俄罗斯的二战韧性：“死亡地面”下的国家意志
俄罗斯在二战中为何能承受数千万士兵的损失，国家却未崩溃，反而能生产出先进坦克？这引发了关于中央计划经济有效性、斯大林高压统治下政府为何未倒台等诸多谜团。与此相对，希特勒虽也残暴，但其统治的帝国内部并未出现类似沙皇俄国在一战中的瓦解。问题的核心在于，在极端压力下，一个国家或民族是否被推至了“死亡地面”。 Samuel Griffith 对孙子兵法的翻译引入了“死亡地面”这一概念：当敌人将你逼入绝境，你别无选择，只能殊死搏斗，即便胜算渺茫，这是唯一的生存之道。
Original English
why was Russia so robust against not
initially but eventually so robust
against pushing back against the Germans
despite losing tens of millions of
soldiers the government doesn't collapse
like the Zars did in World War I and not
only that but a communist country is
able to produce these really Advanced
tanks in large and reliable numbers
there's so many Mysteries are like why
central planning worked why the
government didn't collapse despite the
fact that Stalin you know killed all so
many people he would have been hated
right so ah but Hitler killed more and
was more hated uh what you're thinking
about is what did the Russians do I'm
going to flip it what do the Germans do
a useful concept comes from the Samuel
Griffith translation of sunzo which
talks about death ground what's death
ground it's when your enemy puts you on
death ground which means they're going
to kill you and therefore you have no
choice but to fight because if you don't
fight you're dead and even if you fight
your odds are poor but at least that's
the only way you're going to get out
乌克兰的抵抗与民族认同的锻造
乌克兰人民在二战初期曾因斯大林强加的饥荒而对德国入侵者抱有复杂态度，认为“再糟糕也比不过过去的苦难”。然而，纳粹的暴行——强迫乌克兰人挖掘万人坑——彻底改变了他们的看法，将德国变成了必须抵抗的敌人。这种因外部极端压迫而激发的强大反抗力量，不仅体现在俄罗斯身上，也正被乌克兰经历。回溯至2014年克里米亚危机前，腐败的乌克兰政府使民众在“乌克兰化”与“俄罗斯化”之间摇摆不定。但时至今日，俄罗斯军队对东部地区民众的毁灭性打击，迫使乌克兰人认识到与俄罗斯“共存”的可能性已不复存在。讽刺的是，弗拉基米尔·普京的行动正在无意中锻造出一个前所未有的、坚定的乌克兰民族认同，正如历史上美国独立战争促成了北美十三殖民地的联合国家认同。
Original English
the
ukrainians initially welcomed the
Germans why because Stalin and friends
had imposed the uh terrible Famine of
the early
1930s on them and they couldn't imagine
that anything would be worse than that
until they met Nazis who then had them
dig their own Mass Graves the ukrainians
rethought that whole thing and if you do
this to people you will conjure a
formidable enemy so that's what happened
to Russia you can see it happening to
Ukraine now before your eyes go back uh
before the invasion of Crimea in 2014
you got Ukraine which has very corrupt
government and people were sixes and
sevens about whether they want to do
Ukrainian things or Russian things okay
fast forward to now where you have
Russians blowing away the people who
were most loyal to them in the eastern
part of the country who didn't leave
their apartment buildings are being
leveled by Russians ukrainians think aha
you know this idea that we can coexist
with these people is over and and our
irony is Putin's forging Ukrainian
national identity and Wars often do this
in the United States uh we start out
with our 13 colonies and they're all
very different after the Revolutionary
War that starts forging a national
identity and by the time you get to the
end of the Civil War where you have
northern armies at least those people
have been all over the country they have
a real sense of nature
比较战争策略：“无条件投降”与文化驱动的士气
美国在二战及内战中奉行的“无条件投降”策略，与轴心国在乌克兰或中国提出的极端政策目标存在本质区别——美国并未进行种族灭绝。那么，为何美国的策略未导致其对手国家（如德国、日本）出现与俄国在二战初期类似的崩溃？关键在于，美国并未将对手国的民众置于“死亡地面”。相反，在许多情况下，是对手国的领导层（如东条英机）将自身推入了“职业生涯的死亡地面”，因为任何退让都意味着政治生命的终结，甚至可能面临处决。尽管如此，日本民众最终并未感受到“死亡地面”的绝望，其社会结构因战争长期消耗而濒临破碎。美国也从未像俄罗斯屠杀波兰人那样，大规模屠杀德国平民。然而，1945年东京经历的毁灭性火烧（一晚造成8.4万人死亡）等惨剧，为何未能使日本人陷入“死亡地面”的绝境？
Original English
by the end of that one it's interesting
because the strategy we pursued with
Germany and Japan was unconditional
surrender now do you think of that is
different than obviously we didn't
commit genocide or anything but you
think that is different than the sort of
um total unlimited policy objectives
that for example Germany had in Ukraine
or Japan had in China or we also pursued
unconditional surrender against the
south in the Civil War right so how do
you think about because that's also
something where your back is up against
the wall why did that not result in the
same kind of morale because because the
United States did not put the people of
these countries on death ground the
leadership had self- put themselves on
death ground by where the basically the
problem for Tojo hiedi is if he backs
down on anything he's out of office and
then he doesn't know what happens after
that so he personally is on Career death
ground and possibly he thinks uh well we
would we we were planning to that he
would get executed at the end of the war
but the Japanese people eventually
figured out that they weren't on J death
ground and in fact the Japanese people
were so exhausted by the whole thing
that they the society shattered um but
the United States was never uh going to
put the German people start massacring
them in the way that the Russians
massacred the poles when they moved in
the Germans massacred the poles how do
you wind up with eight or nine million
polish deaths in World War II think
about that's a large number it's because
they're massing they're being massed but
there was a fire bombing you know Tokyo
and Dron and Berlin I think it was in
your book that 84,000 people died in
that one night fire bombing in Tokyo
it's terrible why did that not make them
put them in the mind frame of a sort of
total uh death ground well a I don't
know but B Japan had been at War since
日本的文化、战争疲惫与天皇的角色
日本的战争状态自1931年起就已持续，其军队在中国战场消耗巨大。在二战后期，日本国内已承受了长期战争的重压，经济产值远低于美国，且面临严峻的粮食和资源短缺，社会几近崩溃。尽管如此，日本军队却以极高的士气闻名，拒绝投降。这背后深层原因是日本独特的文化——强调对“内团体”（ingroups）的忠诚与义务，而非西方强调的“自由”和“权利”。士兵们在战场上并非考虑战略，而是对行动单位的成功负有义务。一旦战败，他们将为自己、家庭乃至所属团体带来耻辱，投降意味着彻底的失败。
这种文化背景也体现在内部管理上：日本指挥官曾命令士兵处决受伤同袍，以避免“残疾士兵”回国带来的耻辱。在战争的最后关头，裕仁天皇（Emperor Hirohito）介入，打破了内阁的僵局。此前，他因缺乏相关专业知识（其兴趣在于研究后院的鱼类）而未干预日本对外扩张的决策。然而，当面临原子弹威胁时，他挺身而出，避免了可能导致的最大规模的种族清洗。
Original English
1931 in China uh they had been sending
large armies this
isn't like recent us Wars the
counterinsurgencies in Iraq and
Afghanistan this is their sending
hundreds of of thousands of troops to
occupy Manchuria the Chinese don't give
up it goes on and on and on so by the
time you're getting to 1945 it's a long
time also they had committed atrocities
in China and they knew all about it and
the atrocities got even better when
there were wounded Japanese soldiers
their
commanders ordered their fellow soldiers
to execute them because they didn't want
cripples going home they couldn't deal
with them there and so rather than have
the pick them up they executed them in
place you can you imagine how Japanese
soldiers felt about this how do we
explain the high morale the famously
High morale of the Japanese military
where they would refuse to surrender
even after given orders by their
superiors despite knowing about um these
things that you were talking about uh
it's true um it's because it's a
different culture so in Japanese culture
you belong to ingroups or out groups so
the biggest ingroup the Japanese belong
to was Japanese people and everybody
else but within Japan you come from a
province a locality Etc you go school
education various places you belong to a
job wherever you have and there are
various units within your job and you
owe loyalty it's obligations in the west
it's all about Liberties and my rights
in the East it's about obligations to
other people and so you owe obligations
to all of these uh
organizations and when they soldiers are
thinking about war they're not thinking
about Grant strategy they're thinking
about operational success so the moment
you as a soldier start losing a battle
instead of in the west where you can
Retreat you can surrender and it's not
dishonorable because you're going to
live to fight another day in Japan
you're a failure and therefore if you go
come home back as a failed Soldier you
bring dishonor to yourself your family
uh your locality anyone you are
associated with so that's why it is so
difficult to for them to surrender
however by the time you get to the end
of the war they are so exhausted think
about it their economy is I don't know I
can't remember the statistics exactly
something like a tenth of our economy
they have something like a 13th of our I
can't remember was coal or steel
production and they don't have any um
local oil production uh they're
importers of food and they're not
getting that food so by the time you get
to 45 they're
exhausted and it's um it's a shattering
that occurs and um finally at the very
end you have emperor hero who knew full
well earlier if he disagreed and he
didn't disagree for a long time that he
would be assassinated or be proclaimed
deranged and he had a perfectly good
underage son to be used as a figure head
he knew that he couldn't do much about
it uh at the very end when he decided he
was about to get
nuked that's when he intervenes to break
the deadlock and at the cabinet meetings
and there are a variety of people at the
very top who realizes it's over could
heroo have intervened earlier I doubt it
日本的扩张主义与中国的民族觉醒
日本曾以为其极度残暴的侵华政策能助其征服“落后”的中国，却未料到正是这种极端暴行，最终促使中国人民团结起来，将日本人视为共同的敌人，从而成为中华民族崛起的强大动力。这种侵略行为最终适得其反。当前，普京在乌克兰的行动也存在类似的讽刺效果，他正在“加冕”泽连斯基，并为乌克兰锻造出一种前所未有的、坚强的国家认同，永不会忘记当下事件。
Original English
let's go back more than five years if he
intervenes um when Japan is
overextending in China is there any
chance that he could have succeeded I
doubt he uh thought of Japan
overextending in China what expertise
does he have he liked Guppies he likes
studying fish in his
backyard he has no expertise and then of
course there's the Hubers of it all that
we're going to dominate this place and
they look at the Chinese as an
absolutely feckless backward place
that's had all these warlord things
going on and it doesn't Dawn on them
that by their extreme brutality in China
the Chinese finally get it going uh
we're not the problem the Japanese are
the problem and it is uh what the
Japanese do that superlu China and is
the great impetus to n nation building
you can see parallels with Hitler doing
the same thing in Russia and and also
right now um uh Putin's busy canonizing
uh zalinski and uh creating a real
Nation out of Ukraine that's never going
to forget these ongoing events yeah well
反事实设想：日本联合国民党对抗共产主义的可能
从您著作中受到的一个深刻且略带悲剧色彩的启示是，日本本可以采取一种“大陆强权”的战略思维，联合中国的国民党，共同对抗俄国的共产主义势力。这种三线作战（德国、国民党、日本）的策略，或许能阻止共产主义在中国和俄罗斯的崛起。考虑到共产主义在两国造成的巨大生命损失，若能实现这一目标，将挽救无数生命。然而，日本最终选择了与德国结盟，这一决策在如今看来，若采取了另一条路径，例如与国民党合作，则可能意味着希特勒的永恒统治，并可能导致欧洲发生历史上最浩大的种族清洗。
Original English
what I learned from your book that I
thought was really interesting and also
tragic because of the counterfactual was
one of the strategies you suggested what
could have been that Japan could have if
it thought like a continental power it
could have allied with the Nationalist
to beat the Communist in Russia maybe
waged almost a three- front war with
Germany the Nationalist and Japan beat
the Communist and prevented the
Communists from taking hold in China and
given the consequences of Communism in
Russia and China and how many lives
could have been saved if you know I
guess Hitler was beaten and the
Communists are beaten that Japanese
choice just seems so tragic let's say
they do it uh that means Hitler forever
and that means if you're anything but a
nice
Aran uh your days are numbered certainly
it would be the have been the most
massive ethnic cleanse ever in
Europe