Here, on the Sabaton History Channel, we have done one or more episodes dedicated to almost every single song that has appeared as a regular track on one of Sabaton's albums that deal with military history. We haven't done everything from Metalizer basically, right, but uh and sure there's some bonus tracks and preludes and things, but almost every single song that's a regular song on a Sabaton album except one. And that is "Firestorm". [Music] The end of July 1943. Hamburg's firefighters have spent the last couple of days trying to stem the damage from British bombing raids. High explosives have not just ruined many buildings but have also torn craters into the streets, which has made rescue attempts difficult. But although the water reserves are running low, it seems like they'll manage. Then, on the night of July 27th, a fleet of 730 British bombers appears over the city. More than 2,300 tons of bombs are dropped in just one hour, this time including 17,000 incendiary bombs. Major fires break out all over the city, which soon merged together in a storm of fire. Wooden structures combust under the immense heat of up to 800 degrees celsius. The strong summer winds begin to drive the inferno through the streets and the heat drives them to hurricane speeds of 240 kilometres an hour. Craving oxygen, the firestorm sucks at the air with such force that buildings collapse and trees are uprooted from the ground. People are sucked into the flames and immediately incinerated. Thousands of others die slowly from carbon monoxide poisoning in shelters. Hamburg burns! The flames destroyed 12 square miles and killed more than 18,500 people in just that night alone. By August 3rd, after two more raids, 60 percent of Hamburg has been burned and more than 35,000 of its inhabitants are dead. The Germans are stunned, dazed with disbelief. For British Bomber Command, it is a resounding success. The scale of the conflagration and the ensuing firestorm are not an accident or a byproduct of the bombing : it has worked just as intended. Hamburg had been number one on the target list for well over a year. British scientists had been studying the meteorological conditions and the winds speeds in and out of the city for months. High winds would be the best catalyst for the firestorm they sought to unleash. Questions revolved around how many fires needed to be started until it became an uncontrollable force of its own, one that would ultimately overwhelm the German firefighters. Bombing trials were scheduled and models of the city's urban areas were built to accurately study the vulnerability of German houses to fire. The main target of the incendiary raid was to be the most densely packed residential area of the city close to its centre. At first, a group of pathfinder bombers would drop aluminized strips to create false echoes on the German radar screens, right, shielding the coming planes from coordinated fighter attacks. A second group would drop small anti-personnel explosives with delayed action triggers to intimidate the rescue efforts. Some were timed for between 3 and 10 minutes after impact, others would explode if they were hit by a jet of water. Then, the main force would arrive and drop incendiaries, like magnesium bombs mixed with an oil base. The Mark II incendiary bomb was a deadly mixture of white phosphorus and benzoyl gel. Everything worked as planned in creating the perfect firestorm : Hamburg was burnt to ashes! [Music] British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had promised Soviet High Command a year earlier that, although an invasion of Europe was not yet possible, they would continue to attack the Germans at every possible occasion. At first, the sporadic bombing raids against German cities had been a way for the Royal Air Force to show defiance. When they happened, the Germans had to use valuable military and administrative resources to fight them off, and these were desperately needed at the battlefronts. But now the British were determined to turn those raids into a strategic concept, one that would break not only Germany's military capabilities, but break the population spirit. And Churchill had just the right man at hand to fulfill such a goal. Air Marshal Arthur Harris had been appointed Commander in Chief of the British Royal Air Force as part of the new area bombing directive in February 1942. Harris already had a reputation as a ruthless and uncompromising leader who had personal contempt for the Germans and the totalitarianism of the Nazis. He fully expected air power to win the war, and possibly even avoid a costly invasion of Europe against entrenched fanatics, as he called them. If he just had a fleet of a thousand bombers, Harris argued, he could reduce any major German city to rubble. His proposed mass carpet bombing campaigns would shorten the war and the more ruthlessly they attacked, the more it would save allied lives in future. Harris proposed that, instead of attacking single factories or military targets, they should bomb the urban centres of Germany's cities. For him, the tightly packed worker districts were valuable targets. Total war was the people's war! Each industrial worker was as important to the war effort as the soldier at the front was. If the bombers targeted urban areas, they would affect several industries at once too, either through absenteeism, or the death of the workers. If they wanted to win this war, Harris argued, they would have to kill a lot of Germans either way. De-housing the Germans was also the most likely way to break their will to resist, as losing one's home was considered to have the most demoralizing effect. "The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everybody else and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put that rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind and now they are going to reap the whirlwind. Cologne, Lübeck, Rostock : these are only just the beginning. We cannot send a thousand bombers a time over Germany every time, as yet. But the time will come when we can do so." Arthur Harris, June 1942. Such biblical terms were not accidental. The attack on Hamburg was codenamed "Operation Gomorrah", for the apocalyptic scenery it would produce. Like the British propaganda said, Harris also stood behind the fact that the incendiary attacks on German cities were not simple acts of terror bombing. They were retaliation, acts of revenge for what the Luftwaffe had done during the Battle of Britain and the Blitz. The bombing of Coventry in November 1940 was seen as the example of German cruelty. Although the Luftwaffe's aim had been to cripple the local aircraft industry, much of its heavy bombs and incendiaries had fallen upon the residential areas, causing a high civilian death toll and the destruction of the city. Harris and British Bomber Command would now, as the war turned, "Coventry" German cities as well. In the first four months of 1945, British bombers dropped four times the bomb tonnage on German cities that the Luftwaffe had dropped during its 10-months long campaign against Britain. On the night of February 13th, Dresden burnt. 800 Lancaster bombers dropped more than 2,600 tons of bombs on the mostly undefended city. Nearly half of the bombs were incendiary, and more than 15 square miles of the city was devastated by fire. Dresden's historic centre burnt to ashes, as more than 75,000 houses succumbed to the firestorm. Over 25,000 people are estimated to have been killed that night. [Music] In Britain people began to question such actions. Was this really justified? Was this not just terror against civilians? Dresden hadn't been a fortress city, nor did it have major war related industries. Instead, it was full of refugees and evacuees fleeing the Eastern Front. But Harris wanted to see the city bombed because it would make the German administration in the sector collapse and would delay the transport of German troops to the front. It was war after all! But even as the final phase of the war began, and more cities burnt, there was no sign of surrender. Not in Germany, not in Japan. The US had been confronted by the destructiveness of modern air power when Japanese naval aircraft attacked Pearl Harbor December 7th 1941. Actually, Harris lived in Washington DC at the time, and was busy closing a deal with the American aircraft industry as news of that air raid came in. Since the early 1930s, American military planners had foreseen the need for long-range bombers for a future war fought far from American shores. So they had been developed. While any retaliation was seen as a good thing, Tokyo itself was on the target list for retaliation bombing after the Doolittle Raid of April 1942. That had little more than propaganda effect, similar to the initial British raids on the German Rhineland. But then, with Harris establishing a working relationship between the British and American air leaders, the US Air Force began studying the efficiency of firebombing. The development of the B-29 Superfortress bomber pretty much embodied the possibility of destroying a city from the air. With a range of over 3,200 miles (that's over 5,000 kilometres), it could easily reach the Japanese homeland from American forward airbases, and each plane could deliver a bomb load of up to 20,000 pounds (that's over 9,000 kilos). Such a fleet would finally, not only get revenge for Pearl Harbor, but do it a thousand-fold. By February 1945, they were ready and US Air Force general Curtis LeMay ordered the first large-scale bombing runs against Tokyo. By then, Japanese defensive capabilities had been very much diminished. Their air force barely existed anymore, the fleet was shattered, industry marginalized. Still Tokyo refused to surrender, even after the first low altitude raids began. Japanese people still went to work as their families grew accustomed to the daily air raids. Each night they went to bed fully dressed to not waste time in case of an attack. But this was to little avail on the night of March the 9th when 279 B-29 bombers appeared in the skies over the capital. In the darkness, at an altitude of just under 2,500 feet, they dropped more than 1,600 tons of bombs. Most of them were cluster bombs, each releasing several smaller napalm and oil-based incendiary bomblets. M-47 incendiaries, a mix of gelled gasoline and white phosphorus, ignited as they dropped into the tightly packed residential areas. The ensuing conflagration was even more devastating than those in Germany. A firestorm was ignited as the columns and walls of flames were whipped through the streets. Since the Japanese used more wood in the construction of their buildings than Europeans, the devastation was more total. Large parts of the capital were simply obliterated by the flames, leaving more than a million people homeless. The numbers are still disputed but somewhere between 88,000 and 200,000 people fell victim to the flames. In the end, it mattered little if such raids were justified or not. Firebombing gave way to a dangerous precedent. Such carpet bombing runs with high explosives and incendiaries did not just kill people, they incinerated them, they blew them to pieces, they deliberately asphyxiated them, or burned them alive. It was another line crossed, yet another extreme of total war. When months later arguments raged about the ethical use of the atomic bomb, people began pointing fingers to Hamburg, to Dresden, to Tokyo. Mass extinction was already here. The atom bomb, so an argument went, might actually be more humane. [Music] Now this is a rather dark subject of course, the carpet bombing and the allied carpet bombing - which many people tend to forget - that's also a part of the war. But this is on "The Art of War". Yes. This has to do with Sun Tzu. Yes. He was ahead of his time with carpet bombings. Yeah, he was, he invented carpet bombing in Ancient China. Yes. But they used actual carpets back then. Yes, I mean, it wasn't plain they were doing carpet bombing : they were on carpets, flying carpets, and bombing. See, that's pretty cool! Can we get an illustration? No, we can't get an illustration of that. But what made you think of this to illustrate Sun Tzu? Well, I think the chapter was something like "Destruction by fire" or... I can't remember one of the second to last chapters. Okay. In "The Art of War" and the only thing like that, well the most fitting, in modern military conflict was carpet bombing I think, that corresponded to that chapter. Now, of course, he wasn't thinking of carpet bombing. No! Flaming arrows, I guess? Yeah, destroy your opponent's supplies and, you know, everything in that manner. And so many people actually forget about things like that. I know, you know on the World War II channel, you know now it's December 1941 and of course, the War in the Pacific, well the US is not neutral anymore shall we say! Yes. But one thing that the Japanese did not do in the period when they had naval supremacy in the South Pacific and Southeast Asia, it did not try to destroy the American supply lines or the connection between Australia and the US or dominance in the Indian Ocean. It wasn't, they were more focused on their actual goals instead of... They had some mess-ups in their high command but they should have listened to Sun Tzu! They should have, yes! Because if your enemy has no supplies, eventually... You're in trouble, yeah! Yeah, and we said at the very very beginning that this is the last of the regular album songs that we've done! Yes. Did you realize that? Not until quite recently actually. And by quite recently you mean when I said it. Yes, actually! Yeah, because I don't think Pär had either when we were talking about which songs to do, you know this shooting - all these are all the ones that we're doing like this month, that you're seeing. Which is why I have this bandage on my hand for like seven weeks in a row, because it's just not healing. It's because I was attacked by fire. They destroyed my supply lines, it was terrible. But yeah, it was when I was going through the albums and stuff and thinking : "We've done them all!" Man! I mean, we've done some part twos and part threes and stuff and you guys, I'm sure you're wondering what's gonna happen next, but you'll find out soon enough! And I was thinking "Well, why don't we go through Metalizer and do every song on that?" But what would the history parts cover, you know? Oh! Okay, pick a song, pick a song of Metalizer! We do have one that could work... ["Speeder"] Pär is screaming "Speeder". Okay. And uh yeah, I'm gonna... Did you guys hear that? That was Pär screaming "Speeder", he's off directing. Yeah, we, I'm gonna kill him for it! Okay. Uh no. So if you'd like to play bass with Sabaton now is your chance! Now is your chance! #JoakimKilledPär You have to have an "a" with two dots on your computer keyboard though, otherwise it doesn't work. Nope. Because then it'd just be "Par". Yeah and that'd be silly. No, you can't have that. Oh well, easy come, easy go. Anyhow, back to the Metalizer, okay! I think it would be actually "Burn Your Crosses", that song! Okay. It's about a man well, sentenced to death for crimes he did not commit and questioning his faith in Christianity or religion. [Music] I'm trying to figure what it would be like. So, we could write in the history part about... Religious persecution! And eventually... It has happened in history I've heard! I think once, once there was a time! Well, you've done, you know, you've done plenty of songs that had to do with, you know, religion based things and stuff that turn up here and there and stuff. That's interesting though, the shift from Metalizer to the other stuff. When you think back to when you began to really focus on, you know, was it just one day, or was it over a period of weeks and months, when you thought "This is just the way it's gonna be" or did it just turn out that way when you started? Well, we had a few songs written before we actually went into album production with with "Primo Victoria". But I think it was, I think that song was a bit of the start as well because we had the music, me and Pär are sitting down to write the lyrics, and we thought it has a big sound to it, we can't sing about, you know, booze and babes and whatever with this song. So we decided that we were gonna do, yeah, D-Day, something that mattered. And all of a sudden, things started clicking for us. It made sense, I mean, we're interested in history and there are enough bands singing about killing dragons and drinking beer, so we thought... And babes, don't forget the babes! Don't forget the babes! No, so, it's, we sort of "Oh, let's make the whole album about military history!". And the more we got into it, I mean, it all made sense for us because before on, before that day, writing lyrics were sort of a necessary evil. Okay. All of a sudden, it became fun, and interesting, and engaging, you know. Well, that's cool! That's really cool! You found your mojo I guess you could call it. But, so when you're touring and stuff, do you ever play songs from "Metalizer"? It has happened, I mean, it wasn't that long ago we did - was it four or five years ago? - we did the song "7734". [Music] I think three years ago we played in The Netherlands and Frederick, I think he was from "Bloodbound", joined us on keyboards and we played "Hellrider", which is a song we haven't played in 10 years. How does the audience react to that, though? Do they know that album as well as some of the others? Well, it depends actually! With the song "7734", we had that re-recorded on a special edition of, I think it was the "Heroes" album if I'm not mistaken. And then people have heard it, had heard it, of course because it was, you know, released again, you know, and re-released. But the "Metalizer" song was oh "Hellrider", yeah, we played in The Netherlands! No, I would say 50% of the crowd at least are going "Okay, what do they play now?" [Music] Does that disappoint them at all? I mean, you know, when I see a band I like, I don't expect to know all of the songs. The fact that... No we're not, it is, it's all you win some, you lose some. It's a really tricky thing when you're writing a set list. You can't only play the most expected stuff because, if you keep doing that, you're playing the same show over several tours. So we always throw, try to throw in some, you know, curveballs. Because, yeah, we know some people might lose interest, or might not be into that song, or might not know that song. Or get a beer. Yeah, but they go get a beer, go for the toilet or whatever. But it's so amazing to see, you know, the eyes of the hardcore fans, the ones who really [screams]. They are like "No way!". "Man, I never thought I heard that again!" Like they probably got their phone and they're not even filming, they're like "Dad, you're not gonna believe it! Remember when, remember like when I told you there's this band that I really liked, and I said they do all these songs about military history dad, and you love military history, and you said I'll check them out, and then you picked up "Metalizer", and you said : What the hell are you talking about? Well, they're playing, oh wait, they're playing one of the songs that you wouldn't be interested in. Never mind, dad, see you at home!" So, there were a lot of those phone calls in The Netherlands then. Yes. So there were a lot of Dutch people talking like "thish". It was "ongelofelijk"! That's one of the few Dutch words I know. Okay. I know it because the Incredible Hulk is "de Ongelofelijke Hulk". I think I remember a few, something about take your pants off and put them on your head, and "Neuken in de keuken". But here's the thing : if you said that to The Hulk, The Hulk - because it's The Hulk, he's not known for his intelligence when he's The Hulk, right - he might be so like surprised, he'd be like "Yeah okay!" and then take his pants off and put him on his head. And then you could see what The Hulk is actually packing! Well, you heard it here first! This channel goes to some freaky places sometimes! I'll tell you that. Well from carpet bombing to Hulk. From carpet bombing to Hulk and what he's packing. Yes. All in one episode, that's what you get on Sabaton History but I didn't realise, you know, when I did realise that this was the last of the regular songs, I've been - as I was talking to Pär in one of the episodes we were doing today - I've been enjoying perhaps more than the regular songs, doing like bonus tracks and preludes and things that people don't expect and stuff. Because then, we have to really, to think more about the story behind it, and you guys think more about what you want to say about it and stuff. Yeah, and especially the specials, or the deeper dives, looking at the other perspective somehow. I mean, I liked "Soldier of Three Armies", you know, with three episodes, you know, and especially with those there is enough time that I learned so much more! Yeah, yeah. Well me too! I didn't know very much about Lauri Allan Törni so it's good to... So many new things there! So, yeah, I mean, still not too late! We are gonna keep on existing in some ways, some form, somehow! We're not done yet, so we'll tell you when we're done! Don't you run away! Don't worry! But for us today though, that is it for us this time, at Sabaton History! Yeah! [Music] All right everyone, you know the drill : you click, click, click, click, get some subscriptions, check out Indy's other channels, become a patreon. That's it! Get the fuck out of here!
