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.
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.