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Hiroshima (1946)

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Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#221

Post by [deleted] »

Mordisquitos wrote: post #175
alex_young wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t it clearly a horrific crime against humanity to knowingly, instantaneously, and with premeditation, murder hundreds of thousands of civilians? The normal response to this line of reasoning is that they were / could have been doing the same to us. Two wrongs does not make a right does it?

The firebombing of Tokyo[0] on 10 March 1945 is often considered even more destructive and lethal than either of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or at the very least in the same ballpark. However, popular discourse never treats it as a crime against humanity. What is the qualitative difference between the killing 100,000 Japanese civilians in one morning using an atomic bomb and the killing 100,000 Ja…

[deleted]

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#222

Post by wiseowise »

okasaki wrote: post #157
wiseowise wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Broke: countless of arguments arguing that nukes were justified, citing contemporaries from both sides of the time Woke: you’re all brainwashed, because I said so

So should Russia nuke Dallas and Chicago to end the US proxy war in Ukraine?

Of course it should, comrade! Them imperialist pigs deserve the nukes for the war that we have started!

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#223

Post by throwanem »

throw0101c wrote: post #213
throwanem wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I see. I misread your earlier comment as asking what I thought you advocated, rather than why I thought so. Let me try here to answer your actual question there. I consider generally that to have left the Imperial flower intact through a negotiated surrender - even if achievable which I seriously doubt - would have led in about a generation to a dangerously resurgent sense of revanchism, as actually occurred in t…

> I consider generally that to have left the Imperial flower intact through a negotiated surrender - even if achievable which I seriously doubt - would have led in about a generation to a dangerously resurgent sense of revanchism, as actually occurred in the 1960s […] See also Germany post-World War One : the other side (as a collective/society) not only has to be defeated they have to accept the fact they were defea…

> See also Germany post-World War One

Yes, exactly.

The instrument concluding Germany's surrender and nominally ending the First World War, and for which my prior use of the name is metonymous, is known to history as the Treaty of Versailles [1]. Its terms were notoriously punitive largely at the insistence of the French, who regarded themselves with some justification as having paid the majority of the victory's cost, and Germany was denied any participation in the negotiations which determined the surrender terms to be imposed.

Combined with the Dolchstosslüge ("'stab in the back' lie") serviceably excusing the military failure and logistical collapse which made further hostilities impractical for Germany to pursue, thus leaving no options but to sign or be occupied, so were the conditions laid for "World War 2: The Sequel," as of course eventuated in practice. The actions taken with respect to the defeated powers thirty years later were designed with enormous and successful care to avoid a second, nuclear-armed, repeat. In this connection and as minimally an example of earnest intent, consider the so-called "Marshall Plan." [2] (Therein also see 'Aid to Asia' within 'Areas excluded'.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Versailles

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#224

Post by robertlagrant »

udev4096 wrote: post #133
throw0101d wrote: post #41

If anyone thinks that dropping the bombs was unnecessary, I would recommend reading Barrett's 140 Days to Hiroshima: The Story of Japan's Last Chance to Avert Armageddon : * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51089656-140-days-to-hir... * https://www.nationalww2museum.org/about-us/notes-museum/140-... It documents, using Japanese source material including interviews with the principals involved, the decision making…

[flagged]

"You're all brainwashed, and nothing can change my mind!"

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#225

Post by luckys »

I believe we humans have reached a point where, materially at least, everyone could live in reasonable comfort and there would be no space for wars. Yet we seem to often behave as if we're still hunting for sustenance and living in caves, having to carve out our survival.

I don't have any inclination toward socialism or communism, nor do I have an answer for how this system we live in can be changed for the better, but if we don't at least consider that there must be alternatives, we'll keep living in a world where something as absurd as war continues to be considered normal.

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#226

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

wiseowise wrote: post #151
mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe? We can go around in circles on this but there were so many other options the Allies could have tried: - Drop the first bomb in the ocean in front of an envoy of observers and give Japan a week to deliberate their response - Blockade the island, threaten land invasion, and wait for the emperor to call for surrender as they gradually run out of fuel - Drop a bomb on Hiroshima but give more than 3 days for the go…

> Allow the USSR to go ahead with a ground invasion while the US sits on the sidelines Geopolitics 101 from HN.

I'm not suggesting this is would have been a good idea or had good outcomes. I mention it specifically because I frequently hear the false-dichotomy (from Americans in particular) that "we had to use nuclear bombs because a ground invasion would have cost hundreds of thousands of American lives". I rarely if ever hear them say that "we had to use nuclear bombs because we didn't want the USSR to invade Japan before they surrendered".

That is to say, I think it's important to hear the argument against this alternative explicitly raised as a justification for the use of nuclear weapons, because ignoring that motivation is intellectually dishonest.

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#227

Post by philipkglass »

defrost wrote: post #86
JKCalhoun wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that true? I thought they had a core at Los Alamos.

They had Fat Man and Little Boy, after detonating Trinity, so one down, two ready to go, a few near ready cores, and a production pipeline in place to produce more at one a month or so .. (the exact number is on Alex W's Nuclear Secrecy blog .. my recollection is poor and from five+ years past).

The production rate of 3 bombs per month in August was expected to rise to 5 bombs per month in November, and 7 bombs per month in December. In 1946, it could rise much higher.

https://www.dannen.com/decision/bomb-rate.html

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#228

Post by southernplaces7 »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #160
kketch wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are saying the responsibility for the instant incineration of hundreds of thousands of civilians lies with the bombed, and not the bomber?

One thing that's rarely considered is that by any metric Japan had already lost the war. And what's interesting - and definitive - about both Japan and Germany is that the regimes kept fighting when this was obvious. There was plenty of insanity to go around, but it takes an extra special kind of insanity to ignore defeat when outmatched by a superior force, and when continuing to fight will cause massive casualties…

>At the same time it's recognised now that Germany and Japan both had very limited prospects of victory in WWII.

I'd beg to differ about this being widely recognized. For Japan perhaps, but even they could have considerably forestalled their eventual defeat if they'd done a few logical things better, or won the battle of Midway (which they should have won numerically and tactically, if they'd been a bit more careful with their encryption and estimation of U.S naval force disposition), or prioritized their targets at Pearl Harbour more carefully, or maybe better, not even bothered to attack it in the first place while performing the rest of their conquest of Asia.

As for Germany, it could have outright won the war. No debate at this point has settled that this isn't so. Indeed, at several key points Germany emphatically had both means and opportunity to secure its total hegemony at least over Europe and its surroundings in a way that would have resulted in a Nazi-version alternative to the dual superpower bipolar world that instead existed between the USSR and USA after 1945.

Fortunately this didn't happen, since as bad as the USSR was (especially under Stalin) I'd hate to imagine an alternative in which the other hegemonic nuclear power is one built on the even more murderously fanatical legacy of Hitler, Himmler or Heydrich and the rest.

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#229

Post by slg »

throw0101d wrote: post #193
slg wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this discussion always a binary choice between a land invasion of Japan or dropping the bombs exactly how we did? For example, there is rarely any discussion of whether another target with fewer civilian casualties could have accomplished the same result.

> For example, there is rarely any discussion of whether another target with fewer civilian casualties could have accomplished the same result. There weren't many targets left. The US had been fire bombing Japan for months—which did nothing to lead the Japanese leadership to surrender. The leadership didn't seem to care about losses—or rather the honour of Japan as a country/collective was more important than the los…

This is the type of argument that immediately folds in on itself. If they didn’t care about civilian losses, why do people believe the civilian losses in these bombings were necessary? Why is it assumed that the US needed to kill civilians and ended up killing just the right amount of civilians to force surrender?

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#230

Post by Isamu »

Part of the problem understanding this is how much the leadership of Japan was strongly split into factions with opposite goals and views.

There was no unified decision to start the war. Instead the army unilaterally precipitated the war.

There was a lack of unified views about ending the war. To say that the war was already lost was true and recognized by many, but there was a strong faction that would not support surrender.

It’s hard to prove a counterfactual, whether not dropping the bomb would result in fewer deaths or more.

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