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indigi posted:the US can’t actually do this can’t anymore. but we instead just have thousands just ready to go in 3, 5, and 7 days. and a smaller number loaded and ready to go already halfway to anywhere. we still have a real sealift surge capability that exists nowhere else and that is mostly forgotten.
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Jul 30, 2022 17:14
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atelier morgan posted:with japan the us military expected to suffer more casualties in the invasion than in all us military operations before or since and that it would only be possible at all after having firebombed or nuked every single population center and having starved tens of millions (instead of the mere millions who were starved before the war ended) they were openly telling the soldiers, like marines who had been on Guadalcanal, that they expected a million men to die in the invasion.
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Jul 30, 2022 17:18
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https://twitter.com/caitoz/status/1553398247078522880
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Jul 30, 2022 17:18
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Wheeee posted:did the american military just buy wholeheartedly into the end of history and completely stop giving a poo poo about being able to effectively wage war against an adversary more capable than a third world tinpot dictator or something Yes. It’s a bit more complicated, but essentially yeah.
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Jul 30, 2022 17:20
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atelier morgan posted:
This may have been the stated reasons but later released showed military intelligence knew this to not be true and that the nukes were mainly used to show they could
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Jul 30, 2022 17:22
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Japan had been possible open to negotiations before Hiroshima so the idea of the land invasion was purely American aggressiveness
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Jul 30, 2022 17:23
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A Bakers Cousin posted:This may have been the stated reasons but later released showed military intelligence knew this to not be true and that the nukes were mainly used to show they could The nukes were also important data gathering tests and the quality of potential data was a key point in selecting the targets they selected. They wanted to make sure they got to test the bomb on real people before the war ended.
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Jul 30, 2022 17:25
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A Bakers Cousin posted:This may have been the stated reasons but later released showed military intelligence knew this to not be true and that the nukes were mainly used to show they could they wanted Japan to surrender before the Soviets captured any more territory, and they didn't mind vaporizing Japanese civilians to do it
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Jul 30, 2022 17:25
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A Bakers Cousin posted:This may have been the stated reasons but later released showed military intelligence knew this to not be true and that the nukes were mainly used to show they could the flaw in this analysis is the limited number of people who knew about the bomb. even at pretty high levels planning the invasion.
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Jul 30, 2022 17:29
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The bomb had nothing to do with the invasion or the defeat of Japan it was a tea bag we did to show we could. Nothing about who knew what when changes that but go on
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Jul 30, 2022 17:32
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The USSR would have invaded Hokkaido within a few weeks (long before the planned US invasion) had Japan not surrendered. Japanese leadership were fascists, so they strongly preferred the US. It was far more about that, considering that the USSR had just finished steamrolling Manchuria in two weeks after shipping their war machine across Siberia. When the bombs dropped, it wasn't that big of a deal because the cities were already smoking ruins.
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Jul 30, 2022 17:37
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Everybody knows the real reason Japan surrendered
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Jul 30, 2022 17:41
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A Bakers Cousin posted:Japan had been possible open to negotiations before Hiroshima so the idea of the land invasion was purely American aggressiveness Yeah the decision is often framed as purely nukes vs land invasion with sometimes the Soviets being brought up, but the idea of less-than-unconditional surrender is just completely forgotten a lot
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Jul 30, 2022 18:02
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japan surrendered because, as they themselves acknowledged, the sole remaining hope to avoid unconditional surrender was for them to get stalin onboard to broker some deal with the us, and the soviets rolling into manchuria and mulching the kwantung army kinda foreclosed that option
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Jul 30, 2022 18:09
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A Bakers Cousin posted:Nothing about who knew what when changes that but go on a large percentage of people who were planning the invasion had no idea there was a bomb.
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Jul 30, 2022 18:21
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THEE Taiwan
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Jul 30, 2022 18:37
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Bar Ran Dun posted:a large percentage of people who were planning the invasion had no idea there was a bomb. So what?
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Jul 30, 2022 19:00
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A Bakers Cousin posted:This may have been the stated reasons but later released showed military intelligence knew this to not be true and that the nukes were mainly used to show they could the nukes were used because they were already killing every civilian they possibly could so why not use the new bomb, yeah my point was about the scale of the difficulty of fighting a ground war across the pacific and not about justifying anything
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Jul 30, 2022 19:30
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the nukes were used to 1) see what would happen and 2) by doing that, put Stalin in his place
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Jul 30, 2022 19:41
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Stalin was not planning on fighting the Western allies and still thought coexistence could be worked out with the capitalist West for a few years after, so the bombs didn't even succeed at sending a message.
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Jul 30, 2022 19:46
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Atrocious Joe posted:Stalin … still thought coexistence could be worked out with the capitalist West for a few years after that drat 70/30 rule
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Jul 30, 2022 20:05
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A Bakers Cousin posted:So what? the narrative you present assumes things known only afterwards to most of the event participants
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Jul 30, 2022 20:39
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cat botherer posted:My 8th grade history teacher would strongly disagree with this characterization. The US lasted enough that the UK just called it quits because there were far bigger fish to fry, the battle of New Orleans was a footnote. That said, the big shift in American naval (if not military) history happened from 1812 to 1848 when the US went from a fleet that could barely protect its own shores to a blue water navy that could control both of Mexico's coasts.
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Jul 30, 2022 22:08
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This entire thing is presupposing that Stalin would have actually bothered to invade Japan instead of doing the much simpler option of taking Hokkaido, ignoring the rest of Japan, and rolling through China instead
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Jul 30, 2022 22:17
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Bar Ran Dun posted:the narrative you present assumes things known only afterwards to most of the event participants Uh no it doesn't, but ok
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Jul 30, 2022 22:18
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Grapplejack posted:This entire thing is presupposing that Stalin would have actually bothered to invade Japan instead of doing the much simpler option of taking Hokkaido, ignoring the rest of Japan, and rolling through China instead I feel like Japan surrendered because they were more terrified of that possibility than further nukes
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Jul 30, 2022 22:43
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Ardennes posted:The US lasted enough that the UK just called it quits because there were far bigger fish to fry, the battle of New Orleans was a footnote. That said, the big shift in American naval (if not military) history happened from 1812 to 1848 when the US went from a fleet that could barely protect its own shores to a blue water navy that could control both of Mexico's coasts. My American history is extremely weak but how much of this is because Spain lost almost all their American possessions around then? e:  
Weka has issued a correction as of 23:33 on Jul 30, 2022 |
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Jul 30, 2022 23:26
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Atrocious Joe posted:Stalin was not planning on fighting the Western allies and still thought coexistence could be worked out with the capitalist West for a few years after, so the bombs didn't even succeed at sending a message. i think the message was "we have these, we are willing to use them, and we don't want to be friends"
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Jul 31, 2022 00:44
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Admittedly, I don’t know if it made as much of a difference as much as internal shifts in the US since it is the point there was a more honest turn to centralization and infrastructure development (which in turn allowed the US to “harness” its interior.) That said, Spain was already a weakened power on the way out as well and created a power vacuum, but it too the US to develop the power structures to develop a navy.
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Jul 31, 2022 00:48
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https://twitter.com/Intel_sky/status/1553536190107746305?s=20&t=LUQt2crxOb_HL6gj3lmjMA soon?
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Jul 31, 2022 01:47
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indigi posted:that drat 70/30 rule If FDR hadn't blown his gasket that would probably have happened.
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Jul 31, 2022 04:33
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to be clear, i'm only disagreeing with xaris's narrow point that the US has never been an industrial war powerhouse. that's plainly untrue if you go back 100 years. if you're restricting to the postwar era then i agree with you i really enjoyed five days in august by michael gordin, which goes into great detail about the decisions around the usage of the nuclear bomb against japan. definitive scholarship about japan's motivations for surrender will probably never be finished since the japanese cabinet destroyed their meeting notes. on the american side, it's safe to say that there was no single decision maker who approved the usage of the nuclear bomb with the knowledge that it would be a historical inflection point. the USAAF was practically out of civilian control at the time that the bomb was dropped, as targeting decisions were almost entirely within SAC's command. there are credible arguments that truman didn't realize that hiroshima was a populated city at all and may have believed that it was a mere ammunition depot or otherwise purely military target. one factoid that stuck out to me was that a common postwar argument for nuking both hiroshima and nagasaki was that a second bomb was necessary to demonstrate that the destruction of hiroshima was not just a one-off and that the US could destroy any other japanese city at will. gordin claims that this justification is entirely post hoc: there are no sources at all before the atomic bombings that describe this argument. a third bombing (most likely against the ruins of tokyo) was being prepared by hundreds of personnel when truman ordered a halt to the atomic bombings in short, i don't think that the decision making of the US armed forces at the end of ww2 was organized enough to say that any particular motivation for bombing hiroshima and nagasaki was the dominant expression. i think that as long as the weapon existed, the mere presence of the relevant parties involved would ensure that it would be used one way or another.
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Jul 31, 2022 05:23
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cat botherer posted:The USSR would have invaded Hokkaido within a few weeks (long before the planned US invasion) had Japan not surrendered. Japanese leadership were fascists, so they strongly preferred the US. It was far more about that, considering that the USSR had just finished steamrolling Manchuria in two weeks after shipping their war machine across Siberia. When the bombs dropped, it wasn't that big of a deal because the cities were already smoking ruins. I’ve heard this a bunch, but did the Soviets have anywhere close to enough pacific naval and transport capacity to invade Japan?
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Jul 31, 2022 05:27
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Best Friends posted:I’ve heard this a bunch, but did the Soviets have anywhere close to enough pacific naval and transport capacity to invade Japan? no, they lacked the effective transport space to land the insufficient landing force (all of two divisions) and would have needed two waves and that's even with hokkaido being very thinly populated and defended relative to the remaining japanese islands Aglet56 posted:the USAAF was practically out of civilian control at the time that the bomb was dropped, as targeting decisions were almost entirely within SAC's command. there are credible arguments that truman didn't realize that hiroshima was a populated city at all and may have believed that it was a mere ammunition depot or otherwise purely military target. one factoid that stuck out to me was that a common postwar argument for nuking both hiroshima and nagasaki was that a second bomb was necessary to demonstrate that the destruction of hiroshima was not just a one-off and that the US could destroy any other japanese city at will. gordin claims that this justification is entirely post hoc: there are no sources at all before the atomic bombings that describe this argument. a third bombing (most likely against the ruins of tokyo) was being prepared by hundreds of personnel when truman ordered a halt to the atomic bombings these are very accurate and important points that get missed a lot, the us military had gone fairly insane but this point in the war atelier morgan has issued a correction as of 05:37 on Jul 31, 2022 |
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Jul 31, 2022 05:35
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Best Friends posted:I’ve heard this a bunch, but did the Soviets have anywhere close to enough pacific naval and transport capacity to invade Japan? No probably not, they could only land about one division at a time and that's if everything went off without a hitch, if they encountered any logistical problems or serious resistance the plan falls apart.
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Jul 31, 2022 05:36
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remember that the 'lesson' the us military learned from the pacific war was that killing as many people as possible no matter who they were or how you did it was how you won wars and there's a direct line from curtis lemay's staff of mass-murderers to all us military operations in vietnam
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Jul 31, 2022 05:40
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Tankbuster posted:If FDR hadn't blown his gasket that would probably have happened. I don’t think it would have outlasted Eisenhower in any case. and I bet Mcarthyism still happens
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Jul 31, 2022 05:59
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atelier morgan posted:remember that the 'lesson' the us military learned from the pacific war was that killing as many people as possible no matter who they were or how you did it was how you won wars and there's a direct line from curtis lemay's staff of mass-murderers to all us military operations in vietnam yeah but in the Pacific that came from iron bottom sound and Guadalcanal. comparatively nothing else was like that until Vietnam. it’s not just “how you won wars” it’s also to try prevent things from being as bad for the soldiers/marines and sailors. it doesn’t work. though it’s probably only Vietnam where they figure that out.
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Jul 31, 2022 06:21
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Well who is going to win WW3? Russia ain't doing so hot in Ukraine and China's army produces really cool propaganda films but their fighting ability is still unproven.
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Jul 31, 2022 10:02
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Fish of hemp posted:Well who is going to win WW3? Russia ain't doing so hot in Ukraine and China's army produces really cool propaganda films but their fighting ability is still unproven. well certainly not the side that conducts mass rapes
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Jul 31, 2022 10:05
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