The Atomic bombing of Nagasaki

[Rico1304]

Neko's point about context is right, you've been at war 5 years, lost millions of men and come fucking close to losing. You're given the chance to cut the war dead with virtually no risk to your own troops other than a couple of planes. Remember the public perception of the enemy at the time was faceless monsters, your average Joe wouldn't have met or even seen any Japanese. It'd be a brave leader who said "No, we won't use these weapons, we'll spend tens of thousands of lives instead" especially if after the war the other option was made public.

[Stu Monty]

Neko's point about context is right, you've been at war 5 years, lost millions of men and come fucking close to losing. You're given the chance to cut the war dead with virtually no risk to your own troops other than a couple of planes. Remember the public perception of the enemy at the time was faceless monsters, your average Joe wouldn't have met or even seen any Japanese. It'd be a brave leader who said "No, we won't use these weapons, we'll spend tens of thousands of lives instead" especially if after the war the other option was made public.

 

Wouldn't it be a braver leader that didn't? In that case?

[neko]

Stu  - context.

 

You're comparing the decision by a nation to end a world war, sparing millions of lives, with some fanatical individual who wants to blow up innocent people over their own personal religious ideology ?

 

And before you latch on to the 'innocent people' part, remember (as has already been said) 99% of Americans (and other allied nations) in 1945 would have had absolutely no problem with this decision.

[setreal]

What's the Twitter name?

 

German original: https://twitter.com/digitalpast

 

English: https://twitter.com/digitalpast_EN

[Rico1304]

Wouldn't it be a braver leader that didn't? In that case?

Sending lots of his countrymen to their deaths instead of killing the enemy? No.

[Stu Monty]

Sending lots of his countrymen to their deaths instead of killing the enemy? No.

 

Rico. Read your reply there.

 

How is it braver to not do that than do what nobody is going to give you any hassle over?

 

See what I mean, the tougher decision (right or wrong) is to do the difficult thing, not to drop the bomb. Surely?

[Stu Monty]

Stu  - context.

 

You're comparing the decision by a nation to end a world war, sparing millions of lives, with some fanatical individual who wants to blow up innocent people over their own personal religious ideology ?

 

And before you latch on to the 'innocent people' part, remember (as has already been said) 99% of Americans (and other allied nations) in 1945 would have had absolutely no problem with this decision.

 

I'm not doing that Neko. Suicide bombings are often part of a strategy in a war, by people with few other options that they see can be effective, or have the same impact. It's not the numbers I'm talking about, it's the rationale.

 

I'm not sure why you think what people would have a problem with, or not, has any bearing on the innocence of the people killed? You could probably get a majority to support turning Iran into glass tomorrow, it doesn't add weight to any discussion of "innocence", really.

[neko]

Rico. Read your reply there.

 

How is it braver to not do that than do what nobody is going to give you any hassle over?

 

See what I mean, the tougher decision (right or wrong) is to do the difficult thing, not to drop the bomb. Surely?

 

You've got me confused Stu - I think Rico is saying it would have taken a brave man (or a foolish one) to have gone against the idea of dropping a bomb, and instead decided to risk milions of lives to end a protracted war, in what.... a more sporting way ?

[AngryOfTuebrook]

How would you have won the war without them?

 

200,000 dead or a few million on a land invasion?

 

It's shot either way

The war in the Pacific would have been ended the same way as the war in Europe - by the Soviets.

 

The Americans had known since May that Japan was fucked as soon as the USSR entered.  The Japanese knew it too.  Japan's fighting capability was fucked, having been overstretched.  The carpet bombing of other Japanese towns and cities had left the country on its arse.  Japanese officials had already started discussing surrender terms with Moscow, even before the Soviets had entered the Pacific war.

 

The murderous attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not bring forward the end of the war by a single day.

 

[neko]

Sure then  - the rationale to end the war with one (or two) devastating and terrifying weapons of mass destruction dropped on the (not so) innocent country of Japan was a far more righteous decision than one made by a suicide bomber's choice to blow up people, or a modern and advanced society (see what I did there) rubbing out a nation with atomic weapons today.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

It pissed on Red & Struggie's chips too.

 

[neko]

Interesting youtube video, AT - but in just the first few minutes it makes it sound like Truman sort of took ownership of this weapon for political reasons. This might be true, and I said earlier that there is an argument that the bomb was used as a message to Russia (which again I agree with).

 

But to make it sound like all this wouldn't have happened with FDR is a bit of a stretch. It was his baby to begin with.

 

And around we go.....

[Brownie]

I'd rather the bomb had never been used but I think it's difficult for us to relate with the situation at the time, considering the life we have now compared to people back then (i'm not saying that anyone is doing that, I just think it's really difficult for us to ever achieve the required level of perspective).

 

We'd all be suited up and posted somewhere fighting the enemy and i'm sure we'd have a different opinion then.

 

Don't under-estimate what seeing your mates getting killed does to your sense of morals and integrity.

[Lee909]

It was probably in a vert strange way good it was used(from a world point of view)

If they hadnt the pissing contest between the West and Soviets may well have escalated further

 

 

As i said before we hold it as a devasting bomb because it was THE BOMB but the firebombings caused more deaths.

[Section_31]

It was probably in a vert strange way good it was used(from a world point of view)

If they hadnt the pissing contest between the West and Soviets may well have escalated further

 

 

As i said before we hold it as a devasting bomb because it was THE BOMB but the firebombings caused more deaths.

That's an interesting point. If the yanks hadn't dropped the bomb maybe the Russians might have just kept going until they reached London.

[Stu Monty]

That's an interesting point. If the yanks hadn't dropped the bomb maybe the Russians might have just kept going until they reached London.

Would have saved them a few quid in trying to buy it up over the last few years.

[Lee909]

May i be the first to liberate our new Soviet Comrade leaders

 

 

The Flash loves his Comrade Airman of the Soviet Union

 

 

 

United forever in friendship and labour,

Our mighty republics will ever endure.

The Great Soviet Union will live through the ages.

The dream of a people their fortress secure.

Long live our Soviet motherland,

Built by the people's mighty hand.

Long live our people, united and free.

Strong in our friendship tried by fire.

Long may our crimson flag inspire,

Shining in glory for all men to see.

Through days dark and stormy where Great Lenin lead us

Our eyes saw the bright sun of freedom above

And Stalin our leader with faith in the people,

Inspired us to build up the land that we love.

Long live our Soviet motherland,

Built by the people's mighty hand.

Long live our people, united and free.

Strong in our friendship tried by fire.

Long may our crimson flag inspire,

Shining in glory for all men to see.

We fought for the future, destroyed the invaders,

And brought to our homeland the laurels of fame.

Our glory will live in the memory of nations

And all generations will honour her name.

Long live our Soviet motherland,

Built by the people's mighty hand.

Long live our people, united and free.

Strong in our friendship tried by fire.

Long may our crimson flag inspire,

Shining in glory for all men to see

 

 

 

 

I love the old Soviet anthem

[Alan Sex]

Dresden, anyone?

 

I'm not a big fan of some aspects of this article - but it does bring up some interesting and relevant points to this discussion.

 

 

Why Agonize Over Hiroshima, Not Dresden?

August 30, 2000

|ERNEST W. LEFEVER | Ernest W. Lefever is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington

 

 

As we celebrate the 55th anniversary of the end of World War II, we might well look at America's fascination with guilt feelings about selected past sins. Why do some Americans feel guilty about our justified bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which immediately killed 120,000 Japanese (some estimates are significantly higher), and not about the unjustified bombing of Dresden, which killed 135,000 Germans?

 

City bombing is always brutal, but sometimes it is a tragic necessity. In a just war, and certainly the Allied cause was just, all military action should be designed to destroy the enemy's capacity and will to continue fighting.

 

First, the key facts about the bombing of Dresden on the night of February 13-14, 1945, 10 weeks before Germany's surrender, when everyone knew that Germany was beaten: Dresden was a beautiful Baroque city known as the Florence of the north. It had no war industry and little military value. Its population of 630,000 had been doubled by German refugees, mainly peasants from Silesia fleeing the Red Army.

 

The concerted British and American attack dropped 650,000 incendiary bombs, causing a firestorm engulfing eight square miles and killing an estimated 135,000 men, women and children.

 

 

 

Why visit such carnage on the cusp of Germany's defeat? Some analysts say it was merely a continuation of the Allied strategy to bring Germany to its knees, but a postwar U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey concluded that such bombing did little to erode civilian morale or impede war production. Others say it was vindictive anger over Hitler's bombing of London and other British cities.

 

But Hitler's barbarity did not justify the fiery destruction of Dresden. Dresden was not a legitimate military target. British historian Paul Johnson has called the bombing "the greatest Anglo American moral disaster of the war against Germany." Yet few Americans have expressed shame or guilt.

 

So why do guilt-prone Americans continue to fault their government for Hiroshima while ignoring Dresden? Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft recently called Hiroshima a satanic act, placing it in the same moral category as Auschwitz, the Bataan Death March, the Gulag, the Ukraine famine, the Rwanda tribal massacres, Pol Pot's killing fields and Mao's Great Leap Forward.

 

Most historians render a different verdict. They agree on the basic military situation in August 1945:

 

* America had broken the Japanese military code and President Truman had no substantial evidence that Japan was about to surrender.

 

* Though Tokyo and many other Japanese cities had been firebombed, Japan had made elaborate plans to resist an American invasion. It had assembled a Kamikaze suicide armada and mobilized 1 million soldiers and civilians equipped with a variety of suicide devices to stop the Americans on the beaches. Japan had a vast arsenal of chemical and bacterial weapons it likely would have used.

 

* The atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed 120,000 civilians and military personnel immediately, according to Paul H. Nitze's postwar bombing survey. But these terrible weapons ended the war. Japan's expansionist empire, which had slaughtered millions of innocent Chinese and other Asians, was brought to its knees.

 

* The war's abrupt end spared some 400,000 American prisoners of war and civilian detainees in Japanese hands, all of whom were to be executed had the U.S. invaded. The U.S. Pacific command estimated that at least 500,000 Americans and three times as many Japanese would have died in an invasion. Thus, the atom bombs may have saved 2 million lives, mostly Japanese.

 

Why, then, is the atom bombing demonized when the March 9, 1945, firebombing of Tokyo, which killed 85,000 Japanese in one night, is not? The Tokyo raid and other U.S. air raids already had claimed some 500,000 Japanese victims. What is the moral distinction between killing people by an atomic blast or by a rain of fire bombs?

 

All war is hell, but our cause was just. We should be proud that America and its allies liberated hundreds of millions from the brutal empires of Hirohito and Hitler. Beating our breasts over Hiroshima distorts history, but an expression of contrition over the unnecessary firebombing of Dresden redeems it and us.

 

http://articles.latimes.com/2000/aug/30/local/me-12456

[Colin Heald]

For an excellent, and balanced, account of the last two years of the Pacific War I'd recommend "Nemesis" by Max Hastings. He covers all of the aspects mentioned in this thread, plus a lot of others - for example the fate of the tens of thousands of Allied POW's still in Japanese hands if the war hadn't been brought to a swift conclusion.

[Ezekiel 25:17]

Re the unluckiest man story, I've had an eerily simialr experience travelling from ladbrokes to William Hill.

[M_B]

The bombs saved far more lives than they killed.

[Bjornebye]

two atomic bombs were dropped on two cities instantly killing thousands and ruining the lives of millions. 

 

I remember listening to one of the fellas from the enola gay on the radio and he was almost triumphant about it. I don't give a fuck if their army are being cunts, killing innocent people regardless of the circumstances is wrong. Its hard to comprehend that it actually happened. twice. 

[johnsusername]

It was the lesser of two evils I guess. I certainly would probably want revenge for watching my fellow soldier friends die at the hands of the enemy, but then wouldn't want to see my children's skin melting in front of me due to a city bombing.

 

No winners, only losers. Well, apart from the corporations who make loads of money out of war. A different topic though.

[Section_31]

two atomic bombs were dropped on two cities instantly killing thousands and ruining the lives of millions. 

 

I remember listening to one of the fellas from the enola gay on the radio and he was almost triumphant about it. I don't give a fuck if their army are being cunts, killing innocent people regardless of the circumstances is wrong. Its hard to comprehend that it actually happened. twice. 

 

Don't think anyone would argue that it's not wrong Stig, just that it was necessary and can't really be judged by the ethics of today's world.

[Lee909]

So what do you do then

Risk millions of lives on a invasion of the mainland(most of thrm Japanese).

 

The Yanks were ready to go with Operation Downfall. It was a mass kanding thst would have put D-Day to shame. 700,000 troops landing on one island.

 

Very interesting piece here ( http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2011/08/07/why_did_japan_surrender/?page=1 ) from the Boston Globe. A Japanese birn historian says that it was both the US bombings and then the Soviet declaration combined that brought the war to a end.

 

After the bombings the Japanese were looking for a peace deal (Soviets negotiating as still neutral) and wanted to keep there empire intact,no war crimes and keep the Emperor out of anything. But once the Soviets declared war they had nowhere to go.

 

How do you fight a world war as it was then without targeting large cities?

 

It's nasty in every extreme but large cities contain the manufacturing plants that keep countries in the war.

 

Had that bomb not took place and the invasion started instead hundred of thousands of allied prisoners would have been executed.

 

Ask the citizens of Nanking,Singapore and the thousands of nurses and comfort women gang raped by the Japanese soldiers if bringing a end to the war quickly was worth it.

 

Remember who attacked the first too. The U.S was unlikely to have entered the war when they did had the Japanese not tried to destroy what was a neutral navy in one hit. Much like the Germans the Japanese picked too big a fight on too many fronts that ultimately cost them any hope of winning.

 

 

War is a horrible thing but in my mind there is noway we couldn't get involved in that war. Just read or watch the war crimes documentaries. Both Germans and Japanese medical test etc. The Japanese attempting to weaponise the bubonic plague.

 

Its a cunt of a think to say but the few hundred thousand that died saved the life of 5-10 times the same amount. As i have said before there is a stigma on the Atomic bombings being they were the stary of the nuclear age,the fire bombings of Tokyo killed more.