I just want to point out that if it weren't for the Perry expedition, the Pacific war would likely never have happened. This concludes this week's episode of The Whigs Ruined Everything.
The Whigs are so bad that they destroyed Classical Liberalism, formed the basis for Fabian Socialism, and are the pre-cursor to almost every bad idea that everyone tries to replicate, dedicated to solely protecting the power of the elite.
Yes, but the Japanese feeling of resentment and rivalry towards the US was a result of the Perry Expedition. Also, FDR initiated the oil embargo on Japan in a deliberate effort to provoke them into attacking. He wanted that war.
Pretty much. Remember he's the reason for the 22nd ammendment. Every POTUS from Washington up to that point only stood for 2 terms, either consecutively or as was the case with Grover Cleavand who was the first U.S. president to serve nonconsecutive terms until Trump did the same.
Literally everyone else adhered to the "Gentlemen's Agreement" to only stand twice. Except FDR, who stood 4 times, although he died shortly into his 4th term.
But remember it's Nixon that gets drawn in Watchmen repealing the 22nd so he can continue standing [for life], because he has the backing of Doctor Manhattan, or so it is believed.
FDR initiated the oil embargo on Japan in a deliberate effort to provoke them into attacking
close. The oil embargo was so that the US would no longer supporting the genocide of China. in response, Japan started eyeing the aisles to the South to secure oil to continue their campaign. FDR passive-aggressively moved the fleet to Pearl harbor, in range of Japan, as a threat to keep Japan from pulling the trigger. this should have been the point where we joined the war, but he needed a propaganda victory to make the US look sympathetic, so he had the fleet just sit in pearl harbor waiting to get bombed.
was Japan the asshole? absolutely. was the attack "sudden" as FDR said it was in the speech? absolutely fucking not. was the United States maintaining peaceful relations with Japan as FDR claimed in his speech? the military posturing says no.
If you really want to go deeper, look at how American Communists in Japan in the 1930s pushed and prodded Japanese policy towards invading Southeast Asia, instead of Siberia, for their resources. Siberia would've been a natural extension of their ground war in Manchuria, and would not have drawn the wrath of the US. Instead, many Communists in the State Department, and the Institute of Pacific Relations, wanted Japan to fight the US, instead of the Soviets.
Based on what i heard he was willing to let japan invade SEA as long as they didn't threaten the Philippines and Hawaii and it was the jappos that were afraid of american fleet and decided to take it out just in case.
Yes! people forget (because they don't know) all the humiliation and punishments the Allies put on Japan in the decade leading up to WW2.
The 5:5:3 ratio (limiting Japan's navy) and oil embargos which harmed Japan's civilian industries greatly & literally forced Japan to plan an aggressive, fast war.
UK, Russia, USA and most other nations were fine with another "Great War" to settle the score. Talk is cheap, eh?
You're mixing some things here. Yes FDR wanted the war, but Japan was also aiming for the war (because Communist spies directed them against the US instead of the USSR, including spies in the US State Department).
The Japanese were not resentful of the Americans before the war, they were inspired by it. It was Japanese policy to learn US history and adopt US customs.
It was Japanese policy to learn US history and adopt US customs.
And it still is to a large degree. Its why there are so many "America-boos" in Japan and why they have some of the highest approval ratings of the US of any country on the planet.
That actually applies to most of Asia honestly, who treats us more like actual friends and allies than almost anyone in Western Europe does (Eastern Europe is different, due to the memory of the Cold War).
"You're a leftist if you thinking using nuclear weaponry - twice - on largely civilian targets isn't good and should have been avoided."
Yeah, that get's old, try again.
There were so many other ways to handle things. And, if a show of force had been needed, why not drop one on an empty area to start? Or an isolated military base or something? Fucking obliterating an air base would have sent a message too.
Look, it's not even about the nukes, that's kind of a distraction anyway. Nukes exist, and they're a tool. I think nuking civilians is bad, just like I think the nonnuclear atrocities are bad too, from all sides. The firebombing of both Germany and Britain were evil.
I get things spiral in war, but you're taking a chunk out of your own soul when you engage in such actions. Intentionally targeting civilians, intentional starvation, all that...it's bad, and you should just say 'we're not doing that,' even if it's a very effective strategy of war.
I'm just not going to sign off on the bombing - especially the double bombing - of Japan.
WW2 was a fucking dumpster fire from the start, and everyone had plenty of offramps.
Talk like "chunk of your soul" wank sounds nice and flowery when you're nowhere near any actual fighting, but if you asked any of the teenage marines who had to fight in Iwojima or Okinawa or any other useless battle when the war was already clearly over they'd probably say "fuck that nuke em again".
Yes! Except the battles weren't "useless" they were required to set up the invasion of the Home Islands.
Aside from liberating the Philippines, THAT was useless! McArthur had deserted his troops in disgrace & it was his vanity alone that required the Philippines to be liberated.
Every Allied soldier looking into the meatgrinder of Operation Olympic would gladly keep dropping atom bombs until the cows came home.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were both military targets.
Almost the entirety of Nagasaki casualties were civilian, and combined with Hiroshima it was still about 95%, last I heard. Those aren't acceptable numbers.
'BUt tHey're cIVilIaN tArGetS' is just leftist historical revisionism in action.
Most of the anti-Nuclear propaganda is literally just left-over Soviet propaganda.
And, if a show of force had been needed, why not drop one on an empty area to start? Or an isolated military base or something? Fucking obliterating an air base would have sent a message too.
Because a show of force means nothing. Hell, Hiroshima by itself had no real effect on Japanese plans to continue the war. Nagasaki, and the possibility of more nuclear strikes is what helped end it.
Socialists of every variety are hard headed. That's why you see them support their rapists or killers. The ideology is too strong. The level of violence needed to dissuade a Leftist from attacking has to be so extreme, and so disproportionate, that a moral person would wince at the thought. And that level of violence would never make a single Leftist do anything but giggle.
It's a real problem.
The firebombing of both Germany and Britain were evil.
Don't forget Japan. Curtis LeMay killed 150,000 people in a single night.
WW2 was a fucking dumpster fire from the start, and everyone had plenty of offramp
Yeah, but who wanted to take them? Kaiser Wilhelm yelling from his mansion? Some die-hard Warren G. Harding supporters? Some left-over Huey Long supporters? Some dude sitting in a US prison because he didn't turn in his gold coins in 1935? Friedrich Hayek? Everyone in Denmark?
Nobody in power really wanted peace. Everyone in power either wanted Peace, or Socialism, which meant they didn't want peace. This includes people like the Labour Party of Britain. Each elite saw an opportunity to exploit.
It would have been 3 bombs on Japan, but they ran out of plutonium for Skinny Man.
I said in another comment: the use of the Bombs was discussed in depth. The reason they couldn't "demonstrate it" was because they only had 2 bombs until April '46. If their bluff failed? Then it was Operation Olympic time and the millions of deaths from just that invasion.
The post-war analysis of Olympic was: the Allies underestimated Japan's defenses by half: they were much stronger than the wildest imagination and Allied losses would have easily been double the already horrific estimates.
Hundreds of thousands of civilians is bad, but millions is worse, ok?
As it was, it was a bluff! There were no more Bombs to drop. A weaker bluff would have failed, it was literally 50-50 as it was.
Well when you realize that women or feminized men are writing these articles and arguing these points, it becomes more clear.
The lives of the military men matter not to them. The civilians will always matter more because of the women and (lesser so) the children amongst them.
They don't like the idea of dropping bombs on civilians because they get scared of the idea that they may actually be involved in the death and destruction that they're happy to support and vote for.
Much like how they love supporting trannies until you suggest they fuck one or that they are one.
In the days preceding Japan's surrender in August 1945, the Soviet Red Army was rapidly advancing into Japanese-held territory in Manchuria, Korea, Sakhalin Island, and eventually the Kuril Islands.
Oh I was just about to add: "The comments there keep talking about the Russians. They had nothing to do with ending the war. Japan ignored them."
Japan had already stripped the mainland of good troops & equipment. They'd written off everything in an effort to hold Korea and the Home Islands. Russia vastly outnumbered the Japanese troops and had modern equipment, tanks, artillery & aircraft aplenty!
However? They had zero seaborne invasion capacity. None. They had paratroopers yes, 150K reportedly. The distance would have meant no fighter escort (zero aircraft carriers too!) vs 1000 Japanese fighters waiting for them.
150K troops with no tanks, artillery OR air cover vs 1 million troops in those potential landing zones? 6-7 million on the Home Islands?
No, Russia's entry did not cause Japan a second of concern. They knew it was coming for months.
For comparison: The Allies would have landed 500,000 troops with ample tanks and undisputed air superiority. On the first day. They'd keep around 800,000 combat troops in action to take the southern island.
EDIT: I rechecked some sources. I got a few numbers wrong & misattributed a couple of things.
Russia had some seaborne capacity because the Americans gave them 100 landing craft. After the war was over, they continued to invade Japanese islands with heavy losses.
Japan didn't have 1000 fighters, they had 2000 modern, air superiority fighters.
The Home Islands had 3+ million Army soldiers, about half were top-notch troops, and ~2 million Navy personnel. They also planned up to 10 million "citizen soldiers" too.
It would take 5 days to land the 700,000 total troops for Olympic. Plus 1.2 million support personnel across the rest of the Allied forces directly involved.
Didn't the Japanese signal they were ready to surrender after the first bomb and then we went and dropped the second just for funsies or do I have my timelines mixed up?
Considering there were elements of the Japanese military that attempted to coup the Emperor to stop his surrender even after the second bomb, and their scientist were arguing the US could not possibly have more so the danger was past (spoiler, we had a 3rd, with 4-6 ready in another few months), no, many of them werent even willing to surrender after two. It took the Emperor putting his foot down to even get what we got.
The part that also gets left off from all of the talk about Japan being "ready to surrender" is that they said they should still be allowed to control Korea, keep the conquered land in China, and some of the more extreme ones even wanted to only peace out with the US and Russia and keep fighting China. No one in the history of the world has even gotten a "peace" treaty like that.
And yet if they had, the Korean war would never have happened and China would never have become a communist superpower. The bad guys really did win WW2.
The biggest winners were Mao's Communist China and Stalin's Communist Russia. For sure.
The USA salvaged Germany to stop the "Iron Curtain" from rolling over a crippled Europe & rebuilt Japan to keep China in check. :/
Actually? The 3rd one: Skinny Man, was scrapped to make the Fat Man.
"In another few months" was likely April '46. With Operation Olympic set to go in November the new bombs would have been too late. It could not possibly be delayed, moral was already plunging across the Allied armies.
Had America's bluff not worked? Many millions would have died.
You are 100% right: a "negotiated peace" was the end goal of Japan's war plans after 1943. Negotiated peace = Japanese win.
I could have sworn bomb #3 was what would become more infamous as the Demon Core (since they would start experimenting with it instead of using it as a weapon). But I guess I misremembered that.
But either way, I think we both agree on the major point. Not only do I think the nuclear bombs were justified, I have found that it is a great way to ferret out those who have wildly ahistorical views or (more often) a political agenda they want to push, almost always an anti-American one. And it applies to both sides of the political aisle equally.
For sure, atomic weapons bring out the "moral relativism" and "history re-writers" from their hiding places.
"Oh it's BAD to kill someone with an atom bomb!" No, it's bad to kill someone with ANY bomb!
"They should have embargoed Japan until they surrendered!" That means no food, mass starvation and millions of horrible deaths. Not nice!
& etc.
Skinny Man would have been a 'rail trigger' bomb the same as Little Boy, except with plutonium not uranium. Trinity was a uranium bomb with 'implosion trigger' like Fat Man which used plutonium. So two each of uranium/plutonium & rail/implosion. Except they ran out of plutonium & could only build 3.
You've got some timelines mixed up. The Japanese were utterly undeterred by the 1st bomb. They assessed that it was as bad as a bad fire-bombing raid, which had already devastated most of their country.
The 2nd bomb worried them because Truman followed it up with a statement that they would continue to use nukes on a regular basis. They leaked fake information to Japan that we had at least 12 more ready to go. Japanese Air Defense at this time was in shambles, which meant that there was no capacity for Japan to avoid the attacks.
That's when it started to become clear that the war was fundamentally unsustainable. The Americans clearly seemed intending to invade, and it was also clear that the Soviet would join. The absolute catastrophe of the Japanese campaign against the Soviets in Manchuria piled on top of that showed that the war was well and truly hopeless. The militarists had led the IJN and IJA to complete annihilation, the country was literally on fire, and now it looked like it was going to dealt a true death blow by a pincer invasion of the most violent type the world had ever seen. The Americans and Soviets would, undoubtably, burn their way through Japan. The violence of the invasions could be easily be predicted with the Soviet conduct in Eastern Europe (including mass rape), and the Marines conduct in Iwo Jima (burn every single hole and cave). The best case is that, for some reason, the Americans decide to go with a blockade, and therefore create a weaponized famine to starve millions of people to death into making Japan surrender. The Nazis fighting to the last man as even the Wermacht turned on them shows the best case of what could happen to Japanese unity.
The continuation of the war was a existential, civilization-level, threat to Japan.
Hiro Hito must have seen the writing on the wall at this point, and decided the only sane thing was to try and surrender, which is why the militarists tried to coup the government and have him assassinated. At a certain point, it's pretty clear that the militarists had truly gone fucking insane, and were just trying to kill everyone, and themselves, in order to avoid admitting that they fucked up.
and the Marines conduct in Iwo Jima (burn every single hole and cave).
Honestly, I think Okinawa actually had far more of an influence than Iwo Jima did. It tends to get overlooked for some reason, but I would argue for Okinawa because it was the first major time the US had to deal with Japanese civilians in a significant way (the only possible other one before that being Saipan, and that was on a much smaller scale).
Not only do you have the same issue of the US have to burn the Japanese out of every hole and cave, you now add in the civilian population being utterly terrified and acting irrationally because of all the propaganda that they had been fed, like the Marines being cannibal psychopaths or the Air Force being more akin to a natural disaster than a military branch. And as such, the civilians either did hopeless attacks with improvised weapons because at least they will die swinging before a Marine eats their corpse, or they would just kill themselves so they didnt have to live with it. And no amount of sometimes literal begging from the US military stopped it.
So not only would you have the Japanese wanting to make that happen on a civilizational scale on the home islands, you had the US military traumatized by the fact that they would have to do it again on an even bigger scale than Okinawa. At least for me, it is absolutely no coincidence that a ton of the US high command that was in the know about the existence of the nukes went from "They are a nice backup option" to "They will be our first tool" after Okinawa.
I'm not going to deny that Okinawa may have had more of an impact than Iwo Jima. Okinawa was wetter, muddier, slower, involved more civilians, and may have even bloodier. I think that's also where Kamikaze attacks were highly successful. Even veterans of both battles have said they preferred Iwo over Oki. Which, given the context, is a fucking insane thing to say.
The strangest thing is, I think if Operation Olympic had gone through, the surrender rate would actually have been much higher. The US military basically assumed that not even 1% of Japan's civilians, let alone soldiers, would surrender, and that experience was driven home especially by Okinawa. The Japanese troops on those islands were heavily propagandized and reminded that fighting to the last man was an absolute imperative, because the trauma on the US military was a strategic objective. It also represents a terrible miscalculation. Instead of the Americans saying, "My God, we'll have to kill every single man, woman, and child; we should reconsider", they said, "My God, we'll have to kill every single man, woman, and child; we need more flame tanks". Big oof. Historically, I think that might have worked on the English, but the Americans are a more violent people than most Europeans, and even with all our Liberal sensibilities, our propensity for murder is shockingly high.
Had the invasion gone forward, I think the first year would have been the worst we'd ever have seen, probably increasing the dead to a full million on the American side, but by 1946 I think we would have been seeing mass surrender by Japanese civilians. Surrender isn't actually unheard of to Japanese society, it's just that Japanese militarism tried to pathologize it.
Not really. It was just 3 days later, right? They were in internal discussions but those were still leaning heavily towards continuing the war.
The second Bomb forced an emergency session and the 50-50 vote was broken by the Emperor. That's as close as it gets!
Had they voted to continue? America had no more Bombs to drop until April '46. Many millions would be dead by then.
Japan's atomic program was actually well advanced! Their design would likely have worked. But they lacked fissionable materials, not even enough to build a single Bomb.
There's a theory that they tested their Bomb in Korea someplace, but it didn't blow up, just was a 'dirty bomb' and they had no more material left.
The reason they didn't drop one on the Germans was that they feared it might not work & the Germans would fix it and drop it on London :/ But Germany's atomic program had been "paused" by Hitler & was 2 years behind everyone else.
If anyone thinks a blockade going into 1949 would have been a better idea, please remember that the purpose of the blockade would have been to cause a famine. Look to Mao's China and tell me whether or not the nukes were a better decision.
Yes, atomic weapons are scary. That's why MAD has worked for all these decades. All those leftists who protested for all those years wanted to make the world more dangerous, not less.
Sadly? MAD doesn't work on Iran. They'll happily sacrifice millions of their own people for "victory" over the two Satan.
Also, japan isn't allowed to have nuclear weapons anymore, do you think MAD would work with them? Or would the ghost of the Emperor suddenly and mysteriously recruit more followers?
Yes it works for North Korea. Have they crossed the DMZ lately? No.
MAD works for non-nuclear nations because it is agreed that any nation dropping a nuke on anyone else is to be stopped. Every atomic nation is supposed to start blowing them to kingdom come.
In theory: they'd target the aggressor's nuclear capabilities & blow those "1st strike" weapons to oblivion. That would effectively end any war except: 2nd strike weapons are really hard to stop!
So any Nuclear War would probably follow one of 2 scenarios:
Use It Or Lose It: The aggressor launches everything at all their enemies to erase their counter-strike ability, then demand surrender.
Do You Got Any Balls: drop 1-2 "tactical" nukes and dare the world to do anything about it.
Both are bad, but MAD is supposed to counter the 1st option. Nothing can be done about the second, which is what Putin's signaling right now.
I look at the bombing as a horrible, but necessary, event. Do I wish there had been another option, one that didn't involve so many civilian deaths? Yes, undoubtedly, but I also understand that the Japan of that time was a fiercely proud, almost fatalistic, nation. The whole thing definitely falls into the "lesser of two evils" category.
They discussed targets in great detail.
They only had TWO Bombs to drop before April '46. Trinity was the test, Little Boy and Fat Man were completed and Skinny Man was abandoned due to lack of materials. That's all.
If they dropped "demonstration bombs" the Empire could just hide the information from the citizens & carry on as usual until a city was hit. Then they could no longer hide the American Superweapon.
If that bluff was called then it was Operation Olympic with it's massive casualties or a negotiated surrender which = Japan Victory.
As it happened, the Empire couldn't hide the horrors of the Bombs, the public was terrified & there was a 50-50 vote to surrender with the Emperor breaking the tie. That's as close as it gets! Lesser measures would have failed.
Many US generals wanted it dropped > Soldiers were dying every day & the public was sick of war. Germany surrendered, why not end the war with Japan too?
I just want to point out that if it weren't for the Perry expedition, the Pacific war would likely never have happened. This concludes this week's episode of The Whigs Ruined Everything.
No one emphasizes this enough.
The Whigs are so bad that they destroyed Classical Liberalism, formed the basis for Fabian Socialism, and are the pre-cursor to almost every bad idea that everyone tries to replicate, dedicated to solely protecting the power of the elite.
Lolz! Japan would have been opened up eventually. The French & Brits were growing envious of Portugal's monopoly there.
Yes, but the Japanese feeling of resentment and rivalry towards the US was a result of the Perry Expedition. Also, FDR initiated the oil embargo on Japan in a deliberate effort to provoke them into attacking. He wanted that war.
So in other words...we can still blame FDR for everything because he turned a diplomatically salvageable situation into a war.
Pretty much. Remember he's the reason for the 22nd ammendment. Every POTUS from Washington up to that point only stood for 2 terms, either consecutively or as was the case with Grover Cleavand who was the first U.S. president to serve nonconsecutive terms until Trump did the same.
Literally everyone else adhered to the "Gentlemen's Agreement" to only stand twice. Except FDR, who stood 4 times, although he died shortly into his 4th term.
But remember it's Nixon that gets drawn in Watchmen repealing the 22nd so he can continue standing [for life], because he has the backing of Doctor Manhattan, or so it is believed.
And the UK too, and their stooge nations like Netherlands & France.
All over China's territory, which nobody but Japan and China wanted anyhow.
close. The oil embargo was so that the US would no longer supporting the genocide of China. in response, Japan started eyeing the aisles to the South to secure oil to continue their campaign. FDR passive-aggressively moved the fleet to Pearl harbor, in range of Japan, as a threat to keep Japan from pulling the trigger. this should have been the point where we joined the war, but he needed a propaganda victory to make the US look sympathetic, so he had the fleet just sit in pearl harbor waiting to get bombed.
was Japan the asshole? absolutely. was the attack "sudden" as FDR said it was in the speech? absolutely fucking not. was the United States maintaining peaceful relations with Japan as FDR claimed in his speech? the military posturing says no.
If you really want to go deeper, look at how American Communists in Japan in the 1930s pushed and prodded Japanese policy towards invading Southeast Asia, instead of Siberia, for their resources. Siberia would've been a natural extension of their ground war in Manchuria, and would not have drawn the wrath of the US. Instead, many Communists in the State Department, and the Institute of Pacific Relations, wanted Japan to fight the US, instead of the Soviets.
Based on what i heard he was willing to let japan invade SEA as long as they didn't threaten the Philippines and Hawaii and it was the jappos that were afraid of american fleet and decided to take it out just in case.
Yes! people forget (because they don't know) all the humiliation and punishments the Allies put on Japan in the decade leading up to WW2.
The 5:5:3 ratio (limiting Japan's navy) and oil embargos which harmed Japan's civilian industries greatly & literally forced Japan to plan an aggressive, fast war.
UK, Russia, USA and most other nations were fine with another "Great War" to settle the score. Talk is cheap, eh?
You're mixing some things here. Yes FDR wanted the war, but Japan was also aiming for the war (because Communist spies directed them against the US instead of the USSR, including spies in the US State Department).
The Japanese were not resentful of the Americans before the war, they were inspired by it. It was Japanese policy to learn US history and adopt US customs.
And it still is to a large degree. Its why there are so many "America-boos" in Japan and why they have some of the highest approval ratings of the US of any country on the planet.
That actually applies to most of Asia honestly, who treats us more like actual friends and allies than almost anyone in Western Europe does (Eastern Europe is different, due to the memory of the Cold War).
"You're a leftist if you thinking using nuclear weaponry - twice - on largely civilian targets isn't good and should have been avoided."
Yeah, that get's old, try again.
There were so many other ways to handle things. And, if a show of force had been needed, why not drop one on an empty area to start? Or an isolated military base or something? Fucking obliterating an air base would have sent a message too.
Look, it's not even about the nukes, that's kind of a distraction anyway. Nukes exist, and they're a tool. I think nuking civilians is bad, just like I think the nonnuclear atrocities are bad too, from all sides. The firebombing of both Germany and Britain were evil.
I get things spiral in war, but you're taking a chunk out of your own soul when you engage in such actions. Intentionally targeting civilians, intentional starvation, all that...it's bad, and you should just say 'we're not doing that,' even if it's a very effective strategy of war.
I'm just not going to sign off on the bombing - especially the double bombing - of Japan.
WW2 was a fucking dumpster fire from the start, and everyone had plenty of offramps.
Talk like "chunk of your soul" wank sounds nice and flowery when you're nowhere near any actual fighting, but if you asked any of the teenage marines who had to fight in Iwojima or Okinawa or any other useless battle when the war was already clearly over they'd probably say "fuck that nuke em again".
Yes! Except the battles weren't "useless" they were required to set up the invasion of the Home Islands.
Aside from liberating the Philippines, THAT was useless! McArthur had deserted his troops in disgrace & it was his vanity alone that required the Philippines to be liberated.
Every Allied soldier looking into the meatgrinder of Operation Olympic would gladly keep dropping atom bombs until the cows came home.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were both military targets.
And they gave them forewarning.
'BUt tHey're cIVilIaN tArGetS' is just leftist historical revisionism in action.
Almost the entirety of Nagasaki casualties were civilian, and combined with Hiroshima it was still about 95%, last I heard. Those aren't acceptable numbers.
Or, you know, fact...
Most of the anti-Nuclear propaganda is literally just left-over Soviet propaganda.
Because a show of force means nothing. Hell, Hiroshima by itself had no real effect on Japanese plans to continue the war. Nagasaki, and the possibility of more nuclear strikes is what helped end it.
Socialists of every variety are hard headed. That's why you see them support their rapists or killers. The ideology is too strong. The level of violence needed to dissuade a Leftist from attacking has to be so extreme, and so disproportionate, that a moral person would wince at the thought. And that level of violence would never make a single Leftist do anything but giggle.
It's a real problem.
Don't forget Japan. Curtis LeMay killed 150,000 people in a single night.
Yeah, but who wanted to take them? Kaiser Wilhelm yelling from his mansion? Some die-hard Warren G. Harding supporters? Some left-over Huey Long supporters? Some dude sitting in a US prison because he didn't turn in his gold coins in 1935? Friedrich Hayek? Everyone in Denmark?
Nobody in power really wanted peace. Everyone in power either wanted Peace, or Socialism, which meant they didn't want peace. This includes people like the Labour Party of Britain. Each elite saw an opportunity to exploit.
It would have been 3 bombs on Japan, but they ran out of plutonium for Skinny Man.
I said in another comment: the use of the Bombs was discussed in depth. The reason they couldn't "demonstrate it" was because they only had 2 bombs until April '46. If their bluff failed? Then it was Operation Olympic time and the millions of deaths from just that invasion.
The post-war analysis of Olympic was: the Allies underestimated Japan's defenses by half: they were much stronger than the wildest imagination and Allied losses would have easily been double the already horrific estimates.
Hundreds of thousands of civilians is bad, but millions is worse, ok?
As it was, it was a bluff! There were no more Bombs to drop. A weaker bluff would have failed, it was literally 50-50 as it was.
Well when you realize that women or feminized men are writing these articles and arguing these points, it becomes more clear.
The lives of the military men matter not to them. The civilians will always matter more because of the women and (lesser so) the children amongst them.
They don't like the idea of dropping bombs on civilians because they get scared of the idea that they may actually be involved in the death and destruction that they're happy to support and vote for.
Much like how they love supporting trannies until you suggest they fuck one or that they are one.
Sure.... sure...
In the days preceding Japan's surrender in August 1945, the Soviet Red Army was rapidly advancing into Japanese-held territory in Manchuria, Korea, Sakhalin Island, and eventually the Kuril Islands.
Oh I was just about to add: "The comments there keep talking about the Russians. They had nothing to do with ending the war. Japan ignored them."
Japan had already stripped the mainland of good troops & equipment. They'd written off everything in an effort to hold Korea and the Home Islands. Russia vastly outnumbered the Japanese troops and had modern equipment, tanks, artillery & aircraft aplenty!
However? They had zero seaborne invasion capacity. None. They had paratroopers yes, 150K reportedly. The distance would have meant no fighter escort (zero aircraft carriers too!) vs 1000 Japanese fighters waiting for them.
150K troops with no tanks, artillery OR air cover vs 1 million troops in those potential landing zones? 6-7 million on the Home Islands?
No, Russia's entry did not cause Japan a second of concern. They knew it was coming for months.
For comparison: The Allies would have landed 500,000 troops with ample tanks and undisputed air superiority. On the first day. They'd keep around 800,000 combat troops in action to take the southern island.
EDIT: I rechecked some sources. I got a few numbers wrong & misattributed a couple of things.
Russia had some seaborne capacity because the Americans gave them 100 landing craft. After the war was over, they continued to invade Japanese islands with heavy losses.
Japan didn't have 1000 fighters, they had 2000 modern, air superiority fighters. The Home Islands had 3+ million Army soldiers, about half were top-notch troops, and ~2 million Navy personnel. They also planned up to 10 million "citizen soldiers" too.
It would take 5 days to land the 700,000 total troops for Olympic. Plus 1.2 million support personnel across the rest of the Allied forces directly involved.
A complete fiction, rabbi
Whatever you say comrade
You a Mao fan or Stalin's boy?
Um thats yourself Jewboi...
Globalism = Communism = Zionism
So I'm anti-globalist, anti-communist BUT I'm still a "Jewboi".
You really are retarded. Luckily? You're far too stupid to know what that means.
This is good Rhetoric, Sanhedrin
Didn't the Japanese signal they were ready to surrender after the first bomb and then we went and dropped the second just for funsies or do I have my timelines mixed up?
Considering there were elements of the Japanese military that attempted to coup the Emperor to stop his surrender even after the second bomb, and their scientist were arguing the US could not possibly have more so the danger was past (spoiler, we had a 3rd, with 4-6 ready in another few months), no, many of them werent even willing to surrender after two. It took the Emperor putting his foot down to even get what we got.
The part that also gets left off from all of the talk about Japan being "ready to surrender" is that they said they should still be allowed to control Korea, keep the conquered land in China, and some of the more extreme ones even wanted to only peace out with the US and Russia and keep fighting China. No one in the history of the world has even gotten a "peace" treaty like that.
And yet if they had, the Korean war would never have happened and China would never have become a communist superpower. The bad guys really did win WW2.
The biggest winners were Mao's Communist China and Stalin's Communist Russia. For sure.
The USA salvaged Germany to stop the "Iron Curtain" from rolling over a crippled Europe & rebuilt Japan to keep China in check. :/
Actually? The 3rd one: Skinny Man, was scrapped to make the Fat Man.
"In another few months" was likely April '46. With Operation Olympic set to go in November the new bombs would have been too late. It could not possibly be delayed, moral was already plunging across the Allied armies.
Had America's bluff not worked? Many millions would have died.
You are 100% right: a "negotiated peace" was the end goal of Japan's war plans after 1943. Negotiated peace = Japanese win.
I could have sworn bomb #3 was what would become more infamous as the Demon Core (since they would start experimenting with it instead of using it as a weapon). But I guess I misremembered that.
But either way, I think we both agree on the major point. Not only do I think the nuclear bombs were justified, I have found that it is a great way to ferret out those who have wildly ahistorical views or (more often) a political agenda they want to push, almost always an anti-American one. And it applies to both sides of the political aisle equally.
For sure, atomic weapons bring out the "moral relativism" and "history re-writers" from their hiding places.
"Oh it's BAD to kill someone with an atom bomb!" No, it's bad to kill someone with ANY bomb!
"They should have embargoed Japan until they surrendered!" That means no food, mass starvation and millions of horrible deaths. Not nice!
& etc.
Skinny Man would have been a 'rail trigger' bomb the same as Little Boy, except with plutonium not uranium. Trinity was a uranium bomb with 'implosion trigger' like Fat Man which used plutonium. So two each of uranium/plutonium & rail/implosion. Except they ran out of plutonium & could only build 3.
You've got some timelines mixed up. The Japanese were utterly undeterred by the 1st bomb. They assessed that it was as bad as a bad fire-bombing raid, which had already devastated most of their country.
The 2nd bomb worried them because Truman followed it up with a statement that they would continue to use nukes on a regular basis. They leaked fake information to Japan that we had at least 12 more ready to go. Japanese Air Defense at this time was in shambles, which meant that there was no capacity for Japan to avoid the attacks.
That's when it started to become clear that the war was fundamentally unsustainable. The Americans clearly seemed intending to invade, and it was also clear that the Soviet would join. The absolute catastrophe of the Japanese campaign against the Soviets in Manchuria piled on top of that showed that the war was well and truly hopeless. The militarists had led the IJN and IJA to complete annihilation, the country was literally on fire, and now it looked like it was going to dealt a true death blow by a pincer invasion of the most violent type the world had ever seen. The Americans and Soviets would, undoubtably, burn their way through Japan. The violence of the invasions could be easily be predicted with the Soviet conduct in Eastern Europe (including mass rape), and the Marines conduct in Iwo Jima (burn every single hole and cave). The best case is that, for some reason, the Americans decide to go with a blockade, and therefore create a weaponized famine to starve millions of people to death into making Japan surrender. The Nazis fighting to the last man as even the Wermacht turned on them shows the best case of what could happen to Japanese unity.
The continuation of the war was a existential, civilization-level, threat to Japan.
Hiro Hito must have seen the writing on the wall at this point, and decided the only sane thing was to try and surrender, which is why the militarists tried to coup the government and have him assassinated. At a certain point, it's pretty clear that the militarists had truly gone fucking insane, and were just trying to kill everyone, and themselves, in order to avoid admitting that they fucked up.
Honestly, I think Okinawa actually had far more of an influence than Iwo Jima did. It tends to get overlooked for some reason, but I would argue for Okinawa because it was the first major time the US had to deal with Japanese civilians in a significant way (the only possible other one before that being Saipan, and that was on a much smaller scale).
Not only do you have the same issue of the US have to burn the Japanese out of every hole and cave, you now add in the civilian population being utterly terrified and acting irrationally because of all the propaganda that they had been fed, like the Marines being cannibal psychopaths or the Air Force being more akin to a natural disaster than a military branch. And as such, the civilians either did hopeless attacks with improvised weapons because at least they will die swinging before a Marine eats their corpse, or they would just kill themselves so they didnt have to live with it. And no amount of sometimes literal begging from the US military stopped it.
So not only would you have the Japanese wanting to make that happen on a civilizational scale on the home islands, you had the US military traumatized by the fact that they would have to do it again on an even bigger scale than Okinawa. At least for me, it is absolutely no coincidence that a ton of the US high command that was in the know about the existence of the nukes went from "They are a nice backup option" to "They will be our first tool" after Okinawa.
I'm not going to deny that Okinawa may have had more of an impact than Iwo Jima. Okinawa was wetter, muddier, slower, involved more civilians, and may have even bloodier. I think that's also where Kamikaze attacks were highly successful. Even veterans of both battles have said they preferred Iwo over Oki. Which, given the context, is a fucking insane thing to say.
The strangest thing is, I think if Operation Olympic had gone through, the surrender rate would actually have been much higher. The US military basically assumed that not even 1% of Japan's civilians, let alone soldiers, would surrender, and that experience was driven home especially by Okinawa. The Japanese troops on those islands were heavily propagandized and reminded that fighting to the last man was an absolute imperative, because the trauma on the US military was a strategic objective. It also represents a terrible miscalculation. Instead of the Americans saying, "My God, we'll have to kill every single man, woman, and child; we should reconsider", they said, "My God, we'll have to kill every single man, woman, and child; we need more flame tanks". Big oof. Historically, I think that might have worked on the English, but the Americans are a more violent people than most Europeans, and even with all our Liberal sensibilities, our propensity for murder is shockingly high.
Had the invasion gone forward, I think the first year would have been the worst we'd ever have seen, probably increasing the dead to a full million on the American side, but by 1946 I think we would have been seeing mass surrender by Japanese civilians. Surrender isn't actually unheard of to Japanese society, it's just that Japanese militarism tried to pathologize it.
Not really. It was just 3 days later, right? They were in internal discussions but those were still leaning heavily towards continuing the war.
The second Bomb forced an emergency session and the 50-50 vote was broken by the Emperor. That's as close as it gets!
Had they voted to continue? America had no more Bombs to drop until April '46. Many millions would be dead by then.
America fought on the wrong side of ww2.
You should double-check to see if Patton thought the Nazis were good guys.
Hitler could have had them first and saved us all :(
Japan's atomic program was actually well advanced! Their design would likely have worked. But they lacked fissionable materials, not even enough to build a single Bomb.
There's a theory that they tested their Bomb in Korea someplace, but it didn't blow up, just was a 'dirty bomb' and they had no more material left.
The reason they didn't drop one on the Germans was that they feared it might not work & the Germans would fix it and drop it on London :/ But Germany's atomic program had been "paused" by Hitler & was 2 years behind everyone else.
Two cities with a large Christian communities were bombed by the synagogue of satan.
If anyone thinks a blockade going into 1949 would have been a better idea, please remember that the purpose of the blockade would have been to cause a famine. Look to Mao's China and tell me whether or not the nukes were a better decision.
Yes, atomic weapons are scary. That's why MAD has worked for all these decades. All those leftists who protested for all those years wanted to make the world more dangerous, not less.
Sadly? MAD doesn't work on Iran. They'll happily sacrifice millions of their own people for "victory" over the two Satan.
But it works for North Korea 🤔
Also, japan isn't allowed to have nuclear weapons anymore, do you think MAD would work with them? Or would the ghost of the Emperor suddenly and mysteriously recruit more followers?
Yes it works for North Korea. Have they crossed the DMZ lately? No.
MAD works for non-nuclear nations because it is agreed that any nation dropping a nuke on anyone else is to be stopped. Every atomic nation is supposed to start blowing them to kingdom come.
In theory: they'd target the aggressor's nuclear capabilities & blow those "1st strike" weapons to oblivion. That would effectively end any war except: 2nd strike weapons are really hard to stop!
So any Nuclear War would probably follow one of 2 scenarios:
Both are bad, but MAD is supposed to counter the 1st option. Nothing can be done about the second, which is what Putin's signaling right now.
I look at the bombing as a horrible, but necessary, event. Do I wish there had been another option, one that didn't involve so many civilian deaths? Yes, undoubtedly, but I also understand that the Japan of that time was a fiercely proud, almost fatalistic, nation. The whole thing definitely falls into the "lesser of two evils" category.
Sounds like something that is repeated like a religious cult.
The US could have dropped the bomb on one of Japan’s almost uninhabited islands and proved it worked…
None of the generals wanted to drop it. Only Truman himself did.
They discussed targets in great detail.
They only had TWO Bombs to drop before April '46. Trinity was the test, Little Boy and Fat Man were completed and Skinny Man was abandoned due to lack of materials. That's all.
If they dropped "demonstration bombs" the Empire could just hide the information from the citizens & carry on as usual until a city was hit. Then they could no longer hide the American Superweapon.
If that bluff was called then it was Operation Olympic with it's massive casualties or a negotiated surrender which = Japan Victory.
As it happened, the Empire couldn't hide the horrors of the Bombs, the public was terrified & there was a 50-50 vote to surrender with the Emperor breaking the tie. That's as close as it gets! Lesser measures would have failed.
Many US generals wanted it dropped > Soldiers were dying every day & the public was sick of war. Germany surrendered, why not end the war with Japan too?
I still think a non lethal demonstration just offshore would have worked as well.