1942 Q & A show with Jon Parshall

Do not kid yourselves. The nazi party organized the Holocaust. But millions of Germans helped. Willingly.

A wonderful presentation guys thanks

Excellent as usual

Fantastic presentation/discussion as always. Can't wait for the book to come out!

love his wallpaper...

What a MASTERCLASS of detail and dialogue! Surely podcasts don't get any better than this. I thoroughly enjoyed the expertise of debate and information on display here. I await John's new book with supreme anticipation!

The Allies found that mostly intact Zero in the Aleutians, maybe the most important thing to come from the campaign?

I'll watch just about anything with John in it, he's a great human being.

Great show, with great questions!

Absolutely brilliant discussion about the importance of 1942 from almost every angle you could ask for!!

You had me at 1942 John…

The US only had 6 or 8 divisions ready.4 in the pacific In 44 the. US Had about 55 division. Marshal knew this and the knew the Allies were a minimum one year away. Ended up two.

1942 was absurd for the cross channel invasion. It is hard to imagine Marshal even contemplating this. But it was very early in the War and the Americans were desperately worried about the Soviets. And I suspect that Marshal's assessments were still dominated by his World War I experience. But the U.S. Army as not yet present in Britain in the strength needed. It would have had to have been a mostly British operation.

I think Adm King among the major World War II commanders.does not get enough credit. So your program was very helpful. One of the issues with King was that he was not a very sympathetic person. Jon brings up two of the major military issues concerning King. . One that he disliked the British. Jon suggests the problem was with Pound which is interesting. Two was convoying along the East Coast. Jon does not explain just why King was so late in organizing convoys along the East Coast. I was always under the impression that 1) the destroyers were needed in the Pacific and 2) King was surprised that he Germans had the capability of conducting such distant operations along the East Coast. Based on the discussion, one gets the impression, that the issues with Pound is why King did not organize convoying. I'd be surprised if that is what Jon meant to say. It would be interesting to know just why it took so long.

Splendid discussion. I eagerly await Parshall’s book.

And a Maggie Thatcher impression to boot…Parshall got it all😂

It's good talk when the Q&A session is nearly twice the length of the talk.

Another great presentation by Jon, always a pleasure to listen to his knowledge and expertise on the Pacific theatre of war. Thank you Jon and Woody, more from Jon please 👍👏

My Grandpa was on the New Orleans during WW2. He was at Pearl Harbor when it was attacked all the way through the war. My son and I have researched about where it was and where it fought. All we can find is that it fought in the Pacific. Very frustrated.

Thanks!

Another excellent program- thank you.👍

The 39th parallel dividing North and South Korea was decided in a hotel room in New York City by representatives from the USSR and the US State Department. It seemed a fair division at the time and the map used was from an issue of National Geographic I was told.

Great episode thanks Woody and Jon

Those designers of the Essex class carriers early on should be mentioned in any talk of 1942.

Thanks Paul. You and Jon are excellent historians. This presentation is superb.

Also knocking out oil storage facilities is VERY difficult. Just look at Ploesti for a typical one strike result.

Guadalcanal campaign loses table, aircraft, aviators. Does this include Australian and U.S. aircraft and aviators operating out of Port Moresby, and same for Japanese operating against them? A loss over Moresby or Henderson was the exact same thing to the IJN or IJA.

Prior to invasion of Guadalcanal did the IJN have plans for another operation in the Indian Ocean?

Why no mention of the victories over the Japanese in New Guinea? The Japanese did not differentiate between New Guinea & Guadalcanal why do historians focus only on the small battle? There were far more Japanese in New Guinea than Guadalcanal. The Japanese wanted air fields in New Guinea, at Mile Bay. They were handed their first land defeat ( by Australians) attempting to take it. They were pushed back over the Kokoda Trail and defeated at Gona , Buna & Sanananda all allied ( predominantly Australian) victories in 1942. Australia had more Divisions in the SW Pacific in 1942 than America. It was Australian troops who were doing the bulk of the ground war at this time. Not one mention of this! The first American troops to go into action were the US army 32 Division in Buna, in New Guinea not then 1st Marines Division on Guadalcanal. Even if you want to ignore the Australians perhaps the US 32nd Division might have been worth a mention. It suffered far more losses than the Marines. It was engaged more brutal fighting. The largest losses at Guadalcanal were naval. On New Guinea the losses were almost all infantry. Why was this theater ignored?

We have tons of information as to what happened on the Allied side, but this discussion doesn't go into the Japanese discussions about this period. What about that? If I carry things back even more, what prompted the Japanese to attack the US (Pearl Harbor, Philippines)? Had the Japanese NOT attacked the US (yes, I know, lots of the Japanese naval planning pre-WWII was naval conflict with the US), the US would NOT have had a cassus belli to join the war (US electorate isolationism would have prevented it). THIS was the great strategic mistake of the Japanese.
As an overall point, the fact we haven't translated into English the COMPLETE 120 volume Japanese official history is a real black hole in the historiography of ENGLISH-language World War II history.

Thanks for this one Paul and Jon <3 Grüße

General Marshall fired a lot of army senior officers. There was a lot of dead wood to trim.

Washinton DC would do anything to keep Douglas MacArthur out of the USA. Unfortunately Australia got saddled with him.

Excellent stuff

Outstanding discussion! Please keep having Jon on the show!!!

Jon, calling "Mac" a gentleman is both a semantic and literal pervarication, LOL!

The Japanese attitude towards 'conquered" people and POWs was an extention State-Shintoism's doctrine of Japanese superiority as a race and their distain for non-Niponese captives as being lesser beings (similar to the German attitude toward the Jews and Slavs and the Italian attitude toward the Ethiopians and Libian Muslims).

I believe that "Ol' Corncob" MacArthur was left in place and allowed to toot his horn as "the "Great Pacific Soldier" war strictly a political decision by FDR to keep Mac from running against him for President.

Just rewatched this and it keeps on improving, so much to assimilate from an excellent episode.

Jon, I think that FDR feared that MacArthur would run against him for President and beat him. Largely because of "Mac's" personal propaganda machine, FDR thought that he could distract "Mac" by giving him the same "Medal" "Mac's" father had EARNED in the Civil War, and giving him a superfluous command. Of course FDR did have the option to let Mac be captured by the Japanese when they took over Corregador.

yeah maybe-more japs killed in png by the australians and more japanese aircraft destroyed in png and environs in this period. Although Jon admits significant USN failures in the naval battles post this period-there were repetitive failures -particular in the cruiser battles that resulted in the loss of many admirals and cruisers. The USN was very lucky not to have the Guadalcanal invasion ships destroyed after the night battle of savo island -thus altering the outcome of the battle. I think this is the real reason fletcher was pushed aside-he wore it, they just lucky Mikawa was paranoid about air attack after the battle despite knowing the airfield was not yet operational and that the USN carriers had run south. The Japanese air reconaisance had confirmed this fact-perhaps it was not passed on?This failure by the Japanese to destroy the invasion convoy is on a par with the timidity off ceylon in April 1942. The two US divisions in Australia in this period were useless-they were nowhere near the battle efficiency of the 2nd AIF. They failed on the Owen Stanleys and at Buna.A japanese invasion of Australia was beyond them -logistically and by this stage the 2nd AIF had at least the bare bones of two armored divisions-the two us divsisons WERE NOT NEEDED.

yeah youre off point on this one Jon and your us bias is showing

the battleships sunk in iron bottom sound are not divable-they are in very deep water

europe invasion-NOT ON LOGISTICALLY, TROOPS IN ENGLAND , AIR SUPPORT, TRAINING , STOCKPILED SUPPLIES AND AVAILABLE LANDING CRAFT IN 1942 PERIOD-suggesting otherwise is ridiculous

The approach is wrong DEVELOPED into a slugfest by both sides when both sides realised the ships available-it wasnt some brilliant insight by king.The operation is launched to DIVERT resources away from the PNG battle

I could listen to John and stare at that bald head and wallpaper forever lmao

Parshall is a legend. Great presentation.

Jon Parshall is personality plus, knowledgeable, and historically always accurate. Try to watch everything he does, knowledge plus entertainment, it doesnt get any better.

fantastic presentation/discussion by Woody and Jon.