If you were Truman...

[unmerged(11486)]

I agree with Pcasey in this case.

I have to stop short of placing the entire blame for the deaths of German and Japanese civilians on the hands of their own leaders, but I do not see it likely for the Allies to back down from their positions regarding unconditional surrender at all. I would not have either.

EDIT: In regards to those advicating dropping the bomb on Fiji, what good would that have done? Perhaps, if Truman had had a 50-megaton or greater bomb instead of the 'paltry' 20 kilotons unleashed on Nagasaki (The Nagasaki bomb was somewhat more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb), attempting to blow up Mt. Fiji might have done some good, but not with a 'small' bomb.

The Mt. Saint Helens explosion in Washington State, USA, had the equivalent force of 400 megatons, about 16 times more powerful than the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated, and about 20,000 times more powerful than the larger of the WW2 nuclear weapons.

Not much would have happened to the mountain, and it is likely that no acceptable reaction (unconditional surrender) would have been given.

Steele

 

[unmerged(3902)]

Originally posted by Steele
I agree with Pcasey in this case.

Don't let it be a habit . It'd take all the fun out of the board if we all kept agreeing with one another all the time.

 

[w_mullender]

I will just state this: WW2 is one of the very few wars which had a complete moral justification. If the nazi regime or the japanese regime had been allowed any space for negotiation then imo the whole war would have been futile. If anyone doubts the evilness of the japanese regime I will refer him to the various accounts of the prison camps or massacres. I still find it hard to justify city levellings and I dont believe in "the end justifies the means", but this is one of those cases I have next to none moral objections.

 

[unmerged(11486)]

Originally posted by pcasey
Don't let it be a habit . It'd take all the fun out of the board if we all kept agreeing with one another all the time.

I'll try not to, although, I have been agreeing with Suvorov a lot lately...

Steele

 

[unmerged(14689)]

Originally posted by Steele
I'll try not to, although, I have been agreeing with Suvorov a lot lately...

Steele

I think I see a pattern here, Steele! You're getting soft! You must be in love or something and feel all fuzzy inside...

 

[Jove]

Not only with all these points made, but also. If your the US how do you justify all the resources and time sunk into the Manhatten project just to produce something you don't use.

People would say that you had basically built 10 carriers and kept them in port.

Anyone know the cost of research and production?

 

[unmerged(11486)]

Originally posted by Suvorov
I think I see a pattern here, Steele! You're getting soft! You must be in love or something and feel all fuzzy inside...

Hmmm. Tell that to my girlfriend, she'll think its great.

Jove: About 2 billion 1945 dollars, which works out to about 380-440 billion dollars today. One whole hell of a lot of money.

Steele

 

[Jove]

Originally posted by Steele
Hmmm. Tell that to my girlfriend, she'll think its great.

Jove: About 2 billion 1945 dollars, which works out to about 380-440 billion dollars today. One whole hell of a lot of money.

Steele

I am not sure anyone in the US now would advocate spending that much and then just shelving what you come up with.

 

[unmerged(3902)]

Originally posted by Jove
I am not sure anyone in the US now would advocate spending that much and then just shelving what you come up with.

We spent at least that much on strategic nuclear weapons during the cold war between R&D, launch platforms, warheads, and delivery systems and I don't think anyone has *ever* advocated we use them .

 

[Styrbiorn]

Originally posted by Tequila_powered
I say drop the first bomb on Mt Fuji first (ie in plain sight of Tokyo) to show that the bomb is real and ready and destructive (like the top cone of the revered Mt Fuji is gone). If the Japanese still refuse to surrender after that, by all means drop the second and whatever's in production onto Jap for all we care....

Not very smart - you wouldn't be able to convince anyone that it was anything but a regular volcanic eruption

 

[unmerged(11486)]

Originally posted by Styrbiorn
Not very smart - you wouldn't be able to convince anyone that it was anything but a regular volcanic eruption

Except, as I said earlier, the explosion of the bomb would appear to be an incredibly small volcanic eruption, and with no physical damage to anything, and am explosion that appears to be small, why would they surrender?

Steele

 

[phelbas]

Would there not be a massive blinding flash, followed by a mushroom cloud over mount Fuji if we had nuked it? It would still have lacked the effect of destroying a city but i think it would have been different to a volcanic eruption?

 

[unmerged(11486)]

Yes, the mechanics of a nuclear explosion and a volcanic eruption are very different. The point I was trying to make was that the bombs available were so very much weaker than the force of a single eruption, that there would be little to no effect noticed by people, and what would be noticed would be likely written off as a small volcanic eruption.

Steele

 

[unmerged(3902)]

Yeah, it's not like a little popgun 18k nuke is going to make much of an impact on something as solid as a mountain. Even a 1960s era city buster (about 40 MT), isn't remotely strong enough to do any significant damage to a mountain. The kind of volcanic eruptions that blow the tops off mountains are literally hundreds or thousands of times more powerful than the hiroshima bomb.

The problem I always see with the "well, we should have demonstrated the bomb first" argument is basically this:

What if we'd demonstrated the bomb and the Japanese had said "thank you for the demonstration. Now if you'd care to invade mainland Japan, we'll give you a demonstration of how defensible the island is?"

In other words what if we demonstrated and *the Japanese hadn't surrendered*?

The common counter is, well, *then* you nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but at least you gave them a chance to surrender, thus seizing the moral high ground.

The problem with this is twofold.

1) The US physically didn't have enough bombs to do a demonstration and then subsequently nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki. At the time of the bombings, the US had all of two bombs and used them both. The third was some months away.

2) Once you demonstrate the bomb, the cat is out of the bag, and the Japanese political class has the time to prepare their people, and their peers, for the psychological impact of being nuked, thus reducing the likelyhood that the second wave of bombings would work.

To demonstrate first is to gamble that the demonstration works. If it fails, you are far worse off than had you never demonstrated at all.

For better or for worse, the best chance to produce a Japanese surrender was the nuke them out of the blue *and give the impression we'd keep doing it*. It was shock and awe, 1945 style, and it worked.

To give a demonstration, or otherwise warn the Japanese of what was coming would have reduce it's psychological impact when ultimately used.

 

[unmerged(11486)]

We could have waited until December, then dropped a demonstration, and still nuked the two cities, but the war needed to be over quickly. Waiting three or more months, when a weapon to possibly end the war immediately was available would have been bad.

EDIT: I posted this earlier. The Mt. Saint Helens Eruption had about 20,000 times the explosive force of the Nagasaki (Plutonium) bomb, which was itself somewhat larger than the Hiroshima (Uranium) bomb.

Steele

 

[unmerged(16470)]

Originally posted by pcasey

1) The US physically didn't have enough bombs to do a demonstration and then subsequently nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki. At the time of the bombings, the US had all of two bombs and used them both. The third was some months away.

2) Once you demonstrate the bomb, the cat is out of the bag, and the Japanese political class has the time to prepare their people, and their peers, for the psychological impact of being nuked, thus reducing the likelyhood that the second wave of bombings would work.

To demonstrate first is to gamble that the demonstration works. If it fails, you are far worse off than had you never demonstrated at all.

For better or for worse, the best chance to produce a Japanese surrender was the nuke them out of the blue *and give the impression we'd keep doing it*. It was shock and awe, 1945 style, and it worked.

To give a demonstration, or otherwise warn the Japanese of what was coming would have reduce it's psychological impact when ultimately used.

1) The third may be months away but US had the time in the world. The Japanese were going no where. Unless you want to argue that US was under time pressure to get Japan to surrender before the Soviets grab more..... in which case, antinuclear folks (which I am not) would seize upon your argument and go "Ah Ha! So the bombing was a political thingy to stop the reds, over the dead bodies of civilians".

2) The "shock and awe" came with the realisation that you (be you an Iraqi or Japanese) were unable to do shit about it, just to sit there and take the hits over and over again. So
letting the cat out of the bag" would not figure much, especially when the civillians saw for themselves everyday the B29s roaming freely daily over Japan.

But all these hindsights apart, there seems to be lack of any governmental documents that showed any attempt for detailed deliberations for the pros/cons of a warning drop.

 

[unmerged(16470)]

Dropping the bomb on Fuji was not to destroy the mountain (heaven forbids killing an innocent mountain hehe). It is to be a demo. Fuji can be seen from Tokyo, esp more so in the ol days before smog. For the inhabitants of Tokyo (and esp more so the inhabitants of the Imperial Palace who would figure prominently in the historical tug-of-war between the two parties after the two bomb drops), I don't see how they could see the blinding flash and the towering plume of dust and not think about the power of the bomb?

 

[unmerged(11486)]

Mt. Fuji can be seen from Tokyo, but it is almost 100 miles, and these are not the dreaded city-buster bombs of the cold war. People might see the mushroom cloud and the flash, and they might not. Why waste a shot for something that probably would accomplish nothing?

As for wanting to expedite the end of the war, of course it has a little to do with the Russians, but Truman told Stalin not to invade Hokkaido, and Stalin backed down. The main reason for wanting to end the war was to bring the troops home, to end the rationing, to go back to a peacetime footing. People wanted the end, at they were going to get it.

Steele

 

[unmerged(16470)]

Regardless of distance, you can definitely see it from Tokyo. Well, I can. Even today in in smog-Tokyo, when weather is fine, you can see the snow-covered top of Fuji. But Fuji is just as example. If you think Tokyo is too far to be seen, hell, throw the demo somewhere closer in farmland somewhere near Tokyo then

It is not to accomplish nuthing. Like I say, it's will defang most anti-nuclear anti-war anti-anything about US being trigger-happy when the lives are not Americans. And again, it could have had same effect on the Emperor and the peace faction as the first bomb actually did? Why would you think otherwise? If Truman admin had debated the pros-and-cons about it and decided to go ahead without warning, fine. My beef is just that they didnt deliberate, my beef is not against the bombing on the cities itself.

Ok, you and I agree that it was not to prevent Uncle Joe from stepping in. Then that goes back to one of my rebuttal, what's the hurry?? Nazi Germany was toast in May. Japan was on defensive everywhere. The Allies could just sit back and kept throwing Abombs wo Olympic if so required. So what's the hurry and the argument about the third bomb being few months away?

 

[w_mullender]

Originally posted by Tequila_powered
Ok, you and I agree that it was not to prevent Uncle Joe from stepping in. Then that goes back to one of my rebuttal, what's the hurry?? Nazi Germany was toast in May. Japan was on defensive everywhere. The Allies could just sit back and kept throwing Abombs wo Olympic if so required. So what's the hurry and the argument about the third bomb being few months away?

Sorry for not quoting the entire post but just the part I am responding to
I think the main consideration was to annihilate the axis as fast as possible. No remnants of those regimes should be allowed. If Truman would have slowed down chances are that domestically he would have been forced to accept a non-absolute surrender. That would have been totally immoral (and also contra the atlantic charter). In no way the Japanese should have the idea that anything less than an unconditional surrender would suffice.

If there has ever been a just war, it must be WW2 in which the allies vowed to end the most evil regimes (not only practically, but also ideologically) which have ever existed. Therefore I feel that even though imo it was a war crime it was also the oe and only step to take.