WEBVTT - Part One: The Men Who Might Have Killed Us All

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

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<v Speaker 2>Now now you fucked up the introduction. So he doesn't

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<v Speaker 2>feel good now, does it. It's bad. It's harder than

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<v Speaker 2>it sounds.

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<v Speaker 1>You know, I'm honestly kind of fun.

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<v Speaker 2>I'm just hoping that the listeners here will appreciate how

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<v Speaker 2>much work goes into my atonal screeches, because, to be polite,

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<v Speaker 2>they sound a lot better than your atonal screeches. That's

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<v Speaker 2>all I'm saying.

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<v Speaker 1>I absolutely agree, So give the listeners one.

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

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

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<v Speaker 2>on video this week, folks. I'm not feeling well. I

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<v Speaker 2>just had a vasectomy, which I debated on because I

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<v Speaker 2>don't like talking about my private life on the show

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<v Speaker 2>too much. But I also think it's a good thing

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

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

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<v Speaker 2>Go do it or do it yourself. You know, it

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

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<v Speaker 2>You could figure it out, you know. Pruners sure, you

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

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<v Speaker 2>do it on the sheep anyway, Margaret, Okay, how are

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<v Speaker 2>you doing.

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<v Speaker 3>I'm good. I didn't have surgery this week.

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<v Speaker 2>That's also good. That's better than having surgery, is a.

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<v Speaker 1>General I love that for you, Magpie.

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<v Speaker 2>I certainly prefer the weeks when I don't have surgery,

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<v Speaker 2>even if it's minor surgery. It's never very fun. Margaret.

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<v Speaker 2>How often do you think about the fact that, at

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<v Speaker 2>any given moment we're at the most thirty minutes away

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<v Speaker 2>from the entire planet being wiped out?

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<v Speaker 3>Well more recently was depressed?

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<v Speaker 4>Yeah, it's I watched a movie about this recently.

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<v Speaker 2>It is a lot of them will have a lot,

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<v Speaker 2>which is kind of why I haven't actually seen that

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<v Speaker 2>movie yet. But this is always on my mind. It's

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<v Speaker 2>a special The whole nuclear doomsday planetary nuclear doomsday device

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<v Speaker 2>that we largely co created with Russia is on my

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<v Speaker 2>mind a lot. I'm just interested in the facts of

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<v Speaker 2>how it came together and who made it. And I'm

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<v Speaker 2>interested in because our subjects this week are broadly speaking,

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<v Speaker 2>all of the people in the US at least who

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<v Speaker 2>built that. Because we don't have quite as much granular

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<v Speaker 2>detail on their counterparts in the Soviet Union, you can

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<v Speaker 2>generally assume a version of everything we're talking about. This

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<v Speaker 2>we happened over there too, right, Like, they didn't not

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<v Speaker 2>create a planetary killing doomstate device. We both just kind

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<v Speaker 2>of built one that was heavily based on our game

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<v Speaker 2>theory understanding of how the other side would respond in

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<v Speaker 2>like an escalating nuclear scenario, And the end result of

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<v Speaker 2>that was both countries were ready perpetually and are still

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<v Speaker 2>today ready at all times to wipe out more or

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<v Speaker 2>less all of human civilization. But in roughly fifteen to

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<v Speaker 2>thirty minutes, that's about how long it would take.

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

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<v Speaker 4>going to go straight into wig that shit.

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<v Speaker 2>That's a nice thing to think about. It's comforting at

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<v Speaker 2>least the idea that like will never experience the worst

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<v Speaker 2>case scenario because our consciousness doesn't persist in those moments.

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<v Speaker 4>Except kind that's okay, that is, And I think about

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<v Speaker 4>that specifically around nuclear destruction because I think about how

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<v Speaker 4>often the people of the generation ahead of mine are like,

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<v Speaker 4>they almost seem silly, how worried they were about nuclear

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<v Speaker 4>apocalypse because it didn't happen during the Cold War, So

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<v Speaker 4>we're like, oh, obviously humanity would never do that, But

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<v Speaker 4>it would be impossible for me to be alive now

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<v Speaker 4>if the world had been destroyed. So even if nine

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<v Speaker 4>times out of ten we destroyed the world, we're stuck

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<v Speaker 4>being alive.

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<v Speaker 3>In the one out of ten.

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

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<v Speaker 4>it might just be pure raw luck that we didn't

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<v Speaker 4>annihilate ourselves.

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<v Speaker 2>Yes, and unfortunately, I think that is if you're trying

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<v Speaker 2>to look at this from an educated and accurate perspective,

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<v Speaker 2>that is the only reason we're all alive, because it

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<v Speaker 2>we nearly wiped out. Like the number of times that

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<v Speaker 2>the whole world nearly got wiped out in atomic hell

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<v Speaker 2>fire is like you have too many to count on

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<v Speaker 2>all of our fingers and toes in this podcast combined, right, God,

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<v Speaker 2>it happened so many times, and the amount of resistance

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<v Speaker 2>whenever someone pointed out, oh, hey, the way this was

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<v Speaker 2>built could kill us all at any moment. Accidentally, that

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<v Speaker 2>happened so many times. We'll be talking about the fucking

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<v Speaker 2>minute Men missiles and how they were initially set up

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<v Speaker 2>But what's interesting about this week is that our subjects

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<v Speaker 2>are kind of like Schrodinger's bastards, where some of these

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<v Speaker 2>guys do have big body counts, especially the folks who were,

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<v Speaker 2>you know, responsible for getting the new like Leslie Groves right,

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<v Speaker 2>who was the general whoever saw Manhattan Project right, You

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<v Speaker 2>can put a lot of deaths under his his name,

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<v Speaker 2>But most of the people who built this system never

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

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<v Speaker 2>in fact, guys whose last bit of work was in

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<v Speaker 2>the sixties, could fifteen minutes from now, if the right

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<v Speaker 2>things had started happening fifteen minutes ago, or a couple

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<v Speaker 2>of seconds ago, fifteen minutes from now, all of these

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<v Speaker 2>guys could become the biggest murderers in world history right collectively.

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<v Speaker 3>But they won't be remembered.

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<v Speaker 2>But they won't. No one will be nothing will be right.

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<v Speaker 2>That's the beauty of atomic hell fire.

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<v Speaker 3>History is written by the victors. That there's no victor.

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<v Speaker 2>There's going to be no victors of a nuclear war,

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<v Speaker 2>simply no history written. But they are interesting in that

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<v Speaker 2>because a lot of them are not like bad, and

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<v Speaker 2>some of them are even deeply sympathetic. There's a guy

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<v Speaker 2>we're going to talk about who may have saved all

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<v Speaker 2>of human life but also helped still did help build

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<v Speaker 2>the machine that could at any moment end at all. Right,

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

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<v Speaker 2>all of this is still relevant because absolutely nothing has

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<v Speaker 2>been done to make the system safer since the end

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<v Speaker 2>of the Cold War, and in fact, it's significantly more

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<v Speaker 2>dangerous than it was at the end of the Cold War,

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<v Speaker 2>in part because Russia's no longer pretending to not be

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<v Speaker 2>in a launch on warn situation, which is where both

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<v Speaker 2>both Russia and the United States are today is launch

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<v Speaker 2>on warn, which means that the policy of both governments

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<v Speaker 2>is to start shooting everything they have when they have

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

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<v Speaker 2>best case scenario would be like one crazy country like

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<v Speaker 2>North Korea decides to fire a single ICBM at the

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<v Speaker 2>United States, but that would still trigger a massive nuclear response.

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<v Speaker 2>And if for some reason we couldn't get in touch

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<v Speaker 2>with the Russian government, And as a heads up, there

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<v Speaker 2>have been times where we've been out of touch with

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<v Speaker 2>them for as much as forty eight hours when there's

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<v Speaker 2>been like critical things to like like that happens, the

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<v Speaker 2>gaps and comms like that, especially since Ukraine happened. And

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<v Speaker 2>if we started launching missiles the way that most of

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<v Speaker 2>our missiles would work, a lot of them would go

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<v Speaker 2>through or at least appear to be going towards Russi

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<v Speaker 2>aspace or Chinese airspace for a while. And none of

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<v Speaker 2>these radar systems are perfect, So there's a very good

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<v Speaker 2>chance even if we weren't didn't have it set up

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<v Speaker 2>to Crossrustner Chinese airspace, they would think that for a

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<v Speaker 2>period of time that is longer than the amount of

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<v Speaker 2>time they know they have to choose to launch their

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<v Speaker 2>arsenals in response. As per the way to Terrence theory works,

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<v Speaker 2>this could happen at any moment. This could have started

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

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<v Speaker 2>this week, is how we got to this point that

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<v Speaker 2>we have not ever stepped back from. We are just

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<v Speaker 2>as close as we were during the Cold War. That's

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<v Speaker 2>very important for people to understand. So these next couple

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<v Speaker 2>of weeks we're going to talk about how this all

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<v Speaker 2>came to be. Right, because all of the men were

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<v Speaker 2>talking about this week most of whom again have no

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<v Speaker 2>body count and probably lived otherwise decent lives. All of

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<v Speaker 2>these guys put the work in to make this machine

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<v Speaker 2>knowing that they were building a system that, if used,

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<v Speaker 2>would lead to planetary genocide, and they built it anyway.

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<v Speaker 2>They built it because they knew it would work that way. Right,

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<v Speaker 2>So we're gonna talk about why we're gonna talk about

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<v Speaker 2>because they thought they were doing the morally right thing,

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<v Speaker 2>and up until now you could make a case, up

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<v Speaker 2>until the missiles fly, you could continue making a case

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<v Speaker 2>that it was the right thing to do, which is

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<v Speaker 2>part of one of the fucked up things about it, right, Right,

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<v Speaker 2>So this is this is a complicated topic, but I

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<v Speaker 2>do think these people are worth discussing in part because

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<v Speaker 2>these are all people who sat down and had conversations

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<v Speaker 2>about like, Okay, we do this and that'll kill about

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<v Speaker 2>six hundred million people. Yeah, build it, you know, like

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<v Speaker 2>the these are the talks that they were having. There's

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<v Speaker 2>a joke that gets made online today a lot, a

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<v Speaker 2>meme about a tech company building the Torment Nexus, an

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

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<v Speaker 2>It's kind of a joke about the way a lot

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<v Speaker 2>of tech broke, a lot of tech projects. Feel now

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<v Speaker 2>where it's like, this is exactly what the sci fi

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<v Speaker 2>that inspired you was warning against, right, But that really

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<v Speaker 2>is the reality of the atom bomb. And this is

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<v Speaker 2>not something I knew until I read the book Command

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<v Speaker 2>and Control by Eric Schlasser, which is one of the sources,

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<v Speaker 2>one of several books that I used to sources for

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<v Speaker 2>these episodes. And at the start of his book, Schlosser

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<v Speaker 2>points out that the first person to conceive directly of

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<v Speaker 2>an atomic bomb was HG. Wells, who wrote a nineteen

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<v Speaker 2>fourteen novel titled The World Set Free. I was not aware,

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<v Speaker 2>and now there's some other candidates, but this is like

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<v Speaker 2>the first. I'll tell you why this is I think

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<v Speaker 2>the best candidate for like the first guy to imagine

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<v Speaker 2>an accurate, semi accurate conception of an atomic bomb. In it,

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<v Speaker 2>Wells puts together a story that is weirdly like the

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<v Speaker 2>backstory of the Federation. In Star Trek, scientists create the

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<v Speaker 2>ultimate explosive, a radioactive bomb that allowed someone to carry

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<v Speaker 2>in a purse or suitcase quote an amount of latent

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<v Speaker 2>energy sufficient to wreck half a city. As Schlosser writes,

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<v Speaker 2>these atomic bombs threaten the survival of mankind as every

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<v Speaker 2>nation seeks to obtain them and use them before being attacked.

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<v Speaker 2>Millions die, the world's great capitals are destroyed, and civilization

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<v Speaker 2>nears collapse. But the novel ends on an optimistic note,

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<v Speaker 2>as fear of a nuclear apocalypse leads to the establishment

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<v Speaker 2>of world government. And this is Wells. The catastrophe of

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<v Speaker 2>the atomic bombs, which shook men out of cities, shook

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<v Speaker 2>them also out of their old established habits of thought.

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

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<v Speaker 2>I didn't know any of that.

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<v Speaker 3>Yeah, well, he also he is really into wargaming.

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<v Speaker 2>He also he would have he would have been so

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<v Speaker 2>into Warhammer if he was.

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<v Speaker 4>He genuinely was into wargaming. I know, yeah, yeah, yeah,

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<v Speaker 4>yeah him as Warhammer man.

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<v Speaker 3>I like that idea.

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<v Speaker 2>He would have been. Also another war big wargaming nerd

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<v Speaker 2>who would have been into Warhammer was the guy who

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

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<v Speaker 2>nukes didn't work quite like the real things. They went

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<v Speaker 2>off slowly and they lot of huge amounts of radiation

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<v Speaker 2>over years of time. But Wells came pretty close to

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<v Speaker 2>foreseeing that the real thing, close enough to foreseeing the

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<v Speaker 2>real thing that in nineteen twenty nine, a Hungarian physicist

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<v Speaker 2>named Leo Sillard sz I l r d. Met with

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<v Speaker 2>Wells to try and purchase the literary rights to publish

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<v Speaker 2>his novel in Central Europe. This is relevant ter of

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<v Speaker 2>like who was the closest to a nuke? Because Leo

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<v Speaker 2>Zillard is one of the fathers of the Adam Baum.

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<v Speaker 2>A decade or so after trying to buy the rights

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<v Speaker 2>to this this is true, he comes to the US

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<v Speaker 2>and he's he becomes one of the architects of the

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

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<v Speaker 2>right again, if we're talking about where does the moral

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<v Speaker 2>blame lay. He has the most understandable reason for wanting

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<v Speaker 2>to help the US build a nuke of anybody. And

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<v Speaker 2>it's kind of good to talk about him because it

0:11:28.520 --> 0:11:30.199
<v Speaker 2>does make the point that it's a little unfair to

0:11:30.280 --> 0:11:33.000
<v Speaker 2>judge these men without talking about the circumstances in the

0:11:33.000 --> 0:11:36.280
<v Speaker 2>world that formed them. Sillard was a Jewish refugee. He

0:11:36.320 --> 0:11:39.199
<v Speaker 2>fled Nazi Germany, and he wound up in the United States.

0:11:39.440 --> 0:11:42.240
<v Speaker 2>Because he was a physicist, and because he was a

0:11:42.320 --> 0:11:44.840
<v Speaker 2>refugee of the Holocaust, he knew not only the threat

0:11:44.840 --> 0:11:47.000
<v Speaker 2>that fascism represented, but he knew that Hitler had a

0:11:47.000 --> 0:11:49.959
<v Speaker 2>bomb program going. In nineteen thirty nine, he sends a

0:11:50.040 --> 0:11:53.559
<v Speaker 2>letter to Albert Einstein laying out his fears, and Einstein

0:11:53.559 --> 0:11:55.800
<v Speaker 2>is the guy who've sent the letter to Einstein. And

0:11:55.840 --> 0:11:58.120
<v Speaker 2>then yeah, Einstein helps him write a letter to FDR.

0:11:58.200 --> 0:12:02.920
<v Speaker 2>Yeah please, Yeah, like the Einstein helps him craft this

0:12:03.000 --> 0:12:04.960
<v Speaker 2>letter and he sends it to FDR. And this letter

0:12:05.000 --> 0:12:08.440
<v Speaker 2>warns about bombs of a new type, and FDR takes

0:12:08.440 --> 0:12:10.920
<v Speaker 2>the warning seriously that he keeps exploring the idea, which

0:12:10.920 --> 0:12:13.160
<v Speaker 2>helps lead to the establishment of the Manhattan Project in

0:12:13.200 --> 0:12:16.520
<v Speaker 2>nineteen forty two. Like, that's Leo Zillard and he ties

0:12:16.559 --> 0:12:18.200
<v Speaker 2>directly back to the Wells idea.

0:12:18.400 --> 0:12:19.680
<v Speaker 3>That's awful.

0:12:19.920 --> 0:12:22.760
<v Speaker 4>Let's so the fact that we could like literally say,

0:12:23.240 --> 0:12:26.120
<v Speaker 4>not only don't build the tournament nexus, but maybe don't

0:12:26.160 --> 0:12:27.360
<v Speaker 4>write the tournament maybe.

0:12:27.200 --> 0:12:29.560
<v Speaker 2>Don't read about the tournament nexus. I mean it's I

0:12:29.600 --> 0:12:32.520
<v Speaker 2>think Sillard probably was. I think he probably was into

0:12:32.520 --> 0:12:37.320
<v Speaker 2>Wells because he, like people had theorized before Wells that

0:12:37.360 --> 0:12:40.319
<v Speaker 2>something like an Adam bomb might be feasible on like

0:12:40.320 --> 0:12:43.360
<v Speaker 2>like the physicists had and I think Sillard was impressed

0:12:43.360 --> 0:12:46.600
<v Speaker 2>that Wells had gotten something so close. And also he

0:12:46.679 --> 0:12:49.960
<v Speaker 2>clearly wanted to warn the world about this thing, which

0:12:49.960 --> 0:12:52.120
<v Speaker 2>I think is why he was interested in purchasing the

0:12:52.200 --> 0:12:55.559
<v Speaker 2>rights to this. And we'll talk a little bit more

0:12:55.559 --> 0:12:57.920
<v Speaker 2>about him later, but is it is so tragic because

0:12:57.920 --> 0:13:00.880
<v Speaker 2>you can't blame him, like he's like his attitude is like,

0:13:00.920 --> 0:13:02.800
<v Speaker 2>we need, we need to have this because Hitler might

0:13:02.840 --> 0:13:06.080
<v Speaker 2>have it, right, yeah, which like, yeah, maybe I don't know,

0:13:06.520 --> 0:13:09.440
<v Speaker 2>but that's the same logic that like, and you know,

0:13:09.480 --> 0:13:12.680
<v Speaker 2>the USSR is not Nazi Germany, obviously we can the

0:13:12.679 --> 0:13:14.640
<v Speaker 2>proof of that is as simple as what happened in

0:13:14.679 --> 0:13:17.360
<v Speaker 2>the Cold War. Right, And to be fair, neither is

0:13:17.400 --> 0:13:20.760
<v Speaker 2>the United States. Neither country use the damn things on

0:13:20.800 --> 0:13:22.719
<v Speaker 2>the scale that would have ended civilization.

0:13:23.200 --> 0:13:23.480
<v Speaker 3>Right.

0:13:24.040 --> 0:13:26.440
<v Speaker 2>You know, we'll talk about Heroshima and Nagasaki too, but

0:13:26.960 --> 0:13:31.480
<v Speaker 2>it's you understand, like Sillard's motivations are deeply sympathetic, right,

0:13:31.520 --> 0:13:34.160
<v Speaker 2>And a number of scientists behind the Manhattan Projects, some

0:13:34.240 --> 0:13:36.840
<v Speaker 2>of them are refugees, right, But the ones that aren't

0:13:36.920 --> 0:13:39.680
<v Speaker 2>still get into it because they're reading the news they see,

0:13:39.760 --> 0:13:42.760
<v Speaker 2>they're aware of how dangerous the US, like the US's

0:13:42.840 --> 0:13:45.520
<v Speaker 2>enemies are during World War Two, and it's a legitimate

0:13:45.559 --> 0:13:48.720
<v Speaker 2>threat that Germany in particular might get the bomb before

0:13:48.760 --> 0:13:51.320
<v Speaker 2>we do, right, And those stories are like half the

0:13:51.360 --> 0:13:54.560
<v Speaker 2>reason this happened, because a lot of people of goodwill

0:13:54.600 --> 0:13:57.240
<v Speaker 2>got involved with the Manhattan Project because they were like, well,

0:13:57.240 --> 0:14:00.199
<v Speaker 2>this is probably the lesser It's probably better that the

0:14:00.280 --> 0:14:03.600
<v Speaker 2>US has this than that a fascist country is the

0:14:03.600 --> 0:14:06.280
<v Speaker 2>only one with a nuke, right, right, Like that's their

0:14:06.400 --> 0:14:09.319
<v Speaker 2>logic here, and they they had to operate on. We

0:14:09.400 --> 0:14:11.679
<v Speaker 2>know that the Nazis were never going to get a nuke, right,

0:14:11.800 --> 0:14:14.199
<v Speaker 2>just based on the choice because they didn't, right, they

0:14:14.280 --> 0:14:16.600
<v Speaker 2>went in different directions. They did not make the choices

0:14:16.800 --> 0:14:18.640
<v Speaker 2>ultimately that would have given you have.

0:14:18.600 --> 0:14:19.160
<v Speaker 3>You heard this thing?

0:14:19.200 --> 0:14:21.080
<v Speaker 4>Maybe it's in the script or maybe I'm like wrong

0:14:21.120 --> 0:14:23.600
<v Speaker 4>about this, that there was a work slow down of

0:14:23.640 --> 0:14:27.360
<v Speaker 4>the Nazi the Nazi bomb program where they were like

0:14:27.960 --> 0:14:30.000
<v Speaker 4>and they went and they tried to tell their US

0:14:30.080 --> 0:14:34.840
<v Speaker 4>counterparts like, hey, we're slowing down this bomb. You all

0:14:35.040 --> 0:14:37.520
<v Speaker 4>need to slow it down too. But the person that

0:14:37.560 --> 0:14:40.280
<v Speaker 4>they told didn't believe them and was like, oh shit,

0:14:40.600 --> 0:14:42.360
<v Speaker 4>they're trying to lie to us. They must be like

0:14:42.440 --> 0:14:44.400
<v Speaker 4>right about to build this bomb. Have you heard this story?

0:14:44.520 --> 0:14:46.560
<v Speaker 2>No, ipant, actually no, no, no, it's not.

0:14:48.280 --> 0:14:48.600
<v Speaker 3>Okay.

0:14:48.760 --> 0:14:50.920
<v Speaker 4>I can never remember the name of the book because

0:14:50.920 --> 0:14:52.720
<v Speaker 4>I found it in a trash can twenty years ago.

0:14:52.800 --> 0:14:54.760
<v Speaker 4>It was about the social history of building of the

0:14:54.800 --> 0:14:59.400
<v Speaker 4>bomb and I read this and and it like changed

0:14:59.440 --> 0:15:01.000
<v Speaker 4>the way that I was perceiving this stuff.

0:15:01.120 --> 0:15:02.480
<v Speaker 3>But I've since read.

0:15:02.280 --> 0:15:03.960
<v Speaker 4>More about this and research more about this, and I

0:15:04.000 --> 0:15:07.720
<v Speaker 4>think it's like messier than that. But I think again

0:15:08.200 --> 0:15:11.040
<v Speaker 4>just from memory, that there was like a work slowdown

0:15:11.080 --> 0:15:12.920
<v Speaker 4>in the Nazi program because it was all of these

0:15:13.080 --> 0:15:15.680
<v Speaker 4>physicists who used to work with Jews because before all

0:15:15.680 --> 0:15:18.280
<v Speaker 4>the Jews got kicked out of the physicist programs.

0:15:19.040 --> 0:15:20.840
<v Speaker 3>I don't know. I don't know if that's sure or not.

0:15:21.400 --> 0:15:25.600
<v Speaker 2>Uh maybe do I so check on that, But I

0:15:25.680 --> 0:15:27.720
<v Speaker 2>want to believe. Yeah, I mean, there's a couple, there's

0:15:27.720 --> 0:15:31.760
<v Speaker 2>some good. There's some stories, I mean, and the espionage

0:15:31.800 --> 0:15:34.080
<v Speaker 2>is heavily baked into the whole story of how this

0:15:34.120 --> 0:15:37.120
<v Speaker 2>all happened, right, Yeah, And it's the spies in the

0:15:37.240 --> 0:15:41.520
<v Speaker 2>US who bring bomb information to the USSR. Are people

0:15:41.560 --> 0:15:44.480
<v Speaker 2>working on a similar logic to Zillard, where they're like, well,

0:15:44.520 --> 0:15:47.560
<v Speaker 2>the US is obviously not a good actor, and if

0:15:47.600 --> 0:15:49.080
<v Speaker 2>they're the only ones with the nuke, they're going to

0:15:49.160 --> 0:15:51.200
<v Speaker 2>kill everyone in the Soviet Union, right? Oh?

0:15:51.280 --> 0:15:51.720
<v Speaker 3>Yeah?

0:15:51.760 --> 0:15:56.440
<v Speaker 2>Like and maybe you know we talked about it any

0:15:56.480 --> 0:15:59.200
<v Speaker 2>you guys talked about it. We had a plan to

0:15:59.280 --> 0:16:02.880
<v Speaker 2>do it, you know, so you're not and maybe by

0:16:03.600 --> 0:16:07.200
<v Speaker 2>by the way, it's if it's arguable that building this

0:16:07.280 --> 0:16:10.120
<v Speaker 2>doomsday device stopped a war that would have killed hundreds

0:16:10.120 --> 0:16:11.960
<v Speaker 2>of millions and was ultimately the right thing to do,

0:16:12.360 --> 0:16:14.400
<v Speaker 2>and a lot of people argue that to this day,

0:16:14.760 --> 0:16:18.520
<v Speaker 2>then it was certainly morally right for scientists to leak

0:16:18.560 --> 0:16:21.520
<v Speaker 2>information to the Soviet Union because otherwise the US would

0:16:21.520 --> 0:16:24.200
<v Speaker 2>have killed six hundred or so million people, right, right,

0:16:25.560 --> 0:16:28.680
<v Speaker 2>We know that because we talked about doing it a lot.

0:16:30.320 --> 0:16:33.160
<v Speaker 3>You're really right with the like Schrodinger's bastards.

0:16:32.760 --> 0:16:33.440
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, exactly.

0:16:33.640 --> 0:16:36.560
<v Speaker 4>People are heroes or bastards and we will never know.

0:16:36.840 --> 0:16:38.600
<v Speaker 4>And then half the timelines.

0:16:38.120 --> 0:16:39.720
<v Speaker 3>They're one, and then half for the other.

0:16:40.040 --> 0:16:41.840
<v Speaker 2>I guess part of why I'm doing this is that

0:16:41.880 --> 0:16:45.760
<v Speaker 2>if this happens like fifteen minutes after you finished listening

0:16:45.800 --> 0:16:48.200
<v Speaker 2>to this podcast, you'll know who to be angry at

0:16:48.200 --> 0:16:50.880
<v Speaker 2>and your last couple seconds of consciousness, assuming you're not

0:16:50.920 --> 0:16:55.480
<v Speaker 2>near ground zero for one of these things, yeah, you know,

0:16:55.520 --> 0:16:57.680
<v Speaker 2>and you probably want to be at ground zero. It's

0:16:57.720 --> 0:17:03.360
<v Speaker 2>the least painful option available. The road is optimistic in

0:17:03.440 --> 0:17:06.280
<v Speaker 2>terms of like the aftermath of thermonuclear war and a

0:17:06.359 --> 0:17:12.280
<v Speaker 2>planetary scale anyway, So those guy, but guys with that

0:17:12.320 --> 0:17:15.600
<v Speaker 2>logic basically that like, well, this is a messy thing.

0:17:15.680 --> 0:17:17.879
<v Speaker 2>I don't really want to be building a giant bomb,

0:17:18.320 --> 0:17:20.920
<v Speaker 2>but it might save a lot of lives in the

0:17:20.960 --> 0:17:24.600
<v Speaker 2>long run. That's like a sizeable chunk of the Manhattan Project. Right.

0:17:24.640 --> 0:17:27.600
<v Speaker 2>That's like a big amount of the logic behind the

0:17:27.680 --> 0:17:31.040
<v Speaker 2>reason individual people got involved. Right. The other half, though,

0:17:31.480 --> 0:17:34.400
<v Speaker 2>is and this is largely on the military side of things.

0:17:34.400 --> 0:17:37.199
<v Speaker 2>It's not exclusively military thinkers, but this is how the

0:17:37.200 --> 0:17:40.679
<v Speaker 2>military thinks of these weapons, both when we're starting to

0:17:41.119 --> 0:17:43.720
<v Speaker 2>plan one and then immediately after we start using them. Right.

0:17:44.200 --> 0:17:47.719
<v Speaker 2>And the military logic for why this is, why building

0:17:47.720 --> 0:17:49.359
<v Speaker 2>this system, why getting as many of these things as

0:17:49.400 --> 0:17:52.720
<v Speaker 2>possible is a good idea is based on a military

0:17:52.840 --> 0:17:55.480
<v Speaker 2>theory that starts to take hold after the end of

0:17:55.480 --> 0:17:58.480
<v Speaker 2>the First World War, and this is ultimately the theory

0:17:58.520 --> 0:18:00.960
<v Speaker 2>that leads us to the system of internet national usually

0:18:01.200 --> 0:18:03.840
<v Speaker 2>assured destruction that we live in today. Right, And there's

0:18:03.880 --> 0:18:07.640
<v Speaker 2>an element of historical rhyming here that we build this

0:18:07.760 --> 0:18:11.800
<v Speaker 2>global real literal global doomsdaate device as a result of

0:18:11.840 --> 0:18:14.880
<v Speaker 2>a theory that takes off in the end of World

0:18:14.920 --> 0:18:16.960
<v Speaker 2>War One, based on what happened in World War One,

0:18:17.000 --> 0:18:19.679
<v Speaker 2>because World War One is itself the result of a

0:18:19.680 --> 0:18:23.080
<v Speaker 2>doomsday device going off, a device that was never supposed

0:18:23.160 --> 0:18:25.280
<v Speaker 2>to go off, and a device that a lot of

0:18:25.359 --> 0:18:27.600
<v Speaker 2>people a lot if you right up until the start

0:18:27.640 --> 0:18:29.720
<v Speaker 2>of World War One, if you talked about this, this

0:18:29.880 --> 0:18:34.000
<v Speaker 2>system of alliances and military build up, right and like

0:18:34.400 --> 0:18:37.080
<v Speaker 2>an arms build up that like you've got all these munitions,

0:18:37.119 --> 0:18:40.520
<v Speaker 2>refit schedules and whatnot and interlocking alliances was meant to

0:18:40.640 --> 0:18:43.800
<v Speaker 2>ensure that there wasn't going to be a colossal European war,

0:18:43.920 --> 0:18:45.560
<v Speaker 2>Right That was the people who would defend it would

0:18:45.560 --> 0:18:48.479
<v Speaker 2>say that, like, well, if everyone's really well armed, and

0:18:48.600 --> 0:18:52.480
<v Speaker 2>if everybody's always and if we have all these alliances

0:18:52.520 --> 0:18:56.399
<v Speaker 2>between different powers that make it an unwinnable situation, we

0:18:56.440 --> 0:18:59.199
<v Speaker 2>won't have this war. Right, people would make that argument.

0:18:59.320 --> 0:19:02.439
<v Speaker 2>You know now obviously the technology at the time, they

0:19:02.440 --> 0:19:05.479
<v Speaker 2>didn't have access to ICBMs and nuclear submarines, so they

0:19:05.480 --> 0:19:07.960
<v Speaker 2>had to make do with defensive alliances that promised one

0:19:08.000 --> 0:19:10.800
<v Speaker 2>country would enter a theoretical war on another's behalf. And

0:19:10.840 --> 0:19:13.159
<v Speaker 2>these do work like a machine, right, and that's that

0:19:13.320 --> 0:19:15.880
<v Speaker 2>is what happens. You know, you have Austria declares war

0:19:15.920 --> 0:19:19.720
<v Speaker 2>on Serbia that brings France and Germany into it. The

0:19:19.840 --> 0:19:23.080
<v Speaker 2>German plan that they had built meant that like, well,

0:19:23.119 --> 0:19:25.199
<v Speaker 2>the only way we can possibly win this war is

0:19:25.200 --> 0:19:27.440
<v Speaker 2>we have to do this specific kind of invasion that

0:19:27.480 --> 0:19:30.359
<v Speaker 2>takes us through Belgium that brings Great Britain into the

0:19:30.560 --> 0:19:32.359
<v Speaker 2>you know, and so on and so forth, right, and

0:19:32.680 --> 0:19:35.240
<v Speaker 2>a maxim gun and they've got that. Everyone's got a

0:19:35.359 --> 0:19:38.640
<v Speaker 2>version of the maxim gun, and everyone's got your Everyone's

0:19:38.680 --> 0:19:43.040
<v Speaker 2>also thinking, well, I just re like we just refurbished

0:19:43.040 --> 0:19:46.600
<v Speaker 2>and upgraded our artillery, and France is France has just

0:19:46.680 --> 0:19:49.159
<v Speaker 2>upgraded this thing, but they haven't upgraded this thing. And

0:19:49.240 --> 0:19:51.080
<v Speaker 2>if we go now, they won't have the new version

0:19:51.119 --> 0:19:52.920
<v Speaker 2>of this thing, and ours will still be Like that's

0:19:52.920 --> 0:19:55.199
<v Speaker 2>a big part of the thinking too, right, And this

0:19:55.359 --> 0:19:58.119
<v Speaker 2>is like always the case and it had been for

0:19:58.200 --> 0:20:01.880
<v Speaker 2>decades prior to World War and prior to World War One,

0:20:02.320 --> 0:20:04.919
<v Speaker 2>the fact that it would be so costly and it

0:20:04.960 --> 0:20:08.320
<v Speaker 2>was so like everyone's plan for victory rested on so

0:20:08.400 --> 0:20:11.879
<v Speaker 2>many like assumptions and was sketchy enough, no one really

0:20:11.960 --> 0:20:15.680
<v Speaker 2>wanted to do this, right. I mean, with the exception

0:20:15.760 --> 0:20:19.000
<v Speaker 2>of the military thinkers who had spent their entire lives

0:20:19.040 --> 0:20:22.520
<v Speaker 2>building and planning out the system of like, this is

0:20:22.560 --> 0:20:25.679
<v Speaker 2>how we're going to activate our troops, this is the

0:20:25.800 --> 0:20:27.320
<v Speaker 2>order at which we'll get the marching, and this is

0:20:27.320 --> 0:20:30.239
<v Speaker 2>where they'll move in. They really So you have this

0:20:30.320 --> 0:20:33.520
<v Speaker 2>mix of nobody on the civilian side of governance wants

0:20:33.600 --> 0:20:36.280
<v Speaker 2>to think about this seriously because it would be a

0:20:36.280 --> 0:20:39.120
<v Speaker 2>calamity and they know it, and everyone in the military

0:20:39.160 --> 0:20:41.960
<v Speaker 2>is thinking about it constantly. So the instant you start

0:20:42.040 --> 0:20:44.440
<v Speaker 2>having leaders need to make a decision as to whether

0:20:44.520 --> 0:20:46.680
<v Speaker 2>or not they're going to go to war, the loudest

0:20:46.760 --> 0:20:49.000
<v Speaker 2>voice in the ear is this general who's thought of

0:20:49.000 --> 0:20:52.399
<v Speaker 2>nothing else's entire professional life. And by the way, in

0:20:52.440 --> 0:20:55.000
<v Speaker 2>the six minutes a US president would have to decide

0:20:55.000 --> 0:20:57.200
<v Speaker 2>whether or not to launch the nukes, the loudest voice

0:20:57.240 --> 0:20:59.000
<v Speaker 2>in his ear is going to be a guy who

0:20:59.040 --> 0:21:01.280
<v Speaker 2>thinks about using the nukes NonStop.

0:21:01.600 --> 0:21:03.680
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, it's like his job, it's his job.

0:21:04.760 --> 0:21:07.760
<v Speaker 4>This is like the you know, the whole like an

0:21:07.880 --> 0:21:12.960
<v Speaker 4>armed society is a polite society, logical fallacy. Yeah, you know,

0:21:13.119 --> 0:21:16.480
<v Speaker 4>Like it's it's just so interesting that's this written large

0:21:16.480 --> 0:21:19.000
<v Speaker 4>where we have Yeah, we have data that shows that

0:21:19.040 --> 0:21:20.719
<v Speaker 4>an armed society is not a polite society.

0:21:20.720 --> 0:21:21.600
<v Speaker 2>It sure isn't.

0:21:21.840 --> 0:21:21.919
<v Speaker 1>Not.

0:21:22.520 --> 0:21:26.720
<v Speaker 4>I pro Second Amendment for complicated reasons, but very complicated,

0:21:27.040 --> 0:21:29.440
<v Speaker 4>but like it's just not It's like you could watch

0:21:29.480 --> 0:21:31.240
<v Speaker 4>all the videos of people being like you parked in

0:21:31.280 --> 0:21:33.440
<v Speaker 4>my space and now they're shooting at each other. Yeah,

0:21:33.480 --> 0:21:35.840
<v Speaker 4>and they would have been punching each other in a

0:21:35.840 --> 0:21:36.400
<v Speaker 4>different world.

0:21:36.520 --> 0:21:39.760
<v Speaker 2>Yes, And it's one of those things I have had.

0:21:39.960 --> 0:21:43.159
<v Speaker 2>I've literally had the exact situation of, like, I had

0:21:43.160 --> 0:21:45.760
<v Speaker 2>a situation that would have been violent, but we all

0:21:45.840 --> 0:21:48.960
<v Speaker 2>had guns and knew it and so nobody started shit, right.

0:21:49.040 --> 0:21:51.159
<v Speaker 2>And I'm also more than aware of the fact that

0:21:51.280 --> 0:21:53.840
<v Speaker 2>like the United States is more violent than a lot

0:21:53.840 --> 0:21:55.360
<v Speaker 2>of unarmed societies, right.

0:21:56.920 --> 0:21:59.080
<v Speaker 4>And yeah, because if you carry a gun, you have

0:21:59.080 --> 0:22:01.440
<v Speaker 4>to have an entirely mindset where you kind.

0:22:01.240 --> 0:22:02.400
<v Speaker 2>Of changes everything.

0:22:02.520 --> 0:22:04.960
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, you actually can't stand up to you for yourself.

0:22:05.080 --> 0:22:09.640
<v Speaker 4>You kind of have to take possibly even the first punch, right,

0:22:09.720 --> 0:22:14.520
<v Speaker 4>You have to do everything, possibly literally everything to avoiding

0:22:15.400 --> 0:22:18.840
<v Speaker 4>taken a couple hits. Yeah, because you know that you're

0:22:18.920 --> 0:22:22.399
<v Speaker 4>capable of an overwhelming capacity of violence. Yeah, and it

0:22:23.200 --> 0:22:26.000
<v Speaker 4>people don't do that. Instead they're like, isn't this sick?

0:22:26.080 --> 0:22:27.960
<v Speaker 4>I've got overwhelming capacity of violence?

0:22:28.160 --> 0:22:30.439
<v Speaker 2>And that's one of the worries with like the nukes,

0:22:30.520 --> 0:22:32.879
<v Speaker 2>is when they go from because prior, one thing I

0:22:32.920 --> 0:22:35.399
<v Speaker 2>will say, and this is something I'll even give Nixon.

0:22:35.840 --> 0:22:38.760
<v Speaker 2>Basically all of our leaders and all of the Soviet leaders, right,

0:22:38.800 --> 0:22:40.840
<v Speaker 2>it's it's a mistake to leave them out too. This

0:22:40.920 --> 0:22:42.560
<v Speaker 2>is the thing that would only have worked if both

0:22:42.600 --> 0:22:45.320
<v Speaker 2>sides were similar. For all of the flaws of all

0:22:45.359 --> 0:22:47.760
<v Speaker 2>of the men running both countries the duration of the

0:22:47.760 --> 0:22:50.080
<v Speaker 2>Cold War, all of them had one thing in common,

0:22:50.080 --> 0:22:51.520
<v Speaker 2>which is they were guys who were like, no, that

0:22:51.520 --> 0:22:54.000
<v Speaker 2>would be fucked up. Yeah, that that'd be fucked up.

0:22:54.000 --> 0:22:55.640
<v Speaker 2>We're just not gonna do that. Yeah.

0:22:55.720 --> 0:22:55.920
<v Speaker 3>Right.

0:22:56.240 --> 0:22:58.280
<v Speaker 2>There's some great I mean fucking Reagan has some really

0:22:58.280 --> 0:23:01.040
<v Speaker 2>good quotes of like, oh, like where he's like having

0:23:01.080 --> 0:23:03.560
<v Speaker 2>this conscience of like, I can't believe we as human

0:23:03.600 --> 0:23:06.960
<v Speaker 2>beings created this nightmare system. This is so much worse

0:23:07.040 --> 0:23:10.040
<v Speaker 2>than I ever knew it was. What's wrong with people?

0:23:10.720 --> 0:23:12.760
<v Speaker 2>Raygan had those moments.

0:23:12.440 --> 0:23:14.439
<v Speaker 4>Right, because he wants to punch people. Yeah, you know

0:23:14.480 --> 0:23:18.919
<v Speaker 4>he wants that. Yeah, he's want the lower level of violence, like, and.

0:23:19.160 --> 0:23:21.080
<v Speaker 2>There's some good there's a good JFK quote when this

0:23:21.160 --> 0:23:23.280
<v Speaker 2>all got explained to him for the first because JFK

0:23:23.440 --> 0:23:25.639
<v Speaker 2>one of the things he did is he took away

0:23:25.680 --> 0:23:28.320
<v Speaker 2>the military's control of the nukes right and made it

0:23:28.400 --> 0:23:32.440
<v Speaker 2>because the military used to be have a basically theoretically

0:23:32.520 --> 0:23:34.920
<v Speaker 2>could have made the call to launch the missiles, went

0:23:34.960 --> 0:23:39.040
<v Speaker 2>without presidential authority. It wasn't mechanically necessary the way it

0:23:39.080 --> 0:23:41.400
<v Speaker 2>is now, right, like the way the code system works now,

0:23:41.640 --> 0:23:44.480
<v Speaker 2>you mechanically have to have the president looped in. Right,

0:23:45.680 --> 0:23:48.800
<v Speaker 2>although there will talk about that it's not a perfect

0:23:48.880 --> 0:23:52.720
<v Speaker 2>system either, but that that became the way we do

0:23:52.800 --> 0:23:55.639
<v Speaker 2>it during JFK's administration. And when he when all of

0:23:55.640 --> 0:23:57.520
<v Speaker 2>this got explained to him how this works, I think

0:23:57.520 --> 0:23:59.399
<v Speaker 2>his exact quote was like, can we call ourselves the

0:23:59.480 --> 0:24:00.000
<v Speaker 2>human race?

0:24:00.600 --> 0:24:00.760
<v Speaker 3>Like?

0:24:01.080 --> 0:24:07.280
<v Speaker 2>What the fuck? Yeah, are you fucking kidding me? Yeah,

0:24:07.320 --> 0:24:08.840
<v Speaker 2>and they all like, there's a lot. You get a

0:24:08.840 --> 0:24:11.080
<v Speaker 2>lot of reactions like that from presidents, and that's the

0:24:11.119 --> 0:24:12.959
<v Speaker 2>only reason we're all alive to this day. And that's

0:24:13.000 --> 0:24:15.080
<v Speaker 2>the thing, not just with the US and Russia, but

0:24:15.119 --> 0:24:17.920
<v Speaker 2>with any country that gets a nuclear power, is maybe

0:24:17.920 --> 0:24:19.840
<v Speaker 2>you get someone at the head of that country who

0:24:19.960 --> 0:24:22.720
<v Speaker 2>can think about that, and who can think about for

0:24:22.800 --> 0:24:26.560
<v Speaker 2>whom it's not an unthinkable, right, And that changes everybody's

0:24:26.600 --> 0:24:28.960
<v Speaker 2>calculus to a startling degree. Right, This is why a

0:24:29.000 --> 0:24:31.200
<v Speaker 2>lot of people there's a good book called Nuclear War

0:24:31.240 --> 0:24:33.639
<v Speaker 2>by Annie Jacobson that lays all of this out in

0:24:33.680 --> 0:24:36.959
<v Speaker 2>a pretty unsparing term, and she provides like a theoretical

0:24:37.000 --> 0:24:41.320
<v Speaker 2>and her theoretical is North Korea's mad king launches missiles

0:24:41.320 --> 0:24:45.200
<v Speaker 2>for unclear reasons, right. And what I don't like about

0:24:45.200 --> 0:24:47.840
<v Speaker 2>it is I don't really agree with the whole the

0:24:48.640 --> 0:24:51.800
<v Speaker 2>Kim family are like crazy thing. I think they're pretty

0:24:51.920 --> 0:24:55.159
<v Speaker 2>rational actors. I just don't think they're thinking about the

0:24:55.200 --> 0:24:57.720
<v Speaker 2>same things that other countries aren't. Entirely.

0:24:58.000 --> 0:25:00.240
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, they're back to the wall, Like I'm not trying

0:25:00.280 --> 0:25:01.480
<v Speaker 3>to apologize for him, but.

0:25:02.200 --> 0:25:04.120
<v Speaker 2>I see a logic in what they're doing. I don't

0:25:04.119 --> 0:25:08.199
<v Speaker 2>think they're crazy, right, and which is there's a what

0:25:08.280 --> 0:25:10.320
<v Speaker 2>I think is I don't think his book is as good.

0:25:10.320 --> 0:25:11.879
<v Speaker 2>But there was another book that came out a year

0:25:11.920 --> 0:25:16.800
<v Speaker 2>or two previously, by another like a scholar interested in

0:25:16.840 --> 0:25:20.320
<v Speaker 2>the nuclear mutually shared destruction system that was also a

0:25:20.359 --> 0:25:24.560
<v Speaker 2>North Korea US exchange hypothetical, but that didn't rely on

0:25:24.840 --> 0:25:28.880
<v Speaker 2>North Korea being crazy. In fact, everyone was performing logically right.

0:25:28.920 --> 0:25:34.919
<v Speaker 2>It like, basically the premise was North Korea does something

0:25:34.920 --> 0:25:37.440
<v Speaker 2>that kills some South Korean civilians, right. I think that's

0:25:37.480 --> 0:25:39.480
<v Speaker 2>they either shoot or they fire a missile and it hits,

0:25:39.480 --> 0:25:41.840
<v Speaker 2>which has happened before. Right, North Korea has in fact

0:25:41.920 --> 0:25:45.920
<v Speaker 2>killed South Korean civilians, not all that long ago. Right.

0:25:46.960 --> 0:25:49.479
<v Speaker 2>And as a result, the North Korean present, without seeking

0:25:49.600 --> 0:25:54.000
<v Speaker 2>US approval, fires missiles at military targets non nuclear missiles

0:25:54.000 --> 0:25:59.760
<v Speaker 2>at military targets in North Korea. But the leader of

0:25:59.800 --> 0:26:03.960
<v Speaker 2>North Korea doesn't know that the US didn't approve of

0:26:04.000 --> 0:26:07.400
<v Speaker 2>the firing of missiles, and their system can't entirely tell

0:26:07.480 --> 0:26:11.879
<v Speaker 2>what's incoming and what's not, and they see one. Once

0:26:12.280 --> 0:26:14.359
<v Speaker 2>North or South Korea fires missiles into North Korea, the

0:26:14.440 --> 0:26:17.359
<v Speaker 2>US starts raising its alert level and North Korea becomes

0:26:17.400 --> 0:26:20.280
<v Speaker 2>aware and anyway, it's this whole it's this whole cycle

0:26:20.400 --> 0:26:23.199
<v Speaker 2>of escalation that doesn't require anyone being crazy. It just

0:26:23.240 --> 0:26:24.720
<v Speaker 2>requires And by the way, one of the things we

0:26:24.760 --> 0:26:28.720
<v Speaker 2>found at very recently is that the currently imprisoned former

0:26:28.720 --> 0:26:30.840
<v Speaker 2>president of South Korea, who is being charged with I

0:26:30.840 --> 0:26:34.360
<v Speaker 2>believe insurrection at the moment, actually did send drones into

0:26:34.359 --> 0:26:37.920
<v Speaker 2>North Korea illegally without getting US approval or anything while

0:26:37.920 --> 0:26:41.080
<v Speaker 2>he was president as part of some boondoggle to basically

0:26:41.160 --> 0:26:44.479
<v Speaker 2>get to declare martial law. Right, So, like this stuff,

0:26:44.520 --> 0:26:47.040
<v Speaker 2>like shit like that happens all the time. It just

0:26:47.160 --> 0:26:50.280
<v Speaker 2>hasn't escalated. But like we have had the first couple

0:26:50.320 --> 0:26:53.480
<v Speaker 2>stages of a few different apocalypses occur. This is not

0:26:53.520 --> 0:26:55.640
<v Speaker 2>a crazy This is not crazy, and it doesn't require

0:26:56.040 --> 0:26:59.160
<v Speaker 2>any power Russia, the United States, North Korea with nukes

0:26:59.359 --> 0:27:02.440
<v Speaker 2>to be like mustache twirling mad man. It just requires

0:27:02.440 --> 0:27:06.840
<v Speaker 2>them to all be have incomplete, imperfect information and focused

0:27:06.840 --> 0:27:11.040
<v Speaker 2>on their own survival. Right, Yeah, it's it's good.

0:27:11.320 --> 0:27:13.520
<v Speaker 4>I'm like, while you're talking, I'm thinking about all the

0:27:13.560 --> 0:27:15.600
<v Speaker 4>other countries that also have nukes and like their own

0:27:15.680 --> 0:27:18.760
<v Speaker 4>things going on, Like yeah, you know, like like I mean,

0:27:18.880 --> 0:27:21.600
<v Speaker 4>Israel and North Korea are like comparable entities in my

0:27:21.680 --> 0:27:25.040
<v Speaker 4>mind in terms of being like small powers with that

0:27:25.119 --> 0:27:30.159
<v Speaker 4>are like pariah states. Yeah that probably aren't going to

0:27:30.240 --> 0:27:33.800
<v Speaker 4>do something to get themselves. Like I actually could see personally,

0:27:34.119 --> 0:27:37.240
<v Speaker 4>I could see a big state feeling more confident to

0:27:37.359 --> 0:27:38.440
<v Speaker 4>do it, you know.

0:27:38.840 --> 0:27:43.360
<v Speaker 2>But yeah, uh, anyway, we'll keep talking about this, Margaret.

0:27:43.400 --> 0:27:54.840
<v Speaker 2>But uh, first, here's some ads. We're back. Yeah, so

0:27:55.640 --> 0:27:57.119
<v Speaker 2>we got off on a little bit of a tangent.

0:27:57.160 --> 0:27:58.600
<v Speaker 2>But I wanted to get back to a point I

0:27:58.680 --> 0:28:03.040
<v Speaker 2>was making, which is the history rhyming between the system.

0:28:03.400 --> 0:28:06.399
<v Speaker 2>Like the mutually assured destruction is a product of a

0:28:06.440 --> 0:28:09.960
<v Speaker 2>military theory that gets born at the This this theory

0:28:09.960 --> 0:28:12.359
<v Speaker 2>of strategic bombing that gets born at the end of

0:28:12.359 --> 0:28:15.520
<v Speaker 2>World War One, Right, And that theory only exists because

0:28:15.520 --> 0:28:17.680
<v Speaker 2>World War One happens, and World War One is the

0:28:17.720 --> 0:28:20.080
<v Speaker 2>result of a doomsday device that wasn't supposed to go

0:28:20.119 --> 0:28:23.600
<v Speaker 2>off going off. Right, You have all these treaties and

0:28:23.640 --> 0:28:28.280
<v Speaker 2>stuff that basically guarantee that if one of a couple

0:28:28.320 --> 0:28:32.520
<v Speaker 2>of different powers goes to war against basically anyone around them,

0:28:32.840 --> 0:28:35.199
<v Speaker 2>it will start a chain reaction that leads to a

0:28:35.280 --> 0:28:39.080
<v Speaker 2>general European war, right, and because of the way that

0:28:39.240 --> 0:28:42.840
<v Speaker 2>armies work in this period, right and all basically all

0:28:43.080 --> 0:28:46.640
<v Speaker 2>military wisdom at this point is based on the last war,

0:28:46.680 --> 0:28:49.080
<v Speaker 2>as it always is, and the last war for Europe

0:28:49.080 --> 0:28:51.080
<v Speaker 2>is the Franco Prussian War of eighteen seventy to eighteen

0:28:51.120 --> 0:28:54.600
<v Speaker 2>seventy one. That's not literally the last conflict in Europe

0:28:54.640 --> 0:28:56.200
<v Speaker 2>during this period, but it's the last big one that

0:28:56.240 --> 0:28:59.120
<v Speaker 2>people are generally concerned with when they're making their predictions, like.

0:28:59.080 --> 0:29:01.560
<v Speaker 4>This versus France, is the only way to have a

0:29:01.600 --> 0:29:02.800
<v Speaker 4>European war, right, It's like.

0:29:03.440 --> 0:29:05.280
<v Speaker 2>Ah, man, I mean, we have not had a good

0:29:05.360 --> 0:29:07.800
<v Speaker 2>European war since those two got their shit together, and

0:29:07.800 --> 0:29:09.880
<v Speaker 2>that's why I think we should start tweaking them both.

0:29:10.040 --> 0:29:12.440
<v Speaker 2>You know, just just start see who we can make

0:29:12.480 --> 0:29:14.840
<v Speaker 2>angrier at the other. You know, Germany, I hear France

0:29:14.880 --> 0:29:16.560
<v Speaker 2>has been talking hell of shit. You know, just set

0:29:16.640 --> 0:29:19.000
<v Speaker 2>the radiant a little bit, yeah, shit, set the right

0:29:19.080 --> 0:29:22.840
<v Speaker 2>on Firefuck it, let's see what happens. Only France has nukes,

0:29:22.840 --> 0:29:27.160
<v Speaker 2>so we should be fine. Anyway. The great land powers

0:29:27.200 --> 0:29:30.240
<v Speaker 2>of Europe, namely France, Russia, Germany, and to a lesser extent,

0:29:30.240 --> 0:29:32.920
<v Speaker 2>Austro Hungary knew that the instant war was declared. There

0:29:32.960 --> 0:29:35.800
<v Speaker 2>was this clock ticking, right, because most of your army

0:29:36.000 --> 0:29:38.600
<v Speaker 2>is reserves, right, The largest amount of manpower you have

0:29:38.720 --> 0:29:41.200
<v Speaker 2>isn't your active duty. It's this this mass of like

0:29:41.280 --> 0:29:44.440
<v Speaker 2>reserve troops, these guys who when they're eighteen or whatever,

0:29:44.720 --> 0:29:47.840
<v Speaker 2>they're basically drafted. They sometimes serve like a year and

0:29:47.880 --> 0:29:49.520
<v Speaker 2>then for a period of time they have to do.

0:29:49.760 --> 0:29:51.800
<v Speaker 2>It's basically they're all in the national guard, right, that's

0:29:51.840 --> 0:29:53.760
<v Speaker 2>the norm. In most of these states. You have some

0:29:54.320 --> 0:29:57.560
<v Speaker 2>version of that, and so it takes a period of

0:29:57.600 --> 0:30:00.240
<v Speaker 2>time to call these guys up from civilian life, to

0:30:00.320 --> 0:30:03.479
<v Speaker 2>issue them their gear, to get them moved into their units,

0:30:03.520 --> 0:30:05.400
<v Speaker 2>and then to get them moved to the front. So

0:30:05.480 --> 0:30:07.640
<v Speaker 2>everyone is working not just not only do have this

0:30:07.720 --> 0:30:12.120
<v Speaker 2>interlocking series of alliances, but once war starts, every side

0:30:12.200 --> 0:30:15.360
<v Speaker 2>knows I have to be able to get my reserves

0:30:15.680 --> 0:30:19.920
<v Speaker 2>ready for active duty before the enemy can. Otherwise they're

0:30:19.960 --> 0:30:22.440
<v Speaker 2>going to invade before I have my army, which means

0:30:22.960 --> 0:30:25.400
<v Speaker 2>I have a ticket like I. Once the Archdeoke of

0:30:25.440 --> 0:30:28.320
<v Speaker 2>Austria Hungary is assassinated, and then people start to realize

0:30:28.360 --> 0:30:30.800
<v Speaker 2>that generally European war is in play. It's not just

0:30:30.840 --> 0:30:34.320
<v Speaker 2>a matter of diplomatically, can we smooth this, It's that

0:30:34.840 --> 0:30:36.520
<v Speaker 2>all of my generals are shouting that, like, if we

0:30:36.560 --> 0:30:39.840
<v Speaker 2>don't mobilize now, we don't know that France isn't mobilizing, right,

0:30:40.000 --> 0:30:43.120
<v Speaker 2>we can't tell they might be mobilizing, and if they're mobilizing,

0:30:43.320 --> 0:30:45.480
<v Speaker 2>we only have this period of time to start mobilizing

0:30:45.480 --> 0:30:48.480
<v Speaker 2>in turn. Right, that's a big part of everybody's thinking here.

0:30:48.880 --> 0:30:51.200
<v Speaker 2>And that's the same with nuclear war, right, where you

0:30:51.280 --> 0:30:54.120
<v Speaker 2>don't know entirely what the other side is doing. We

0:30:54.320 --> 0:30:56.480
<v Speaker 2>the US have pretty good data on when people are

0:30:56.720 --> 0:31:00.480
<v Speaker 2>because we have this nuts insane like level of life spice,

0:31:00.520 --> 0:31:03.640
<v Speaker 2>satellites and shit like that, although all of it has errors,

0:31:03.680 --> 0:31:05.760
<v Speaker 2>all of it has things that can go wrong. Right,

0:31:05.840 --> 0:31:08.280
<v Speaker 2>none of it's perfect Today, I will run it.

0:31:08.280 --> 0:31:09.000
<v Speaker 3>It'll be fine.

0:31:09.160 --> 0:31:12.440
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, So everyone's acting off of imperfect information, and everybody

0:31:12.440 --> 0:31:15.200
<v Speaker 2>has a very limited timeframe, and they're being shouted at

0:31:15.240 --> 0:31:18.240
<v Speaker 2>by their generals that if we don't move in time,

0:31:18.320 --> 0:31:22.200
<v Speaker 2>were fucked, right, the whole country could be fucked. And

0:31:22.280 --> 0:31:25.120
<v Speaker 2>you have x amount of time now they have it's

0:31:25.200 --> 0:31:27.080
<v Speaker 2>days and weeks, you know, in the case of these

0:31:27.080 --> 0:31:32.680
<v Speaker 2>European monarchs, right, but that's still a ticking clock. Right. Anyway,

0:31:32.840 --> 0:31:35.560
<v Speaker 2>we all know how World War One goes not great

0:31:36.080 --> 0:31:40.840
<v Speaker 2>at least for everyone. European power is seriously hobbled worldwide

0:31:42.000 --> 0:31:44.240
<v Speaker 2>and basically all of the one of the things that's

0:31:44.280 --> 0:31:46.440
<v Speaker 2>fascinated to me, and this is the case in a

0:31:46.440 --> 0:31:49.400
<v Speaker 2>lot of wars. Everyone's planning at the start of World

0:31:49.400 --> 0:31:51.479
<v Speaker 2>War One is based on how the last war had gone,

0:31:51.600 --> 0:31:55.360
<v Speaker 2>and everyone's planning is wrong. Germany. Germany's plan to knock

0:31:55.440 --> 0:31:57.000
<v Speaker 2>France out of the war in the first couple of

0:31:57.040 --> 0:31:59.880
<v Speaker 2>months doesn't work. France and Russia have this plan where

0:32:00.400 --> 0:32:03.560
<v Speaker 2>we'll both hit Germany on either side, right, if Germany

0:32:03.560 --> 0:32:06.080
<v Speaker 2>starts some shit, we'll come in on both flanks and

0:32:06.480 --> 0:32:08.200
<v Speaker 2>we'll be able to knock out their ability to prosecute

0:32:08.240 --> 0:32:11.160
<v Speaker 2>the war pretty quickly. Doesn't work that way. Great Britain

0:32:11.240 --> 0:32:14.600
<v Speaker 2>has this fairly small, really highly trained army that they're like, well,

0:32:14.600 --> 0:32:18.280
<v Speaker 2>we can insert this into the continent if something brushes up,

0:32:18.320 --> 0:32:21.040
<v Speaker 2>and it'll probably be fine, right, And they realize, oh no,

0:32:21.160 --> 0:32:24.120
<v Speaker 2>actually we're kind of you have to have actually millions

0:32:24.120 --> 0:32:26.640
<v Speaker 2>of guys with guns, you know, how fast can we

0:32:26.720 --> 0:32:29.600
<v Speaker 2>draft all the coal miners, all of these and Germany

0:32:29.720 --> 0:32:32.040
<v Speaker 2>or Great Britain's plans are based in part on like, well,

0:32:32.040 --> 0:32:34.760
<v Speaker 2>we've got this great navy, that's probably all we'll need, right,

0:32:35.440 --> 0:32:38.320
<v Speaker 2>And they have a Tolkien and they got Jero Tolkien

0:32:38.400 --> 0:32:41.480
<v Speaker 2>somewhere in there. You know, surely will be okay. Anyway,

0:32:41.520 --> 0:32:44.280
<v Speaker 2>everyone's plans are basically wrong at the start of the war,

0:32:44.480 --> 0:32:47.120
<v Speaker 2>and it leads to disaster. And so after the carnage

0:32:47.120 --> 0:32:49.880
<v Speaker 2>a bunch of military leaders around the world started studying

0:32:49.880 --> 0:32:52.719
<v Speaker 2>what had happened to try to make predictions about what

0:32:52.760 --> 0:32:55.320
<v Speaker 2>would happen in the next war, which is the same

0:32:55.440 --> 0:32:57.960
<v Speaker 2>thing that did happened after eighteen seventy one. And they'd

0:32:57.960 --> 0:33:00.840
<v Speaker 2>made the wrong predictions. But they're sure this time we'll

0:33:00.840 --> 0:33:02.920
<v Speaker 2>get it. Wal we're smarter than that. Last generation of

0:33:02.920 --> 0:33:06.880
<v Speaker 2>military thinkers will make conclusions from the last war that

0:33:06.960 --> 0:33:09.720
<v Speaker 2>are right, you know. And one of these guys, among

0:33:09.760 --> 0:33:12.480
<v Speaker 2>the most influential of these fuckers, is an Italian general

0:33:12.640 --> 0:33:16.360
<v Speaker 2>named Guilio Duhey. Now. He had been born in Caserta,

0:33:16.440 --> 0:33:19.640
<v Speaker 2>Italy in eighteen sixty nine, but his family were refugees

0:33:19.680 --> 0:33:22.560
<v Speaker 2>from Savoy, which was a former Italian possession that had

0:33:22.600 --> 0:33:25.560
<v Speaker 2>been ceded to the perfidious French. As a young man,

0:33:25.600 --> 0:33:28.880
<v Speaker 2>he'd attended a military academy and became an artillery officer

0:33:28.920 --> 0:33:31.960
<v Speaker 2>in the Italian Army. He continued his formal education by

0:33:31.960 --> 0:33:35.600
<v Speaker 2>studying engineering at a university in Turin. Du Haey rose

0:33:35.600 --> 0:33:37.959
<v Speaker 2>steadily through the ranks, and by the early nineteen hundreds

0:33:37.960 --> 0:33:40.440
<v Speaker 2>he was a member of the Italian General Staff, basically

0:33:40.480 --> 0:33:43.640
<v Speaker 2>their joint chiefs. Right, that's kind of the idea. He

0:33:43.680 --> 0:33:47.000
<v Speaker 2>had been an early advocate for dirigibles, initially used as

0:33:47.000 --> 0:33:49.680
<v Speaker 2>spots for artillery and the like, and once the first

0:33:49.720 --> 0:33:53.160
<v Speaker 2>aircraft started taking off, he became an immediate advocate for

0:33:53.200 --> 0:33:55.840
<v Speaker 2>aircraft as a weapons system. Right now, this on its

0:33:55.880 --> 0:33:58.520
<v Speaker 2>own is a noteworthy He was right, obviously aircraft are

0:33:58.520 --> 0:34:02.160
<v Speaker 2>pretty important in modern war. Yeah, but very a lot

0:34:02.160 --> 0:34:04.640
<v Speaker 2>of people, I'm not. It wasn't universal. There were certainly

0:34:04.720 --> 0:34:07.760
<v Speaker 2>some guys being like, no, the infantryman with a rifless

0:34:07.960 --> 0:34:10.600
<v Speaker 2>will be the always be the core of any war

0:34:10.640 --> 0:34:13.560
<v Speaker 2>fighting effort. We don't need planes. There were some nuts,

0:34:13.800 --> 0:34:17.120
<v Speaker 2>but most intelligent people were like, obviously planes are going

0:34:17.200 --> 0:34:19.839
<v Speaker 2>to be useful, you know, being able to have the

0:34:19.880 --> 0:34:24.279
<v Speaker 2>sky seems helpful in the event of a conflict and

0:34:24.560 --> 0:34:26.640
<v Speaker 2>do Hay. But one thing that did make him noteworthy

0:34:26.680 --> 0:34:28.480
<v Speaker 2>where he was kind of seeing far ahead, was that

0:34:28.560 --> 0:34:31.600
<v Speaker 2>he suggested air power shouldn't entirely be the purview of

0:34:31.600 --> 0:34:34.160
<v Speaker 2>ground commanders, right, it would effectively need to be its

0:34:34.160 --> 0:34:36.160
<v Speaker 2>own kind of service, you know. And this is something

0:34:36.200 --> 0:34:38.600
<v Speaker 2>even during World War Two. There's not an air force

0:34:38.680 --> 0:34:40.920
<v Speaker 2>in the US. We have the Army Air Corps, right,

0:34:40.960 --> 0:34:43.920
<v Speaker 2>it's a part of the Army, do Hay ahead of

0:34:43.920 --> 0:34:47.000
<v Speaker 2>times it's like, no, the air power should be its

0:34:47.719 --> 0:34:50.840
<v Speaker 2>own independent branch. It's different enough, right, it's like the navy.

0:34:51.640 --> 0:34:53.560
<v Speaker 2>In nineteen eleven, he got a chance to act on

0:34:53.600 --> 0:34:55.760
<v Speaker 2>some of his theories when Italy went to war again

0:34:55.800 --> 0:34:58.600
<v Speaker 2>in Libya against the Ottomans, because an awful lot of

0:34:58.640 --> 0:35:01.120
<v Speaker 2>Italians had never really gotten over Roman Empire. That's the

0:35:01.160 --> 0:35:05.600
<v Speaker 2>gist of why we keep fucking with Ethiopia. Du Hay's

0:35:05.640 --> 0:35:08.080
<v Speaker 2>conclusion from this was and this was like the first

0:35:08.200 --> 0:35:10.920
<v Speaker 2>real world use of air combat power for Italy. And

0:35:10.960 --> 0:35:13.839
<v Speaker 2>his conclusion is that in the future planes will get

0:35:13.880 --> 0:35:16.560
<v Speaker 2>better and high altitude bombing will become the number one

0:35:16.560 --> 0:35:20.960
<v Speaker 2>battlefield role of planes. Right, this is not true for

0:35:21.120 --> 0:35:25.560
<v Speaker 2>World War Two entirely. I mean it's debatable, right, but

0:35:25.600 --> 0:35:27.560
<v Speaker 2>there's a lot of argument that that that that's not

0:35:27.760 --> 0:35:30.120
<v Speaker 2>entirely that high altitude bombing was not the number one

0:35:30.160 --> 0:35:31.640
<v Speaker 2>battlefield use of air power.

0:35:32.239 --> 0:35:36.280
<v Speaker 4>It wasn't high altitude bombing more like bombing civilians civilians.

0:35:36.320 --> 0:35:39.319
<v Speaker 2>But close air support is less high altitude because you

0:35:39.320 --> 0:35:41.759
<v Speaker 2>can't do it as accurately, right, Like you need to

0:35:41.760 --> 0:35:44.160
<v Speaker 2>be closer to not hit your own guys as much.

0:35:45.080 --> 0:35:48.040
<v Speaker 2>This is one of those things technologies made this kind

0:35:48.040 --> 0:35:49.799
<v Speaker 2>of true because like even a lot of what we'd

0:35:49.840 --> 0:35:52.320
<v Speaker 2>call close air support today is still pretty high altitude

0:35:52.480 --> 0:35:56.080
<v Speaker 2>because you can fire a missile from pretty high altitude, right,

0:35:57.120 --> 0:36:00.520
<v Speaker 2>like if like modern like modern weapon systems, you can

0:36:00.560 --> 0:36:04.160
<v Speaker 2>shoot from higher up. But he's wrong in spirit, right,

0:36:05.040 --> 0:36:07.960
<v Speaker 2>which is that like this is not the way most

0:36:08.120 --> 0:36:10.719
<v Speaker 2>effective combat use of airpower in World War two is

0:36:10.719 --> 0:36:14.160
<v Speaker 2>not high altitude bombing, right, And even if you look

0:36:14.200 --> 0:36:16.719
<v Speaker 2>in the Pacific theater, right, like, it's a lot of

0:36:16.840 --> 0:36:19.920
<v Speaker 2>naval aviation being used to knock out other ships, but

0:36:19.960 --> 0:36:23.440
<v Speaker 2>it's not really high altitude bombing. You know, Pearl Harbor

0:36:23.480 --> 0:36:27.640
<v Speaker 2>isn't high altitude bombing, right, Like it's a different kind

0:36:27.719 --> 0:36:31.440
<v Speaker 2>of use of aircraft. But dou Haey is certain that

0:36:31.520 --> 0:36:33.799
<v Speaker 2>high altitude bombing is going to be like almost the

0:36:34.000 --> 0:36:37.440
<v Speaker 2>not just like critical, but basically the only thing that

0:36:37.520 --> 0:36:42.640
<v Speaker 2>airpower will be used for. Right, And he's he's so

0:36:42.680 --> 0:36:44.560
<v Speaker 2>certain of this that he becomes kind of an asshole

0:36:44.560 --> 0:36:47.680
<v Speaker 2>about it, right, Like he illegally orders the construction of

0:36:47.719 --> 0:36:50.600
<v Speaker 2>bombers without getting like approval to actually spend the money,

0:36:50.800 --> 0:36:53.160
<v Speaker 2>and it burns out his career. He gets forced into

0:36:53.160 --> 0:36:55.479
<v Speaker 2>the infantry, and he spends the early stages of World

0:36:55.480 --> 0:36:58.600
<v Speaker 2>War One basically screaming that Italy can win. We can

0:36:58.680 --> 0:37:01.160
<v Speaker 2>break this deadlock, you know, in the mountains and make

0:37:01.200 --> 0:37:03.120
<v Speaker 2>the enemy harmless if we could just gain command of

0:37:03.120 --> 0:37:05.319
<v Speaker 2>the air. And he calls for the construction of five

0:37:05.400 --> 0:37:07.680
<v Speaker 2>hundred bombers to drop one hundred and twenty five tons

0:37:07.680 --> 0:37:10.160
<v Speaker 2>of bombs on Austria daily in order to break the

0:37:10.160 --> 0:37:13.920
<v Speaker 2>stalemate of trench warfare. Now, yeah, so this is the

0:37:13.960 --> 0:37:16.279
<v Speaker 2>kind of thing It seems ahead of its time, right,

0:37:16.400 --> 0:37:21.279
<v Speaker 2>because this is sort of where military thinking went, right, Like,

0:37:21.560 --> 0:37:24.160
<v Speaker 2>it was certainly the way military thinkers were thinking World

0:37:24.160 --> 0:37:27.680
<v Speaker 2>War two because of dou Hay. But it's not correct

0:37:27.800 --> 0:37:31.480
<v Speaker 2>ahead of its time in part like Italy simply couldn't

0:37:31.480 --> 0:37:34.359
<v Speaker 2>have built five hundred high altitude bombers to drop that

0:37:34.480 --> 0:37:37.400
<v Speaker 2>kind of tonnage on Austria daily. They did not have

0:37:37.440 --> 0:37:40.920
<v Speaker 2>the capacity, like the Italian industry, the Italian military in

0:37:40.920 --> 0:37:42.920
<v Speaker 2>the middle of World War One was not going to

0:37:42.920 --> 0:37:44.759
<v Speaker 2>be able to do that. Right, It's just not a

0:37:44.800 --> 0:37:46.720
<v Speaker 2>realistic ask of the country.

0:37:46.960 --> 0:37:50.360
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, it is not getting slaughtered in the war already.

0:37:50.719 --> 0:37:53.720
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, they don't have at the spare resources. And also

0:37:53.920 --> 0:37:57.040
<v Speaker 2>bombers aren't that good yet right, like they will be

0:37:57.200 --> 0:37:59.680
<v Speaker 2>by World War two. But do Hay is not saying

0:37:59.719 --> 0:38:01.960
<v Speaker 2>this is what I mean. He will eventually say this

0:38:02.000 --> 0:38:03.879
<v Speaker 2>is how the future should work, But he is also

0:38:04.000 --> 0:38:06.000
<v Speaker 2>arguing we should be trying to do this right now,

0:38:06.080 --> 0:38:08.560
<v Speaker 2>and Italy just doesn't have the resources or technical know

0:38:08.640 --> 0:38:11.440
<v Speaker 2>how to create the bomber fleet he wants in nineteen fifteen,

0:38:11.640 --> 0:38:14.000
<v Speaker 2>when he's shouting about it to everybody who will listen,

0:38:14.200 --> 0:38:16.080
<v Speaker 2>and he is such an asshole about this that he

0:38:16.120 --> 0:38:19.160
<v Speaker 2>is imprisoned for a year for not shutting up about

0:38:19.160 --> 0:38:22.520
<v Speaker 2>how because he's calling his superiors incompetent for not following

0:38:22.560 --> 0:38:24.239
<v Speaker 2>through with this impossible plan.

0:38:24.520 --> 0:38:26.879
<v Speaker 3>Like Yeah, you don't get away with that during a war.

0:38:27.120 --> 0:38:29.799
<v Speaker 2>No, they lock him up for a while, but he

0:38:29.880 --> 0:38:32.279
<v Speaker 2>keeps writing about his ideas while he's in jail, and

0:38:32.320 --> 0:38:34.680
<v Speaker 2>the war gets worse and worse for Italy, and he's

0:38:34.680 --> 0:38:37.480
<v Speaker 2>eventually brought back and given command of the Aviation Bureau,

0:38:37.480 --> 0:38:40.160
<v Speaker 2>which shows you how desperate Italy is. After the end

0:38:40.160 --> 0:38:43.160
<v Speaker 2>of hostilities, he starts work on his magnum opus, a

0:38:43.239 --> 0:38:46.600
<v Speaker 2>manifesto on the future of strategic air power. In nineteen

0:38:46.640 --> 0:38:49.240
<v Speaker 2>twenty one, it was published under the title The Command

0:38:49.320 --> 0:38:53.200
<v Speaker 2>of the Air. Now, some of his arguments are pretty strong, right.

0:38:53.320 --> 0:38:54.879
<v Speaker 2>One of the things he's saying is that, like, look

0:38:54.880 --> 0:38:57.200
<v Speaker 2>at what happened in this fucking First World War. It

0:38:57.239 --> 0:39:01.160
<v Speaker 2>was a shit show. Bomber aircraft aren't blocked by trenches, right,

0:39:01.239 --> 0:39:03.320
<v Speaker 2>You can get right over them. You can hit targets

0:39:03.320 --> 0:39:06.640
<v Speaker 2>behind the trenches like their artillery, right, and you could

0:39:06.680 --> 0:39:09.320
<v Speaker 2>maybe knock infantry out of trenches. Now, this is actually

0:39:09.400 --> 0:39:11.600
<v Speaker 2>something One of the things will be proved wrong on

0:39:11.640 --> 0:39:14.200
<v Speaker 2>that is that infantry and trenches are a lot less

0:39:14.280 --> 0:39:17.879
<v Speaker 2>vulnerable to aerial bombing than everybody wants them to be. Right.

0:39:18.080 --> 0:39:22.320
<v Speaker 2>Turns out trenches are pretty good at protecting people, especially

0:39:22.360 --> 0:39:24.319
<v Speaker 2>with the kind of technology they're going to have by

0:39:24.320 --> 0:39:27.800
<v Speaker 2>World War two, it's better than just shelling them endlessly.

0:39:27.960 --> 0:39:30.399
<v Speaker 2>But it is not the get out of trench free card.

0:39:30.880 --> 0:39:34.480
<v Speaker 2>Do Hey pretends it is right now? Du Hay is

0:39:34.560 --> 0:39:37.160
<v Speaker 2>also he's one of a number of growing military theorists

0:39:37.160 --> 0:39:40.040
<v Speaker 2>who had learned from the last war that these huge

0:39:40.120 --> 0:39:44.080
<v Speaker 2>conscript armies that everybody has moved towards. Like, if that's

0:39:44.120 --> 0:39:48.160
<v Speaker 2>how war works, if the whole male civilian population is

0:39:48.200 --> 0:39:50.920
<v Speaker 2>potentially part of the military, and the whole country is

0:39:50.920 --> 0:39:54.080
<v Speaker 2>being mobilized to support the military, then you can't limit

0:39:54.120 --> 0:39:57.440
<v Speaker 2>yourself to just striking troops in the field. In future

0:39:57.480 --> 0:40:02.200
<v Speaker 2>wars civilian populations. Do hey attitude is, civilian populations make

0:40:02.280 --> 0:40:06.719
<v Speaker 2>continued resistance possible, and thus civilians participating in the infrastructure

0:40:06.719 --> 0:40:11.719
<v Speaker 2>of war must be attacked, right yeap. Oops.

0:40:13.560 --> 0:40:16.440
<v Speaker 4>You know it's funny whenever there's these things that are

0:40:16.440 --> 0:40:19.040
<v Speaker 4>technologically developed that I just would have assumed or older,

0:40:19.239 --> 0:40:21.480
<v Speaker 4>like I would have just assumed somehow that like bombing

0:40:21.480 --> 0:40:24.440
<v Speaker 4>civilian populations is somehow older than this as a like,

0:40:24.520 --> 0:40:25.440
<v Speaker 4>I mean tactic.

0:40:25.640 --> 0:40:27.840
<v Speaker 2>You know, it is like this duet is not the

0:40:27.880 --> 0:40:31.040
<v Speaker 2>first military leader to be like civilians are a valid This,

0:40:31.200 --> 0:40:34.480
<v Speaker 2>in fact, is the norm in a lot of ancient warfare, right, Like,

0:40:34.880 --> 0:40:37.240
<v Speaker 2>fucking a lot of times in ancient Greece, one city

0:40:37.239 --> 0:40:39.560
<v Speaker 2>state goes to war against another. The one that loses

0:40:40.560 --> 0:40:42.880
<v Speaker 2>does not get to keep being a city state. You

0:40:42.960 --> 0:40:49.239
<v Speaker 2>inihilate them, right, you kill the men, you rape the women, right, Like,

0:40:49.320 --> 0:40:51.799
<v Speaker 2>That's not every war, but a lot of wars in

0:40:51.960 --> 0:40:53.560
<v Speaker 2>classical history go that way.

0:40:53.640 --> 0:40:56.239
<v Speaker 4>So I've been reading that for my show recently, and

0:40:56.280 --> 0:40:58.600
<v Speaker 4>I suddenly like had to realize. I was like, oh,

0:40:58.760 --> 0:41:01.959
<v Speaker 4>the concept of surren under yeah, is sort of new.

0:41:02.160 --> 0:41:06.759
<v Speaker 4>It's a new technology, is to actually like let people

0:41:06.840 --> 0:41:09.040
<v Speaker 4>go home after you beat That's.

0:41:08.960 --> 0:41:11.440
<v Speaker 2>It's more that it had stopped being the norm to

0:41:11.520 --> 0:41:15.480
<v Speaker 2>consider the whole country to be enemies. But even during

0:41:15.480 --> 0:41:19.280
<v Speaker 2>World War One, right, Great Britain starves a million Germans

0:41:19.280 --> 0:41:21.960
<v Speaker 2>to death by by blocking ports Germany. We know they

0:41:21.960 --> 0:41:25.280
<v Speaker 2>can't grow, they don't have the ability to produce sufficient

0:41:25.280 --> 0:41:28.040
<v Speaker 2>food stuffs on their own. That's part of the military effort. Right.

0:41:28.160 --> 0:41:31.000
<v Speaker 2>It's not as direct as bombing civilians, but it would be.

0:41:31.040 --> 0:41:33.200
<v Speaker 2>It would be very inaccurate to pretend Duhey is the

0:41:33.200 --> 0:41:36.120
<v Speaker 2>first guy who is like civilians are on the table, right.

0:41:36.160 --> 0:41:39.879
<v Speaker 4>No, totally, but specifically the idea of this standard ice, Yeah,

0:41:40.120 --> 0:41:42.120
<v Speaker 4>exactly exactly, it's meaningful.

0:41:42.440 --> 0:41:46.439
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, Like I think that that is important that

0:41:46.520 --> 0:41:48.359
<v Speaker 2>he is the guy writing in a book this is

0:41:48.560 --> 0:41:51.879
<v Speaker 2>the this is a logical strategy for how modern war

0:41:51.920 --> 0:41:54.920
<v Speaker 2>ought to be pursued, is the systematic destruction of civilian

0:41:54.960 --> 0:41:58.560
<v Speaker 2>populations through strategic bombing, Right, it is does matter that

0:41:58.600 --> 0:42:01.480
<v Speaker 2>he's the first guy to write that, you know, like

0:42:02.120 --> 0:42:06.440
<v Speaker 2>that's that's upon his soul. Yeah, yeah, Which is not

0:42:06.480 --> 0:42:08.320
<v Speaker 2>to say that nobody would have thought to do stuff

0:42:08.360 --> 0:42:10.120
<v Speaker 2>like this if he hadn't been around, right.

0:42:10.080 --> 0:42:12.040
<v Speaker 4>No, But I mean just because someone else will invent

0:42:12.080 --> 0:42:13.920
<v Speaker 4>the torment nexus is not a reason to invent the

0:42:13.920 --> 0:42:15.080
<v Speaker 4>torment nexis.

0:42:14.840 --> 0:42:17.680
<v Speaker 2>And no, nor does it erase your culpability and making

0:42:17.719 --> 0:42:20.160
<v Speaker 2>it now. One of my sources for this episode is

0:42:20.200 --> 0:42:23.160
<v Speaker 2>an article by Colonel Everest Rascioni of the One of

0:42:23.160 --> 0:42:25.200
<v Speaker 2>the more who's one of the more influential pilots in

0:42:25.320 --> 0:42:28.960
<v Speaker 2>US combat aviation history, is an interesting guy. He was

0:42:29.000 --> 0:42:31.640
<v Speaker 2>a key member of what became known as the Fighter Mafia,

0:42:31.840 --> 0:42:33.920
<v Speaker 2>which is a group of guys in the Air Force

0:42:34.200 --> 0:42:35.839
<v Speaker 2>who argue and this is in like the latter half

0:42:35.840 --> 0:42:39.080
<v Speaker 2>of the twentieth century, they argue that like the branch's

0:42:39.160 --> 0:42:41.640
<v Speaker 2>bureaucracy was corrupt and lying about the This is like

0:42:41.719 --> 0:42:43.280
<v Speaker 2>right before the birth of I think the F sixteen.

0:42:43.680 --> 0:42:46.480
<v Speaker 2>They're they're they're saying the Air Force bureaucracy is corrupt

0:42:46.480 --> 0:42:49.319
<v Speaker 2>and it's lying about how well certain weapons systems work

0:42:49.440 --> 0:42:52.719
<v Speaker 2>for corrupt reasons. And as a result, they have all

0:42:52.760 --> 0:42:55.880
<v Speaker 2>these complaints about like hybrid role fighters as opposed to

0:42:56.000 --> 0:42:58.239
<v Speaker 2>dedicated anti aircraft fighters. There's a lot of debatus to

0:42:58.280 --> 0:43:00.600
<v Speaker 2>whether or not the fighter mafia was right bringing this up,

0:43:00.600 --> 0:43:02.480
<v Speaker 2>because this is a guy who has a history of

0:43:02.520 --> 0:43:05.840
<v Speaker 2>being on controversial sides of arguments right, and he wrote

0:43:05.920 --> 0:43:09.080
<v Speaker 2>an interesting article about the history of strategic bombing for

0:43:09.160 --> 0:43:11.040
<v Speaker 2>the Air Force right where he is kind of laying

0:43:11.080 --> 0:43:15.040
<v Speaker 2>out his thinking as to why do Hay was wrong,

0:43:15.640 --> 0:43:18.439
<v Speaker 2>and he summarizes do Hay's arguments this way. He also

0:43:18.520 --> 0:43:21.319
<v Speaker 2>believed that air forces would dominate surface forces on land

0:43:21.360 --> 0:43:23.600
<v Speaker 2>and at sea, and that an enemy's ability to sustain

0:43:23.640 --> 0:43:26.200
<v Speaker 2>a war could be eliminated. He preached the destruction of

0:43:26.280 --> 0:43:28.759
<v Speaker 2>enemy airpower in the air and on the ground. The

0:43:28.840 --> 0:43:31.480
<v Speaker 2>need is not only to kill the enemy's eagles, but

0:43:31.520 --> 0:43:34.560
<v Speaker 2>also to destroy their eggs and their nests. Hay wrote

0:43:34.800 --> 0:43:38.000
<v Speaker 2>enemy aircraft production plants were defined as prime strategic targets.

0:43:38.120 --> 0:43:40.600
<v Speaker 2>He believed that bomber attacks were inevitable and that defenses

0:43:40.600 --> 0:43:43.400
<v Speaker 2>against them were useless. He believed that attacking populations with

0:43:43.440 --> 0:43:47.120
<v Speaker 2>relatively small amounts of explosives, incendiary and gas weapons would

0:43:47.160 --> 0:43:50.000
<v Speaker 2>make populations force their leaders to sue for peace. He

0:43:50.080 --> 0:43:53.240
<v Speaker 2>believed that a powerful strategic bombing force could deter potential

0:43:53.320 --> 0:43:57.160
<v Speaker 2>enemies from attacking. Now, a lot of this is the

0:43:57.160 --> 0:44:00.239
<v Speaker 2>way very influential people in military plannings still think to

0:44:00.320 --> 0:44:03.520
<v Speaker 2>this day. Do Hayes thinking is incredibly common, or at

0:44:03.600 --> 0:44:07.440
<v Speaker 2>least a descendants of do Hayes thinking is incredibly common

0:44:07.520 --> 0:44:10.279
<v Speaker 2>within military planners to this day. And this is the

0:44:10.400 --> 0:44:14.520
<v Speaker 2>root of mutually assured destruction. It starts with these ideas, right,

0:44:14.840 --> 0:44:17.080
<v Speaker 2>particularly the idea, yeah.

0:44:16.800 --> 0:44:19.880
<v Speaker 4>That people won't put up with it from their leaders.

0:44:19.800 --> 0:44:22.840
<v Speaker 2>That people won't put up with it that well, and

0:44:23.040 --> 0:44:26.960
<v Speaker 2>that a powerful strategic bombing force can deter an attack,

0:44:27.640 --> 0:44:31.240
<v Speaker 2>right right, Okay, because your ability because they can't be stopped.

0:44:31.360 --> 0:44:34.960
<v Speaker 2>You can't stop a bombing run right, it's impossible. Part

0:44:35.000 --> 0:44:37.160
<v Speaker 2>of his attitudes that the sky is too big, right,

0:44:37.200 --> 0:44:39.719
<v Speaker 2>you can't actually stop bombers from getting to where they're

0:44:39.719 --> 0:44:41.680
<v Speaker 2>going to go. So if you have a powerful enough

0:44:41.680 --> 0:44:45.320
<v Speaker 2>bombing fleet, like no one will attack you because they

0:44:45.400 --> 0:44:49.360
<v Speaker 2>know they're doomed in that instance, right, And this is

0:44:49.719 --> 0:44:52.880
<v Speaker 2>basically how we think about near peer nuclear warfare to

0:44:52.920 --> 0:44:56.000
<v Speaker 2>this day, right, and that knowledge deters those soda of wars.

0:44:56.000 --> 0:44:57.560
<v Speaker 2>So this is part of why people will argue to

0:44:57.680 --> 0:44:59.880
<v Speaker 2>Hey round up being right even though he did not.

0:45:00.040 --> 0:45:02.479
<v Speaker 2>We're seeing nuclear weapons right in any way, shape or form.

0:45:02.640 --> 0:45:05.279
<v Speaker 2>And to be clear, he's not right right.

0:45:05.280 --> 0:45:07.560
<v Speaker 4>He was wrong about bombers, but he was right for

0:45:07.680 --> 0:45:09.000
<v Speaker 4>now about nukes.

0:45:09.360 --> 0:45:11.320
<v Speaker 2>Well. This is kind of the theme of our episodes

0:45:11.360 --> 0:45:13.200
<v Speaker 2>is that a lot of people buy into do Hayes's

0:45:13.239 --> 0:45:16.200
<v Speaker 2>theories and base their careers in the Air Force on

0:45:16.320 --> 0:45:18.640
<v Speaker 2>believing that this is more or less right. And once

0:45:18.760 --> 0:45:23.040
<v Speaker 2>nukes come around, that's the thing that makes that they're

0:45:23.080 --> 0:45:25.520
<v Speaker 2>the things they had already believed true and as part

0:45:25.520 --> 0:45:29.000
<v Speaker 2>of why they become such advocates for nuclear warfare. Right now,

0:45:29.080 --> 0:45:31.560
<v Speaker 2>I want to really emphasize how wrong Duhey is here,

0:45:31.560 --> 0:45:34.560
<v Speaker 2>because he is not making grand predictions about the distant future.

0:45:34.640 --> 0:45:37.880
<v Speaker 2>Nor is he theorizing about twenty first century nuclear warfare

0:45:38.120 --> 0:45:41.360
<v Speaker 2>or even late twentieth century warfare. He is discussing the

0:45:41.400 --> 0:45:43.360
<v Speaker 2>war he expected to break out in the next twenty

0:45:43.440 --> 0:45:46.319
<v Speaker 2>years or so, and on basically every technical point, du

0:45:46.320 --> 0:45:49.160
<v Speaker 2>Haey was desperately wrong. Again. He argues, the sky is

0:45:49.200 --> 0:45:53.200
<v Speaker 2>so big that airpower should only be offensive because airpower

0:45:53.239 --> 0:45:56.400
<v Speaker 2>cannot defend territory, and the only way to protect the

0:45:56.440 --> 0:45:58.359
<v Speaker 2>homeland is to build an air force that can bomb

0:45:58.360 --> 0:46:00.640
<v Speaker 2>the enemy into the ground before you're opponent can do

0:46:00.719 --> 0:46:04.680
<v Speaker 2>the same. He makes really specific predictions, arguing in nineteen

0:46:04.719 --> 0:46:06.920
<v Speaker 2>twenty eight that dropping a payload of just three hundred

0:46:06.960 --> 0:46:09.400
<v Speaker 2>tons of bombs over a capital city and under a

0:46:09.440 --> 0:46:11.719
<v Speaker 2>month would be enough to end a war. This would

0:46:11.840 --> 0:46:15.600
<v Speaker 2>all be proven catastrophically wrong, but for the later period

0:46:15.640 --> 0:46:17.839
<v Speaker 2>of his life do Hay as effectively the first air

0:46:17.880 --> 0:46:21.200
<v Speaker 2>power influencer. His book doesn't sell quickly at first, but

0:46:21.400 --> 0:46:24.120
<v Speaker 2>it becomes the bible of how to make an air

0:46:24.160 --> 0:46:26.120
<v Speaker 2>force for basically all of the men who were in

0:46:26.200 --> 0:46:29.319
<v Speaker 2>charge of the air forces in World War Two. Like

0:46:29.400 --> 0:46:34.240
<v Speaker 2>on every side, he's super influential, and that's not entirely accurate.

0:46:34.280 --> 0:46:38.279
<v Speaker 2>He has his detractors, obviously, but he's massively influential, and

0:46:38.600 --> 0:46:40.719
<v Speaker 2>I'm sure to Hay would have been thrilled to have

0:46:40.960 --> 0:46:43.840
<v Speaker 2>had such an influence because everyone in World War Two

0:46:43.960 --> 0:46:46.560
<v Speaker 2>tries out his ideas, but he never gets a chance

0:46:46.560 --> 0:46:49.719
<v Speaker 2>to see that. Shortly after Benito Mussolini makes him the

0:46:49.760 --> 0:46:52.640
<v Speaker 2>Italian chief of Aviation, he dies of a heart attack

0:46:52.680 --> 0:46:55.200
<v Speaker 2>in nineteen thirty. So, by the way, ends's life is

0:46:55.200 --> 0:46:55.960
<v Speaker 2>a fascist two.

0:46:56.400 --> 0:46:58.200
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, couldn't happen to a worse guy.

0:46:58.800 --> 0:47:01.759
<v Speaker 2>Really tragic. You know who else died of a heart

0:47:01.760 --> 0:47:04.960
<v Speaker 2>attack in nineteen thirty after being made the Fascist Minister

0:47:05.000 --> 0:47:07.200
<v Speaker 2>of Aviation by Benita Mussolini.

0:47:08.080 --> 0:47:08.840
<v Speaker 3>His twin brother.

0:47:09.520 --> 0:47:21.399
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, sure, or these sponsors, I don't know. Great, and

0:47:21.520 --> 0:47:24.000
<v Speaker 2>we're back. I was an awkward ad pivot. I'm not

0:47:24.000 --> 0:47:26.719
<v Speaker 2>gonna lie, Margaret. I'm not gonna lie. But I think

0:47:26.719 --> 0:47:27.880
<v Speaker 2>the audience will forgive us.

0:47:28.160 --> 0:47:30.400
<v Speaker 4>I think they will. I think they'll be able to

0:47:30.400 --> 0:47:32.080
<v Speaker 4>find it in their heart attack to do it.

0:47:32.440 --> 0:47:32.720
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.

0:47:32.800 --> 0:47:34.640
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, that's actually what I'm trying to do is make

0:47:34.640 --> 0:47:37.600
<v Speaker 4>you feel better by making a terrible joke. So those

0:47:37.600 --> 0:47:40.400
<v Speaker 4>people have already forgotten about your bad ad pivot.

0:47:40.719 --> 0:47:44.719
<v Speaker 2>Thank you, Thank you, Margaret. Let's continue talking about this

0:47:44.760 --> 0:47:47.560
<v Speaker 2>guy's stupid ideas about how planes work. Right.

0:47:49.680 --> 0:47:54.719
<v Speaker 4>Three hundred bombs, Yeah, three hundred tons of bombs all

0:47:54.760 --> 0:47:56.959
<v Speaker 4>you need that'll wipe out any cities, will to fight.

0:47:58.120 --> 0:48:00.960
<v Speaker 2>So, German war planners, influenced by dou Haye, built a

0:48:01.000 --> 0:48:04.080
<v Speaker 2>bomber fleet that was tailored for the attack, not operations

0:48:04.080 --> 0:48:06.720
<v Speaker 2>on enemy cities, but providing close support to their advancing

0:48:06.760 --> 0:48:08.719
<v Speaker 2>infantry and armour. And this is you could call this

0:48:08.760 --> 0:48:11.200
<v Speaker 2>an adaptation of some of de Haetes, certainly influenced by it,

0:48:11.239 --> 0:48:14.799
<v Speaker 2>this idea that like air power should just be for

0:48:14.840 --> 0:48:19.160
<v Speaker 2>the offense, right, like that that's its primary purpose. And

0:48:19.239 --> 0:48:22.880
<v Speaker 2>so it's kind of an adaptation, right. England also dou

0:48:22.920 --> 0:48:25.799
<v Speaker 2>Hayes attitudes have a lot of influence on how the

0:48:25.880 --> 0:48:28.440
<v Speaker 2>Royal Air Force is constructed in the inter war period,

0:48:28.680 --> 0:48:31.280
<v Speaker 2>and England spins a lot of resources creating a bomber

0:48:31.320 --> 0:48:33.719
<v Speaker 2>command that was meant to deter German action on the

0:48:33.760 --> 0:48:37.560
<v Speaker 2>continent without requiring another painful mass conscription for British kids.

0:48:37.640 --> 0:48:41.000
<v Speaker 2>You know, that does not exactly work out. Here's how

0:48:41.040 --> 0:48:44.840
<v Speaker 2>Colonel Risioni describes what happened next. Germany then turned to

0:48:44.840 --> 0:48:46.640
<v Speaker 2>the invasion of England and its first test of dou

0:48:46.680 --> 0:48:49.319
<v Speaker 2>Hayes's theories. The Battle of Britain was engaged to gain

0:48:49.360 --> 0:48:52.960
<v Speaker 2>air superiority for operations Sea Lion. Britain's bomber command had

0:48:52.960 --> 0:48:55.200
<v Speaker 2>failed to deter the war and the attacks on England,

0:48:55.280 --> 0:48:57.759
<v Speaker 2>but Germany's bomber fleets also failed to bring England to

0:48:57.800 --> 0:49:01.480
<v Speaker 2>its knees. The Luftwaffa tried to gain superiority over England.

0:49:01.680 --> 0:49:04.200
<v Speaker 2>The initially frail fighter force of the Royal Air Force,

0:49:04.280 --> 0:49:06.760
<v Speaker 2>under the competent command of Air Marshal Sir Hugh Doubting

0:49:06.960 --> 0:49:09.480
<v Speaker 2>and using the nascent technology of radar, was able to

0:49:09.480 --> 0:49:13.360
<v Speaker 2>inflict unacceptable losses on the German bombers and their fighter escorts.

0:49:13.560 --> 0:49:16.000
<v Speaker 2>After the Battle of Britain was won by England, Hitler

0:49:16.000 --> 0:49:18.600
<v Speaker 2>turned his aerial weapons on London to bring the population

0:49:18.680 --> 0:49:22.680
<v Speaker 2>to its knees. Churchill cheered quietly. The bombing only stiffened

0:49:22.680 --> 0:49:24.960
<v Speaker 2>the morale of Londoners and brought England's war effort to

0:49:24.960 --> 0:49:28.680
<v Speaker 2>a higher pitch. So from the start do hay has

0:49:28.719 --> 0:49:32.880
<v Speaker 2>proven wrong, just immediately on boccounts about yes, yeah, the

0:49:32.960 --> 0:49:36.359
<v Speaker 2>having a big bomber fleet does not deter enemy action. Also,

0:49:36.880 --> 0:49:40.520
<v Speaker 2>you can defend from a bombing attack, and aircraft are

0:49:40.600 --> 0:49:45.120
<v Speaker 2>great on the defense. Having fighters to intercept bombers works

0:49:45.160 --> 0:49:46.240
<v Speaker 2>really fucking well.

0:49:48.440 --> 0:49:52.480
<v Speaker 4>It's funny because like this is the Europe gave medieval

0:49:52.480 --> 0:49:55.120
<v Speaker 4>warfare was a big part of medieval Europe, right, and

0:49:55.200 --> 0:49:58.239
<v Speaker 4>like the development of armor until.

0:49:57.960 --> 0:49:58.720
<v Speaker 3>You get to guns.

0:49:58.960 --> 0:50:01.840
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, it's like really it's the development of armor that

0:50:01.960 --> 0:50:03.600
<v Speaker 4>is the new technology that's changing.

0:50:03.640 --> 0:50:03.839
<v Speaker 3>Shit.

0:50:04.080 --> 0:50:07.319
<v Speaker 4>You put a fucking armored knight against anybody and they're

0:50:07.360 --> 0:50:09.080
<v Speaker 4>just like, yeah, you kind of can't do anything unless

0:50:09.080 --> 0:50:10.600
<v Speaker 4>you get a dagger to my throat, you know.

0:50:10.680 --> 0:50:13.680
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, no, that's it. Like it is. It is

0:50:13.719 --> 0:50:15.640
<v Speaker 2>the same. It takes place over a shorter period of

0:50:15.640 --> 0:50:18.719
<v Speaker 2>time with airpower because shit moves faster now, right, But

0:50:18.800 --> 0:50:21.600
<v Speaker 2>it is the I mean this it's the it's the

0:50:21.600 --> 0:50:25.000
<v Speaker 2>the red Queen hypothesis, right, like everyone is constantly moving

0:50:25.040 --> 0:50:27.040
<v Speaker 2>as fast as they can just to stay in place,

0:50:27.200 --> 0:50:29.560
<v Speaker 2>you know, like you were you you build up this

0:50:29.600 --> 0:50:33.600
<v Speaker 2>great bomber fleet just in time to get attacked by

0:50:33.640 --> 0:50:35.400
<v Speaker 2>a bomber fleet of your own and realize, actually, we

0:50:35.400 --> 0:50:38.720
<v Speaker 2>probably should have had more fighters that might have been handier.

0:50:38.719 --> 0:50:41.560
<v Speaker 2>It's to jump right, yeah, But also the Germans are

0:50:41.600 --> 0:50:43.680
<v Speaker 2>learning all you need is a bunch of bombers. We've

0:50:43.680 --> 0:50:46.399
<v Speaker 2>got a bunch of bombers. Oh shit, fighter aircraft really

0:50:46.440 --> 0:50:50.080
<v Speaker 2>fuck up bombers. Oh no, all our pilots are gone.

0:50:50.280 --> 0:50:52.439
<v Speaker 4>Who'd have thought Mussolidi would have named a guy who

0:50:52.480 --> 0:50:54.520
<v Speaker 4>wasn't actually as good at things as he said he was.

0:50:54.920 --> 0:50:58.360
<v Speaker 2>Would have thought the Italian fascist Minister of Aviation was

0:50:58.400 --> 0:51:03.120
<v Speaker 2>wrong about some important points right now. One of the

0:51:03.120 --> 0:51:05.200
<v Speaker 2>things that is important for what will come next is

0:51:05.840 --> 0:51:09.600
<v Speaker 2>it is true air power is great on the defensive,

0:51:10.000 --> 0:51:15.480
<v Speaker 2>and it's actually very possible to interdict and damage bombers

0:51:15.600 --> 0:51:19.240
<v Speaker 2>before they can hit their targets. But not a single

0:51:19.760 --> 0:51:22.600
<v Speaker 2>group of bombers on any side during the war is

0:51:22.680 --> 0:51:27.320
<v Speaker 2>turned back right entirely without being able to drop any bombs.

0:51:27.440 --> 0:51:31.399
<v Speaker 2>That doesn't happen, which for nuclear planning. This again, one

0:51:31.400 --> 0:51:34.960
<v Speaker 2>of these things nuclear warfare retroactively makes do Hey correct

0:51:35.000 --> 0:51:37.040
<v Speaker 2>on is that like, well, once you've got nukes, if

0:51:37.040 --> 0:51:40.920
<v Speaker 2>you have a thousand bombers flying towards London with conventional bombs,

0:51:41.360 --> 0:51:43.960
<v Speaker 2>then yeah, fighters can kill a bunch of those bombers

0:51:44.000 --> 0:51:47.200
<v Speaker 2>and do enough damage that it renders like, you know,

0:51:48.080 --> 0:51:50.000
<v Speaker 2>the Germans will drop some bombs in response, but you

0:51:50.040 --> 0:51:52.239
<v Speaker 2>can make it be more costly for the Germans than

0:51:52.239 --> 0:51:54.760
<v Speaker 2>it is for Great Britain. Right, if a thousand bombers

0:51:54.800 --> 0:51:57.600
<v Speaker 2>each have a nuke, you're not stopping every nuke from

0:51:57.680 --> 0:52:00.880
<v Speaker 2>hitting and all they need is one, right, Right, That

0:52:01.040 --> 0:52:04.439
<v Speaker 2>is an important point about this is another lesson that's

0:52:04.480 --> 0:52:06.160
<v Speaker 2>being learned right at the same time as we're learning

0:52:06.200 --> 0:52:09.520
<v Speaker 2>how wrong dou Hay is. Once nukes come into the picture,

0:52:09.520 --> 0:52:11.120
<v Speaker 2>people are going to be looking at this data and

0:52:11.120 --> 0:52:14.799
<v Speaker 2>seeing something different, which is that you can't stop a

0:52:14.880 --> 0:52:18.880
<v Speaker 2>nuclear attack of sufficient size even before ICBMs.

0:52:19.080 --> 0:52:19.440
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.

0:52:19.560 --> 0:52:21.920
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, the scale of destructiveness of a nuke is just

0:52:22.000 --> 0:52:26.000
<v Speaker 4>so different. Yeah yeah, it's huh yeah.

0:52:26.080 --> 0:52:29.120
<v Speaker 2>Now, I do want to really emphasize the wrongness that

0:52:29.200 --> 0:52:32.040
<v Speaker 2>do Hay was because again he said that about three

0:52:32.120 --> 0:52:34.400
<v Speaker 2>hundred tons of explosives in a month dropped over an

0:52:34.440 --> 0:52:36.919
<v Speaker 2>enemy capital would be enough to break any people's will

0:52:36.960 --> 0:52:39.320
<v Speaker 2>to fight. During a single night, during the Battle of

0:52:39.320 --> 0:52:41.840
<v Speaker 2>Britain May tenth to May eleventh, nineteen forty one, Germany

0:52:41.880 --> 0:52:44.400
<v Speaker 2>dropped more than seven hundred tons of high explosives on

0:52:44.480 --> 0:52:49.600
<v Speaker 2>London as well as eighty six thousand incendiary devices. England

0:52:49.680 --> 0:52:50.200
<v Speaker 2>kept fighting.

0:52:51.000 --> 0:52:53.840
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, no, they came up with the whole crazy slogan

0:52:53.920 --> 0:52:58.920
<v Speaker 4>about it. Yeah, everyone pulled together of like orwell like

0:52:59.120 --> 0:52:59.840
<v Speaker 4>organizing in the home.

0:53:00.400 --> 0:53:05.279
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, a lot of people felt better. Yeah yeah, which

0:53:05.320 --> 0:53:06.160
<v Speaker 2>is a fun story.

0:53:06.400 --> 0:53:08.640
<v Speaker 3>Gives us punk rock that people grew up out of.

0:53:08.560 --> 0:53:12.560
<v Speaker 2>That gives us punk rock. Sure. Yeah, but yeah, that

0:53:12.640 --> 0:53:15.200
<v Speaker 2>is an important point again just to how wrong dow

0:53:15.239 --> 0:53:17.360
<v Speaker 2>Hay is, Like, yeah, we took more than twice as

0:53:17.440 --> 0:53:19.640
<v Speaker 2>much as he said would break any city in a

0:53:19.640 --> 0:53:22.919
<v Speaker 2>month and a night. London did, and people don't break

0:53:23.000 --> 0:53:26.040
<v Speaker 2>under bombing, you know, which is also going to influence

0:53:26.120 --> 0:53:29.000
<v Speaker 2>nuclear thinkers because then the attitude becomes, well you just

0:53:29.040 --> 0:53:30.200
<v Speaker 2>have to kill all of them then.

0:53:30.600 --> 0:53:30.920
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.

0:53:31.200 --> 0:53:35.520
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. So despite the fact that do Hay is right

0:53:35.560 --> 0:53:39.040
<v Speaker 2>out the gate proven wrong, war planners on the Allied

0:53:39.040 --> 0:53:41.000
<v Speaker 2>side continue to give a great deal of credence to

0:53:41.040 --> 0:53:44.640
<v Speaker 2>his now badly marred theories. One advocate was Sir Arthur Harris,

0:53:44.680 --> 0:53:47.000
<v Speaker 2>also known as Bomber Harris, who became head of the

0:53:47.120 --> 0:53:51.280
<v Speaker 2>RAF's Bomber Command. He was a huge advocate of area

0:53:51.360 --> 0:53:54.920
<v Speaker 2>bombing precision bombing, which is another thing people are. The

0:53:54.960 --> 0:53:57.960
<v Speaker 2>strategic bombing side also breaks down to a couple of

0:53:58.000 --> 0:54:00.320
<v Speaker 2>broad schools, and as is always the case, most people

0:54:00.320 --> 0:54:03.080
<v Speaker 2>are you know, have are a little take some from

0:54:03.080 --> 0:54:06.600
<v Speaker 2>column as from Colum b. But there's you've got area

0:54:06.640 --> 0:54:09.560
<v Speaker 2>bombing and precision bombing, right, And the idea behind precision

0:54:09.600 --> 0:54:12.080
<v Speaker 2>bombing is that you can hit just the target you want.

0:54:12.320 --> 0:54:15.320
<v Speaker 2>That is, like the factory making bombs or the factory

0:54:15.360 --> 0:54:18.960
<v Speaker 2>making planes, right, or a barracks, and not hit the

0:54:19.040 --> 0:54:22.680
<v Speaker 2>high rise apartment structure near it. Now, precision bombing is

0:54:22.719 --> 0:54:25.799
<v Speaker 2>a lie, right, it's especially it's it's not all that

0:54:25.880 --> 0:54:28.799
<v Speaker 2>true today, but it's especially a lie in World War Two. Right,

0:54:29.040 --> 0:54:31.600
<v Speaker 2>it's a lot. Now you can kind of do it,

0:54:31.680 --> 0:54:34.120
<v Speaker 2>although it never works as well as planners like to

0:54:34.160 --> 0:54:36.080
<v Speaker 2>claim it does. But in World War Two it's just

0:54:36.120 --> 0:54:40.319
<v Speaker 2>a fantasy, right, And so there's a lot of that

0:54:40.320 --> 0:54:43.800
<v Speaker 2>that gives a lot more push to people like Bomber Harris,

0:54:43.800 --> 0:54:47.839
<v Speaker 2>who are like, well, fuck precision bombing, just bomb desaturate

0:54:47.880 --> 0:54:51.600
<v Speaker 2>an area with bombing, right, you accept greater civilian casualties

0:54:51.719 --> 0:54:54.680
<v Speaker 2>so that you can cripple their industrial capabilities. Right, that's

0:54:54.680 --> 0:54:57.719
<v Speaker 2>the public argument. In private, they're saying something different, But

0:54:57.840 --> 0:54:59.400
<v Speaker 2>the public argument is that this is just the way

0:54:59.440 --> 0:55:02.120
<v Speaker 2>it has to work. The first area bombings by the

0:55:02.280 --> 0:55:05.480
<v Speaker 2>RAF on German cities was in nineteen forty one, in

0:55:05.520 --> 0:55:09.279
<v Speaker 2>nineteen forty two, and they did not work very well. Right.

0:55:09.320 --> 0:55:12.240
<v Speaker 2>They's spun as wins, but on an actual strategic level,

0:55:12.520 --> 0:55:14.520
<v Speaker 2>they're not huge hits. They caused some shock to the

0:55:14.520 --> 0:55:17.919
<v Speaker 2>German citizenry, but they don't accomplish the stated goal, which

0:55:17.960 --> 0:55:21.280
<v Speaker 2>is to damage war production. Right, and the RAF suffers

0:55:21.320 --> 0:55:24.080
<v Speaker 2>high casualties because German air defenses are excellent. You know,

0:55:24.160 --> 0:55:26.680
<v Speaker 2>do Hay continues to be very wrong about air defense.

0:55:26.719 --> 0:55:30.480
<v Speaker 2>It is popular possible. I mean in Vietnam, North Vietnam.

0:55:30.560 --> 0:55:31.960
<v Speaker 2>Part of why the war goes the way it does

0:55:32.000 --> 0:55:35.200
<v Speaker 2>is that North Vietnam has excellent, very advanced air defenses. Right,

0:55:36.040 --> 0:55:37.799
<v Speaker 2>something gets lost in the whole. It was just some

0:55:37.880 --> 0:55:40.680
<v Speaker 2>farmers in the jungle that beat the US. No, they

0:55:40.719 --> 0:55:44.920
<v Speaker 2>had an army, they had radar guided missiles and everything.

0:55:45.040 --> 0:55:49.719
<v Speaker 2>You know. When Arthur Harris took over bomber command for

0:55:50.120 --> 0:55:54.360
<v Speaker 2>Great Britain, he immediately organized a much bigger area bombing campaign,

0:55:54.920 --> 0:55:58.480
<v Speaker 2>Operation Millennium. On May thirtieth of nineteen forty two, nearly

0:55:58.520 --> 0:56:02.160
<v Speaker 2>eleven hundred Allied bombers hit Cologne, annihilating some six hundred

0:56:02.200 --> 0:56:05.200
<v Speaker 2>acres of the city and rendering one hundred thousand people homeless.

0:56:05.600 --> 0:56:09.000
<v Speaker 2>Harris declared the raid a success. The British press did too,

0:56:09.040 --> 0:56:11.880
<v Speaker 2>but they focused on the destruction of war industry, not

0:56:11.960 --> 0:56:15.920
<v Speaker 2>the civilian cost, and this frustrated Harris, in part because

0:56:15.960 --> 0:56:18.880
<v Speaker 2>it was inaccurate. While dozens of factories had been damaged

0:56:19.000 --> 0:56:21.239
<v Speaker 2>or destroyed, the city only lost the equivalent of a

0:56:21.280 --> 0:56:25.360
<v Speaker 2>month's war production. The real cost to Germany, as bomber

0:56:25.400 --> 0:56:28.520
<v Speaker 2>Harris saw it, was human. Here's how he later described

0:56:28.520 --> 0:56:31.600
<v Speaker 2>the purpose of bomber Command. In his eyes, the aim

0:56:31.719 --> 0:56:34.560
<v Speaker 2>is the destruction of German cities, the killing of German workers,

0:56:34.560 --> 0:56:37.920
<v Speaker 2>and the disruption of civilized community life throughout Germany. It

0:56:37.960 --> 0:56:41.000
<v Speaker 2>should be emphasized that the destruction of houses, public utilities,

0:56:41.200 --> 0:56:44.000
<v Speaker 2>transport and lives, the creation of a refugee prob an

0:56:44.080 --> 0:56:47.120
<v Speaker 2>unprecedented scale, and the breakdown of morale both at home

0:56:47.160 --> 0:56:49.239
<v Speaker 2>and on the battlefronts by the fear of extended and

0:56:49.280 --> 0:56:53.680
<v Speaker 2>intensified bombing are acceptable and intended aims of our bombing policy.

0:56:53.840 --> 0:56:56.759
<v Speaker 2>They are not by products of attempts to hit factories.

0:56:58.000 --> 0:57:02.040
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, that makes sense. So does the same stealing the reserve.

0:57:02.160 --> 0:57:05.000
<v Speaker 4>Like I've I've met someone whose family I think it

0:57:05.040 --> 0:57:08.080
<v Speaker 4>was Colne or Cologne. I just did the ass whole

0:57:08.120 --> 0:57:09.960
<v Speaker 4>thing where I've been to a city, so I'm like, let.

0:57:09.800 --> 0:57:10.640
<v Speaker 3>Me use the whatever.

0:57:11.360 --> 0:57:13.960
<v Speaker 4>Yeah. But you know, it's like I've met someone who

0:57:14.000 --> 0:57:15.920
<v Speaker 4>was like, oh, yeah, my whole family was like staunch

0:57:15.920 --> 0:57:18.160
<v Speaker 4>anti Nazis, and then eighty percent of the family was

0:57:18.200 --> 0:57:20.920
<v Speaker 4>wiped out in one night by an by a bombing,

0:57:20.960 --> 0:57:23.120
<v Speaker 4>and then they all join the army And I'm like, yeah,

0:57:23.160 --> 0:57:25.040
<v Speaker 4>they still joined the Nazi army, so fuck them. But

0:57:25.160 --> 0:57:28.200
<v Speaker 4>like also like, yeah, I couldn't tell you that anyone

0:57:28.200 --> 0:57:29.200
<v Speaker 4>I've ever met would do anything.

0:57:29.320 --> 0:57:31.720
<v Speaker 2>That's just how people work when their family gets killed

0:57:31.720 --> 0:57:34.280
<v Speaker 2>in a bombing. Yeah, if they get pissed, they don't

0:57:34.320 --> 0:57:38.360
<v Speaker 2>always they're not their best selves, you know exactly. That's

0:57:38.520 --> 0:57:41.040
<v Speaker 2>that's just how people be. Homie, I don't know what

0:57:41.080 --> 0:57:43.520
<v Speaker 2>to tell you. They don't like having their families killed

0:57:43.520 --> 0:57:47.880
<v Speaker 2>by bombs. Yeah, And there's as we'll talk about a

0:57:47.920 --> 0:57:50.400
<v Speaker 2>lot of debate as to the influence of strategic bombing

0:57:50.440 --> 0:57:53.040
<v Speaker 2>on the German civilian population, but what we can say

0:57:53.080 --> 0:57:57.080
<v Speaker 2>is that it's not why they lose. However, however, whatever

0:57:57.120 --> 0:57:59.200
<v Speaker 2>it does to morale doesn't in the war. You know,

0:58:01.440 --> 0:58:05.600
<v Speaker 2>So Bomber Harris is wrong in his primary attitude right

0:58:05.640 --> 0:58:07.959
<v Speaker 2>as to like what would work to actually in the war,

0:58:08.120 --> 0:58:10.400
<v Speaker 2>and he doesn't. He never gets called on that because

0:58:10.440 --> 0:58:13.360
<v Speaker 2>we win the war anyway, and everyone kind of thinks,

0:58:13.400 --> 0:58:17.120
<v Speaker 2>fuck those guys, low key a high key but and

0:58:17.320 --> 0:58:21.560
<v Speaker 2>you know, fuck them, but it doesn't work. That is important. Now.

0:58:21.880 --> 0:58:24.640
<v Speaker 2>There's not agreement and in fact a huge a lot

0:58:24.720 --> 0:58:27.720
<v Speaker 2>of conflict between the US and Great Britain over the strategy. Initially,

0:58:28.200 --> 0:58:30.640
<v Speaker 2>the guys in the US Army Air Command do not

0:58:30.800 --> 0:58:34.040
<v Speaker 2>all agree with Harris, and in fact we keep conducting

0:58:34.320 --> 0:58:37.200
<v Speaker 2>the Brits are doing night time raids, which allows you

0:58:37.280 --> 0:58:39.800
<v Speaker 2>to lose the least aircraft while killing the most civilians

0:58:39.880 --> 0:58:42.520
<v Speaker 2>or killing the most people. We do daytime raids for

0:58:42.560 --> 0:58:45.400
<v Speaker 2>a long time, which are way more dangerous because the

0:58:45.480 --> 0:58:48.760
<v Speaker 2>idea is it gives these civilians more of a chance

0:58:48.800 --> 0:58:51.240
<v Speaker 2>to get away, right, that's part of why you're doing it.

0:58:51.000 --> 0:58:54.560
<v Speaker 2>It's more honorable basically, right, which it is, but it

0:58:54.600 --> 0:58:56.840
<v Speaker 2>also means you lose a lot more guys right, like,

0:58:56.920 --> 0:59:00.840
<v Speaker 2>it's way more dangerous. Yeah, it's very dnerable thing I

0:59:00.840 --> 0:59:02.960
<v Speaker 2>think that we're doing for a while. We're not always

0:59:03.000 --> 0:59:08.080
<v Speaker 2>going to be that way. So yeah, this debate really

0:59:08.080 --> 0:59:10.120
<v Speaker 2>starts to erupt after this point. And on one end

0:59:10.160 --> 0:59:14.440
<v Speaker 2>you've got these area bombing strategic bombing advocates saying like,

0:59:15.120 --> 0:59:18.520
<v Speaker 2>you know, I know it hasn't quite worked yet, right, Like,

0:59:18.840 --> 0:59:20.760
<v Speaker 2>we haven't knocked Germany out of the fight. They're not

0:59:20.760 --> 0:59:23.200
<v Speaker 2>giving up yet, but if we just get more bombers, bro,

0:59:23.480 --> 0:59:24.040
<v Speaker 2>it'll work.

0:59:24.400 --> 0:59:24.560
<v Speaker 1>Right.

0:59:25.240 --> 0:59:27.320
<v Speaker 2>And on the other side, and again a lot of

0:59:27.320 --> 0:59:29.560
<v Speaker 2>people do kind of wind up in the middle here,

0:59:29.600 --> 0:59:32.040
<v Speaker 2>but the other side broadly are like, well, close air

0:59:32.080 --> 0:59:35.680
<v Speaker 2>support is what's most important, right. Airpower's primary use is

0:59:35.680 --> 0:59:40.200
<v Speaker 2>its ability to augment conventional forces in taking and holding territory, right,

0:59:40.480 --> 0:59:44.600
<v Speaker 2>And it works really well. It had proved to be

0:59:44.720 --> 0:59:47.880
<v Speaker 2>tantalizingly potent in North Africa, and guys in the US

0:59:47.880 --> 0:59:50.840
<v Speaker 2>like General Pete Cassada were bullish about its potential in

0:59:50.880 --> 0:59:53.640
<v Speaker 2>a future invasion of France. An early test for the

0:59:53.680 --> 0:59:56.800
<v Speaker 2>strategic bombing advocates, on the other hand, came prior to

0:59:56.840 --> 1:00:01.520
<v Speaker 2>the invasion of Sicily. There's this island called Antillaria, which

1:00:01.560 --> 1:00:04.120
<v Speaker 2>is garrisoned with about eleven thousand Italian troops that we

1:00:04.160 --> 1:00:07.240
<v Speaker 2>need to take before we invade Sicily and then invade Italy.

1:00:07.960 --> 1:00:09.680
<v Speaker 2>And I'm going to quote for an article in National

1:00:09.720 --> 1:00:13.160
<v Speaker 2>Interest by James Stevenson here. The bombing of Pantelleria became

1:00:13.200 --> 1:00:16.400
<v Speaker 2>an experiment when anticipated to demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt

1:00:16.440 --> 1:00:18.720
<v Speaker 2>that bombing would ratify what up to then had been

1:00:18.720 --> 1:00:20.960
<v Speaker 2>a matter of faith, but would soon offer proof through

1:00:21.000 --> 1:00:24.600
<v Speaker 2>bombing alone, surrender was a certainty. All these forces were

1:00:24.600 --> 1:00:26.920
<v Speaker 2>assembled to test the assertion that if you destroy what

1:00:26.960 --> 1:00:29.240
<v Speaker 2>a man has and remove the possibility of his bringing

1:00:29.280 --> 1:00:31.400
<v Speaker 2>more in, then in due course of time it becomes

1:00:31.400 --> 1:00:35.200
<v Speaker 2>impossible for him to defend himself. Major General Jimmy Doolittle said,

1:00:35.520 --> 1:00:37.920
<v Speaker 2>if bombing alone did not force a surrender, the Allies

1:00:37.920 --> 1:00:40.240
<v Speaker 2>planned to invade the island by June eleventh. In an

1:00:40.280 --> 1:00:42.720
<v Speaker 2>attempt to avoid the need for an invasion, the Allies

1:00:42.800 --> 1:00:45.600
<v Speaker 2>generated five two hundred and eighty four sorties, dropping a

1:00:45.600 --> 1:00:48.880
<v Speaker 2>total of twelve point four million pounds of bombs on Pantelleria.

1:00:49.160 --> 1:00:56.120
<v Speaker 2>Jesus did it work kay After a month of unopposed

1:00:56.200 --> 1:00:59.960
<v Speaker 2>round the clock bombing. The Italians surrendered after Allied ground

1:01:00.040 --> 1:01:04.040
<v Speaker 2>troops had approached the island. Right, They did surrender on

1:01:04.040 --> 1:01:07.000
<v Speaker 2>their own from the bombing. They surrendered before ground troops

1:01:07.000 --> 1:01:11.120
<v Speaker 2>came in. Now you can still say, but that still worked. Right. However,

1:01:11.160 --> 1:01:13.960
<v Speaker 2>there's a couple of other issues. For one, Italian defenses

1:01:14.000 --> 1:01:17.400
<v Speaker 2>were remarkably intact still given the force deployed against them,

1:01:17.480 --> 1:01:21.480
<v Speaker 2>because nearly every bomb missed. The B seventeens were most accurate,

1:01:21.520 --> 1:01:24.360
<v Speaker 2>with a twenty two percent hit rate. That's defined as

1:01:24.440 --> 1:01:26.360
<v Speaker 2>landing a bomb within one hundred yards of its target.

1:01:26.400 --> 1:01:29.200
<v Speaker 2>So the B seventeens hit twenty two percent of the time,

1:01:29.240 --> 1:01:30.800
<v Speaker 2>and that's our best bomber.

1:01:30.640 --> 1:01:33.120
<v Speaker 3>And that's within a football field, because that's still within

1:01:33.160 --> 1:01:34.000
<v Speaker 3>a football field.

1:01:34.160 --> 1:01:39.120
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and our medium bombers hit rate is about six percent. Now,

1:01:39.760 --> 1:01:42.720
<v Speaker 2>this is a problem because we had been claiming very

1:01:42.760 --> 1:01:45.360
<v Speaker 2>different things about the accuracy of our bombs. Back at

1:01:45.400 --> 1:01:47.680
<v Speaker 2>the start of nineteen forty three, we'd had something called

1:01:47.680 --> 1:01:50.920
<v Speaker 2>the Casablanca Conference, in which Winston Churchill sat down with

1:01:51.040 --> 1:01:54.160
<v Speaker 2>the eighth Air Force Commander Ira Eaker, who promised the

1:01:54.160 --> 1:01:57.320
<v Speaker 2>British Prime Minister that the B seventeen flying fortress. That's

1:01:57.360 --> 1:02:00.000
<v Speaker 2>fancy knew. We had these things called the Norden bomb Site,

1:02:00.120 --> 1:02:02.520
<v Speaker 2>which was like, this is the shit. This makes precision

1:02:02.560 --> 1:02:06.040
<v Speaker 2>bombing possible. It's like almost it's like a little computerized

1:02:06.520 --> 1:02:09.240
<v Speaker 2>bombing system that like, we can do things with bombs

1:02:09.240 --> 1:02:11.480
<v Speaker 2>we never could do before. You can drop a bomb

1:02:11.520 --> 1:02:13.480
<v Speaker 2>for twenty five thousand feet and hit a target the

1:02:13.520 --> 1:02:16.080
<v Speaker 2>size of a pickle barrel. Right, that's the promise Iri

1:02:16.200 --> 1:02:19.280
<v Speaker 2>Echer makes Winston Churchill when he's like they're sitting there,

1:02:19.280 --> 1:02:20.919
<v Speaker 2>He's like, we can hit a pickle barrel at twenty

1:02:20.920 --> 1:02:23.680
<v Speaker 2>five thousand feet. Now in combat. A few months later,

1:02:23.720 --> 1:02:25.920
<v Speaker 2>these things would hit within a football field only twenty

1:02:25.920 --> 1:02:29.280
<v Speaker 2>two percent of the time. Yeah, so you're getting this.

1:02:29.280 --> 1:02:31.880
<v Speaker 2>This is going to be also a theme with all

1:02:31.920 --> 1:02:34.240
<v Speaker 2>of the nuke stuff that the Air Force builds. They

1:02:34.240 --> 1:02:36.680
<v Speaker 2>will make all these claims about yes, you know, it'll

1:02:36.720 --> 1:02:39.440
<v Speaker 2>it's it's this accurate, and it's this safe, and it

1:02:39.440 --> 1:02:42.160
<v Speaker 2>can only be activated if this and this and this happens,

1:02:42.160 --> 1:02:44.200
<v Speaker 2>so it like could never be accidentally fired. And they're like,

1:02:44.320 --> 1:02:46.280
<v Speaker 2>oh wait, but what if this thing happens that happens

1:02:46.320 --> 1:02:48.520
<v Speaker 2>every day, Oh yeah, that could accidentally launch all of

1:02:48.520 --> 1:02:51.280
<v Speaker 2>our missiles. Yeah, are you guys gonna fix it? We

1:02:51.360 --> 1:02:54.440
<v Speaker 2>actually don't wanna. That's the story of the minute Man

1:02:54.480 --> 1:02:58.320
<v Speaker 2>in a nutshell, but we'll talk more about that later. Anyway,

1:02:58.440 --> 1:03:01.280
<v Speaker 2>with a fleet of these eager price we can disembowel

1:03:01.280 --> 1:03:04.040
<v Speaker 2>the German Reich and destroy its industrial capacity with no

1:03:04.120 --> 1:03:07.000
<v Speaker 2>need for ground forces. Right, we can just get the

1:03:07.040 --> 1:03:11.120
<v Speaker 2>Reich entirely through precision bombing. Now, Churchill has some direct

1:03:11.160 --> 1:03:14.600
<v Speaker 2>experience with aerial warfare, and he does not believe Eger, right,

1:03:14.680 --> 1:03:17.320
<v Speaker 2>he doesn't believe about the accuracy. And the other thing

1:03:17.320 --> 1:03:20.000
<v Speaker 2>that iri Eker is saying is we don't need fighter

1:03:20.120 --> 1:03:22.560
<v Speaker 2>escorts for our B seventeens because they have all these

1:03:22.600 --> 1:03:25.040
<v Speaker 2>guns on them that will that'll be enough to deter attack.

1:03:25.240 --> 1:03:29.600
<v Speaker 2>We can send the fortress. Yeah, that's basically the idea

1:03:29.800 --> 1:03:33.480
<v Speaker 2>behind that title. But like, yeah, because these B seventeens

1:03:33.480 --> 1:03:37.200
<v Speaker 2>are surrounded in machine guns, fighters won't be able to

1:03:37.480 --> 1:03:39.240
<v Speaker 2>if they attack us, they won't be able to penetrate.

1:03:39.600 --> 1:03:41.920
<v Speaker 2>And that that's necessary because the bombers can fly a

1:03:41.960 --> 1:03:44.240
<v Speaker 2>lot further than the fighters. So what Eker is saying

1:03:44.280 --> 1:03:46.520
<v Speaker 2>is we can send these bombers into the heart of

1:03:47.120 --> 1:03:49.600
<v Speaker 2>enemy territory. We don't need to worry about the range

1:03:49.600 --> 1:03:51.920
<v Speaker 2>of the fighters, and they'll be fine. And he's going

1:03:52.000 --> 1:03:55.800
<v Speaker 2>to be wrong about that too. So one result of

1:03:55.800 --> 1:03:58.479
<v Speaker 2>this the Casablanca Conference, is that the Allies put together

1:03:58.520 --> 1:04:01.720
<v Speaker 2>a list of military assets they want prioritize destroying or

1:04:01.760 --> 1:04:04.960
<v Speaker 2>disabling a task that would overwhelmingly fall on air power.

1:04:05.200 --> 1:04:10.120
<v Speaker 2>These included submarine bases, train lines, fuel storage, aircraft production facilities,

1:04:10.160 --> 1:04:12.720
<v Speaker 2>and other crucial war industry sites. One of the first

1:04:12.760 --> 1:04:16.440
<v Speaker 2>of these targets was a ball bearing production facility in Regensburg.

1:04:17.200 --> 1:04:20.400
<v Speaker 2>Ball bearings were critical for constructing aircraft and number of

1:04:20.440 --> 1:04:24.440
<v Speaker 2>other important military vehicles. Operation Double Strike was launched by

1:04:24.480 --> 1:04:27.720
<v Speaker 2>Major General Ekers eighth Army Air Force on August seventeenth,

1:04:27.840 --> 1:04:31.080
<v Speaker 2>nineteen forty three. Three hundred and seventy six bombers plowed

1:04:31.120 --> 1:04:34.040
<v Speaker 2>deep into German territory, beyond the range of any fighters

1:04:34.120 --> 1:04:37.160
<v Speaker 2>to escort them. Per the website code names operations of

1:04:37.160 --> 1:04:39.880
<v Speaker 2>World War II, The mission inflicted heavy damage on the

1:04:39.960 --> 1:04:43.200
<v Speaker 2>Regensburg target, but only at catastrophic loss to the force

1:04:43.280 --> 1:04:46.000
<v Speaker 2>inasmuch as sixty bombers were lost and many more damaged

1:04:46.040 --> 1:04:49.320
<v Speaker 2>beyond economical repair. As a result, the Eighth Air force

1:04:49.400 --> 1:04:52.520
<v Speaker 2>was incapable of immediately following double strike with a second

1:04:52.560 --> 1:04:56.440
<v Speaker 2>attack that might have seriously crippled German industry when Schweinfert,

1:04:56.480 --> 1:04:59.360
<v Speaker 2>that's the industrial facility was attacked again two months later.

1:04:59.560 --> 1:05:01.800
<v Speaker 2>The lack of long range fighter escorts still had not

1:05:01.840 --> 1:05:04.800
<v Speaker 2>been addressed, and losses were even higher. As a consequence,

1:05:04.840 --> 1:05:07.880
<v Speaker 2>the US deep penetration strategic bombing effort was curtailed for

1:05:07.920 --> 1:05:08.560
<v Speaker 2>five months.

1:05:09.560 --> 1:05:11.840
<v Speaker 4>Could you imagine going on a thing where you're like, well,

1:05:11.920 --> 1:05:15.400
<v Speaker 4>last time we did this about uh, you know, one

1:05:15.440 --> 1:05:20.440
<v Speaker 4>in six of us died anyway, so we didn't change anything.

1:05:20.640 --> 1:05:24.560
<v Speaker 2>Are we so different? Yeah? Are we doing anything new? Yeah? No,

1:05:24.640 --> 1:05:29.160
<v Speaker 2>same plan huh okay, yeah. I mean you talk to

1:05:29.160 --> 1:05:31.680
<v Speaker 2>anyone who saw heavy combat and they have stories like

1:05:31.720 --> 1:05:33.680
<v Speaker 2>that where it's like, well this was this went really badly.

1:05:34.120 --> 1:05:37.280
<v Speaker 2>We're just doing the same thing. Huh yeah, okay, yeah,

1:05:37.320 --> 1:05:41.720
<v Speaker 2>that is that is how armies work. Now, this was

1:05:41.760 --> 1:05:44.960
<v Speaker 2>a double failure, not just for Eager but for douheyes theories.

1:05:45.160 --> 1:05:47.880
<v Speaker 2>Once again, the vastness of the sky didn't stop a

1:05:47.960 --> 1:05:51.560
<v Speaker 2>defending military for women inflicting severe casualties on a farmer fleet,

1:05:51.920 --> 1:05:54.800
<v Speaker 2>and that despite the damaged under the Regensburg Plant. German

1:05:54.840 --> 1:05:58.480
<v Speaker 2>industrial capabilities were not seriously harmed. As Reich Minister of

1:05:58.520 --> 1:06:01.440
<v Speaker 2>Supply Albert Spear stated at after the war, no plane

1:06:01.480 --> 1:06:04.000
<v Speaker 2>or tank failed to be built for lack of ball bearings.

1:06:04.520 --> 1:06:09.240
<v Speaker 2>Colonel Yeah, it just didn't work. Colonel Rassioni noted in

1:06:09.280 --> 1:06:11.960
<v Speaker 2>his article the Allies failed in their choice of a

1:06:12.040 --> 1:06:15.480
<v Speaker 2>target because they hadn't learned their intelligence was bad. Germany

1:06:15.520 --> 1:06:18.240
<v Speaker 2>was importing ball bearings from Sweden and Switzerland by this point,

1:06:18.320 --> 1:06:21.480
<v Speaker 2>and it also stop. They had foreseen this and stockpiled

1:06:21.560 --> 1:06:25.000
<v Speaker 2>pre war. They had also redesigned a bunch of aircraft

1:06:25.000 --> 1:06:27.200
<v Speaker 2>and shit to not see as many ball bearings.

1:06:27.400 --> 1:06:29.400
<v Speaker 4>This was for like a home alone style plan they

1:06:29.440 --> 1:06:31.520
<v Speaker 4>had that was actually the stockpile was unrelated.

1:06:31.800 --> 1:06:33.400
<v Speaker 2>It was they were dropping it down the stairs.

1:06:33.600 --> 1:06:33.840
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.

1:06:33.960 --> 1:06:37.800
<v Speaker 2>Did a horrible damage to the Third Army. Yeah, yeah,

1:06:38.000 --> 1:06:41.360
<v Speaker 2>so yeah. Rassioni writes this was a failure both in

1:06:41.400 --> 1:06:44.680
<v Speaker 2>target definition and target priority. Worse, because it was vulnerable,

1:06:44.760 --> 1:06:48.760
<v Speaker 2>the Eighth Air Force had become the target. Now over

1:06:48.840 --> 1:06:52.400
<v Speaker 2>in England, Arthur Harris never accepted the primary contentions of

1:06:52.440 --> 1:06:55.560
<v Speaker 2>the advocates of precision strategic bombing. In October of nineteen

1:06:55.600 --> 1:06:58.720
<v Speaker 2>forty three. Not long after Regensburg, he stated the aimous

1:06:58.720 --> 1:07:02.280
<v Speaker 2>destruction of germanies, the killing of German workers, and the

1:07:02.280 --> 1:07:05.600
<v Speaker 2>disruption of civilized community life throughout Germany. It should be

1:07:05.600 --> 1:07:09.640
<v Speaker 2>emphasized that the destruction of houses, public utilities, transport and lives,

1:07:09.640 --> 1:07:12.480
<v Speaker 2>the creation of a refugee problem on an unprecedented scale,

1:07:12.640 --> 1:07:14.440
<v Speaker 2>and the breakdown of morale both at home and at

1:07:14.480 --> 1:07:17.680
<v Speaker 2>the battlefronts by fear of extended and intensified bombing are

1:07:17.760 --> 1:07:21.000
<v Speaker 2>acceptable in intended aims of our bombing policy. They are

1:07:21.000 --> 1:07:24.760
<v Speaker 2>not byproducts if attempts to hit factories. Yeah, Bobara Harris,

1:07:24.840 --> 1:07:27.360
<v Speaker 2>one thing you have to give him. He's very clear. No, no, no,

1:07:27.520 --> 1:07:30.560
<v Speaker 2>this is about killing women and children and riten'ing them homeless.

1:07:30.840 --> 1:07:34.120
<v Speaker 2>That's what we're doing. That's the business the RAF is in.

1:07:34.680 --> 1:07:37.280
<v Speaker 2>You guys need to stop pretending that you're fucking with

1:07:37.360 --> 1:07:38.320
<v Speaker 2>ball bearings.

1:07:39.520 --> 1:07:42.680
<v Speaker 4>I mean, there's an honesty to that that I respect.

1:07:43.000 --> 1:07:46.880
<v Speaker 2>Yes, the man knows what he's about. It's killing civilians,

1:07:46.960 --> 1:07:47.920
<v Speaker 2>but he's about it.

1:07:48.200 --> 1:07:51.600
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, he has made his peace with whatever he believes,

1:07:51.640 --> 1:07:53.440
<v Speaker 4>and he thinks that this is the lesser evil is

1:07:53.440 --> 1:07:55.240
<v Speaker 4>by doing a lot of evil, and like you know,

1:07:55.880 --> 1:07:58.960
<v Speaker 4>it's not evil quickly, right, Yeah.

1:07:59.000 --> 1:08:02.080
<v Speaker 2>A little before the Regensburg attack, bomber Harris had launched

1:08:02.080 --> 1:08:04.680
<v Speaker 2>a nighttime raid on Hamburg. It was the opposite of

1:08:04.720 --> 1:08:08.360
<v Speaker 2>a precise attempt to destroy a specific target. Incendiaries created

1:08:08.360 --> 1:08:12.080
<v Speaker 2>a firestorm that swept through the downtown area, incinerating roughly

1:08:12.120 --> 1:08:16.360
<v Speaker 2>forty thousand civilians. This is like, and this is one

1:08:16.360 --> 1:08:19.200
<v Speaker 2>of the this becomes a theory, Right, there's a theory

1:08:19.200 --> 1:08:20.960
<v Speaker 2>put into practice. But there had been this theory that

1:08:21.320 --> 1:08:24.040
<v Speaker 2>by dropping incendiaries in the right place, in a certain

1:08:24.080 --> 1:08:26.600
<v Speaker 2>parts of a city, you can create these firestorms that

1:08:26.760 --> 1:08:29.800
<v Speaker 2>massively amplify the damage of your bombing campaign. Right, And

1:08:29.840 --> 1:08:32.320
<v Speaker 2>this is like when it when it really works for

1:08:32.360 --> 1:08:34.200
<v Speaker 2>the first time. This is going to be a massive

1:08:34.200 --> 1:08:37.120
<v Speaker 2>part of our strategy. And when we're bombing the Japanese

1:08:37.160 --> 1:08:40.479
<v Speaker 2>home islands, right, is creating these these hideous firestorms. And

1:08:40.520 --> 1:08:44.040
<v Speaker 2>this also this becomes I think the term is literally

1:08:44.120 --> 1:08:47.160
<v Speaker 2>like bonus damage. Basically, this is like a concept of

1:08:47.200 --> 1:08:49.479
<v Speaker 2>nuclear war too. Is a big part of the appeal

1:08:49.479 --> 1:08:52.479
<v Speaker 2>of nuclear weapons to the people planning to use them

1:08:52.720 --> 1:08:55.400
<v Speaker 2>is that you create these firestorms the size of states,

1:08:55.800 --> 1:08:59.519
<v Speaker 2>and like, that's really handy It really amplifies the amount

1:08:59.560 --> 1:09:02.960
<v Speaker 2>of a country you can destroy when you create firestorms

1:09:02.960 --> 1:09:04.799
<v Speaker 2>that wipe out thousands of miles of terrain.

1:09:05.080 --> 1:09:08.280
<v Speaker 4>So it has never occurred to me until this moment

1:09:08.439 --> 1:09:12.480
<v Speaker 4>that the phrase firestorm. I'm aware that firestorms happen in wildfires,

1:09:13.080 --> 1:09:15.760
<v Speaker 4>it has never really actually occurred to me until this

1:09:15.840 --> 1:09:19.280
<v Speaker 4>moment that people artificially create them. And that's where a

1:09:19.360 --> 1:09:23.320
<v Speaker 4>firestorm like, you know, a firestorm to purify if you're

1:09:23.360 --> 1:09:27.040
<v Speaker 4>in a shitty hardcore music yeah, yep, okay.

1:09:26.840 --> 1:09:28.880
<v Speaker 2>Yep, yep. I mean, I think most people have learned

1:09:28.880 --> 1:09:32.920
<v Speaker 2>the term firestorm from Command and Conquer Tiberian Sun firestorm

1:09:33.000 --> 1:09:37.760
<v Speaker 2>obviously the Tiberian Sun expansion pack. That was pretty good. Yeah,

1:09:37.840 --> 1:09:41.920
<v Speaker 2>But some people learned it from history. I'm sure I

1:09:42.080 --> 1:09:43.880
<v Speaker 2>learned it from a shitty hardcore band. So I learned

1:09:43.880 --> 1:09:46.000
<v Speaker 2>it from a hardcore band. I learned it from Command

1:09:46.000 --> 1:09:48.920
<v Speaker 2>and Conquer. Yeah. In November of nineteen forty three. In

1:09:48.960 --> 1:09:51.519
<v Speaker 2>March of nineteen forty four, there were vast raids on

1:09:51.560 --> 1:09:55.519
<v Speaker 2>Berlin which left much of the capital in ruins, and

1:09:55.640 --> 1:09:57.960
<v Speaker 2>yet German morale continued to hold this is the thing,

1:09:58.120 --> 1:10:01.200
<v Speaker 2>Bomber Harris, He's more honest, But what he's saying will

1:10:01.240 --> 1:10:05.799
<v Speaker 2>happen still doesn't happen. Yeah, he's No amount of bombing

1:10:05.960 --> 1:10:08.800
<v Speaker 2>causes Germany to give up. By the time the war

1:10:08.840 --> 1:10:11.680
<v Speaker 2>in Europe enters its endgame, there were very mixed conclusions

1:10:11.680 --> 1:10:14.160
<v Speaker 2>to draw from the actual efficacy of strategic bombing and

1:10:14.200 --> 1:10:17.840
<v Speaker 2>precision bombing. Both ideologies had suffered failures, and both had

1:10:17.840 --> 1:10:21.560
<v Speaker 2>claimed successes, although some of those were dubious claims of success.

1:10:22.120 --> 1:10:25.360
<v Speaker 2>Months earlier, bomber Harris had considered strategic bombing the same

1:10:25.400 --> 1:10:27.920
<v Speaker 2>as opening a new front, summarizing a write up for

1:10:27.920 --> 1:10:30.519
<v Speaker 2>the Juno Beach Center quote until D Day, he was

1:10:30.560 --> 1:10:33.320
<v Speaker 2>convinced that bombings, if they were destructive enough, could force

1:10:33.360 --> 1:10:36.439
<v Speaker 2>Germany into submission without the Allied casualties that were bound

1:10:36.439 --> 1:10:39.879
<v Speaker 2>to result from a massive landing operation in continental Europe.

1:10:40.280 --> 1:10:43.719
<v Speaker 2>In Part two, we're going to talk about what happens next.

1:10:43.800 --> 1:10:46.519
<v Speaker 2>We'll get to Japan finally, and we'll start talking about

1:10:46.560 --> 1:10:50.160
<v Speaker 2>the nukes. But this is all necessary. These are the

1:10:50.200 --> 1:10:55.160
<v Speaker 2>foundational assumptions of the people who build the doomsday device

1:10:55.200 --> 1:10:58.679
<v Speaker 2>that we all live under right now. Like this second,

1:10:58.840 --> 1:11:02.160
<v Speaker 2>an incident could have started, maybe just because a radar

1:11:02.280 --> 1:11:05.160
<v Speaker 2>station was wrong, that will in fifteen to thirty minutes

1:11:05.200 --> 1:11:08.400
<v Speaker 2>result in the annihilation of all organized life human life

1:11:08.439 --> 1:11:10.880
<v Speaker 2>on the planet. That could have happened, as I say

1:11:10.880 --> 1:11:14.719
<v Speaker 2>this sentence, and we mostly won't know until the bombs fall,

1:11:14.960 --> 1:11:18.559
<v Speaker 2>and there's really nothing. Like One thing that maybe will

1:11:18.560 --> 1:11:21.880
<v Speaker 2>comfort you is that that like, none of the facilities

1:11:21.920 --> 1:11:27.080
<v Speaker 2>we have to protect our government will work, like none

1:11:27.120 --> 1:11:29.519
<v Speaker 2>of them are sufficient for the amount, the tonnage, the

1:11:29.560 --> 1:11:32.559
<v Speaker 2>mega tonnage of explosives coming at them. That little like

1:11:32.840 --> 1:11:34.400
<v Speaker 2>this is a good This is a good thing about

1:11:34.439 --> 1:11:37.880
<v Speaker 2>Jacobson's book Nuclear War. One thing she points out is like, yeah,

1:11:37.920 --> 1:11:41.559
<v Speaker 2>there's bunkers underneath the Pentagon and the White House. Everyone

1:11:41.640 --> 1:11:44.439
<v Speaker 2>will bake to death slowly as if they're in an oven.

1:11:45.240 --> 1:11:47.920
<v Speaker 2>Like we know what kind of forces will be deployed

1:11:47.960 --> 1:11:51.559
<v Speaker 2>against DC. There's no surviving in those bunkers. It's a

1:11:51.680 --> 1:11:53.960
<v Speaker 2>much worse death than the people top side will have.

1:11:54.880 --> 1:11:59.519
<v Speaker 2>Well that's good, that's good anyway, maybe that'll cheer you up.

1:12:00.160 --> 1:12:01.400
<v Speaker 2>We roll out of part one.

1:12:01.920 --> 1:12:04.599
<v Speaker 4>I appreciate this idea of like I hadn't put together

1:12:04.760 --> 1:12:08.480
<v Speaker 4>this idea that World War One, the powder keg was intentional.

1:12:09.080 --> 1:12:12.640
<v Speaker 4>You know that it was this mutually assured destruction concept

1:12:12.960 --> 1:12:16.760
<v Speaker 4>and like seeing the through line is yeah, fascinating.

1:12:17.240 --> 1:12:19.640
<v Speaker 2>It wasn't as direct because it did kind of a

1:12:19.640 --> 1:12:22.080
<v Speaker 2>lot of this started to like this evolved accidentally out

1:12:22.080 --> 1:12:24.960
<v Speaker 2>of stuff that it existed before. It was not constructed

1:12:24.960 --> 1:12:28.559
<v Speaker 2>as consciously as nuclear mad, right, but it was something

1:12:28.640 --> 1:12:32.000
<v Speaker 2>people were conscious of, people talked about. That's a reason

1:12:32.040 --> 1:12:35.560
<v Speaker 2>why so many historians have discussed the system of alliances

1:12:36.080 --> 1:12:40.439
<v Speaker 2>and like military armament schedules and like the different like

1:12:40.680 --> 1:12:44.120
<v Speaker 2>arming schedules for reserves as a doomsday device, right, because

1:12:44.120 --> 1:12:47.400
<v Speaker 2>it worked that way, and it is really relevant to

1:12:47.400 --> 1:12:50.080
<v Speaker 2>discuss that in the context of the doom state device

1:12:50.160 --> 1:12:54.439
<v Speaker 2>that we all live under, right now, Yeah, yep, cool, cool?

1:12:55.040 --> 1:12:58.640
<v Speaker 2>All right, all right, everybody.

1:12:58.560 --> 1:13:00.479
<v Speaker 3>Magpie, do you want marketing blood?

1:13:01.040 --> 1:13:06.040
<v Speaker 4>Oh well, if you respond to the possible eminent destruction

1:13:06.120 --> 1:13:08.920
<v Speaker 4>of all things by retreating a little bit into escapism,

1:13:09.960 --> 1:13:13.519
<v Speaker 4>you could listen to me and Robert and some of

1:13:13.520 --> 1:13:16.479
<v Speaker 4>our friends play Pathfinder, where we're just pretending to be

1:13:16.840 --> 1:13:18.360
<v Speaker 4>people in a fantasy world.

1:13:18.439 --> 1:13:21.479
<v Speaker 2>You don't know what Pathfinder is. It's a tabletop game thing,

1:13:22.400 --> 1:13:24.200
<v Speaker 2>much in the vein of Dungeons and Dragons or a

1:13:24.240 --> 1:13:27.519
<v Speaker 2>number of other games just legally distinct, legally distinct.

1:13:27.840 --> 1:13:30.439
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, and if you like weird history, I have a

1:13:30.520 --> 1:13:33.640
<v Speaker 4>podcast called Cool People Didical Stuff with a totally original

1:13:33.920 --> 1:13:36.960
<v Speaker 4>the format, Robert, you got to try this format. What

1:13:37.040 --> 1:13:40.080
<v Speaker 4>I do is that I research a topic every week, okay,

1:13:40.720 --> 1:13:42.880
<v Speaker 4>and then I get a guest who doesn't know as

1:13:43.000 --> 1:13:45.080
<v Speaker 4>much about that topic but sometimes knows like kind of

1:13:45.080 --> 1:13:49.080
<v Speaker 4>related things around that topic, and then I tell them

1:13:49.360 --> 1:13:50.560
<v Speaker 4>what I've learned.

1:13:50.960 --> 1:13:53.560
<v Speaker 2>Is that that seems like the newest idea in podcasting.

1:13:53.880 --> 1:13:54.479
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, there are.

1:13:55.280 --> 1:13:58.160
<v Speaker 1>A producer named Sophie there that doesn't say very much

1:13:58.200 --> 1:13:59.479
<v Speaker 1>but sometimes talks a lot.

1:14:00.120 --> 1:14:02.920
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, you should, actually, Robert, you should. You should use

1:14:02.960 --> 1:14:05.080
<v Speaker 4>that part too. Get a producer named Sophie.

1:14:06.240 --> 1:14:08.600
<v Speaker 2>I'll see, I'll think about it, Markka, I'll think about it.

1:14:08.640 --> 1:14:09.479
<v Speaker 2>I'll think about it.

1:14:09.640 --> 1:14:12.000
<v Speaker 4>But uh, but don't take my name. You are you

1:14:12.000 --> 1:14:14.439
<v Speaker 4>have a decent name from behind the bastards. Mine's cool

1:14:14.439 --> 1:14:15.559
<v Speaker 4>people who did cool stuff?

1:14:15.640 --> 1:14:18.519
<v Speaker 2>Okay, cool people who did cool stuff. Check out us

1:14:18.520 --> 1:14:23.320
<v Speaker 2>playing Pathfinder on it could happen. Here's book club. And remember,

1:14:24.240 --> 1:14:26.840
<v Speaker 2>if there is a nuclear war, all of the people

1:14:26.840 --> 1:14:29.479
<v Speaker 2>who got us into it will also die unthinkable deaths.

1:14:30.520 --> 1:14:31.040
<v Speaker 4>So yay.

1:14:31.800 --> 1:14:33.280
<v Speaker 2>I don't know. Try to live near the center of

1:14:33.320 --> 1:14:35.960
<v Speaker 2>a city and just you know, say the things to

1:14:36.000 --> 1:14:38.080
<v Speaker 2>your loved ones that you need to say. Yeah, tell

1:14:38.080 --> 1:14:40.280
<v Speaker 2>your friends you love you, Tell your friends you love them.

1:14:40.520 --> 1:14:42.280
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, bye bye.

1:14:45.280 --> 1:14:48.200
<v Speaker 1>Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.

1:14:48.320 --> 1:14:50.960
<v Speaker 1>For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool

1:14:51.040 --> 1:14:55.000
<v Speaker 1>Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

1:14:55.080 --> 1:14:58.240
<v Speaker 1>Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the

1:14:58.240 --> 1:15:02.320
<v Speaker 1>Bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes every Wednesday

1:15:02.400 --> 1:15:03.000
<v Speaker 1>and Friday.

1:15:03.320 --> 1:15:04.040
<v Speaker 3>Subscribe to our

1:15:04.120 --> 1:15:07.760
<v Speaker 1>Channel YouTube dot com slash at Behind the Bastards