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Junkyard Poodle posted:Agreed, but I just want to know how unethical on a relative basis vs an absolute. I have a finite amount of shame I can feel, so I want to properly attribute it to each warcrime of WWII. If its that limited to the best solution would be to focus your shame solely on your own culture because that's the only one you have a stake in
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Aug 7, 2015 17:51
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Popular Thug Drink posted:to be honest i'm not reading your posts that closely as soon as you start questioning the mental abilities of the japanese given how many people itt are evoking battaltions of schoolgirls banzai charging the beachhead etc. They're not irrational in the sense they act randomly or the like. They're irrational in the sense that all people are irrational and are prone to the same biases as any other person. People do not make decisions based on coldly weighing the options and going with the best one in nearly as many situations as we'd like. They certainly do not in a situation where your decisions have led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of your countrymen (creating a sunk cost issue) and personal honor is at stake. Hell, just look at the Republican debate from last night, where Jeb Bush was forced to chose between admitting the people who died in Iraq died for a mistake, and admitting the Iraq war was a mistake, and how much trouble he's had threading that needle. People double-down when they've made an error, they take bad risks to try to get back to even they'd never take without that sunk cost. Understanding those motivations is critical to understanding historical figures. Looking at a government in a crisis like the end of a losing war as a unified rational whole will get you nowhere in understanding it. That's why I view the FP's article as explaining why the bombs were so useful to blame for Japan's defeat as missing the point - it's precisely because of that they helped end the war, because they offered a political lever not just between the government and its people, but between the pro-surrender and anti-surrender people in the government itself. And hell, even just giving people an internal reason to step down from their personal commitment to the war. I basically view the Japanese strategic position before the bombings and before the USSR as utterly untenable. They had no way to win, or even force an honorable peace. But one of the thin reeds of hope they were clinging to was that perhaps once the Americans invaded they'd be able to repel that, or make it so bloody that the Americans came to terms. This idea was insane - but it's the sort of insane gamble someone who has so completely lost sometimes makes, putting it all on a longshot to try to avoid losing. But the nuclear bombs effectively erased even that thin hope. This isn't a "the japs are so crazy" thing, this is people are people, even when they're leading a government, and they still make the same dumb decisions as anyone else. They don't become coldly rational just because they're important.
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Aug 7, 2015 17:52
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VitalSigns posted:Wait wait. If the terror campaigns aimed solely at destroying axis morale weren't justifiable, then how are the atomic bombings any different? Is it just because the atomic bombings (maybe) succeeded? Seems a bit strange to say that war crimes are okay if after you do them it turns out they worked. Like the unrestricted submarine warfare that the US engaged in in the Pacific? I mean that was absolutely a war crime with the officers that carried it out not only admitting it but also giving the German crews that did it in the Atlantic a pass on it after the war. This is a response to this as well: Chantilly Say posted:If it's justifiable it is by definition not a war crime. That's part of why we as a culture understand that winning nations cannot commit war crimes. That's not ideal but it's the reality we've been operating in since we failed to prosecute Bomber Command and the Eighth Air Force at the Nuremberg Trials.
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Aug 7, 2015 17:52
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Chantilly Say posted:If it's justifiable it is by definition not a war crime. That's part of why we as a culture understand that winning nations cannot commit war crimes. That's not ideal but it's the reality we've been operating in since we failed to prosecute Bomber Command and the Eighth Air Force at the Nuremberg Trials. I think this is confusing principles with practicality. Something can still be criminal even if a governing body lacks the ability to prosecute it. Realistically, the winner gets away with what the loser can't. But this is a debate of historical retrospect, actions matter more than consequences.
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Aug 7, 2015 17:54
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Bombing couldn't BE more accurate. That was it. You could possibly argue that they shouldn't have done it at all* once they realized how bad the CEP of a B-17 or Lancaster was, but there's very little room between bombing and bombing better. * The other unexplored alternative being the use of heavy bombers as tactical support aircraft.
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Aug 7, 2015 17:54
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evilweasel posted:This article is interesting. But there's one thing that makes it abundantly, obviously, flawed: it doesn't actually look at the surrender decision meetings, it doesn't consider the debates, it doesn't pay attention to a single thing said by the Japanese internally following the bombings. It relies entirely on ignoring, rather than crediting, the Japanese records of the internal debate to surrender. Why did it take Japan three days to surrender after Hiroshima, if the bomb was what caused them to do so? The Japanese government clearly knew that it was bombed merely hours after it had happened. The Japanese government didn't care about civilian casualties. Their only concern was the readiness of their army and navy. Tokyo was already a wasteland by the time Hiroshima was dropped. There was nothing left of it. It's one of the key reasons why it wasn't chosen as a target for the A-bomb. evilweasel posted:I have no doubt the USSR intervening was a gigantic worry for the Japanese - it's why getting the USSR to intervene was a major American priority. But if the Japanese government was coldly considering strategic realities they'd have surrendered well before: the Japanese strategic position was utterly untenable long before the USSR intervened and the Japanese knew it. As everyone mentioned in this thread prior, the Japanese had been considering for a long time to surrender and wanted a better deal than what the Americans had to offer. Their idea of getting a better bargain was inflicting serious American casualties first, which leads me to my next point. evilweasel posted:That's not unique to the Japanese either: the Nazis were still fighting long after it was clear they lost, until the Nazi leadership either ate a bullet or fled after the fall of Berlin. Anyone who tried to surrender or flee before risked getting executed by the die-hards. The Nazis were completely defeated military way before the Soviets made it to Berlin. The Eastern Front simply caused too many losses that they couldn't soak up. On the other hand, the Japanese were not utterly defeated military prior to the invasion of Manchuria. The article cites that Japan still had a well armed army of four million that they were already calling back to deal with a home invasion. evilweasel posted:The issue with surrender was never "well, what's the strategic considerations here, is victory still in sight". Victory was never in sight well before either the bombings or the USSR. It was if the pro-peace side could sieze control of the government. And even when they did surrender that was no sure thing: even after the bombings, even after the USSR entered the war, there was still an attempted coup by the military against the surrender.. And that's why the article is so badly flawed: it points to the reasons that it made sense for the Emperor to blame the surrender on the bombings. But that's precisely why the bombings mattered - they gave the pro-peace members of the government the chance to overthrow the war party. A mere worsening in the already hopeless strategic situation did not. The only thing that would have decreased the influence of the pro-war group within the council was if the Japanese military was humiliated in the field, which is what precisely Stalin did. Prior to this point, the Americans seriously struggled to make progress in the war and Truman was looking for a quick way out at every corner right after Germany surrendered.
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Aug 7, 2015 17:55
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evilweasel posted:They're not irrational in the sense they act randomly or the like. They're irrational in the sense that all people are irrational and are prone to the same biases as any other person. People do not make decisions based on coldly weighing the options and going with the best one in nearly as many situations as we'd like. They certainly do not in a situation where your decisions have led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of your countrymen (creating a sunk cost issue) and personal honor is at stake. so we should ignore the minutes of the japanese cabinet because we can't inherently trust that they are rational actors
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Aug 7, 2015 17:56
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VitalSigns posted:Wait wait. If the terror campaigns aimed solely at destroying axis morale weren't justifiable, then how are the atomic bombings any different? Is it just because the atomic bombings (maybe) succeeded? Seems a bit strange to say that war crimes are okay if after you do them it turns out they worked. Yes, that's basically correct. The justification isn't that they're not war crimes, it's that they were the best of a set of bad options. The terror bombing campaigns didn't work - but worse, they had clearly failed and were continued anyway. I can see an argument that in their initial stages they were justifiable even if they didn't work, but Bomber Harris simply ignored the evidence they failed and continued well after they should have ended. I mean seriously, the guy tried to undersupply the D-Day landings with bombers because he wanted to keep pulverizing German towns despite that it had become apparent that whatever civilians thought of Hitler at this point, their terror of the Nazi police state made it relatively irrelevant.
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Aug 7, 2015 17:57
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Mel Mudkiper posted:I think this is confusing principles with practicality. Something can still be criminal even if a governing body lacks the ability to prosecute it. Realistically, the winner gets away with what the loser can't. But this is a debate of historical retrospect, actions matter more than consequences. My point is that calling something a winning nation does a war crime is counterproductive because people's understanding is commonly that that can't be true. A winning nation commits crimes against jtself when it prosecutes a war in an immoral way.
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Aug 7, 2015 17:59
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evilweasel posted:Yes, that's basically correct. The justification isn't that they're not war crimes, it's that they were the best of a set of bad options. The terror bombing campaigns didn't work - but worse, they had clearly failed and were continued anyway. I can see an argument that in their initial stages they were justifiable even if they didn't work, but Bomber Harris simply ignored the evidence they failed and continued well after they should have ended. I mean seriously, the guy tried to undersupply the D-Day landings with bombers because he wanted to keep pulverizing German towns despite that it had become apparent that whatever civilians thought of Hitler at this point, their terror of the Nazi police state made it relatively irrelevant. They did work, though ---- you don't see any German uttering a stabbed in the back myth over WW2.
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Aug 7, 2015 18:00
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LGD posted:??? I'm not sure why my saying your demonstrated inability to read or comprehend the basic positions of the people you're arguing with in favor of making completely unsubstantiated implications of racism is undermining your credibility actually means I'm basing my understanding of history on some sort of bizarre gestalt of forums popularity and personal slights? yeah you're dinging me for not treating evilweasel's bad argument with enough respect which is a pretty dumb derail, which i can only assume is because i shamed you at some point or another there's no reason to assume the japanese government thought of the atomic bombs any differently in a real strategic since given that america had already amply demonstrated its capability to bomb any city it wanted into ashes. the part that confuses people is that the entry of a brand new participant into the war completely encircling japan came at the same time that america started using a historically important but not appreciably more destructive form of weapon
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Aug 7, 2015 18:00
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A Winner is Jew posted:Like the unrestricted submarine warfare that the US engaged in in the Pacific? I mean that was absolutely a war crime with the officers that carried it out not only admitting it but also giving the German crews that did it in the Atlantic a pass on it after the war. I think it's much more solid ground to say that submarine warfare had a useful military purpose than the bombing of Dresden did, but my understanding could be as wrong as anyone's.
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Aug 7, 2015 18:01
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My Imaginary GF posted:They did work, though ---- you don't see any German uttering a stabbed in the back myth over WW2. Because there was no 2nd Treaty of Versailles and the Germans had been thoroughly beaten in the field.
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Aug 7, 2015 18:02
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Chantilly Say posted:My point is that calling something a winning nation does a war crime is counterproductive because people's understanding is commonly that that can't be true. I am not sure if I agree with that assertion though. I don't think people as a majority believe the winners are incapable of committing war crimes. I think, at best, its that there is no considerable social pressure for them to acknowledge the crimes and its always easier to simply ignore how unpleasant they are. Take US actions in Latin America during the Cold War. Tell an average person about 9/11/73 or the United Fruit Company and they will go, "Oh yeah, horrible war crimes/violations of human rights". The only reason its not a common understanding is not the belief that US winning the Cold War makes them incapable of committing a War Crime, its that being the winner means no outside force obligates you to acknowledge them.
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Aug 7, 2015 18:02
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Popular Thug Drink posted:so we should ignore the minutes of the japanese cabinet because we can't inherently trust that they are rational actors So we should ignore the attempted coup?
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Aug 7, 2015 18:03
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Job Truniht posted:Because there was no 2nd Treaty of Versailles and the Germans had been thoroughly beaten in the field. The Germans were thoroughly beaten in the field in ww1, though. Firebombings made sure they would accept an unconditional surrender.
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Aug 7, 2015 18:04
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evilweasel posted:Yes, that's basically correct. The justification isn't that they're not war crimes, it's that they were the best of a set of bad options. The terror bombing campaigns didn't work - but worse, they had clearly failed and were continued anyway. I can see an argument that in their initial stages they were justifiable even if they didn't work, but Bomber Harris simply ignored the evidence they failed and continued well after they should have ended. I mean seriously, the guy tried to undersupply the D-Day landings with bombers because he wanted to keep pulverizing German towns despite that it had become apparent that whatever civilians thought of Hitler at this point, their terror of the Nazi police state made it relatively irrelevant. I see what you're saying, but where do you draw the line then? Back to the Madrid train bombings example: they successfully prompted a Spanish withdrawal from Iraq in 2004. Justified?
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Aug 7, 2015 18:05
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crabcakes66 posted:So we should ignore the attempted coup? a coup which was swiftly put down and accomplished none of its goals? i don't see what it has to do with anything, unless you can explain what a handful of disgruntled junior officers with no popular support has to do with the japanese government
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Aug 7, 2015 18:06
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evilweasel posted:I basically view the Japanese strategic position before the bombings and before the USSR as utterly untenable. They had no way to win, or even force an honorable peace. But one of the thin reeds of hope they were clinging to was that perhaps once the Americans invaded they'd be able to repel that, or make it so bloody that the Americans came to terms. This idea was insane - but it's the sort of insane gamble someone who has so completely lost sometimes makes, putting it all on a longshot to try to avoid losing. But the nuclear bombs effectively erased even that thin hope. It doesn't follow that nukes ereased that thin hope, because we know that they didn't. The documentation exists, and the Japanese high command didn't consider Hiroshima significant. What did erase that thin hope, however, was the USSR entering the war. We know that the Japanese basically had two slim hopes, the first one was, as you say, to make the US invasion so bloody that japan could get better terms, and the second one was that they could approach Stalin and have him broker a peace. This was basically the point of contention between the so-called war and peace parties in the Japanese cabinet. The nukes didn't factor into this because neither plan necessitated that Japan's cities stayed intact (and in fact those cities were already mostly leveled), but the USSR staying neutral most certainly did, because the second plan obviously was right out if the USSR declared war, and the first one necessitated that the entire Japanese army on the home islands was deployed in south and west Japan to fight off the US invasion. This left only a skeleton crew to hold the rest of Japan, and if the USSR attacked Hokkaido, Japan wouldn't have been able to fight them off, even given the sorry state of the USSR:s pacific fleet. If you had read that FP article that has been linked like four times already ITT you'd know this. So basically you're ignoring the perfectly sensible explanation for one that we know isn't true based on the documentary evidence. Why is this? EDIT: crabcakes66 posted:So we should ignore the attempted coup? By the way, why don't you explain why this attempted coup should be considered significant in the first place? Cerebral Bore fucked around with this message at 18:09 on Aug 7, 2015 |
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Aug 7, 2015 18:06
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crabcakes66 posted:So we should ignore the attempted coup? Yeah probably since it was just some mid-level officers with no support that was quickly suppressed and had no chance of actually overthrowing the government and running the country for another six months of total war?
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Aug 7, 2015 18:08
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My Imaginary GF posted:They did work, though ---- you don't see any German uttering a stabbed in the back myth over WW2. They didn't because they witnessed their cities defended by old men, children, and teenaged girls because that was all that was left, and then those people's storm divisions being slaughtered if they got anywhere near the Russians as they watched most of their country get conquered well before their government finally surrendered. In WWI, they watched their armies march home from some field in France having never witnessed them lose a battle.
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Aug 7, 2015 18:08
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JeffersonClay posted:I studied abroad in Beijing and had a great teacher who made a big deal about V-J day. I told him that there was a significant controversy about the morality of dropping the atomic bombs on Japan in the U.S. He looked at me like I was completely nuts. Whoa there chief.. There isn't a significant controversy in the US about the morality of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There is a small collection of morons who have it in their head that the way the US put an end to the most destructive war in the history of the world was the WORST THING EVER. And they just don't shut up. Because, you know, the countless Asian countries invaded by the Glorious Emperor were well treated, and frankly bombing a port of a non-evolved nation was justified because well... There were battleships docked there? I guess? We did the right thing. Most Americans will agree given the options we had. Which were: 1 - Continue a bombing campaign that had done nothing to force the surrender of the aggressor. 2 - Continue a bombing campaign while waging an invasion which would have resulted in unknown military and civilian casualties. 3 - Asking them really nicely to not be mean anymore. 4 - Prove that we not only had a weapon capable of destruction of an unimaginable level, but that we were willing to use it to force their surrender. 4 was the best option, it was the right option, and only a small number of pearl clutching guilt mongers cry about it.
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Aug 7, 2015 18:10
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Genocide Tendency posted:Whoa there chief.. oh good the racist genocide advocate is here to share what he learned on the history channel the soviets won the war against germany and the war against japan, sorry bro
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Aug 7, 2015 18:11
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My Imaginary GF posted:The Germans were thoroughly beaten in the field in ww1, though. The Allies had yet to even invade Germany before it surrendered. At the time they did, they still had ~2.5 million men in the field along the Hindenburg Line. The American entry into the war was sloppy, and the countries of France and Great Britain were also suffering from war exhaustion. No wonder the average German soldier in that time period felt cheated.
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Aug 7, 2015 18:11
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Popular Thug Drink posted:yeah you're dinging me for not treating evilweasel's bad argument with enough respect which is a pretty dumb derail, which i can only assume is because i shamed you at some point or another no, it's because your argumentation is really, really bad, and the notion that I would only point this out because you've doubtlessly owned me at some nameless point in the past and I've been nursing a grudge is laughably narcissistic nobody is asking you to treat bad arguments with undue respect, but when you respond to an argument predicated on the notion that the inherently fractious nature of bureaucracy leads to results that appear irrational and contradictory when you treat it as a unitary actor (as you do in this very post) by deliberately misinterpreting it as a racial slur, the only things you're making look bad are yourself and the arguments you're advancing (because you presumably can't defend them otherwise)
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Aug 7, 2015 18:12
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VitalSigns posted:I see what you're saying, but where do you draw the line then? Possibly, sure, but I don't have the information to hand to answer the question to my own satisfaction right now. But I suspect that even an answer of "possibly" is significant to you, so go ahead with that.
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Aug 7, 2015 18:13
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Popular Thug Drink posted:oh good the racist genocide advocate is here to share what he learned on the history channel Germany yes, Japan absofuckinglutely not. Russia had as much of an influence on Japans eventual surrender as the Allies did by opening up the Normandy front.
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Aug 7, 2015 18:14
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LGD posted:no, it's because your argumentation is really, really bad, and the notion that I would only point this out because you've doubtlessly owned me at some nameless point in the past and I've been nursing a grudge is laughably narcissistic uh i keep pointing out that if you look at what the japanese government was actually debating on august 9 it's pretty clear the USSR was the major trigger for ending the war, saying that this is all irrational to handwave how our magic bombs were actually important despite evidence to the contrary is not actually a good argument so i can see how you might get confused what is this universe i'm in where you can accuse me of poor argumentation just so long as you continue to ignore the actual points i'm making? i can only assume that you're got a bee in your bonnet about me otherwise you're just lashing out angrily for little to no reason at all and i'd like to give you more credit than that
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Aug 7, 2015 18:14
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Job Truniht posted:The Allies had yet to even invade Germany before it surrendered. At the time they did, they still had ~2.5 million men in the field along the Hindenburg Line. The American entry into the war was sloppy, and the countries of France and Great Britain were also suffering from war exhaustion. No wonder the average German soldier in that time period felt cheated. Nah, the Germans were in full retreat, the soldiers knew they were beaten and there were mutinies and desertions all over, that's part of the reason the Generals considered holding off the Entente hopeless. Stab-in-the-back was rear end-covering revisionism that happened years after the fact.
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Aug 7, 2015 18:14
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A Winner is Jew posted:Germany yes, Japan absofuckinglutely not. It's more accurate to say that the USSR invading was the immediate cause of Japan's surrender, but naturally it was not the only or even remotely close to the most significant cause.
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Aug 7, 2015 18:16
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A Winner is Jew posted:Germany yes, Japan absofuckinglutely not. The Russians just walked out of a campaign in Manchuria that lasted only two weeks and killed 100,000 Japanese in the field. That was a better victory, military, than anything the US accomplished against the Japanese until that point.
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Aug 7, 2015 18:16
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I'm really McLovin' how we went from "inaccurate carpet bombing didn't work" to "okay their economic output grew but yeah bombing made it slower than it would've been otherwise" to that whole line of discussion mysteriously being dropped entirely by the anti-bomb brigade  So if we prosecuted the war without strategic bombing, would Germany have gotten the nuke and used it in a more restrained way? Discuss.
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Aug 7, 2015 18:16
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This poster loves police brutality, but only when its against minorities!
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evilweasel posted:They didn't because they witnessed their cities defended by old men, children, and teenaged girls because that was all that was left, and then those people's storm divisions being slaughtered if they got anywhere near the Russians as they watched most of their country get conquered well before their government finally surrendered. In WWI, they watched their armies march home from some field in France having never witnessed them lose a battle. That was all that was left before we firebombed; in WW1, there were others left because we didn't firebomb. They witnessed the luftwaffe lose the battle and their homes destroyed. They knew they lost because we firebombed. If anything, we didn't firebomb enough.
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Aug 7, 2015 18:17
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Popular Thug Drink posted:oh good the racist genocide advocate is here to share what he learned on the history channel No. They didn't. Germany was forced to fight on multiple fronts, and had their infrastructure destroyed by US and British bombing campaigns. And you have no loving clue what happened in the pacific during WWII if you think the Soviets had anything significant to do with the fall of Japan.
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Aug 7, 2015 18:17
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evilweasel posted:They didn't because they witnessed their cities defended by old men, children, and teenaged girls because that was all that was left, and then those people's storm divisions being slaughtered if they got anywhere near the Russians as they watched most of their country get conquered well before their government finally surrendered. In WWI, they watched their armies march home from some field in France having never witnessed them lose a battle. Given the conditions that are necessary for the ascent of fascism and militarism, I'd wager that our decision to build Germany and Japan back up with huge capital injections after WW2 instead of charging them a whole bunch of gold and leaving their economy in shambles had more to do with it.
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Aug 7, 2015 18:18
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Genocide Tendency posted:And you have no loving clue what happened in the pacific during WWII if you think the Soviets had anything significant to do with the fall of Japan. yeah they often don't cover that on hirohito's henchmen or whatever, it doesn't play well with an american audience who like to think of the pacific as america's war
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Aug 7, 2015 18:19
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Job Truniht posted:The Russians just walked out of a campaign in Manchuria that lasted only two weeks and killed 100,000 Japanese in the field. That was a better victory, military, than anything the US accomplished against the Japanese until that point. We never faced 4 million Japanese on open plains. When we did face millions of Japanese in wooden plains, we burned them down. That's what firebombing was for. Also you loving forgot Midway. The only military victory in WW2 greater than the Battle of Midway has to be the atomic bombings of Japan.
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Aug 7, 2015 18:19
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Popular Thug Drink posted:so we should ignore the minutes of the japanese cabinet because we can't inherently trust that they are rational actors
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Aug 7, 2015 18:21
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rudatron posted:How much access did the US decision makers have to the japanese cabinet minutes? we aren't US decision makers in 1945, we are discussing the reasons japan surrendered, in 2015, who have access to this information
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Aug 7, 2015 18:21
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My Imaginary GF posted:That was all that was left before we firebombed; in WW1, there were others left because we didn't firebomb. They witnessed the luftwaffe lose the battle and their homes destroyed. They knew they lost because we firebombed. If anything, we didn't firebomb enough. No, they didn't fight us again, by definition we firebombed enough even by your standards. I mean, I think if anything we firebombed too much, but I don't know how you got that we firebombed too much.
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Aug 7, 2015 18:22
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