Carlin's podcast on this subject, summarizing other well-researched histories, gives a much better idea of why firebombing and the atomic bomb were considered within bounds. The Japanese government was willing to throw away an appalling number of military and civilian lives in order to delay inevitable defeat, or at the very least attempt to bargain for better terms on which to end the war. (Carlin accurately describes this as "a form of political murder.") In places like Burma, New Guinea, and Peleliu, Japanese soldiers were thrown into utterly hopeless actions in order to inflict as many Allied casualties as possible. Beyond this, Japanese soldiers generally refused to surrender, and often had to be killed to the last man.

Firebombing and the atomic bomb, while obviously subjects of internal bureaucratic and ideological jockeying, were considered viable primarily because they might shorten a long and very brutal war. Whether they did so or not is debatable, but we'd be on very shaky ground to debate the morality of the attempt from the comfort of posterity.

I don't particularly care for Gladwell's glib nonsense, but I also find fault with the sort of anti-Gladwell Brooklyn-podcaster history (e.g. https://thebaffler.com/latest/narrative-napalm-kulwin) that engages in righteous hand-wringing over supposed American atrocities, without once mentioning any of the context above, nor Japan's atrocities in China in the 1930s leading up to the conflict, nor the very obvious fact that America didn't start the war.

This is a bunch of nonsense. The real reason Americans wanted to finish the war with Japan quickly (at any cost) is that they were afraid that Russia would invade Japan.

Nonsense? How about you read up on Operation Ten-Go and the senseless suicidal demise of the battleship Yamato, wasting the lives of two and a half thousand Japanese men to accomplish absolutely nothing except a show of defiance. In total more than 4,000 Japanese men lost their lives that day, while less than 100 Americans were killed. They knew it was suicide and they did it anyway.

> The ships' crews were briefed on the nature of the mission and given the opportunity to stay behind if desired; none did.

Your parent post is right, the Japanese military were absolute fanatics.

Edit:

And another point. After the second atomic bombing, military officers attempted to overthrow the Japanese emperor to prevent the surrender. After the second atomic bombing. Let that sink in. If not for the heroic actions of a few Japanese men, they might have succeeded in suppressing the broadcast of the surrender: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_incident

This is a good example, although I would be careful about characterizing the entire Japanese military as fanatics. (To his great credit, Carlin is also careful in this regard, and discusses the issue at some length.)

The average Japanese soldier was certainly perceived as a fanatic—due a combination of the evidence at hand at the time, deliberate Japanese policy and propaganda, and also a lot of rather nasty racial narratives—which had a lot to do with why total war was seen as unavoidable.

I think the word fanatic is justified, but I see that it has derogatory connotations. Let's put it this way, the Japanese military, soldiers, sailors and officers, all provided their extreme courage and devotion numerous times over in that war. Courage and devotion to a horrible cause, but nonetheless they certainly weren't quitters.

Another example: 21,000 Japanese soldiers on Iwo Jima, but only 216 taken as prisoners. They fought for five weeks until the bitter end. The stubborn defiance demonstrated at the Battle of Iwo Jima and Operation Ten-Go both played a role in the decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan.

You're right that these are the sorts of figures that influenced the decision. It's also worth remembering that there were high-ranking members of the Japanese military who questioned the logic of the war or ordered retreats from indefensible positions, but were often arrested, assassinated, or ordered to commit suicide. Any stance other than loud, defiant resistance proved dangerous within a military hierarchy dominated by extremists.

There is also some evidence that Japanese Army officers created a deliberate culture of extreme violence, ordering ordinary soldiers to commit atrocities, for example, as a way of ruling out surrender as an option. The soldiers would then assume that their treatment by the other side would be identical.

I don't object to the word "fanatic" out of some semantic pedantry or because it's derogatory per se, but I think it robs us of some consideration of the individuals in question, and the various strands of policy, training, propaganda, fear, group pressure, and nostalgic death-worshipping cultural narratives to which they were subjected. The result was certainly the perception of fanaticism, which was intended to demoralize the Allies but backfired terribly, like the decision to prosecute the war itself. (And, as you point out, produced an enormous wastage of lives for no real gain.)

The research I've read recently puts this concern on the Japanese side. They delayed their surrender, despite atomic attacks, until after it was clear that the Russians were starting to pivot to the Pacific theater, and decided it was better to surrender to the US today than to endure a Russian invasion and occupation.

The Emperor states himself in his surrender that his decision was influenced by the display of the atomic bombs, and ultimately it was the Emperor who put the final end to the Japanese war effort.

It’s probably foolish to say the Soviets didn’t play a part in the decisions of some of the men involved but I also strongly doubt there’s a compelling argument that it was more influential than what the Americans had just shown themselves capable of doing. The Soviets were a distant threat compared to the Americans continually bombing Japan for 3 months up to that point.

> The Emperor states himself in his surrender that his decision was influenced by the display of the atomic bombs, and ultimately it was the Emperor who put the final end to the Japanese war effort.

The argument goes that the Emperor's public statements were an effort to save face in front of the country. "No, it wasn't our incompetence that created defeat, they had a Super Weapon!" The Russians could have had ground troops on Japanese territory in days, compared to weeks or months for the Americans.

There was a faction of right wing Republicans who wanted to end the war quickly in order to forestall Russia, but they wanted to end the war quickly by forgoing an invasion and allowing Japan to surrender conditionally, without an occupation or a forced change of government or constitution, because they thought an armed and relatively intact militarist-run Japan would be a good buffer against the Soviet Union. This was unacceptable to the liberal new deal faction running the US government, who believed that a disarmed and democratic Japan was the only way to prevent another war.

“They only wanted to keep the commies out” is a nicely glib line, but one that glosses over the many, many political considerations that shaped the end of the pacific war and reveals an almost total ignorance of the scholarship on the subject

There is no convincing evidence for this argument. The Soviet Union was deeply engaged in its war against Nazi Germany until the very bitter end, and fully mobilized in that direction. Beyond that, America provided immense quantities of aid to the Soviet Union in the form of Lend-Lease, including military hardware. Some would argue that this was profoundly short-sighted given the realpolitik of Stalin's approach to the war, with an eye on what the Soviet Union would do in the conquered territories of Eastern Europe after the war (as a realization of tsarist fantasies going back a hundred years or more). But the fact is that--while every decision has various complicating factors related to political and institutional concerns--America's primary focus was on ending the war as quickly as possible with an unconditional surrender.

When I first heard Dan Carlin's macho vocal persona, I expected a very hawkish and USA-centric view of history. But he completely defied my bias. He really makes an effort to present a balanced and nuanced view of history, from all perspectives in a conflict.

Thanks for the tip on part VI, I've been eagerly awaiting the release of that.

His voice sounds / sounded so uncannily like Alex Jones' (maybe just to me?) that I had a similar initial reaction, and similarly was pleasantly surprised

Carlin's interview on the Lex Fridman podcast was great.

Carlin actually had Gladwell on recently to talk about the book. He wasn't anywhere close to as critical as this review, however.

https://pca.st/5rvqo9kz

> He wasn't anywhere close to as critical as this review, however.

When someone with a much (much!) bigger following than you parachutes into your field and joins you on your platform (where you are currently covering the same topic), you maybe withhold your most severe criticism of their work.

Coincidentally, I just started reading Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire by Richard B. Frank [1]. The very first chapter details survivor accounts of the March 45 fire bombing of Tokyo. Later chapters go into the difficulties LeMay had when trying to precision bomb industrial facilities and how ineffective the bombing was.

[1] https://www.google.com/books/edition/Downfall/cJXtAAAAMAAJ?h...

For a general; history of bombing as a tactic, I recommend A History of Bombing by Sven Lindqvist [2]. A short and unusual book in that the author gives instructions on how to read the book in two ways, either chronologically as a history book, or thematically, following the themes and ideas of bombing strategies.

[2]. https://books.google.com/books?id=Wws_HAAACAAJ&newbks=0&hl=e...

Carlin has also been criticized for being loose with history in favour of story.

Carlin's podcast series are much, much longer than Gladwell's typical podcast treatments though, so at least it lets him include a lot more details.

Carlin spends a lot of time telling you where he gets information, who he's quoting from, how reliable they are, what the historical consensus is, etc. In a word, historiography.

That's not to say he never gets anything wrong, he and his researchers aren't steeped in the subject for their whole careers so they'll miss things. He is biased towards the exciting stories and sources, but usually qualifies them with "I'll tell you this fun story but historians disagree about X Y Z because of A".

I'll have to look into the criticisms but my impression just from listening is far better than any other pop history.

From what I read, historians generally like him. The main criticism is that he sometimes uses outdated sources or oversimplifies stuff.

I've heard somewhat mixed things from my historian friends.

But you'll be happy to hear that "sometimes uses outdated sources or oversimplifies stuff" is a common criticism of basically all academic history written outside of the last 20 years, so he is in decent company.

> Carlin has also been criticized for being loose with history in favour of story.

How so? He seems to be pretty upfront in talking about his sources, quoting from them, and saying repeatedly that he's a journalist and not a historian.

In one of his podcasts, he talks about the "pendulum of history" and how it swings, depending on the time, between more story (ie more emotion and look as to feelings of the time) or more fact (ie 10k people died in this battle). He mentioned that he preferred to be on the more story side; giving eyewitness accounts and showing the emotion of the history. I wouldn't put him near Gladwell though, but on the more story side of the pendulum.

I think there's a difference between Dan Carlin's "I'm interested in exploring what it felt like to be in some moment of history, and why the people there made the decisions they made" and Malcolm Gladwell's "I'm going to cherrypick facts until my 'history' fits the just-so fable I'm trying to tell".

Being on the "story" side is IMO a large part of his podcast's appeal. You can get the bare facts of a battle or event on Wikipedia, and that's interesting in its own way. After listening to an episode on Carlin's podcast, I usually go look it up on Wikipedia, to get a different picture.

But talking about the people who were in that event, leaning heavily on eyewitness accounts and primary sources, all of that makes the events come alive. I think both are valid and important viewpoints on history. I think history in school would be a lot more interesting if it took a similar approach.

Looking at an historical event at more of a ground-level is nowhere near the same thing as giving outright incorrect information.

Barbara Tuchman's "Stilwell and the American Experience in China" is a good booklength treatment of WW2 in Asia, also prominently featuring a prominent proponent of air warfare, General Chennault.