61–70 of 124 posts
As a German I would love to have read it in German or hear the audio files. Nevertheless an interesting piece of history.
Same here. I tracked down the German version on their website here: http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/deu/German101ed.pdf (PDF)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We had a much larger economy and resource potential than germany and japan. Yes, I once thought that it should have been surprising that Germany didn't get the bomb first. Upon more reading, the effort that the US threw at the project was simply staggering - nobody knew which was the best technique for how to do a bunch of different things, so the Americans tried all of them at the same time. No other participant i…
The effort was indeed huge, but it's not so obvious that the Germans could not have done it. IIRC the V2 missile program may actually have been more expensive? Different technology but also hard... hard enough that in 1969 the same guys were still leading the world.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"its effects were substantially interchangeable with the bomb" Yes, its military effects. (And humanitarian effects.) But no, in political effect. If "war is politics carried on by other means" and the goal was to defeat Japanese Fascism, then you had to make sure it couldn't come back from the dead after a grudging surrender. That was IMHO the main lesson of Versailles. And it worked.
I think this is the part that people miss when discussing the nuclear attacks. It’s purpose was not tactical or military. It was a political purpose.
When people debate this issue, I find they tend to resort to a reductionist view of history and the players involved in order to justify their personal views of the US. The degree to which one is opposed to American cultural imperialism and military hegemony, or believes the US to be an evil state, tends to be the degree to which one believes the bombings had a nefarious purpose, or an ulterior motive. The whole thing has become a Rashomon style play of contradictory truths, except no one insisting on the order of events, motives or naming the culprit was actually there.
It seems more likely to me than not that the bombings didn't have only that one explicit purpose to the exclusion of the others, just as it seems unlikely to me that the bombings were either absolutely responsible or absolutely irrelevant to Japan's surrender.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The effort was indeed huge, but it's not so obvious that the Germans could not have done it. IIRC the V2 missile program may actually have been more expensive? Different technology but also hard... hard enough that in 1969 the same guys were still leading the world.
It did not help that some new aspects found in physics were considered 'ungerman' ('Jewish physics') and discarded, especially Einstein's work and many aspects of quantum mechanics. This alone would probably have proved crippling to any efforts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik
What an interesting read. Also, is it just me or are there a surprising number of german related topics on the frontpage right now? "We only had one man working on it and they may have had ten thousand" This is why I always chuckle at the ww2 "documentaries" positing the possibility of german or japanese bomb. Nevermind that both parties were preoccupied fighting far stronger and larger opponents ( US, British Empire…
I don't believe that it was a unfair race so to speak. In my knowledge it were the German scientists who moved to US and helped US develop the bomb. US may have had the resources but it definitely lacked the knowledge for building bomb which German surely possessed.
You can try to posit a Nazi regime without such constraints, but a Nazi regime which isn't lead by Hitler is fundamentally different from the regime we're talking about. A well-run Nazi Germany, one which didn't pick unwinnable fights, is a Nazi Germany contrary to Hitler's vision.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It did not help that some new aspects found in physics were considered 'ungerman' ('Jewish physics') and discarded, especially Einstein's work and many aspects of quantum mechanics. This alone would probably have proved crippling to any efforts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik
[edited to remove mis-information ] apologies!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm having trouble parsing the quote, I think by 'Anglo-Saxon' he really means 'England and the US', and it's not really clear that England the US have true "power and control" over Europe. Instead what we see is a Europe dominated by England and Germany with large military influence by US.
If you look at the period from 1945 to, say, 1975, though, which is the speaker's perspective, American political and economic influence were both extremely strong compared to today, in addition to the obvious military influence.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The effort was indeed huge, but it's not so obvious that the Germans could not have done it. IIRC the V2 missile program may actually have been more expensive? Different technology but also hard... hard enough that in 1969 the same guys were still leading the world.
It did not help that some new aspects found in physics were considered 'ungerman' ('Jewish physics') and discarded, especially Einstein's work and many aspects of quantum mechanics. This alone would probably have proved crippling to any efforts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s debatable because we just don’t know when the surrender would have taken place in the absense of the bombings. We can look at statements by leaders on what they would have done under the hypothetical of them not occurring but we still wouldn’t know what would have happened if they didn’t occur. Perhaps one nuke was not enough to induce surrender. When the second occurs maybe it’s enough to induce. Maybe they wer…
I find the notion that morality can be objectively demonstrated by convincing a majority that your viewpoint is correct very interesting notion... In any case, I also think the charge of racism is a bit uncalled for, the complete disregard for human suffering exemplified by the firebombing campaigns are surely enough to qualify as very serious war crimes all on their own. (Though to claim that an America that was int…
None of this suggests a primarily racially-motivated rationale. The evidence doesn't seem to support the premise that the US bombed Japan because they were Asians and didn't bomb Germany because they were Caucasians.
Although, racism and xenophobia likely informed American public opinion of the bombings after the fact. There's no way to know how that would have played out had Germany been bombed, or both Germany and Japan.
[0]http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/10/04/atomic-bomb-used-n...