Why did Japan surrender? (2011) • Hacker News Board

Re: Why did Japan surrender? (2011)

#71

Post by hga » Mon, Jan 19, 2015, 2:51 PM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #58

pmoriarty wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet no German-Americans were herded in concenration camps, unlike what the American government did to all Japanese-Americans. Why was that?

Certainly we had people who thought that Japanese were more apt to side with our foe due to their being Japanese and being easy to tell apart. However as it pertains bombing, which is the discussion here, we were indiscriminate towards both. We did try to steer clear from cultural targets such as avoiding Kyoto. We did not have the same view on Dresden as it had more strategic importance. And people forget we had res…

Kyoto was the traditional seat of Imperial power. Tokyo, called Edo back in the days the seat of the Tokugawa Shogunate, a military dictatorship, is the national capital because of that. A whole lot of the action that overthrew the Shogunate happened in Kyoto, so sparing it was in part to encourage the Emperor---in a position that for a very long time had little or no real power---to do exactly what he did then. If he'd tried it earlier, he would have been killed and replaced with a more pliable one. As others have noted, the final surrender was a rather close run thing....

Re: Why did Japan surrender? (2011)

#72

Post by chaostheory » Mon, Jan 19, 2015, 7:32 PM UTC

iand wrote: post #53

chaostheory wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, as I've already mentioned it deserves more thought than just two sentences when you're trying to sell the idea that nuclear weapons are not deterrents to large scale wars. So far modern history has already disproved Hasegawa's opinion. Ever since the advent of global ballistic weapons, we have yet had another major world war besides conflicts here and there. They have kept the peace.

World wars are uncommon whether we have nuclear deterrents or not, after all we had none before 1914. However we have had major near decade long regional conflicts and many wars by proxy between nuclear powers. While it's persuasive to think that nuclear weapons have prevented world wars, there isn't much evidence to support that idea.

There's a big difference between wars conducted directly by major world powers and little conflicts by proxy. They are not the same thing especially when it comes to scale. The other replies to your post have already made my point.

Re: Why did Japan surrender? (2011)

#73

Post by ArkyBeagle » Tue, Jan 20, 2015, 1:01 AM UTC

rdl wrote: post #17

"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…

The most interesting version I have read is that the naval mutinies rendered Kaiser Wilhelm unable or unwilling to continue the war.

Pershing being a West Pointer, noted that there was no decisive victory on land in WWI and that it would be resumed in a generation. Remarkable prediction.

Re: Why did Japan surrender? (2011)

#74

Post by ArkyBeagle » Tue, Jan 20, 2015, 1:11 AM UTC

agumonkey wrote: post #60

GCA10 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fascinating. I just finished "To End All Wars," by Adam Hochschild. He points out that Germany's military was doing quite well in July 1918 ... but that blockades had ruined Germany's ability to feed its people. Folks were getting by on 1000 calories/day; starvation was common, and with the Bolsheviks having stirred up Russia, socialist/pacifists were totally tired of fighting. After modest military setbacks, Ge…

As if WW 1 and 2 are in fact a single event with a strange picnic pause in the middle.

It's a stretch, but some have linked those two with the Franco-Prussian War as well.

Bismarck predicted:

"Jena came twenty years after the death of Frederick the Great; the crash will come twenty years after my departure if things go on like this"

"One day the great European War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_von_Bismarck#Forced_to_res...

Re: Why did Japan surrender? (2011)

#75

Post by peterfirefly » Tue, Jan 20, 2015, 9:31 AM UTC

moo wrote: post #21

A bigger obfuscation is the cause of WWII. We are given the history of WWI, geopolitical alliances, assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, harsh Treaty at Versailles, collapse of German currency, WWII continuation of WWI, failure of Chamberlain appeasement, German Soviet non-aggression pact. No mention of German genocide of African Herero and colony in South-West Africa ( Namibia ), Italian occupation and war against E…

Getting back Elsaß wasn't really all that unreasonable. Annexation of the Sudetenland wasn't, either: it was overwhelmingly German, it used to be in the Holy Roman Empire, it was now a minority in a country created to cater to Slavs. A merger between Austria and Germany wasn't unreasonable, either. Getting back the land Poland stole/was granted after WWI was, again, not entirely unreasonable. Protecting the German cities of Danzig and Stettin was, again, not unreasonable.

Furthermore, much of the rhetoric about the Jews sounded awfully much like the current rhetoric about the rich, the banksters, the international finance, the 1%, etc.

Other things we usually don't hear about is how scary Socialism was in Germany from, say, 1917 to 1933. Have you heard about the Bavarian Soviet Republic, for example?

Re: Why did Japan surrender? (2011)

#76

Post by jihokoo » Wed, Jan 21, 2015, 6:05 AM UTC

pmoriarty wrote: post #54

jihokoo wrote: post #22

Maybe Hasegawa's interpretation has new implications regarding nuclear deterrence theory, but not how the author suggests. The idea that the nuclear bombings were not decisive factors in Japan's surrender does not mean that nuclear weapons do not serve as a deterrence. Nuclear weaponry advanced so much in the aftermath of WW2 that now nuclear countries can literally reduce entire nations to pixie dust. And the potent…

"the potential of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) all but guarantees that nuclear countries will never attack each other for fear of nuclear escalation." I would feel a lot more secure in the efficacy of MAD if war was rational in the first place. History shows it is anything but. It hasn't even been 100 years since the last nuclear weapon was used offensively, but already the world has come dangerously close to s…

I don't think its right to judge the rationality of decisions based on their outcome. The question is whether war was a rational decision at the time. From a realist perspective anything decision is rational if it can lead to an improvement in the chances for survival. If war leads to a relative increase in my power even if I may lose soldiers and resources, then its worth it.

If country A has 100 soldiers while country B has 20 soldiers, even if the cost of war is a 2 to 1 loss in soldiers, war would result in the absolute power of country A.

In a conflict between two countries with nuclear weaponry, the core logic is the same, but the paradigm is different. Nuclear warfare can erase both countries off the face of the earth. This follows from the fact that to combat nuclear attacks, countries started adopting hair-string triggers to destroy the adversary before they can send more warheads their way... except now every country is doing the same thing. In this case, forget the relative nonsense, anyway you cut it, nuclear warfare is not rational for countries because it will end their survival.

My belief is that MAD is sound. And my underlying assumption is that countries tend to think rationally when dealing with international relations. Regardless of leadership, countries do whats best for them an overwhelming majority of the time. Case in point, how often has the U.S. (the bastion of freedom) voluntarily helped countries/people when the U.S.' interests were not directly involved? Also, observe how a seemingly crazy country like North Korea plays the game shrewdly by varying is strategy depending on its adversary.

I agree that there is a threat that nuclear weapons will get in the wrong hands and, in that case, I think its more than probable that disaster would ensue. But the safety and standards for handling infrastructure degradation has improved significantly since the early days of nuclear weapons (when many were lost to the ocean and never recovered) . As for Putin's threats, its nothing a good back and forth of denouncing and condemning can't fix.