While there were some generals that were a bit too resistant to changing strategy when it might have seemed reasonable, the fact of the matter is, is that this was the 1910s.

Everyone was trying to solve the problem of trying to figure out how to fight, and no one could keep up with how fast warfare was changing. Armchair generals watching people die in almost real time from drone footage in Europe did not exist in 1915.

The reason we have this view of WW1 is that after WW1 in the 20s many normal people in the 20s started writing about the horrors of war and that combined with the strong anti-war sentiment lead to the view we have now. Claiming that generals like Haig was an incompetent butcher. The whole 'lions led by donkeys' myth.

However non of that is actually true. Or not anymore true then in any other war. For example, there is stark contrast to right after the war, where Haig was considered a hero and most soldiers in their post-WW1 writing liked him.

In terms of causality rates, WW1 isn't that special, high intensity combat in modern war isn't that different, from Crimea to WW2. If you have warfare at that level, even if you are successful, you have massive causalities. The Somme for example wasn't that different from the Normandy campaign in WW2.

These generals had to deal with armies of literally million of people and they didn't even have wireless communications. How do you command 500 men in a coordinated attack without communication?

The Americans had to go threw the same learning curve as the others, but they started right away fighting against an enemy that was mostly veterans. Americans could have learned better, but it also has to be said that Pershing by command from the president was not allowed to fully integrate his troupes with that of the French army.

> I assume that this was because many generals were trained on Napoleonic-Era tactics

This is complete and utter nonsense. Please stop spreading these myths. This all just Post-WW1 anti-war politics propaganda.

> against machine guns and semiauto rifles

This is again a myth. Semiauto rifles practically didn't exist in the beginning of WW1. And machine guns had existed for a while and were not that effective.

The big killer on the battle field is the fast shooting artillery. Massive innovations in that had happened in the 30 years before WW1.

As far as credible 5th generation strike fighters go, that's a pretty cheap per-squadron price tag. My bigger gripe is with the "Big Bomb Diplomacy" tactics that require such a platform, but we'd end up wanting one either way if a fight with China is in the cards.

As in, Kamikazis because ordered, honour in death, or killing yourself with your own sword. Not really a culture of capitulation. Most of their cities were already firebombed, as you elude to, some more than once, yet there was still no surrender.

Without surrender, a country isn't really done. Leave it be, and they'll arm and rebuild, still at war with you. Invade, and your troops die, for a standing army still existed. Japan also had colonies, islands, resources.

And of course without surrender, even if you occupy, now you have insurgents.

It's hard to view the world through the eyes of even 80 years ago.

War weary, endless soldiers lost already, an unsurrendering Japan, and a way to put an end to it...

The massive bombing of Japan was a grinding war of attrition that has well-understood limitations and challenges. Military leaders in Japan were perfectly capable of understanding what those campaigns couldn't do, so it came down to a willingness to accept the losses to maintain strategic optionality, which they clearly were.

Most of the limitations of strategic bombing campaigns do not apply to nuclear weapons, which is something the Japanese military leadership also understood, though the scope of capability was uncertain (which also probably helped). If the US switched to nuclear weapons instead of conventional bombing campaigns, which was the risk Japanese military leaders had to consider, it takes most of the strategic optionality off the table at which point there is little to gain by continuing.

So they chose to end it.

There's a fair amount of detail and references in those books if one wishes to dig into it.

(I say they are "history" books as opposed to "activist" books. The latter are not worth reading.)

Some material I've seen claimed that the Japanese leadership didn't know it was a nuclear bomb. The Japanese knew immediately it was nuclear bomb, because they had a nuclear bomb development program themselves.

By whom? In actuality, both the US and Japan were planning for a long campaign on the Japanese home islands: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall. The Japanese intended to prolong fighting as much as possible to force the US to abandon the invasion because of mounting costs and casualties.

Even the night before the surrender, some among the Japanese military attempted a coup to prevent it and continue the war: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_incident