31–40 of 76 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article also poses the idea that its unlikely that the U.S. would surrender a war after a city was destroyed. Article also gives the example of UK not giving up after German bombing in WW2.
Don't forget that France surrendered.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
France likely surrendered because their home country defense force was defeated and their capital overrun, the countries administration had little chance of extracting itself from the rest of France before being completely overrun. This does not always mean surrender; think Napoleon's invasion of Russia. The difference for Russia in my opinion is that they had a large homogeneous land mass upon which to move and main…
I think it was the large number of casualties the soviets were wiling to tolerate, I doubt the French would have encouraged the loss of a million as was incurred during Stalingrad. Consider also that the large land mass was a liability as it had to be defended, for example from Japan.
Similar reasons cost Napoleon dearly ~130 years before.
Also, Stalin's massive ego wouldn't allow a city named after himself to be taken by the Germans. That's the primary reason that particular city suffered the high casualties that it did. Stalin once told Churchill at the Tehran Conference that "when one man dies it is a tragedy, when thousands die it's statistics."[1]
[1] http://books.google.com/books?id=8fp1A2s6aQwC&pg=PA510&dq#v=...
> Hasegawa’s ability to read three languages, Bernstein says, gives him a unique advantage over other scholars. Hasegawa spent years working through primary documents, with a deep understanding of linguistic and cultural nuance. His knowledge was especially valuable because historians of the period face such fragmentary and contradictory evidence, in part because the Japanese destroyed many documents. > But therein l…
The article also poses the idea that its unlikely that the U.S. would surrender a war after a city was destroyed. Article also gives the example of UK not giving up after German bombing in WW2.
Would America surrender if we were essentially defeated, blockaded, and the enemy were bombing our cities with impunity? Of course we would.
It isn't like America just snuck two nukes into Japan. It had totally defeated the Imperial Navy and was essentially bombing Japan without any resistance.
The comparison between Japan in August 45 and UK during the Blitz is just stupid.
Even if the Soviet attack was the last straw, it was only a straw. They were trying to use the Soviets to negotiate a better peace and it failed. This is like blaming your QB for missing the Hail Mary for losing the game. It was the first 59 minutes of game that caused you to lose.
People online (not real historians) like to hype this up to bandwagon the "US didn't win WWII, the USSR did" mythology. The truth is it was a huge combined effort.
> Hasegawa’s ability to read three languages, Bernstein says, gives him a unique advantage over other scholars. Hasegawa spent years working through primary documents, with a deep understanding of linguistic and cultural nuance. His knowledge was especially valuable because historians of the period face such fragmentary and contradictory evidence, in part because the Japanese destroyed many documents. > But therein l…
The article also poses the idea that its unlikely that the U.S. would surrender a war after a city was destroyed. Article also gives the example of UK not giving up after German bombing in WW2.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
France likely surrendered because their home country defense force was defeated and their capital overrun, the countries administration had little chance of extracting itself from the rest of France before being completely overrun. This does not always mean surrender; think Napoleon's invasion of Russia. The difference for Russia in my opinion is that they had a large homogeneous land mass upon which to move and main…
I think it was the large number of casualties the soviets were wiling to tolerate, I doubt the French would have encouraged the loss of a million as was incurred during Stalingrad. Consider also that the large land mass was a liability as it had to be defended, for example from Japan.
Lol. This topic is just about the most sensitive things I can imagine. The concept that America "won" both the pacific and European wars is an integral part of American identity. Shortly after the war, with the rise of the cold war, US students were brought up on the one narrative. Any suggestion that the Soviets were a driving force in ending the war forces them to confront deeply held beliefs regarding the use of f…
They were used on Japan and not Germany because they barely were okayed for use a few weeks prior to their detonation over enemy territory. The Germans had no compunction about dropping them on us had they had a working one so I don't think we would have had any issue deploying one over Germany --just like we had little issue firebombing Dresden. At the time saw both Japan and Germany as mortal enemies and would have…
US bombing in Germany was designed to specifically attack industry. They flew during daytime, despite that leading to much higher causalities among their crews, and used bomb targets.
It was the UK that firebombed Dresden during night without bothering to aim at specific targets. The British always flew night raids and just aimed to cause carnage.
American policy on the Western campaign didn't target civilians. They used precision bombing (what it was called at the time, it wasn't very precise) to target real targets.
Yet, the policy against Japan ended up much different. At the beginning precision bombing was attempted. But by 1945 they started to resort to firebombing entire cities.
I wonder if there was a racial aspect to it. A lot of Americans consider themselves ethnically German.
"Why/how did WW1 end" is an interesting question, too. Aside from cursory school classes and then some reading, I've never really looked into it in great detail. The elementary school version is "tanks broke the stalemate, and the US/UK rolled through to victory", but it was a lot more nuanced than that, with internal revolutions in multiple countries. WW1 clearly could have kept going for some extended period longer…
"If killing large numbers of civilians does not have a military impact, then what, Wilson asks, is the purpose of keeping nuclear weapons?" The writer stupidly jumps from the idea that if nukes have less than a major impact then they have no impact. Does anyone think the UK or USSR would not have surrendered if the Germans had nukes? If the US had today's nukes on 8 Dec 1941 the war would not have lasted nearly as lo…
> "If killing large numbers of civilians does not have a military impact, then what, Wilson asks, is the purpose of keeping nuclear weapons?" I just was reading about this [1]. Unguided weapons miss their targets, almost always. As a result you need to mass together and fire large numbers of them to hit even one target with any reliability. Also, because of the large numbers needed and the need to fire them near the…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They were used on Japan and not Germany because they barely were okayed for use a few weeks prior to their detonation over enemy territory. The Germans had no compunction about dropping them on us had they had a working one so I don't think we would have had any issue deploying one over Germany --just like we had little issue firebombing Dresden. At the time saw both Japan and Germany as mortal enemies and would have…
Actually, I think there is a big open issue about the difference between the US policy on strategic bombing in Japan and against Germany. US bombing in Germany was designed to specifically attack industry. They flew during daytime, despite that leading to much higher causalities among their crews, and used bomb targets. It was the UK that firebombed Dresden during night without bothering to aim at specific targets. T…
The imminent Soviet invasion of Manchuria surely played a role in the U.S. decision to use the atomic bomb, end the war quickly to end the prospect of post war Soviet occupation of Japanese held territory.
It appears to have worked.