 01:06:48,760
Speaker 2: the Eighth Air Force had become the target. Now over

1345
01:06:48,840 --> 01:06:52,400
Speaker 2: in England, Arthur Harris never accepted the primary contentions of

1346
01:06:52,440 --> 01:06:55,560
Speaker 2: the advocates of precision strategic bombing. In October of nineteen

1347
01:06:55,600 --> 01:06:58,720
Speaker 2: forty three. Not long after Regensburg, he stated the aimous

1348
01:06:58,720 --> 01:07:02,280
Speaker 2: destruction of germanies, the killing of German workers, and the

1349
01:07:02,280 --> 01:07:05,600
Speaker 2: disruption of civilized community life throughout Germany. It should be

1350
01:07:05,600 --> 01:07:09,640
Speaker 2: emphasized that the destruction of houses, public utilities, transport and lives,

1351
01:07:09,640 --> 01:07:12,480
Speaker 2: the creation of a refugee problem on an unprecedented scale,

1352
01:07:12,640 --> 01:07:14,440
Speaker 2: and the breakdown of morale both at home and at

1353
01:07:14,480 --> 01:07:17,680
Speaker 2: the battlefronts by fear of extended and intensified bombing are

1354
01:07:17,760 --> 01:07:21,000
Speaker 2: acceptable in intended aims of our bombing policy. They are

1355
01:07:21,000 --> 01:07:24,760
Speaker 2: not byproducts if attempts to hit factories. Yeah, Bobara Harris,

1356
01:07:24,840 --> 01:07:27,360
Speaker 2: one thing you have to give him. He's very clear. No, no, no,

1357
01:07:27,520 --> 01:07:30,560
Speaker 2: this is about killing women and children and riten'ing them homeless.

1358
01:07:30,840 --> 01:07:34,120
Speaker 2: That's what we're doing. That's the business the RAF is in.

1359
01:07:34,680 --> 01:07:37,280
Speaker 2: You guys need to stop pretending that you're fucking with

1360
01:07:37,360 --> 01:07:38,320
Speaker 2: ball bearings.

1361
01:07:39,520 --> 01:07:42,680
Speaker 4: I mean, there's an honesty to that that I respect.

1362
01:07:43,000 --> 01:07:46,880
Speaker 2: Yes, the man knows what he's about. It's killing civilians,

1363
01:07:46,960 --> 01:07:47,920
Speaker 2: but he's about it.

1364
01:07:48,200 --> 01:07:51,600
Speaker 4: Yeah, he has made his peace with whatever he believes,

1365
01:07:51,640 --> 01:07:53,440
Speaker 4: and he thinks that this is the lesser evil is

1366
01:07:53,440 --> 01:07:55,240
Speaker 4: by doing a lot of evil, and like you know,

1367
01:07:55,880 --> 01:07:58,960
Speaker 4: it's not evil quickly, right, Yeah.

1368
01:07:59,000 --> 01:08:02,080
Speaker 2: A little before the Regensburg attack, bomber Harris had launched

1369
01:08:02,080 --> 01:08:04,680
Speaker 2: a nighttime raid on Hamburg. It was the opposite of

1370
01:08:04,720 --> 01:08:08,360
Speaker 2: a precise attempt to destroy a specific target. Incendiaries created

1371
01:08:08,360 --> 01:08:12,080
Speaker 2: a firestorm that swept through the downtown area, incinerating roughly

1372
01:08:12,120 --> 01:08:16,360
Speaker 2: forty thousand civilians. This is like, and this is one

1373
01:08:16,360 --> 01:08:19,200
Speaker 2: of the this becomes a theory, Right, there's a theory

1374
01:08:19,200 --> 01:08:20,960
Speaker 2: put into practice. But there had been this theory that

1375
01:08:21,320 --> 01:08:24,040
Speaker 2: by dropping incendiaries in the right place, in a certain

1376
01:08:24,080 --> 01:08:26,600
Speaker 2: parts of a city, you can create these firestorms that

1377
01:08:26,760 --> 01:08:29,800
Speaker 2: massively amplify the damage of your bombing campaign. Right, And

1378
01:08:29,840 --> 01:08:32,320
Speaker 2: this is like when it when it really works for

1379
01:08:32,360 --> 01:08:34,200
Speaker 2: the first time. This is going to be a massive

1380
01:08:34,200 --> 01:08:37,120
Speaker 2: part of our strategy. And when we're bombing the Japanese

1381
01:08:37,160 --> 01:08:40,479
Speaker 2: home islands, right, is creating these these hideous firestorms. And

1382
01:08:40,520 --> 01:08:44,040
Speaker 2: this also this becomes I think the term is literally

1383
01:08:44,120 --> 01:08:47,160
Speaker 2: like bonus damage. Basically, this is like a concept of

1384
01:08:47,200 --> 01:08:49,479
Speaker 2: nuclear war too. Is a big part of the appeal

1385
01:08:49,479 --> 01:08:52,479
Speaker 2: of nuclear weapons to the people planning to use them

1386
01:08:52,720 --> 01:08:55,400
Speaker 2: is that you create these firestorms the size of states,

1387
01:08:55,800 --> 01:08:59,519
Speaker 2: and like, that's really handy It really amplifies the amount

1388
01:08:59,560 --> 01:09:02,960
Speaker 2: of a country you can destroy when you create firestorms

1389
01:09:02,960 --> 01:09:04,799
Speaker 2: that wipe out thousands of miles of terrain.

1390
01:09:05,080 --> 01:09:08,280
Speaker 4: So it has never occurred to me until this moment

1391
01:09:08,439 --> 01:09:12,480
Speaker 4: that the phrase firestorm. I'm aware that firestorms happen in wildfires,

1392
01:09:13,080 --> 01:09:15,760
Speaker 4: it has never really actually occurred to me until this

1393
01:09:15,840 --> 01:09:19,280
Speaker 4: moment that people artificially create them. And that's where a

1394
01:09:19,360 --> 01:09:23,320
Speaker 4: firestorm like, you know, a firestorm to purify if you're

1395
01:09:23,360 --> 01:09:27,040
Speaker 4: in a shitty hardcore music yeah, yep, okay.

1396
01:09:26,840 --> 01:09:28,880
Speaker 2: Yep, yep. I mean, I think most people have learned

1397
01:09:28,880 --> 01:09:32,920
Speaker 2: the term firestorm from Command and Conquer Tiberian Sun firestorm

1398
01:09:33,000 --> 01:09:37,760
Speaker 2: obviously the Tiberian Sun expansion pack. That was pretty good. Yeah,

1399
01:09:37,840 --> 01:09:41,920
Speaker 2: But some people learned it from history. I'm sure I

1400
01:09:42,080 --> 01:09:43,880
Speaker 2: learned it from a shitty hardcore band. So I learned

1401
01:09:43,880 --> 01:09:46,000
Speaker 2: it from a hardcore band. I learned it from Command

1402
01:09:46,000 --> 01:09:48,920
Speaker 2: and Conquer. Yeah. In November of nineteen forty three. In

1403
01:09:48,960 --> 01:09:51,519
Speaker 2: March of nineteen forty four, there were vast raids on

1404
01:09:51,560 --> 01:09:55,519
Speaker 2: Berlin which left much of the capital in ruins, and

1405
01:09:55,640 --> 01:09:57,960
Speaker 2: yet German morale continued to hold this is the thing,

1406
01:09:58,120 --> 01:10:01,200
Speaker 2: Bomber Harris, He's more honest, But what he's saying will

1407
01:10:01,240 --> 01:10:05,799
Speaker 2: happen still doesn't happen. Yeah, he's No amount of bombing

1408
01:10:05,960 --> 01:10:08,800
Speaker 2: causes Germany to give up. By the time the war

1409
01:10:08,840 --> 01:10:11,680
Speaker 2: in Europe enters its endgame, there were very mixed conclusions

1410
01:10:11,680 --> 01:10:14,160
Speaker 2: to draw from the actual efficacy of strategic bombing and

1411
01:10:14,200 --> 01:10:17,840
Speaker 2: precision bombing. Both ideologies had suffered failures, and both had

1412
01:10:17,840 --> 01:10:21,560
Speaker 2: claimed successes, although some of those were dubious claims of success.

1413
01:10:22,120 --> 01:10:25,360
Speaker 2: Months earlier, bomber Harris had considered strategic bombing the same

1414
01:10:25,400 --> 01:10:27,920
Speaker 2: as opening a new front, summarizing a write up for

1415
01:10:27,920 --> 01:10:30,519
Speaker 2: the Juno Beach Center quote until D Day, he was

1416
01:10:30,560 --> 01:10:33,320
Speaker 2: convinced that bombings, if they were destructive enough, could force

1417
01:10:33,360 --> 01:10:36,439
Speaker 2: Germany into submission without the Allied casualties that were bound

1418
01:10:36,439 --> 01:10:39,879
Speaker 2: to result from a massive landing operation in continental Europe.

1419
01:10:40,280 --> 01:10:43,719
Speaker 2: In Part two, we're going to talk about what happens next.

1420
01:10:43,800 --> 01:10:46,519
Speaker 2: We'll get to Japan finally, and we'll start talking about

1421
01:10:46,560 --> 01:10:50,160
Speaker 2: the nukes. But this is all necessary. These are the

1422
01:10:50,200 --> 01:10:55,160
Speaker 2: foundational assumptions of the people who build the doomsday device

1423
01:10:55,200 --> 01:10:58,679
Speaker 2: that we all live under right now. Like this second,

1424
01:10:58,840 --> 01:11:02,160
Speaker 2: an incident could have started, maybe just because a radar

1425
01:11:02,280 --> 01:11:05,160
Speaker 2: station was wrong, that will in fifteen to thirty minutes

1426
01:11:05,200 --> 01:11:08,400
Speaker 2: result in the annihilation of all organized life human life

1427
01:11:08,439 --> 01:11:10,880
Speaker 2: on the planet. That could have happened, as I say

1428
01:11:10,880 --> 01:11:14,719
Speaker 2: this sentence, and we mostly won't know until the bombs fall,

1429
01:11:14,960 --> 01:11:18,559
Speaker 2: and there's really nothing. Like One thing that maybe will

1430
01:11:18,560 --> 01:11:21,880
Speaker 2: comfort you is that that like, none of the facilities

1431
01:11:21,920 --> 01:11:27,080
Speaker 2: we have to protect our government will work, like none

1432
01:11:27,120 --> 01:11:29,519
Speaker 2: of them are sufficient for the amount, the tonnage, the

1433
01:11:29,560 --> 01:11:32,559
Speaker 2: mega tonnage of explosives coming at them. That little like

1434
01:11:32,840 --> 01:11:34,400
Speaker 2: this is a good This is a good thing about

1435
01:11:34,439 --> 01:11:37,880
Speaker 2: Jacobson's book Nuclear War. One thing she points out is like, yeah,

1436
01:11:37,920 --> 01:11:41,559
Speaker 2: there's bunkers underneath the Pentagon and the White House. Everyone

1437
01:11:41,640 --> 01:11:44,439
Speaker 2: will bake to death slowly as if they're in an oven.

1438
01:11:45,240 --> 01:11:47,920
Speaker 2: Like we know what kind of forces will be deployed

1439
01:11:47,960 --> 01:11:51,559
Speaker 2: against DC. There's no surviving in those bunkers. It's a

1440
01:11:51,680 --> 01:11:53,960
Speaker 2: much worse death than the people top side will have.

1441
01:11:54,880 --> 01:11:59,519
Speaker 2: Well that's good, that's good anyway, maybe that'll cheer you up.

1442
01:12:00,160 --> 01:12:01,400
Speaker 2: We roll out of part one.

1443
01:12:01,920 --> 01:12:04,599
Speaker 4: I appreciate this idea of like I hadn't put together

1444
01:12:04,760 --> 01:12:08,480
Speaker 4: this idea that World War One, the powder keg was intentional.

1445
01:12:09,080 --> 01:12:12,640
Speaker 4: You know that it was this mutually assured destruction concept

1446
01:12:12,960 --> 01:12:16,760
Speaker 4: and like seeing the through line is yeah, fascinating.

1447
01:12:17,240 --> 01:12:19,640
Speaker 2: It wasn't as direct because it did kind of a

1448
01:12:19,640 --> 01:12:22,080
Speaker 2: lot of this started to like this evolved accidentally out

1449
01:12:22,080 --> 01:12:24,960
Speaker 2: of stuff that it existed before. It was not constructed

1450
01:12:24,960 --> 01:12:28,559
Speaker 2: as consciously as nuclear mad, right, but it was something

1451
01:12:28,640 --> 01:12:32,000
Speaker 2: people were conscious of, people talked about. That's a reason

1452
01:12:32,040 --> 01:12:35,560
Speaker 2: why so many historians have discussed the system of alliances

1453
01:12:36,080 --> 01:12:40,439
Speaker 2: and like military armament schedules and like the different like

1454
01:12:40,680 --> 01:12:44,120
Speaker 2: arming schedules for reserves as a doomsday device, right, because

1455
01:12:44,120 --> 01:12:47,400
Speaker 2: it worked that way, and it is really relevant to

1456
01:12:47,400 --> 01:12:50,080
Speaker 2: discuss that in the context of the doom state device

1457
01:12:50,160 --> 01:12:54,439
Speaker 2: that we all live under, right now, Yeah, yep, cool, cool?

1458
01:12:55,040 --> 01:12:58,640
Speaker 2: All right, all right, everybody.

1459
01:12:58,560 --> 01:13:00,479
Speaker 3: Magpie, do you want marketing blood?

1460
01:13:01,040 --> 01:13:06,040
Speaker 4: Oh well, if you respond to the possible eminent destruction

1461
01:13:06,120 --> 01:13:08,920
Speaker 4: of all things by retreating a little bit into escapism,

1462
01:13:09,960 --> 01:13:13,519
Speaker 4: you could listen to me and Robert and some of

1463
01:13:13,520 --> 01:13:16,479
Speaker 4: our friends play Pathfinder, where we're just pretending to be

1464
01:13:16,840 --> 01:13:18,360
Speaker 4: people in a fantasy world.

1465
01:13:18,439 --> 01:13:21,479
Speaker 2: You don't know what Pathfinder is. It's a tabletop game thing,

1466
01:13:22,400 --> 01:13:24,200
Speaker 2: much in the vein of Dungeons and Dragons or a

1467
01:13:24,240 --> 01:13:27,519
Speaker 2: number of other games just legally distinct, legally distinct.

1468
01:13:27,840 --> 01:13:30,439
Speaker 4: Yeah, and if you like weird history, I have a

1469
01:13:30,520 --> 01:13:33,640
Speaker 4: podcast called Cool People Didical Stuff with a totally original

1470
01:13:33,920 --> 01:13:36,960
Speaker 4: the format, Robert, you got to try this format. What

1471
01:13:37,040 --> 01:13:40,080
Speaker 4: I do is that I research a topic every week, okay,

1472
01:13:40,720 --> 01:13:42,880
Speaker 4: and then I get a guest who doesn't know as

1473
01:13:43,000 --> 01:13:45,080
Speaker 4: much about that topic but sometimes knows like kind of

1474
01:13:45,080 --> 01:13:49,080
Speaker 4: related things around that topic, and then I tell them

1475
01:13:49,360 --> 01:13:50,560
Speaker 4: what I've learned.

1476
01:13:50,960 --> 01:13:53,560
Speaker 2: Is that that seems like the newest idea in podcasting.

1477
01:13:53,880 --> 01:13:54,479
Speaker 3: Yeah, there are.

1478
01:13:55,280 --> 01:13:58,160
Speaker 1: A producer named Sophie there that doesn't say very much

1479
01:13:58,200 --> 01:13:59,479
Speaker 1: but sometimes talks a lot.

1480
01:14:00,120 --> 01:14:02,920
Speaker 4: Yeah, you should, actually, Robert, you should. You should use

1481
01:14:02,960 --> 01:14:05,080
Speaker 4: that part too. Get a producer named Sophie.

1482
01:14:06,240 --> 01:14:08,600
Speaker 2: I'll see, I'll think about it, Markka, I'll think about it.

1483
01:14:08,640 --> 01:14:09,479
Speaker 2: I'll think about it.

1484
01:14:09,640 --> 01:14:12,000
Speaker 4: But uh, but don't take my name. You are you

1485
01:14:12,000 --> 01:14:14,439
Speaker 4: have a decent name from behind the bastards. Mine's cool

1486
01:14:14,439 --> 01:14:15,559
Speaker 4: people who did cool stuff?

1487
01:14:15,640 --> 01:14:18,519
Speaker 2: Okay, cool people who did cool stuff. Check out us

1488
01:14:18,520 --> 01:14:23,320
Speaker 2: playing Pathfinder on it could happen. Here's book club. And remember,

1489
01:14:24,240 --> 01:14:26,840
Speaker 2: if there is a nuclear war, all of the people

1490
01:14:26,840 --> 01:14:29,479
Speaker 2: who got us into it will also die unthinkable deaths.

1491
01:14:30,520 --> 01:14:31,040
Speaker 4: So yay.

1492
01:14:31,800 --> 01:14:33,280
Speaker 2: I don't know. Try to live near the center of

1493
01:14:33,320 --> 01:14:35,960
Speaker 2: a city and just you know, say the things to

1494
01:14:36,000 --> 01:14:38,080
Speaker 2: your loved ones that you need to say. Yeah, tell

1495
01:14:38,080 --> 01:14:40,280
Speaker 2: your friends you love you, Tell your friends you love them.

1496
01:14:40,520 --> 01:14:42,280
Speaker 3: Yeah, bye bye.

1497
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Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.

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Speaker 1: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool

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Speaker 1: Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

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Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the

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Speaker 1: Bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes every Wednesday

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Speaker 1: and Friday.

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Speaker 3: Subscribe to our

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Speaker 1: Channel YouTube dot com slash at Behind the Bastards