Thanks so much to everyone suggesting viewing and listening to enhance my understanding of WW2-era Japan, and for the personal insights. Much apprecated!
Falling Down said:
As for the Adam Tooze observation, that really came alive for me reading a WW2 history book several years ago and realising how much depended on fuel, hardware and kinetic energy deployed in theatre through tanks, shells, ships, planes, bombs and bullets. There were equations that the respective war offices drew up that calculated how many KW/square mile were needed that informed production in the factories making all the stuff. I guess that’s why The Bomb suddenly became so attractive to all.
Yes this is so true. For me, WW2 is really the start of the very modern world that we live in today. When I see anything WW1 related, it always feels like the last gasp of what Brad de Long calls the "steam power societies" rather than the oil based societies that had fully emerged by 1945. And the war office equations you mention, which I hadn't heard of but which sound absolutely par for the course, remind me of the German tank problem in statistics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_tank_problem
I'm guessing these were the first steps in the path that took us to game theory being applied to nuclear war, or the McNamara quantitative approach to the Vietnam War, as I'm not sure many of the techniques used were really possible in 1914-18, with Fisher not really creating modern statistics until the 1920s and 30s.
As for the bomb, watching The Pacific gave me a visceral sense of why the loses for the Americans must have been very hard to bear. But perhaps it's also tied in with the way of fighting for modern, rich democracies. Tooze again:
"The first point is that the more material is mobilized, the more we flaunt productive power, the more we downplay the role of the fighting men on the frontline. Materialism cuts against heroism. The US Army Rangers scaling the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc were fighting with great bravery, but they had behind them a truly staggering arsenal. Nor was this an accident. The Western way of war, exemplified by D-day put firepower above manpower wherever possible. This is how rich democracies fight if they can. Those who suffer horrendous casualties are, almost by definition, either poor or desperate."
https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-289-d-day-80-years-on-world
The whole article is great, and includes a wonderful newsreel footage from 1946 about V2 launches in the American desert in which they put a camera on the rocket, letting the public see the earth from space for the first time.