If you were Truman...

[phelbas]

Originally posted by w_mullender

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.

Fought to eliminate the evil regimes while allied to the most evil one of all. hardly the greatest moral stance taken was it. Plus they did it for the protection of their own intrests aswell, not just out of a duty to defend what was right. America din't feel the need to get directly involved until after Pearl harbour and britain anf france avoided war until Hitler took too much. And our conduct in the war included the complete aniahlation of cites from the air, with the immence causaulties that resulted.

There is no such thing as a "just" war, it is a complete contradiction. WW2 was a necessary war, one that we had to fight and win for our own survival.

 

[w_mullender]

Originally posted by phelbas
Fought to eliminate the evil regimes while allied to the most evil one of all. hardly the greatest moral stance taken was it. Plus they did it for the protection of their own intrests aswell, not just out of a duty to defend what was right. America din't feel the need to get directly involved until after Pearl harbour and britain anf france avoided war until Hitler took too much. And our conduct in the war included the complete aniahlation of cites from the air, with the immence causaulties that resulted.

There is no such thing as a "just" war, it is a complete contradiction. WW2 was a necessary war, one that we had to fight and win for our own survival.

I am not gonna discuss communism/fascism, but I will just say that at least the ideology isnt evil.
Point is you can critisise as much as you want on the allies, but the fact remains that after they entered they had the absolute morality on their side. That hasnt happened much throughout history.

 

[phelbas]

Originally posted by w_mullender
I am not gonna discuss communism/fascism, but I will just say that at least the ideology isnt evil.
Point is you can critisise as much as you want on the allies, but the fact remains that after they entered they had the absolute morality on their side. That hasnt happened much throughout history.

Of course if Hitler and the Nazis had won, history would say they were right and had morality on their side when they chrushed the USSR and exterminated the Jews. The Allies fought because they had to for their own survial. It was a neccesity, it doesn't make it just or moral. I'm not condeming the allies in WW2, i just don't see any need to make it out that we were some sort of moral crusaders who did nothing wrong.

 

[unmerged(3902)]

Originally posted by phelbas
Of course if Hitler and the Nazis had won, history would say they were right and had morality on their side when they chrushed the USSR and exterminated the Jews. The Allies fought because they had to for their own survial. It was a neccesity, it doesn't make it just or moral. I'm not condeming the allies in WW2, i just don't see any need to make it out that we were some sort of moral crusaders who did nothing wrong.

Some things are horribly wrong, no matter who writes the history. The systemic murder of six million people being one of them.

To claim that our current revulsion towards the Nazi regime is somehow situational strikes me as the worst sort of moral reletivism and historical revisionism.

Have you actually *been* to Aushwitz? Go there and then tell me the Nazi's were only wrong because they lost the war.

 

[unmerged(11486)]

And if your aunt had balls, then she'd be your uncle.

Steele

 

[unmerged(16470)]

Originally posted by w_mullender
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.

Hey, I agree with unconditional surrender but still, how sure are you that the delay of the few months for the third bomb (assuming the first was used up as demo) to come online would allow US domestic opinion to swing to anti-war? Especially if US held off Olympic until the third abomb had been dropped? After May, if US did not invade anymore islands, American casualties would be minimal. From existing facts, by May, Jap fighters were few (most kept husbanded for Olympic) and the few that came out mostly stayed far away from the bomber fleet.

 

[w_mullender]

Originally posted by Tequila_powered
Hey, I agree with unconditional surrender but still, how sure are you that the delay of the few months for the third bomb (assuming the first was used up as demo) to come online would allow US domestic opinion to swing to anti-war? Especially if US held off Olympic until the third abomb had been dropped? After May, if US did not invade anymore islands, American casualties would be minimal. From existing facts, by May, Jap fighters were few (most kept husbanded for Olympic) and the few that came out mostly stayed far away from the bomber fleet.

Well "pausing" would give the public the impression things arent going swell. Just look at current Iraq-approval-ratings which have dropped considerablyin a couple of months.

 

[Jools]

Dropping the bomb had two good sides

1) The surrender of Japan with minimum casualties

&

2) Made Stalin discard his plan to invade Europe

 

[unmerged(16470)]

Originally posted by w_mullender
Well "pausing" would give the public the impression things arent going swell. Just look at current Iraq-approval-ratings which have dropped considerablyin a couple of months.

but but there would not be any pause. Olympic supposed to kick in in Nov, right. Play around with bomb schedule. for example (or use your own schedule if you like) demo drop in Aug as per real life date. then follow with another bomb drop in Aug as per real life but on city target, then in sept, continue with more bomb drops as per production below.......

Quote
Atomic bombs of the Fat Man or plutonium type were already in production. The first had been tested at Alamogordo in July; the second had been available on Tinian on August 1 and was dropped on Nagasaki. The third could have been available on Tinian by late August. Possibly three more could have been ready in September, And the production rate was expected to increase to seven or more per month by December 1945. The Little Boy uranium bombs were more difficult to produce. The first was dropped on Hiroshima, and a second would have been ready by the end of the year. The bomb-production schedule could have put numerous atomic bombs in General MacArthur's invasion arsenal. Groves's principal deputy,Brigadier General Kenneth D. Nichols, later recalled that "If the landings actually took place, we might supply fifteen atomic bombs to support the troops.
Unquote

The source is a memoradum from George L. Harrison (Secretary of Interim Committee) to the Secretary of War, Tripartite Conference, Babelsburg, Germany, 1945 (National Archives)

And US was quite confident on the bomb production output that they were planning to also use it tactically besides strategic city bombing......

"In 1957, Marshall gave some details of his invasion plans for the atomic bomb:

"There were three corps to come in there [to invade Japan], as I recall. ...there were to be three bombs for each corps that was landing. One or two, but probably one, as a preliminary, then this landing, then another one further inland against the immediate supports, and then the third against any troops that might try to come through the mountains from up on the Inland Sea. That was the rough idea in our minds." (Bland, George C. Marshall: Interviews and Reminiscences for Forrest C. Pogue, pg. 424).

 

[phelbas]

Originally posted by pcasey
Some things are horribly wrong, no matter who writes the history. The systemic murder of six million people being one of them.

To claim that our current revulsion towards the Nazi regime is somehow situational strikes me as the worst sort of moral reletivism and historical revisionism.

Have you actually *been* to Aushwitz? Go there and then tell me the Nazi's were only wrong because they lost the war.

Funny i would say the complete aniahlation of german and japanese cities by aerial bombardment, resulting in huge civillian casualties, would be moraly wrong. but the allies were unlikely to charge their own with war crimes were they. It is like during cold war and the present day, what is right and wrong depends on wether you are allied to the US or not.

And if Germany had one the war, it's view would have been enforced on everyone else. Hitler had got the german people to accept what was happening either through indoctrination or fear, the same would have been done to the other people under nazi rule.

 

[w_mullender]

Originally posted by phelbas
Funny i would say the complete aniahlation of german and japanese cities by aerial bombardment, resulting in huge civillian casualties, would be moraly wrong. but the allies were unlikely to charge their own with war crimes were they. It is like during cold war and the present day, what is right and wrong depends on wether you are allied to the US or not.

And if Germany had one the war, it's view would have been enforced on everyone else. Hitler had got the german people to accept what was happening either through indoctrination or fear, the same would have been done to the other people under nazi rule.

The difference being as already pointed out that the Nazi regime and Japanese regime had institutionalised mass murder as part of their policy. If Germany had won the death count wouldnt have stopped at 6 million in the concentration camps.
And mind you the allies werent the ones who started city bombings on pure civilian targets.
I am not saying that the city bombing by the allies was good and in some of the cases I consider them a war crime, but with the exception of Dresden I think on balance they saved lives and were necessary to win the war and rid the world of that evil.

 

[unmerged(10262)]

Originally posted by w_mullender

And mind you the allies werent the ones who started city bombings on pure civilian targets.
I am not saying that the city bombing by the allies was good and in some of the cases I consider them a war crime, but with the exception of Dresden I think on balance they saved lives and were necessary to win the war and rid the world of that evil.

Thats a new one The allied city bombing of Germany saved life...

 

[unmerged(3902)]

Originally posted by knott
Thats a new one The allied city bombing of Germany saved life...

I'm not sure if it's accurate, but in the calculus of war such a statement is no the absurdity you imply.

The purpose of the allied strategic bombing campaign wasn't the killing of German civilians. It was the reduction of the third reich's industrial output.

This could be achieved either by physically bombing industrial plants, or by, yes, killing industrial workers.

In either case, the goal was to take a German state which was producing, say 100 tanks a week, and attrit its industrial capacity to the state where it made, say, 35 tanks a week.

If the Germans produced less munitions, the allied armies had to face less munitions, thus *saving lives*.

Likewise, Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed some 80,000 Japanese. How many Japanese would have died in an actual ground invasion? If you use Okinawa as a baseline where the Japanese lost about 25% of the civilian population, you'd have losses on the home islands of about 18 *million* civilians.

The way you save lives is to win the war. Fast decisive wars almost never achieve the casualty counts of the longer affairs.

 

[unmerged(18920)]

Here's a little food for thought. Less than a year after the bombings an extensive official study by the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey concluded that Japan would have likely surrendered in 1945 even if the U.S. had never dropped the Atomic Bomb, but it went further than this and even stated that Japan would have likely surrendered even if the Soviets had not entered the war or even if the U.S. had never invaded...

Also as far as the moral superiority argument. Here are a few quotes from the Commission on the Relation of the Church to the War in Light of the Christian Faith, Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America from March 1946...

"The surprise bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are morally indefensible..."

"Both bombings, morever, must be judged to have been unnecessary for winning the war..."

"As the power that first used the atomic bomb under these circumstances, we have sinned grievously against the laws of God and against the people of Japan."

 

[unmerged(9600)]

Originally posted by Krivitsky
Here's a little food for thought. Less than a year after the bombings an extensive official study by the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey concluded that Japan would have likely surrendered in 1945 even if the U.S. had never dropped the Atomic Bomb, but it went further than this and even stated that Japan would have likely surrendered even if the Soviets had not entered the war or even if the U.S. had never invaded...

Well then why didn't they? They sure weren't making surrender noises when they fought to the last man, woman and child on Okinawa. There was no broadcast "We surrender, please don't hurt us." If Japan was oh so willing to surrender, why didn't they?

Also as far as the moral superiority argument. Here are a few quotes from the Commission on the Relation of the Church to the War in Light of the Christian Faith, Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America from March 1946...

"The surprise bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are morally indefensible..."

"Both bombings, morever, must be judged to have been unnecessary for winning the war..."

"As the power that first used the atomic bomb under these circumstances, we have sinned grievously against the laws of God and against the people of Japan."

Religions have absolutely zero credibility when discussing what is neccessary in times of war. For one thing, they have a history of mass slaughter far beyond anything the atom bombs did. For another, they simply don't understand that some souls can't be saved, and some men can't be reached. To take the word of a council of churches that the bombings were unneccessary to win the war is quite simply illogical. I don't trust churches to interfere in my government, why would I trust them to interfere in the most important field of human endeavour, war?

In short, a bunch of contemporary people saying that nuking Japan was bad are no better than modern people who are against the bombs. They cry for the dead Japanese, forgetting all of the victims of Imperial Japan, and why that regime had to be defeated.

 

[w_mullender]

Originally posted by pcasey
I'm not sure if it's accurate, but in the calculus of war such a statement is no the absurdity you imply.

The purpose of the allied strategic bombing campaign wasn't the killing of German civilians. It was the reduction of the third reich's industrial output.

This could be achieved either by physically bombing industrial plants, or by, yes, killing industrial workers.

In either case, the goal was to take a German state which was producing, say 100 tanks a week, and attrit its industrial capacity to the state where it made, say, 35 tanks a week.

If the Germans produced less munitions, the allied armies had to face less munitions, thus *saving lives*.

Likewise, Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed some 80,000 Japanese. How many Japanese would have died in an actual ground invasion? If you use Okinawa as a baseline where the Japanese lost about 25% of the civilian population, you'd have losses on the home islands of about 18 *million* civilians.

The way you save lives is to win the war. Fast decisive wars almost never achieve the casualty counts of the longer affairs.

What he says plus the psychological impact on the population. Remember it was fun in 1940 to support the Totaler Krieg, but much less so in 1944.

 

[unmerged(16470)]

Originally posted by Krivitsky
Here's a little food for thought. Less than a year after the bombings an extensive official study by the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey concluded that Japan would have likely surrendered in 1945 even if the U.S. had never dropped the Atomic Bomb, but it went further than this and even stated that Japan would have likely surrendered even if the Soviets had not entered the war or even if the U.S. had never invaded...

USSBS also concluded in support of the non-atomic bombing campaign -

"Allied airpower was decisive in the war in western Europe...Its power and superiority made possible the success of the invasion. It brought the economy which sustained the enemy's armed forces to virtual collapse, although the full effects of this collapse had not reached the enemy's front lines when they were overrun by Allied forces. It brought home to the German people the full impact of modern war, with all its horror and suffering. Its imprint on the German nation will be lasting"

as stated by pcasey

 

[Darkrenown]

Originally posted by pcasey
Likewise, Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed some 80,000 Japanese. How many Japanese would have died in an actual ground invasion? If you use Okinawa as a baseline where the Japanese lost about 25% of the civilian population, you'd have losses on the home islands of about 18 *million* civilians.

The losses would probably be even higher since they would be fighting on the actual home island and it's the final battle of the war. There were plans to arm civillians with every spare gun that could be produced and give spears or suicide bombs to everyone else.

 

[Darkrenown]

Originally posted by Tequila_powered
USSBS also concluded in support of the non-atomic bombing campaign -

"Allied airpower was decisive in the war in western Europe...Its power and superiority made possible the success of the invasion.

Sure an invasion would have succeded, but only with massive casualties to both sides. Many more would die than the 80,000 the 2 A-bombs killed, how would that be better?

 

[unmerged(16470)]

Originally posted by Darkrenown
Sure an invasion would have succeded, but only with massive casualties to both sides. Many more would die than the 80,000 the 2 A-bombs killed, how would that be better?

Hey hey, you misread me I'm in support of the abombs. I was just showing that USSBS concluded opposite of those who tot strategic bombing per se was wrong.