Waiting for Dan to jump into Chinese history
A history book that really changed the way I thought about politics, war, and history was about the Mexican Revolution. Written by a distinctly marxist author too (he literally wrote it from a jail cell as a political prisoner).
Absolutely fascinating how it all broke down. Pretty bleak but if your goal in reading history is to better understand how things work it’s extremely valuable.
I’m sure everyone will scoff but I think a marxist lens really is the best context to evaluate most world events.
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It’s a valid lens to cycle through for sure. I don’t love the framing ‘which lens should I use’ since the right answer is always several. It’s generally better to look at the same set of events repeatedly through multiple different viewpoints than it is to look at several different sets of events through just one lens.
Just my opinion on studying history for the development of frameworks you can use to evaluate the present/future. There’s a lot of value to be had in comparing and contrasting the different lenses takes on the same underlying facts. The Mexican Revolution itself is simply an incredible case study for this kind of deeper dive.
Honestly I didn’t like this series all that much by episodes 2-3, but now it’s one of my favorites. It’s super good. It also kinda puts the " Should the US have dropped the atomic bombs " into perspective when you learn what the Japanese military was doing, and not only that but how brainwashed the citizenship was. If we had taken to country conventionally the deaths on both sides would have been WAY higher. A large part of the population would have legit fought to the death.
It sucks how long it takes for him to put these out, but I mean it is what it is, quality takes time. There is no other podcast out there like it.
I really liked 4-5. Midway was nuts.
After a long series like this he usually drops a one off episode instead of a new series. I definitely think we will get one more this year.
I mean he had a SHITLOAD to cover for this episode so it makes sense it took so long, plus its a topic he wasn’t super familiar with. He will probably do a one off on something ancient, as he goes back and forth between periods of history, and it’ll be something he’s familiar with so less research.
It sucks it takes so long, but still GOAT podcast and AINEC.
I listen to them while I fall asleep, benefit of being single I guess. It’s like being read a great story or play. I can’t sleep in silence so maybe that helps me enjoy them a lot. Would probably annoy me if I had to try and listen to them in the car or w/e. Because I listen to them as I fall asleep I relisten a bunch of times and pick up new stuff each time.
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Kinda wild how Japans suicidal ideals kinda backfired. They wasted so many lives doing their suicidal charges into machine guns WWI style. If they had gone full vietkong and just did straight up guerrilla warfare they could have done a ton more damage and possibly even got a none unconditional surrender.
I haven’t gotten to the nukes part yet but just the rest of the series puts it into perspective. The Japanese were killing insane amounts of Chinese civilians daily.
He does argue against it in a way that the civilians didn’t deserve to die, some were probably against the war.
But dropping the nukes and ending the war early absolutely saved a ton of lives. If they had invaded the home island along with the red army the civilian death totals would have been much, much higher. In china as well. Like have you read about what the Japanese army was doing in china? The sooner the war ended the more lives would have been saved all around
He doesn’t really come to that conclusion from what I’ve heard so far, but I am. It’s fairly obvious. The vast majority of japanese civilians and soldiers would commit suicide before surrender.
Have you listened to the series up until now? It definitely gives you a different perspective
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The fire bombings were way more fucked up than the nukes.
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The only other option was the let Japan keep china and murder millions of their civilians every year. That’s what started the whole war.
They were doing horrible, horrible shit to the Chinese. They air dropped bubonic plague infected fleas over towns/cities.
I suggest you finish the series and see if you change your mind
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I’m finally getting to it, and he’s telling the horrific stories of people after the bombs were dropped. He isn’t downplaying how horrible it is. I don’t think he will come to a conclusion, he will say it was absolutely disgustingly horrible, but the alternative was also absolutely disgustingly horrible. Like is logical insanity episode. All options were really bad.
The stories are really, really hard to listen too.
Granted that it took two bombings, could the first one have been on some countryside beside a major city? ‘Look what we have’?
idk what it is about carlin, I just can’t listen to the guy, it’s like that book for the blind that George Costanza gets, it’s just unlistenable.
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Everything is subjective. some people don’t like listening to Carlin, some people enjoy making love to sheep. Whatever makes you happy
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fun fact: 2x podcast speed was invented specifically because for and due to Hardcore History.
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didn’t he already do something on the khans?
That’s the Mongols.
Speaking of I’d love a single episode of Tamerlane. Only because steppe culture amazes me and I know nothing about his conquest besides Wikipedia
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I expected to be super bored of the Pacific theater because I had zero interest in it but Dan was able to make it super interesting