WEBVTT - Part Three: The Men Who Might Have Killed Us All 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:09.120 Also media, Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, the special 0:00:09.360 --> 0:00:12.720 episodes on how We're all possibly going to die in 0:00:12.840 --> 0:00:13.880 nuclear hell fire. 0:00:14.040 --> 0:00:17.960 I'm Robert Evans. This is a series we'll be doing 0:00:18.040 --> 0:00:21.599 over the course of two weeks, five episodes. We're in 0:00:21.640 --> 0:00:23.680 our second week, so we'll be getting a bonus episode 0:00:23.680 --> 0:00:27.280 this week about the sons of bitches who created the 0:00:27.280 --> 0:00:30.560 doomsday device that again could kill every single person you've 0:00:30.600 --> 0:00:33.440 ever known and loved in every animal and on earth 0:00:33.479 --> 0:00:37.640 except for you know, cockroaches and the like fifteen minutes 0:00:37.680 --> 0:00:39.960 from now or right now. You know, we'd have no 0:00:40.000 --> 0:00:42.440 way of knowing unless you're I don't know, in the 0:00:42.440 --> 0:00:46.080 White House at this exact moment. Margaret Kiljoy, Welcome to 0:00:46.159 --> 0:00:48.600 the show. How are you doing. You're thinking about nukes? 0:00:48.880 --> 0:00:51.599 Well, I got promise this is about Warhammer forty k 0:00:52.159 --> 0:00:56.040 but no, I suppose we're learning about the nuclear of Poculus. 0:00:56.400 --> 0:00:58.520 I'll bring you on when we do our Warhammer show. 0:00:59.080 --> 0:01:01.800 That'll oh yeah, yeah, there's a lot of genocide in 0:01:01.840 --> 0:01:02.200 that too. 0:01:02.440 --> 0:01:04.319 I could be the podcast today for that because I 0:01:04.360 --> 0:01:06.280 actually don't know anything about Warhammer. 0:01:06.600 --> 0:01:09.080 It does involve a lot of nukes and radiation, poisoning, 0:01:09.720 --> 0:01:12.199 which is what we ended our last episode talking about 0:01:12.600 --> 0:01:15.959 our friend Lewis Sloton, who was the partial father of 0:01:15.959 --> 0:01:19.920 the first atomic bomb, had his inards dissolved due to 0:01:20.000 --> 0:01:21.240 a horrible nuclear error. 0:01:21.680 --> 0:01:24.920 And yeah, that's like kind of like leave a record 0:01:24.959 --> 0:01:27.640 for science because he was a pretty cool guy. Like 0:01:27.720 --> 0:01:31.280 that's that's badass, Like when you know that, like, Okay, 0:01:31.319 --> 0:01:33.800 well I have just taken an immediately fatal dose of radiation. 0:01:33.920 --> 0:01:36.559 I'm going to die the most nightmarish death imaginable. Time 0:01:36.600 --> 0:01:41.640 to take notes like fucking that's cool. That's cool, Like 0:01:42.959 --> 0:01:44.440 and I guess so acting. 0:01:44.080 --> 0:01:47.760 With agency is like a really good way to not stress, right, yes, 0:01:47.840 --> 0:01:50.080 you know, and like I have a job. I'm just 0:01:50.080 --> 0:01:50.800 doing my job. 0:01:51.120 --> 0:01:53.760 And I'd say it takes him off the perpetrate, like 0:01:53.760 --> 0:01:56.120 he did help build that first nuke, but as we've discussed, 0:01:56.120 --> 0:01:59.360 there's some mitigating factors. I think dying to it afterwards, 0:01:59.480 --> 0:01:59.800 you know. 0:02:00.160 --> 0:02:01.520 Yeah, has come up AND's happened. 0:02:01.560 --> 0:02:11.360 I'm taking them off the list of guys I'm pissed at. Yeah, 0:02:11.440 --> 0:02:14.120 so before we move on past World War Two, we 0:02:14.120 --> 0:02:16.560 should at least linger on what guys like LeMay and 0:02:16.720 --> 0:02:19.800 General Power would have argued was the most important question 0:02:19.919 --> 0:02:22.160 of the whole war, Right, which is still a question 0:02:22.200 --> 0:02:25.520 that people debate today. Did the use of atomic weapons 0:02:25.520 --> 0:02:28.600 against the Empire of Japan force its leaders to surrender, 0:02:28.720 --> 0:02:32.400 thus sparing both Japan and the allies, primarily the US, 0:02:32.760 --> 0:02:36.160 a hideously bloody ground invasion. Right, this is a question 0:02:36.240 --> 0:02:40.160 people still argue about. There's not an objective answer here. 0:02:40.280 --> 0:02:42.360 I think you'll it'll be pretty clear where I tend 0:02:42.360 --> 0:02:44.160 to land once we get through this. Right, But this 0:02:44.200 --> 0:02:46.919 isn't something that like, this is something that's debated, right. 0:02:47.600 --> 0:02:49.160 I'm not going to come in and just give one 0:02:49.200 --> 0:02:52.440 side of this. Again, I have my my take on 0:02:52.520 --> 0:02:55.200 the matter. I think it's worth emphasizing even if you 0:02:55.360 --> 0:02:58.200 argue that the sheer horror of atomic warfare forced Japan 0:02:58.240 --> 0:03:02.240 to surrender, that the military Japan never independently agreed to 0:03:02.280 --> 0:03:04.919 call it quits, and if the Emperor of Japan had 0:03:04.960 --> 0:03:08.760 not broken the Supreme Council's deadlock and started peace negotiations, 0:03:09.160 --> 0:03:12.520 we can't say that the civilian population wouldn't have continued 0:03:12.560 --> 0:03:14.960 supporting the war effort, no matter how many fire bombs 0:03:15.040 --> 0:03:17.360 or even additional nukes fell. Right, We actually don't know 0:03:17.480 --> 0:03:22.400 that there's a that's a valid point. There's also an 0:03:22.520 --> 0:03:25.000 argument that the view pushed after the war, which is 0:03:25.000 --> 0:03:28.240 that the horror of nuclear warfare was justified by avoiding 0:03:28.280 --> 0:03:30.720 a greater slaughter in Japan. That like, if we had 0:03:30.720 --> 0:03:33.480 invaded the main islands, so many more people would have died. 0:03:33.960 --> 0:03:36.600 That that gives too much credit to atomic weapons as 0:03:36.600 --> 0:03:39.480 a single weapons system. In an article for outrider dot 0:03:39.600 --> 0:03:42.360 org Jasmine Power Rights, there is general agreement that the 0:03:42.400 --> 0:03:44.720 bombing of Nagasaki did little in the way of changing 0:03:44.720 --> 0:03:47.320 the hearts and minds of the Japanese military. By blaming 0:03:47.360 --> 0:03:50.280 their surrender on the atomic bombs, Japan avoided the Soviet 0:03:50.360 --> 0:03:52.960 Union having a hand in the post war reconstruction process. 0:03:53.240 --> 0:03:55.520 Japan was afraid that the Soviet Union might try to 0:03:55.560 --> 0:03:58.120 push a communist regime onto the country. It was also 0:03:58.280 --> 0:04:01.360 very convenient for the US that the attributed their surrender 0:04:01.440 --> 0:04:03.720 to the atomic bombings, and. 0:04:03.880 --> 0:04:06.360 Oh shit, so it was a way to stay capitalist, 0:04:06.520 --> 0:04:08.000 was to be like, oh, it was the nukes, the 0:04:08.080 --> 0:04:08.680 nukes to us. 0:04:08.720 --> 0:04:10.880 In more than that, it was a way to avoid 0:04:11.000 --> 0:04:14.720 whatch happened to Germany? Right, they're watching Germany get split up? Right, 0:04:15.320 --> 0:04:18.040 that's obvious at this point, and they don't want that, 0:04:18.480 --> 0:04:23.080 you know, and surrendering now before the Soviets are in, 0:04:23.600 --> 0:04:25.760 you know, in the mix, so to speak, means that 0:04:25.800 --> 0:04:28.039 the country doesn't get split up. Right, You're not gonna 0:04:28.040 --> 0:04:31.240 have Tokyo divided or whatever. Right, that's one argument people 0:04:31.240 --> 0:04:34.599 will make, you know, And in this view, pretty simply, 0:04:34.800 --> 0:04:38.239 Japan was defeated not because of the nukes, although that's 0:04:38.279 --> 0:04:40.520 not a non factor, but they were defeated because they 0:04:40.560 --> 0:04:45.440 were defeated viciously and comprehensively in every field of military endeavor. 0:04:45.600 --> 0:04:47.599 It's not just the nukes. It's the fact that we 0:04:47.680 --> 0:04:51.200 beat the shit of them all across the Pacific, right, yeah, like, 0:04:51.640 --> 0:04:54.400 which is probably, i mean, certainly a more accurate view 0:04:54.440 --> 0:04:56.560 than just saying it was the nukes, right Like, there 0:04:56.600 --> 0:04:58.400 was a whole war. A lot of guys had to 0:04:58.480 --> 0:05:02.839 die to finish that thing, right And Yeah, Harry Truman, 0:05:02.960 --> 0:05:06.159 the president who ordered the atomic bombs dropped, went on 0:05:06.240 --> 0:05:09.080 record basically saying that military planners had told him that 0:05:09.160 --> 0:05:11.880 when they were looking into like what how many people 0:05:11.920 --> 0:05:14.240 would die in an invasion of the Japanese Home islands, 0:05:14.960 --> 0:05:17.640 American casualties alone would have been in the neighborhood of 0:05:17.640 --> 0:05:21.239 five hundred thousand to a million, and if you're talking 0:05:21.279 --> 0:05:24.520 about the kind of casualty ratios that we saw on 0:05:24.560 --> 0:05:26.480 these other island hopping campaigns, and that would have meant 0:05:26.520 --> 0:05:29.359 both the military and civilian cost for Japan would have 0:05:29.360 --> 0:05:32.479 been higher than that. Right Now, that said, this is 0:05:32.520 --> 0:05:34.760 not a real estimate, as best as I can tell, 0:05:34.880 --> 0:05:38.400 you will encounter it often. It comes up constantly, but 0:05:38.440 --> 0:05:41.080 it's heavily debatable whether or not those numbers that five 0:05:41.160 --> 0:05:45.039 hundred to a million American casualties estimate have any basis 0:05:45.040 --> 0:05:50.039 in reality. Lose in Europe we lost in the whole war, 0:05:50.120 --> 0:05:53.159 the United States lost about half a million people, Okay, 0:05:53.640 --> 0:05:57.240 Like so this this would be basically doing World War 0:05:57.279 --> 0:05:59.520 Two all over again for US more or less. Right, 0:06:00.040 --> 0:06:02.560 It's not perfectly accurate, but it's pretty close. And I 0:06:02.600 --> 0:06:04.640 want to quote from an article by Alfi Khne on 0:06:04.800 --> 0:06:08.760 kind of the veracity of these numbers. Historian Barton Bernstein 0:06:08.800 --> 0:06:11.159 writes that military planners at the time put the number 0:06:11.160 --> 0:06:14.440 of American casualties between twenty thousand and forty six thousand. 0:06:14.680 --> 0:06:16.960 But far more disturbing than this discrepancy is the strong 0:06:17.000 --> 0:06:19.400 possibility that neither an invasion nor in nuclear attack was 0:06:19.400 --> 0:06:21.800 actually necessary to get Japan to surrender. And this is 0:06:22.240 --> 0:06:25.360 an interesting point because if you're saying, oh, five hundred 0:06:25.360 --> 0:06:28.000 thousand to do a million Americans killed and injured, millions 0:06:28.000 --> 0:06:31.239 of Japanese people dead, you know, maybe the nukes save lives. 0:06:31.279 --> 0:06:33.040 But if you're looking at well twenty to forty six, 0:06:33.520 --> 0:06:36.840 forty or fifty thousand American casualties, probably twice that many 0:06:36.920 --> 0:06:42.480 Japanese casualties, well, maybe that's better than nuke the islands. Right, Yeah, 0:06:42.600 --> 0:06:42.880 you know. 0:06:42.960 --> 0:06:44.680 What, could they have just laid siege the whole because 0:06:44.680 --> 0:06:46.320 they were already they weren't. 0:06:46.120 --> 0:06:48.600 In fact doing Yeah, and that's another point, as we'll 0:06:48.600 --> 0:06:50.280 get to. That's another point people will make, is that 0:06:50.400 --> 0:06:52.880 Japan would have broken on its own right. In a 0:06:52.880 --> 0:06:54.920 good essay on the subject for his book You Know 0:06:54.960 --> 0:06:57.720 What They Say, The Truth About Popular Belief, Alfie Cone 0:06:57.760 --> 0:06:59.880 gives a succinct version of what we might call this 0:07:00.040 --> 0:07:03.640 skeptic's case against the necessity of nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 0:07:04.040 --> 0:07:06.920 He notes that the US fire bombs had already incinerated 0:07:07.839 --> 0:07:11.720 Japan's six largest cities and are basically the siege that 0:07:11.760 --> 0:07:13.960 we put on the Home Islands had blocked all oil 0:07:14.040 --> 0:07:17.640 from entering the country. What held up Japanese surrender was 0:07:17.680 --> 0:07:20.320 in part a desire for the Emperor to retain his title, 0:07:20.680 --> 0:07:22.920 con sites in nineteen forty six report from the War 0:07:23.000 --> 0:07:27.160 Department Strategic Bombing Surveys Study Group, which concluded the Hiroshima 0:07:27.240 --> 0:07:30.800 and Nagasaki atomic bombs did not defeat Japan, nor by 0:07:30.800 --> 0:07:33.000 the testimony of the enemy leaders who ended the war, 0:07:33.080 --> 0:07:36.640 did they persuade Japan to accept unconditional surrender. The Emperor, 0:07:36.720 --> 0:07:39.440 the Lord Privy Seal, the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister, 0:07:39.480 --> 0:07:41.680 and the Navy Minister had decided as early as May 0:07:41.720 --> 0:07:43.720 of nineteen forty five that the war should be ended, 0:07:43.960 --> 0:07:46.880 even if it meant acceptance of defeat on Allied terms. 0:07:47.160 --> 0:07:49.680 Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, supported 0:07:49.680 --> 0:07:52.320 by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, is 0:07:52.360 --> 0:07:55.000 the survey's opinion that, certainly prior to his thirty first 0:07:55.000 --> 0:07:57.920 of December nineteen forty five, and in all probability prior 0:07:57.960 --> 0:08:01.200 to first November nineteen forty five, pan would have surrendered 0:08:01.240 --> 0:08:03.680 even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, Even 0:08:03.680 --> 0:08:05.640 if Russia had not entered the war, and even if 0:08:05.680 --> 0:08:08.400 no invasion had been planned or completed. This is the 0:08:08.520 --> 0:08:10.080 US War Department. 0:08:10.720 --> 0:08:12.960 So that's the They were already beat theory. 0:08:13.040 --> 0:08:15.440 They were beat. They were beat. And I would say 0:08:15.480 --> 0:08:18.160 that's by far the strongest argument if you're going with 0:08:18.160 --> 0:08:20.160 the fact based argument. Not that it's the only one, 0:08:20.160 --> 0:08:23.200 but I think it's the strongest. You know, your feelings 0:08:23.240 --> 0:08:25.840 may vary on this. I'm not a historian, but I'm 0:08:25.880 --> 0:08:30.040 convinced pretty well now. There was at least one other 0:08:30.120 --> 0:08:32.800 secret intelligence assessment from the same time, done by the 0:08:32.920 --> 0:08:36.359 US Armies planning an operations group, which reached a similar conclusion, 0:08:36.559 --> 0:08:40.360 and several prominent US officers agreed. Admiral William Lahey, the 0:08:40.400 --> 0:08:43.160 president's chief of staff during the war, called Truman's decision 0:08:43.200 --> 0:08:45.560 to deploy an atomic bomb for the first time adopting 0:08:45.720 --> 0:08:48.560 quote an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the 0:08:48.640 --> 0:08:52.079 dark Ages, which is a nuts thing for the president's 0:08:52.120 --> 0:08:58.120 chief of staff to say about. Like Dwight Eisenhower reached 0:08:58.120 --> 0:09:01.240 a similar conclusion early on, arguing it wasn't necessary to 0:09:01.320 --> 0:09:04.880 hit them with that awful thing. So I guess I 0:09:04.960 --> 0:09:07.560 go with Ike on this. One. Not a perfect man, 0:09:07.679 --> 0:09:10.320 but he pretty much he knew World War two pretty well. 0:09:11.720 --> 0:09:13.560 That's why he had the I'm with Ike button. 0:09:14.000 --> 0:09:16.559 Yeah, I'm with Ike. It wasn't necessary to hit them 0:09:16.559 --> 0:09:20.400 with that awful thing. We didn't have to do that. Yeah, 0:09:20.480 --> 0:09:23.080 now I've allowed that. There's still some room for argument 0:09:23.120 --> 0:09:25.760 here about how much the use of nukes influenced Japan's 0:09:25.760 --> 0:09:29.559 decision to surrender, because the bombing campaign in general influenced 0:09:29.559 --> 0:09:31.840 their decision to surrender, and the nukes were part of that. Right, 0:09:32.320 --> 0:09:35.640 But what isn't arguable is this President Truman and men 0:09:35.679 --> 0:09:38.280 in high positions within the US Army like Curtis LeMay 0:09:38.640 --> 0:09:42.600 never considered anything but a nuclear option once they knew 0:09:42.760 --> 0:09:45.839 they had a bomb. Right, there was never any possibility 0:09:45.880 --> 0:09:49.080 in their minds but that they would use it. Percne's article, 0:09:49.760 --> 0:09:52.040 the fearsome new weapon was not treated as an option 0:09:52.080 --> 0:09:54.559 of last resort. It would be easier to accept the 0:09:54.640 --> 0:09:56.840 argument that he Truman had no choice but to drop 0:09:56.880 --> 0:09:59.520 the bomb if other possibilities, such as demonstrating its power 0:09:59.559 --> 0:10:02.720 to Japan the leaders on an unpopulated island and demanding surrender, 0:10:03.000 --> 0:10:05.920 had been carefully considered. They were not there was never 0:10:05.960 --> 0:10:08.199 a serious attempt at to find a strategy short of 0:10:08.200 --> 0:10:12.079 obliterating the children of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As Yale sociologist 0:10:12.160 --> 0:10:15.120 Kai Eriksson put it, using nuclear weapons was not, by 0:10:15.120 --> 0:10:18.160 any stretch of the imagination, a product of mature consideration. 0:10:18.520 --> 0:10:20.640 We have it on the authority of virtually all the 0:10:20.640 --> 0:10:22.920 principal players that no one in a position to do 0:10:23.000 --> 0:10:25.840 anything about it ever really considered alternatives to dropping the 0:10:25.840 --> 0:10:26.600 bombs on Japan. 0:10:27.200 --> 0:10:28.800 So that's pretty much we have a new toy. Weird, 0:10:28.800 --> 0:10:32.439 We're gonna see what this thing does. Yeah, this sphenometer 0:10:32.559 --> 0:10:34.640 goes up to two hundred, I'm going to two hundred. 0:10:34.760 --> 0:10:37.640 Yeah, we're already planning for the next war. Like they 0:10:37.679 --> 0:10:41.680 handed Lameya list of Soviet cities that might be nuclear targets, right, 0:10:41.760 --> 0:10:44.000 Like they wanted to use this thing in part to 0:10:44.040 --> 0:10:46.160 scare the Russians. That's not all it was, but that 0:10:46.320 --> 0:10:47.720 was part of their logic, right. 0:10:48.800 --> 0:10:49.559 Yeah. 0:10:49.800 --> 0:10:52.800 Now it bears emphasizing that the atomic bombs we dropped 0:10:52.800 --> 0:10:54.760 in Japan killed between one hundred and fifty thousand and 0:10:54.800 --> 0:10:57.800 two hundred and fifty thousand people. The initial death toll 0:10:57.880 --> 0:11:00.120 was horrific enough, but it was what came after. It 0:11:00.200 --> 0:11:03.720 really was the nightmare. I've spoken to a Hiroshima survivor 0:11:03.840 --> 0:11:06.880 and she described the site of thousands of blinded, burnt 0:11:06.880 --> 0:11:09.480 people throwing themselves into rivers in a desperate attempt to 0:11:09.520 --> 0:11:12.880 quench their burning bodies, and all of these, like a 0:11:12.960 --> 0:11:15.120 huge number of these people died. Like the rivers were 0:11:15.120 --> 0:11:18.079 just flooded with corpses, charred bodies of people who had 0:11:18.120 --> 0:11:21.800 tossed themselves, burnt and singing and like melting basically into 0:11:21.840 --> 0:11:25.319 the water. It was horrible, And in the days and 0:11:25.360 --> 0:11:28.720 weeks after the bombing, survivors started to sicken, vomiting up blood, 0:11:28.760 --> 0:11:31.440 pulling their hair out, and clumps from radiation poisoning. Right, Like, 0:11:31.880 --> 0:11:35.800 this is something that we were pretty immediately aware that 0:11:36.240 --> 0:11:38.640 not only does the bomb kill a shitload of people 0:11:38.640 --> 0:11:40.760 when it goes off, but there are knock on effects 0:11:40.760 --> 0:11:43.480 that continue killing people. Right even though we didn't have 0:11:43.480 --> 0:11:45.760 a full understanding of this, we had a pretty good 0:11:45.880 --> 0:11:48.440 understanding pretty early of what we were doing to people 0:11:48.440 --> 0:11:51.880 with these things. The Air Corps generals did their best 0:11:51.920 --> 0:11:55.040 to minimize the horror of atomic weapons. In November of 0:11:55.120 --> 0:11:58.320 nineteen forty five, General Leslie Groves, who again the military 0:11:58.360 --> 0:12:01.199 head of the Manhattan Project, that before the US Senate 0:12:01.280 --> 0:12:03.480 Special Committee on Atomic Energy, and I want to read 0:12:03.520 --> 0:12:07.320 you a selected Q and A from that meeting, Senator Milligan. General, 0:12:07.400 --> 0:12:10.920 is there any medical antidote to excessive radiation? General Groves. 0:12:11.080 --> 0:12:13.160 I'm not a doctor, but I will answer it anyway. 0:12:13.240 --> 0:12:16.240 I always love it when people say that the radio 0:12:16.320 --> 0:12:18.520 act of casualty can be of several classes. He can 0:12:18.559 --> 0:12:20.199 have enough so that he will be killed instantly. He 0:12:20.240 --> 0:12:21.839 can have a smaller amount which will cause him to 0:12:21.840 --> 0:12:24.200 die rather soon, and as I understand it from the doctors, 0:12:24.200 --> 0:12:26.640 without undue suffering. In fact, they say it is a 0:12:26.760 --> 0:12:29.520 very pleasant way to die. Oh yeah, that's what people 0:12:29.559 --> 0:12:36.880 say about people say about radiation, about having your insides liquefied, pleasant, chill. 0:12:38.320 --> 0:12:40.000 All the parts of you that tell you that you're 0:12:40.040 --> 0:12:41.600 in trouble are also destroyed. 0:12:41.640 --> 0:12:43.880 So yeah, exactly, you're fine. 0:12:44.080 --> 0:12:46.959 You're chillin now happens to everyone. 0:12:47.760 --> 0:12:50.120 That was a lie. That was not just Groves not knowing. 0:12:50.200 --> 0:12:52.719 That was Groves lying to try and make nukes more 0:12:52.720 --> 0:12:56.560 palatable for Americans when he said that the average citizen, 0:12:56.559 --> 0:12:58.960 and indeed the average senator, would not have had to 0:12:59.000 --> 0:13:02.080 dig very deep to find at least a little countervailing 0:13:02.120 --> 0:13:05.600 evidence that radiation poisoning was not pleasant. Precisely what had 0:13:05.640 --> 0:13:07.800 happened on the ground in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not 0:13:07.920 --> 0:13:11.280 yet fully understood by most Americans, but early reports of 0:13:11.280 --> 0:13:13.840 horrific burns and lingering sickness far from the blast sight 0:13:13.960 --> 0:13:16.599 were available. More to the point, you've heard about the 0:13:16.640 --> 0:13:19.079 radium girls in the like. People had been exposing themselves 0:13:19.080 --> 0:13:22.160 to different kinds of radiation for decades and they died horribly. 0:13:22.520 --> 0:13:25.520 We knew radiation poisoning was not pleasant before we ever 0:13:25.559 --> 0:13:31.160 dropped an atomic bomb. Right now. Again, the point here 0:13:31.200 --> 0:13:33.240 is that Groves was he was not just lying, He 0:13:33.280 --> 0:13:35.760 was engaged in a cover up. This is a conspiracy, 0:13:35.800 --> 0:13:37.920 and it's a conspiracy that ran parallel to one of 0:13:37.960 --> 0:13:40.920 the most successful marketing campaigns of all time, the campaign 0:13:41.000 --> 0:13:44.240 to get Americans on the bomb. Step one of that 0:13:44.280 --> 0:13:46.840 campaign was to keep people from thinking of the horrors 0:13:46.880 --> 0:13:49.240 of atomic weapons for a little while, longer we knew 0:13:49.280 --> 0:13:52.000 eventually it would get out. Right. These generals all knew 0:13:52.240 --> 0:13:56.280 you can't lie about this forever, right, But the longer 0:13:56.320 --> 0:13:58.160 we lie about it, the more money we get into 0:13:58.200 --> 0:14:00.800 these programs, the more momentum they get behind them, the 0:14:00.840 --> 0:14:04.600 more we can centralize the US military and defense apparatus 0:14:04.640 --> 0:14:07.640 around nukes, which was their goal right Their goal was 0:14:07.640 --> 0:14:10.360 replaced as many humans as possible with atomic weapons, and 0:14:10.400 --> 0:14:13.880 they start on it almost immediately. For these generals, as 0:14:13.920 --> 0:14:16.679 for Curtis LeMay, the existence of the atom bomb seems 0:14:16.720 --> 0:14:19.400 to have given some sort of purpose and provided a dark, 0:14:19.520 --> 0:14:22.920 animating force to the remainder of their lives. Immediately after 0:14:22.920 --> 0:14:25.000 the war's end, they set to work launching a new 0:14:25.080 --> 0:14:28.560 kind of campaign, a media blitz targeted at convincing decision 0:14:28.560 --> 0:14:31.000 makers in the US that nukes were the only future 0:14:31.040 --> 0:14:33.840 for the military that was worth caring. About three months 0:14:33.880 --> 0:14:36.960 after the bombing of Hiroshima, LeMay visited the Ohio Society 0:14:37.000 --> 0:14:39.440 in New York City to give a speech. He warned 0:14:39.480 --> 0:14:41.800 slash promise the men a symbol that the next war, 0:14:41.880 --> 0:14:44.200 understood to be the next World War, would be fought 0:14:44.240 --> 0:14:48.120 with rockets, radar, jet propulsion, television guided missiles, and that 0:14:48.200 --> 0:14:50.640 all of these weapons would be launched at speeds faster 0:14:50.800 --> 0:14:54.560 than sound and involve atomic power. So he's he's got 0:14:54.560 --> 0:14:58.280 a pretty clear vision of the future. Our friend Curtis Lamay, 0:14:58.400 --> 0:15:00.040 and he is now trying to sell. 0:14:59.880 --> 0:15:04.280 It and like, are there other because Okay, we have 0:15:04.360 --> 0:15:06.600 this like thing where apparently people who build bombs are 0:15:06.600 --> 0:15:08.400 obsessed with how bombs are the only thing? 0:15:08.600 --> 0:15:08.840 Yes? 0:15:08.920 --> 0:15:13.320 Right? Are there other character classes who feel like similar 0:15:13.360 --> 0:15:15.760 about like, like are like the fighter jets being like, no, 0:15:15.920 --> 0:15:17.920 all that matters is fighter jets? 0:15:18.840 --> 0:15:21.920 Yeah, go ahead, yes there are, and what we will 0:15:21.960 --> 0:15:25.200 talk about that. Unfortunately, most of the people who disagree 0:15:25.200 --> 0:15:27.640 with le may just want nukes to be used differently. 0:15:28.560 --> 0:15:31.160 But there are some people, there's a couple of decent 0:15:31.280 --> 0:15:34.280 human beings still in the military establishment in this period 0:15:34.280 --> 0:15:36.200 who are like, what the fuck is wrong with you people? 0:15:36.800 --> 0:15:37.960 Are you at our minds? 0:15:38.480 --> 0:15:41.800 Yeah? You know what this thing does? Yeah, I'm able 0:15:41.800 --> 0:15:43.960 to figure out this means to destroy the world. 0:15:44.120 --> 0:15:46.720 Yeah, that seems bad. Why are we building the world 0:15:46.880 --> 0:15:48.840 killing machine? Why are we doing this? 0:15:49.400 --> 0:15:50.120 We live here? 0:15:50.480 --> 0:15:53.400 Yeah, this is the one planet that we've got. 0:15:54.160 --> 0:15:54.920 Yeah. 0:15:55.280 --> 0:15:57.720 Back in nineteen twenty one, do Hay had argued that 0:15:57.760 --> 0:16:00.080 the invention of the bomber craft basically rendered all all 0:16:00.120 --> 0:16:02.840 other types of weaponry obsolete, and LeMay was making a 0:16:02.880 --> 0:16:05.400 similar argument, but with the nuclear weapon at the heart 0:16:05.440 --> 0:16:07.840 of this fabled air force that could finally do the 0:16:07.880 --> 0:16:11.240 whole job of war all on its own. He argued, quote, 0:16:11.320 --> 0:16:14.560 the air force must be allowed to develop unhindered and unchained. 0:16:14.600 --> 0:16:17.680 There must be no ceiling, no boundaries, no limitations to 0:16:17.720 --> 0:16:20.840 our air power development. That doesn't sound at all like 0:16:20.840 --> 0:16:25.280 a crazy man, No, and it's you know, this is 0:16:25.320 --> 0:16:27.520 a pretty bleak series of episodes. I will say. One 0:16:27.520 --> 0:16:30.000 thing that has me optimistic is that Curtis Lemy tried 0:16:30.000 --> 0:16:32.880 harder than any single human ever has to end the 0:16:32.960 --> 0:16:35.800 human race and he didn't do it. And I don't 0:16:35.880 --> 0:16:39.960 quite know why. Like, it's shocking that we survived. Curtis Lamay, 0:16:40.120 --> 0:16:42.720 he would do shit like fly bombers into Russian airspace 0:16:42.800 --> 0:16:45.160 just to like tweak them, Like he was such a 0:16:45.280 --> 0:16:47.800 piece of shit, And they always had. 0:16:47.720 --> 0:16:52.480 Nukes, right, quantum immortality as a species. That that's all 0:16:52.520 --> 0:16:52.840 I got. 0:16:53.480 --> 0:16:57.640 It's nuts, Like no one has ever tried harder to 0:16:57.720 --> 0:17:01.400 wipe out the human race than Curtis fucking went with 0:17:01.560 --> 0:17:05.320 his fucking dead face. Oh man, it's nuts. I wonder 0:17:05.320 --> 0:17:05.760 if like. 0:17:05.720 --> 0:17:08.440 The villains and pulp stuff from like two hundred years 0:17:08.440 --> 0:17:11.280 ago didn't even claim that they're going to destroy the world, 0:17:11.359 --> 0:17:13.760 whereas like now we have villains who are like, I'm 0:17:13.760 --> 0:17:18.560 going to destroy the world, like yeah, yeah, because people 0:17:18.600 --> 0:17:19.560 can now. 0:17:19.440 --> 0:17:22.280 People can now, and we have examples of people who 0:17:22.320 --> 0:17:24.520 really worked hard to try to do that, you know. 0:17:25.160 --> 0:17:27.919 And this is ultimately kind of why we are now 0:17:27.960 --> 0:17:30.040 at the point where the whole human race is, you know, 0:17:30.119 --> 0:17:32.920 fifteen to thirty minutes away from annihilation at any given 0:17:33.000 --> 0:17:35.800 moment in time, which is Curtis LeMay and a bunch 0:17:35.880 --> 0:17:38.320 of guys that followed him felt the air force, and 0:17:38.359 --> 0:17:41.359 to them this means the nuclear air force must be 0:17:41.400 --> 0:17:45.560 allowed to develop, unhindered and unschained. I cannot emphasize enough 0:17:45.560 --> 0:17:47.919 how much of LeMay's speech to the Ohio Society was 0:17:48.000 --> 0:17:51.080 just warmed up do Hay. He insisted no air attack, 0:17:51.160 --> 0:17:54.080 once it is launched, can be completely stopped. This was 0:17:54.080 --> 0:17:55.960 an echo of du Hay's argument that the sky was 0:17:55.960 --> 0:17:59.439 too vast for bombers to be perfectly intercepted, right, And 0:17:59.520 --> 0:18:01.920 this hadn't proved true in World War Two, But when 0:18:02.000 --> 0:18:04.960 you got nukes, it kind of is true. Right. If 0:18:04.960 --> 0:18:07.440 you send five hundred bombers and they each have a nuke, 0:18:07.680 --> 0:18:09.600 one of them is going to drop that fucker, you know. 0:18:09.880 --> 0:18:14.280 Yeah. Also, when people say history doesn't repeat but it rhymes, yeah, 0:18:14.520 --> 0:18:17.280 this feels a little on the nose. I actually wasn't sure. 0:18:18.359 --> 0:18:21.280 Do May and lou Hay, Yeah, do Hay and le May? 0:18:21.800 --> 0:18:24.720 Yeah. Yeah. It is weird how history literally rhyme. 0:18:24.840 --> 0:18:27.480 Yeah. I hadn't even got that fuck no, because I 0:18:27.520 --> 0:18:29.320 was trying to remember which one was which. 0:18:29.400 --> 0:18:32.240 Yeah. Dueyes, the old Italian guy who was like in 0:18:32.359 --> 0:18:35.320 nineteen twenty one Bombers of the Future all, we need 0:18:35.560 --> 0:18:37.480 no use in having anything else. 0:18:38.080 --> 0:18:40.600 Yeah. A couple decades later, the man who rhymes says 0:18:40.640 --> 0:18:42.320 the same thing, right, nuke. 0:18:42.600 --> 0:18:44.800 Yeah, if you get if anyone gets into the military 0:18:44.840 --> 0:18:47.439 whose name rhymes with either of these guys' names, we 0:18:47.560 --> 0:18:52.879 need to redact it immediately. So, as Richard, I'm going 0:18:52.920 --> 0:18:54.359 to quote now from a piece in The New Yorker 0:18:54.359 --> 0:18:56.480 by Richard Rhodes in which he lays out le May's 0:18:56.560 --> 0:18:59.040 thinking in the rest of this speech, and it all 0:18:59.119 --> 0:19:01.680 kind of follows from the bay that you can't stop 0:19:01.720 --> 0:19:04.720 an aerial nuclear attack. Quote. This meant to le May 0:19:04.800 --> 0:19:06.560 that the United States would have to have an air 0:19:06.600 --> 0:19:10.320 force in being that could immediately move immediately to retaliate 0:19:10.320 --> 0:19:13.399 if the country was attacked. The preparation for retaliation, the 0:19:13.440 --> 0:19:15.440 thread of it might be sufficient to prevent attack in 0:19:15.480 --> 0:19:18.160 the first place. If we are prepared, it may never come. 0:19:18.200 --> 0:19:20.800 It is not immediately conceivable that any nation will dare 0:19:20.840 --> 0:19:23.360 to attack us if we are prepared. So in November 0:19:23.400 --> 0:19:25.960 of nineteen forty five, l May was already thinking in 0:19:26.040 --> 0:19:28.920 terms of what came to be called deterrence. But therein 0:19:29.000 --> 0:19:32.480