Friday marked 81 years since Allied Forces launched the largest amphibious invasion in history, taking the first steps on a journey that would ultimately wrest Europe from the occupation and control of Nazi forces.
Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower — who would later be elected the 34th President of the United States — wrote two letters in the hours before 156,000 troops (primarily American, British, Canadian, and Australian) swarmed a 50-mile stretch of beaches near Normandy, France. One, delivered to the men preparing to march into the jaws of death, expressed his confidence in his men and his prayers for their victory. The second was a handwritten note, in which Eisenhower said that he alone would shoulder the blame if the mission were to fail.
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Left: Eisenhower’s D-Day letter: “You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade” &amp; “Let us beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great &amp; noble undertaking.”
Right: Eisenhower’s in-case-of-failure letter: “If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.” <a href="https://t.co/qBNjmHOu8T">pic.twitter.com/qBNjmHOu8T</a>
&mdash; Jerry Dunleavy IV 🇺🇸 (@JerryDunleavy) <a href="https://twitter.com/JerryDunleavy/status/1930849040851247517?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 6, 2025</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force!&#8221; Eisenhower opened the first of the two letters. &#8220;You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hope and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.&#8221;
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&#8220;Your task will not be an easy one,&#8221; the general warned. &#8220;Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely. But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory!&#8221;
&#8220;I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full Victory!&#8221; he concluded. &#8220;Good luck! And let us beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.&#8221;
The second letter was much shorter — and was misdated &#8220;July 5,&#8221; likely due to stress — and scribbled in the general&#8217;s own hand. It was the message he intended to deliver if Operation Overlord failed:
<blockquote>&#8220;Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that Bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.&#8221;</blockquote>
But 81 years later, the world remembers the bravery and dedication of the men who charged those beaches amid a hail of machine-gun bullets and mortars to deliver first France, and then the rest of Europe, from Nazi control.
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Eighty-one years ago, our nation&#39;s bravest stormed the beaches of Normandy. 
We will never forget their sacrifice. <a href="https://t.co/eiwNDhBTHG">pic.twitter.com/eiwNDhBTHG</a>
&mdash; DOD Rapid Response (@DODResponse) <a href="https://twitter.com/DODResponse/status/1930990988891201670?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 6, 2025</a></blockquote>
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RIGHT NOW in 1944, this is the scene in Normandy. The liberation of France is underway <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/DDay?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#DDay</a> <a href="https://t.co/0LUQIImNJp">pic.twitter.com/0LUQIImNJp</a>
&mdash; Military History Now (@MilHistNow) <a href="https://twitter.com/MilHistNow/status/1930855923481972947?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 6, 2025</a></blockquote>
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“Here the allies stood &amp; fought against tyranny in a giant undertaking. … These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war.”<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/DDay?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#DDay</a> <a href="https://t.co/kcFUv9wllA">pic.twitter.com/kcFUv9wllA</a>
&mdash; Jerry Dunleavy IV 🇺🇸 (@JerryDunleavy) <a href="https://twitter.com/JerryDunleavy/status/1930988710440452389?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 6, 2025</a></blockquote>
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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth delivered remarks commemorating the 81st anniversary, saying, &#8220;Eighty-one years ago, Hitler thought his Atlantic wall was impenetrable &#8230; He clearly had not met enough Americans.&#8221;
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. <a href="https://twitter.com/SecDef?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@SecDef</a> “Eighty-one years ago, Hitler thought his Atlantic wall was impenetrable.
He clearly had not met enough Americans.” <a href="https://t.co/pmf4WQK0G7">pic.twitter.com/pmf4WQK0G7</a>
— DOD Rapid Response (@DODResponse) <a href="https://twitter.com/DODResponse/status/1930950043151815068?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 6, 2025</a></blockquote>
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US Troops on D Day.

81 Years Later, The World Remembers D-Day

American History

Dwight D. Eisenhower

History

Military

Pete Hegseth

Politics

World War II

Harrison Ruffin Tyler — the grandson of President John Tyler, who served in the White House from 1841 to 1845 — died earlier this week, his family said on Wednesday. He was 96.
Tyler, born in 1928, was so close in his family tree to President Tyler, who was born in 1790, due to two generations of second marriages to much younger wives, CBS News <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/harrison-ruffin-tyler-grandson-president-john-tyler-dies/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>. Tyler&#8217;s father, Lyon Gardiner Tyler, had two sons with his second wife, Sue Ruffin Tyler, when he was in his 70s. Similarly, Lyon Gardiner Tyler&#8217;s father, President John Tyler, had multiple children with his much younger second wife when he was in his 50s and 60s. President Tyler fathered 15 children, with Lyon being the 13th child born to him.
Tyler grew up in poverty during the Great Depression and World War II. His father died when Tyler was just 7 years old, according to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2025/05/29/harrison-ruffin-tyler-grandson-president/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Washington Post</a>. Tyler was also related to Pocahontas and President William Henry Harrison, whom his grandfather replaced as president after Harrison died just one month after his inauguration in 1841.
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The last living grandson of President John Tyler has died. 
Harrison Ruffin Tyler was born in 1928 and died in 2025. 
His grandfather, the 10th President of the United States, was born in 1790 and died in 1862. <a href="https://t.co/MIBD1u71EM">pic.twitter.com/MIBD1u71EM</a>
&mdash; Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) <a href="https://twitter.com/yashar/status/1927798344664948948?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 28, 2025</a></blockquote>
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John Tyler faced unprecedented challenges, being the first vice president to succeed a president who died while in office. Near the end of his life, John Tyler, a Virginia Democrat, sided with the Confederacy and served as a member of the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States. He died in 1862, shortly after the start of the Civil War.
The grandson of the 10th president became fascinated with history, and to preserve some of his family&#8217;s legacy, he purchased President Tyler&#8217;s Sherwood Forest plantation in 1975 and Fort Pocahontas, a Civil War fortification, in 1996. Both historical sites are in Virginia, where the Tyler family lived for generations. Harrison Tyler and his wife, Frances Payne Bouknight Tyler, spent $250,000 to restore the Sherwood Forest house to its original state and open it to the public. Thanks to Tyler&#8217;s preservation, people can <a href="http://www.sherwoodforest.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">tour</a> the plantation home in Charles City, Virginia.
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&#8220;He will be remembered for his considerable charm, generosity and unfailing good humor by all who knew him,&#8221; said Annique Dunning, executive director of Sherwood Forest.
Much of Tyler&#8217;s efforts to preserve history were made possible by his successful and lucrative career. He graduated from the College of William &amp; Mary in 1949 with a degree in chemistry. In 1968, he co-founded ChemTreat, an industrial water treatment company, which was sold to the Danahar Corporation in 2007 for $435 million, according to the Post.
Tyler suffered mini strokes in 2012, which landed him in a nursing home in Virginia, where he lived the final years of his life. His wife died in 2019, and his last remaining sibling, Lyon Gardiner Tyler Jr., died in 2020. Tyler and his wife, who married in 1957, had three <a href="https://people.com/grandson-of-10th-united-states-president-john-tyler-dies-at-96-11744091" target="_blank" rel="noopener">children</a> and eight grandchildren.

President John Tyler

Last Living Grandson Of America’s 10th President, John Tyler, Dies At 96

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General

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Virginia

The Trump administration announced this week an opportunity for American artists to create sculptures of historical figures like George Washington, Patrick Henry, Davy Crockett, and other American heroes in celebration of the nation’s 250th birthday.
The National Endowment for the Humanities <a href="https://www.neh.gov/news/neh-announces-grant-opportunity-create-statues-iconic-americans-national-garden-american" target="_blank" rel="noopener">announced</a> on Thursday that it would be handing out grants for artists to sculpt one of the 250 American historical figures identified by the Trump administration for placement in a new National Garden of American Heroes.
“The garden will provide the public with an opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of how the lives and accomplishments of these individuals have shaped our history and culture,”Acting National Endowment for Humanities Chairman Michael McDonald said.
Artists, who must be American citizens, can be awarded up to three grants each of $200,000 for a total of $600,000. The statues will be life-size and made with marble, granite, bronze, copper, or brass.
The National Endowment for the Humanities will be partnering with the National Endowment for the Arts to spend $34 million on the project.
“The National Garden will feature Americans who deserve honor, recognition, and lasting tribute because of the battles they won, the ideas they championed, the diseases they cured, the lives they saved, the heights they achieved, and the hope they passed down,” the <a href="https://apply07.grants.gov/apply/opportunities/instructions/PKG00290638-instructions.pdf">notice</a> of funding says.
The notice also says that the garden will be a spot for visitors to learn about American history.
“It will also be a place where Americans can gather to learn about and celebrate America and the icons who made America what it is today. Visitors to the park will learn the stories of some of the greatest Americans,” the notice says.
A specific location for the garden has not yet been determined. Trump first proposed the plan in 2020, but it was later cancelled by former President Joe Biden.
The list of figures to be honored includes a wide variety of people, such as President John Adams, Civil War nurse Clara Barton, inventors Orville and Wilbur Wright, World War II General Douglas MacArthur, astronaut Neil Armstrong, Civil War soldier Joshua Chamberlain, Pilgrim leader William Bradford, country music artist Johnny Cash, anti-slavery activist Frederick Douglas, founding firebrand Patrick Henry, World War I hero Alvin York, and many others.

US-POLITICS-HOLIDAY-TRUMP

Trump Rolls Out New Project To Honor Heroes Ahead Of America’s 250th Birthday

Donald Trump

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Marine Charging During Battle of Okinawa

OKINAWA, THE LAST BATTLE, Part One: Operation Iceberg

Japan

Marines

U.S. Military

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President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday aimed at purging &#8220;anti-American ideology&#8221; from the Smithsonian Institution and restoring monuments that were removed during the past five years.
The executive order, <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/restoring-truth-and-sanity-to-american-history/">titled</a> &#8220;Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,&#8221; directs Vice President JD Vance to eliminate “improper partisan ideology” from the Smithsonian, which has, according to the order, promoted the idea that American history is “inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed.”
“Over the past decade, Americans have witnessed a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth,” the order states.
“This revisionist movement seeks to undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.”
The Smithsonian Institution was founded in 1846 as a public-private partnership, and is the “world’s largest museum, education, and research complex,” according to its website.
The White House <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/03/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-restores-truth-and-sanity-to-american-history/">points</a> to several examples of “anti-American ideology” the administration plans to address:
<ul>
<li>At Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, the Biden Administration sponsored training by an organization that advocates for dismantling “Western foundations” and that taught Park Rangers that their racial identity should dictate how they present history to visitors.</li>
<li>The American Art Museum currently features an exhibit that purports to address how “sculpture has been a powerful tool in promoting scientific racism” and claims that the United States has “used race to establish and maintain systems of power, privilege, and disenfranchisement.”</li>
<li>The National Museum of African American History and Culture has proclaimed that “hard work,” “individualism,” and “the nuclear family” are aspects of “White culture.” 
The American Women’s History Museum plans to celebrate male athletes participating in women’s sports.</li>
</ul>
The order prohibits the museum from including transgender-identifying men, specifying that funding should &#8220;celebrate the achievements of women&#8221; and &#8220;not recognize men as women in any respect.&#8221;
Additionally, it instructs Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum to identify monuments under the federal government’s jurisdiction that were taken down to “perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history” and to “take action to reinstate” them.
Burgum is also tasked with ensuring that current monuments “do not contain descriptions, depictions, or other content that inappropriately disparage Americans past or living (including persons living in colonial times), and instead focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people.”
Trump&#8217;s order represents the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2025/03/27/trump-issues-executive-order-eliminate-anti-american-ideology-smithsonian/">first</a> direct attempt by a presidential administration to reshape the Smithsonian&#8217;s content approach in its nearly 180-year history, despite the institution receiving 62% of its annual funding from the federal government, according to The Washington Post.

President Trump Announces New Automobile Tariffs

Trump Signs Executive Order Targeting ‘Anti-American Ideology’ At The Smithsonian

Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI)

JD Vance

LGBTQ

Social Issues

By 2:30 a.m. on March 10, 1945, the bombers had all disappeared over the glowing horizon and the “all clear” sounded across a shattered Tokyo. 
While back on Guam, Gen. LeMay and his staffers were breathing a collective sigh of relief, over a million suddenly homeless Japanese wandered the smoldering lunar landscape of their devastated capital city like bewildered phantasms. When the smokey dawn arrived, the grey, muted sunlight revealed badly burned survivors stumbling into what medical centers remained while others returned to ash heaps that were once their neighborhoods searching for family members separated from them in the chaos of the night before. Ishikawa Iwao came upon the charred remains of his wife and two girls. One young girl would recall having to push her way through the dead bodies with her feet. In the Tokyo subway, thousands of naked and seared humanoid figures were piled into the narrow confines. If it was not hell itself, LeMay’s bombers had come as close as the human race could to replicating it on this earth.
Although there were attempts soon after the raid to arrive at a reliable casualty figure, it was guesswork. Many of the Tokyo officials who would have tallied the corpses and presented a body count to the emperor, whose palace had been spared, were either dead, injured, searching for loved ones, or scrounging for food. Various historians, as well as subsequent Japanese and U.S. records, put the death toll at anywhere from 87,000 to over 110,000 with another 40,000 injured. Respected researchers like Edwin Hoyt, however, argued that even the high estimates of fatalities are a gross undercount given the population of the area that was scorched, and that these figures only represent actual counted dead along with approximations based on fragments of clothing, bones, jewelry, and the like. He would actually put the number at over 200,000. We will never know for sure. But what we do know is that, with the possible exception of Hiroshima, the March 9-10, 1945, firebombing of Tokyo was the most lethal single act of war in human history, and certainly tops anything conventional weapons had ever achieved before or since.
<div id="attachment_888437" style="width: 971px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-888437" class="size-large wp-image-888437" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-568885031-961x576.jpg" alt="Tokyo residents who lost their homes as a result of the U.S. bombings. 10th March 1945. The Operation Meetinghouse air raid of 9-10 March 1945 was later estimated to be the single most destructive bombing raid in history. It was part of a series of firebombing raids, conducted by the United States Army Air Forces during the Pacific campaigns of World War II. Photo: Kouyou Ishikawa, officer of the Metropolitan Police Department. Tokyo, Japan. (Photo By Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images)" width="961" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-568885031-961x576.jpg 961w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-568885031-300x180.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-568885031-768x461.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-568885031.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 961px) 100vw, 961px" />Tokyo residents who lost their homes as a result of the U.S. bombings. 10th March 1945. Photo: Kouyou Ishikawa, officer of the Metropolitan Police Department. Tokyo, Japan. (Photo By Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images)</div>
Despite the mass killing they’d just unleashed, LeMay and his bomber crews were ebullient. Losses hadn’t been 70% as some predicted but rather just 4%: 14 bombers and 96 crewmen lost. This in exchange for reducing over 16 square miles of the enemy’s capital city to ash. The Superfortresses incinerated 63% of the commercial district, wiped out 18% of Tokyo’s industry, and burned to the ground roughly a quarter million buildings and homes, which was 25% of the city.
Flying at low altitude, it turned out, was less taxing on the B-29’s temperamental engines as well as more fuel-efficient. So low-level nighttime fire bombings would be LeMay’s template going forward. In effect, America’s strategy for winning the war was to simply dump burning gasoline over Japan until they finally came to their senses. In fact, over the next six months the B-29s would proceed to burn out one Japanese city after another, including several return trips to embattled Tokyo, effectively hammering a nation already teetering due to critical shortages to its knees. In fact, LeMay was confident that by putting every Japanese city to the torch, his B-29s could compel Japan to surrender without ever having to invade, or drop an atomic bomb. And, as <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Flyboys-Story-Courage-James-Bradley/dp/0316105848/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;sr=" target="_blank" rel="noopener">post-war surveys</a> revealed, of all the reasons Japanese civilians believed their nation had no choice but to end the war, the air raids topped the list.
And no wonder. As historian and author James Bradley writes: “Curtis [LeMay] was clearly much more effective than the American bombers had been in Europe. Bombing destroyed seventy-nine square miles of Germany’s urban area. Curtis destroyed more than twice as much urban area in Japan. 178 square miles…In fact, the damage in just two Japanese cities, Tokyo (56.3 square miles) and Osaka (16.4 square miles) nearly equaled all the damage done to all German cities put together.” And these were just two of nearly 70 cities the B-29s burned out between March and August 1945.
<div id="attachment_888441" style="width: 727px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-888441" class="size-large wp-image-888441" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-141556154-717x576.jpg" alt="Aerial view of Tokyo razed by American bombing carried out on the evening of March 9th by 334 B-29 Super Flying Fortresses. Tokyo, March 1945 (Photo by Mondadori via Getty Images)" width="717" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-141556154-717x576.jpg 717w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-141556154-300x241.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-141556154-768x617.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-141556154.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 717px) 100vw, 717px" />Aerial view of Tokyo razed by American bombing carried out on the evening of March 9th by 334 B-29 Super Flying Fortresses. Tokyo, March 1945 (Photo by Mondadori via Getty Images)</div>
Indeed, even after the atomic bombs vaporized Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the firebombing continued; the last Japanese city to be put to the torch was Akita, on August 14, 1945, five days after Nagasaki and just hours before Japan announced its capitulation.
The morality of firebombing or “area bombing” has been a subject of intense debate ever since. Certainly in the modern age where nations like Israel are castigated in the court of global opinion for “disproportionate” responses to acts of war, one is hard-pressed to find proportionality in a bombing campaign that, in ostensible retaliation for 2,400 dead at Pearl Harbor, eventually burned to death over a half million old men, women, and children and rendered over eight million homeless.
To be sure, some in the military did question the ethics of such indiscriminate killing. Brig. Gen. Charles Bonner Feller condemned the Tokyo raid as “one of the most ruthless and barbaric killings of non-combatants in all of history.” LeMay himself candidly <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Second-World-Wars-Global-Conflict/dp/0465066984" target="_blank" rel="noopener">conceded</a>, “I suppose if we’d lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminals.”
But when it comes to the bombing of Japan especially, there are two factors to consider before handing down judgement ex post facto. First, 34% of Japanese industrial workers were jammed into her six largest cities. And many of those who did not work on the factory floor were directly involved in contributing to the war effort through the cottage industry of making parts for nearby factories in their home workshops. As one 1944 report to the White House argued, “each factory was like a tree radiating a web of roots throughout the surrounding living areas from which it drew both workers and parts.” In other words, an argument could be made that every Japanese dwelling was a legitimate military target. And thusly, “de-housing”, to use Churchill’s antiseptic phrase, was considered to be justified.
Feller’s rare dissent aside, we are speaking of what the Germans called “terror bombing” and the Japanese “slaughter bombing” with the advantage of decades of hindsight and reflection. Today we know that by March 1945 the war was barely six months away from concluding. But U.S. planners back then certainly could not know this. As far as they were concerned the ferocious battles of Peleliu, Manila, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa amply demonstrated that, if anything, Japanese resistance was stiffening, and growing ever more fanatical. In 1945, Germany may have been on the ropes, but Japan was showing no hint of surrender. The trusted journalist Ernie Pyle wrote, “The closer we get to Japan, the harder it will be. To me it looks like trying days for us in the years ahead.” As Bradley points out, Pyle said years, not months.
It was with this backdrop of frustration with an enemy who, though clearly beaten, still refused to give up, combined with the brutality of the Japanese themselves — especially their sadistic conduct towards civilians and POWs that was well-known by then — that erased any moral qualms from the nation’s collective conscience. The growing consensus both inside the War Department as well as Main Street, USA, was that this madness had to end. And if it took burning all of Japan back into the stone age to stop our boys from coming home in coffins or maimed and mutilated, then so be it. Who are we, basking in the eighth decade of the hard-won Pax Americana, to judge those who saw nothing but a human catastrophe looming before them? As the war inexorably moved towards what would have been its inevitable gory climax, all that lay ahead was an invasion of the home islands with literally millions of Allied, and most likely tens of millions of Japanese, casualties to pay the price.
As for the men who carried out the burning of Tokyo that night, once the euphoria of surviving a mission so many expected to be their last wore off, they no doubt pondered the ethics of dumping napalm on defenseless people below. But training, discipline, and war-weariness had instilled in most of them a sense of clinical detachment. They just wanted to get in, execute the mission, and get out of there in one piece. As LeMay would offer unapologetically, “Every soldier thinks about the moral aspect of what he is doing. But all war is immoral, and if you let that bother you, you’re not a good soldier.”
On August 6, 1945, the uranium bomb “Little Boy” destroyed Hiroshima. Three days later the plutonium bomb “Fat Man” obliterated Nagasaki. But Japan’s most stalwart militarists, who were more than prepared to sacrifice their entire population to thwart an Allied invasion, viewed atomic weapons as more of a gradual rather than quantum leap in escalation. After all, as with the M69, the atomic bombs killed most of their victims with fire.
Russia’s invasion of Japanese-occupied Manchuria on August 8, 1945, certainly removed another piece of their wobbly Jenga tower. One and a half million Red Army troops attacked the emperor’s three quarter of a million warriors in the Chinese province and, along with vengeful Manchus, engaged in the mass killing, looting, and rape of thousands of Japanese “pioneers,” and sent 700,000 captives to Stalin’s gulags.
Even the intrepid U.S. submariners effectively sinking the Japanese Merchant Marine did not alone end Japan’s war effort. Dai Nippon’s commanders still ate well, drank good sake, and ravished enslaved “comfort women” while their starving people subsisted on grasshoppers and sawdust cakes.
Morality aside, a strong case can be made that, of all the factors that led to Japan’s ultimate surrender, it was the firebombing that weighed most heavily in Hirohito’s decision to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1989/01/07/obituaries/a-leader-who-took-japan-to-war-to-surrender-and-finally-to-peace.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">compel his nation</a> to “bear the unbearable, and “endure the unendurable.” In fact, it is quite conceivable to imagine eventual U.S. victory over Japan through “slaughter bombing” alone. In a meeting with Gen. Arnold, LeMay informed him that by September 1945 there would be no more Japanese targets left to bomb. “And with the targets gone we couldn’t see much of any war going on.” According to Prince Fumimaro Konoe, “…the thing that brought about the determination to make peace was the prolonged bombing by the B-29.” It makes one wonder if Hiroshima and Nagasaki ever needed to occur. Although others would argue that the atom bombs were, in fact, the essential wake-up call demonstrations of the awesome power arrayed against Japan. In a post-war interview, Prime Minister Suzuki Kantaro stated, “The atom bomb didn’t end the war, but it prompted the emperor to make a decision.” The debate continues.
<div id="attachment_888479" style="width: 790px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-888479" class="size-large wp-image-888479" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-3208513-1-780x576.jpg" alt="2nd September 1945: Japanese Imperial Headquarters representative General Yoshijiro Umezu (foreground, right) signing Japanese Instrument of Surrender while General MacArthur (foreground, centre) watches, aboard the USS Missouri, Tokyo Bay. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" width="780" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-3208513-1-780x576.jpg 780w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-3208513-1-300x221.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-3208513-1-768x567.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-3208513-1.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px" />Hulton Archive/Getty Images</div>
Again, these are questions revisited today through the clear lens of decades of hindsight. At the time, the U.S. government, seeing no end in sight, had a solemn obligation to the American people to do whatever was necessary to end the costliest war in human history. Still, no matter what ultimately prompted Japan’s leaders to accept defeat, the countdown to that defeat began on a terrible March night over Tokyo, eighty years ago, when the B-29s came in force, and the night sky rained fire. And the hellfire of total war finally came home to Japan.
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Brad Schaeffer is a commodities fund manager, author, and columnist whose articles have appeared on the pages of The Daily Wire, The Wall Street Journal, NY Post, NY Daily News, National Review, The Hill, The Federalist, Zerohedge, and other outlets. He is the author of three <a href="https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B07MQJBJSD?ccs_id=55112527-86f6-4c89-b82e-a96d6869abed" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B07MQJBJSD?ccs_id%3D55112527-86f6-4c89-b82e-a96d6869abed&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1736518135479000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3K_WhJtiUZw7LF1PwSIHtH">books</a>. Follow him on <a href="https://bradschaeffer.substack.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://bradschaeffer.substack.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1736518135479000&amp;usg=AOvVaw02hy-lB4UuAlHo7FfD_FIQ">Substack</a> and <a href="https://x.com/bschaeffer123" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://x.com/bschaeffer123&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1736518135479000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0P6pRoAqcBhUQ1W0qwN5rH">X/Twitter</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
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<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/tokyo-inferno-operation-meetinghouse-the-deadliest-air-raid-in-history-part-1?row=0&amp;elementPosition=2&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;author=Brad+Schaeffer&amp;title=Tokyo+Inferno%3A+Operation+Meetinghouse%2C+The+Deadliest+Air+Raid+In+History%2C+Part+1&amp;category=News" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: Tokyo Inferno: Operation Meetinghouse, The Deadliest Air Raid In History, Part 1</a>
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/tokyo-inferno-operation-meetinghouse-the-deadliest-air-raid-in-history-part-2?row=0&amp;elementPosition=1&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;author=Brad+Schaeffer&amp;title=Tokyo+Inferno%3A+Operation+Meetinghouse%2C+The+Deadliest+Air+Raid+In+History%2C+Part+2&amp;category=News" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: Tokyo Inferno: Operation Meetinghouse, The Deadliest Air Raid In History, Part 2</a>

Aerial View Of Tokyo After The Bombing

Tokyo Inferno: Operation Meetinghouse, The Deadliest Air Raid In History, Part 3

U.S. Army

If God ever decided to create a city that would be most vulnerable to a mass napalm attack, He would construct 1945 Tokyo. Estimates vary, but at that stage of the war the city’s population was roughly 6.5 million inhabitants, as opposed to around 3.5 million Berliners. Although the two Axis capitals had roughly the same overall average population density of between 8,000 to 10,000 per square mile, certain areas in Tokyo like the Asakusa workers district crammed 130,000 people into the same space. And, unlike Berlin, many of Tokyo’s houses, shops, and other structures were built of wood and featured paper walls. To make matters worse, even though Japan’s leaders understood the ominous threat posed by the now-in-range B-29s to the home islands due to the loss of the Marianas, they prioritized production over protecting their citizenry.
As such, there were only 18 concrete air raid shelters in all of Tokyo, capable of only shielding approximately 5,000 of the city’s 6.5 million inhabitants. The rest made do with shallow backyard dugouts and other makeshift shelters. In the entire city a mere 8,000 firefighters along with citizens practiced in forming bucket brigades were all that stood between them and $200 million-worth of a mighty industrial power’s most advanced war machines coming in low to dump over three million pounds of flaming gel onto their city. And as if Tokyo wasn’t exposed enough, the night of March 9-10, 1945, was cold with howling winds gusting at up to 50 mph, creating an ideal environment for fanning the flames. 
In short, the stage was set for what would be the single most lethal day in the history of conventional warfare.
<div id="attachment_888383" style="width: 697px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-888383" class="wp-image-888383 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-104421219-1-687x576.jpg" alt="IN FLIGHT - JANUARY 02: The Bomber Boeing B-29 Superfortress On Assignment Between 1943 And 1945. Put Into Service In 1943, It Was Used By Great Britain And The Usa. (Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)" width="687" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-104421219-1-687x576.jpg 687w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-104421219-1-300x251.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-104421219-1-768x644.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-104421219-1.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 687px) 100vw, 687px" />Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images</div>
A little after midnight, just as Radio Tokyo was signing off and the air-raid sirens began to whine, the first group of pathfinder B-29s roared over the city. Flying in at right angles to each other, their mission was to paint a flaming “X” on the target area with incendiaries. Once the pathfinders did their work, the rest of the bombers appeared overhead in groups of three and began dropping their payloads onto their assigned quadrants. Residents would later recall how, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Flyboys-Story-Courage-James-Bradley/dp/0316105848/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;sr=" target="_blank" rel="noopener">in the words</a> of Hashimoto Yoshiko, the bombers did not appear as they usually did as “dots in the sky with a tail.” This night was different. “They were flying so low,” she said, “I wondered if they would hit the utility poles…They were so big.”
The B-29 had a device called an intervalometer, which dropped a bundled cluster of M69s each weighing 500 pounds every 50 feet; the timing was such as to cover an area roughly 350 by 2,000 feet. Once they dropped to an altitude of 2,000, the clusters burst and showered the area with the incendiary pipe bombs; they floated to the ground like a “silver waterfall” as many observers <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Flyboys-Story-Courage-James-Bradley/dp/0316105848/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;sr=" target="_blank" rel="noopener">commonly described</a> the scene. A German priest watching from the Jesuit Sophia University perched on a hill overlooking the city remarked that it reminded him of “the silver tinsel we hung from Christmas trees in Germany…and where these silver streamers would touch the ground, a fire would erupt.”
With each detonation, a fountain of burning goo would shoot out in all directions and devour everything it touched. The high winds at ground level whipped the flames sending them spreading out rather than up. And when the fires merged, the wind gusts fanned the conflagration into a raging firestorm racing through the narrow streets, incinerating thousands of Japanese who realized too late their shallow dugouts were no protection from this rapidly advancing cataclysm consuming their city.
Within fifteen minutes of the first fires, Tokyo’s firefighters were completely overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude and violence of the spreading inferno, with one <a href="https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/hellfire-earth-operation-meetinghouse" target="_blank" rel="noopener">declaring</a> “Hellfire is upon us!” Many would die in heroic, if futile, attempts to contain the conflagration that resulted from 8,519 clusters of M69s weighing 500 pounds, each bursting over their city and cascading down on them like a flaming deluge. One pilot recalled seeing burned out corpses of firefighters huddled around their engine that had melted like wax.
Succeeding waves of fliers had no problem spotting their targets. The flames were so bright, said one pilot, “the whole area was lighted as if it was broad daylight when we entered the drop zone.” Martin Sheridan, a correspondent for The Boston Globe, hitched a ride with the B-29 Patches, which was farther back in the bomber stream. He would write: “The navigator didn’t have to give the pilot bearings towards Tokyo because 40 miles from the blacked-out city we could see the reddish glow of the burning capital on the horizon.” Once over the target, Sheridan would report, “The area below me was a sea of flame.”
<div id="attachment_888493" style="width: 478px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-888493" class="wp-image-888493 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/image-1-468x576.png" alt="Credit: S. Smisek. Colorized image from a B-29." width="468" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/image-1-468x576.png 468w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/image-1-244x300.png 244w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/image-1.png 720w" sizes="(max-width: 468px) 100vw, 468px" />Credit: S. Smisek. Colorized image from a B-29.</div>
The fires were so strong they sent updrafts whooshing thousands of feet into the air, tossing the giant Superfortresses through the demonic orange sky like leaves in the wind. Several bombers were flipped over on their backs; crewmen not firmly buckled in their seats went tumbling wildly through their fuselages. Although the updrafts posed a very real danger and pushed pilots’ skills to the limit, enemy action was barely a factor. Anti-aircraft gunners, confused by the darkness and unexpected low altitudes, tried to put their spotlights on bombers above them while frantically adjusting their barrels to intercept the speeding machines but with little success. The B-29 crews reported back to LeMay: “Bombing the target visually. Flak moderate. Fighter opposition: nil.”
LeMay’s gamble had paid off. It turned out the enemy had plenty of small caliber guns that could reach up to 5,000 feet, and heavier flak cannons ranging between 10,000 and 30,000, but the window through which the general sent over 300 of his nation’s most expensive hardware and thousands of highly trained crewmen was wide open. After all, who would be mad enough to fly bombers in at that altitude? Although his commander would wait for follow-up reconnaissance photos the next day to assess the damage, one staffer on Guam that night remembered the taciturn LeMay chomping his cigar and saying, “It looks pretty good.” He even managed a hint of a smile.
<div id="attachment_888413" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-888413" class="size-large wp-image-888413" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Norstad_LeMay_Power-864x576.jpg" alt="From left: General Lauris Norstad, Twentieth Air Force Chief of Staff, General Curtis LeMay, XXI Bomber Command commander, General Thomas S. Power, 314th Bomb Wing commander. The three senior USAAF officers review reports from the Tokyo raid of March 9-10, 1945. U.S. Government (National Archives), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Norstad_LeMay_Power-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Norstad_LeMay_Power-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Norstad_LeMay_Power-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Norstad_LeMay_Power.jpg 960w" sizes="(max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />National Archives. Public domain.</div>
No one caught in the fiery cauldron below, however, was smiling. Fueled by the ferocious winter winds, the firestorm ripped through the city like a red hot cyclone. <a href="https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2024/03/08/japan/society/tokyo-fire-bombing-anniversary/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CI%20left%20my%20house%20(in,night%20of%20March%209%2C%201945." target="_blank" rel="noopener">Recalled</a> Matsumoto Yoshio, just fifteen at the time, “I left my house (in Chuo district) and looked east. All of Sumida district and Koto district was engulfed in red.” Survivors would remember seeing people stumbling through the streets while fiery tentacles flailed at them, setting them ablaze. Teenager Ono Kimei was running for her life through the conflagration when she saw a fleeing mother carrying her small child ahead of her. “Suddenly the firestorm swept out a finger to lick them, and in a second the mother and child burst into flames…Their clothes afire, they staggered and fell to the ground.”
The inferno soon spread well beyond LeMay’s chosen target area. The firestorm not only created hurricane-force winds of flames, but the intense heat reached an astounding 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit in some areas, blowing liquified glass into the air which then rained down on people like a searing hot shower. Even those who managed to escape incineration by direct exposure to the fires cried out in agony as the intense heat alone was enough to burn their clothes off their bodies. Thousands more suffocated as the firestorm greedily devoured any oxygen.
In desperation to escape the hellfire, panicked mobs of Tokyo residents stampeded towards any water they could find, such as the massive swimming pool inside the Futaba School. But the pool water offered no protection this night in which superheated vapors rushing ahead of the tsunami of flames cooked the air up to the same temperature as a blast furnace. The next morning over a thousand pink and scorched bodies were found crammed within; it was bone dry as all the water had boiled away. Others raced for the Sumida River whose Kototoi Bridge was a bonfire as the metal trestles had long been removed to be melted into munitions and replaced with now flaming wooden beams. A bundle of M69s burst right over the crowded span, effectively cooking anyone who didn’t jump into the water. “People were burning to death on the bridge,” recalled Hashimoto. “Clothes would burst into flames. My hair caught fire. Everyone was screaming.”
<div id="attachment_888423" style="width: 932px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-888423" class="size-large wp-image-888423" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Kototoi_bashi_old-922x576.jpg" alt="Kototoi Bridge. Public Domain. " width="922" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Kototoi_bashi_old-922x576.jpg 922w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Kototoi_bashi_old-300x188.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Kototoi_bashi_old-768x480.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Kototoi_bashi_old.jpg 1280w" sizes="(max-width: 922px) 100vw, 922px" />Kototoi Bridge. Public Domain.</div>
When dropping bombs from up in the stratosphere, airmen are somewhat shielded by what psychologists call “the morality of altitude” wherein they are presented not with fellow human beings way down there on the ground, but rather just “targets”. But at a mere 5,000 feet there was no denying the horrors they were inflicting on the people below. Bombardier Maynard David <a href="https://ww2ondeadline.com/2021/03/29/world-war-ii-on-deadline-anniversary/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">recalled</a>: “When the bomb bay doors opened, the plane filled with smoke from the ground and we smelled this horrible odor. We closed the bomb bay doors after we dropped and headed out to sea. The odor was still so strong in the plane the pilot ordered me to open the doors again to let the fresh air in. You could only imagine what was going on down below us.” The odor was the aroma of burning flesh. The sickeningly sweet smell permeated aircraft and uniforms for days after.
Two-and-a-half hours after the first B-29 appeared overhead, the last of the American “fire devils” plotted a southerly course over the ocean and headed back to base 1,200 miles away. Unfathomable scenes of horror were playing out in the blazing city behind them. But to a relieved LeMay, the mission had been a success beyond expectation.
In a single raid, the B-29 was vindicated and the entire trajectory of the war had been altered. Curtis “Bombs Away” LeMay had his template. No city in Japan was safe. And hence forward all of Dai Nippon, the land of the Rising Sun whose jackbooted conquerors had so recently lorded over the Western Pacific from China to Burma to New Guinea to the Aleutian Islands would suffer the wrath of his B-29s and their rain of fiery death from the sky.
Japan’s celebrated Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku is rumored to have uttered a chilling prognostication after his surprise attack on Pearl Harbor a little over three years before: “I fear we have awakened a sleeping giant, and filled him with a terrible resolve.” Whether he really said this or not, one doubts that even the imaginative Yamamoto, had he lived, could have envisioned just what a terrible resolve Curtis LeMay and his fleet of B-29s that would soon number over 1,000 Superfortresses at his disposal had in store for his people. America’s hellfire of retribution had begun.
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Brad Schaeffer is a commodities fund manager, author, and columnist whose articles have appeared on the pages of The Daily Wire, The Wall Street Journal, NY Post, NY Daily News, National Review, The Hill, The Federalist, Zerohedge, and other outlets. He is the author of three <a href="https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B07MQJBJSD?ccs_id=55112527-86f6-4c89-b82e-a96d6869abed" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B07MQJBJSD?ccs_id%3D55112527-86f6-4c89-b82e-a96d6869abed&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1736518135479000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3K_WhJtiUZw7LF1PwSIHtH">books</a>. Follow him on <a href="https://bradschaeffer.substack.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://bradschaeffer.substack.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1736518135479000&amp;usg=AOvVaw02hy-lB4UuAlHo7FfD_FIQ">Substack</a> and <a href="https://x.com/bschaeffer123" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://x.com/bschaeffer123&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1736518135479000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0P6pRoAqcBhUQ1W0qwN5rH">X/Twitter</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
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<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/tokyo-inferno-operation-meetinghouse-the-deadliest-air-raid-in-history-part-1?row=0&amp;elementPosition=2&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;author=Brad+Schaeffer&amp;title=Tokyo+Inferno%3A+Operation+Meetinghouse%2C+The+Deadliest+Air+Raid+In+History%2C+Part+1&amp;category=News" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: Tokyo Inferno: Operation Meetinghouse, The Deadliest Air Raid In History, Part 1</a>
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/tokyo-inferno-operation-meetinghouse-the-deadliest-air-raid-in-history-part-1?row=0&amp;elementPosition=2&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;author=Brad+Schaeffer&amp;title=Tokyo+Inferno%3A+Operation+Meetinghouse%2C+The+Deadliest+Air+Raid+In+History%2C+Part+1&amp;category=News" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: Tokyo Inferno: Operation Meetinghouse, The Deadliest Air Raid In History, Part 3</a>

Firebombed Tokyo

Tokyo Inferno: Operation Meetinghouse, The Deadliest Air Raid In History, Part 2

On November 15, 1941, U.S. Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall gave a secret briefing to a small group of reporters to discuss the rising tensions between Washington D.C. and Tokyo. He was asked how the U.S. might prosecute a war against Japan if it should come to that. Marshall went off the record, and stated we would be merciless. American aircraft would be “dispatched to set the paper cities of Japan on fire. There won’t be any hesitation about bombing civilians — it will be all out.”
Just three weeks later, Pearl Harbor was attacked and the U.S. found itself at war with the Japanese empire. With the exception of Col. Jimmy Doolittle’s celebrated, if mostly symbolic, April 1942 raid the enemy’s homeland remained safely out of range.
As the Americans began to press ever closer to Japan in a series of island hopping operations through the Central Pacific, however, it became clear that once the Marianas were captured this situation would change.
In 1943, out in the Utah desert on the Dugway Proving Ground, the Army Air Force constructed a 24-building replica of a Japanese city. There they ran a series of tests to determine how best to bomb a metropolitan area with wooden structures containing paper walls. Inside the imitation homes were pieces of imported Japanese furniture, tatami mats, and even clothes hung in the closets for authenticity. With forensic dispassion, they dropped various ordnances on the miniature city dubbed “Little Tokyo” to determine which was most effective.
<div id="attachment_887413" style="width: 810px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-887413" class="size-full wp-image-887413" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/German_Japanese_Village_Dugway.jpg" alt="View of the German and Japanese Village at Dugway Proving Grounds, Utah, 1943. US ARMY, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons." width="800" height="215" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/German_Japanese_Village_Dugway.jpg 800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/German_Japanese_Village_Dugway-300x81.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/German_Japanese_Village_Dugway-768x206.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" />View of the German and Japanese Village at Dugway Proving Grounds, Utah, 1943. US ARMY, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.</div>
The weapon chosen was the new M69 napalm bomb. It was a simple design. Weighing under seven pounds, it didn’t look like a typical bomb. Instead it was a hexagonal pipe just three inches in diameter and only 20 inches long and packed with cheesecloth bags loaded with napalm. The bomb trailed a three-foot streamer to slow its descent so it wouldn’t crash through a structure to the basement before igniting. Once the M69 pipe landed it lay inert for several seconds before shooting out the cheesecloth bags with a bang. Unimpeded, the bags could fly as far as a football field’s distance in any direction. If one should hit something in its path, like a wall, a ceiling, a car, a person even, the bag would burst like a water balloon, splattering a glob of flaming gel up to 50 feet, starting hundreds of intense mini fires. And they kept burning until the small fires eventually coalesced into an inferno, ravenously feasting on the ready fuel supply of Japanese wood and paper.
The destructive implications were disquieting. Potential civilian casualties would be on an order of magnitude never before seen. This at a time when firebombing Axis cities, like the RAF raid on Hamburg in July 1943 that killed 45,000 civilians, had already come into its own. By this stage in the war, however, with casualties mounting and Japan showing no inkling towards surrender, American hatred for the Japanese was so intense that personal scruples hardly entered into the calculation.
Meanwhile, the engineers at Boeing Aircraft had created an awesome delivery system to bring the war to Japan: The B-29 long range bomber. With a fuselage length of 99 feet and wingspan of 140 feet, the aptly named “Superfortress” was the largest, most technologically advanced mass-produced weapon of the Second World War. Driven by four 2,200 horsepower Wright R-3350 engines mounted on wing nacelles spinning four 16-foot 7-inch four-bladed propellers, and protected by remote-control gun turrets, the 60-ton wonder plane sped through the air at up to 350 mph at 30,000 feet. Pressurized compartments liberated the crews from the bulky flight suits and oxygen masks at altitude that were a necessity for the aviators on the B-29’s less advanced stablemates, the USAAF B-17 and B-24 and RAF Lancaster. Despite its size and weight, the Superfortress could hit targets 1,600 miles away with a 12,000 pound payload at altitude. The B-29 was to the other bombers in the Allied arsenal what the Cadillac DeVille was to the Model-T.
<div id="attachment_887453" style="width: 763px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-887453" class="size-large wp-image-887453" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Boeing-Whichata_B-29_Assembly_Line_-_1944-753x576.jpg" alt="Bell-Marietta Georgia, B-29 Assembly Line - 1944. Serial numbers on the planes suggest these are Wichita-built Boeing B-29-5-BWs. United States Army Air Forces, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons." width="753" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Boeing-Whichata_B-29_Assembly_Line_-_1944-753x576.jpg 753w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Boeing-Whichata_B-29_Assembly_Line_-_1944-300x230.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Boeing-Whichata_B-29_Assembly_Line_-_1944-768x588.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Boeing-Whichata_B-29_Assembly_Line_-_1944-1536x1175.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Boeing-Whichata_B-29_Assembly_Line_-_1944-2048x1567.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 753px) 100vw, 753px" />Bell-Marietta Georgia, B-29 Assembly Line &#8211; 1944. Serial numbers on the planes suggest these are Wichita-built Boeing B-29-5-BWs. U.S. Army Air Forces, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.</div>
But having spent an unprecedented $3 billion in 1940s dollars designing, constructing ,and deploying the new leviathan bomber, U.S. planners feared they may have created the costliest flop in military history.
For all its promise and technological wonder, however, the B-29 was proving to be a disappointment. 
Flying first off of bases on mainland China and then, once captured, the Marianas, the B-29, would climb to its prescribed bombing altitude of 30,000 feet. Once there, the aircraft encountered the heretofore unheard of jet stream — a current of air that raced over Japan like an angry “kaze”, or wind, at 250 mph. When flying perpendicular to it, the bombers skidded wildly off course. If flying directly into it, real ground speed was reduced to a crawl, making the bombers easy targets for anti-aircraft. And if the kaze was in their six, the bombers raced headlong over their targets at speeds in excess of 450mph which was far too fast for accurate bombing. The results were negligible, and each time a B-29 was shot down, $600,000 worth of aircraft (in a time when a typical new house cost $3,100) and anywhere from ten to fourteen highly trained crewmen were lost. And, though greatly diminished by mid-1944, Japanese fighters still rose up to challenge the intruders over their cities.
In its first raid against Japan on June 15, 1944, for example, 60 China-based B-29s flying at 30,000 feet attempted to bomb a steel mill in Kyushu. Seven bombers were lost, while only one bomb hit the target. Something had to be done to salvage the B-29.
So the overall USAAF commander, Gen. Henry “Hap” Arnold, reached over to the European Theater and summoned his most aggressive airman, Gen. Curtis LeMay, to take over the Pacific strategic bombing campaign from Gen. H.S. Hansell, who remained a stubborn disciple of high altitude precision bombing with high explosives. Arnold’s orders to LeMay were direct: get results or be fired too.
<div id="attachment_887389" style="width: 457px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-887389" class="size-large wp-image-887389" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-3244623-447x576.jpg" alt="circa 1955: Studio portrait of United States Air Force Major General Curtis Emerson Le May wearing a military uniform, with medals over his left breast pocket. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" width="447" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-3244623-447x576.jpg 447w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-3244623-233x300.jpg 233w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-3244623-768x989.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-3244623.jpg 795w" sizes="(max-width: 447px) 100vw, 447px" />circa 1955: Studio portrait of United States Air Force Major General Curtis Emerson Le May wearing a military uniform, with medals over his left breast pocket. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)</div>
The cigar-chomping LeMay was known as a no-nonsense bomber ace who’d flown his share of combat missions over Germany, often piloting the lead plane into the flak and Luftwaffe-filled skies. He brought that same gritty determination to the Pacific.
At first, LeMay stayed true to daylight precision bombing dicta. But dropping high explosives on Tokyo from six miles up was proving ineffective. So on February 28, 1945, LeMay did something unorthodox. He sent his bombers high over Tokyo again, but this time they carried 450 tons of incendiaries. The results were encouraging; one square mile of Tokyo was burned out and 28,000 buildings destroyed or damaged. The general wondered what a mass raid coming in low could do.
LeMay summoned his wing commanders to his Quonset hut on Guam to inform them he’d made a stunning, and some thought insane, decision. He would bring the B-29s down under the jet stream to an altitude of between 5,000 and 8,000 feet. To impede anti-aircraft they would go in under the cover of night and the bombers would be loaded to the gills with M69 napalm bombs. And as if this wasn’t radical enough, LeMay informed his flabbergasted crews “I’m going to send you in at 5,000 feet without any guns, gunners or ammunition.” Though stripping away the heavy .50 caliber machine guns and extra crewmen would enable each bomber to haul an additional 2,700 pounds of ordinance, each aircraft would now be defenseless.
LeMay’s fliers were horrified. In fact, they saw the mission briefing as tantamount to a madman reading out their collective death sentences. There was safety in altitude. Said one aviator, “A sort of cold fear gripped the crew. Many frankly did not expect to return from a raid over that city at an altitude of less than 10,000 feet.” This wasn’t hyperbole. LeMay’s own flak experts feared that as many as seven out of ten bombers could be lost.
But the calculating airman thought he’d spotted a hole in Japan’s air defenses between low-level small caliber and high-altitude larger caliber anti-aircraft fire in that five to ten thousand corridor. He also knew there were only two dedicated night fighter squadrons on Tokyo’s Honshu island.
Dangers aside, there was a moral aspect to the new mission code-named “Operation Meetinghouse.” The specific target selected was a three-by-four-mile area that housed an estimated 750,000 people, many of them working as home-based shop laborers for the local war factories, which the planners figured made the zone a legitimate military target. Still, LeMay had no delusions as to what he was asking of his young fliers, and he was coldly candid in his briefing. “No matter how you slice it, you’re going to kill an awful lot of civilians. Thousands and thousands. But if you don’t destroy Japanese industry we’ll have to invade Japan.” Every man knew the horrific casualties such a final Götterdämmerung on the home islands implied.
At 5:35 p.m. on Friday, March 9, 1945, the first of 324 B-29s, carrying a combined payload of three and a third million pounds of napalm, roared down the runways on three Marianas islands; first Guam, which was farthest from Japan, then forty minutes later lifting off from Saipan and Tinian. Once in the air, the bombers headed for Japan in three parallel streams stretching 400 miles across the darkening Pacific sky.
<div id="attachment_887371" style="width: 730px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-887371" class="size-large wp-image-887371" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-141556232-720x576.jpg" alt="Two U.S. soldiers watching the takeoff of a B-29 bomber from the air base at Saipan, destination Tokyo. Saipan, 23rd November 1944 (Photo by Mondadori via Getty Images)" width="720" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-141556232-720x576.jpg 720w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-141556232-300x240.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-141556232-768x614.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-141556232.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px" />Two U.S. soldiers watching the takeoff of a B-29 bomber from the air base at Saipan, destination Tokyo. Saipan, 23rd November 1944 (Photo by Mondadori via Getty Images)</div>
LeMay, being LeMay, had wanted to lead the mission himself as he was going all in, betting hundreds of expensive bombers, and the young lives of their crews, on an untested theory. But his knowledge of the atomic bomb made his capture too high a security risk, so he was compelled to stay behind on Guam and pace his control room while furiously chomping his cigar. For the first time in the war, Curtis LeMay could not sleep. “I’m sweating this one out,” he confessed. “A lot could go wrong.”
<div id="attachment_887463" style="width: 996px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-887463" class="size-full wp-image-887463" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/501st_Bombardment_Group_B-29_takeoff_Northwest_Field_Guam_1945.jpg" alt="" width="986" height="515" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/501st_Bombardment_Group_B-29_takeoff_Northwest_Field_Guam_1945.jpg 986w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/501st_Bombardment_Group_B-29_takeoff_Northwest_Field_Guam_1945-300x157.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/501st_Bombardment_Group_B-29_takeoff_Northwest_Field_Guam_1945-768x401.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 986px) 100vw, 986px" />501st Bombardment Group B-29 takeoff Northwest Field Guam. U.S. Army Air Forces, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons</div>
1,500 miles farther north, Tokyo’s teeming inhabitants had no clue as to the holocaust heading their way. All they knew from Radio Tokyo was that tomorrow, March 10, was Army Day. There would be a big parade through the streets. After reading the latest news, Radio Tokyo offered final words of encouragement to stay strong in the face of mounting adversity. “It is always darkest before dawn,” said the announcer. Then he wished them a good night and signed off.
Shortly after the radio went silent, six-year-old Suzuki Kensuke heard the blare of air-raid sirens erupting across the city, mingling with the ominous hum of thousands of approaching radial engines echoing through the night sky. “They sounded like an advanced notice telling us death was on the way,” he recalled. Death was, in fact, already overhead.
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Brad Schaeffer is a commodities fund manager, author, and columnist whose articles have appeared on the pages of The Daily Wire, The Wall Street Journal, NY Post, NY Daily News, National Review, The Hill, The Federalist, Zerohedge, and other outlets. He is the author of three <a href="https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B07MQJBJSD?ccs_id=55112527-86f6-4c89-b82e-a96d6869abed" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B07MQJBJSD?ccs_id%3D55112527-86f6-4c89-b82e-a96d6869abed&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1736518135479000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3K_WhJtiUZw7LF1PwSIHtH">books</a>. Follow him on <a href="https://bradschaeffer.substack.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://bradschaeffer.substack.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1736518135479000&amp;usg=AOvVaw02hy-lB4UuAlHo7FfD_FIQ">Substack</a> and <a href="https://x.com/bschaeffer123" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://x.com/bschaeffer123&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1736518135479000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0P6pRoAqcBhUQ1W0qwN5rH">X/Twitter</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
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<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/tokyo-inferno-operation-meetinghouse-the-deadliest-air-raid-in-history-part-2?row=0&amp;elementPosition=1&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;author=Brad+Schaeffer&amp;title=Tokyo+Inferno%3A+Operation+Meetinghouse%2C+The+Deadliest+Air+Raid+In+History%2C+Part+2&amp;category=News" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: Tokyo Inferno: Operation Meetinghouse, The Deadliest Air Raid In History, Part 2</a>
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/tokyo-inferno-operation-meetinghouse-the-deadliest-air-raid-in-history-part-1?row=0&amp;elementPosition=2&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;author=Brad+Schaeffer&amp;title=Tokyo+Inferno%3A+Operation+Meetinghouse%2C+The+Deadliest+Air+Raid+In+History%2C+Part+1&amp;category=News" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: Tokyo Inferno: Operation Meetinghouse, The Deadliest Air Raid In History, Part 3</a>

World War II. American Air

Tokyo Inferno: Operation Meetinghouse, The Deadliest Air Raid In History, Part 1

Bombings

Pacific Ocean

Tokyo

Iwo Jima Photo

‘Uncommon Valor Was A Common Virtue’: The Battle Of Iwo Jima

'Uncommon Valor Was A Common Virtue': The Battle Of Iwo Jima

Iwo Jima

On July 30, 1941, a wan, painfully gaunt man in his early fifties was chauffeured through the Kremlin gates and ushered into the office of Josef Stalin. The American presented the Soviet dictator with a letter from President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In it, FDR instructed Stalin that his sickly envoy should be treated with “the identical confidence you would feel if you were talking directly to me.”
The man’s name was Harry Hopkins.
Hopkins, whose last official government title was Secretary of Commerce until 1940, acted as Roosevelt’s chief emissary throughout the war years. He was, in fact, Roosevelt’s most trusted confidant. So heavily did the president lean on his friend’s counsel that Hopkins literally lived for three-and-a-half years in his own <a href="https://time.com/archive/6782779/presidential-agent/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">private quarters</a> within the White House. He had been the principal architect of the New Deal and, between that and his work at the Commerce Department, was considered a top notch administrator. Indeed, Hopkins had the president’s unshakeable faith — so much so that Hopkins’ <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Operation-Barbarossa-Cataclysm-Jonathan-Dimbleby/dp/0197547214/ref=asc_df_0197547214?mcid=0fb21b4b93c03010be6c135e68622dcc&amp;hvocijid=6511239155696965424-0197547214-&amp;hvexpln=73&amp;tag=hyprod-20&amp;linkCode=df0&amp;hvadid=730434177080&amp;hvpos=&amp;hvnetw=g&amp;hvrand=6511239155696965424&amp;hvpone=&amp;hvptwo=&amp;hvqmt=&amp;hvdev=c&amp;hvdvcmdl=&amp;hvlocint=&amp;hvlocphy=9013184&amp;hvtargid=pla-2281435178098&amp;psc=1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">detractors</a> saw him as “a sinister figure, a backstairs intriguer, and an Iowan combination of Machiavelli, Svengali and Rasputin.”
<div id="attachment_875305" style="width: 422px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-875305" class="size-large wp-image-875305" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GettyImages-2628468-412x576.jpg" alt="Soviet Communist leader Joseph Stalin (1879 - 1953) with American diplomat Harry Hopkins (1890 - 1946). Original Publication: People Disc - HW0294 (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" width="412" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GettyImages-2628468-412x576.jpg 412w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GettyImages-2628468-215x300.jpg 215w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GettyImages-2628468.jpg 733w" sizes="(max-width: 412px) 100vw, 412px" />Hulton Archive/Getty Images</div>
But he was FDR’s man. Someone to whom he’d effectively given a sort of presidential power of attorney to speak on his behalf throughout the war to such important allies and world leaders as Stalin and Churchill, and to decide matters that could affect the fates of millions across four continents, while the physically deteriorating president stayed back in Washington. Hopkins was also appointed to head the $11.3 billion Lend-Lease program to aid the Allies, and became a member of the War Production Board and the Pacific War Council. But he functioned mainly as the president’s intimate, and unelected, advisor.
This was some serious power placed courtesy of the president into the hands of one man, an unelected administrator. Indeed, Hopkins wielded much more de facto power under FDR than Elon Musk does under Donald Trump today. The tech billionaire’s unsalaried role as the head of DOGE is to recommend to the president actions he might take to root out government waste, fraud and abuse, and nothing more. As per the historical record, no one “voted” for Hopkins any more than they voted for Musk — a common complaint from a Democrat Party that has not been so bewildered by a total loss of power since Appomattox.
Unlike President Trump, Roosevelt never openly campaigned on giving Hopkins, who also served as his 1940 campaign manager, such an integral role in the center of his administration. And yet, there were no GOP lawmakers making fools of themselves, a la Chuck Schumer today, through cringe-worthy grandstanding by shrieking over any perceived threat Hopkins posed to the health and safety of our sacred Democracy.
While Hopkins was pushing his cancer-riddled body to the breaking point in his global travels on behalf of his closest friend, other unelected men who would also wield awesome power and authority granted by Roosevelt were hard at work back home shifting the USA’s manufacturing base to a war footing.
<div id="attachment_875321" style="width: 714px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-875321" class="size-large wp-image-875321" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GettyImages-515955368-704x576.jpg" alt="Homeward bound from the Casablanca Conference of 1943, President Roosevelt is shown in animated conference with Harry Hopkins. Sitting directly behind them are Lieutenant George Fox (left), US Navy Medical Corps, and Rear Admiral Ross T. McIntyre (right), Surgeon General of Navy. Across the aisle are Guy H. Spaman (back to camera) of the US Secret Service, and Captain John L. McCrea, Presidential Naval Aide. Standing are Arthur Prettyman, valet, Charles Fredericks, (hands folded), Elmer Hipley, Secret Service, Wilmer Deekand, Secret Service, and Captain Otis Bryan, Chief Pilot." width="704" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GettyImages-515955368-704x576.jpg 704w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GettyImages-515955368-300x246.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GettyImages-515955368-768x629.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GettyImages-515955368.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 704px) 100vw, 704px" />Homeward bound from the Casablanca Conference of 1943, President Roosevelt is shown in animated conference with Harry Hopkins. Getty Images.</div>
This was not an easy task for FDR, a neo-socialist, whose isolationist stance stalled America’s response as war clouds brewed overseas. His ideological antipathy towards pure capitalism caused the U.S. government to do everything it could to hinder war production through activist policies that capped profits on war materials, and banned the sale of arms to foreign powers. By 1940, Roosevelt had effectively destroyed the U.S. defense industry. All this while malevolent nations like Germany and Japan were on the march.
It is difficult for us today to imagine how weak the United States military was leading up to the Second World War. At its outbreak in 1939, the U.S. fielded less than 175,000 troops, ranking 19th in the world and behind such global powerhouses as Portugal. In fact, in 1940 FDR was advised that Nazi Germany — which was by then Blitzkreiging its way across Scandinavia, the Low Countries and the mighty France — might only need five divisions to take over much of the country. The administration was suddenly faced with a difficult choice: bring back the war economy, or risk invasion.
Gen. George Marshall, FDR’s Joint Chiefs head, told him in no uncertain terms that the U.S. government could not prepare the nation for war and then execute production on its own. He therefore urged Roosevelt to bring in the industrialists if this mammoth mobilization effort was to succeed. Says <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCkIyEmUgX0&amp;t=555s" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. Stephen Davies</a> of the <a href="https://iea.org.uk/dr-stephen-davies/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Institute of Economic Affairs</a>, “There was no large army, there was virtually no air force. It all had to be created from scratch in almost no time at all, and the administration, the government, recognized very realistically that there was just no way they could do this themselves. What they had to do was to reach out to private industry, the private sector, and divert it to the war effort.” 
Roosevelt saw the light. Says <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCkIyEmUgX0&amp;t=555s" target="_blank" rel="noopener">historian</a> and pilot Randy Hotton, “Roosevelt said ‘I want the top manufacturing guys in this country.’ And one of his top advisors said, ‘Number one is Bill Knudsen of General Motors. Number two is Bill Knudsen of General Motors.’ And we can all guess who number three was.” Knudsen ended up flying in the face of the administration&#8217;s and other war economies’ dicta by keeping the U.S. war economy unplanned, unfettered, open, and allowing defense industries to turn a profit.
<div id="attachment_875313" style="width: 730px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-875313" class="wp-image-875313 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/General_Motors_head._Washington_D.C._May_29._A_new_informal_picture_of_William_S._Knudsen_President_of_General_Motors_Corp._LCCN2016875727-720x576.jpg" alt="File:General Motors head. Washington, D.C., May 29. A new informal picture of William S. Knudsen, President of General Motors Corp. Harris &amp; Ewing, photographer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons" width="720" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/General_Motors_head._Washington_D.C._May_29._A_new_informal_picture_of_William_S._Knudsen_President_of_General_Motors_Corp._LCCN2016875727-720x576.jpg 720w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/General_Motors_head._Washington_D.C._May_29._A_new_informal_picture_of_William_S._Knudsen_President_of_General_Motors_Corp._LCCN2016875727-300x240.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/General_Motors_head._Washington_D.C._May_29._A_new_informal_picture_of_William_S._Knudsen_President_of_General_Motors_Corp._LCCN2016875727-768x614.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/General_Motors_head._Washington_D.C._May_29._A_new_informal_picture_of_William_S._Knudsen_President_of_General_Motors_Corp._LCCN2016875727-1536x1229.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/General_Motors_head._Washington_D.C._May_29._A_new_informal_picture_of_William_S._Knudsen_President_of_General_Motors_Corp._LCCN2016875727-2048x1638.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px" />William S. Knudsen, President of General Motors Corp (right). Harris &amp; Ewing, photographer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons</div>
Hopefully by now the reader sees a parallel between Roosevelt’s actions in delegating authority in the 1940s to affect a specific outcome — overhaul the war effort while bestowing upon unelected officials enormous power to affect real change both domestic and abroad — and what Trump is doing today in his empowering a man he trusts in Elon Musk, and those also unelected DOGE whiz kids, to massively overhaul our own federal government.
The Democrat Party is so pathetically lost, so out-of-touch, so confused that they are desperate for any issue to use as a differentiator between them and the Trump-enabled wrecking ball laying waste to their carefully constructed edifice of waste, fraud and abuse. So they have turned their vocal and crazed minority loose on their newest impediments to maintaining power: Elon Musk, “Big Balls,” and the DOGE crew. They claim DOGE is behaving in an “unconstitutional” even “illegal” manner. Why? Because, as Senator Elizabeth Warren screeched with an interesting choice of grammar for a Harvard professor, “No one elected Elon Musk to nothing!”
As the examples above show, when faced with a far more daunting task than rooting out government waste, even Roosevelt, among the most Left-wing of presidents, did not keep the task of winning the war within government alone, but rather brought in top men from the private sector to do the job that the federal bureaucracy simply could not be entrusted to do. Knudsen’s National Defense Research Committee and Office of Production Management was to the 1940s what DOGE is today. And the GM CEO then was the Tesla CEO of his day. And like Musk, Knudsen was even an immigrant! 
The enemy these two extraordinary men, along with Hopkins on the other side of the Atlantic, were mobilized to defeat may be different — Roosevelt’s team faced an external threat in the Axis, whereas Trump’s crew faces the internal threat of a far-reaching, ingrained web of Deep State corruption and waste. But the underlying idea of bringing on top private sector minds in a particular field (manufacturing in 1940, coding and AI search algorithms in 2025) to most efficiently perform a vital, indeed existential service to the country, even though no one elected them, is a model that has been tried before, and has succeeded with stunning results.
The Democrats know this, of course, don&#8217;t they? Ignorance can be rectified, but deep-seeded corruption, mendacity, lust for power and reliance on theft for one’s income is a harder course to change.
And as for Musk’s seeming “co-presidency” as Time magazine’s latest cover showing the Tesla/SpaceX CEO sitting behind Trump’s Resolute Desk implies, all I can say is there have been no private citizens in modern history with more power bestowed upon them by an American president, a Democrat icon no less, than Harry Hopkins and William Knudsen. Even the rabid isolationist Henry Ford got on board after Pearl Harbor. 
These men, who were akin to the Musk, Zuckerberg, and Bezos of their day, had very prominent seats at the Roosevelt administration table in order to tackle problems that were simply beyond an entrenched, ideological Federal administrative state. And not only did the nation survive, it thrived. We won the war and came out on the other side as the economic colossus of the world. Courtesy of the diligent and invaluable efforts of many patriotic, if unelected, titans of their day.
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Brad Schaeffer is a commodities fund manager, author, and columnist whose articles have appeared on the pages of The Daily Wire, The Wall Street Journal, NY Post, NY Daily News, National Review, The Hill, The Federalist, Zerohedge, and other outlets. He is the author of three <a href="https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B07MQJBJSD?ccs_id=55112527-86f6-4c89-b82e-a96d6869abed" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B07MQJBJSD?ccs_id%3D55112527-86f6-4c89-b82e-a96d6869abed&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1736518135479000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3K_WhJtiUZw7LF1PwSIHtH">books</a>. Follow him on <a href="https://bradschaeffer.substack.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://bradschaeffer.substack.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1736518135479000&amp;usg=AOvVaw02hy-lB4UuAlHo7FfD_FIQ">Substack</a> and <a href="https://x.com/bschaeffer123" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://x.com/bschaeffer123&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1736518135479000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0P6pRoAqcBhUQ1W0qwN5rH">X/Twitter</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

President Franklin Roosevelt

Before Trump, FDR Had His Own Unelected Millionaires Come To Washington

Cabinet

Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)

Federal Government

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR)

Presidency

Inside the imperial palace in Tokyo, Prime Minister Koiso Kuniaki stood uneasily before his Emperor Hirohito and apologized for the catastrophe that had just befallen his majesty’s army and navy at the hands of the Americans on and around the Philippine island of Leyte. In the fierce land and sea combat that lasted from October 17 to December 24, 1944, the backbone of the Japanese fleet, as well as some 65,000 troops and hundreds of aircraft, were erased from the order of battle. When the Emperor reminded Koiso that he’d promised Leyte would be a repeat of Japan’s 1582 victory at Tennozan, the prime minister sheepishly mumbled that Luzon, not Leyte, would be the Kentai Kessen, “decisive battle,” that would once and for all destroy the Americans and their allies advancing ever closer to the home islands.
Luzon was the main island in the Philippines archipelago, and site of the nation’s capital city Manila. Slightly larger than Cuba, it stretches some 460 miles running north-to-south, and sits roughly equidistant between Japan and Australia. If Japan could not fight off the Americans here and regain the initiative then the sea lanes between the home islands and her vital raw materials in the Dutch East Indies, which had been severed when Leyte was lost, would be forever cut off. And should Luzon fall, only the island bastions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa stood between the Allies and Japan.
<div id="attachment_855787" style="width: 726px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-855787" class="size-large wp-image-855787" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-289537-716x576.jpeg" alt="Leyte Invasion, October 1944. General Douglas Macarthur and Philippine president Sergio Osmena in a landing craft on their way to ceremonies proclaiming the liberation of Leyte, 23 October 1944. On the right is Brigadier General Carlos P. Romulo. Catalog #: 80-G-289537. National Archives. Mon, Oct 23, 1944. National Archives. Naval History and Heritage Command." width="716" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-289537-716x576.jpeg 716w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-289537-300x241.jpeg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-289537-768x618.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-289537.jpeg 1280w" sizes="(max-width: 716px) 100vw, 716px" />General Douglas MacArthur and Philippine president Sergio Osmena in a landing craft on their way to ceremonies proclaiming the liberation of Leyte, 23 October 1944. National Archives. Naval History and Heritage Command.</div>
Bearing down on Luzon was an immense U.S. invasion force of over 800 ships, 3,000 landing craft — many just arrived from Normandy — and some 280,000 troops. This formidable army, fielding more men than Eisenhower landed at Sicily, was led by America’s most brilliant strategist, Five-Star General Douglas MacArthur. For two years this American Caesar had dazzled the Japanese with one victory upon the next in a relentless drive up New Guinea and the Bismarck Sea with the aim of recapturing the Philippines.
<div id="attachment_855769" style="width: 727px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-855769" class="wp-image-855769 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-281338-717x576.jpeg" alt="Carrier Raids on Formosa, October 1944. Crewmen on USS Hancock (CV-19) move 3.5-inch rockets (with 5-inch diameter warheads) to planes, while preparing for strikes on Formosa, 12 October 1944. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives.Catalog #: 80-G-281338. Naval History and Heritage Command. " width="717" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-281338-717x576.jpeg 717w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-281338-300x241.jpeg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-281338-768x617.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-281338.jpeg 1280w" sizes="(max-width: 717px) 100vw, 717px" />Carrier Raids on Formosa, October 1944. Crewmen on USS Hancock (CV-19). National Archives. Naval History and Heritage Command.</div>
Beginning in November 1942 with a grinding, bloody fight for Buna on New Guinea’s northern coast, MacArthur’s advances steadily accelerated. Utilizing amphibious thrusts by coordinating land, sea, and air power — what Churchill described as “triphibious warfare” — the general leapfrogged from beachhead to beachhead in ever more audacious envelopments up the world’s second largest island. Indeed, by the time his landing force steamed towards Leyte in October 1944, the first of the Philippine islands targeted for assault, MacArthur had captured more territory while suffering fewer casualties than any commander in modern warfare — while inflicting ten times as many losses on the enemy.
MacArthur now set his determined sights on the ultimate prize, Luzon, 300 miles north of Leyte. Waiting for him, however, was a Japanese garrison numbering some 270,000 determined troops, the largest enemy contingent the Americans would confront in the Pacific War. Moreover, the Emperor’s forces would be under the overall command of a formidable general in his own right, Tomoyuki Yamashita, the “Tiger of Malaya.” On this most vital Philippine island, two gifted generals, each at the height of his power, would face off in the climactic battle of the Southwest Pacific campaign.
<div id="attachment_855827" style="width: 463px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-855827" class="wp-image-855827 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3201763-453x576.jpg" alt="circa 1945: Japanese army general Tomoyuki Yamashita uses a cane while walking along a dirt road ahead of several soldiers. Yamashita was known as the 'Tiger of Malaya' for his leadership of the Japanese forces against the British troops in the Philippines. (Photo by US Army/Getty Images)" width="453" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3201763-453x576.jpg 453w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3201763-236x300.jpg 236w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3201763-768x977.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3201763.jpg 805w" sizes="(max-width: 453px) 100vw, 453px" />Japanese army general Tomoyuki Yamashita. US Army/Getty Images.</div>
Although the primary aim of seizing Leyte in the fall of 1944 was to provide MacArthur an aerodrome from which Allied planes could cover his Luzon campaign, as well as stage raids on Formosa and the Chinese mainland, the soil proved to be unstable during the rainy season, which had just begun (24 inches of rain fell in November alone). Although some air bases were eventually operational, due to the soggy runways as well as washed out roads in need of constant repair, MacArthur’s air chief, General George Kenney, was unable to utilize the bulk of the island’s airstrips for the upcoming operations. Still, even with this unexpected setback, the imaginative MacArthur saw an opportunity.
The island of Mindoro, a mere hour-and-a-half ferry ride from Luzon and just 200 miles from Manila, offered ideal ground for Kenney’s aircraft. Adm. Chester Nimitz, MacArthur’s naval counterpart, agreed to support an operation to seize the island, with Adm. William “Bull” Halsey’s carrier task force providing vital top cover until Mindoro could be seized and converted into a land-based aerodrome. But the approach was dangerous. So perilous, in fact, that MacArthur’s reliable naval head, Adm. Thomas Kinkaid, vehemently opposed the landings as he feared his transports would be exposed to attacks from land-based enemy aircraft — especially the deadly Kamikaze suicide planes that made their debut at Leyte and whose attacks were growing in number and lethality — as the vulnerable convoy wiggled its way through the narrow waters of the Surigao Strait and Sulu Sea. Furthermore, should there be a significant number of Japanese on Mindoro, the operation could be costly, even repulsed. The Joint Chiefs in Washington, DC were also alarmed; the Pentagon declared MacArthur’s plan “too daring in scope, too risky in execution.”
But MacArthur’s sixth sense told him Yamashita had no stomach for another Leyte, but was instead husbanding his strength for the defense of Luzon. He also might have assumed that, just as his subordinates had been frightened by the hazards facing any convoy on the narrow approach to Mindoro, Yamashita would figure no enemy would risk such a passage. MacArthur’s contrarian instincts proved correct.
<div id="attachment_855783" style="width: 712px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-855783" class="size-large wp-image-855783" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-301022-702x576.jpeg" alt="Mindoro Operation, December 1944. Caption: Escort carriers of task group 77.12.7 getting under way from the Palau Islands, en route for the invasion of Mindoro, 10 December 1944. Photographed from USS KADASHAN BAY (CVE-76). Catalog #: 80-G-301022. National Archives. Naval History and Heritage Command." width="702" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-301022-702x576.jpeg 702w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-301022-300x246.jpeg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-301022-768x630.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/80-G-301022.jpeg 1280w" sizes="(max-width: 702px) 100vw, 702px" />Mindoro Operation, December 1944. Photographed from USS KADASHAN BAY (CVE-76). National Archives. Naval History and Heritage Command.</div>
On December 16, 1944, 10,000 American troops raced from their Higgins boats and overwhelmed the barely 1,000 Japanese stationed on Mindoro; the GIs soon captured four abandoned airstrips. The U.S. suffered just 240 KIA (a mere 18 on the ground, the rest Naval losses from air attacks). And unlike Leyte, the ground here was solid. U.S. engineers went to work refurbishing the captured airfields and constructing two more. Overhead, Halsey’s pilots fended off waves of marauding Japanese fighters and suicide planes swooping down from Luzon. By New Years Day 1945, an ebullient Kenney declared Mindoro his main aerodrome, allowing MacArthur to once again operate under the protection of his land-based air force.
The capture of Mindoro, the last stepping stone to Luzon, also confronted Yamashita with the possibility that MacArthur could hit him from the south as well as the obvious landing spot in Lingayen Gulf 140 miles north of Manila. And he was now cut off from his garrisons in the southern Philippines.
<div id="attachment_855845" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-855845" class="size-large wp-image-855845" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-183023714-864x576.jpg" alt="acprints. Getty Images." width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-183023714-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-183023714-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-183023714-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-183023714-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-183023714-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-183023714-1800x1200.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-183023714-1200x800.jpg 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />acprints. Getty Images.</div>
Yamashita’s motivations for defending the island were purely military. But for MacArthur, his return to the Philippines was a deeply personal crusade. He’d lived in the archipelago for many years and felt the U.S. had a solemn obligation to free a people over whom we’d assumed responsibility after wresting the islands from the Spanish in 1898. He had been in command of the joint US-Philippine army in December 1941 when the Japanese invaded. Abandoning the capital, he consolidated his forces on the Bataan Peninsula due west across Manila Bay, and the Island fortress of Corregidor covering the mouth of the inlet. The General had hoped to fight a holding action, anticipating a U.S. relief force would come to the rescue and save his command. 
In early 1942, however, Japan was at the zenith of its power while the U.S. was just getting on a war footing, and thus in no position to relieve the beleaguered defenders. In May 1942 a combined 75,000 ragged and malnourished American and Filipino troops surrendered. Although it had been a heroic if forlorn stand that upset the Japanese timetable, it was the largest capitulation of U.S. forces in history.
<div id="attachment_855835" style="width: 801px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-855835" class="size-large wp-image-855835" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3272158-791x576.jpg" alt="May 1943: Premier Tojo arriving in Manila. He responds to the salute from General Waui Ehk of the Japanese Administration and the Commander of the Imperial Japanese Fleet (in the white uniform). (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" width="791" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3272158-791x576.jpg 791w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3272158-300x219.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3272158-768x560.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-3272158.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 791px) 100vw, 791px" />May 1943: Premier Tojo arriving in Manila. Hulton Archive/Getty Images.</div>
MacArthur believed his government had abandoned not just the brave garrison, but also the 18 million inhabitants of his beloved islands to a cruel occupier in the dark days of the war’s opening rampage of Japanese conquest following Pearl Harbor. He also felt an individual obligation to return as he’d been ordered by FDR to leave his doomed garrison and escape to Australia before the inevitable defeat, where he would organize the island continent’s defenses and then lead the eventual Allied counter-offensive in the Southwest Pacific. For almost three years, while American and Filipino captives languished in brutal captivity* and civilians endured privations and repressions, the Japanese military ruled the American protectorate.
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But now, to the jubilation of the Filipinos, who’d feared their islands would be bypassed in favor of a U.S. landing on Formosa farther to the north, and thus abandoned a second time, the Americans were back.
Carlos Romulo, the Philippine writer and diplomat who had been with MacArthur on Corregidor, was one of the General’s confidants. When in October he descended from the transport John Land to join the landing party of brass, politicians and war correspondents onto the barge headed for the beaches of Leyte, MacArthur embraced his friend. “Carlos, my boy, how does it feel to be home?” Two months later, the elated Romulo found himself in Lingayen Gulf amidst a vast Allied armada whose ships stretched out to the horizon. Thirty-seven agonizing months before, it had been a Japanese landing force in these waters. He recalled his “cold horror” when Manila Radio announced the news of Japanese transports in Lingayen. But now, he wrote with satisfaction, “it is their turn to quake.”
Meanwhile, following an interview with Yamashita who promised, “I shall write a brilliant history of The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere on the Philippine Islands”, Radio Tokyo confidently announced: “The battle for Luzon, in which 300,000 American officers and men are doomed to die, is about to begin.”
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<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-battle-of-luzon-part-1-climax-of-the-southwest-pacific-war" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: The Battle Of Luzon, Part 1: Climax Of The Southwest Pacific War</a></h3>
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-battle-of-luzon-part-2-race-to-manila" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: The Battle Of Luzon, Part 2: Race To Manila</a></h3>
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-battle-of-luzon-part-3-the-massacre-of-manila" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: The Battle Of Luzon, Part 3: The Massacre Of Manila</a></h3>
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-battle-of-luzon-part-4-victory-and-aftermath" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: The Battle Of Luzon, Part 4: Victory And Aftermath</a></h3>
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Brad Schaeffer is a commodities fund manager, author, and columnist whose articles have appeared on the pages Daily Wire, The Wall Street Journal, NY Post, NY Daily News, National Review, The Hill, The Federalist, Zerohedge and other outlets. He is the author of three <a href="https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B07MQJBJSD?ccs_id=55112527-86f6-4c89-b82e-a96d6869abed" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B07MQJBJSD?ccs_id%3D55112527-86f6-4c89-b82e-a96d6869abed&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1736518135479000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3K_WhJtiUZw7LF1PwSIHtH">books</a>. Follow him on <a href="https://bradschaeffer.substack.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://bradschaeffer.substack.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1736518135479000&amp;usg=AOvVaw02hy-lB4UuAlHo7FfD_FIQ">Substack</a> and <a href="https://x.com/bschaeffer123" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://x.com/bschaeffer123&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1736518135479000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0P6pRoAqcBhUQ1W0qwN5rH">X/Twitter</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the Daily Wire.
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NOTES:
<ol>
<li>In World War II some 40% of U.S. POWs died at the hands of the Japanese, as opposed to only 1% of those captured by the Germans.</li>
</ol>

NH 44317

The Battle Of Luzon, Part 1: Climax Of The Southwest Pacific War

American General

Philippines

On December 13, 1862, during the U.S. Civil War, the Union Army suffered its most calamitous and tragic defeat to date at the hands of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia on the frozen fields south of Fredericksburg, Virginia.
After taking over for the paradoxically arrogant yet timid Maj. Gen. George McClellan following the blood-letting at Antietam in September, the new Union Army commander Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside was tasked by President Lincoln to vigorously pursue and destroy CSA Gen. Robert E. Lee’s army now encamped in the Shenandoah Valley in that state. Despite harboring doubts about his own abilities as an army commander, the affable and dapper Burnside concocted a plan to dash due south and lay a pontoon bridge over the Rappahannock River at Fredericksburg. His aim was to get ahead of Lee’s army farther to the west and race for Richmond, the Southern Confederacy’s capital.
<div id="attachment_843789" style="width: 597px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-843789" class="size-large wp-image-843789" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-90001933-587x576.jpg" alt="UNITED STATES - CIRCA 1863: Warrenton, Virginia. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside and staff officers (Photo by Buyenlarge/Getty Images)" width="587" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-90001933-587x576.jpg 587w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-90001933-300x294.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-90001933-768x754.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-90001933.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 587px) 100vw, 587px" />UNITED STATES &#8211; CIRCA 1863: Warrenton, Virginia. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside and staff officers (Photo by Buyenlarge/Getty Images)</div>
But Burnside&#8217;s plan that relied on speed and surprise almost immediately went awry. The pontoon bridges needed to affect the river crossing were delayed by ten days. By the time they arrived and construction began, Lee had marched his army to Fredericksburg. The Rebels took up a nearly impregnable position south of the town on a rise called Marye’s Heights that presented the defenders with a commanding view of the city and open ground before them.
<div id="attachment_843801" style="width: 837px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-843801" class="size-large wp-image-843801" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-3090033-827x576.jpg" alt="13th December 1862: Union troops attempting to cross the Rappahannock river during the battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia. (Photo by MPI/Getty Images)" width="827" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-3090033-827x576.jpg 827w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-3090033-300x209.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-3090033-768x535.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-3090033.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 827px) 100vw, 827px" />13th December 1862: Union troops attempting to cross the Rappahannock river during the battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia. (Photo by MPI/Getty Images)</div>
Despite his plan being foiled — his anxious engineers found themselves laying the pontoon bridges under fire from Rebel snipers who occupied the town along the river bank — the unimaginative Burnside pressed forward anyway. Following a bombardment that all but destroyed the little town, Yankee troops marched over the bridges and fought their way through the streets, whereupon many shamelessly looted the abandoned homes and shops until officers could corral them back into their ranks. The Yankees then formed up for the doomed assault against Lee’s lines.
What the Union troops faced was the suicidal prospect of crossing a half-mile of open, sloping ground to assault a solid line of veteran Rebel troops massed behind the protection of both a sunken road and high stone wall backed by artillery lined hub-to-hub along the crest of the hill before them. While watching the lines of Union blue forming up to make their attack, Lee’s First Corps commander on the Marye’s Heights sector of the line, Gen. James Longstreet, asked his young artillerist, Col. E.P. Alexander, if he thought the position was defensible. Alexander assured him: “General, a chicken can’t live in that field when we open up on it!”
<div id="attachment_843811" style="width: 765px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-843811" class="size-large wp-image-843811" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-103011593-755x576.jpg" alt="A Union Army battery makes final preparations on the day before the Battle of Fredericksburg, on Marye's Heights, Virginia, USA, December 1862. (Photo by Kean Collection/Archive Photos/Getty Images)" width="755" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-103011593-755x576.jpg 755w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-103011593-300x229.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-103011593-768x586.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-103011593.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 755px) 100vw, 755px" />A Union Army battery makes final preparations on the day before the Battle of Fredericksburg, on Marye&#8217;s Heights, Virginia, USA, December 1862. (Photo by Kean Collection/Archive Photos/Getty Images)</div>
And so began a series of ill-advised charges up the slopes of Marye’s Heights by a Union Army that proved itself to be as brave as any army in any field; but they were doomed nonetheless. The Confederate lines were so concentrated that for every man at the wall shooting down into the slowly approaching Union lines, two stood behind them with loaded and rammed rifles at the ready to hand the marksman one weapon after another, giving the stone wall’s rate of fire the effect of a machine gun — with the same grisly efficiency. As Alexander predicted, whirring, bouncing projectiles fired from his overheating guns tore into the compact blue formations, killing and maiming groups of men with each round. Thousands of Union troops totaling six divisions were fed into the Rebel meat grinder, one brigade at a time.
Watching the slaughter from his vantage point above the fighting, Gen. Lee, his stirred warrior blood struggling for equilibrium with his humanitarian nature, offered somberly: “It is well that war is so terrible. We should grow too fond of it.”
<div id="attachment_843805" style="width: 468px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-843805" class="size-large wp-image-843805" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-3090032-458x576.jpg" alt="7th November 1862: Confederate General Robert E Lee (1807 - 1870) at the battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia. Lee was offered the command of the Union Army but although personally opposed to both slavery and secession, his loyalty to Virginia led to his taking command of the Confederate forces. (Photo by MPI/Getty Images)" width="458" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-3090032-458x576.jpg 458w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-3090032-239x300.jpg 239w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-3090032-768x965.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-3090032.jpg 815w" sizes="(max-width: 458px) 100vw, 458px" />7th November 1862: Confederate General Robert E Lee (1807 &#8211; 1870) at the battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia. (Photo by MPI/Getty Images)</div>
After fourteen assaults some 13,300 Union dead and wounded lay strewn in a veritable carpet of blue before the smoke-obscured Confederate lines (to the South&#8217;s 4,500, many of whom listed as &#8220;missing&#8221; had just slipped away to nearby homesteads for Christmas). Although he contemplated continuing the forlorn attack, Burnside was convinced by his corps commanders that any new assaults would be just as fruitless and bloody so he called the battle off. (Burnside actually wanted to lead a final charge himself, so distraught was he over the carnage he’d unnecessarily inflicted on an army he sincerely loved).
The Union attack against 2nd Corps Commander &#8220;Stonewall&#8221; Jackson&#8217;s more exposed lines east of Marye&#8217;s Heights situated in lower swampland on Lee&#8217;s right did actually make some progress, but this attack too was repulsed.
For two days in the bitter December cold, the shivering Union survivors trapped in the no-man&#8217;s land between the heights and the town, hunkered down on the frozen ground. Many shielded themselves from Rebels taking shots at them from behind the stone wall by piling up the bodies of their fallen comrades to act as macabre breastworks. Soldiers would always remember the sound of .566 rounds thudding into the stiff cadavers. At night the eerie lights of a rare Southern aurora borealis flashed overhead in the starry sky, which the Confederates took as a sign that God Himself was celebrating their astounding one-sided victory.
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The surviving Union troops eventually withdrew from the corpse-laden field and made it back through the town and across the Rappahannock to safety.
Col. Joshua Chamberlain of the 20th Maine recounted the retreat under the shroud of night. &#8220;We had to pick our way over a field strewn with incongruous ruin; men born and broken and cut to pieces in every indescribable way, cannon dismounted, gun carriages smashed or overturned, ammunition chests flung wildly about, horses dead and half-dead still held in harness, accoutrements of every sort scattered as by whirlwinds. It was not good for the nerves, that ghastly march, in the lowering night!&#8221;
After one more botched offensive in late January, during which his plans were foiled by a torrential rainstorm rather than Rebel bullets (forever remembered to history as the &#8220;Mud March&#8221;) Gen. Burnside resigned as army commander. He was replaced by Gen. Joe Hooker — Lincoln’s fifth new commanding general in two years.
When the Confederates re-occupied the shattered and ransacked Virginia town, Lee asked Jackson how they could put an end to this terrible war and all its needless desolation. “Kill them,” Jackson said coldly while surveying the ruins. “Kill them all!”
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Brad Schaeffer is a fund manager and author of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B07MQJBJSD" target="_blank" rel="noopener">three books</a>. His articles have appeared on the pages of Daily Wire, The Wall Street Journal, New York Post, New York Daily News, National Review, The Hill, The Federalist, The Blaze, Breitbart, Zerohedge and other outlets.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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