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Comment by cushychicken | Hacker News Reader

Been listening to Dan Carlin's podcast series on the Imperial Japanese military in WWII. (It's six parts, and about 20 hours long at this point.) Coincidentally, I just listened to the part about the attack on Pearl Harbor yesterday.

He didn't mention any of these failed wargames in the podcast. Reading about it now gives a lot more context on why the commander in chief of the US Navy at Pearl Harbor knew his head was going to roll following the Japanese attack.

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Just keep in mind to take everything he says with a big grain of salt.

Quite a few times I've been mesmerized by his podcasts only to find out later its either mostly made up or a "classic" but totally discredited version of the story.

He really doesn't bother reading up on the latest and most accurate material for his topics.

It's the main reason why I stopped listening to him (the smaller one is that I will never get used to his grating accent).

Oh - interesting, I never knew that was a claimed levied against him - that his history wasn't necessarily accurate. That is a bummer. Still like what he is doing for getting the concept out there that history is worth studying and should be "cool," and you can't blame a generalist for not being 100% up-to-date on the latest findings / understandings by experts... so if its just that, I get it - if its more storytelling and embellishment - that is unfortunate.

I was disappointed when listening about WWI how wrong the numbers were and gave up.

do you have some examples?

I read https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ppmsm/thoug...

To be fair, he always states: "I am not a historian". So if you listen to him as a storyteller, you will have a great time, and you might learn something along the way.

Absolutely, he's the kind of guy that should fire up your interest and make you buy a real book to learn more.

However, never take the book he's actually using...most of the time it's plain outdated.

As you say, you can't really blame a guy who says 5 times per episode that he's "not a historian", but plenty of times I just can't help and wonder why didn't he spend 30 minutes extra researching a topic and choosing better material and sources. The only answer I got is that bad material makes for better stories.

Supernova in the East was a great series. I read one of his major sources, Ian Toll's Pacific War trilogy, immediately after finishing the series, which gave a great strategic and political view to complement Carlin's emotional view

I'll look that up. Thanks for the recommendation.

Hey - I'm a few days late here but I got Pacific Crucible on Kindle and I'm really liking it. About a quarter of the way through.

OMG, did I never realize how terrifying war in the Pacific was.

What an epic podcast. And rather than being a straightforward recitation of events, it cleverly focuses on everything else: politics, the brutality of combat, personalities, why soldiers and commanders act as they do, and so on. It really drives home the feeling of the war as a slow-motion car accident, long in the making, impossible to stop, and horrific in its human impact. I’ve read a lot of military history, and this still felt so fresh, original, and dramatic.

Here is a link to Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast feed:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/dancarlin/history?format=xml

"Supernova in the East" is his latest series.

Keep listening! Some of his best since Blueprint for Armageddon

Which is likely his best series yet

The Japanese embarrassed a lot of Allied commanders in WW2. White superiority complex was the first casualty of the war.

I agree, the dismissive racism of the American military command was paid for heavily.

The Japanese military was not one that their contemporaries dismissed lightly. Casually assuming racism as well?

And yet the US went from not being on a war footing to rolling up the Japanese forces across a huge war zone in 4 years. And this was the side hustle to the main job. But go ahead and misunderstand what happened while throwing racist comments around.

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