|
VikingSkull posted:From our perspective it wasn't, from the Japanese civilians perspective those weeks meant the difference between living and starving to death. Pretty sure the people against the bomb are also against starving Japan to death so
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2016 13:18
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 11, 2024 04:29 |
|
|
Chomskyan posted:Pretty sure the people against the bomb are also against starving Japan to death so There was no choice in the matter, if the Japanese didn't surrender when they did, they starved. Operation Starvation had already been carried out. Waiting for the Japanese to surrender would have been a death sentence for millions.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2016 13:28
|
|
|
I think one of the crucial factors to consider if you wonder why the bomb was used is to consider that Germany had surrendered in May, the American population was sick of the war, most of the military was sick of the war, and money for running the war was drying up, a very crucial fact. Japan was pretty much done already, the only thing that remained was their willingness to accept unconditional surrender. When the bomb was ready the pressure was on Truman to use it to bring about the end of the war, or possibly, if the war did keep going on, to be seen as one who had kept the war going and lost American lives even as he was in possession of what seemed to most people a decisive new weapon. The nuclear bombings proved, I think, to the Japanese leadership (at least the Emperor and some others) that the US weren't going to relent in their aerial bombardment to bring Japan to its knees and that probably the Japanese wouldn't get to fight a heroic sacrificial defense of their country against an invasion, and then the Soviet declaration of war and invasion of Manchuria knocked the last strong (on-paper, not in reality) Japanese army out of the war and the Japanese government lost the channel they had previously relied and placed their hopes on for a negotiated settlement. That's it really. I think it's quite likely that the Soviet declaration of war might have been enough, but at the moment the pressure was on Truman to use the bomb, because it was ready. And when it was used it was quite an awesome sight, perhaps not as strategically decisive as might seem, but it made an impact. It might seem an unsatisfactory explanation, but I think that's it really. Had the bomb been ready earlier you can bet your rear end it would have been used on Germany even though by April/May Germany was pretty much done and we would have the same debate there I think. Randarkman fucked around with this message at 13:40 on Oct 26, 2016 |
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2016 13:33
|
|
|
I'm struggling with the justification of nukes being the ethical thing to do to end the war so they can't be a war crime. As a thought experiment what if Japanese had developed nuclear weapons and decided to use them against US cities. To force US surrender by nuking US civilians would save both Japanese and US lives by ending the war quickly. For a historical example see The Rotterdam Blitz that forced the surrender of Netherlands. I'd argue that despite the moral calculus, both examples are still war crimes and evil because targeting civilians can't be excused. Now you can argue that the Rotterdam Blitz and hypothetical Japanese use of nukes are war crimes because both German and Japanese war aims were evil. The problem is that there hasn't been a country that conducts war thinking their cause isn't justified. If you think that targeting of civilians can be a justified method of warfare, you treading on a very slippery and dangerous slope.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2016 13:34
|
|
|
VikingSkull posted:There was no choice in the matter, if the Japanese didn't surrender when they did, they starved. Operation Starvation had already been carried out. Waiting for the Japanese to surrender would have been a death sentence for millions. If you neither starve nor bomb Japan it would have been much better defended for the inevitable invasion.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2016 13:34
|
|
|
I'm guessing Japan surrendered because of a combination of factors, none of which were sufficient by themselves. It seems weird to argue that the atomic bombings were both a huge unprecedented catastrophe in human history, yet made no impression on anyone making decisions in Japan, for instance.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2016 13:38
|
|
|
Glah posted:I'm struggling with the justification of nukes being the ethical thing to do to end the war so they can't be a war crime. As a thought experiment what if Japanese had developed nuclear weapons and decided to use them against US cities. To force US surrender by nuking US civilians would save both Japanese and US lives by ending the war quickly. For a historical example see The Rotterdam Blitz that forced the surrender of Netherlands. I'd argue that despite the moral calculus, both examples are still war crimes and evil because targeting civilians can't be excused. I don't think anyone is arguing that the atomic bombings were ethical and not a war crime, though. At least from my perspective, when I weigh it against what the US either was already doing or had planned, it was.... I don't even know how to put this.... more palatable? I mean, I can't justify one war crime over another, but holy hell, compared to mass starvation or wholesale chemical warfare/urban combat? Least bad of horribly bad choices? I dunno. We all have the benefit of hindsight, so it's hard to make any argument that doesn't sound bloodthirsty, which is kinda exactly what the Allies were by spring, 1945.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2016 14:32
|
|
|
Japan would have surrendered unconditionally even without the nukes due to the USSR entering the Pacific War. Hence all this handwringing about how There Was No Alternative is pretty weird.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2016 14:41
|
|
|
Cerebral Bore posted:Japan would have surrendered unconditionally even without the nukes due to the USSR entering the Pacific War. Hence all this handwringing about how There Was No Alternative is pretty weird. This assumes that the atomic bombings played zero part in the decision, which kinda shows why just a display of it wouldn't work. It also assumes that the Japanese surrender on the same date, and not a week, or two weeks, or a month later, and any delay in the surrender from what we had condemns at the very least tens of thousands to death by way of starvation. Likely far more than that. It also assumes a split in Japanese occupation, and as we've seen in Korea and Eastern Europe, led to Very Bad Things.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2016 14:47
|
|
|
VikingSkull posted:This assumes that the atomic bombings played zero part in the decision, which kinda shows why just a display of it wouldn't work. It also assumes that the Japanese surrender on the same date, and not a week, or two weeks, or a month later, and any delay in the surrender from what we had condemns at the very least tens of thousands to death by way of starvation. Likely far more than that. It assumes none of this, except that the nukes were superfluous. Things would have gone as they did historically if the nukes weren't dropped.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2016 14:50
|
|
|
Cerebral Bore posted:It assumes none of this, except that the nukes were superfluous. Things would have gone as they did historically if the nukes weren't dropped. Are the Russians ever going to return the Kurils or are they still occupying them to stop Japanese Imperialism? 'Cause the US eventually returned Japan to the Japanese.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2016 14:54
|
|
|
VikingSkull posted:Are the Russians ever going to return the Kurils or are they still occupying them to stop Japanese Imperialism? 'Cause the US eventually returned Japan to the Japanese. Nice whataboutism, but I don't see what is has to do with the question at hand.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2016 14:56
|
|
|
Cerebral Bore posted:Nice whataboutism, but I don't see what is has to do with the question at hand. It shows that the Russians were making land grabs not agreed to by the Allies and that reliance upon the Russian declaration of war to end the Japanese conflict would have resulted in further land claims by the USSR. e- the Treaty of San Francisco in 1951 mandated that the USSR give up the Kurils and they did not.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2016 14:59
|
|
|
VikingSkull posted:It shows that the Russians were making land grabs not agreed to by the Allies and that reliance upon the Russian declaration of war to end the Japanese conflict would have resulted in further land claims by the USSR. This is irrelevant WRT when the Japanese would have finally decided to accept unconditional surrender, which was the point of contention, and also hightly speculative.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2016 15:04
|
|
|
Cerebral Bore posted:This is irrelevant WRT when the Japanese would have finally decided to accept unconditional surrender, which was the point of contention, and also hightly speculative. It's a proven fact that the Soviet declaration of war was the sole factor in the Japanese surrender? That's not entirely speculative on your part? Ok then.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2016 15:14
|
|
|
VikingSkull posted:It's a proven fact that the Soviet declaration of war was the sole factor in the Japanese surrender? That's not entirely speculative on your part? It's the overwhelmingly most likely reason, given that it foreclosed all remaining strategic options for Japan. There's also the fact that, as already explained ITT, all expert military opinion in the US itself also agreed that the nukes had little impact, which indicates that the other big thing that happened just before the decision to surrender was the cause. We also have all those Japanes officers and officials saying in private that the nukes were at most a convenient excuse.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2016 15:16
|
|
|
The same Japanese officers said that the Soviet invasion was also an excuse, and that the actual reason was domestic, which would be mass starvation, civil unrest, and being hung up in the streets.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2016 15:23
|
|
|
VikingSkull posted:The same Japanese officers said that the Soviet invasion was also an excuse, and that the actual reason was domestic, which would be mass starvation, civil unrest, and being hung up in the streets. Yes, and the Soviet invasion made further military resistance strategically useless on top of that. The nukes did not.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2016 15:40
|
|
|
How exactly is the US supposed to deduce that the soviets declaring war is the 'final straw' though? Reminder, the nazis didn't surrender until Berlin itself fell. If you're the allies, you cannot reasonably assume that anything less than an invasion is going to work.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2016 15:49
|
|
|
rudatron posted:How exactly is the US supposed to deduce that the soviets declaring war is the 'final straw' though? Reminder, the nazis didn't surrender until Berlin itself fell. If you're the allies, you cannot reasonably assume that anything less than an invasion is going to work. If we accept this argument then they couldn't know that dropping the nukes would compel an unconditional surrender either. So what's the rationale left then?
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2016 15:54
|
|
|
rudatron posted:How exactly is the US supposed to deduce that the soviets declaring war is the 'final straw' though? Reminder, the nazis didn't surrender until Berlin itself fell. If you're the allies, you cannot reasonably assume that anything less than an invasion is going to work. Let's not even bring up the fact that the bombing of Nagasaki and the Soviet declaration of war happened on the same day, leaving Hiroshima to have happened before the US would even know that the Japanese would have such a reaction to Soviet involvement.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2016 15:56
|
|
|
Cerebral Bore posted:If we accept this argument then they couldn't know that dropping the nukes would compel an unconditional surrender either. So what's the rationale left then? Try it and find out if it did?
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2016 16:12
|
|
|
Hey my good friends. Thanks for your discussion, but the reason I made this thread was to get more things like this:ComradeCosmobot posted:but even German scientists were astounded that we did it (although some had their suspicions) The link I quoted was amazing and very interesting. Thanks mister Comrade. PLZ more of the same.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2016 16:17
|
|
|
So, the Rosenbergs obviously didn't get a fair trial and gently caress Roy Cohn forever, but were they guilty?
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2016 16:19
|
|
|
sean10mm posted:Try it and find out if it did? That is one rationale, but it's also one that runs a pretty big risk of falling foul of the laws of war. EDIT: Goatman Sacks posted:So, the Rosenbergs obviously didn't get a fair trial and gently caress Roy Cohn forever, but were they guilty? As far as I can tell, Julius probably was, but Ethel clearly wasn't. Cerebral Bore fucked around with this message at 16:26 on Oct 26, 2016 |
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2016 16:23
|
|
|
VikingSkull posted:So Hirohito was partly responsible for one of the worst wars in history, but the Allies should have accepted the Japanese request for his staying around because....? Because having the ability to get rid of him meant killing a lot of Japanese civilians. Was it worth the cost to insist on that concession, rather than possibly ending the war earlier with fewer people dead? The Japanese government was seriously awful, so the answer to that might actually end up being "yes", but the demand for unconditional surrender shouldn't be taken for granted since that's actually an incredibly massive demand. Unconditional surrender means "you can do anything you want to us", not just removing the emperor. Was that really worth the civilian casualties inflicted in order to extract that unconditional surrender? Maybe, but I think that's a much more interesting question than pretending that the US simply had no choice but to openly slaughter the Japanese civilian population. blowfish posted:Once every major power got themselves a big pile of nukes, nuclear war became risky in terms of making it too easy to accidentally destroy human civilisation in a day and everyone agreed that accidentally destroying themselves would be silly so it would be best to not casually launch nukes at each other on a whim. It's more difficult to accidentally destroy human civilisation with conventional bombs so there isn't the same taboo on conventional bombing. What really mattered in bringing about the fears of world destruction and MAD wasn't the nukes themselves, it was the delivery systems. Long-range strategic bombers, and later ballistic missiles, created a situation where a country could bomb basically anywhere in the world from anywhere else in the world. I won't say the development of high-yield nukes wasn't a factor, but the real thing that brought about those fears was the ability for a bomber taking off from Moscow to bomb any population center or military site in Europe or the US without too much fear of being taken down by AA defenses. steinrokkan posted:The moral context is that the allied states and friendly territories in Asia were beleaguered by Japanese forces whose behavior was as bad as that of the Nazis, and that the US acted both out of the interest of its own military, and due to considerations and diplomatic pressures from the countries who were unfortunate enough to be still suffering murder and destruction in 1945 due to the Japanese refusal to approach peace mediation even remotely realistically. Prolonging the war meant endangering the survival of many among the hundreds of millions of people still within the Japanese sphere of influence. Considering what the Allies nearly did to Germany, it's an interesting question. Only the spectre of the Cold War, the decline in Western-Soviet relations, and fear that a starving German population might turn communist prevented German from being essentially deindustrialized. Sure, fascists were bad, but what the Allies did in Germany went well beyond merely removing the Nazi government. A number of abuses were carried out under the unconditional surrender, and much more was only averted due to fear of the communist boogeyman. sean10mm posted:It seems weird to argue that the atomic bombings were both a huge unprecedented catastrophe in human history, yet made no impression on anyone making decisions in Japan, for instance. Why not? The Holocaust was a huge unprecedented catastrophe, but it didn't have much impact on decision-makers in the Allies.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2016 16:53
|
|
|
Main Paineframe posted:Because having the ability to get rid of him meant killing a lot of Japanese civilians. Was it worth the cost to insist on that concession, rather than possibly ending the war earlier with fewer people dead? The Japanese government was seriously awful, so the answer to that might actually end up being "yes", but the demand for unconditional surrender shouldn't be taken for granted since that's actually an incredibly massive demand. Unconditional surrender means "you can do anything you want to us", not just removing the emperor. Was that really worth the civilian casualties inflicted in order to extract that unconditional surrender? Maybe, but I think that's a much more interesting question than pretending that the US simply had no choice but to openly slaughter the Japanese civilian population. There were certainly decisions that could have been made that would have limited Japanese civilian deaths, I agree, the problem is the Allied commanders had already thrown those out and decided that killing Japanese civilians to force an unconditional surrender would be the plan. So we're left with starvation, terrible urban combat and invasion, continued firebombing, the nukes, or a combination of those four choices. Most likely it was going to be all four, with invasion being the last resort from an American perspective.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2016 17:02
|
|
|
Cerebral Bore posted:That is one rationale, but it's also one that runs a pretty big risk of falling foul of the laws of war. Which had been abandoned wholesale by every belligerent by 1942 if we're generous. So... yeah.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2016 17:17
|
|
|
Considering that the nazis managed to trick germans into thinking that, actually, imperial germany hadn't lost ww1, demanding unconditional surrender is absolutely critical. You have to drive home the point that, yes, you loving lost, and no, we are not doing this again in 20 years.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2016 17:40
|
|
|
rudatron posted:Considering that the nazis managed to trick germans into thinking that, actually, imperial germany hadn't lost ww1, demanding unconditional surrender is absolutely critical. You have to drive home the point that, yes, you loving lost, and no, we are not doing this again in 20 years. Nazi's didn't really need to try hard to convince the average German that they didn't lose WW1 when most of the population was shocked as gently caress when they surrendered in 1918 due to pro-military propaganda during the war and most of the fighting happening outside of Germany. The rest of your point stands though.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2016 17:48
|
|
|
ANIME AKBAR posted:Was Japan even a credible threat beyond its own borders on the eve of the bombings? Why was it so important for them to unconditionally surrender at that time, rather than weeks or months later? Japan still controlled vast areas of China, Manchuria, Korea, Indonesia, Indochina, and each day of their occupation meant more slave labor being drafted, more property stolen, more food requisitioned, more people killed and raped.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2016 19:51
|
|
|
Glah posted:I'm struggling with the justification of nukes being the ethical thing to do to end the war so they can't be a war crime. As a thought experiment what if Japanese had developed nuclear weapons and decided to use them against US cities. To force US surrender by nuking US civilians would save both Japanese and US lives by ending the war quickly. For a historical example see The Rotterdam Blitz that forced the surrender of Netherlands. I'd argue that despite the moral calculus, both examples are still war crimes and evil because targeting civilians can't be excused. This example requires the presumption that the United States and Imperial Japan are morally equivalent actors and that seems to be the implicit assumption a ton of "Bombs were war crimes" folks seem to be making.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2016 20:50
|
|
|
Cerebral Bore posted:It's the overwhelmingly most likely reason, given that it foreclosed all remaining strategic options for Japan. There's also the fact that, as already explained ITT, all expert military opinion in the US itself also agreed that the nukes had little impact, which indicates that the other big thing that happened just before the decision to surrender was the cause. If you're referring to that article posted a few pages back, it isn't a very good article in light of the fact that it requires an incredibly selective reading of a handful of quotes and an assumption that the Japanese were lying about some things but not others (depending on whether or not the statements were conducive to arguing the papers opinion, of course)
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2016 20:53
|
|
|
steinrokkan posted:Japan still controlled vast areas of China, Manchuria, Korea, Indonesia, Indochina, and each day of their occupation meant more slave labor being drafted, more property stolen, more food requisitioned, more people killed and raped. Every day also meant the Soviets were only going to advance further into Korea and China or that the Viet Minh were only gaining strength in Indochina.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2016 20:59
|
|
|
Ardennes posted:Every day also meant the Soviets were only going to advance further into Korea and China or that the Viet Minh were only gaining strength in Indochina. The decision to drop the bombs was made before anybody knew just how fast the Soviets would storm through the Kwantung army, and a war between guerillas and Japanese army isn't exactly conducive to reducing atrocities. steinrokkan fucked around with this message at 22:00 on Oct 26, 2016 |
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2016 21:07
|
|
|
steinrokkan posted:The decision to drop the bombs was made before anybody knew just how fast the Soviets would storm through the Kwangtung army, and a war between guerillas and Japanese army isn't exactly conducive to reducing atrocities. I think the issue more is the timing of Nagasaki more than anything else. Hiroshima was going to happen, but they probably needed to wrap things up quick because the KMT wasn't going to last very long otherwise. Soviet troops were within days of capturing Beijing. As for atrocities the Viet Minh, they were going to be fighting the Japanese or fighting the French, the atrocities were baked in history. You could say more or less the same thing about China and the CPC/KMT. Interesting tidbit, the French, British and even the Japanese cooperated to suppress the Vietminh after the war. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 21:30 on Oct 26, 2016 |
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2016 21:28
|
|
|
steinrokkan posted:The decision to drop the bombs was made before anybody knew just how fast the Soviets would storm through the Kwangtung army, and a war between guerillas and Japanese army isn't exactly conducive to reducing atrocities. This is worth noting, because the preparations for the bombing were set in stone before August 6th. Really, to stop Hiroshima, Japan needed to surrender from mid-July to August 6th, and they did not.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2016 21:51
|
|
|
rudatron posted:Considering that the nazis managed to trick germans into thinking that, actually, imperial germany hadn't lost ww1, demanding unconditional surrender is absolutely critical. You have to drive home the point that, yes, you loving lost, and no, we are not doing this again in 20 years. This is commonly cited as a reason, but the "the civilian government betrayed the military by offering up a premature surrender" myth isn't affected by surrender conditions or lack thereof. Documentation on the reasoning behind the demand is pretty scarce, since it sprang forth fully formed from Roosevelt's mouth without any discussion with the other Allied leaders, but it was likely for simple political reasons - either to reassure Stalin somehow, or more likely, to counter American public's discontent over leaving Vichy officials in charge of French North Africa.
|
|
#
?
Oct 26, 2016 22:59
|
|
|
VikingSkull posted:From our perspective it wasn't, from the Japanese civilians perspective those weeks meant the difference between living and starving to death. What the gently caress does this have to do with my question? VikingSkull posted:There was no choice in the matter, if the Japanese didn't surrender when they did, they starved. Operation Starvation had already been carried out. Waiting for the Japanese to surrender would have been a death sentence for millions.
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2016 04:54
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 11, 2024 04:29 |
|
|
ANIME AKBAR posted:What the gently caress does this have to do with my question? Seems pretty clearcut to me, you asked why it was so important to have the Japanese surrender sooner rather than later and the answer is "because immense suffering was being prolonged both for Japanese civilians and the victims of the IJA for every moment the war continued."
|
|
#
?
Oct 27, 2016 05:09
|
|