The Rest Is History - 183. History's Biggest Questions with Dan Carlin (Part 1)

Episode Date: May 9, 2022

Who was the most influential leader of the 20th century? What would have happened if the South had won the American Civil War? Would you rather be under siege from the Mongols, the Romans, or the Assyrians? In a huge moment for transatlantic history podcasting, Tom and Dominic are joined by titan of the genre and friend of the show Dan Carlin, the host of one of the world's largest history podcasts, Hardcore History. Over the course of two episodes, Dan, Tom and Dominic tackle ten of the biggest questions in history, including counterfactuals and hypothetical matchups. The second part of this double-header is out on Thursday. For Hardcore History fans listening to The Rest Is History for the first time - welcome! If you enjoyed this episode, feel free to check out some of our other pods. Below are a few suggestions: Young Putin, the KGB and the Soviet Union Watergate Alexander the Great If you want the second part right now, head over to restishistorypod.com to join The Rest Is History Club. You'll also get ad-free listening to the full archive, weekly bonus episodes, live streamed shows and access to an exclusive chatroom community. Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor & Jack Davenport *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. Or, if you're listening on the Apple Podcasts app, you can subscribe within the app in just a few clicks. Hello, welcome to The Rest is History. For more than 200 episodes, Tom Holland and I have been considering the great questions of our time.

The causes of the French Revolution, the origins of Dweil flunking, and the tragic fate of Graf Dietrich von Hülsen-Hesler. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you'll have to dig back into our back catalogue. But today we've set ourselves a real challenge. Some of the thorniest and most intriguing historical questions of all, with a guest who specialises in tackling only the most difficult topics. Since 2006, the podcaster Dan Carlin has recorded a series of truly gigantic podcast episodes, sometimes more than five hours long, which makes us look positively weedy, examining truly enormous questions. Alexander the Great and Hitler, the battle for the Pacific, or the death throes of the Roman Republic.

And Tom, I know you'll enjoy this analogy. This is a bit of a Marvel superheroes team up, isn't it? I've no idea what you're talking about, Dan. Tom hates, Tom hates. He absolutely hates it. I'm the Hulk. You're, I don't know who you would be. Would you be that fellow who- I'd be Loki, wouldn't I?

Wouldn't I be Loki? You were in your dreams. Anyway, crack on with it. Yeah, well, it is. I mean, it's a great honour to have Dan on the show with us. The Elvis to our Cliff Richard, I suppose. Dan. Are we going to have to explain Cliff Richard

to our non-British listeners? So you were well ahead of the game because you were doing a history podcast 16 years ago. Is that right? Is that when you started? We had a current events one start in 2005 and then a history one in 2006. Yes. And at that stage, so podcasting was pretty niche, I would say, wasn't it? I mean, it was, had the, I mean, did the iPhone exist? Did people, how do people listen?

Well, it's funny because we had been sitting on this show idea for a while and somebody who had just come over to the company I was working in from Apple had said to me, you know, that show that you kind of got, you know, just sitting on the shelf waiting for the right time to release. He goes, I can't tell you why, but he goes, release it now. And so we released it. And it just turned out that was the month that that Apple started supporting podcasts on its iTunes platform. And so the month we started was the I want to say it was like July or somewhere in there, 2005. And that was when we started was the I want to say it was like July or somewhere in there, 2005. And that was when Apple first started supporting podcasts. So it's kind of like turning up in the Klondike before anyone's arrived.

The bottom line is, it's just absolute serendipitous luck. And it's taught me, I think, a lot about history, where you look and you go, OK, so a lot of things maybe fall into that same category where you say, how did Julius Caesar end up in this place at this time? Was it Julius Caesar's doing or was he just lucky? And on the topics. So for those people, your podcast is called Hardcore History. And I mean, it is pretty hardcore. It really makes us look positively soft core, Tom. That's not something I'd often say about us by comparison, because your episodes are enormous. You'll do a sort of series on the Pacific war and it's sort of five episodes that are five hours each. So have you memorized all the stuff beforehand or how does that work? Well, let me just say that the first episode

we ever did was 16 minutes. So that shows you what I was thinking it was going to be. So this evolution is totally contrary to anything I would have chosen because as you guys know, as podcasters yourself, it is really hard to do five and a half hour long shows and then listen to them and edit them and all that,

and then all the stuff that ends up on the cutting room floor. In terms of memorization, no, I have to do all of the prep ahead of time in terms of a lot of these topics are things I knew something about anyway, right. I'm not starting from ground zero. Somebody said to me once, why would you please do a show on 17th century India? And I said, I can't do a show on 17th century. I know nothing about 17th century that information I used to know is still valid? And so you start from the foundational level there and you read a lot. And then I usually mark down little quotes that I want to include in the program. But then we go in and we sort of freewheel because it ends

up becoming something that you never could have planned for better or for worse, if that makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint. And Dan, what you also do do so you great narrative sweep but you also you focus in on on the big questions that i'm sure people are always asking themselves so alexander or hitler are they really so different that kind of thing um and so that was really our inspiration for what we thought we we talked about with you as dominic said we we have discussed some of the big, big questions of history on our podcast. But we thought that to go to the next league, we've got you here. We could ask you perhaps 10 questions that we've prepared in advance, and we could discuss them. And I think that the 10 that we've chosen are absolutely probably the 10 biggest questions in the whole field of history.

That's a very big claim, Tom. I should say for our listeners, our regular listeners, we obviously didn't prepare them together because there would be far too much bickering. So we each prepared five. You can judge who chose serious, intelligent, wide-ranging questions, and who chose the sort of questions that you'd see on a quiz machine at a pub in 1988.

I want you guys to know something. When we decided to do the history show, my original intention was to do it for people like you, right? I had never intended to do shows for people that didn't know the history. Tom, what does he mean by people like us? I mean people that know the history, right? And so we were just going to talk about the weird questions that you were referring to. And I thought, OK, I'm not qualified to teach anybody history, but I can talk about the weird questions. And it was only when you found out that a lot of the listeners didn't know the background story that we started giving more background.

But my intention had been to talk to people like you who knew this stuff and then just say, isn't it weird that, you know, blank, blank, blank. So go ahead. The questions. Yes, we'll see what we can maul. OK, so here is the first question. I think this is probably the biggest question of all, and I'm sure that Regis professors at Oxford and Cambridge would agree with me on this. Okay, so here we go. University challenge, yes.

Dan, who would you least like to be besieged by? A, the Assyrians, B, the Romans, or C, the Mongols? I'll repeat. Do you need to repeat? A, the Assyrians, B, the Romans, or C, the Mongols? Okay, so I have a little clarification question. Who am I? Am I just a common citizen in this city, or am I someone in a leadership or position of authority? I think that's up to you. OK, that's I mean, that's a fruit. That's a fruitful avenue to to discuss.

So let's let's start off by saying that you are the person in charge of the city. OK, then I'm going to say I want to be besieged by the Mongols because I think they have the least good chance of getting into the city. I think the Assyrians and chance of getting into the city. I think the Assyrians and the Romans, it's going to be 100 percent. I'm in deep trouble. Whereas the Mongols sometimes didn't have the greatest siege situation. It depends on who they captured and who they were bringing with them. But I mean, if you catch the Mongols at certain periods of time and in certain venues, sometimes they had a harder time. The Romans and the Assyrians always had their gear with them. They were ready for sieges most of the time. The Mongols, sometimes it would have been just as devastating. Other times they might have ridden around your walls for a long time, you know,

and not been able to do much. So if I'm the leadership, in which case I'm dying when any of these people get a hold of me, then I think the Mongols have, and they all probably have a pretty good chance of taking my city, but I think they have the least good chance of those three individual groups. Maybe that's a good way. I think that's it. I'd answer the Mongols, Tom, but for a different reason. Am I not right in thinking that if, I mean, I know, Dan, you've done a podcast about Genghis Khan Avenue, and we did one about, a couple about Genghis Khan a few weeks ago. Am I not right in thinking that the Mongols, if you surrender immediately, you can probably collaborate with them?

So you're saying you take the coward's option, Dominic? I don't think it's a coward's option, Tom. I think it's that, given that the alternative is to be part of a pyramid of skulls or similar. As I have already said, you have the heart of a eunuch. We call that living to fight another day, don't we? Yeah, exactly, exactly.

It's the alternative brave option. So Tom, what do you think the answer should have been? Okay. So if I'm going to surrender, it would definitely be the Mongols. Because if you surrender- So all that eunuch stuff was just- Yeah, but I'm not going to. I'm going to carry on fighting. And in that case, I definitely don't want to be captured by the Mongols because I think it would be awful. I think I would go with the Assyrians on the assumption that I'm not the leader and that I'm a woman. I think if you're the leaders, the Assyrians are going to flay you alive. Yeah, but that's the proviso. I'm not the leader,

because that would be awful. That's why I asked that at the beginning. That's right. No, so I'm saying I'm a woman with children and that therefore hopefully i will be taken away into exile and set up in a nice kind of cushy billet in nineveh or something like that i agree however dan that if you're the leader probably the mongols is the one to go for what would the right what's the roman practice when they sack a city when they take a city do they have kind of three days license or something they um well according to polybiusbius, they not only kill everybody in the city, but all the animals as well. So he said that you could always tell where the Romans had been because all the dogs and cattle and horses would be cut into pieces too. But Dan, you answered as a leader. What if you're not a leader?

If you're not a leader, I mean, when the Romans sacked Cremona, those were Roman citizens that they treated that way. So, I mean, obviously all three of these groups are known to cause great damage and harm. But I think if you're not the leader and again, I think we have to ask whether or not slavery is better or worse than death, because I think slavery is what you're going to get in most of these situations. Also, I think the Assyrians might spare the common citizens that you're probably going to be relocated and slavery is going to be what's going to happen to you. But I think the Mongols kill everybody. And again, the Romans depend. I mean, if you're Julius Caesar, he was kind of known for clemency. You might get off easy. I don't know. Especially if you're in the middle of a civil war and he's trying to sort of get some propaganda props against his opponents. Yeah, so that's a good point.

So it depends also if you're a Roman or a Gaul. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Because the sack of Cremona, which happened in the year of the four emperors, I mean, that was viewed as a terrible crime by the Romans themselves. So probably if you're a Roman, you'd want to be besieged by the Romans. But you wouldn't want to be a Gaoul besieged by Caesar, would you? You've done loads of stuff on this. Isn't his claim that he killed a million ghouls?

I mean, that seems wildly inflated, doesn't it? Or Dan, if you've done your podcast about this, is it true that he killed a million ghouls? I forgot where we – I think that's a modern estimate. I don't – and Tom may know this. Yeah, Plutarch says that. Plutarch says that Caesar killed a million and enslaved a million. And it's probably an exaggeration, but not that much of an exaggeration. I mean, I think Caesar's campaign in Gaul was on a genocidal scale. And also, he was very into mutilating prisoners. So he demonstrated his clemency by not killing ghouls, but chopping off their hands.

Well, see, there you go. So anyway, he's practically a humanitarian. I know, liberal. Liberal. So the upshot was the Mongols, was it? So I think, yes, I think the Mongols. Yeah. Okay.

How weird, wait, how weird is that, that we all chose the Mongols? That's got to be the only time. You set up the discussion so that that would be the only time you would ever pick wanting to be captured by the Mongols. Go on, Tom, what are you going to say? Well, I was just saying that we've definitively answered the first big question in history. So that's one down, nine to go. Okay, very good. Let's go on to number two then. So number two, Dan. Which world leader do you think made the biggest difference to the course of the 20th century oh which world leader made the biggest difference i i'm gonna say that it's going to be um kaiser wilhelm i think i think i think starting a friend of the show yeah i think to me that is and i always think about this from a German perspective.

I mean, if you could take back any move and you're a German, I think taking back marching into Belgium has to be. I mean, think about how different German history is if that doesn't happen. So in my mind, if you look at the First World War as being a domino that begins tumbling throughout the 20th century, then not starting that is that, I mean, you know, you can talk about Bolshevism not happening, Hitler in the Second World War not happening, the Cold War not happening. So I'm going to say, and again, I'm not pretending Kaiser Wilhelm actually controlled the mechanism that does, because we all know that there were multiple people involved in this, but I'm going to blame it on the emperor of Wilhelmine, Germany. Wow wow that's harsh tom i think that's harsh because we've discussed the kaiser in in sympathetic terms haven't we we talked about his his issue with shoes in particular

yes so so dan we're very interested in um the snub that uh k Kaiser Wilhelm received when he went yachting with the British royal family off the Isle of Wight, and he wore the wrong shoes. And we have asked whether this perhaps was the turning point in 20th century history. Are you suggesting that they should have gone easy on him? I mean, there are standards after all, Tom. Well, Tom is bitter about this, Dan, because he once wore the wrong shoes on a yachting holiday.

Oh, I see. So I have a lot of fellow feeling. I also think that's harsh because Nicholas II also, you know, he signed the mobilization orders. And when he did so, said to his generals, you know, this is a very bad move. I feel very bad about this. So he equally could have taken a decision not to escalate although i suppose you would say he equally was basically a prisoner of the decision making kind of process in you know the summer of 1914 well but what happens if okay if you don't if

belgium doesn't get invaded one could one could argue and you could tell me if i'm wrong about this but one could argue that you could have a regional war or you could have a war between Russia and Germany or power blocks in Central and Eastern Europe. I mean, it is only when Belgium becomes invaded that this becomes something that turns into the monstrosity that it was. I mean, let me ask the question this way. If Germany and Russia go to war with each other and Belgium is not invaded, do you think Britain goes into the First World War? Oh, that's a difficult question. So we did a podcast about the origins of the First World War. So people who listen to that will know that I have very heretical views. So people always argue in Britain whether we should have fought in the First first war or not and i i think we should but but on the other side um okay but i crack at the french but i think so

so the french so the french so the french were always going to fight the first world war i mean there's no doubt about that um and i think the germans thought didn't they that basically the only way i mean their entire military machine was predicated on the idea that they would strike west and they would have to do that through belgium right so so germany going to war with russia i i don't think there is a scenario in which they don't go through belgium because i think they felt that was an absolute because that was their plan wasn't it there was that was always the plan but they couldn't ignore the French. I mean, France is, they think we knock out, we have to deal with France first. And the only way to do that is to go through Belgium. I mean, I think, but I think the bigger question is, well, it's not if, I suppose what to me the question is, is what if Britain nevertheless stays out? Because it could have, if the Germans had gone into Belgium in a different way, maybe. If that's the case, then you could say that it's

whoever makes the final decision to involve Britain. Herbert Henry Asquith. Herbert Asquith is the most important. Well, I don't think the United States gets in the war if Britain's not in the war. So I think that's true. That's true. When I wrote that

question i was i was guessing that you would choose either hitler stalin or mao but hitler and stalin are both created by the first world war that's right that's so if the first world war goes differently then neither of them are part of the equation so for example if the first world war britain isn't involved and germany wins quickly then is there a bolshevik revolution well but but isn't isn't i mean a popular theme of counterfactuals in which Germany wins and defeats France is that France then produces Hitler. Yeah. Wow.

Wow. Hitler. Well, you know, here's the thing that no one ever considers either. But what if, you know, during the initial stalemate of things, peace talks had broken out and somehow they'd manage in 1915 or 1916 to sort of end this thing with an armistice then with none of these countries destroyed or, you know, or I mean, that would have been interesting to the United States wouldn't have been involved. See, here's the you guys know much better than I do. But the damage to the British Empire in this war from the financial standpoint and everything else, I mean, I don't know if you call it a mortal wound, but the bleeding that happens

from that moment on is such that when we talk about, you know, impact on the 20th century, I mean, imagine if Britain had not been mortally wounded then and the role that they might have played in a 20th century world as a much more healthy, great power. I mean, the counterfactuals, as Tom was suggesting, are fantastic. Yeah, I think that's true. But to play devil's advocate, you could argue that Europe was a tinderbox waiting to explode. Oh, yeah, Bismarck said so, didn't he? Yeah, that if it hadn't been the Kaiser, it would have been someone else. And you would also, on the topic of Britain, say relative to America,

Britain was always going to be eclipsed by America. It was just a question of how and when, I would have thought. The scale of, you know, America is such a larger power, now a continental power. Britain's just a small island. I think that the eclipse of Britain by America was always going to happen. And the First World War probably just expedited it. I love the line that Bismarck is quoted to have said a generation before the war that that Europe's leaders were like men smoking in an arsenal. And so so so I think I think your point is well taken about about the nature of the situation. You know, the United States is a funny is a funny question on this, because I you have to remember that there was a long history in the United States of non-interventionism in Europe's situation. I mean, it goes back to the founding

fathers, right? And I think if you hadn't had the First World War the way you had it, I don't think the United States gets involved in at least European affairs from that moment on. And then it would have been very interesting because, of course no first world war no second world war what is going to be this momentous event that breaks this taboo in american uh international history you know you needed something that broke down and then once the wall was broken down it was a lot easier to get back and do it again but i i don't know i don't know what America's- Something in the Pacific, maybe? Something to do with China? Well, on China, what about Chairman Mao? Because he perhaps is the obvious candidate

for the Chinese empire is going to collapse whatever happens. The imperial system that had been a feature of Chinese history for centuries, millennia, something was going to step into the gap. Maybe Mao's communism wouldn't have happened without the example of the Russian Revolution. The Russian Revolution wouldn't have happened without the First World War. So again, yeah, the Kaisersdeck shoes. But I think that Mao at the moment seems more influential than either Hitler or Stalin

because the regime that he established is ongoing and plays an escalating role in world affairs at the moment. But of course, Mao didn't overthrow the imperial system. He overthrew the nationalists and the nationalists were weakened by a war with the Japanese. And so, I mean, there's all these things that come into play play that say the Japanese aren't involved in weakening the nationalists.

Are Mao's communists able to, you know, win the civil war? I mean, again, to me, it does come to the Kaiser's deck shoes question. I mean, that's that's a wonderful movie title right there. But and again, I would I would be open to the idea that the Kaiser was dragged along by his generals or or or as we always say in the United States, the president is often given a small range of choices, some of which are so outlandish that you end up choosing what the generals want anyway. And I think you can make a case that maybe the Kaiser was presented with a situation where he felt like he didn't have any options. I'm not educated enough to know what the internal deliberations were in the room between the Kaiser and von Moltke and all those people. I mean, the one thing I think is fascinating, though, is that point about your point you made about Britain and its empire, because I probably agree with Tom that the United States was always going to overtake Britain. And the European, the Western European colonial empires were probably always going to disintegrate in roughly the middle of the 20th century. I mean, maybe they would have done so later. But I think there's a couple of countries. So China would be one, but also Russia. Russia at the beginning of the 20th century was a massively industrializing kind of dynamic power. And it didn't have to take the path that it took,

the sort of communist years. So a Russia that doesn't go communist and doesn't enter the First World War, where could you have had and this was early in their actual revolution, you know, 1917, 1918, you had other groups of people sort of arm wrestling it out. I mean, there might have been a Russian democracy or some sort of a parliamentary system. I mean, there's a number of ways it could have gone Lenin back to Russia to destabilize the situation there? I mean, what if, again, this goes back to the Kaiser, too, because if the Germans aren't in the war, do you send Lenin back? But I mean, how much of a difference does that make and if Lenin doesn't go back if Lenin stays in Switzerland writing angry essays and papers and newspaper articles uh does Russia go in a different direction because he seems to be a pretty pivotal figure all by himself yeah I'd agree with that so doesn't it Churchill said that it was like sending a chemical weapon or a biological weapon unleashing a virus yes yes yes exactly i think um yes no lenin lenin gets to st petersburg

doesn't he the finland station and basically says to all the bolsheviks you know we will we will take power within you know our plan is to take power by the end of the year or something and they're just dumbstruck because they don't see how they're going to do it they don't have enough support without lenin and his charismatic and his ruthlessness and his ruthlessness. Yeah, you're right. I mean, he obviously sets the tone for the revolution, doesn't he? Well, and so did all the Russians dying against the central powers. I mean, you know how war tends to damage the underpinnings and the foundational stability of states. And we all know what situation Russia was in by 1916, 1917. I mean, if there hadn't been a communist revolution, you were basically having a soldier-led mutiny

on the front lines regardless. But maybe what you have in Russia, it's a bit like taking Hitler out of the equation in Germany in the 1930s. I think in both cases, if you take those charismatic kind of demagogues out of the picture, then you have, to my mind, probably a military authoritarian dictatorship of some kind, maybe. But it would be less brutal, wouldn't it? I think. Actually, in both cases,

both Hitler and Lenin are characterized by a degree of cruelty, of utter ruthlessness that his opponents found shocking, didn't really know how to cope with. I don't know what Dan thinks about this. I think a white Russian regime would have had pogroms straight away, anti-Jewish pogroms, and there would have been some liquidation of people they blamed for their defeat. But they wouldn't have had an ideological project that decades later still involve famines and collectivization and all that sort of stuff. What do you think, Dan? Well, I think you can play with that counterfactual just imagining

the whites winning the Civil War, right? I mean, you would have had a very interesting... I mean, look, and not only would the whites maybe have been different if they won the Civil War, but remember they had close ties to to several allied governments. Right. So so maybe someone like a British government can turn to the whites who are victorious and say, OK, now, if you want aid rebuilding the system, we're going to demand certain things are met, like, you know, not having mass executions. And I don't know, because I think a lot of those people would have been happy to see any communists liquidated in that country afterwards. But I do think that that Tom's point is well taken, that these ideological regimes that so encapsulate the 20th century version of those of Hitlerism or Stalinism, that those things had a particularly they'd somehow integrated the the the sense of vengeance or the bitterness. I mean, both sides had real opponents. They were blaming for the way things were. And and those and there was a sort of an unstated demand that when when the time comes, those people will pay. Right. So if it's the kulaks or if it's the Jews or whatever

it might be. So in other words, for that program of constantly finding a scapegoat to blame is to come to its fruition there's got to be some eventual i mean i think you see this in putin's russia now you have a scapegoat and then the logical follow-through is to punish the scapegoat right just just one last thought on on might there be a case for saying that it's too early to tell which world leader made the biggest difference to the story of the 20th century and i'm thinking particular um of the uh the return to nuclear anxiety about nuclear war at the moment um i don't know enough about the development of uh of nuclear weapons but is there any particular political leader who plays a decisive role in the proliferation of nuclear weapons? Would it- FDR, maybe? FDR or Stalin? I mean, without- I don't know the answer to that.

But you'd have them without either of those characters, surely, wouldn't you? Well, look, I mean, if one wants to play the game that way, one can say that there would be no nuclear weapons when they happened, if not for Hitler. Right. Because the war created a dynamic where there was a feeling of whoever gets to the finish line first on this is going to be the victor. Or the line about Einstein telling FDR in that famous letter about the potential for weapons creation out of nuclear fission. I mean, in my mind, if the war hadn't happened and it was peacetime and you weren't worried about somebody else beating you to the punch on that, maybe 10 more years elapse. But I agree that you're looking at something which is inevitable technological development. You might not have used them. It might have been interesting to see a world today with no actual examples of what atomic or nuclear weapons might do. Maybe one could argue that it almost was a benefit because I think we haven't used them since simply because we know how nasty they are. So you could argue the fact that Truman did use them and demonstrated what they

could do, perhaps was as decisive as anything that happened in the 20th century. Yeah, no, I have a problem with Truman too, because I really feel like he, when you talk about somebody who was in a very, and I have some sympathy too, but not in a position to be the person who should have been making those decisions. I think, you know, Truman didn't even know about the bomb, right? I mean, that's how cloistered he was. He'd only been a vice president for like five minutes. So when you take over, I mean, I was struck when we did a show on the early years of atomic weaponry and whatnot.

I was, I guess it's a reminder. Sometimes you forget the institutional forces at play when a long time has elapsed. But there was a guy named Graves, who was the head of the U.S. program to develop the weapon. And he basically said that had they not used the weapon with all of the sunk costs and the opportunity costs, right, the things you didn't do because you put that into the way that the American people would have hung everybody up who made that decision by the nearest lamppost. Right. So in other words, it would have taken somebody of a Churchill or an FDR of a standing where they could have said, no, I don't have to worry about what the public backlash is going to be.

We're not going to drop this weapon. Whereas Truman was the new guy. And he was I think he was simply following an already laid path and he didn't feel like there was. But he's also not deciding in a vacuum, though, is he, Dan? Because he's thinking he's not weighing up you know will i use the weapon and kill all these japanese civilians or will i not he's thinking will i use the weapon or will i authorize conceivably a land invasion of japan which based on what's happened in okinawa is going to be horrifically bloody and tens and tens of thousands of american GIs will die. And he probably, I mean, his argument

to you would be, if he were here now, would presumably be, I took a terrible option, but the least worst option that arguably saved American lives. Yes. And the other thing that they had been talking about was a blockade, right? The Navy was all up for some sort of a long-term blockade. But there's all, I mean, you know, the arguments that could be made here. I mean, here's the bottom line, and it's horrific to say this, but the numbers of people that were killed by the atomic bombs, which look horrible by today's standard, is, I don't want to put a number on it because I don't know off the top of my head, but let's say a week's worth of fighting in that theater.

I mean, and we used a quote, and I'm going to go from memory, so I'm sure it's wrong, but it was talking about the hundreds of thousands of civilians that were dying, I want to say, every week in that theater. And so to sit there and focus on, God, these are huge numbers. So 100,000 here, 100,000 there is to, they're still killing all those civilians in China. They have the option of holding prisoners of war sort of hostage. I mean, there's a lot that could happen. In other words, one might make the case that at least in determining what might happen, at least with the atomic bombs, you can say, OK, we'll do this and then this will happen. Whereas all these other choices leave the door open to a thousand unforeseeable little tributaries that might occur off the use of atom bombs, of nuclear weapons, that essentially has, in the long run, served the world in good stead. Because I wonder, what do you think would have happened had no atom bombs been used in the Berlin Wall crisis or in Cuba, the Cuban Missile Crisis? Wouldn't it be likelier in those situations, if Truman hadn't dropped the bombs that perhaps either the Americans or the Russians would have thought, oh, we'll just give it a go, just see what happens? I've made that exact argument. And what's more, had there been,

I mean, can you imagine today's high definition phone cameras being able to, from 10,000 different phone users in Hiroshima or Nagasaki being able to show you in horrific with sound. I mean, it would have even had more of a sort of a deterrent effect. I will say the other thing that I think makes a difference here is that people will look at the photos of the victims and the cities and just go, oh, my God, this is the most horrifying thing in the world where similar photos do not generally exist from the Chinese situation, for example. I mean, or one of the things that I always talk about is most Americans don't realize when they make an argument about the atomic bombs, just how terrible the firebombing that was already going on was. From a functional standpoint, there's little functional difference.

I mean, the reason Hiroshima and Nagasaki were on the targeting list already is because the United States Army Air Force had already eliminated so many cities that they wanted cities that were still basically standing to test these things on. No point in doing it to Tokyo, where so much of Tokyo has been burned out already. How would you measure the results? Right. I mean, isn't it a famous thing that Robert McNamara, one of the architects of the Vietnam War said, when people used to ask him, are you a war criminal because of Vietnam? He would say, no, but I might be a war criminal because I helped with the logistical planning or whatever it was of the firebombing of Tokyo in which we worked out exactly the best way to incinerate huge entire blocks with all the people in them and all of this sort of stuff well and the few pictures that exist from that are truly of the sort that again if you'd had the high definition iphone type photos i don't even know but i mean there are there are photos

that are i mean you look at it and you go how could a nuclear bombing have been any worse i mean it seems to have reached maximum horrific levels right and like they had said about future bombing of some of these cities, it was only going to make the rubble bounce. Well, you could make the same case for, I mean, how much more badly can you burn the civilians, you know? Now, before we get on to the third question, let us take a quick break, Tom, for some ads. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews,

splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. dot com that's the rest is entertainment dot com hello before we get back to part two it is uh time to look at what our friends at unheard

un herd are getting up to uh and dominic i saw on twitter they're pushing back against her mentality encouraging independent thinking, Tom. Of course they are. That goes without saying, but it's the question of how they're doing it. And I saw on Twitter this morning that you had picked up on a prime example of how they're doing it

with relation to a series of books that I know is a great favourite of yours, The Flashman Books by George MacDonald Fraser. Tell us about what you saw. So I'm gutted about this because I would have loved to have written this essay. But in fact, Ares Routinos, who I believe is Unheard's foreign editor, has done it. Brave war correspondent as well.

I think he's been in Ukraine. Yes. Well, he's written this article and he's actually done it brilliantly. So it's just as well he did it, not me. How annoying for you. Very annoying. It's awful, actually. I feel sick.

You actually recommended it. I feel sick. I did it whole only. I did it. I did it. No i did it i did it you know dominic that's a great great tribute to your character oh tom you're very kind so it's basically it's an advert for myself this but it's also an advert for unheard anyway um aris roussinos has picked up on the fact that it's the 200th anniversary of the fictional birth of the great

imperial anti-hero harry flashman so flashman is, of course, the narrator of George MacDonald Fraser's brilliant series, The Flashman Papers, which are all about Britain's sort of Victorian empire, and Flashman has all these tremendous adventures. Because he's the bully from Tom Brown's school days. He is indeed the bully from Tom Brown's school days. But he becomes a lauded hero, despite being an absolute coward and paltrude. Exactly.

So these are – I mean, it's weird how um as as aris rusanos says that the the books are sometimes seen as kind of celebrations of empire but they're actually not at all because they're all about the hypocrisies of empire and the um you know they're slightly cakist as we like to be on our podcast because this is they they're sort of having their cake and eating it a bit so there's all kinds of derring-do and the retreat from kabul and the indian mutiny and all this sort of stuff. But at the same time, they're very clear-eyed, I think,

about the world of the Victorians and the pieties and the kind of hypocrites. Yeah, exactly, of Victorian Britain. So anyway, Aris Rousanos did this brilliant article and I feel sad and cheated. Gutted.

Gutted that he's done it so well. And I have now nothing more to say about the subject at all. Okay. So go and read that and find out what ruined Dominic's day and read a whole host of other articles pushing back against herd mentality and encouraging independent thought. So the good news, Tom. Yes?

Do you know the really good news? I mean, it's maybe a surprise to some listeners. What's the good news? But it's that Rest Is History listeners get a special offer. Did you know this? Do you know the really good news? I mean, it's maybe a surprise to some listeners. What's the good news? But it's that Rest is History listeners get a special offer. Did you know this? Do you know? I did. Oh, you did?

I did. But share the good news with those listeners who may not have heard this before. Well, if you go to unheard.com slash rest, I'm doing that from memory because I've done it so often. U-N-H-E-R-D. Yeah, U-N-H-E-R-D. You can get a special offer and you can try 10 weeks for free because normally, Tom, it's a pound a week. I mean, which is very generous in and of itself,

but to get it for nothing. That's an absolute bargain, isn't it? Is, I mean, the Victorians would swoon at such philanthropy. They truly would. So that is what we are on this podcast, Victorian philanthropists. Exactly. And on that note, let's get back to our philanthropic venture, part two.

So on the topic of the way that evidence and sources influence our understanding of the past, could I come to another big question? Sure. Thanks to writers like Suetonius and Plutarch, we have lots of biographies of Greeks and Romans. Which ancient empire do you wish had left us with a similar range of biographies? A, the Egyptian, the New Kingdom, perhaps particularly? B, the Persian, the Achaemenid Empire, or C that the Persian libraries are going to contain the information from Egypt, the information from Assyria, the information from Babylonia. And one could imagine that that would also include stuff from even the earlier civilizations in Mesopotamia,

assuming that there'd been no logical break in the literature's history. But I imagine if you get your hands on the Persian library, you're going to find out about Sumeria in ways that you wouldn't find out about if you captured the Carthaginian library, maybe. Does that make sense? Yeah. You could argue, I suppose, couldn't you, that we know more about the Persians than the Carthaginians? The Carthaginians are a complete mystery, aren't they, really? I mean, so little we know about them. So't it be be more be filling more of a gap well there are there are biographies of you know of of persian kings written by greeks

by herodotus and people i mean yes and actually by by plutarch as well um but they're very greek i mean it would be it would be it would be nice to have the kind of the you know the the persian perspective on themselves but it's just the persians didn't write that kind of style. But I agree, the Carthaginians is kind of awful because they had incredibly rich libraries and the Romans deliberately incinerated them, all except for their agricultural manuals. Tom, if they got in their hands, and this is just a question for my own purposes, but if somebody had ever gotten their hands on the library at Alexandria, does that include all this kind of information we're talking about, or is that still going to be lost stuff? It's a good question. I mean, the ambition supposedly with Alexandria was to contain the entire knowledge of the world, but they were Greek. So generally they equated the knowledge of the world with what Greeks had written. You know, the obvious example, the obvious difference with that is that they do seem to have included Jewish writings, which inspires the translation of the Hebrew writings into Greek.

So I don't know the answer to that. And I don't think it's possible to know the answer to that. But the problem is, is that that style of kind of gossipy, racy biography that tells you whose mother was getting up to what and what his horse was called and all that kind of stuff. The Persians in particular seem to have seen that kind of style as below the dignity of the Persian king is the embodiment of truth and order, and therefore, details about what color hair he had or what sexual shenanigans he got involved with would simply not be permissible. Presumably, there must have been people who knew about this, and the dream would be to – maybe they wrote it up somewhere and it's buried in some desert or something. But I think it's unlikely. Well, but your point's well taken because a lot of this is this. It's not that a lot of these other cultures didn't write. It's that they didn't write like that. Right. They used it for different purposes. So that's a wonderful point. So one could make a case that a lot of our entertainment today follows the sort of Suetonius, especially Suetonius model. But what I can also say, because I heard from a lot of Iranians after we did a show on Persian history who talked about the fact that they simply told their history through other means. So you would have had the oral historians or some of these sagas and things that didn't that didn't follow what we would consider, let's say, a Thucydides kind of take on history, but more of the Viking sagas rather than something like Plutarch. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think I would go for the Egyptian simply because we did an episode on Tutankhamen and Akhenaten, and they seem such extraordinary figures, particularly

Akhenaten. Akhenaten, yeahaten that whole kind of um because and because ironically because they tried to obliterate his memory and therefore it kind of survived the two you know tutankhamen's tomb survived and reliefs of of akhenaten survived in in the rubble of of temples and so on um it is possible to kind of patch together a sense of the drama of that story that makes you think it would be amazing, amazing, amazing to have a Suetonius style or even a Plutarch style biography of Akhenaten or Tutankhamen or that kind of set or Hatshepsut or Ramesses II. I mean, I deeply, deeply regret that because in Egypt, as in Persia, you have this sense that the personality of the king has to be dissolved into the grandeur of the pharaoh. But isn't that the point, Tom?

I mean, you'd never have an Egyptian. Yeah, it is. It's inconceivable. It would be a category error to think that they existed, but it would be, you know, if there were such a thing. It would be brilliant if they did. It would be wonderful. But wasn't Akhenaten, I mean, we're talking about a guy, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong. This is a guy who may have tried to foist a monotheistic, I guess, rolling up the traditional Egyptian panoply of gods into sort of a monotheistic sort of vein. I mean, had that happened, I think you open up the door potentially to

dissolving the entire Egyptian sort of royal style of writing into something. Because I mean, even the figures and the art form and the representations are much more realistic. I mean, maybe you get rid of that sort of the court way of looking at this thing and you open up the door. I mean, again, there's another one of your things. I mean, maybe Akhenaten's the reason that the First World War broke out. He has the most impact on the 20th century when you start the dominoes tumbling. All right. Well, we've got another counterfactual for you, actually, Dan. I mean, we did a podcast about counterfactuals in which we said we poured scorn on them, didn't we, Tom? But we've now broken our own rule completely because this is one of the great

American counterfactuals, probably the most famous American counterfactual of all. If the American Civil War, Dan, had gone differently, is there a scenario in which the Confederate States of America could still exist today? Okay, let me just say, I think the greatest counterfactual related to that is if the Revolutionary War goes the other way. In our dreams, in our dreams. That messes up the First World War also. Okay, so here's what I would say. I would say if the Confederacy wins,

there's still a Confederacy today. Now, I don't think it looks like the dreams of Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis and those kind of guys, because I think slavery obviously goes away and all those kinds of things. But I think it's not such a weird counterfactual, especially if foreign powers came in and started aiding the Confederacy's cause. There would have been a lot of interest, I think, in seeing the United States split apart just from a power relation standpoint. And also just to jump in, the Confederacy don't need to win,

do they? They just need to not lose. You're right. Exactly right. That's a great point. And so I do think it's possible. And I think that's the difference between, say, a lot of Americans, yours truly, have talked about the current situation resembling something like a cold civil war. But the difference I always point out is in the Civil War of 1861, 65, you're talking about a a geographically divided country where with the exception of certain border states, you can nicely draw sort of the borders.

Nowadays, the United States is separated by voting districts within counties. You know, I mean, there's no. So in answer to your question, though, yeah, I think it could have happened. And if it had happened, too strong to countenance. It would become an inevitability of history that they were always going to break away, that people would be doing counterfactuals now. What if the United States had stayed together? And people would be saying, well, I mean, it's fanciful. The differences were too great. The cultures were different.

They were always agrarian and industrial. People would have all these explanations, wouldn't they? And it's hard to imagine the Confederacy then voting voluntarily to dissolve itself or to reapply for admission to the Union, because it would mean in the eyes of their political elite, betraying the sacrifice that had been made for their independence, I suppose. Isn't that what they would be saying? Well, there's still futurists today who are predicting that the United States will break apart based on the exact same things you're talking about, that this was something that was built into the nation's DNA, if you will, a contradiction that was bound to fracture

along certain as you know, there's a there's a book out. I forgot what it's called, but but but it's a book basically that breaks the United States down into six or seven regions and then talks about how each of those regions are different, have a different history and a different outlook. And they use it to explain the modern day political situation. But a good but but it makes even more sense in the context of what you're talking about, that that some of these areas, while thinking that they are patriotic Americans, have a very different idea of what that means. And that something like that is an inevitable fracture point that if it doesn't happen in 1861, 65 happens eventually. And you just said about a cold civil war. So do you do you i mean we're all sort of familiar with the politics of the last decade or so in the united states but would you trace that back to the

the civil war itself and the legacy and reconstruction and the unfinished business of abraham lincoln or whatever i mean do you think there's a lineage between the two? Wow, that's a great question. Well, the big debate over Reconstruction in the United States has always been whether or not there really was any. I mean, because of the way the politics sort of fell, including Lincoln's assassination and everything else, there's this feeling that Reconstruction was hurried, that it wasn't. I mean, you know, I've read people talking about how we should have had a more denazification, you know, post Second World War, the way we treated Germany kind of an approach. But but the way that the United States is set up, including the political parties at the time and the representation and everything else sort of opened the door to, let's call it a reconstruction light. So I don't know about that. I do think that one could make

a case that certainly by the middle of the 20th century, you can see the sorts of trends starting to develop that are in full bloom now. So I do think this goes a lot farther than just the last 10 years. But I certainly think we're at more of a critical mass point than bloom now. So I do think this goes a lot farther than just the last 10 years. But I certainly think we're at more of a critical mass point than we were. So whereas you used to be able to, I mean, look at the late 60s, not to change gears, but look at the late 60s and the early 70s. I think people forget exactly how violent and destabilizing those times were. And I think, as you guys have pointed out, if we're looking at this from a history book 500 years from now, where time gets compressed and the 1960s look like they happened yesterday compared

to today, I think they're going to see these all as sort of connect-the-dot data points in a way that we don't quite perceive them now. Well, Dan, you mentioned the analogy with de-Nazification. Sticking to the counterfactual, the Confederacy at least holds out and manages to negotiate a kind of precarious independence, isn't it likely that the northern states would have been radicalized by the feeling that they had been fighting to combat slavery? And that that sense would have given the north a more burning sense of mission than perhaps it had when it went into the Civil War. And that in a sense, that would make a kind of long-term peace between a radically anti-abolitionist American bloc and an American bloc that still had slavery. It would make war between those two kind of inevitable in

the long run. Well, let's break that down a little farther, because I think maybe you're giving too much credit to the American abolition movement in the North. It was still only a piece of the pie, right? And first of all, whereas a lot of Northerners would have disagreed with slavery, they certainly weren't non-racist, right? I mean, a perfect example might be if you imagine the South not firing on Fort Sumter and starting the war. I mean, this is a little like what was just said about the South doesn't have to win, they just have to survive. Well, if the South doesn't start the Civil War, the North isn't going to start a war to, you know, with the South just to get rid of slavery.

So, I mean, I think I think that that had had had somebody started talking about re let's imagine we get to 1900 or maybe let's just say 1885 or something, because there's still going to be slavery in in Brazil and places like that after it ends in the United States. The idea that the United States, the northern United States especially, would restart the worst war in American history. And of course, it's the folks that a lot of people in the north didn't feel were their equals anyway. I mean, I come from, you know, I'm a typical American mongrel when it comes to my ethnic heritage. But there's quite a bit of Irish in my heritage. And the Irish people both fought passionately against the South and against slavery. But there were a lot of Irish people that rioted during draft riots and everything else whose attitude was, why the heck do we have to go die for this? I don't care. You know, I guess what I'm saying is, is I think the abolitionism in the North was powerful, but it was also an elite sensibility in some sorts of a sense. And that I'm not sure the rank and file Americans, other than maybe not being for slavery,

were very passionate about the idea of what we would today term equal rights. Does that make sense? But you think that even if the Confederacy had held out, that slavery would have gone? Oh, eventually. Absolutely. I think it was untenable over the long haul. The question is, is what is the long haul? I can't imagine slavery exists very long into the 20th century. But I suppose what you could argue, though, is that segregation would have lasted longer.

It lasted until 1965. I mean, yeah. So, I mean, it's lasted a pretty long time anyway. I mean, right. But it lasts. I mean, that's but that's a point about how resilient it is, that it lasts as long as it does, even with the federal government that is often run by people who hate the idea of segregation, FDR or whoever, who are not themselves instinctive segregationists. And it exists in a country where there are states, again, where a lot of people are horrified by the idea of segregation, and yet it still survives for decades. So imagine it in a society where there aren't those people.

In other words, like a richer, more secure version of South Africa. Because it was South Africa that I was thinking. I mean, South Africa, you know, when did apartheid end? South Africa, early 1990s. Yeah, but, you know, I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to caution against looking at the northern states as so benign on saying is that these people might have been against slavery, but they weren't necessarily wanting to live in harmony with black folks in their neighborhoods. I mean, racism was a nationwide problem, even if slavery itself was something that was reviled by many in the North. And remember, there's a religious component to this, too. I mean, a lot of this anti-slavery stuff comes from people who are part of a religious tradition that looks upon this as as a kind of a sin. But they didn't have any problems with sharecropping after the Reconstruction. They didn't have any problems with, you know, they did sometimes. But I mean, hotels that wouldn't allow black folks in. I guess what I'm saying is, is that

slavery being such an outlier and so above and beyond what most people could stand. But they sure put up with things even in the north that weren't that wasn't slavery, but wasn't freedom either. But the upshot is that we all think that Confederacy could still exist today had the 1860s worked out differently. I don't you know, here's and I know I'm probably an outlier here and I always get angry letters when I say this. I think it would have been really difficult for the Confederacy to have won the war if the North didn't just decide

that they didn't want anymore. What's the old Ennius line, right? The victor is not victorious until the opponent considers themselves so. I can see the North stopping the war because it's getting too costly. But if the North persists in an almost Second World War, unconditional surrender sort of thing- It's always going to win.

Yeah. It's hard to see the Confederacy winning. What about if Britain gets involved there? That's a big counterfact. Yeah. Then it's like France's role in the Revolutionary War. Then I agree. Then the tables change significantly. So Dan, as a man, or I mean, since you're a man who does five hour podcasts, I guess we should have expected this because we have got through, I think, well, we've barely got through four of our 10 questions. We have been going for almost an hour, which I know to you is nothing, but to our listeners, we don't want to try their patience. So what we'll do is we will come back for a second episode, and that will be out on Thursday.

Now, if you can't wait till then, the Rest Is History Club will have both episodes in their podcast feed right now. Oh, it's exciting. And if you're interested and you're not a member of the Rest Is History Club, go to restishistorypod.com to sign up. We will see you regardless on Thursday for samurai bodyguards, for whether the West could have lost the Cold War and other monumental questions of history with Dan Carlin. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening and access to our chat community,

please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com.