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LGD posted:I'm not really sure? I mean all I'm saying is that once the war was won in a strategic sense, the question was very much "how do we bring this to a decisive close with as little loss to our side as possible." It's not a terribly profound point, but you seem to think I'm suggesting that I'm implying the allied forces were using 90's US style thinking about this, which I'm not at all. You should have said that, instead of arguing that the strategic bombing and conservation of losses were ancillary secondary objectives.
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Oct 25, 2016 02:09
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LGD posted:Whoa way to ignore the other posts regarding your misapprehensions on this topic, and then making GBS threads out a contextless link that explores the way revisionist scholarship based on archival material provides a new counter-narrative that I explicitly addressed in the very post you quoted. your argument rings hollow because: General Curtis LeMay, chief of the Air Forces posted:“The war would have been over in two weeks without the Russians entering and without the atomic bomb.”
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Oct 25, 2016 02:13
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Condiv posted:your argument rings hollow because: Oh we're uncritically accepting LeMay's opinions on things now? 
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Oct 25, 2016 02:16
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The story of Marcus McDilda is pretty great. American P-51 pilot, shot down and captured August 6th, 1945.quote:With the Kempeitai interrogators getting nowhere, a Japanese General Officer was summoned. Drawing his sword, he pressed it to McDilda’s lip, drawing blood, and threatened to behead him right there if he did not tell them everything he knew about the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. In response, McDilda spun a lie that may very well have saved his life. Remembering his high school chemistry, he launched into the following explanation of the US Army Air Force’s new weapon: Link tl;dr A POW proves torture doesn't work when he tells his captors the US has 100 bombs stockpiled, and they believe him
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Oct 25, 2016 02:18
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Condiv posted:your argument rings hollow because: On the other hand: Literally Hirohito posted:Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should We continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization.
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Oct 25, 2016 02:18
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LGD posted:Oh we're uncritically accepting LeMay's opinions on things now? no, just his unhawkish opinions. considering the man was fine with nuking vietnam to win that war, that he thought the atom bombs in japan were overkill seems noteworthy LeMay again posted:The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.”
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Oct 25, 2016 02:26
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Hirohito literally said "We're surrendering because of the atomic bombs."
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Oct 25, 2016 02:28
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Fojar38 posted:On the other hand: on the other other hand: quote:Historians often point to Japanese statements made after the war as proof that
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Oct 25, 2016 02:35
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LGD posted:Oh we're uncritically accepting LeMay's opinions on things now? This is not just the opinion of Lemay. It was the opinion of MacArthur, Eisenhower, Leahy, virtually the entire top brass of the US Military at the time. It was also the conclusion of the US Strategic Bombing Survey's postwar study. Red and Black fucked around with this message at 02:40 on Oct 25, 2016 |
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Oct 25, 2016 02:38
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Condiv posted:on the other other hand: Link your source also lol "Actually everything that the Japanese said were lies if it contradicts my beliefs"
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Oct 25, 2016 02:40
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It is almost like there were several compounding factors. However you seem to be arguing both that the atomic bombs weren't a large enough show of force to cause the surrender, while simultaneously being an enormous and disproportional show of force that was entirely unnecessary and overly costly in lives. In the end it hardly matters. The atomic weapons used on Japan to end WW2 are quite comparable to the conventional bombings used at the same time, and are orders of magnitude smaller in comparison to those developed in the height of the cold war. Saying "America Nuked Japan" with the idea of nukes being 1Mt doomsday weapons is sort of misleading.
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Oct 25, 2016 02:44
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Also, I don't know why people are posting post-war think tank studies when a ton of that poo poo wasn't available to Allied commanders at the time. e- guess what the "domestic situation" they are talking about is hint- it's lack of food
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Oct 25, 2016 02:46
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VikingSkull posted:Also, I don't know why people are posting post-war think tank studies when a ton of that poo poo wasn't available to Allied commanders at the time. Oh for sure dude, the IJA cared a lot about Japanese civilians starving to death.
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Oct 25, 2016 02:49
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Brainiac Five posted:Oh for sure dude, the IJA cared a lot about Japanese civilians starving to death. Lack of food leads to social unrest, social unrest leads to the lynching of people in power. So yeah, they kinda did.
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Oct 25, 2016 02:52
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VikingSkull posted:Also, I don't know why people are posting post-war think tank studies when a ton of that poo poo wasn't available to Allied commanders at the time. Hey this is alternate universe Fojar (Fojar39) and Brainiac Six is in our thread complaining that the Americans cruelly starved hundreds of thousands of Japanese to death instead of using their superweapon to show them that there was no point resisting
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Oct 25, 2016 02:53
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hundreds of thousands, lol if only
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Oct 25, 2016 02:55
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Fojar38 posted:Link your source
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Oct 25, 2016 03:00
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Chomskyan posted:The text quoted says nothing like that. If you're going to insist on inflicting your terrible posting on this thread at least try to post in good faith. It more or less does though. It ascribes motivations to the Japanese government that aren't particularly well supported. Its only proof are some officials saying that in hindsight they're glad for the bombs because it meant that they could save some more face when they surrendered, but if the intent of that passage is to prove that the emperor and the chief decision makers of Imperial Japan felt the opposite of how they said they felt that is very weak evidence. The chief purpose of the passage is to say "Well, yes, the Japanese said that, but they might have been lying! Here is the motivation for their hypothetical lies and some selective quotes to back it up!" Fojar38 fucked around with this message at 03:11 on Oct 25, 2016 |
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Oct 25, 2016 03:09
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If we're gonna quote MacArthur's objection to the bomb, this stands to be mentioned, too.quote:MacArthur's first priority was to set up a food distribution network; following the collapse of the ruling government and the wholesale destruction of most major cities, virtually everyone was starving. Even with these measures, millions of people were still on the brink of starvation for several years after the surrender. As expressed by Kawai Kazuo, "Democracy cannot be taught to a starving people". The US government encouraged democratic reform in Japan, and while it sent billions of dollars in food aid, this was dwarfed by the occupation costs it imposed on the struggling Japanese administration. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_Japan
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Oct 25, 2016 03:16
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So anyway how did the media interpret the bombings?
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Oct 25, 2016 03:28
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VikingSkull posted:Lack of food leads to social unrest, social unrest leads to the lynching of people in power. So you agree completely with the thrust of the passage, but want to intimate that it's wrong anyways. Hmmmmmm....... Fojar38 posted:Hey this is alternate universe Fojar (Fojar39) and Brainiac Six is in our thread complaining that the Americans cruelly starved hundreds of thousands of Japanese to death instead of using their superweapon to show them that there was no point resisting This isn't "your" thread you gabbling moron.
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Oct 25, 2016 03:29
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Brainiac Five posted:So you agree completely with the thrust of the passage, but want to intimate that it's wrong anyways. Hmmmmmm....... I've never said that the Soviet involvement didn't play a part in the Japanese surrender, though, it certainly did. My whole thing in this thread has been that famine was what drove Japan to surrender, and that the people who point to the atomic bombings as the worst travesty of the war don't really get how dire the situation was in regards to food stores. Japan was weeks away from being one of the worst humanitarian disasters of the modern age, and simply "waiting them out" would have resulted in at least as many deaths by way of starvation as the atomic bombings did. We know that the atomic bombings played a part in ending the war, along with the Soviet declaration of war. What we don't know is, had the Soviet declaration happened without the joint bombings, how long the war would have dragged on. Each successive week the war lasted added to Japanese famine.
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Oct 25, 2016 03:52
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Brainiac Five is either Tezzor or his clone. Nobody else posts like that.
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Oct 25, 2016 04:18
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Stereotype posted:However you seem to be arguing both that the atomic bombs weren't a large enough show of force to cause the surrender, while simultaneously being an enormous and disproportional show of force that was entirely unnecessary and overly costly in lives. These claims aren't mutually exclusive though. For example: the Katyn Massacre wasn't a large enough show of force to cause the German surrender. But murdering unarmed POWs is still entirely unnecessary and overly costly in lives. In fact these propositions would seem to support each other: if a massacre isn't big enough to affect the enemy's decision to surrender then by definition it was unnecessary and therefore overly costly in lives.
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Oct 25, 2016 04:38
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VitalSigns posted:These claims aren't mutually exclusive though. The Katyn massacre obviously didn't have anything to do with the Germans surrendering, it was about the Soviets loving over their then arch-nemesis.
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Oct 25, 2016 04:42
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VitalSigns posted:These claims aren't mutually exclusive though. This assumes a single gesture is enough to capitulate surrender when we know the war itself was a series of massacres over years. You could potentially argue that every military action from 1941 on short of the last atom bomb was unnecessary because it didn't cause a surrender but you'd have to be misreading the entire situation pretty spectacularly.
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Oct 25, 2016 04:43
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new phone who dis posted:This assumes a single gesture is enough to capitulate surrender when we know the war itself was a series of massacres over years. You could potentially argue that every military action from 1941 on short of the last atom bomb was unnecessary because it didn't cause a surrender but you'd have to be misreading the entire situation pretty spectacularly. Don't you have some better hole to go to now that they've run you out of GBS?
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Oct 25, 2016 04:45
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LeoMarr posted:So anyway how did the media interpret the bombings? I remember reading somewhere (possibly wiki) that the American public's reception to the bombing was overwhelming positive largely because the media focused on the flashy aspects of it: the stunning mushroom cloud, the flattened cityscape devoid of almost every building, the heroism of the plucky B-29 crew etc, and showed nothing of the human misery inflicted, none of the images of children with their backs burnt off, or people with skin hanging off them like tattered clothing or whatever else has since become iconic. It's interesting to note that feelings against Japan hardened in pre-war America after the publishing of the famous 'Bloody Saturday' photo, showing a bloodied and burnt baby crying amidst the ruins of a Shanghai train station after a Japanese air raid, and this helped to fuel sentiment that 'Japs' were a brutal and savage race. So I wonder how different the reaction in America might have been had photos of the victims (which naturally included thousands of babies) surfaced earlier and not been censored. Perhaps it wouldn't have actually changed much since many Americans saw the Japanese as well and truly subhuman at that point, who got everything they deserved. Hell, there are many people who use that line of reasoning to this day.
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Oct 25, 2016 04:51
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new phone who dis posted:This assumes a single gesture is enough to capitulate surrender when we know the war itself was a series of massacres over years. You could potentially argue that every military action from 1941 on short of the last atom bomb was unnecessary because it didn't cause a surrender but you'd have to be misreading the entire situation pretty spectacularly. That's not the argument Stereotype was making. His argument was that if the bomb didn't cause the surrender then it couldn't have been big enough to be responsible for unnecessary death. This is a crap argument though because every war crime kills people unnecessarily, and it's entirely possible to kill people unnecessarily without achieving some tactical or strategic objective. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 05:09 on Oct 25, 2016 |
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Oct 25, 2016 04:55
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Drunk in Space posted:I remember reading somewhere (possibly wiki) that the American public's reception to the bombing was overwhelming positive largely because the media focused on the flashy aspects of it: the stunning mushroom cloud, the flattened cityscape devoid of almost every building, the heroism of the plucky B-29 crew etc, and showed nothing of the human misery inflicted, none of the images of children with their backs burnt off, or people with skin hanging off them like tattered clothing or whatever else has since become iconic. You would have been hard pressed to find anything the American public wouldn't celebrate at that point if it meant the war was going to end sooner. For all the talk of propaganda and dehumanization, there's the very real effect of thousands upon thousands of men being sent back home in body bags over a period of four years. Everyone knew someone who lost somebody. Most of the WW2 vets I knew through my grandfather at different veteran's clubs didn't hold any special animosity towards the Japanese later on in their life. There were a few holding on to old grudges but for the most part they understood that most of them were just soldiers like they were. Many went back and visited Japan multiple times in their lives.
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Oct 25, 2016 05:06
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new phone who dis posted:You would have been hard pressed to find anything the American public wouldn't celebrate at that point if it meant the war was going to end sooner. For all the talk of propaganda and dehumanization, there's the very real effect of thousands upon thousands of men being sent back home in body bags over a period of four years. Everyone knew someone who lost somebody. Most of the WW2 vets I knew through my grandfather at different veteran's clubs didn't hold any special animosity towards the Japanese later on in their life. There were a few holding on to old grudges but for the most part they understood that most of them were just soldiers like they were. Many went back and visited Japan multiple times in their lives. Also, the American public were being shown newsreels like this (possibly NSFW) in the run up to a potential invasion of the mainland. Propaganda, sure, but this is why the American public had such a reaction to the bombs.
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Oct 25, 2016 05:09
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Drunk in Space posted:I remember reading somewhere (possibly wiki) that the American public's reception to the bombing was overwhelming positive largely because the media focused on the flashy aspects of it: the stunning mushroom cloud, the flattened cityscape devoid of almost every building, the heroism of the plucky B-29 crew etc, and showed nothing of the human misery inflicted, none of the images of children with their backs burnt off, or people with skin hanging off them like tattered clothing or whatever else has since become iconic. Interviews with Japanese civilians during the late 1940s significantly shifted American public opinion, and a large part of that was depicting the suffering underwent by Japanese civilians as part of the development of the narrative where the Japanese public was victimized by the Japanese army and navy alongside the people of the nations Japan invaded, what has been called "victim consciousness" by Japanese sociologists.
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Oct 25, 2016 05:10
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Condiv posted:oh, and here's a nice little article on this: http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/is3104_pp162-179_wilson.pdf That article itself says that those initial negotiations were hopeless and without merit. If the Dönitz government sued to declare armistice in exchange for enemy troops leaving Berlin and all areas East of Ruhr - Rhine, and also sought amnesty for German state officials, they would have been curbstomped also.
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Oct 25, 2016 07:21
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new phone who dis posted:You would have been hard pressed to find anything the American public wouldn't celebrate at that point if it meant the war was going to end sooner. For all the talk of propaganda and dehumanization, there's the very real effect of thousands upon thousands of men being sent back home in body bags over a period of four years. Everyone knew someone who lost somebody. Most of the WW2 vets I knew through my grandfather at different veteran's clubs didn't hold any special animosity towards the Japanese later on in their life. There were a few holding on to old grudges but for the most part they understood that most of them were just soldiers like they were. Many went back and visited Japan multiple times in their lives. No doubt, but I was talking specifically about how the bombing itself was perceived based on the images and information released to the public, not people celebrating its role in ending the war.
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Oct 25, 2016 07:26
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VitalSigns posted:These claims aren't mutually exclusive though. The Katyn massacre was a 1940 killing of Polish soldiers. Nevertheless, your larger point is a sound one. The just war theory states that any military operation made without enough of a commitment to have a real chance of achieving its goals as decisively as is within one's powers is unjustifiable, and merely contributes to the other injustices of war. E.g. drone bombing militant outposts across the ME is a criminal thing because it is just a show of force that causes death and indiscriminate damage largely for the sake of keeping up appearances, without much concern from the US as to how it contributes to the strategic goal of establishing peace in the region, and is hugely disproportionate to the magnitude of the task at hand, therefore entirely inappropriate and pointless.
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Oct 25, 2016 07:29
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VikingSkull posted:There really isn't, but unconditional surrender is the underlying cause to Operation Starvation, Operation Downfall, Operation Meetinghouse and Operation Centerboard. So if you have to pick something, the root cause would be where to start. My recollection from college history is that a big factor behind the push for unconditional surrender was WW1; a lot of people still remembered it and came to the conclusion that a brokered armistice would just lead to WW3 with the same belligerents in another twenty years, so the Germans and the Japanese had to be broken and conquered, not merely agree to stop fighting. I think a lot of people who had seen the first world war and were now fighting the second would have been willing to do nearly any drat thing if they felt it meant a third couldn't happen. Hell, even into the 80s, you had people like Thatcher willing to cooperate with the Soviets on blocking German reunification.
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Oct 25, 2016 08:27
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:My recollection from college history is that a big factor behind the push for unconditional surrender was WW1; a lot of people still remembered it and came to the conclusion that a brokered armistice would just lead to WW3 with the same belligerents in another twenty years, so the Germans and the Japanese had to be broken and conquered, not merely agree to stop fighting. You're correct. The end of WW1 was a giant gently caress-up that Wilson tried and tried to talk the other allies out of because he knew it would just cause another war down the line. You can't impoverish a country to those levels of foreign debt without expecting a reaction. They ended up being right, Japan and Germany ended up much better off due to the allied occupation and restoration effort than they probably would have been under any sort of system preserved from the previous leaders.
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Oct 25, 2016 08:30
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Consider if we hadn't used nuclear weapons the subsequent coups that occurred even after we did, may have attracted more supporters and been successful. Then we're right back to square one, or worse. I don't know if I like the argument about the nuclear bombings saving more lives though. I don't value Japanese lives more highly than American ones, nor vice-versa, but I think I might value civilian lives more than soldier's lives. Maybe "value" is the wrong way to put it but if your job is to fight a war then it seems like we should be more willing to accept your death. The draft does complicate that considerably though, perhaps even to the point of invalidating the argument entirely.
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Oct 25, 2016 09:22
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Stereotype posted:Yeah A-bombs are really just big bombs, the fact that they are so feared/revered nowadays is because of the half century of media interpretation. 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. However, once the weapons are fired that doesn't make a million deaths from nukes worse than a million deaths from literal megatons of TNT, and in a world where there's a single-digit number of minor nukes in existence (making accidentally destroying civilisation by launching all nukes impossible) using those nukes isn't different from dropping literal megatons of TNT. new phone who dis posted:Brainiac Five is either Tezzor or his clone. Nobody else posts like that. Effectronica rereg, actually. suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 11:17 on Oct 25, 2016 |
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Oct 25, 2016 11:00
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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new phone who dis posted:You're correct. The end of WW1 was a giant gently caress-up that Wilson tried and tried to talk the other allies out of because he knew it would just cause another war down the line. You can't impoverish a country to those levels of foreign debt without expecting a reaction. They ended up being right, Japan and Germany ended up much better off due to the allied occupation and restoration effort than they probably would have been under any sort of system preserved from the previous leaders.
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Oct 25, 2016 13:08
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