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Hi guys and welcome back to Pods with Nick and James. I'm Nick and this is James.
Hello there.
And this week we hope to find the reason why soldiers hate the month of March.
How are you doing James?
I'm OK. I'm doing alright.
So this week we have decided on the topic of military.
So let's get straight into it.
Obviously military exists as a means to defend and a means to attack.
And military's main use is during war. But can you tell me the eight reasons why war starts?
OK. Disagreement over land. So like as in invasion.
Disagreement over a specific resource.
I can't remember the exact one but the one used in the crusade. God wills it.
Religion.
Yeah, so religion. So would you say that a civil... are we counting civil wars?
Civil unrest, yeah. That's the reason.
OK. Alright. In which case then any leadership change?
So civil unrest is different to revolution but both are reasons.
OK. Well military coup then I guess.
That would be revolution I suppose. That would come under.
OK. I guess so. OK we covered disagreement over land, disagreement over resource, religion.
You've got five so far which is pretty good.
I mean I'm thinking... I hate to say it but like just race genocide like you had in Serbia and you had in all of the...
So nationalism, pride, sense of superiority I suppose.
Yep. Alright and I'm just thinking... I mean do people ever go to war? Is it ever just stated?
Yeah we're doing it for the money.
Well that's economic gain isn't it? But yes, absolutely they do. It's a resource isn't it?
I wasn't sure if they were ever that blasé about it. Like if America had said rather than we're invading Iraq and Afghanistan not for looking for weapons of mass destruction,
they're charging us too much for our oil. We want to get it direct from the source.
Yeah well they wouldn't tell us that in the media would they? But that's definitely why.
So there are two more in it. I would be surprised if you got these two. You've done really well.
Well I tell you what, I'm going to give up there but could you go through the list because I feel I've divvied and gone about the point and maybe come up with several answers which are in fact the same answer.
So we've got economic gain. So that's resources, money, wealth, power. Well maybe not power so much. Territorial gain. Religion. Nationalism.
So that encompasses a lot of racism and other forms of difference should we say that aren't necessarily accepted.
And we've got revenge which you didn't mention but is a very very good reason especially in the dark ages as to why people went to war.
Well it's weird because some of the crusades you could literally argue, not the whole things, not the whole things but one of the reasons why the crusades happened.
Yes it was religion, yes it was the pope looking at a map realising he was surrounded but part of that was revenge against some of the Saracen raiding that was happening at the time.
But okay you know what it's interesting that that's literally used as a reason. Remember when they invaded a couple of years ago. Well we're going to get them back.
Let me be completely clear here, I'm pretty sure I started a few wars in school when somebody stole my biscuits.
Yeah but were they good biscuits?
They were, that's why I went to war.
Yeah, that's what I figured. Rich tea or hobnob?
Oh, Bourbons.
Bourbons all the way.
Bourbons absolutely.
Alright sorry I'm back, away from Bourbons, back to war.
So civil unrest, which you mentioned of course, revolution, which are two different things apparently, not that I'm smart enough to know the difference.
Did they split the hairs in the definitions there?
In that respect so I suppose revolution doesn't always start from the inside does it?
That's true.
And then defence or preemptive wars.
You see that's the one that always gets me. I don't think preemptive military action, or I don't believe it, I don't think it's justified.
Because the world is full of so much uncertainty, going, ah well we're going to attack first just to make sure, just doesn't have enough weight with myself.
No and I completely understand that I've always been quite reserved when it comes to expressing my opinion and I think you can't always take first glance as gospel.
What you observe on first glance can often be tainted by your own thoughts and feelings at the time and I think that's where people need to take a second to think, process, before they react.
Okay was that all eight?
That was all eight, yep. So economic, territorial, religion, nationalism, revenge, civil unrest, revolution and defence.
Interesting. And what did, see what, in the first and second world wars what were those claimed as?
They were claimed, well to be fair they were started over nationalism weren't they? I suppose a little bit of it would be economic gain but I think from our perspective, not necessarily the German perspective, but from our perspective it was definitely more economic and territorial gain than it was nationalism.
But from their side, no from our side it was more nationalism but from their side they could say it was economic or territorial gain.
I definitely confused the hell out of that one so I didn't know.
So, do you know who's got the largest army in the world right now?
Okay so I have some facts to do with this, which are just kind of things that I've picked up so it'll be interesting to see which ones are right which ones are not.
Right now, the largest army in the world. Yep.
I'm going to take a guess and it's probably going to be terribly wrong but I'm going to go for it anyway. I'm going to guess that Russia has the largest army.
The largest standing army in the world.
No it doesn't. As a matter of fact it doesn't even come in the top three.
Oh okay does it come in the top five?
I'm not 100% on that but I don't think so.
Okay interesting. Okay so my next guess would be the obvious one, America or the United States of America.
Top three but not top one.
God damn okay it's not North Korea is it?
No I think you're thinking too small, think population or populous.
God damn, so obvious now that you said it. China.
Absolutely.
The Red Army right?
When you have an abundance of people you might as well stick a fair few of them in your army right?
They have over 2 million conscripted armed force personnel.
With India and the US having 1.4 million each.
That kind of makes sense.
To be fair like that makes, that's actually really...
If anything that's actually...
Not nice but it just, it's ordered.
You know?
China has a huge number of people.
It couldn't surprise me that its military matches that.
Interestingly most of, a lot of the population of China is in the south and east of the country.
With like the north and west kind of being incredibly mountainous.
So it's not a, this is where most of the people live in this big country equally spread out.
It's no, this is where most of the people live on the border of, or along this line.
Well that's the same as Russia isn't it?
I mean you've got most of Siberia which is barren and freezing cold and it's got about 30 people per mile.
Whereas like the western coast, or I say western coast, the western border of Russia is mainly where most of the population is.
Where it's actually inhabitable, shall we say?
No that's a fair point.
So if China has the largest army with India and the US coming in a very close second, do you know what the smallest army in the world is?
Is it the Vatican City?
I'm really surprised you knew that but yes, do you know what they're called?
Yeah okay so alright so first off that was a stab in the dark, okay, but it was a calculated stab in the dark because what's the smallest country in the world?
Yeah Vatican City.
It's Vatican City so I just literally went by that.
Additionally their army is, isn't it made up mostly of ex-Swiss special forces?
And although they're wearing medieval attire and carrying a halberd, each one of those, sorry to say it gentlemen, ridiculously dressed men at arms is an absolute beefcake and killing machine.
Yep they are the Pontifical Swiss Guard and they are the oldest army in the world as well. They remain, and I'll say this loosely, so there are older armies however their format has changed since they were implemented.
Whereas the Pontifical Swiss Guard were implemented in 1506 and remain unchanged.
There is 110 single, and I say single as in not married, Swiss Catholic men who must be over 5'8' tall. So I use the term smallest army very loosely.
That's interesting.
Okay, there you have it folks, largest army fits with the largest country, smallest army fits with the smallest country.
Whilst we're on the topic of linking things up, can you tell me where did the first army appear in records?
Now this is the, oh it wasn't good old King Sargon was it? It was Sargon of Arcadia. Yes, fucking, I mean, yep, cut that out. Yes, knew it. Yep.
I did kind of give a good segway there, if you didn't get that I'd have been upset. And the first military action was in a war between Sumer and Ilam in 2600 BC. Now Sumer and Ilam are basically modern day Iraq and Iran.
They weren't fighting over the Tigris and Euphrates were they? More than likely, yeah. That's pretty much what their world was built on back then wasn't it?
Annoyingly alert. Alright, if you're from Iran, Syria and Turkey, I do not mean to undermine you at all, but just like the sheer amount of poverty that is caused by countries upstream damming the river is bad.
The amount of tension there is over the lack of a resource which in England where it always rains, we take for granted, is genuinely, it's completely alien to us so apologies if I seem flippant, but it is genuinely also terrifying that you've got peace treaties and threats of military action over hydroelectric dams being bought, being built.
To be fair, I think the main quibble they've got is with where the power that they're generating is going.
Because, I mean, take Dungeness power station for example, where does the power that's generated at Dungeness go?
Well I kind of was assuming that it would go up to London.
No, it goes to France.
But they own our power, do they own our power stations too?
Well I know that the nuclear power from that power station goes to France. I don't know this because I know people that work there.
I really need to... I don't know why, why am I...
Wait a minute. That means if they threat, if there's a threat of invasion, we can turn their lights off.
Yeah, yeah.
Alright, I'm okay with it.
This is why, this is why French military victories were few.
But this is the thing, I've heard, okay so you've probably got a load of facts there and I'm probably wrong here.
But I'd heard that historically the French are in fact the most successful military country in the world.
Yeah, yeah. So up until about the 1800s they were the absolute powerhouse of military.
Up until about the 1860s or so they were the country that spent the most on their military.
They were the country that had like post-Roman empire as it were.
They did copy the Roman model and I find it interesting, do you mind if I go on a little tangent here?
Absolutely, carry on.
Okay, so the Roman model is you take half of your taxes and put it into your military.
It's weirdly enough it's also what the Soviet Union was doing back in the day when that was during the Cold War.
It's what some countries, whether more fascist or militaristic, still do it.
You can't ever go above that 50% because it means the rest of your infrastructure ends up getting stretched to the point where it ends up breaking down.
But it's interesting just how many countries go that far.
Like doesn't, I may be misquoting here and I'm hoping this will segue quite nicely into your next fact.
When it comes to the taxes going into military, I know the America, sorry our cousins across the pond,
they've got like, isn't it 20, 25, 20% of their taxpayer money goes solely into their military.
I only know based on gross domestic product and it's about 4% of their gross domestic product.
In which case then, I am completely wrong and yeah, but I do know that the Roman Empire at least did put half of its money back into its military.
Well I can do budgets, we can actually segue into that.
So let's go, basically in, like the UK back in 1983 spent $26.4 billion because of the stats that I was going by because I was actually nosing about the Americans when I compared it to the UK.
So back in 1983, the UK spent $26.4 billion on defence and in which by 2021, can you guess how much it had risen by in nearly 40 years?
Okay, so first off, oh shit, it's going up. I shouldn't be surprised. I am.
I don't know, for some reason I'm perhaps a bit naive here, but I thought military generally had shrunk in this country as we are no longer the world power that we once were.
I will actually answer your question, but first, whereabouts is England when it comes to standing army? Are we even in the top 20?
We are, yeah, as it goes for...
17.
No, we're about fifth.
Get out of town.
Yeah, for yearly spend on military, but I will say this, there is a clear leader by a marked margin.
Oh, I was thinking numbers wise for...
Yeah, no, I mean...
...ast army forces.
I mean, this is budget. This is purely budget.
Right, right, right.
We may well be in the top five, but we are dwarfed by the leader of their budget.
Okay, well, alright.
So yeah, how much has it grown by in 40 years?
I hate where my mind's going because it's gone. Oh, my positive view on this is wrong. It clearly must be horribly, horribly dark. Has it doubled?
It's more than doubled. So it's currently at 68 million pounds per year that we spend on military and defence.
That's a good number of Harrier jets.
So comparatively, in 1983, how much do you think the US spent on their military?
Can you give me the figure for England again? My mind has gone to poop.
In 1983, we spent 26.4 billion and in 2020, well, 2021, we spent 68 billion.
I'm going to guess that America in 1983...
70.
70?
Yeah.
You'd be closer if you said 10 times the amount that we spent in 1983.
Get out of town.
They spent $223 billion in 1983 on their military.
In 1983, was Vietnam still happening? Because this is the weird thing about Vietnam.
Wasn't that the 70s?
It stretched over 20 years.
That's why they ended up spending so much on their military. This is something that we'll go into, but obviously this is all part of the privatisation of defence and how it becomes a machine.
So $223 billion in 1983, how much do you think they spend now?
$500 billion?
I'm going to do a Dr Evil here. $800 billion.
$800 billion.
$800 billion in 2021. That is a ridiculous amount.
And like I said,
You could literally build a country with that kind of money. Like in here's me going with Scotland or spending $400 million in order to have their own parliament building.
I mean that's quite an expenditure for one building.
That's what I thought. I would have thought they would have gone like Sandstone or something. They haven't. It's modern, you know, like they're going with a changing time and stuff.
But considering the building itself, somebody's pocketed a load there.
But anyway.
Yeah, $800 billion in 2021. Bear in mind that Russia's current military budget is $65 billion.
I mean, should we just all be happy that America hasn't crushed us all at this point?
Or do you think that we should be looking more at, because you know, like it's clearly then in their ability to kill us. So is it that the stuff that we're doing like, what's the right way of putting it?
Is it that the stuff that we are doing already benefits them?
And it's not worth the additional expense of going to war with that kind of defense budget?
I mean, I think the UK are definitely very smart. We're definitely wiser than the US.
And for that reason, I think we're still allies with them because I'm sure as hell if I was in a playground and there was a kid that was four times my size, I would go and be his friend because I didn't want to be his enemy.
So it's kind of weird that you can make that comparison with England being wiser to us being a little bit of a suck up like America's the playground bully and then we're the wheezy mean kid who then like
America's like, what are you? Give us your sweets. And then we're the little kid who goes who bends around the corner and just kind of goes, yeah, you tell them boss.
Yeah, you tell them.
No, I mean, are we not smart for doing so? I'm not being funny, but we've been the powerhouse. It didn't do us any good. So maybe in our wise old age as a nation, we're kind of going, no, it's all right. You can take the limelight and get all the grief and be the enemy of the world and we'll just be here.
Yep. So I want to do a little bit of story time, James. Oh, I hate to admit how much I love a story, but I do. So the obviously we've quite centered around the negative traits of military and don't get me wrong.
I'm not a glorifier of war at all. I don't think there's any need for a military in the modern day. I think diplomacy can override most need for military.
However, in those moments where the necessity has arisen, normally because the guy next door has started a row and like you need to defend yourself. Some people have had moments of sheer genius that typically explains why they were in the position that they were at that time in order to make that decision.
Because I know if I was in that position, I'd probably just be screaming, running around, waving my hands above my head, waiting for a bomb to land. But that's me. And this is obviously them.
So in in World War Two, this is probably something that you have heard a lot about in World War Two. The Nazi created a machine which was used to encipher their communications. Do you know what that machine was called?
Enigma. Yep. Yep. It was the Enigma machine, which was ridiculously complex and it basically worked on. There was a keyboard that you would type and but you'd encode it with the the days encoding.
OK. And as you type, it would then spit out these lit up letters in the top, which would then there would be a second person writing down what those letters were. And that's the message that you transmitted.
So you didn't actually transmit your message directly. You typed it into this machine and then it lit up the coded message that you needed to send.
And the thing that made this machine so, for lack of a better term, unbreakable was the fact that every day the Germans would change their code.
Which means you could spend all the time you needed to in that day, maybe have a breakthrough and decipher their code.
The next day it's meaningless. The next day it's absolutely meaningless. Absolutely.
So. And that like a lot of the reason why the Nazis were so effective during Second World War was because of this encoded messaging that they had.
So much of what they did was secret and nobody, nobody expected it. Nobody knew what their next move was.
And that they literally crippled a lot of Europe before we had a chance to do anything. However, the UK or England rather started a task force,
which was specifically tasked with cracking the Enigma code. And one man designed the world's first computer in order to crack the Enigma code.
Do you know what his name was?
I know, I know, I know that the Enigma code was one of the first computers or the machine that cracked it. I know that he's played by the Benedict Cumberbatch in a film about this.
Unfortunately, I haven't watched that film.
So you can actually design these machines. You can build these machines.
And they are named after him. They're called Turing machines and his name is Alan Turing.
So, yeah, as I said, Alan Turing created an immense machine purely designed just to break the Enigma code.
Unfortunately, when they first broke the Enigma code, their knee-jerk reaction was to use the information and save the people that they could hear were going to be attacked.
However, if they had have acted on that information, they would have plainly given away the fact that they had cracked the Enigma code.
So they were left in a position where they could do very little, but they knew everything that was going to happen.
But what it did do was it paved the way for plans to be made, which could be used to bring down the German war machine, which I thought was absolutely incredible.
Another thing that happened during World War II, which I was absolutely flabbergasted when I heard about this, you know much about the Battle of Normandy?
I... Yes. Okay, was the battle... Okay, so Dunkirk is when we ran away. Normandy is when we landed.
Yeah, weirdly enough, my grandfather on... well, actually, technically, I suppose he's my great uncle. My great uncle adopted my mom because to work with those, you know, I won't go massively into it.
My family history is messed up. But anyway, he actually was one of the pilots of the landing boats for Normandy.
So I know that a huge number of people got... yeah, a huge number of people were dropped off, a huge number of people died, and I know Omaha Beach was the shitstorm center of it or the place where things were worse because the air support didn't arrive.
The concentration of German troops in that building was higher and just there was a lot more going on.
Yeah, so Normandy was an absolute masterstroke as far as the Allied forces go.
And the reason why isn't... I mean, obviously, it was wartime, there were casualties, but the whole ingenuity of that plan was something else.
And so Winston Churchill and his Allied commanders came up with a fantastic plan where they would deceive Adolf Hitler into believing that they were going to land at Calais.
And what they did in order to trick Adolf Hitler was they lined the coast around Dover with wooden structures covered in canvas that looked like tanks and planes and tents.
And they absolutely littered the landscape around Dover because obviously Dover is where you would take off from if you were going to go directly to Calais. That's where you would embark from.
And when they left the army, the actual army, down in Portsmouth, well out of the way, their spy planes that flew nearby enough to see what was going on saw this formidable force building up at Dover.
And he was absolutely convinced that they were going to land at Calais, to the point where when they landed in Normandy, he was determined to believe that it was a distraction, a diversion, and that the idea was that the force would land at Normandy only to draw his forces away from Calais and allow the forces in to Calais.
So he didn't even send...
So he didn't send reinforcements until Normandy beach was taken.
That's a mistake.
It's absolute genius from the part of the allied forces that they came up with a plan that was so believable that the mastermind that was Adolf Hitler fell for it hook, line and sinker to the point where he lost key standing in France.
And that was the beginning of the downfall as well because obviously once they had the, the information coming from the enigma code, and they had a foothold in France, they just pushed them back.
And from there it took about two years, I think, before German forces were forced back to their own lines.
Hmm. That's interesting. I'd also heard that because of, although I haven't, you know, I really should look this up, but because I've also heard that because of the...
Because of the help of a certain bank, or without the help of a certain bank, I hear the war would have been over a lot earlier.
But that's, that's interesting. Like also, I know that both sides did this because there's also a famous joke of there were a load of fake planes that the Germans had made in a field in Germany.
And what the Allies did is like one of the jokes of the war was they sent a plane, which then dropped a wooden bomb onto this fake airstrip that the Germans had made just as a way of kind of saying, you know, we know, with the jigs up, we know.
Yeah, yeah.
Well that's brilliant and that's good to hear that that's how we were able to...
Yeah, how we're, well, one of the ways in which we were able to overcome things.
There is one more story that I want to go over.
Okay, yep.
This story is, have you seen the film, The 300?
You see, I've seen it. I've also done a little bit of research.
Okay.
The things behind it so.
So you know, you know where it stems from, where the base story comes from.
Well, yes, it's so the film 300 is based off of a comic book, which in turn is based off of either some Greek or Macedonian propaganda, which in turn is based off of a genuine historical event.
So there's a lot of wisdom.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, so the numbers have been exacerbated and drama fired and glorified in all their means.
But the the long and short of it was that there was a battle called the Battle of Thermopylae, which was essentially what had happened was the there was a second Persian invasion.
Basically the first Persian invasion happened. Persians invaded Greece. A number of the city states of Greece fell. However, after a while, the Persians were pushed back and Darius, the king of Persia at that time, retreated back to his own country, planned to re-invade Greece.
However, he died before he had the chance.
His son, King Xerxes, then took over and amassed what can only be described as the most formidable ancient force to ever grace the planet by that point in time.
Now, stories have been, like I said, numbers have been exacerbated and you might hear the number that two million forces crossed the river and crossed the cross the gap and invaded Greece. However, the number two million is far, far more than what actually happened.
It's actually nearer about three hundred two hundred and fifty thousand to three hundred thousand forces, but that even in itself is still a formidable force of its time. And like I said, it was probably one of the biggest forces to ever walk the planet at that time.
And Athens and Sparta were two city states that kind of unified, two Greek city states which kind of unified and decided that they would not bow down to the Persian orders of surrender and would fight.
And they, I'm going to use the term amassed very loosely, an army of seven thousand Spartans, seven thousand Greeks rather, of which there was about three thousand Spartans, about four thousand Athenians.
Amongst them were their slaves.
And they decided they would defend the Straits of, I've got to remind myself of the name, Artemisium, and they would defend the pass of Thermopylae.
Now the pass of Thermopylae was probably the master stroke in this plan because it was like a choke point. There was very little the Greek, the Persians could do other than pass through like a fifty foot wide gap, which minimized the amount of forces that they could get to the Greeks at any one time.
During which time that this war was going on. There was also the war on the Straits of Artemisium where twelve hundred soldiers in Persian boats came across the sea from Persia.
Bear in mind there was about three hundred, three hundred of the Greek ships on the water and against the twelve hundred Persian ships they were massively outnumbered, massively outpowered.
However, the Persians came over during a very turbulent time on the sea and they lost about a third of their forces as they traveled to the Straits of Artemisium.
And not only did they lose about a third of their forces, they also became scattered, which allowed for the more organized and local Greek forces to kind of pick off as much as they could of these forces.
So during that time, obviously the battle of the Pass of Thermopylae is going on and like I said there was a force of around two hundred, two hundred and fifty thousand soldiers coming towards the Greeks.
And there was two solid days of constant fighting where in historic accounts even the page boys of the Knights or the soldiers shall we say, the Spartan soldiers and the Greek soldiers,
would take their turn in battling against these Persians that were coming through the wall. The main thing that gave the Greeks the upper hand was the fact that they were all wearing bronze plate armor,
whereas the Persians were wearing more leather. The Persians had their short spears and their swords, whereas the Greeks had their long spears and that gave them the upper hand as they were coming up through the pass.
Anyway, they battled on for two days and after the second day, hypothesis says that there was a villager nearby that lived locally that betrayed the Greeks and told the Greeks of a pass that allowed them to flank the Greeks.
However, it's more likely that their scouts found a way up and around, which as soon as Leonidas, which was actually the king of the Spartans at the time, as soon as Leonidas realized that he was flanked,
he sounded the retreat and the majority of his Greek forces retreated back to, I believe Athens, which was where they were based at the time, and they left behind a rearguard of which Leonidas stayed,
and there was about 300 Spartans, about 400 Athenians, so about 10% of them, total four, stayed behind to protect their retreat and they all died in doing so.
At the same time, on the streets of Artemision, as soon as they realized that the, or they heard that the battle at the pass of Thermopylae was lost, they retreated and came back inland.
Obviously, an act of sheer heroism from Leonidas, although I'm not really sure at the time he thought it was courage that did it, I think it was more necessity that forced his hand into defending his army's retreat.
Neither Athens or Sparta actually fell due to that. Xerxes ended up, his forces ended up too thin and he needed to retreat back to his country, but he did leave a contingent to finish the fight in Greece.
However, he was unable to do so, so that was how the second Persian invasion ended.
Like I said, an act of absolute heroism from very small numbers, it is a very David vs Goliath story, which is why it's been, I think, glorified in the comic, in novels, in films.
The idea that such a small number can take on such a massive force is almost unbelievable, but like I said, the reason I find it so incredible is that one person or a number of people had the ingenuity to use the terrain to their advantage, and what an advantage it gave them.
Absolutely incredible.
I mean it also really kind of highlights the importance of technology and, or at least of equipment.
Yeah, the right equipment of the day, because obviously as I said, the Greeks were wearing brass plate armour, you know, whereas the Persians were wearing leather.
Like the Greeks didn't have to travel so fast, so they kitted themselves out with their heaviest, thickest armour and their long spears.
The Persians, who unfortunately had to travel from across the sea and then all the way through Greece, travelled lighter.
But that in turn was the downfall of that attack, you know.
Yeah, it was pretty, I love that story anyway.
It's a good story and it does highlight a lot of things there about using your environment to its advantage.
Yeah, which obviously if you're playing stuff like Brisk or Warhammer, that's where it comes into play for me, and chess, you know, a strategist, definitely more of a strategist in those scenarios, but I certainly don't think I could do it in a life and death scenario.
Jeez, I was pretty sure you were just... It's hard to send wave after wave of your own men at the enemy when it's genuine people.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
So I'm going to move on now to the bloodiest wars. So I'm going to just go with the top three, okay, and I'm not going to do this whole, like, can you guess, etc.
But we will have a little talk about each one of them in their own rights.
So the third bloodiest war of all time lasted for over 60 years from the year 1618 to the year 1683.
It was called the Hundred Year War.
No, it wasn't. It was the King dynasty conquest of the Ming dynasty in China, and it resulted in the death of 25 million people over those 60 years.
That's terrifying because back then that would have been a sizeable chunk of the world's population.
Absolutely, absolutely. But it also does make me think, has China always been so overpopulated?
Hmm.
Like, that's a lot of people. That is a lot of people to just... they gone.
I know it wasn't necessarily a click of a finger, it was 60 years, but that's two generations as well of time that that war spanned for.
What was the end result? Like, other than the death count, what was that war over?
I'm pretty sure the King dynasty ended up winning, because the King dynasty wasn't one of those that is still going today, or it was still going until the early 1900s.
Hmm.
So the second bloodiest war was the Second Sino-Japanese War. It was waged between 1937 and 1944 between the Chinese and the Japanese.
And it killed over 25 million civilians and 4 million military personnel.
So they were the Chinese again, but I know that the Japanese have waged quite frequent wars with China.
Mainly because they have had massive population problems, where they've outgrown their little islands.
And have aimed to take lands nearby in order to continue their development, continue their growth and be able to sustain their population.
Which is a lot of the reason why they ended up with that honorable death, the old kamikaze.
Because it was either they won their war, or they die trying, because going home to their overpopulated island was not going to give them what they wanted.
Absolutely. And see if you can guess which the most bloodiest war in history is.
Is it the First World War?
No, it's definitely the Second World War. The First World War I think was about sixth in bloodiest wars.
Yeah, the Second World War killed over 70 million people, 50 million of which were civilians, and about 12 million it's estimated were Jews.
That's horrible.
Absolutely disgusting.
12 million Jews, that's the entire, 12 million is above the population of London, or the greater London area.
Yeah, isn't the population of London like 7.4 billion people, or 8 million people? 8 million people rather, not billion, that's the population of the world.
I always remember it because the population of the UK is 1% of the population of the world. 80 million.
Yeah, 8 billion being the population of the world, 80 million being the population of the world, and 8 million being 10% of the UK's population being just in London.
It's ridiculous.
It is, and then 70 million people dying, that is not that higher than our current population now as a country.
It's near, I think we're about 80 million in the UK, but yeah, it's incredible, imagine us just disappearing overnight.
I know the world would go on, but like still.
Well the world in perspective, yeah, the world may well go on, but ours wouldn't.
Yeah.
You know.
So, my biggest problem with the military is that there was once a need to show ability to defend yourself.
There was once a need because you didn't know what next door could do.
You didn't know what might happen because of some bloke that lived over the mountains a couple of miles away.
And it was a very different world.
I don't feel, and I'm quite open to you trying to change my perspective, but I don't feel that it's necessary for military to exist in the modern day.
And the reason I say that is because we must have learnt at some point by now that war just leads to more war.
You only need an army because your neighbours got an army.
You only need bombs because your neighbours got bombs.
Are we not in a position where we can discuss and negotiate developments instead of fighting to end disputes?
I wish that I could agree with you.
I wish I could say that I think that humanity...
Yeah.
I wish I could believe that humanity had gotten to that point.
But I don't... I think as individuals we're there, as nation states we're not.
Like the very fact that the war in Ukraine, for example, was completely Russia just trying to take land.
Tibet has been entirely taken over by China.
To be fair, they didn't stand a chance now that we know what the sheer number of that army was.
Like there is... Unfortunately there is still...
I'm trying to think of the right way of putting it.
There is still conflict. There is still, unfortunately, that fear.
There is still terror. There is still tyrants.
Like if everybody disarmed but North Korea didn't disarm, I honestly believe within a generation we'd all be...
Yeah, we'd all be under the heel of somebody with the name King Jong.
Don't know which one it would be at that point, but you know what I mean.
Yeah, I think you're bang on in the fact that it would be taken advantage of.
I think like we discussed in an earlier podcast that human nature is very self-serving.
And the opportunity, I think, would be too good to pass up for some people.
I personally could not bring myself to...
It's almost like... Do you remember that show? Was it Golden Balls with Jasper Carrot?
Did you ever see that? Complete tangent here, but go with me. Go with me. It's alright.
The whole point was that you built up... You amassed a pot of money between you and a group of people.
Throughout the game show. And the final part is who gets to take the money home.
Now if neither of you steal, then you both split the money 50-50 and you both take it home.
But if you steal and the other person doesn't, then you get all of the money.
And if you both steal, nobody gets the money.
Oh my god.
Now I'm very much of the mentality that I'm not going to steal.
I'm going to share the money 50-50, we'll both go our separate ways, everybody's happy.
But I watched the show once and there was this woman who was so convincing.
And this bloke genuinely was suckered in. They were both going to walk away with £40,000 or something like that.
And she opens the steal ball and steals all of the money and completely rips that rug out from underneath him.
Because opportunity presented itself. She knew what she was doing the whole time and that's human nature.
That is, for every 10 good people there is one person that will do exactly that.
You know? The wolf in sheep's clothing.
It's renowned throughout history and it will continue to be a part of human nature for a very long time.
Probably until we develop the ability to be telepathic, in which case we cannot lie anymore.
Then you're going to look at a world without deceit because your intentions are completely out there.
But until such a time as you can read somebody's thoughts and know exactly what they're doing, somebody is free to deceive you.
And good intentions are only as good as the next person.
You can be as good as you want to be but it's going to get quashed by someone at some point.
And this is the problem that you find in modern day.
Now my biggest bugbear with military, and it's not really a bugbear, it is a downright disgust for modern day military.
The fact that there is now a privatisation of war makers, arms dealers, tank builders, plane builders, bomb makers.
They're not built out of necessity now. Back in the day where a farmer could build or make pikes if he needed to.
Or a blacksmith could increase his capacity to building more swords for the army if he needed to.
Now they are mass produced regularly and rolled off of a production line as if they are bags of crisps at the supermarket.
For example Lockheed Martin, a name that has come up before in our podcast, they have remained the biggest profiters of war since 2009.
That's 14 years where they have produced the most profit year after year from war.
In 2021 alone they made 50 billion out of sales which amassed to a massive 90% of their profit came through sales to the US government for their arms.
Now if you have an organisation such as Lockheed Martin which relies on the turnover of arms deals, then you have the necessity for war.
The need for war as an organisation. And then you lose all sense of want, desire, need. It becomes another organisation.
It becomes another trade. What's your trade? Well I'm a soldier. What do you do for money? I'm a murderer. I go to other countries and I kill their people because my government employed me to do so.
Because they want to continue putting money in the pockets of private organisations.
Let's go back to the days where you defend because you want to defend. You defend because you have something to defend. You don't just defend because you've been broken down and rebuilt to do exactly as you're told.
That's where the military's lost on me.
I don't think there should be, there definitely shouldn't be this economical gain for war because war in itself is so wasteful. To be able to turn a profit in that in itself is distasteful.
The fact that we're then making it necessary is then also a problem. I know there are limited resources in the world.
The fact that so many people at the company that we're just working at are now being made redundant. There is only so much of the pie to go round but there are other ways to handle things.
Just so the folks at home remember it and not at all because I'm terrible at remembering things. What's the name of that company?
Lockheed Martin. Watch the news because there's going to be a lot of developments around Lockheed Martin and it's privatised warfare I should think over the next coming months and maybe the next couple of years.
The problem is, and I sent you the link to the video, Dwight Eisenhower when he left office after his term as President in the US gave a speech which has resounded through history.
He warns against the military industrial complex, the privatisation of military, the need and necessity for war as an organisation and the risks of privatising power.
I don't think he could have had any real understanding of how far this has gone and how much truth there was in his speech.
But he does say that only an educated citizenry has the power to overcome that force and I think more people need to be wise to what need there is for military intervention, for military action.
And really start to speak up when they don't agree. You go back to 2004, 2005 when we invaded Iraq and it was a completely illegal war.
Completely illegal war that was started under the guise of terror and weapons of mass destruction that did not exist and have been proven to not have existed.
And yet the leaders that were in power at that time have faced very little consequence for their actions and their part in that play, even though they knew and have openly admitted that there was no need for them to go to war.
The fact that Tony Blair wasn't made an ambassador of the peace? He's literally in the House of Lords.
Why is he still working in the House of Lords? Why does he even still have a right to a say in what goes on in the world after that? Is that not an international war crime?
I don't want to get angry but it's definitely one of those things that really does get me going is when people abuse their power.
Both George W Bush and Tony Blair abused the situation that was presented to them or they manipulated, whichever is your interpretation.
Whatever happened in the lead up to that war they abused their power and sent countries, multiple countries to war with innocent people unnecessarily.
Yeah.
It's interesting how justice falls differently on different people isn't it?
Yeah, yeah absolutely. Absolutely.
But remember listeners and yourself James, as one individual person yes you have no power at all.
But we're not one individual. We are people. The people. And there is no war if we all sit down.
I know I'm sounding a little bit like John Lennon right now but it's absolutely right.
Are you saying war is over if we want it?
Absolutely. The point is if you're part of that wheel turning just get off that wheel.
Get off that wheel. Just go home. Make peace with your family. Spend some time with them. Get a job.
Fill in shelves at a supermarket. It's still better than being part of the war machine.
I cannot bring myself to even begin to think what it must take, what it must do to a person to hold a gun and shoot someone you've never seen.
You have no idea what they're doing, what their thought process is, why they're even there.
I would be stuck in a complete limbo of why am I doing this? Who is this guy?
I would die very quickly in that respect because I'd be sitting there asking too many questions like dude do you want to talk about it?
Like are you ok? Should we put the guns down and have a chat? Cup of tea?
See if we can really air this out and stop everybody from dying around us. But no, that's not what you get told to do.
But it's just not human.
Yeah.
I think we've covered as much as we can. There's a lot of other topics that we can but I don't know about you but I'm running out of energy.
I will say that I believe that there is some call for military when it comes to disaster prevention.
But to be fair, that's because the military has the boats and the equipment.
You could have the boats and the equipment without the guns but then it wouldn't be military, it would be something else.
It would be a force wouldn't it? But it would be a rescue force. Which makes a lot more sense.
Would you say you could make it an international rescue force? No, sorry, right.
But anyway, yeah. Can they have their own little island?
Absolutely. And they'll need some kind of billionaire backing them, providing financial aid.
It will need to be top secret for some reason which they never go into. Anyway, sorry.
Before we go too far off topic, thank you very much for the research you've done.
I've really enjoyed this conversation. I've definitely learnt a couple of things.
Main facts that I've taken away from this are China has the biggest military.
The Vatican City has the smallest military. What else? Good old King Sargon.
Had the first military. Was the first military commander.
The 300 film is massively overdone and there wasn't just 300 of them, there was a fair few more.
The spears are realistic but the idea that they were all there in just leather loin cloths and a shield and a cape is pushing it a little bit.
America spends £800 billion per year on their military?
You know what, that's one of the things that I've forgotten but like that, that's a terrifying fact.
If any one of our listeners is a quantity surveyor and wants to tell us how many houses that could build, that'd be great.
If one of our listeners isn't a quantity surveyor, don't spend too much of your time figuring it out.
I'm not going to necessarily do anything for you. It's just, that would be interesting to know wouldn't it?
I give all of the listeners a challenge which is spend £800 billion. Write down how you would spend £800 billion.
Go to Reddit, r slash Pods with Nick and James or NNJ Pods, one of the two. I can never remember now.
It's Nick and James Pods, r slash Nick and James Pods. Go on there, tell me how would you spend $800 billion?
I'm pretty sure you'd run out of ideas after about £100 billion. I reckon I could spend up to £100 billion but I don't think I could go anywhere near £800 billion.
I'm talking realistic things, don't just make things up in order to spend money.
You know what, I've got a lot of things coming to my head at the moment but I also realise that because we're dealing with obscene amounts of money here, my mind has gone to the obscene.
Yeah, absolutely. Have a think about it James, chuck it on the Reddit. I'll get involved as well and I'll come up with a list of my own. See if I can spend $800 billion.
Alright, okay. Well, I'm going to call it good night there. Frank, if you have listened to the last list, thank you very much for listening, Lester.
Yep, thank you very very much. All the best, take care, goodbye from me.
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