News about the nuclear bomb in 1945

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > News about the nuclear bomb in 1945

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

rudatron posted:

The only qualitative difference between nuclear and conventional explosions is the radiological effects. For the immediate bombing, there's no much of an ethical difference, any bomb either kills you or it doesn't, and the whole thing happens in an instant. It's just a probability game.

Again, the 'special' ethics with which we treat nuclear weapons has less to do with the weapon itself, than it does with the implication of the weapon, and the environment it creates, for everyone who lives on this planet. That is entirely a product of the cold war, and did not exist in the context of its use in ww2.

I'm not even convinced this is a qualitative difference. Conventional explosions can (do?) leave behind heavy metals, basically all burnt materials are carcinogens. Unexploded ordinance seems to be a bigger danger with conventional weapons versus nuclear (in terms of residual danger left behind in comparison to radiation).

# ¿ Oct 27, 2016 19:07

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# ¿ May 19, 2024 14:23

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Fojar38 posted:

But if the Nazis are fighting using a total war mindset and the Allies didn't, that gives an inherent strategic advantage to the Nazis and considering the stakes of this war I'm glad that the allies denied them that. Ditto with Imperial Japan.

Yes being willing to commit war crimes does indeed give the war criminal an advantage at war.

vintagepurple posted:

If you really want to criticize US or british conduct, what wartime nation of the 1940s took more pains to reduce civilian casualties? How should the war have been fought differently?

We should have killed less civilians. I understand at the time, killing civilians was generally acceptable, but it is a bad thing to do, much like while slavery was considered generally acceptable in 1800, it was still a bad thing to do.

# ¿ Oct 28, 2016 18:21

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

vintagepurple posted:

How?

How do you even calculate it? What if Luftwaffe air superiority or parity over Russia is maintained for another x months due to additional flak and air assets available to the nazis? That means lots more dead russians, and they didn't start the war.

Are you claiming this is impossible to calculate? Nothing is perfect, you take you best estimate, and you choose the action that you believe kills the least civilians. You can argue that I'm incorrect in saying a different action would result in less civilians being killed (though doing so would require you to acknowledge that such a thing could be calculated), but arguing it's fundamentally impossible to guess at which action kills the least civilians is absurd.

# ¿ Oct 28, 2016 18:53

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

VikingSkull posted:

The US did precisely this and were losing aircraft* at an unsustainable rate.

What you're suggesting is that the Allies shouldn't have won the war.

*more than this, trained aircrews

Yes, if winning a war requires that you kill more civilians than losing the war would, you should lose the war. Winning wars is only good if winning the war results in the some positive benefit.

# ¿ Oct 28, 2016 19:09

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

fivegears4reverse posted:

Are you actually going to answer how we should have killed less civilians to win the war rather than firing back questions that were never asked to begin with?

We should not have firebombed Dresden. (edit: I think it's pretty absurd that you think that "How could we have killed less civilians in World War 2?" is a question that demands an answer)

quote:

Not only did we know how to calculate the vast majority of our available options, we had a pretty good idea of how many people would have died for a number of them. Millions starving, tens of thousands vaporized in an instant, millions killed over the course of years from an extensive bombing campaign, whatever the case may have been, we ultimately knew that we were killing people and killing them horribly in every way.

War is horrible, and it is nice to pretend that whatever bizzaroworld fiction you will deign to post in here about how things could have been nicer for all involved would have, in effect, ended the war in a more satisfactory fashion to Something Awful Poster twodot. But there is no guarantee that the other options would have resulted in more or less deaths, short of just not fighting wars, ever. That would be nice, maybe (belligerent nations here) should think about this before they start some poo poo next time.

I realize you aren't the person who asked me how to calculate this. But given you apparently understand how to calculate this, it's awkward you are replying to my post which was replying to someone who suggested calculating this was difficult at best.

# ¿ Oct 28, 2016 19:13

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Fojar38 posted:

ITT we unironically argue that the Axis should have won the war

I strongly suspect the Axis winning the war would have resulted in more civilian deaths than what actually happened.
edit:
It's VikingSkull that's suggesting that winning the war required us to kill more civilians than the Axis would.

# ¿ Oct 28, 2016 19:17

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

fivegears4reverse posted:

Even if such a magical world existed where it's proven that the Soviets were just trying to cover their bases, cross their t's and dot their i's, I think I'd still call the rape and murder of civilians in this context abhorent at best and much like Dresden I would say it is VERY arguable that organized sexual violence towards women and children did less to break the German spirit than, say, blowing up their infrastructure, breaking the back of the military on two separate fronts, and the wholesale slaughter of a generations worth of trained, capable fighting men. Actual recorded history and civilian accounts of Russian occupation would likely suggest that I am right.

There is absolutely no way to prove that the Russians were 'reducing partisan actions' with this nonsense so bringing up a hypothetical like this in order to say "gotcha!" is pretty loving retarded.

This looks to me a lot like the "torture is bad because it's ineffective" crowd. Arguably they are right, but it's a very awkward position to maintain if torture were to become effective in the future somehow. Similarly, historically, raping a bunch of unrelated people hasn't been very useful for the war effort, but if you are justifying things based on usefulness to the war effort and conditions change in the future, you're going to land in a bad position.
edit:
To be clear, torture and rape are bad independent of their utility towards achieving goals.

# ¿ Oct 28, 2016 20:32

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

Main Paineframe posted:

Historically, a lot has - unconditional surrender demands are the exception, not the rule.

I don't even understand what unconditional surrender is supposed to mean in a realpolitik sense. You can always un-surrender, the victor needs to offer conditions (even if they are implicit) to stop the loser from reneging, since they have no motivation to stay faithful to the surrender otherwise.

# ¿ Oct 28, 2016 21:22

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

A Buttery Pastry posted:

Surrender implies telling your dudes to lay down their arms, at which point your enemy can move in and make "un-surrender" pretty difficult.

I think you'll discover that dudes are relatively good at reacquiring arms, even if you actually want through the exercise of putting all of your arms in a pile.

# ¿ Oct 28, 2016 21:36

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

VikingSkull posted:

It's a good thing that the Allies didn't kill more civilians than the Axis did, then!

Do you actually know anything about WWII? Anything at all?

If you believe this, then you should think that winning the war was the action that resulted in less civilian deaths, then why did you say me thinking that we should choose actions that minimize civilians deaths is tantamount to saying we should have lost the war?

# ¿ Oct 28, 2016 21:55

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# ¿ May 19, 2024 14:23

twodot: Aug 7, 2005; You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

VikingSkull posted:

Well, you said that in response to my post saying "the US tried to minimize civilians casualties and it was eroding our capability to prosecute the war".

Do you actually have an idea as to what the Allies could have done to minimize civilian casualties?

How can minimizing civilians casualties erode our capability to prosecute war if successfully prosecuting the war minimizes casualties?

I've already put forward "not firebomb Dresden", but since you've asked again I'll add "not firebomb Tokyo". It really should not be in dispute that the Allies could have killed less civilians than they did.

# ¿ Oct 28, 2016 22:01

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > News about the nuclear bomb in 1945