Looking at the massive logistical effort that was the D-Day landings, did the Soviets even have the strategic lift/naval capability to transport their army onto Japan's northern islands? I guess that the Germans had fortified the coast better, and maybe Japan hadn't, never expecting an invasion from the North, but still, you need a Navy, and at that point, did the Soviets even have one?
The Bomb Didn't Beat Japan
81–90 of 223 posts
Re: The Bomb Didn't Beat Japan
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
1.5 million is a comically low estimate. Where did you get your figure? Over 3 million died in the Ukrainian collectivization political famine alone.
I want to start by saying that's controversial. Famines were frequent in that area way before the Soviet Union even existed. Can you attribute these to Stalin's policies alone? Nobody would blame Coolidge for the Dust Bowl. But you're right that 1.5 million is too small. I read again and there's about 3 million officially recorded victims. I cannot trust or distrust the higher figures, as these were reported either b…
I suggest you read Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin.
The artifical famine of 1932-1933 was not a natural famine. It was a calculated effort by Stalin to undermine the Ukrainian peasant farmers, a class he viewed as a threat, and force them into collectivization. It was perpetrated by the Communist party through the steady increase in grain quotas. It is a matter that of historic fact that Ukrainians starved to death while trains shipped away mountains of grain that they themselves had grown.
Feel free to distrust "Western media", but there are primary sources that support this narrative. For instance, Soviet defector Victor Kravchenko's account, or the narrative of American (and up to that point Soviet sympathizer) William H. Chamberlin (although perhaps you might not trust his account since he's a Westerner).
Re: The Bomb Didn't Beat Japan
#83This is why I've started to dislike revisionist history. The premise that the threat of Stalin alone forced Japanese surrender is at least as ludicrous as saying that the nuclear bombs alone forced Japan to surrender. I closed the page immediately because of the full-page popup ad, but I've encountered the premise elsewhere so it warrants examination. The first thing to realize is that for Japan, whatever else happen…
It's uncool to post a long comment on an article you didn't bother to read, let alone dismiss it with a slur about "revisionist history", whatever that is. The article is clearly a serious one, and since it challenges the #1 belief by far that nearly everyone (in North America if not elsewhere) has about the end of the Pacific War, it deserves attention. Unsurprisingly, you haven't addressed most of the article's arg…
If you're seeking serious responses to the claim that the Soviet invasion was paramount and the atomic bombings irrelevant, /r/AskHistorians has had several threads on the subject:
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/wwii#wiki_japan_a...
(I think mpyne's reply is "serious", though. It's always preferable to read first, but the argument presented in the article is not new. I did read the article, and I'm not surprised mypne managed to address several of its points without even looking at it.)
Re: The Bomb Didn't Beat Japan
#84I love UFO stories, and I love history, and I love pseudo-science. Hell, I even like counter-factuals. What if Lee had won at Gettysburg? What if Patton had actually commanded the Normandy invasion? And so forth. But these things are the province of speculation, not knowledge. Think for a minute about what this essay is asking "What if action X did not end the war in the Pacific?" Well dang, Action X could be just ab…
>But dropping the bombs on Japan saved millions of both Japanese and allied lives.
This assumes an invasion of the island of Japan would somehow have been a necessary goal.
Re: The Bomb Didn't Beat Japan
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Also, one of the article's major claims (its first, in fact) is that Japan didn't surrender immediately. I find it hard to reconcile this idea with the relatively persuasive reasoning that the second bomb was unjustifiable: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombings... I am not entirely convinced that it was so, but I do think it is reasonable that a few days is not sufficient time to understand t…
I believe the logic of the U.S. military planners was that they were worried the Japanese would assume the bomb was truly unique and novel. They didn't want the Japanese to assume they could simply hunker down and expect a bomb every 2-3 months or so; the Japanese were already surviving equivalent damage from mere conventional bombing raids. That doesn't mean the U.S. couldn't have waited more (the Nagasaki bombing o…
The second bomb and the surrender were probably both independently inevitable. Better to drop the second bomb before there were Soviet troops in the same country laying claim to it though. I find it easy to believe that they rushed the second bomb because they didn't want to miss the opportunity to use it.
Re: The Bomb Didn't Beat Japan
#86I love UFO stories, and I love history, and I love pseudo-science. Hell, I even like counter-factuals. What if Lee had won at Gettysburg? What if Patton had actually commanded the Normandy invasion? And so forth. But these things are the province of speculation, not knowledge. Think for a minute about what this essay is asking "What if action X did not end the war in the Pacific?" Well dang, Action X could be just ab…
I have to agree.
The way the article ends with the bogeyman, "What if we didn't fear nukes as much?" has a circularity to it. What "nuclear warfare" meant in 1945 was obviously different from what it became just 15 years later - a political football that diverted people's attention, vs. an entire strategic doctrine that acted to encourage low-level proxy wars and interventions, while discouraging the "total war" practice that was conventional through the World Wars.
Re: The Bomb Didn't Beat Japan
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
It has become the rule that even a good article must have a horrible title. Otherwise, who will click through to see what has been written? It's a real shame, because the title isn't really reflected by the content. The actual title: "The Bomb Didn't Beat Japan... Stalin Did" A more accurate title: "The Bomb Didn't Beat Japan... There Were Many Confluent Factors" The latter is something you'd expect to read on an aca…
Absolutely. I thought it was a very well-written article despite the hyperbolic, misleading title.
As the sibling comment states, writers rarely get to pick their own titles.
Re: The Bomb Didn't Beat Japan
#88I love UFO stories, and I love history, and I love pseudo-science. Hell, I even like counter-factuals. What if Lee had won at Gettysburg? What if Patton had actually commanded the Normandy invasion? And so forth. But these things are the province of speculation, not knowledge. Think for a minute about what this essay is asking "What if action X did not end the war in the Pacific?" Well dang, Action X could be just ab…
I loved the first part of the argument, that many a time causality is not from one source but multiple (often overlapping and even contradictory sources). But towards the end, you sort of do the exact opposite :). The assertion that "But dropping the bombs on Japan saved millions of both Japanese and allied lives". Allied life, I can understand that, but Japanese life. Also the assertion that the bomb somehow magically safeguarded the Japanese culture.
Re: The Bomb Didn't Beat Japan
#89I love UFO stories, and I love history, and I love pseudo-science. Hell, I even like counter-factuals. What if Lee had won at Gettysburg? What if Patton had actually commanded the Normandy invasion? And so forth. But these things are the province of speculation, not knowledge. Think for a minute about what this essay is asking "What if action X did not end the war in the Pacific?" Well dang, Action X could be just ab…
I think there is a contradiction in one of the things that you say. You say that counter-factuals are speculative and not useful, yet later you say the bomb saved millions of lives - that itself invokes a counter factual. i.e. The millions who would have died if the bomb hadn't been dropped (we speculate).
Is it even possible to imply any causality without a counterfactual? You can obviously take things too far and start speculating on an alternative time line, but the immediate turn of events is surely a legitimate area of speculation (even for 'serious' historians) and I would say the decision to surrender in japan is one of those.
Re: The Bomb Didn't Beat Japan
#90I love UFO stories, and I love history, and I love pseudo-science. Hell, I even like counter-factuals. What if Lee had won at Gettysburg? What if Patton had actually commanded the Normandy invasion? And so forth. But these things are the province of speculation, not knowledge. Think for a minute about what this essay is asking "What if action X did not end the war in the Pacific?" Well dang, Action X could be just ab…
>But these things are the province of speculation, not knowledge. Here's the opinion of the leader of the US military at the time. "It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons."…
By the time Leahy published that, nuclear weapons were an existential threat to the US Navy, see e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolt_of_the_Admirals