I think is was clear to everyone in July of 1945 that Japan would have to surrender soon. My view is that the atomic bombings were the way to make it happen with the fewest (i.e. zero) US casualties. It probably also minimized Japanese casualties, but we'll never really know.
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Because two was all it took to get an unconditional surrender? Are you trying to make a slippery slope argument that two nukes being justified would justify nuking everyone?
I don't want to speak for Arilou, but you are back to the question of the atomic bombings, so:
If you think it was stupid, then how would you have ended the war if you were in their shoes?
My understanding is that that was the plan. The US had a third bomb almost ready to go. And the reactor online at the time was projected to provide enough for three additional bombs. The plan was to bomb Japanese cities until Japan surrendered.
Terrifyingly horrible, yes. But don't forget that these people had been fighting a war for four years (six for the Europeans). The war had already claimed over 50 million lives, most of them innocent women and children. They wanted to end the war as quickly as possible. They felt that this was the way to end it with the fewest casualties - cruel arithmetic indeed.
If you think it was stupid, then how would you have ended the war if you were in their shoes?
For them. Few causalities for them. Any pretending they did care for the Japanese population is sheer hypocrisy and hindsight. "Kill enough people and the soldiers will be so depressed that they won't shoot us back" was exactly the plan.
As for the justify nuking everyone, well, I think I didn't imagine McArthur's plan to nuke China within the Korean War. Or the ideas for nuking Vietnam a decade later. And the reasoning after that ideas and plans was exactly "hey, it worked last time".
And If they weren't used it was because the military feared the USSR would nuke them back, not just for "humanitarian" reasons.
Not my problem, I don't have to explain why NOT nuking civilians is a bad idea and I remain unconvinced.
Slippery what? There was no limitation except technical ones. They could have dropped a third one or a fourth one just for being extra sure.
As for the justify nuking everyone, well, I think I didn't imagine McArthur's plan to nuke China within the Korean War. Or the ideas for nuking Vietnam a decade later. And the reasoning after that ideas and plans was exactly "hey, it worked last time".
And If they weren't used it was because the military feared the USSR would nuke them back, not just for "humanitarian" reasons.
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Without a doubt the primary purpose was to save american lives. (which is understandable, and remember, Japan had started the war, it was not as if they were innocent victims of american aggression here) but in the end it probably ended up saving japanese lives anyway, just as a side effect of ending the war quicker.
EDIT: Remember, the war was still ongoing. Japanese soldiers were still murdering civilians all over asia, including the chinese mainland. It's not just a matter of japanese civilians here.
In neither case were nukes used so apparently there wasn't a slippery slope. If anything the example of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has deterred future use.
Because they were afraid nukes were used against them. Had the USSR not had nukes... bye, bye, Beijing or Hanoi.
To Keep on destroying cities was indeed the plan, only with incendiary bombs instead of nukes.
US bomber command had destroyed so many cities by the end of the war they were running out of targets.
US bomber command had destroyed so many cities by the end of the war they were running out of targets.
In 1953 the USSR had no capacity to deliver nukes to the US. MAD was a later development. I'm still not seeing what you meant by "Then, why stopping nuking? Devastate the whole Japanese Empire with nuclear bombs, it's the only way they can be really sure nobody is making weapons anymore."
I don't think very many people in the US during WW II cared very much about Japanese civilian casualties; given that Japan had started the war, especially since they started the war with a surprise attack before they had even declared war. Despite the lack of concern, the US wasn't specifically targeting civilians; they were trying to destroy the cities that housed Japan's military industry. It was an effort to demoralize everyone in Japan (not just the military) and to force the Japanese government to surrender.
If you are going to post on a thread about the justification of dropping the atomic bombs to bring the war to an end, call the bombing stupid, then offer no alternative means of ending the war; then how do you expect anyone to take your opinion on this subject seriously?
The US wasn't simply nuking civilians; they were at war with Japan and were destroying Japanese cities that contained military targets (industry, bases, army units and air force units). The civilians were just innocent bystanders. It was an effort to force the Japanese government to end the war by surrendering. I think we can all agree that ending the war was a good idea.
And again that line of reasoning means that conclusions like "the air campaign significantly contributed to ending the war" can be dismissed as opinion also. In which case you need to start defending all strategic bombing again because a lot of it was frankly done in the most stupid way possible.
Hindsight is fine. Hiding assessments and pretending they are suddenly just opinion is by contrast revisionism. There was in fact many assessments even as early as 1946 that the bombing was a huge mistake. Fifty years have been spent denying these facts. Indeed, it's rather ironic that you challenge me to "prove" it was a mistake when your very first act was - with no evidence or cause - your dismissal of the evidence showing it was a mistake.
Again, those discussions are all based on a lie. The original estimate was the one I linked. There was no further study showing 500,000. It was invented entirely based on a handful of quotes by Truman.
That you pretend there is a "debate" on the casualty figures and once again ignore the actual primary documents showing the real estimates is indicative of how much actual "denial" there is in Western history that they constantly project on other countries.
You are arguing in bad faith by ignoring the fact I said that the Soviet invasion of Manchuria would have been sufficient to force a surrender. Then you repeat the lie that the US ground invasion would have resulted in 500,000 casualties.
This is precisely the sort of blatant historical denial that I am speaking of. You are so wedded to believing the lies your government created to justify the bombing that you play theoretical games based on these lies rather than the real facts. Indeed, you outright dismissed the real facts and still insisted on the righteousness of your position.
Again, two very simple and real facts: Japan would have likely surrendered after the Soviet invasion of Manchuria regardless, and even an actual US invasion would not have resulted in 500,000 casualties. That you ignore these two facts and pretend there's still no evidence to show the bombing could be a mistake is simply the same sort of "war crime denial" that guilty American and British consciences regularly foist on the Japanese.
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It's all very well and good until you realize that Harris was an idiot whose bombers were almost always unable to deliver a "whirlwind". Maybe it had something to do with how he ordered his crews to bomb at night - even after American fighters had largely cleared the daytime skies of German fighters - so that bombers were regularly hitting the wrong targets or empty fields by mistake all the time.
And all this because he was obsessed with a deliberate policy of targeting civilians under the guise of "area-bombing" to prove his demented fantasy that strategic bombers could win a war on its own without the need for fighters or ground forces.
People should really stop quoting British idiots who spend a lot and time and effort plagiarizing "inspiring" quotations to hide acts of outright military incompetence. Harris was a man-child who needed to grow up from his own childish delusions about effective strategic bombing, and that such a man-child was left in charge of the British bombers was a big reason why the whole thing was controversial and arguably bankrupted the British economy for very little gain.
Look at it again. This thread is called "why some people think the bombing was unjustified". I have told my reasons why.
Nope. It was an effort to shock the Japanese government by causing an unprecedented destruction and loss of civilians lives. It didn't matter what Hiroshima or Nagasaki's factories did.
Ending the war, of course it was a good idea. Targeting civilians in order to that, no so much good idea.
Just to be extra sure: I am not American, nor German, or Japanese. My country was (somewhat) neutral during WW2. I feel no need to justify anything and I feel sincerely horrified at the mere idea of "punishing the civilian population".
Neither the destruction nor the loss of civilian life was unprecedented. As mentioned earlier in this thread the firebombing of Tokyo was much worse. The unprecedented part was how easy it was and the implied threat that it could be done on a much larger scale and truly inflict unprecedented deaths if Japan didn’t surrender.
And yet why was the Tokyo firebombing less controversial? Why did Tokyo fire-bombing victims sue to the Japanese government in the 2000s for "failing to end the war" rather than blame the Americans?
Indeed, we see the same thing in Europe where the Hamburg bombing was far more destructive and yet there was no outcry like in Dresden.
The reason - though I doubt partisan participants would admit to it - was because the war was clearly not won yet when Tokyo and Hamburg were bombed.
By contrast Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Dresden were all bombed when the war was pretty much clearly won already. In the case of Dresden it was clearly thought by many quarters in Bomber Command that it was supposed to be a "show of force" against the Russians rather than something they did because it would "end the war sooner". For Hiroshima / Nagasaki the fact that the Japanese government might have surrendered to the Soviets is perennially ignored.
Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Dresden might not have been war crimes, but it could definitely be argued that they were little more than acts of spite. And really the reaction of a lot of people defending Hiroshima/Nagasaki in this thread tells me that they would react rather poorly if such an act of spite was instead inflicted on them.
You yourself have written in this thread that there were other motives behind all three bombings (a message to the Soviets) so even if we ignore the possibility that they were actually intended to shorten the war, they still weren’t ”acts of spite”. If done today they would probably be judged as war crimes but I tend to give the Allied command some slack due to being on the defending side in a war that had already killed 50+ million people.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki would probably be controversial even if they proved to be essential to ending the war, due to their very nature as the first and only use of nukes in war.
Then why didn't they? Again. It's not as if the US didn't keep pressuring them. The fact is, the Japanese did not surrender after the invasion of Manchuria. They did not surrender despite warnings from the US government. They did not surrender after the first atomic bomb even. And even after the second bomb they still faced an attemped coup.
The Japanese had ample opportunity to surrender. They didn't. Was the atomic bombs the deciding factor? Hard to say, but it was, at least, a reasonable decision based on availible information.
Agreed. The focus today is on the level of destruction the nuclear bombs caused, but the lesson at the time for Japan was that this was an attack that they had no defense for at all. With a mass carpet bombing or strategic bombing mission, bombers had to attack en masse, there were engine trails to spot, time to raise the alarm, time to scramble fighters, etc. One lone bomber was almost impossible to spot with the technology of the day, especially because Japanese radar was a little behind the rest of the great powers and Japanese infrastructure had suffered under the bombings that had already taken place.
The overall efffect was a weapon that it was virtually impossible for Japan to defend against, that could neutralize whole cities with the dropping of a single bomb from an altitude where surface guns were useless, the bomber couldn't be spotted and there wasn't even time to evacuate people to shelters. There was no defense at all, no way to even mitigate the damage, nothing the military could even try to do to protect its people or prevent the attack.
The message is clear. You are defenseless. We can destroy your cities one at a time, at our leisure, using a weapon you can't counter or protect yourselves from. Now about those terms of surrender...
There have been a lot more recent scholarship on the topic that indicates that the generals, in deliberating surrender, didn't mention, or barely mentioned the use of the bomb, but highly weighed the intervention of the soviets in their theater, thus negating the possibility of a soviet-brokered conditional surrender. A lot of this is newer historigraphy, (within the last 20-30 years IIRC) so you might not be as aware of it. So that's the argument that had Truman just waited they would have surrendered anyway.
In addition, there is an argument that he could have attempted to demonstrate the bomb in an unpopulated area to invoke fear rather than use it as on a city.
That's why some people argue that.