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Thanks for the info. A little googling and reading more or less gave me the answer that I was looking for and the answer to the two obvious followup questions: "The invasion was definitely the plan despite the fact that the Japanese capacity to wage war had been effectively eliminated. It stayed the plan in spite of that reality and thus the fact that alternatives to invasion still would have made victory inevitable because the Allied overall military command wanted the war officially ended within the year to avoid 'damaging homefront morale.' Even up to the A-Bombs being used it wasn't really a consensus that it was the right or best course, which in turn explains why Truman was talking even in his private journal like it wouldn't be necessary even before the bomb was successfully tested." King and Nimitz were lobbying against it to the bitter end for example, especially after intelligence in July revealed the planners had significantly underestimated the surviving defense potential, and both sides of the debate were drawing up estimates and projections that were designed to do nothing but support their position all the way along the argument, which is I assume why those estimates are rarely talked about in favor of that post-war one that everyone always cites.
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Aug 30, 2021 04:27
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Nebakenezzer posted:Dick be Trippin' Yeah he do https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6mMNzUSJzc
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Aug 30, 2021 04:41
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Sanguinia posted:Thanks for the info. A little googling and reading more or less gave me the answer that I was looking for and the answer to the two obvious followup questions: "The invasion was definitely the plan despite the fact that the Japanese capacity to wage war had been effectively eliminated. It stayed the plan in spite of that reality and thus the fact that alternatives to invasion still would have made victory inevitable because the Allied overall military command wanted the war officially ended within the year to avoid 'damaging homefront morale.' Even up to the A-Bombs being used it wasn't really a consensus that it was the right or best course, which in turn explains why Truman was talking even in his private journal like it wouldn't be necessary even before the bomb was successfully tested." I'm not sure who's quote that is about the Japanese capacity to wage war bring eliminated, but to my knowledge it's very much not considering the occupied territories of Korean and China. There was still a lot of suffering in those areas directly related to the Japanese occupation, which regardless of the Japanese ability to send out ships to directly challenge a US fleet is still quite important. Also too, a lot of these narratives ignore the Japanese government agency in these discussions. Like yes it's important to consider the American perspective, but don't forget that the war could have ended a lot earlier with less loss of life had the government not been so stubborn. They had agency and were responsible for their own actions. They're not a simple force of nature.
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Aug 30, 2021 05:02
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Carillon posted:I'm not sure who's quote that is about the Japanese capacity to wage war bring eliminated, but to my knowledge it's very much not considering the occupied territories of Korean and China. There was still a lot of suffering in those areas directly related to the Japanese occupation, which regardless of the Japanese ability to send out ships to directly challenge a US fleet is still quite important. I mean, yeah, obviously to both of those things, but I was talking about the US/Allied decision to invade the Japanese Home Islands as opposed to NOT doing that and still winning the war. The former is relevant to that issue, but only insofar as leaving Japan blockaded and just attacking those forces directly would have probably been a better solution to liberating those people than invading unless you are convinced that the invasion will lead to a swift surrender. The armies in the field on Mainland Asia weren't exactly overflowing with supplies and war material compared to what the allies could bring to bear, despite the success of Operation Ichi-Go. I guess it would be more accurate to say they'd lost the capacity to wage BENEFICIAL war? Its not like what they had left in the field could help the Home Islands. The later is technically relevant to the issue, but only insofar as their intransigence is the only reason a home island invasion was on the table in the first place when the Allied war planners were trying to figure out how to end the way by the end of 1945 regardless of circumstances. The video I mentioned in my original post certainly does not hold back from the Imperial government's accountability in the atomic bombing, nor for that matter in any of the stuff that happened to Japanese forces and territories in the last 12ish months of the war when defeat was certainly already inevitable. In fact he goes into a lot of detail about their internal deliberations and communiques that paints a pretty dire picture of just how little they cared about their people's suffering, especially when he gets into how the bomb on Hiroshima failed to end the gridlock on the Surrender vs Hold Out question and how little they allowed themselves to be phased by it. EDIT: The main reason I even asked the question in the first place is that so much of the historical discourse around the Home Island invasion is wrapped up in justifying the A-Bomb retroactively, and like I said the video I watched presented Primary Source evidence that made me wonder just how serious the US even was about doing the invasion at all because it seems like it would have been very easy in 1945 to draw the conclusion that such an invasion was pointless even taking the bomb out the equation. Given that I was curious just how committed the US was to something that seemed really needless and WHY they would be thusly committed. To which I was pointed to a satisfactory answer. Sanguinia fucked around with this message at 05:29 on Aug 30, 2021 |
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Aug 30, 2021 05:17
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Carillon posted:I'm not sure who's quote that is about the Japanese capacity to wage war bring eliminated, but to my knowledge it's very much not considering the occupied territories of Korean and China. There was still a lot of suffering in those areas directly related to the Japanese occupation, which regardless of the Japanese ability to send out ships to directly challenge a US fleet is still quite important. The americans did not care about this King and Nimitz' concerns came from the intensity of air attack the USN experienced at Okinawa. The IJN's fleet had been neutralized, but the air arm killed an alarming of sailors at Okinawa. This was in spite of flying some 500km from Japan, through the extensive screen of picket ships and air patrols. The picket ships were particularly vulnerable, many of them took catastrophic losses when targeted. For the invasion of Japan itself, the navy would be forced into a worse strategic situation. Japanese planes could fly from safe bases all over Japan, and navy would be forced to guard logistics for multiple landing sites. The navy took serious losses at Okinawa which is why Nimitz balked.
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Aug 30, 2021 05:33
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I'm not exactly sure what you're saying @Sanguinia, but liberating China would've been exceptionally difficult via bypassing Japan. They probably needed to invade either from the South, through Burma/South East Asia; and invade/secure Taiwan which probably is about on par with Okinawa in terms of defences in order to launch another series of follow up landings along the coast of China; and that's if Chiang Kai Shek gave the okay as perhaps he would have preferred if Nanjing/Shanghai were liberated with Chinese troops? And also the presence of American troops on the mainland might complicate matters with the Soviets and with the domestic political situation between the KMT and CCP where more Americans meeting with CCP's leaders might complicate Chiang's situation. Also the Soviet invasion would have more time to cover more ground, likely easily occupying the remainder of Korea, clearing out groups not friendly with Moscow and more of northern China which could have numerous knock on effects. And of course which should not be forgotten is the millions of people on the Japanese home islands whose food insecurity issues were facing catastrophe as the Allied blockade immobilized their transportation networks and hindered if not entirely prevented Japan's ability to feed its people with the food that could be produced on Japan proper and potentially millions more might have starved to death if the Allies didn't drop the bombs or invaded Japan proper soon to pursue a very indirect plan of liberating China that held no guarantee it would effect Japan's willingness to unconditionally surrender?
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Aug 30, 2021 05:34
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Raenir Salazar posted:Also the Soviet invasion would have more time to cover more ground, likely easily occupying the remainder of Korea, clearing out groups not friendly with Moscow and more of northern China which could have numerous knock on effects. Truman didn't seem to care about this considering he re-negotiated Stalin's entry into the war like a day before he got confirmation that the A-Bomb would mechanically function. He cared about clawing back some of the concessions that FDR made to Stalin, but he didn't care enough about the political implications of the Soviets in Manchuria/Korea to not want them in at all As for the rest I was responding to something someone else said, I didn't really think the Americans had much interest in invading China and neutralizing Japan's mainland armed forces, mainly because those forces were not a threat to them. The decision was always "Blockade and Bombing until we win, or invade until we win." There's also the third option of "offer something other than unconditional surrender and we win," but that's a whole other can of worms and outside the scope of why I started this conversation Sanguinia fucked around with this message at 05:44 on Aug 30, 2021 |
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Aug 30, 2021 05:42
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Sanguinia posted:I mean, yeah, obviously to both of those things, but I was talking about the US/Allied decision to invade the Japanese Home Islands as opposed to NOT doing that and still winning the war. Forgive me if this comes off as rude but war in real life isn't like war in a videogame. There isn't some war weariness or victory score you hit and then you 'win' the war. There was nothing that suggested Japan would surrender under any circumstances. Island by island Japanese forces had essentially self genocided, often killing their own civilians (or at least standing by while they killed themselves). It was extremely possible that the same thing would happen on Japan, that you'd have massively contested landings, and then 1000s of small units in the forests and mountains, and that there would be no large scale surrenders. As others have said, the fact that the Japanese couldn't win the war didn't seem to stop them. The Nazis essentially fought until the last moment, and if anything the Japanese seemed as if they would be even more stubborn. The US was recalling units all over the Europe, because they honestly thought they were going to need them. Sanguinia posted:There's also the third option of "offer something other than unconditional surrender and we win," but that's a whole other can of worms and outside the scope of why I started this conversation There were agreements with the UK, China, and the Soviet Union that no separate peace would be made, so that would have been quite a dicey proposition. SerCypher fucked around with this message at 06:18 on Aug 30, 2021 |
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Aug 30, 2021 06:15
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SerCypher posted:Forgive me if this comes off as rude but war in real life isn't like war in a videogame. There isn't some war weariness or victory score you hit and then you 'win' the war. Forgive me if this comes off as rude, but this sounds exactly like the type of rhetoric that comes right before "and therefore the atomic bomb was justified because an invasion would have cost far more lives." The entire reason that I came here to ask my question was to try and develop a fuller understanding of the situation and why invasion was even being considered in the first place when from the American perspective it would not seem to be necessary to win the war, even more so when you mention all those things about how horrible the Island Hopping campaign was and double right after the charnel house that was Okinawa. I watched a video that I thought made a pretty compelling case with lots of primary sources that even a lot of people in charge of preparing the invasion, like the POTUS, didn't think the invasion would be necessary, or at least were hoping the invasion wouldn't be necessary, even BEFORE the bomb was successfully tested, which serves as a piece of evidence that the justification for dropping the bomb as a war-ending measure is at least partially invalid. However, since the video was more focused on the Abomb in a more holistic fashion than that specific sub-point, I came here because I trust Goons to generally not be ghouls who spout misinformation to justify atrocities and asked what the deal with invasion preparations were so I could put the presented evidence in better context.
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Aug 30, 2021 06:34
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Sanguinia posted:Forgive me if this comes off as rude, but this sounds exactly like the type of rhetoric that comes right before "and therefore the atomic bomb was justified because an invasion would have cost far more lives." The entire reason that I came here to ask my question was to try and develop a fuller understanding of the situation and why invasion was even being considered in the first place when from the American perspective it would not seem to be necessary to win the war, even more so when you mention all those things about how horrible the Island Hopping campaign was and double right after the charnel house that was Okinawa. I watched a video that I thought made a pretty compelling case with lots of primary sources that even a lot of people in charge of preparing the invasion, like the POTUS, didn't think the invasion would be necessary, or at least were hoping the invasion wouldn't be necessary, even BEFORE the bomb was successfully tested, which serves as a piece of evidence that the justification for dropping the bomb as a war-ending measure is at least partially invalid. However, since the video was more focused on the Abomb in a more holistic fashion than that specific sub-point, I came here because I trust Goons to generally not be ghouls who spout misinformation to justify atrocities and asked what the deal with invasion preparations were so I could put the presented evidence in better context. It wasn't an either/or thing, they were going to do both (drop the bombs and also invade). Also I wouldn't treat this Atomic bomb as some incredible escalation that needs to be justified (maybe it does today, but not at the time). They were already firebombing japan around the clock. They would have dropped more than two, but they only had two available.
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Aug 30, 2021 06:58
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Sanguinia posted:why invasion was even being considered in the first place when from the American perspective it would not seem to be necessary to win the war Why do you think it wouldn't be necessary to win the war? What are your criteria for American Victory?
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Aug 30, 2021 07:18
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Sanguinia posted:from the American perspective it would not seem to be necessary to win the war What do you mean by "win the war" here?
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Aug 30, 2021 08:02
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Carillon posted:Why do you think it wouldn't be necessary to win the war? What are your criteria for American Victory? The same as the people at the time, "Japan surrenders," adding on "unconditionally," depending on how hawkish you are. The only question is if invasion was necessary for that or not, and I don't see how anyone could objectively argue that there is no way that it happens without the invasion (or the bomb). The argument that the Allied Command Chiefs made at the Quebec conference was that the invasion was necessary for it to happen IN 1945, not that it was necessary for it to happen AT ALL. They didn't want to drag out the end of the war after Germany fell for more than a year because of morale concerns. This is the information I found thanks to the suggestions made after my first post. If the argument you want to make is blockade and bombardment would have NEVER led to Japanese surrender, which is the argument the people pushing for an invasion like McArthur made, ok I guess, but I don't buy it when you yourself were talking about how the Home Islands couldn't produce enough food to keep the population alive, and that's not even talking about fuel or other basic life necessities, nor the continued consequences of the fire-bombing, nor the long-term psychological effect of propaganda which would have continued alongside all of that. The fact that King and Nimitz renewed the argument after Okinawa alone proves that it wasn't exactly a bullet-proof suggestion, regardless of what their reasons were. The only argument to make is how much longer surrender would have taken without invasion, and then argue whether the consequences of that longer siege option are better or worse than the consequences of invasion. The people living at the time felt like the price of the invasion was worth it, but I don't think "to avoid negative morale on the home front," is a very good reason to pay that price. If there was some other reason motivating the choice I'm happy to hear what it was. I didn't see any mention that humanitarian arguments about how the price of invasion was the lesser evil compared to mass starvation in Japan or leaving the people in Japanese occupied territory under their rule were any significant consideration in the decision making. If anyone at the time was making that argument, kudos to them for thinking along those lines, but that'd be a pretty hard sell for me by Summer '45 considering the invasion scenarios people typically present, and apparently were presenting at the time, regarding millions of deaths as civilians Banzai Charge with bamboo sticks and Okinawa On A National Scale in terms of mass suicides and whatnot. Frankly its kind of surprising that the invasion wasn't being reconsidered in favor of a long-term blockade and terror bombing strategy even BEFORE Okinawa, regardless of how long it might take to work. The Japanese had no significant means to threaten such a blockade, nor any means to develop such a threat.
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Aug 30, 2021 08:25
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Sanguinia posted:The same as the people at the time, "Japan surrenders," adding on "unconditionally," depending on how hawkish you are. This is still a highly unclear definition. Would you consider it a "surrender" for the purposes of "winning the war" if Japan sued for a peace \w the US under the agreement that it be allowed to continue its war in China? What if Japan proposed a peace where the present status quo (i.e. Japan is in control over large areas of mainland China etc.) is retained? How about if Japan sued for peace with the understanding that the outcome is status quo ante bellum?
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Aug 30, 2021 08:37
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Sanguinia posted:The only argument to make no
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Aug 30, 2021 08:47
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Loezi posted:This is still a highly unclear definition. Would you consider it a "surrender" for the purposes of "winning the war" if Japan sued for a peace \w the US under the agreement that it be allowed to continue its war in China? What if Japan proposed a peace where the present status quo (i.e. Japan is in control over large areas of mainland China etc.) is retained? How about if Japan sued for peace with the understanding that the outcome is status quo ante bellum? Potsdam set a pretty clear list of terms, aside from leaving the issue of the Emperor vague because they couldn't agree on it themselves. There's no reason to think that list would have deviated whether they invaded or not, and there's no reason to think the Japanese would have only accepted them through invasion and not the alternative means of blockade. The only question is timetable and the associated cost-benefit analysis. And like I said, if there is significant motive in the decision making beyond that stated thing of wanting to wrap the war up for morale purposes from Quebec behind choosing invasion over blockade, I'm curious to hear it, because the assertion that there is NEVER an acceptance of terms without invasion is nonsense regardless of how many people swallowed it when McArthur sold it. Sanguinia fucked around with this message at 08:58 on Aug 30, 2021 |
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Aug 30, 2021 08:53
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Sanguinia posted:There's no reason to think that list would have deviated whether they invaded or not, and there's no reason to think the Japanese would have only accepted them through invasion and not the alternative means of blockade. You seem to think a blockade would be a more 'humane' or better option. Regardless of whether or not it would have worked, it almost certainly would have resulted in incredible civilian casualties. Already there was mass starvation in Japan, I'm not sure if you know anything about the occupation but it almost instantly changed from a war to disaster relief as the US tried to stave off famine there. The Japanese people were under the thrall of a cruel authoritarian government, that is perfectly fine with throwing their lives away. The most moral thing to do was to end the war as quickly as possible, to save the japanese people from an endless war at the behest of that government. Beyond that, China and other parts of asia were still largely under japanese control, and were subject to warcrimes on the daily. Every day the war goes on is another tragedy.
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Aug 30, 2021 09:03
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Sanguinia posted:Forgive me if this comes off as rude, but this sounds exactly like the type of rhetoric that comes right before "and therefore the atomic bomb was justified because an invasion would have cost far more lives." The entire reason that I came here to ask my question was to try and develop a fuller understanding of the situation and why invasion was even being considered in the first place when from the American perspective it would not seem to be necessary to win the war, even more so when you mention all those things about how horrible the Island Hopping campaign was and double right after the charnel house that was Okinawa. I watched a video that I thought made a pretty compelling case with lots of primary sources that even a lot of people in charge of preparing the invasion, like the POTUS, didn't think the invasion would be necessary, or at least were hoping the invasion wouldn't be necessary, even BEFORE the bomb was successfully tested, which serves as a piece of evidence that the justification for dropping the bomb as a war-ending measure is at least partially invalid. However, since the video was more focused on the Abomb in a more holistic fashion than that specific sub-point, I came here because I trust Goons to generally not be ghouls who spout misinformation to justify atrocities and asked what the deal with invasion preparations were so I could put the presented evidence in better context. I think the point you are missing is that it didn't really matter what the POTUS thought. Truman generally understood very little of what was happening in the war, and in any case did not involve himself heavily in things until after the bombing of Nagasaki. The way the war was run at that point was that it was left to the military leadership to figure out, with the various admirals and generals being mostly left alone to use the resources at their disposal to achieve victory through whatever strategy they thought most effective. The bomber guys wanted to bomb, the submarine guys wanted to sink transports, the army wanted to invade, and the science guys wanted to use their fancy new bomb. Edit: It's not so much "why was the decision made", it is "how was the decision made" (or really, on certain levels, if a decision is made at all) that is critical here. Fangz fucked around with this message at 09:25 on Aug 30, 2021 |
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Aug 30, 2021 09:08
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SerCypher posted:You seem to think a blockade would be a more 'humane' or better option. If that was the motive behind choosing invasion, great, I support that thinking even if I find it less than convincing when the Pro-Invasion people were arguing that surrender would never happen without an invasion, and they were defending that positions with evidence that would lead one to conclude that any invasion will be a humanitarian disaster of similar scale to a blockade. Its not the motive I'm aware of for anyone involved in the decision making though. Truman wanted haste to minimize American losses, that's why he still wanted the Soviets in the war despite being significantly more anti-Soviet than FDR to the point of wanting to renegotiate their entry. The Joint Command wanted haste for morale reasons. The Navy seemed to not care about haste and just wanted less risk to the Navy. The Army wanted invasion because they apparently didn't believe a surrender would ever come without it. I haven't seen anyone involved in the decision making saying they care about making the most humane choice. Fangz posted:I think the point you are missing is that it didn't really matter what the POTUS thought. Truman generally understood very little of what was happening in the war, and in any case did not involve himself heavily in things until after the bombing of Nagasaki. The way the war was run at that point was that it was left to the military leadership to figure out, with the various admirals and generals being mostly left alone to use the resources at their disposal to achieve victory through whatever strategy they thought most effective. The bomber guys wanted to bomb, the submarine guys wanted to sink transports, the army wanted to invade, and the science guys wanted to use their fancy new bomb. This is a helpful post, thank you. Sanguinia fucked around with this message at 09:18 on Aug 30, 2021 |
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Aug 30, 2021 09:16
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Everyone (including the Japanese government) knew that Japan had lost the war and had no hope of turning things around by 1944, given that Japan didn't surrender in 1944 it seems odd to suggest that US planners should have stopped working on Downfall on the basis that they'd probably surrender in '45.SerCypher posted:Every day the war goes on is another tragedy. I've used this as my bottom line before on the A-bomb discussion, but I'd add a second part that given the lessons of Versailles it is unreasonable to expect the Allies to settle for anything less then permanently crushing the militarism of their opponents. Every day the war goes on is another tragedy, but the war should not have been ended at the cost of spinning the world up for round 3 in another twenty years time. Alchenar fucked around with this message at 11:31 on Aug 30, 2021 |
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Aug 30, 2021 11:23
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It's also important to remember that most people outside the Manhattan Project scientists did not regard the atomic bomb as some shocking new weapon or level of atrocity. For the most part, the military saw it as simply a continuation of the strategic firebombing campaigns that already scorched much of Japan's urban centers. The conventional strategic bombing campaign did more damage than the atomic bombs did, and to most of the military personnel involved the atomic bomb was simply a matter of putting an entire bomber flight's payload into one bomber.
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Aug 30, 2021 13:30
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Oops, haven't done one of these last week, have two: IS-3 SU--76 frontline impressions Big articles queue: SU-5, Myths of Soviet tank building: 1943-44, IS-2 post-war modifications, Myths of Soviet tank building: end of the Great Patriotic War, Medium Tank T6, RPG-1, Lahti L-39, American tank building plans post-war, German tanks for 1946, HMC M7 Priest, GMC M12, GMC M40/M43, ISU-152, AMR 35 ZT, Soviet post-war tank building plans, T-100Y and SU-14-1, Object 430, Pz.Kpfw.35(t), T-60 tanks in combat, SU-76M modernizations, Panhard 178, 15 cm sFH 13/1 (Sf), 43M Zrínyi, Medium Tank M46, Modernization of the M48 to the M60 standard, German tank building trends at the end of WW2, Pz.Kpfw.III/IV, E-50 and E-75 development, Pre-war and early war British tank building, BT-7M/A-8 trials, Jagdtiger suspension, Light Tank T37, Light Tank T41, T-26-6 (SU-26), Voroshilovets tractor trials, Israeli armour 1948–1982, T-64's composite armour, Evolution of German tank observation devices, Oerlikon and Solothurn anti-tank rifles Available for request (others' articles):  Shashmurin's career T-55 underwater driving equipment T-34 tanks with M-17 engines ISU-152 Wartime and post-war anti-tank hand grenades  German King Tiger losses in December of 1944 in Hungary Small articles queue: Soviet tank camouflage, AA machine guns on tanks, IS-3 pike nose Small articles available: linked because the list is too long
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Aug 30, 2021 14:11
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Cessna posted:Huh, 62 new posts since I logged in, I hope it isn't more "would Japan have surrendered if we hadn't dropped the a-bomb" talk... Huh, 48 new posts since I logged in, I hope it isn't more "would Japan have surrendered if we hadn't dropped the a-bomb" talk...
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Aug 30, 2021 15:01
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But would Japan have surrendered if we dropped the gay bomb??
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Aug 30, 2021 15:03
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Cyrano4747 posted:The issue is that that's specifically the problem that you have with a ton of depictions of war criminals in popular media. It's why I made the point that the Nazis were people, not WH40k unknowably evil horrors. Our ability to voyeuristically observe the life of violent fascists, and see the contrast between their humanity as well as their violent antipathy towards those they view as weaklings to be crushed under their heel, has only increased over the past decades. Just hop on cop/troop facebook, and in between pictures of smiling families and happy dogs and adages about Christ's Love, you will find raging posts about how foreigners are diseased and giving people the 'rona, immigrants and muslims and homosexuals need to be deported/put into camps, and demoncrats need to be massacred. The nature of Man has not changed.
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Aug 30, 2021 15:23
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P-Mack posted:But would Japan have surrendered if we dropped the gay bomb?? I wanna take you to a gay bomb I wanna take you to a gay bomb I wanna take you to a gay bomb, gay bomb, gay bomb
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Aug 30, 2021 16:05
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SerCypher posted:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Macedonian Macedonian doesn't count. It's offset by ex-USS HMS President; the RN later gave the name to a new-construction hull, so arguably they're up one on the exchange.
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Aug 30, 2021 16:14
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Sanguinia posted:This is a helpful post, thank you. Sanguinia, it sounds like you may not have read Alex Wellerstein on the use of atomic weapons. If that's the case, you owe it to yourself to change that. His academic research focuses on these issues and will be helpful in contextualizing them for you. Here's his blog post The Decision to Use the Bomb: A Consensus View?
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Aug 30, 2021 16:38
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Epicurius posted:This is more my ranting, but I hate the term "humanizing" in contexts like these. Almost all the participants in WWII except for Wojtek, the fighting Polish bear, the Soviet tank mine dogs, and the bats the US tried to use to bomb Japanese cities, were human...often times humans who did horrible stuff, but still humans. I think it's realistic to say that a lot of soldiers are dumb idiots who aren't aware of the political framework that led into the war they're involved with, or aren't particularly concerned with the political consequences of their actions, and are about as cognizant of what's going on in the grand scheme of things as a bear. It's not often satisfying to consider that aspect of things though, and most of the time people people go the opposite way and ascribe way more intention and responsibility to soldiers than they'd realistically have or feel. World War 2 may have added ideological weight because nazis were more objectively in the wrong than a lot of belligerents throughout history, but they weren't uniform and monolithic, and there were people on the allied side who had to go burn down villages and then go back home and live their lives like normal people, which doesn't overall outweigh the demise of the nazis as a good thing, just that's war. It's part of the human condition to have to reconcile things like that, and there's sort of an aspirational hope out there that people's personal feelings about what they do couldn't possibly drift too far from what external judgements of them are, and that perspective is kinda intrinsically opposite to actually examining them as people.
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Aug 30, 2021 17:07
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Cessna posted:Huh, 48 new posts since I logged in, I hope it isn't more "would Japan have surrendered if we hadn't dropped the a-bomb" talk... I think in this case there is somebody asking a historically-oriented question getting sidetracked by people intent on rehashing the dumb american moral question. The question is ofc, what were the various branches of the non-nuclear US military planning or theorizing in August 1945?
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Aug 30, 2021 17:27
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Briefly interrupting Japan surrender chat to go back to tank in a field chat. Here is a gallery of old tanks and nature reclaiming them. https://imgur.com/gallery/obNyElK My personal favorite: 
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Aug 30, 2021 17:51
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everydayfalls posted:Briefly interrupting Japan surrender chat to go back to tank in a field chat. Here is a gallery of old tanks and nature reclaiming them. My favorite: 
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Aug 30, 2021 17:55
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Is the article on cottonclad warships on wikipedia as funny to professionals as it seems to me
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Aug 30, 2021 18:10
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Hyrax Attack! posted:Oh yeah I tried to listen to Very Bad Wizards where a philosopher and psychologist are the hosts and some eps were ok but one of the guys trying to posture as a badass got old fast. I bailed on their discussion of Unforgiven when they both failed to grasp basic plot elements. No, the younger cowboy in the brothel was not innocent, he helped hurt the woman. One of the major themes is nobody will accept his sincere attempts to make amends. Somehow both hosts missed that. Over the weekend I tried listening to a bit more Omnibus on subjects I know a bit about, and I think it's pretty clear that both hosts - but especially Broderick - have some sort of deal where once they're presenting they can't say "I don't know the answer to that." There are times when it's clear that they don't know about something but just try to ad-lib their way through it on the basis of their inherent cleverness. This seems to be a common feature in podcasts.
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Aug 30, 2021 18:40
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MikeCrotch posted:I wanna take you to a gay bomb Was there a gay bar in Hiroshima?
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Aug 30, 2021 18:46
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It seems like there is finally a way of figuring out what kind of panzer Hitler should have built to Sprocket Tank Design It allows you to design what ever shapes of armoured vehicles, put in an engine, transmission etc. and then try them out. It looks like stupidly fun and buggy (it's early access...).   
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Aug 30, 2021 18:47
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OpenlyEvilJello posted:Sanguinia, it sounds like you may not have read Alex Wellerstein on the use of atomic weapons. If that's the case, you owe it to yourself to change that. His academic research focuses on these issues and will be helpful in contextualizing them for you. Here's his blog post The Decision to Use the Bomb: A Consensus View? This is tremendously helpful, thank you Slim Jim Pickens posted:I think in this case there is somebody asking a historically-oriented question getting sidetracked by people intent on rehashing the dumb american moral question. The question is ofc, what were the various branches of the non-nuclear US military planning or theorizing in August 1945? I'll be fair and say the dumb american moral question was certainly tied to what and why I was asking it, I said as much, but I didn't really intend to degrade as far down into that as it went, I was just trying to broaden my information base on the circumstances and fill in a gap I thought was important to understand so I could get a better perspective, for which I'm very grateful for Jello's post because its even more than what I was hoping for on the subject. Sorry if I derailed your thread, I lurk here often and its great.
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Aug 30, 2021 19:02
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Aug 30, 2021 19:11
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaC0vNLdLvY
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Aug 30, 2021 19:28
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Nenonen posted:It allows you to design what ever shapes of armoured vehicles, put in an engine, transmission etc. and then try them out. It looks like stupidly fun and buggy (it's early access...).
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Aug 30, 2021 19:38
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