PLEASE, put these into playlists as it’s seemingly really hard to put the episodes together.
Amazing podcast as always though fellas!

American here, in my fifties. I don't remember when I learned that WW2 had happened, both my parents were kids when it began and they both told me about it for as long as I can remember. My father especially was fascinated with it and he passed that on to me.
It wasn't until recently that I'd quite realized how much it means to me that my nation led the Allies to victory in WW2 and then led the free world in the aftermath. The Marshal Plan helped Europe rebuild, and then NATO kept Western Europe free until it could all be freed. I know all these policies benefited the USA most of all, but they truly benefited everyone and were such brilliant ideas. The prosperity the world has enjoyed since WW2 is the most abundant period in human history. How many times in my life have I looked at our flag and felt proud of what my country stood for? Countless times, and I didn't fully realize quite what I was feeling.
Anyhow, now that Trump is foolishly, fiendishly trying to destroy the global order for no good reason, I'm heartbroken every time I think about it. How could my countrymen be so damn dumb as you elect such a fool, twice. Bah, it's sickening.
Anyhow, thank you for this video.

I was a Cold War soldier. To be precise, I was a U.S. Coast Guard rescue swimmer in San Francisco in the '70s ...in the days before Kevlar trunks. It was rough duty, but somebody had to do it. Charlie never got as far as Sausalito on my watch!

I had heard that as part of the Truman Commission that Truman had found the black hole that was the Manhattan Project. He was basically told it involved a top secret project that should not be looked into. Apparently Truman accepted this explanation and did not investigate further.

To your point: McKinley chose Teddy Roosevelt as his vice-president to get him out of the way and shut him up.  It was thought that the Vice President would just fade away.  They McKinley was assassinated!

Thank you, gentlemen. No need to apologize for providing post war context to help understand decisions made during the strict confines of 1939-1945. Context is routinely under appreciated in discussions of WW2 history, overlooked under the glare of sharpened vision granted by hindsight.

I remember when Hirohito came to Britain in the eighties full of reconciliation the headline in Private Eye was “Piss off Bandy Knees!”

35:31 Al Murray does a great Churchill impression. Even James is grinning.

20 years ago I met an old Japanese gentleman who told me he had been conscripted (at age 16!) to drive a kamikaze speed boat full of TNT against the American fleet when they arrived off Kyushu. He hated the Japanese military with a passion, even as a very old man.

He told me that while of cause the civilian deaths in Hiroshima & Nagasaki were tragic, the Atomic bomb almost certainly saved HIS life and ultimately the lives of hundreds of thousands (possibly millions) of other innocents.

This is how and why they were allies. They are the epitome of the three Spider-Man trio pointing fingers. They all needed each other.

Thanks guys. Truman is a hugely under appreciated president.

This has been one of the best series cutting through the gibberish of others making sense on the words very clearly.  

Brilliant gents and gave me a better understanding the power of good relations with each other.

You are so right to highlight appreciation for the fact that these people were willing to deal with the need despite the weight, complexity, and nuance.  I cannot imagine this could ever happen again in my lifetime.

17:03 Truman did investigate the massive spending from the Manhattan Project, as a senator, but Sec of War Stimson asked him in 1943 to drop the investigation and he did

Jon Parshall makes the excellent point that every day from the middle of July till the end of the war the Japanese were killing tens of thousands of innocent people in Southeast Asia. We think about the casualties saved in invading Japan, but we don’t think about the innocent people. They were killing every day during the war. Dropping that bomb probably saved hundreds and hundreds of thousands of lives.

James! I loved your interview with The Mooch! I’m glad Truman is really getting the love he deserves

The Cold War started Sept ‘45 when Igor Gouzenko walked out of the Soviet embassy in Ottawa and defected to the Canadian government. With cables and documents showing the extent of espionage by Russia against the western powers in WWII.

That is a mean Churchill Al  lol. Great eppy fellas but Al doin the Iron Curtain speech with that much teeth and just zero bravado.. come on now lol

Using the atomic bombs on Japan was a terrible thing, but it had to be done. The bottom line is exactly what Truman said, he couldn't have looked into the eyes of the mother of a service member killed during the invasion of Japan if he'd had the bomb and not used it. The other side of that is this, had Truman not used the bomb, and we'd invaded Japan and gone through all that horror the invasion would have caused, the greatest scandal of the twentieth century would have been the secret that we had an atomic weapon before the invasion of mainland Japan and didn't try to end the war with it first.
There was no other option.

Big fan of We Have Ways of Making You Talk. James, your depth on WWII history is as good as it gets, and this Al Murray guy isn't half bad either for a sidekick. (Sorry,  couldn't resist,  guys!)  Really appreciate the massive amount of knowledge combined with not taking yourselves too seriously. The late-war geopolitical breakdown was outstanding. Keep 'em coming.