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World War II · Saberian History Lectures

• 0:00
  We left off with the US entry into the war.
• 0:04
  Now, if I look at the US entry into the war itself,
• 0:09
  the most, the easy answer for why did the US enter World War II
• 0:15
  is the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
• 0:18
  That's the easy answer.
• 0:20
  And that is true.
• 0:22
  So that's December 1941, the attack on Pearl Harbor.
• 0:32
  Leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor,
• 0:35
  you have the Japanese expansion into Manchuria, Mainland China,
• 0:44
  French Indochina will become Vietnam,
• 0:48
  and threatening British colonies in India, Pakistan, Burma,
• 0:56
  that area.
• 0:58
  So you have the Japanese who ally themselves
• 1:01
  with the fascists in Europe, not only to keep the Russians
• 1:06
  in check, but also because the Japanese are
• 1:10
  moving against British and French territorial possessions
• 1:14
  in the Eastern Hemisphere.
• 1:18
  Now, the US, seeing Japanese expansion,
• 1:24
  sanctions the Japanese, cuts off their fuel supply,
• 1:26
  and they attack the United States.
• 1:29
  Also, had the United States taken
• 1:31
  other measures against the Axis powers prior to Pearl Harbor?
• 1:37
  You have the Lend-Lease Bill, where the United States is,
• 1:41
  air quote, lending ships, but are they really?
• 1:44
  No, they're giving ships in exchange for naval bases.
• 1:48
  And it's a veiled breach of the neutrality.
• 1:53
  So December 1941, Japanese attack the United States.
• 1:58
  US declares war on Japan.
• 2:00
  Subsequently, Germany declares war on the United States.
• 2:02
  And then the US declares war on Germany.
• 2:04
  And everybody declares war on everybody.
• 2:07
  And so now World War II is on.
• 2:10
  US doesn't really get into the fray until 1942.
• 2:17
  So I'm going to get to the aims and strategy in a moment.
• 2:21
  The first military operation against the Axis powers.
• 2:26
  And so here's how I'm going to do it.
• 2:28
  And here's what I'm just going to call Europe and the Pacific.
• 2:39
  Now, really, if you think about it, World War II is two wars.
• 2:44
  It is.
• 2:44
  It is a war in the Pacific, and it is a war in the Atlantic.
• 2:48
  They are occurring at the same time,
• 2:51
  but they're on two different hemispheres.
• 2:54
  And so as a matter of ease, I kind of
• 2:57
  want to tell the story of first the war in Europe.
• 3:00
  So I'm going to go through the whole war in Europe,
• 3:02
  and then I'm going to go through the whole war
• 3:04
  in the Pacific, starting with December 1941.
• 3:09
  So America's first military operations.
• 3:13
  And so if I'm looking at Europe, before I get into America's
• 3:16
  first military operations, summer 1941.
• 3:23
  Germany invades what?
• 3:27
  Sudetenland.
• 3:29
  OK, that's in the 1930s.
• 3:32
  1941, summer of 1941, Germany invades the Soviet Union.
• 3:37
  They break the deal that Hitler had with Stalin.
• 3:41
  So summer of 1941, Germany invades the Soviet Union.
• 3:51
  Now, in 2020 hindsight, we look at that as a tactical error.
• 3:56
  However, if I look at the Germans' previous military
• 3:59
  experience, had they fought a great power before Russia?
• 4:04
  They had fought the French.
• 4:05
  How long did it take them to defeat the French?
• 4:07
  Like a month.
• 4:09
  So if I'm invading Soviet Russia in June,
• 4:12
  if I'm going off my previous experience,
• 4:14
  how long do I think it's going to take me to get to Moscow?
• 4:17
  A month, maybe six weeks.
• 4:20
  The Russian summer and the Russian fall aren't that bad.
• 4:24
  It's the Russian winter.
• 4:26
  And so yes, it's a tactical error,
• 4:28
  but based on their previous experience,
• 4:30
  it was not an unreasonable tactical error.
• 4:33
  OK, so something you need to keep in mind.
• 4:35
  There is fighting on the Eastern Front
• 4:38
  from 1941 until the fall of Berlin in May of 1945.
• 4:46
  So summer of 41, Germany invades USSR, May 1945.
• 4:57
  So the Red Army takes Berlin.
• 5:08
  So this is what we would call the Eastern Front.
• 5:19
  Do American troops participate in the Eastern Front
• 5:23
  of the European theater?
• 5:25
  No.
• 5:26
  Does America provide material aid to the Soviet Union
• 5:31
  in support of their operations in the Eastern Front?
• 5:33
  Yes.
• 5:34
  The United States and the United Kingdom
• 5:37
  provide supplies to the Soviet Union
• 5:41
  to help their war effort.
• 5:42
  So from 1941 to 1945, the Soviet Army is in combat action.
• 5:48
  The Soviet Union lost more people
• 5:49
  than the British and the Americans
• 5:51
  and the French resistance combined.
• 5:54
  To them, this was their first armed conflict
• 5:57
  since the Russian Revolution.
• 5:59
  So you have the Russian Revolution, the Russian Civil
• 6:02
  War, you now have the establishment of Soviet communism
• 6:04
  under Stalin, and this is their first armed conflict
• 6:07
  for the preservation of the Soviet Union against fascism.
• 6:11
  While the United States calls it World War II,
• 6:13
  the Russians call it the Great Patriotic War.
• 6:18
  So now let's get to the Western Front.
• 6:21
  And I say Western Front, but Western is not, in this case,
• 6:25
  it's not really Western Front in terms of where it's fighting.
• 6:28
  It's in terms of who's doing the fighting.
• 6:30
  We can call the United Kingdom and the United States
• 6:33
  Western peoples because we're west of Greenwich Mean Time
• 6:36
  and we're also west of the Earl Mountains.
• 6:38
  And so you don't actually have British or American troops
• 6:45
  in combat until November of 1942.
• 6:50
  Now here's the thing.
• 6:52
  In November of 1942, the United States and the United Kingdom
• 6:57
  land troops in North Africa.
• 7:05
  Why?
• 7:08
  Libya, Morocco, Egypt, Sinai.
• 7:15
  Why?
• 7:21
  The Germans had colonial interests
• 7:23
  and they had military presence.
• 7:25
  And the North Africa is, there's a German presence there,
• 7:30
  there's a fascist presence there,
• 7:32
  and it's the jumping off point to invade Italy.
• 7:36
  Also, and this is the part, and again, you kind of need
• 7:41
  to look at it from multiple perspectives.
• 7:43
  You have a, relatively speaking, green American army.
• 7:47
  What I mean by green is I'm not talking about the color
• 7:49
  of the uniforms.
• 7:50
  I mean they are not veteran soldiers.
• 7:54
  You're not going to throw the troops up
• 7:56
  against the bulk of the Nazi defenses in Europe.
• 7:58
  You're going to throw them against the Nazi periphery.
• 8:03
  In other words, here in North Africa,
• 8:06
  they're cut off from their mainland.
• 8:09
  They don't have ready access to the supplies.
• 8:11
  And so the contingent in North Africa is not as well fortified
• 8:15
  as the German contingent in Europe.
• 8:18
  And so why they go into North Africa?
• 8:21
  So you can look at it as training.
• 8:25
  You can look at it as strategy.
• 8:29
  But by the way, and let's go back to something
• 8:32
  I talked about leading into World War I.
• 8:34
  Who controls Egypt?
• 8:38
  Great Britain.
• 8:39
  Great Britain has.
• 8:41
  And so we can talk about this as protecting
• 8:45
  a British colonial interest.
• 8:48
  Now Egypt, which is in North Africa,
• 8:53
  also is where the Suez Canal is.
• 8:56
  So if Egypt falls to the Nazis, guess what is no longer
• 9:01
  available to the British?
• 9:04
  The Suez Canal.
• 9:05
  Now when you think about it, the United States
• 9:09
  becomes the premier oil producer and exporter
• 9:13
  to both Great Britain and to our forces in the Pacific.
• 9:16
  But where did Great Britain get its oil before?
• 9:20
  They got it from Texas.
• 9:21
  Before Texas, they got it from Egypt and from the Middle East.
• 9:25
  You get the idea.
• 9:27
  Now if you're Russia and you're like, wait,
• 9:29
  we're killing the Germans while you're playing in the sand,
• 9:34
  do you see how this begins to breed some degree of distrust
• 9:37
  between the Soviet Union and the Western Allies?
• 9:43
  So November of 1942, you have Operation Torch.
• 9:47
  January of 1943, you have the Casablanca Conference.
• 9:54
  The Casablanca Conference was a meeting
• 9:58
  of Churchill and Roosevelt. First time a president had
• 10:06
  actually flown outside of the continental United States.
• 10:09
  Now had there been a president who
• 10:10
  had gone outside the continental United States before?
• 10:13
  Wilson, by ship, on a passenger liner
• 10:16
  with a full on battleship military escort.
• 10:18
  We come in peace.
• 10:19
  We brought several warships.
• 10:22
  Now one of the things about the Casablanca Conference
• 10:25
  was they came to a consensus that they would only
• 10:27
  accept the unconditional surrender of Germany.
• 10:33
  Why was unconditional surrender a necessary thing?
• 10:40
  Because what was the original cause of the war?
• 10:47
  They violated the Treaty of Versailles.
• 10:49
  They violated the Munich Conference.
• 10:51
  And they invaded Poland.
• 10:54
  When you declare war, and I didn't really
• 10:56
  get into this because I should have.
• 10:59
  So December 8, the United States declares war on Germany.
• 11:03
  Who declares war in the American Constitution?
• 11:08
  Congress.
• 11:09
  It is an act of Congress.
• 11:10
  FDR does something that no other American president has done.
• 11:14
  He signs the Declaration of War.
• 11:18
  Presidents don't sign declarations of war.
• 11:21
  Why not?
• 11:22
  Because it's not his job.
• 11:25
  He executes war.
• 11:26
  It's not a law.
• 11:27
  It is Congress is saying we are at war with these people.
• 11:31
  You get what I'm saying?
• 11:32
  So while a president can sign a treaty,
• 11:35
  it's not ratified until it's passed by the Senate.
• 11:37
  A declaration of war doesn't need a presidential signature.
• 11:40
  So then why did he sign it?
• 11:43
  Because come now, this is FDR.
• 11:44
  It's all about him.
• 11:48
  And it could have been an error.
• 11:50
  But anyway, so they demanded unconditional surrender.
• 11:54
  What else could you have demanded of an enemy
• 11:56
  rather than unconditional surrender?
• 12:00
  Withdraw from this place or that place, yes?
• 12:05
  Because what had been the model in previous wars
• 12:07
  with the Germans?
• 12:10
  We push you back into your country.
• 12:12
  We don't annihilate your capital.
• 12:16
  World War II is really the first time
• 12:17
  that war is visited on the capital of the major warring
• 12:20
  powers for the first time in industrialized warfare.
• 12:24
  Previously, it was limited war for limited ends.
• 12:26
  The capitals were left unmolested
• 12:29
  because you were only fighting for this county or that county.
• 12:31
  But now you have the capability with modern industrial warfare
• 12:34
  that the Nazis went to Paris.
• 12:36
  And in the end, the Allies will go to Berlin.
• 12:39
  You get the idea.
• 12:40
  OK, so let's keep going.
• 12:43
  Battle in the Atlantic.
• 12:45
  And the book does this as kind of an aside,
• 12:47
  but here's the thing.
• 12:48
  The Atlantic Ocean.
• 12:49
  You have merchant men, combat vessels, and German U-boats
• 12:56
  dueling it out in the sea lanes of the Atlantic.
• 12:58
  So one of the things that the US and the British start doing
• 13:01
  is they start moving ships in convoys.
• 13:03
  What a convoy is is, OK, back before the convoy system
• 13:07
  and back before the war is you'd load the ship up,
• 13:10
  you'd get on the sea lanes, you'd go to your destination.
• 13:13
  If a German U-boat found you, you sunk.
• 13:15
  Sucks to be you.
• 13:19
  What a convoy system is is you send a group of ships
• 13:23
  in a formation with an armed escort.
• 13:27
  The armed escort was a destroyer.
• 13:30
  Destroyers are small, relatively fast ships.
• 13:32
  And what they would do is they would patrol around the slower
• 13:38
  moving merchant ships looking for German U-boats.
• 13:41
  And if they found German U-boats,
• 13:42
  they would use depth charges or torpedoes or whatever
• 13:45
  to attack the German U-boats to provide
• 13:47
  some semblance of defense.
• 13:49
  Because basically, if you're an unarmed merchant ship,
• 13:53
  your only recourse if you had a German U-boat
• 13:55
  was to ram it while it was on the surface, which
• 14:01
  they trained for that contingency.
• 14:02
  You get the idea.
• 14:04
  And so with the dawn of a convoy system,
• 14:06
  the losses to the Germans' U-boats was less.
• 14:10
  This allowed the Allies to move not just produce
• 14:15
  from America and from the colonies, but also
• 14:18
  the massive number of military personnel
• 14:21
  as they move troops to North Africa,
• 14:24
  and they move troops to England in preparation
• 14:27
  for the Normandy invasion.
• 14:29
  July 1943.
• 14:31
  Actually, I'm going to get to that in just a minute.
• 14:33
  All right.
• 14:35
  So July 1943, the Allies jump from North Africa to Sicily.
• 14:41
  I'm going to show you this on a map.
• 14:45
  If I can find a map.
• 14:46
  Here we go.
• 14:49
  Zoom in.
• 14:50
  So basically, they expel the Nazis out of Northern Africa.
• 14:57
  Then they land at Palermo and then Syracuse,
• 15:02
  and then they start moving on Italy.
• 15:04
  Why?
• 15:04
  Who are they going to take out first?
• 15:07
  Mussolini.
• 15:08
  Couple of things.
• 15:09
  Italy as an economy is less industrialized.
• 15:12
  Italy is a more divided government.
• 15:14
  Italy doesn't have the same state apparatus.
• 15:17
  Things like that.
• 15:20
  So July of 43, landing in Sicily.
• 15:27
  Fall of 1943, all three of the major leaders meet in Tehran.
• 15:31
  Now, let me tell you something kind of interesting
• 15:33
  about Tehran, and I don't know if you can see that on the map.
• 15:36
  Hang on.
• 15:37
  That's Yalta.
• 15:38
  Let me show you Tehran.
• 15:40
  OK.
• 15:42
  So let's look at the map for a moment.
• 15:46
  Oops.
• 15:47
  All right, here we go.
• 15:49
  Kind of interesting.
• 15:53
  Where is Tehran?
• 15:56
  In Iran, which is an ally, an axis, neutral.
• 16:02
  Kind of interesting, neutral, but until 1941,
• 16:09
  Iran was an ally of the Nazis.
• 16:15
  So plot twist.
• 16:18
  Actually kind of interesting.
• 16:19
  Actually not kind of in the book.
• 16:21
  So from time immemorial to 1935, the country we now call Iran
• 16:30
  was called Persia in reference to the Persian Empire.
• 16:33
  In 1935, the Qajar dynasty was overthrown,
• 16:39
  making way for the Pahlavi dynasty.
• 16:42
  Reza Khan, the first of the Pahlavi kings,
• 16:46
  allied his country with Germany in the 1930s.
• 16:51
  By the way, if you're Iran, what very large power
• 16:54
  is to the north of you?
• 16:57
  Russia.
• 16:57
  And so the country was called Persia.
• 17:00
  And so why do you ally yourself with Germany?
• 17:03
  The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
• 17:06
  So there were geopolitical reasons.
• 17:08
  There were actually economic ties
• 17:10
  between Iran, Germany, and Turkey going back
• 17:12
  to the time of the Ottoman Turks.
• 17:15
  And there were actually linguistic cultural ties
• 17:18
  between the Persians and the Germans.
• 17:20
  It's actually kind of interesting.
• 17:22
  The languages are very similar, actually.
• 17:24
  You don't notice it because Persian uses an Arabic script.
• 17:28
  But in 1935, the Shah and the government
• 17:31
  changed the name of the country from Persia
• 17:34
  to Iran, which means the land of the Aryans,
• 17:38
  in solidarity with Hitler's Third Reich.
• 17:42
  So why are the major allied powers
• 17:45
  having a conference in Tehran in 1943?
• 17:50
  Well, in 1941, the Soviets invaded Iran, deposed the king,
• 17:56
  and allowed his son to sit on the throne
• 17:59
  because his son had left fewer ties to Hitler.
• 18:02
  Also, why would the Soviet Union invade Iran?
• 18:07
  Oil, partially.
• 18:08
  Soviet Union has oil.
• 18:10
  There is one thing that the Soviet Union doesn't have
• 18:13
  in 1941 because in 1941, who controls the Baltic Sea?
• 18:22
  Germany.
• 18:22
  Russia has a lot of coastline, but most of that coastline
• 18:26
  is frozen in the winter.
• 18:30
  What's their only ports that are warm water ports?
• 18:36
  The Black Sea and the Baltic Sea.
• 18:41
  The Nazis control the Baltic Sea.
• 18:43
  And you have, actually, the Germans beginning
• 18:45
  to encroach on Ukraine.
• 18:47
  So they actually control the end of the Baltic Sea.
• 18:50
  They have the main ports in Ukraine,
• 18:53
  so they actually control the entry points into the Black Sea
• 18:56
  because Greece is under fascist control as well.
• 19:00
  So they use the Persian Gulf as a warm water
• 19:03
  port for the supplies coming from the United States
• 19:10
  and the United Kingdom.
• 19:10
  So they basically had to run over Iran
• 19:12
  to get a warm water port because all their other ports
• 19:14
  were either blocked or frozen.
• 19:16
  Kind of an interesting aside that most history books
• 19:18
  don't get into, including yours.
• 19:20
  In Tehran, in the Tehran Conference,
• 19:22
  they actually begin the process of looking at world governance
• 19:27
  afterwards.
• 19:28
  They agree to an unconditional surrender,
• 19:30
  and they set the timeline for the cross-channel invasion.
• 19:33
  So Tehran Conference is the fall of 43.
• 19:37
  The cross-channel invasion, Normandy, is the summer of 44.
• 19:44
  Basically, Stalin's like, hello, we
• 19:46
  were looking to open up that second front.
• 19:48
  Why are you playing in the sands in Africa?
• 19:50
  You get the idea.
• 19:51
  But they had a meeting of the minds in Tehran.
• 19:53
  OK, everybody good on this part so far?
• 19:55
  Yes?
• 19:56
  OK.
• 19:59
  So cross-channel invasion.
• 20:04
  So kind of interesting.
• 20:06
  The Allies are working their way up Italy.
• 20:08
  June 4, 1944.
• 20:12
  Two things happen.
• 20:15
  June 4, 1944.
• 20:16
  Two things happen in June.
• 20:17
  June 4, Mussolini was dismissed by the king.
• 20:24
  So Mussolini's out.
• 20:26
  He tries to set up a fascist puppet
• 20:28
  state up in northern Italy.
• 20:31
  He is eventually captured by the people decapitated
• 20:34
  along with his wife and his corpse hanging upside down
• 20:36
  in the street.
• 20:39
  Yeah.
• 20:41
  So June of summer of 1944, Mussolini is out of the equation,
• 20:45
  and he dies horribly.
• 20:47
  OK.
• 20:49
  June 6, 1944.
• 20:51
  You have the Normandy invasion.
• 20:53
  Largest amphibious assault in the history of the human race.
• 21:02
  So you have the Normandy landing.
• 21:04
  Actually kind of interesting getting
• 21:06
  into a little bit of the military strategies.
• 21:09
  By the way, if you ever have time,
• 21:10
  if you ever watch Francis Ford Coppola's rendition of Patton,
• 21:14
  it does get into a lot of these details very, very well,
• 21:17
  and it's one of the great classic movie cinema things.
• 21:20
  So here you have Dunkirk and the Pas de Calais.
• 21:25
  The Pas de Calais is the narrowest point
• 21:27
  between England and France.
• 21:30
  So you know those people who swim the English Channel?
• 21:33
  They're swimming from here.
• 21:37
  They would not swim from here or here.
• 21:42
  I know I have a lot of swimmers in here.
• 21:46
  I would not recommend doing it.
• 21:47
  It's cold.
• 21:48
  I don't want any of you to say challenge accepted.
• 21:50
  I mean, this is not going to end well.
• 21:53
  I was thinking the movie about Dunkirk.
• 21:56
  I'm.
• 21:58
  All right.
• 21:59
  Anyway.
• 22:02
  Oh, all right.
• 22:03
  Well, too late to help you review for my test.
• 22:05
  Anyway, well, hopefully it'll help the next 1301 class.
• 22:08
  All right.
• 22:09
  So here's the thing.
• 22:11
  If you're Nazi Germany and you think the enemy is coming,
• 22:14
  where do you think they're going to come?
• 22:17
  Pas de Calais.
• 22:18
  Yes?
• 22:19
  So the Nazis have most of their defenses concentrated here.
• 22:22
  Now, kind of interesting is they actually
• 22:25
  did create a phantom army and spread false intelligence
• 22:29
  that the United States and the British
• 22:31
  were going to attack at the Pas de Calais.
• 22:33
  They don't.
• 22:34
  They land at Normandy, which is further.
• 22:36
  So while many of the Nazi defenses
• 22:38
  are tied up here, that included their Panzer divisions,
• 22:41
  the US lands here.
• 22:44
  Now, part of it is they didn't believe their own intelligence
• 22:48
  reports.
• 22:49
  And again, it's one of those things,
• 22:52
  if the Nazis had reacted more swiftly,
• 22:54
  Normandy would have been remembered not
• 22:56
  as a military success, but as a colossal failure.
• 22:59
  As it stands, more modern historiography
• 23:02
  has pointed to it as, OK, it's not that the US was good
• 23:06
  and the Nazis were bad at what they did.
• 23:08
  It's that the Nazis screwed up more.
• 23:11
  Because one of the things that you had in the Normandy invasion
• 23:13
  is, OK, they had this great plan.
• 23:15
  OK, we'll have these swimming tanks.
• 23:16
  We'll get the people on the shore.
• 23:18
  Yeah, the swimming tank sank.
• 23:21
  You had a very large loss of life among American soldiers
• 23:25
  because their vehicle sank and whatnot.
• 23:29
  And a lot of lives were lost because they were pinned down
• 23:32
  and the Nazis were mowing them down.
• 23:33
  Now, one of the things that you run into,
• 23:35
  and this is where we get the expression,
• 23:36
  Rangers Lead the Way.
• 23:40
  No, Rangers Lead the Way is the motto commonly found
• 23:43
  among the US Army Rangers.
• 23:44
  It was the Army Rangers at the cliffs of Normandy
• 23:48
  where they climbed the cliffs to take out the Nazi machine
• 23:51
  gun nests led by Earl Rudder of Texas A&M.
• 23:56
  Now, it's actually kind of interesting getting
• 23:58
  into the whole thing.
• 23:59
  So they paratrooped people behind enemy lines
• 24:01
  to cut the communication lines.
• 24:04
  Then the main force comes in.
• 24:05
  Actually, and Stephen Ambrose wrote a great book about it,
• 24:09
  also one of the other great annals of military history.
• 24:12
  So there's this destroyer captain who sees.
• 24:19
  Before you send people in, you bombard the target
• 24:22
  to take out defenses.
• 24:24
  So they got the battleships putting down
• 24:26
  ordnance on the coastline.
• 24:27
  And then you've got the amphibious troops coming in.
• 24:29
  Well, the thing about the battleships
• 24:30
  is battleships are big and heavy,
• 24:32
  and they can't get close.
• 24:34
  So there's a destroyer captain who's on patrol,
• 24:37
  and he sees the troops are getting
• 24:39
  cut up by a German emplacement.
• 24:41
  He beaches his vessel and uses the deck guns on the destroyer
• 24:44
  to open up on the Nazis.
• 24:46
  He was not court-martialed.
• 24:47
  One of the few times that a Navy captain has beached a vessel
• 24:50
  and gotten away with it.
• 24:53
  It's like, yeah, it was worth it.
• 24:54
  All right.
• 24:56
  So that was June 6, 1944.
• 24:59
  Once they break through the Nazi defenses at Normandy,
• 25:04
  it's a line drive to Paris.
• 25:06
  Why is it a line drive to Paris?
• 25:09
  Where is the bulk of the Nazi army fighting who?
• 25:15
  The Russians.
• 25:18
  Because this Eastern Front is still going on.
• 25:22
  And how long have they been fighting the Russians?
• 25:25
  Four years.
• 25:26
  They've been bled out.
• 25:28
  Nazi Germany, when the Allies get past Normandy,
• 25:33
  when they cross into Koblenz, the Nazi army
• 25:36
  is down to old men and boys.
• 25:40
  Because in a standard military practice,
• 25:42
  you take your fighting age men.
• 25:44
  That's your 18 to 30.
• 25:47
  When you start digging into your 40-year-olds
• 25:49
  and your 50-year-olds and you start tagging 14 and 16-year-olds,
• 25:52
  that's when you're at the bottom of the barrel.
• 25:55
  You get what I'm saying?
• 25:59
  It's not just a draft.
• 26:00
  Think about this for a moment.
• 26:03
  And I know it is very hard for us
• 26:05
  who have lived in a long place of peace
• 26:07
  to put your mind to this.
• 26:12
  The enemy is at the gate.
• 26:14
  It's not that you sign up.
• 26:16
  It's that the fires are burning and somebody gives you a gun.
• 26:22
  And you're looking to defend your home and your native land.
• 26:27
  That's where they were.
• 26:29
  We don't have a schema for that, do we?
• 26:33
  We could not possibly envision the hills of the valley
• 26:37
  on fire and the enemy at the gate.
• 26:40
  Could we?
• 26:44
  Want to put yourself in that person's head for a moment?
• 26:47
  And in that moment, do you care a lick
• 26:50
  about politics or leader or what have you?
• 26:54
  No.
• 26:55
  You're looking out for your home, your family,
• 26:58
  and the man next to you in the stack.
• 27:01
  All right.
• 27:02
  So July 25, you have the liberation of Paris.
• 27:09
  So July 25, 1944, Paris is liberated.
• 27:16
  And so basically, you have, after they get past Paris,
• 27:20
  that's not us.
• 27:21
  You have the Red Army heading to the west.
• 27:24
  You have the American and the British Army heading to the east.
• 27:27
  And they're both heading towards Berlin,
• 27:29
  because who's in Berlin?
• 27:32
  Specifically Hitler.
• 27:33
  It's OK.
• 27:34
  This is the chess match.
• 27:35
  You take the capital.
• 27:35
  You win the game.
• 27:36
  Yes?
• 27:37
  And both and also, they're not just looking to win the war,
• 27:41
  because here's the thing.
• 27:42
  They're already planning for the next one.
• 27:46
  What's the next one?
• 27:48
  This was always known.
• 27:51
  The war between the Western world, the capitalists,
• 27:55
  and the communists.
• 27:58
  And so embedded in this conflict,
• 28:01
  you have the Russians trying to take as much of Eastern Europe
• 28:05
  as they can.
• 28:06
  And you have the Western powers trying
• 28:08
  to take as much of Western Europe
• 28:10
  as they can to set themselves up to be in a good position,
• 28:14
  because they know that the philosophy of communism
• 28:17
  and the philosophy of liberal democracy
• 28:19
  cannot peacefully coexist in the same world.
• 28:24
  There was a reason why America was
• 28:26
  reluctant to jump into the war between communists and fascists.
• 28:29
  They just figured out they couldn't live with fascism,
• 28:33
  or at least not in those countries.
• 28:34
  OK.
• 28:35
  So February 1945, a couple of things happen.
• 28:39
  You have the Yalta Conference.
• 28:41
  At the Yalta Conference, the major powers
• 28:44
  negotiate how they are going to divide Europe.
• 28:48
  So now that the Russians and the Americans and the British
• 28:51
  start having territorial control over France,
• 28:53
  over Poland, over Czechoslovakia,
• 28:55
  they start dividing what's going to be under Russian control
• 28:58
  and what's going to be under Western control.
• 29:03
  April 12, 1945, FDR dies in the arms of his mistress.
• 29:08
  Of a stroke, apparently.
• 29:17
  May 2, 1945, Berlin falls.
• 29:22
  Hitler commits suicide.
• 29:24
  Why?
• 29:26
  Because he doesn't want to go out like Mussolini.
• 29:31
  He doesn't want to go out like Mussolini.
• 29:34
  Because he doesn't want to go out like Mussolini.
• 29:38
  How did Mussolini go out?
• 29:40
  Being hung upside down and decapitated
• 29:42
  and letting the flies devour his corpse in the street.
• 29:47
  So what does Hitler do?
• 29:48
  Well, he and his lover.
• 29:50
  His lover takes a cyanide pill.
• 29:52
  He takes a Walther PPK 7.62 or 7.6 millimeter,
• 29:57
  puts it, blows his brains out, and the plan
• 29:59
  was for them to both be burned in petrol, gasoline.
• 30:04
  Sort of ancient Aryan fire ritual.
• 30:06
  Anyway, so Hitler's dead.
• 30:10
  Who does the surrender?
• 30:13
  Karl Dönitz.
• 30:15
  Karl Dönitz was the commander of the U-boat fleet.
• 30:22
  And he was basically the vice-fuerer, basically.
• 30:27
  And so it fell to him.
• 30:28
  Kind of interesting, the surrender of the German army
• 30:32
  and the German armed forces was basically, so Berlin falls.
• 30:37
  The leadership makes its way to surrender to the British
• 30:41
  and to the Americans.
• 30:43
  Why?
• 30:45
  They don't want to surrender to the Russians.
• 30:49
  Because the Russians were a lot less civilized about things.
• 30:53
  Russians had a score to sell.
• 30:56
  OK.
• 30:57
  So May 8, the Nazi government surrenders to the Allies.
• 31:04
  I'm going to fast forward to the war in the Pacific,
• 31:07
  because I don't want to run out of time.
• 31:09
  You'll have to read up on the Holocaust at your own leisure.
• 31:12
  Many of you have had to stay.
• 31:13
  Did you all have to read Knight by Elie Weisel?
• 31:16
  OK.
• 31:17
  He died this year, didn't he?
• 31:19
  Last year.
• 31:20
  Last year?
• 31:21
  Or he died in 16.
• 31:22
  Yeah.
• 31:23
  I mean, the dude was ancient.
• 31:26
  I mean, but still a loss to humanity.
• 31:31
  All right.
• 31:31
  Everybody good on this?
• 31:33
  Yes?
• 31:33
  All right.
• 31:34
  Let's get to the Pacific.
• 31:37
  So a couple of things you need to keep in mind.
• 31:40
  So December 1941, you have the attack on Pearl Harbor.
• 31:48
  You also have the Japanese have launched
• 31:52
  an invasion of the Philippines.
• 31:53
  They will successfully occupy the Philippines.
• 31:56
  The Philippines was an American territory going all the way
• 32:00
  back to what war?
• 32:02
  Spanish-American War.
• 32:03
  At that time, the former chief of staff of the US Army,
• 32:06
  Douglas MacArthur, is in the Philippines
• 32:09
  commanding US troops.
• 32:11
  He is ordered by the president to exit the island.
• 32:14
  He takes a PT boat out.
• 32:15
  The Japanese set up a blockade.
• 32:17
  He has to leave his men.
• 32:20
  When he gets to Australia, he pledges
• 32:22
  that he will return to the Philippines.
• 32:25
  I came through, and I shall return.
• 32:29
  But before you can return to the Philippines,
• 32:31
  you have to have operational control of the waters around it.
• 32:33
  Yes?
• 32:34
  No more water.
• 32:34
  Yes.
• 32:36
  OK.
• 32:38
  So first big battle is May 7 and 8, 1942.
• 32:47
  It's the Battle of the Coral Sea.
• 32:48
  What's interesting about the Battle of the Coral Sea,
• 32:51
  and I don't know if our friends in ROTC
• 32:53
  have told you all this story.
• 32:55
  What's the interesting part of the Battle of the Coral Sea?
• 32:59
  First naval battle where the ships did not actually
• 33:03
  see each other.
• 33:04
  It was carrier aircraft.
• 33:07
  First aircraft carrier battle where basically this carrier
• 33:12
  group sent planes to go bomb the heck out of those guys,
• 33:15
  and it comes back.
• 33:16
  You get the idea?
• 33:18
  OK, that one was kind of interesting.
• 33:19
  But the big territorial June 4, 1942, the Battle of Midway.
• 33:30
  Or was it 43?
• 33:31
  I need to double check.
• 33:32
  Nope.
• 33:38
  OK.
• 33:44
  All right, now, Midway is the turning point in the Pacific.
• 33:49
  All right.
• 33:51
  And I'm going to see if I have a map for this.
• 33:55
  Let me see.
• 33:57
  Here we go.
• 33:58
  All right.
• 33:59
  So that's Saipan.
• 34:04
  Where's Midway?
• 34:06
  Pearl Harbor.
• 34:07
  Ah, Midway.
• 34:08
  Here we go.
• 34:09
  OK.
• 34:10
  So here's Hawaii.
• 34:14
  Here's Midway.
• 34:15
  Here's Japan.
• 34:16
  Called Midway because it's kind of Midway.
• 34:18
  I mean, they weren't very creative about the names.
• 34:21
  OK.
• 34:21
  So when you have this, you can then move to the other islands.
• 34:27
  OK.
• 34:28
  Now, February 1943, you have the Battle of Guadalcanal.
• 34:36
  A grossly undermanned US force takes
• 34:40
  the island from the Japanese.
• 34:43
  Now, you also, and when I look at World War II in the Pacific,
• 34:50
  you have US forces vectoring from California, Hawaii,
• 34:54
  towards Japan here.
• 34:55
  You also have US forces in the South Pacific here.
• 34:59
  You also have Australian forces coming up from New Guinea.
• 35:03
  Because when the Japanese attack,
• 35:05
  they attack Pearl Harbor, but then they
• 35:08
  go Philippines, Indonesia, New Guinea,
• 35:12
  because what's their plan next?
• 35:15
  Australia.
• 35:16
  Now, is Australia a territorially large country?
• 35:20
  Yes.
• 35:21
  Is it a populous country?
• 35:23
  No.
• 35:24
  If I have to take Australia, I only
• 35:26
  need to take the major cities.
• 35:28
  It is not a country where people are, I mean,
• 35:31
  Australia has been conquered before.
• 35:32
  It used to belong to the Bushmen.
• 35:35
  And then the British showed up.
• 35:39
  I mean, there it is.
• 35:40
  And so originally, you have American forces
• 35:44
  under MacArthur's command coming up from Australia.
• 35:48
  First, they have to take New Guinea.
• 35:49
  And then you've got Nimitz's fleet moving towards Japan
• 35:54
  this way.
• 35:54
  So a couple of things going on.
• 35:56
  MacArthur, who has limited men and limited resources,
• 36:00
  knows he cannot win in pitched battles.
• 36:03
  And this is where MacArthur is actually
• 36:05
  demonstrated to be one of the few great military strategists
• 36:07
  of American history.
• 36:08
  American military history has really only
• 36:10
  had about three.
• 36:14
  Lee, MacArthur, and Schwarzkopf.
• 36:16
  That's it.
• 36:18
  Most American historiography has said
• 36:20
  that the United States has only produced
• 36:22
  three great strategists.
• 36:24
  The rest of the wars that the United States has won
• 36:26
  has been due to overwhelming industrial capacity.
• 36:30
  I can send more men at my enemy than he can send at me.
• 36:33
  In the case of Lee, and in the case of MacArthur,
• 36:35
  and in the case of Schwarzkopf, you actually
• 36:37
  have victories with inferior numbers.
• 36:39
  OK, so what you have with MacArthur's strategy
• 36:42
  is what they call island hopping or leapfrogging.
• 36:52
  And so the idea of leapfrogging is this.
• 36:54
  Rather than attacking my enemy in his fortified positions
• 37:00
  and killing them all, I attack his supply lines, which
• 37:04
  are less heavily guarded.
• 37:06
  And what happens if the people in those garrisons
• 37:09
  are cut off from their supplies?
• 37:11
  Of starvation.
• 37:13
  And MacArthur said, starvation is my ally.
• 37:17
  And so they went from island to island to island
• 37:21
  to cut the Japanese off of their supplies.
• 37:23
  Now, the Central Pacific, and I talked about this
• 37:25
  before Tinian, Guam, and Saipan.
• 37:27
  I talked about this in my napalm lecture.
• 37:30
  You have the United States landing amphibious forces,
• 37:33
  dropping firebombs on the place, and taking the islands.
• 37:35
  Because here's your basic idea.
• 37:37
  You push the Japanese off of Indonesia.
• 37:41
  But the thing is, if you can take Japan, game's over, yes?
• 37:45
  So you cut their supply lines so the Japanese can't advance.
• 37:48
  And then you work your way taking islands,
• 37:50
  because your end goal is to take Formosa and Okinawa.
• 37:55
  From Okinawa, I can set up an air base.
• 37:57
  And what can I start doing?
• 37:59
  Bomb.
• 37:59
  Bombing.
• 38:00
  Now, nuclear weapons haven't been developed.
• 38:02
  But what has been developed back in 1942?
• 38:05
  Napalm.
• 38:07
  Napalm.
• 38:08
  And what can I do with napalm?
• 38:10
  Burn.
• 38:11
  I can burn and kill a whole bunch of people.
• 38:14
  So you have the island hopping through 1943 into 1944.
• 38:22
  October 1944, you have the Battle of Leyte Gulf.
• 38:25
  And MacArthur returns to the Philippines.
• 38:35
  Then from the Philippines, they move on to Okinawa.
• 38:38
  Once they take Okinawa, they begin
• 38:40
  launching strategic attacks on the targets in mainland Japan.
• 38:44
  You have March 1945, the firebombing of Tokyo,
• 38:47
  which I talked about in the napalm lecture.
• 38:49
  And then you have the Japanese, which
• 38:51
  is the Japanese attack on Japan in 1945, the firebombing
• 38:55
  of Tokyo, which I talked about in the napalm lecture.
• 38:59
  Killed three times as many people as the atomic blast
• 39:02
  as Hiroshima.
• 39:04
  When you drop enough napalm on enough places in a city,
• 39:09
  the city goes up.
• 39:10
  You have primary fires become secondary fires.
• 39:12
  And secondary fires become a firestorm
• 39:14
  that has its own weather system.
• 39:16
  It not only kills by direct contact burns,
• 39:19
  but also by the explosion of atomic bombs.
• 39:21
  And then you have the Japanese attack on Japan.
• 39:24
  And the Japanese attack on Japan is a massive, massive
• 39:26
  infection.
• 39:28
  Really massive casualties.
• 39:30
  If you want more details, I have that on the other podcast.
• 39:33
  Those of you who were here last Friday, that was fun, wasn't it?
• 39:36
  I mean, not for them.
• 39:37
  I mean, for us.
• 39:38
  I mean, looking at it backwards.
• 39:41
  OK.
• 39:41
  Now, here's the thing that's kind of interesting.
• 39:47
  Obviously, Germany had been conquered, but here's the thing,
• 39:50
  which has more people.
• 39:52
  Japan had more people than Germany.
• 39:53
  Not only that, they had ferocious emperor worship.
• 39:55
  And so as they were preparing for the invasion of Japan,
• 39:58
  most of the military planners were not
• 40:00
  aware of the atomic bomb.
• 40:04
  Even Vice President Truman did not
• 40:07
  know about the atomic bomb until it was ready.
• 40:13
  August.
• 40:14
  So Truman authorizes the nuclear attack in July of 1945.
• 40:18
  August 1945, the United States dropped the first atomic weapon
• 40:24
  on the port city of Hiroshima.
• 40:26
  Why?
• 40:28
  One of the things, and this is one thing
• 40:30
  that your friends in AP are going to waste a lot of time
• 40:33
  on, the why.
• 40:38
  Had the United States already used
• 40:40
  mass weapons of destruction against civilian targets?
• 40:43
  Yes.
• 40:45
  What is less interesting than why
• 40:47
  Truman agreed to drop the atomic bomb in August of 1945
• 40:51
  is why the US was fired bombing Dresden and Tokyo
• 40:54
  and all these other cities years earlier,
• 40:56
  because it killed a lot more people.
• 41:01
  So originally, it was, OK, we have this piece of ordinance.
• 41:05
  Let's try it, see what it works.
• 41:07
  One bomb is better than 20 tons, so let's see what happens.
• 41:10
  And so they detonate the bomb first Hiroshima,
• 41:14
  then they have another bomb dropped on Nagasaki.
• 41:17
  Kind of interesting, the Hiroshima blast
• 41:20
  kills 78,000 in the blast zone and 140,000 due to radiation.
• 41:26
  Later, they aren't fully aware of the radiation studies
• 41:28
  until later.
• 41:29
  Radiation studies aren't released to the public
• 41:31
  until 1953.
• 41:33
  In most of the earliest research about atomic weapons,
• 41:36
  they're still categorized as incendiaries,
• 41:39
  because that was the only thing that they could compare it to
• 41:42
  in terms of destruction.
• 41:44
  OK.
• 41:47
  Two days later, they detonate the second bomb at Nagasaki.
• 41:53
  The government changes in and the emperor
• 41:57
  addresses his people directly over radio
• 42:01
  for the first time in Japanese history,
• 42:05
  and they were terrified.
• 42:08
  Now think about this for a moment.
• 42:09
  We have a schema for this.
• 42:10
  We hear our president, we see our president all the time,
• 42:12
  yes?
• 42:15
  In Japanese culture, you do not look the emperor in the face.
• 42:21
  So for an emperor who is seen as divine to address his people
• 42:26
  directly, to announce that they had to change their strategy,
• 42:29
  the Japanese would eventually surrender,
• 42:31
  was a shocking and terrifying moment for the Japanese people.
• 42:37
  So final surrender was on board the USS Missouri.
• 42:42
  MacArthur officiated the surrender.
• 42:51
  MacArthur, when he talks about it,
• 42:53
  he says that, if we do not find a peaceful and more equitable
• 43:00
  means of settling disputes among nations,
• 43:03
  Armageddon will be at our door.
• 43:07
  We have had our last chance.
• 43:10
  And with that hope, he ends his remark by saying,
• 43:14
  and with this, a brave new world will
• 43:16
  emerge from the blood and carnage of the past.
• 43:21
  Think about this for a moment.
• 43:25
  The dawn of the atom bomb changes the game of warfare.
• 43:32
  And it changes the game of warfare
• 43:33
  because, for the first time in human history,
• 43:36
  it is that war can now become omnicidal.
• 43:42
  It's not just killing those people over there.
• 43:44
  It's killing everyone everywhere.
• 43:48
  And so that moment is going to change
• 43:52
  how people look at war and peace,
• 43:55
  how people look at military doctrine.
• 43:57
  Because before, what was the military doctrine?
• 44:00
  The military doctrine was the utmost exertion
• 44:03
  of power and violence.
• 44:05
  And now we've seen what utmost can be.
• 44:10
  And that fear will dictate the course of politics and statecraft
• 44:17
  into your time for at least a generation
• 44:21
  and into the next one.
• 44:23
  Questions, problems, concerns?