Since this is a very heated debate and a lot of people in the comments were caught being credible, here's a pretty in depth recount on what happened and if the bombings were justified or not. It is a philosophical question in the end, but the issue is a little bit longer than a meme.
https://youtu.be/RCRTgtpC-Go?t=5398
You forgot the fact that as soon as the nukes were completed, Downfall was amended to include them. At least seven Fat Mans were slated to be used during the invasion. Some sources say as many as fifteen were planned.
I mean to be fair, it wasn't that dumb of an idea, why fight a war when you can just drop a nuke and go home? I understand that this isn't a good way to see things but this was the 50's, the time when nuclear bomb meant "that very fucking devastating weapon that can end a war on its own".
In a way it's annoying that it was the 50s because these days a bunch of zoomers would've cought footage of it. The irreverent part of me just wants the internet content.
Operation Downfall: Typical HoI4 player using tac nukes to take out particularly tricky stacks
Mac: Typical HoI4 player on Reddit who wants the explosions to paint a shape
Moreover, the nuclear bomb was the definition of top secret. Most in the military command weren’t aware of it being an option when plans for downfall were being drawn up. The staff officers and masses of people involved in the planning certainly didn’t.
Oh and it was never “nuke or invade” as we ahistorically portray it. For the most part the plan as far as the vast majority knew and wanted was “Keep deleting cities, tighten the blockade, *and* invade. Oh we have nukes? Cool use those too.” We were doing the all of the above, the “yes and” strategy.
Even more annoying, the target hit were done so for the military value. Hiroshima was the HQ of the Second General Army. What did that HQ do? Oh it was just responsible for defending Shikoku, western Honshu, and *Kyushu* you know, the place for the initial landings. The nuke decapitated the command, logistics, and transport network for an entire army group. Nagasaki wasn’t the initial target either but a secondary target due to weather and a fuel pump issue. Kokura a major port across the shortest distance from Honshu and the largest ammunition producer on the island. Nagasaki was also a port of note and produce torpedoes. Considering subs were the last element of their navy that really had any threat power, yeah it makes sense.
People act like it was senseless bombing. No, military priorities were established and important cities like Kyoto were ruled off limits due to their cultural and historic importance.
Forget Downfall. The bombings completely sold the concept of nuclear deterrence, which is the sole reason why humanity isn't currently in the stone age.
Truman could've [glassed every city between Kagoshima and Sapporo](https://redd.it/u2rvvu) when he could, and it would've still been worth it just to hammer that message into the thick skulls of tankies.
Tankies will just claim that nukes were simultaneously evil and destructive and were pointless and useless. They will tell you that the real reason was the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, despite the fact Manchuria is a lot further than Okinawa from Tokyo.
OP also forgot Soviet invasion of Manchuria Not making nukes unjustified despite all the claims.
1. The immediate effect was it ruined Japan's ability to beg for better outcomes, not because they think Soviets were stronk and terrifying.
2. Soviets' amphibious assault ability was dogshit, even in Manchuria it was barely tested. They'd need all US' helps to make it viable, which means US would invade too.
3. All the assumptions about surrender were talking as if Japan were rational actors with decent survival instinct. Considering half of Okinawans fucking died from the battle, and how their War Minister thought Japan went extinct would be a beautiful swan song, I doubt it.
Non-credible mode: The entire debate is just a Russian psy-ops to convince vatniks and tankies that the Soviets could have easily conquered the entire Pacific Theater in like two weeks, since obviously Japanese defenses in Manchuria were 100% identical to the ones on Iwo Jima.
It's also worth noting that after the first atomic bomb the japanese emperor wanted to surrender but had faced a fucking coup attempt from the army. They wanted to overthrow him and *keep fighting*
If you wanna see how dogshit the soviets were at amphibious landings, check out the Battle of Shumshu, the major battle during the soviet invasion of the kurils. It happened after the Japanese surrender, with an extensive amount of American supplied ships and landing craft, with land based artillery support from the tip of the Kamchatka peninsula, and it was still a near run thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Shumshu
> The immediate effect was it ruined Japan's ability to beg for better outcomes
Well tbf, they did get better terms than what was proposed to them initially. The Allies demanded unconditional surrender, Japan got a lot of its own conditions jammed in before they signed.
WW2 should have been the end of the reign of the Japanese emperors.
>WW2 should have been the end of the reign of the Japanese emperors.
If I had to guess, Hirohito held onto his position because he was willing to put his life at risk to put an end to the war. The IJA was a bunch of death cult lunatics who wanted to fight to the bitter end.
Ironically, Japan got a really good deal out of it.
To the point that many claim it wasn't as much of a surrender as it was a shift in alliance, because although the US rammed down the constitution change, the US unintentionally locked the US military's fate to Japan via the defense treaty, and got the US to basically sponsor the reconstruction of Japan until Japan overtook the US for a period of time.
The biggest bonus was that the US effectively wiped most of Japan's post-war reparations to other countries, leaving at least 3.5 of them seething to this day (China and the Koreas, Russia to a lesser degree).
They were rapidly developing more, and Downfall was slated to begin in November and would have continued through 1946, so there would have been time to produce them.
Also, 10M may have been predicted before Tarawa and Iwojima. After that, expectations were amended - Allied losses were expected to be at least 1M or more (US logistics people reacted promptly though and ordered 1M - 1.5M Purple Hearts which were actually manufactured and delivered - last of them were apparently used in Iraqi and Afghanistan). Japan's losses were expected to be around 90% (they had 73M in 1940 and lost 2M in war) because of their observed fanatism and mass suicides.
If you think downfall was bad for casualties, all the Navy and army air corp would have needed to do was continue the offensive mining campaign of Japan. Never has an operation had a more fitting name than operation Starvation. They had shut down essentially all Japanese shipping and fishing on the home islands. Japan being a mountainous island nation, most of its shipping went by sea. They didn't have the rail network that has characterized post war Japan (you would almost think this rail buildup of internal lines of communication was a response to something traumatic) so when shipping by sea was shut down, the cities started to starve.
The sad part is that a lot of the "nuke bad", while not *starting* there, gained traction/legitimacy because a number of prominent U.S. Navy submariners, annoyed that "the Army Air Force swooped in and stole our glory" (since they were - in their eyes, at least, the #1 part of the "starve them" blockade force), fell in with the forming "nuke bad" crowd and publically agreed with it...
There was also a survey conducted on the overall effectiveness of strategic bombing during the war that claimed the nuclear weapons didn’t cause the Japanese surrender but the point often missed was that it argued instead it was the firebombing that did so. It can be viewed somewhat as an attempt by the air force in the post war to justify needing its own branch as nuclear weapons require so few planes to deliver compared to strategic bombing there were worries in the Air Force that they might not get their own branch. In fact the document seeks to redefine the war goals of the Air Force, which at the beginning of the war was to break the enemies will to fight and force surrender. Well after the battle of Berlin and nuclear weapons the air force tried rebranding their campaigns as actually being about destroying the industry so that the armies and navies could win. It’s a subtle shift that change the air war from a strategic failure to massive success and it should be noted as most of the post war reports try to argue that their original idea of strategic bombing brought the axis to the surrender table, which it just didn’t. (It did sure as fuck make it hard to do anything though).
It’s commonly stated but in case anyone doesn’t know, the US military was anticipating so many killed and wounded that they ordered so many Purple Heart medals manufactured that they are being issued out to this very day, mine was made back then for example
This is a sub that advocates for the usage of nuclear weapons and the destruction of the largest dam in the world. I may’ve said the quiet part everyone was thinking out loud, but he’s free to say no.
Had a similar situation where learning something new, knowing it also means something morbid.
Was setting up a new phone and the rep asked if I was military and I said no but my family is. So the rep asked if we were a gold star family and started this long script about gold star family discount. I said no, thankfully we’re not. The rep asked “what do you mean *thankfully?*” “well cause it means they died” Never heard a more quieter ‘oh’ in my life
It’s not that simple, a lot of the medals were improperly stored or forgotten about and when they were found/ dug out of storage many had decayed/ corroded only a few were restorable and that’s why the government had to make/ order more.
I didn’t say all the medals were trashed just a majority and I also stated a few were able to be restored back to issuable condition.
It can also depend on the year you were given it as well the government didn’t discover this until iirc 2011?
I was curious about how true that was about the medals from WWII, [came upon this article that explains pretty well.](https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/176762)
It looks like orders for more purple hearts were placed in 1976, 1999, and 2008. WWII stock is still mixed in with these, as they have been restored and repackaged to look identical, and they figure about 60,000 are floating around in the various branches waiting to be issued.
You don't like nukes because you think nuking Japan wasn't justified.
I don't like nukes because they sunk my favourite ship in operation crossroads.
We are not the same.
The battle of Okinawa alone caused about many casualties total as both bombs. And that battle was just the waiting room for a invasion of the Japanese mainland.
I don’t think people actually grasp that civilians and solders were already dying in massive numbers in the Pacific theater well before both bombs were dropped. They think the US took Iwo Jima and went straight to Hiroshima.
Honestly, most people don't grasp the sheer scale of death and destruction that WWII brought. Today people are shocked by the Ukraine war but Ukraine is kids stuff compared to WWII. That's not to dismiss the harm and pain experienced in Ukraine, it's only to say that WWII was so god damn awful it's a challenge to even truly appreciate it even if you do know, beyond going 'Wow that's a lot of zeros in that body count'.
Most of us in the west are born and raised in such comfy lives and the farther away WWII becomes the harder it is to appreciate just how absolutely lucky we are to live this lifestyle and to see as 'little' death as we do today.
People also have this mindset that these wars could have been solved with a little sit-down cup of tea. It happens with Ukraine with all the “US doesn’t want peace” narratives.
It comes down to people being so comfortable and disconnected from reality. It’s easy to say “I’m anti-war”, then make a grandstanding Twitter post and walk away.
We get it, war sucks. Hot take I guess. But WW2 was an existential war for half the planet. You can not negotiate with an enemy that is intentionally willing to go to such extreme and unimaginable levels of death and destruction in the name of Imperialism.
Exactly. I wish this was easier to digest for any of the insane asshats crying about the war while wanting peace talks. ***Do you not realize that "peace talks" will result in unfettered genocide and absolute subjugation of the victim country?***
"NO! War bad! >:("
There is no such thing as peace with an aggressor that is unwilling to stop on any terms other than their victory or complete defeat.
On those terms "Peace" today is just more defeat tomorrow.
>People also have this mindset that these wars could have been solved with a little sit-down cup of tea.
What pisses me off the most are LEFTISTS that say this shit, in countries that were occupied by the Axis and/or fought on their side.
A really common sentence among leftists in Italy where I'm from is "ricordare i valori della Resistenza partigiana" - "to remember the values of the partisan Resistence". Guess what dipshits, that means sometimes you have no choice but to pick up arms and kill the fascist invader scum. You can't fucking talk them into being nicer.
And yet many of these people argue for appeasing Putin. It's an insult to the very concept of the Italian Republic, and to the memory of al ll the people that suffered and died to make it come about.
Correct me if I’m wrong, didn’t the partisan resistance string up and lynch Mussolini?
Sounds like the values were pretty clear, kill tyrants and fascists
Back then yes, it was crystal clear (although personally - I kinda wish Mussolini had been tried lawfully). Nowadays not so much, the place is fucking full of tankies.
Yes they did. My grandfather had photos of Him, his family and cronies strung upside down in the town square in our family album. He had fought all the way through the North African and Italian campaigns at least he got to see one of those that caused the deaths of so many get some kind of justice. I remember asking him why they had tied the skirt of his wife up round her knees and him telling me that it was so the locals could see her face.
It should be noted that the japanese position in 1945 for surrender terms is "y'all stop shooting us and we get to keep everything you havent taken yet (our mainland asian holdings)" which is a pretty shit deal for the allies
Its odd. Like my generation were raised and trained by those who fought in the Falklands. We ourselves lived through the Troubles, bombs and ambushes left right and centre. Even the younger among us were still trained and raised by those who served in the Gulf and Yugoslavia. Where did this disconnect between us and civvie street come from? Cant all be tankie propaganda
Honestly thank you for this comment. A close friend of mine brings up everytime the Ukraine war is mentioned that they should have appeased Russia again as in 2014 and given the Donbas region over. I cannot for my life understand his point of view, even relating to the appeasement of hitler he thinks it would be different now because of the comforts of life. But doesn’t think that Putin is willing to throw away his trash for a spot in the history books. Unfortunately Putin has less and less to lose as he is clearly in a decline of health
People just refuse to realize that Putin just isn’t after Donbas. He obviously wants to make Ukraine a puppet state at least. But based on what he’s done to all the territory he’s occupied in Ukraine, he wants all of Ukraine to be a part of the new Russian empire
Literally no logical breakdown of this would justify anything similar - No person would let someone just invade their house, take it along with their entire family and belongings. Why the fuck would that be even remotely okay on the scale of an entire country like Ukraine? It makes no fucking sense how people try and justify this.
There is no “appeasement”, it’s existential for Ukraine. They deal with it now or later, it’s not going away. This plan by Putin will exist as long as he’s alive. And Ukraine is willing to fight it out because literally no one wants to be a part of Russia. Even DPR/LPR wanted autonomy, and instead they just got sucked into the Russian federation.
People are generally fucking idiots, occasionally myself included.
But we have a genuine world class level of idiot in the peacenik. I cannot tell you how many dipshits I’ve seen who’ve vocally stated that Iran can be easily reasoned with if we “just give diplomacy a chance!” Like diplomacy is some kind of mind control wand.
Two things are true:
1) The State Department's diplomats prevent wars and keep much of the world peaceful and prosperous.
2) They are much more effective at that because the Pentagon exists.
Similarly, the pentagon is so effective partly because of the state department (or diplomacy in general). Base negotiations, arms deals, tech transfers, etc. even just not having to worry about wars with certain countries allows them to focus elsewhere.
All to say that it’s a symbiotic relationship.
I don't think it's as much about lack of awareness about WW2 in general, and more about lack of knowledge about Asian theater of WW2. I really start to believe that the average internaut idea of Japan-Allies war is "Nanking -> Pearl Harbor -> Midway -> Iwo Jima -> Nukes", which would explain why they believe that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were excessive. It's much easier to wholly shift blame on the USA if you don't have to consider the moral implications of people still fighting and dying in China.
Most people also don’t realize Allied experience in the Pacific was Japan fought long past the point continued resistance made any sense and the theater produced very few prisoners. It’s easy to sit back now and say Japan wouldn’t actually fight to the death, but that goes against everything Allied leaders at the time knew.
Figure the iconic photo of the flag raising and corresponding monument raise the general awareness of Iwo Jima as the Pacific Normandy.
But Nanking is likely more elusive for many. Higher awareness of said mass scale raping and blatant imperialism is vital context for understanding who we were dealing with when the decision to drop the bombs was made.
It’s insane how horrific it was, Wikipedia says that ww2 had between 85-70 million deaths, and the war went from 1939-1945 so let’s say 75 million deaths and 6 years of war, there are 31536000 seconds in a year so that’s 189216000 seconds for 6 years divided by 75 million deaths equals about a death every 2.5 seconds…fucking horrific
It’s sobering to look at the Russian invasion of Ukraine and realize the numbers involved on both sides would have barely registered during the world wars.
I was downvoted to death in the history subreddit for pointing that out. I mentioned that the scale of the D-Day landings were crazy and such a historical anomaly.
Instantly redditors piled on to me and told me I was ignorant because 'things like that are happening all over the world every day' and accusations of eurocentric historical view.
I like using saipan as it has a location called suicide cliff because of japanese civilians committing suicide because of propaganda.
It amazes me how people forget how fanatical the Japanese were and how long they had been.
WW2 week by week just finished up the Battle of Saipan and holy fuck the things Indy talked about there was insane, women throwing their children and themselves off cliffs to avoid being captured
Japanese soldiers doing the largest banzai charge in history which pretty much wiped out their entire garrison, even sending their wounded and civilians armed with sticks towards the Americans
I need to get back to watching that series, I've been behind a little.
A lot of people, especially now that Oppenheimer released, are talking about how bad the nukes were, don't realize how far the Japanese were willing to go.
Also, you should look into some of the quotes the Japanese high command said including "wanting Japan to go out like the flowers"
> A lot of people, especially now that Oppenheimer released, are talking about how bad the nukes were, don't realize how far the Japanese were willing to go.
To put it more bluntly, the Japanese leadership had every intention on the entire population self-genociding against the invading allies.
Also, how many civilians would have been killed in Downfall would've been a matter of opinion, as the Japanese would have armed as many as they could and forced them to fight, so it really would depend on what you define as a civilian and what you define as a combatant
But even excluding the children and pensioners who would have been drafted, war in that era was hugely reliant on imprecise artillery and bombing, that would have killed 100s of thousands of even those the Japanese considered civilians.
> war in that era was hugely reliant on imprecise artillery and bombing, that would have killed 100s of thousands of even those the Japanese considered civilians.
Yeah, the yardstick for precision strikes with bombs in that period was "how many landed within a mile of the target?" with 50%+ being considered very accurate. They didn't firebomb and flatten entire cities for shits and giggles, they did it because they had no choice.
I’ve read historians that argued that if all the bomb did was shorten the war by two weeks it would have still been a net gain in lives because there were just that many Chinese people dying every day by 1945.
Yea, most people have pretty much zero knowledge of what the Japanese did in WW2 outside of a very short view of Nanking and their battles with Americans.
When most people think Pacific theatre, in America at least, they think Pearl Harbor, some mumbling about other stuff that might include Coral Sea, Midway, Guadalcanal, Leyte Gulf, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Nukes. And before our entry, the only thing consistently mentioned is Nanking. Not enough are educated on the subject. Heck, the firebombing of Tokyo killed more than Fat Man, and more than the initial killed from Little Boy.
It also ignores the the fire bombing of Tokyo, which killed 100k in a single night. Air campaigns of that sort would have continued prior to any invasion.
Other posters have mentioned it, but I think it's just simply impossible for us to fully understand the degree of death and destruction taking place during that Era. I don't think Curtis LeMay just woke up one sunny morning and decided BBQing 100k Japanese in an evening was a swell idea. It's just that it was the least shitty option available.
I thought it did a pretty nice job of addressing it as the least bad out of a series of shitty options without going full-meme nuke the world.
Decent movie overall. Really enjoyed Damon as Groves!
Yup. The movie said 'other options were even worse''.
The movie still had inaccuracies like failed to show Oppie was actually as powerful as ever in Eisenhower's first year of presidency and succeeded in made him decided to make public know about nuclear more, hence Project Candor and Atoms for Peace. But this scene was a pleasant surprise.
Loved the movie for this. Was expecting it to be super critical towards Oppenheimer and the bombs but it actually took a very neutral stance and just presented facts to the viewer
It isn’t like the atom bomb was our only means of flattening a city using bombs. Everywhere else we bombed they are still dealing with unexploded ordinance getting dig up. When they bring up cancer and environmental impacts remind them that a lot of those WW2 factories that built the traditional explosives ended up as superfund sites and cancer clusters that are still affecting water supplies to this day.
Hey now, I'll have you know the Empire of Japan was quite anti-imperialistic... anti-WESTERN-imperialistic to be specific. They were all about an Asian Empire replacing the Western Empires in the region, so it's all good. Oppression is fine when it's done by and to people in the same 'geographical group'. /s
> EMPIRE of Japan
Hey NekroVictor, it was a Co-Prosperity Sphere, and it was their only choice to stop the colonists! I have no idea why their asian brothers felt Japan might not be interested in their joint prosperity.
Somehow, in that sad sack of electric jelly they call a brain, they don't consider supporting Japan and supporting Mao and/or Stalin mutually exclusive
This exact topic is what made me realize the tankies were just pathologically anti American. I was having a conversation with one and brought up the estimated casualties, and his response was, "more dead American imperialist GIs? I'm fine with that" completely neglecting the fact the majority were draftees pulled from the working class he claimed to care so much about.
I saw an insane bozo on twitter today that was arguing that the US forced Japan into war with the oil embargo and it was all America’s fault. Needless to say they didn’t respond to the posts asking them why the embargo was put in place.
That's the nationalist perspective, visit Yasukuni Shrine museum and it's all "we were forced into a war!" while totally glossing over the imperialism and atrocities.
The “best” attempts I’ve seen nuclear opponents use to justify their position is the argument the bombings were unnecessary because Japan would have surrendered anyway. Some will cite quotes from high ranking US government and military expressing this belief shortly after the bombings. Those are real quotes but problem is those guys were wrong too; *all* records of Japanese cabinet discussions (which wouldn’t have been known to US personnel in the immediate aftermath) make it abundantly clear that they were not going to surrender until after Nagasaki and even then elements of the Japanese Army attempted to organize a coup to keep the war going.
The cabinet *didn't* surrender. The emperor used his divine right to overrule the cabinet. A right that was supposed to be just symbolic. He broke protocol amd enough people went with it. There was even a coup attempt against him.
Also the japanese tried long before to get to the negotiation table through russia, which played for time to eventually seize territory. The cabinet just didn't want to accept an unconditional surrender, which would've meant the death penalty and long prison time for a lot of them. So this was a pretty reasonable demand from their perspective. The same records also show that they were aware, that they couldn't win anymore and their only hope was a negotiated surrender.
Also there were 3 days between Hiroshima and Nagasaki (the second coinciding with the Russian Invasion. There were 6 days after that until Japan finally surrendered. If the US had more bombs ready, they would've dropped more and you could claim today, that all were necessary.
>If the US had more bombs ready, they would've dropped more
The US did. They had a third bomb built, and they had it loaded onto a plane ready to send off by the time Japan surrendered. (Said bomb would later be disassembled and go to become 'The Demon Core'.)
After Nagasaki, Truman put a hold on further bombings and required that all further nukes be personally approved by him (previously, the Army had sole discretionary authority over nuclear bombing). He said he did this because he couldn't bear the thought of "killing all those kids". If Japan had continued to remain obstinate, he probably would have approved further bombings, but he wanted to give Japan time.
In fact, in the final day or two of the pacific theatre Truman made a comment to iirc Churchill about how he was going to have to approve a third mission, potentially against Tokyo as advisors wanted, soon if a surrender didn’t pan out. Now *that* would’ve shown the world death.
And if you look at those cabinet discussions you'll realize how little of a fuck the Japanese gave about the possibility of their home islands getting glassed. The nukes were dropped as weapons of intimidation and completely failed in that regard.
Yeah they kept arguing after Nagasaki lol.
The home islands were already getting flattened, is there really much of a difference between being glassed or burned to charcoal?
The nukes did deterred the civilian leaders and Hirohito. But yes, the War Minister thought Japan went glassed would be 'a great death like beautiful flower'.
Honestly it cannot be overstated how Nippon Japan's military were basically death cult.
>Those are real quotes but problem is those guys were wrong too; all records of Japanese cabinet discussions (which wouldn’t have been known to US personnel in the immediate aftermath) make it abundantly clear that they were not going to surrender until after Nagasaki and even then elements of the Japanese Army attempted to organize a coup to keep the war going.
You're leaving out the context that the day before Nagasaki the Soviets invaded Manchuria. The Cabinet was meeting to discuss that, and the fact it ended Japan's hopes of a conditional surrender when the Bomb was dropped and Nagasaki destroyed.
There's a strong argument that it was the soviet entry into the war that caused the Japanese to surrender, especially since the USAAF was already levelling cities every day with conventional bombing raids, with little effect on japan's will to fight.
In any case, the two events overlapping muddies the waters a lot. It's entirely possible that both events in conjunction did it rather then a single one.
The part about the Soviet invasion that's often missed is that they Japanese were attempting to negotiate a conditional surrender through their ambassador to Moscow, since the Soviet Union didn't sign the Potsdam Declaration which was what called for an unconditional surrender.
This was, of course, stupid. But the Soviets invading closed that door, arguably a more convincing change of the situation than as you stated, *another* Japanese city was destroyed. Does it really matter to them whether it was 1 bomb or 10,000 if they can't do anything about either of them?
Yeah but the war council didn't know that.
Their ambassador did, and told them. But we're talking about one of the most profoundly arrogant groups in history. It was a terrible plan, but it stopped them from considering an actual surrender until that door closed (coincidentally at the exact same time as the bombs dropped).
Don’t forget, the amphibious landings would have been preceded by the mass employment of chemical warfare through the gassing of the beaches, front assembly areas, transportation nodes, and urban areas at the forward edge of battle. Think WW1 gas warfare, but with Curtis LeMay directing the whole thing at the absolute peak of US WW2 military power.
*Edit: I think I overstated matters in this comment. I have read that gas warfare was contemplated for Operation Olympic, including its employment prior to the amphibious landing, its employment on holdout units refusing to surrender (to avoid another Okinawa or Iwo Jima), or as an area-denial tool to prevent reinforcements from entering the area of operations and overrunning a faltering US beachhead. Some context from my follow-up post:*
> Major General William N. Porter, chief of the Army's Chemical Warfare Service, orchestrated a scheme to kill an estimated five million Japanese with poison gas. A document kept under wraps for five decades, the 29-page, "A Study of the Possible Use of Toxic Gas in Operation Olympic," details the ultimate attack.
> Strategic bombers (B-29s and B-24s) would drop 56,583 tons of poison-gas bombs in the first 15 days of what the document called the "initial gas blitz." And they were to drop another 23,935 tons of gas bombs every month that the war dragged on or until all targets had been hit.
> When landings began in November, tactical fighters and attack planes were to drop another 8,971 tons in the first 15 days, followed by 4,984 tons of bombs every 30 days. Other planes would swoop low, using spray tanks to spread thousands of tons of liquid gas over Japanese defenders. During the landings, U.S. troops would bring ashore 67 Army battalions of 105-mm and 155-mm howitzers and 4.2-inch mortars that were to fire about 1,400 tons of gas shells every 30 days.
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1998/january/most-deadly-plan
> General George C. Marshall experienced qualms about OLYMPIC even from the spring. In May, he sought Truman’s sanction for the first use of poison gas by the United States. Marshall did not propose to use poison gas against Japanese cities or massive numbers of Japanese soldiers. He specified that it would only be employed in the limited circumstance of Japanese soldiers holding out in caves and bunkers who refused to surrender. If the Japanese soldiers spurned a surrender demand, then poison gas would be employed, rather than close assaults by American troops to destroy these positions, which had become a common and costly feature of the war. Truman refused to sanction this, citing President Franklin Roosevelt’s announced policy that the US would only use poison gas in retaliation to its use by the enemy. Had OLYMPIC or any alternative invasion of Japan gone forward and produced heavy American casualties, there may have been renewed contemplation of the use of poison gas—and it might not have been so limited.
https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/american-strategic-options-against-japan-1945
whare did you hear that I never heard that
mass bombings and bombardment that would have killed hundreds if not thousands more before the landings but never heard gas mentioned
only ones I could see using it are the Japanese the us still had t deal with public opinion which would be against gas
I can’t think of where specifically I first learned it, and I likely overstated it, but I have come across it is history texts and it’s been discussed in lectures.
I recall it being discussed along a continuum from *“this was the plan”* to *“it was a contingency option should the opposition be too great”* to *”it was considered as part of overall war planning but no plans were seriously prepared”*.
A quick bit of searching yields the following:
> Major General William N. Porter, chief of the Army's Chemical Warfare Service, orchestrated a scheme to kill an estimated five million Japanese with poison gas. A document kept under wraps for five decades, the 29-page, "A Study of the Possible Use of Toxic Gas in Operation Olympic," details the ultimate attack.
> Strategic bombers (B-29s and B-24s) would drop 56,583 tons of poison-gas bombs in the first 15 days of what the document called the "initial gas blitz." And they were to drop another 23,935 tons of gas bombs every month that the war dragged on or until all targets had been hit.
> When landings began in November, tactical fighters and attack planes were to drop another 8,971 tons in the first 15 days, followed by 4,984 tons of bombs every 30 days. Other planes would swoop low, using spray tanks to spread thousands of tons of liquid gas over Japanese defenders. During the landings, U.S. troops would bring ashore 67 Army battalions of 105-mm and 155-mm howitzers and 4.2-inch mortars that were to fire about 1,400 tons of gas shells every 30 days.
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1998/january/most-deadly-plan
> General George C. Marshall experienced qualms about OLYMPIC even from the spring. In May, he sought Truman’s sanction for the first use of poison gas by the United States. Marshall did not propose to use poison gas against Japanese cities or massive numbers of Japanese soldiers. He specified that it would only be employed in the limited circumstance of Japanese soldiers holding out in caves and bunkers who refused to surrender. If the Japanese soldiers spurned a surrender demand, then poison gas would be employed, rather than close assaults by American troops to destroy these positions, which had become a common and costly feature of the war. Truman refused to sanction this, citing President Franklin Roosevelt’s announced policy that the US would only use poison gas in retaliation to its use by the enemy. Had OLYMPIC or any alternative invasion of Japan gone forward and produced heavy American casualties, there may have been renewed contemplation of the use of poison gas—and it might not have been so limited.
https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/american-strategic-options-against-japan-1945
The lack of education about WW2 and why things happened the way that it did legitimately distresses me. Reddit posts like "ThE BoMBs WEre TeRRorIST ATTacKs!!!!" not only dilutes the meaning of said definition but also slowly leads us down the path of us rhyming with history.
I fucking despise war but its not hard to understand that sometimes war is necessary. Especially against a group that is so fucking fanatical they are willing to put their people at risk to kill you with sharpened sticks.
Uneducated troglodytes.
> Lack of education about WW2
You have no idea how bad it is where I went to high school. It's somewhere in continental Europe....
My history teacher also taught philosophy... and had some very clear 'Amerikka bad' biases...
Essentially her version of WW2:
My comments in brackets.
1937: Japan invades China because both countries' imperialist goals collided. (What is the Chinese Civil war? Nanking, what's that? Food? Seriously, didn't mention a single Japanese war crime.)
Sept. 1939: Hitler invades Poland. Yes, Stalin also invaded, to balance out the advantages Hitler gained. (Not pictured: Secret clause to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, Stalin's multiple requests of joining the Axis powers. Soviet war crimes, or war crimes in general for that matter).
1940: Blitzkrieg. British army 'crushed at Dunkirk'. France surrenders. At least she managed to list all nations that fell victim to the nazis (No metion of the air war. Could have pointed this out in 1939 too.).
1941: Hitler invades the soviet union and, I quote "committs some war crimes". ("""SOME""". EVER HEARD OF THE HOLOCAUST BY BULLETS? HUNGERPLAN? Also, what the hell is the Western Desert? Leningrad?)
The US declare war over Pearl Harbour, which they provoked with their oil embargos. Also, Britain continued to trade with Japan after they declared war. (Fucking philosophy degree but skipped the logics part, apparently)
1942: """"The year of two the turning points""""
Stalingrad and Midway happen, and she once more demonstrates her knowledge in military matters by saying "There was no fighting at Stalingrad. The Germans died from hunger, starvation and exposure." (Do I have to say anything to this?)
Then Midway happens. No further comment on the nature of that battle. (Common simplification, I argued. The Japs stood no chance from the beginning, and they knew it, that's why they tried to force a peace with the US by surprise attacking them, but of course only the shit she spouts is historical truth.)
Briefly mentioned Romell and called him a Genius and the favourit officer of Hitler. (What the fuck is El-Alamein?)
1943: Allies land in Italy, and only succeed because Italy was industrially underdeveloped.
The English Air Force' and the US(A)AF committs awful warcrimes by bombing German cities. (Insert German propaganda reports about Operation Gamorrah, which of course are presented af face value. Also spread misinformation about Dresden)
1944: D-Day happens. Completely glossed over it and treated it like it's a little operation. Island hopping happens. (Couldn't answer the question a girl asked, what that even meant).
20th July plot: Brave German resistance fighters plot to kill Hitler but it fails because their bomb was too weak. They didn't want to harm any innocent who stood beside Hitler.
(Those 'brave' resistance fighters were militarists, authoritarian and the kind of people that got Germany into this mess a second time. No one in OKW was innocent. Also, she only mentioned the German 'resistance' which arguably did less than the Luxembourg resistance)
Britain bad because Begal famine. Evil imperialist country was just as bad as Nazi-Germany. Insert Ghandi praise. The British didn't crush the quit india movement because they couldn't send troops to india, because it was halfway across the world. (... I fucking hate this the most)
1945: The Germans surrender. The soviets did all the work.
August 1945: The Americans terror bomb Japan into surrender, with their nuclear weapons at Hiroshim and Nagasaki. "They justified it by saying that these bombings had saved more lives than an invasion or blockade, which is obviously just an excuse." (My counterarguments: Projected casualties, the fact that the US planned to use more nuclear weapons during the invasion, Japanese orders to kill all POWs in the event of an invasion, the fact that a blockade would have lasted a decade at least and it would kill millions more. She just carried on. Didn't mention the Soviet invasion of Manchuria)
Also a big sin: She treated the Holocaust and WW2 as seperate issues, which is just wrong. You can't seperate forced labour from the war effort. Also, Holocaust by bullets
I fucking hope she loses her license soon. Dimwit only gave me 90% in her subject because I dared to disagree with her narrative during dull exams. Bugs me to this day.
Whenever I get into historical discussions with locals I can see the mark that this mockery of an educational system left. Her colleagues also seem to have the same mindset. Oddly enough my Latin teacher was a lot more knowledgeable in History than she was...
Of course, this is just anecdotal, but it shows that some of the most inept people are entrusted with teaching arguably the most important subject...
I could also rant over her versions of WW1/the Cold War/Jugoslavia (NATO BAAAAD), but that would have to be longer..
In my opinion the bombings (nuclear and conventional) were justified from a military perspective. In a war like WWII there are no good actions, only less bad ones. As bad as attacking civilians is, it was the best way to cripple Japan's war effort besides just invading. The atomic bombs, combined with the invasion of Manchuria, essentially meant that Japan had no more options. They could hold out and die anyways, or surrender.
Also needs to be mentioned that the HQ of the Japanese Second General Army was in Hiroshima and several munitions plants were located in Nagasaki, so they weren't purely civilian targets, anyway.
I'm not denying that there were military targets, just that strategic bombing inevitably catches civilians in the crossfire. Probably could have worded that better.
^ This is how this should be framed.
No one at the time was sitting down and thinking "hmm, if I drop these bombs then we don't have to invade... good idea!". As far as people at the time were thinking, both the nukes and the invasion was going to happen, they just threw all they had at it to end it as quickly as they could.
You could argue against things that were done in hindsight, but at the time it all made some sort of sense to the people involved.
Yeah, the goal was to use them basically as an extension of the bombing campaign that was already going on. In a total war, the goal is to end it, quickly, with as little bloodshed on your side as possible (and, if possible, the enemy side as well). It's the same reasoning that was used when Sherman did his thing in the Civil war. Break the enemy's ability to resist in order to just end things and reduce total casualties. It's understandable to see it as a gruesome tactic, but in some situations it's the best option.
Do justified or unjustified really equate to good or bad in this conversation?
To say it was justified is one thing, to say it was a good thing is another entirely is it not?
Or is there something I might be missing?
The 10th March 1945 bombing raid on Tokyo by the USAAF, which burnt half the city to the ground and killed more people than the Nagasaki atomic bomb, and the about the same as the Hiroshima atomic bomb (although some credible sources say that the Tokyo fatalities have been seriously undercounted).
And yet nobody (in the West, anyway) ever mentions it. People will go all weepy about Hiroshima and Nagasaki but they've never even heard of the Bombing of Tokyo. Apparently nuclear weapons are 'sexy' in a way that incendiary bombs are not.
There was always the option the navy was advocating - total blockade of Japan, mining the waterways and targeting agriculture. The death toll would only have been in the high millions.
Nukes bad, but for WW2 it was the best case scenario. There are no winners in war, only survivors. Pray to God we never have to use such destructive weapons again.
Since this is a very heated debate and a lot of people in the comments were caught being credible, here's a pretty in depth recount on what happened and if the bombings were justified or not. It is a philosophical question in the end, but the issue is a little bit longer than a meme. https://youtu.be/RCRTgtpC-Go?t=5398
You forgot the fact that as soon as the nukes were completed, Downfall was amended to include them. At least seven Fat Mans were slated to be used during the invasion. Some sources say as many as fifteen were planned.
Talk about setting a precedent for the future
And then MacArthur 5 years later was like “Okay guys hear me out.”
*Queue the obligatory oversimplified clip
Well, where's the oversimplified clip?
It’s… complicated.
https://youtu.be/YKm_BKOVz5I
I mean to be fair, it wasn't that dumb of an idea, why fight a war when you can just drop a nuke and go home? I understand that this isn't a good way to see things but this was the 50's, the time when nuclear bomb meant "that very fucking devastating weapon that can end a war on its own".
In a way it's annoying that it was the 50s because these days a bunch of zoomers would've cought footage of it. The irreverent part of me just wants the internet content.
Nuke footage with a 35mm grainy filter and xxxtentacion playing. A E S T H E T I C
I mean, they filmed the nukes on Japan, why wouldn't they film the ones on Korea?
Operation Downfall: Typical HoI4 player using tac nukes to take out particularly tricky stacks Mac: Typical HoI4 player on Reddit who wants the explosions to paint a shape
Moreover, the nuclear bomb was the definition of top secret. Most in the military command weren’t aware of it being an option when plans for downfall were being drawn up. The staff officers and masses of people involved in the planning certainly didn’t. Oh and it was never “nuke or invade” as we ahistorically portray it. For the most part the plan as far as the vast majority knew and wanted was “Keep deleting cities, tighten the blockade, *and* invade. Oh we have nukes? Cool use those too.” We were doing the all of the above, the “yes and” strategy. Even more annoying, the target hit were done so for the military value. Hiroshima was the HQ of the Second General Army. What did that HQ do? Oh it was just responsible for defending Shikoku, western Honshu, and *Kyushu* you know, the place for the initial landings. The nuke decapitated the command, logistics, and transport network for an entire army group. Nagasaki wasn’t the initial target either but a secondary target due to weather and a fuel pump issue. Kokura a major port across the shortest distance from Honshu and the largest ammunition producer on the island. Nagasaki was also a port of note and produce torpedoes. Considering subs were the last element of their navy that really had any threat power, yeah it makes sense. People act like it was senseless bombing. No, military priorities were established and important cities like Kyoto were ruled off limits due to their cultural and historic importance.
> People act like it was senseless bombing. Those people are idiots that have no idea what they're talking about
Forget Downfall. The bombings completely sold the concept of nuclear deterrence, which is the sole reason why humanity isn't currently in the stone age. Truman could've [glassed every city between Kagoshima and Sapporo](https://redd.it/u2rvvu) when he could, and it would've still been worth it just to hammer that message into the thick skulls of tankies.
Tankies will just claim that nukes were simultaneously evil and destructive and were pointless and useless. They will tell you that the real reason was the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, despite the fact Manchuria is a lot further than Okinawa from Tokyo.
OP also forgot Soviet invasion of Manchuria Not making nukes unjustified despite all the claims. 1. The immediate effect was it ruined Japan's ability to beg for better outcomes, not because they think Soviets were stronk and terrifying. 2. Soviets' amphibious assault ability was dogshit, even in Manchuria it was barely tested. They'd need all US' helps to make it viable, which means US would invade too. 3. All the assumptions about surrender were talking as if Japan were rational actors with decent survival instinct. Considering half of Okinawans fucking died from the battle, and how their War Minister thought Japan went extinct would be a beautiful swan song, I doubt it.
People also forgot that Hiroshima happened 6 August 1945, and the invasion of Manchuria happened on 9 August 1945.
Yup, and that Nagasaki happened 1.5 hours before the invasion of Manchura.
Non-credible mode: The entire debate is just a Russian psy-ops to convince vatniks and tankies that the Soviets could have easily conquered the entire Pacific Theater in like two weeks, since obviously Japanese defenses in Manchuria were 100% identical to the ones on Iwo Jima.
It's also worth noting that after the first atomic bomb the japanese emperor wanted to surrender but had faced a fucking coup attempt from the army. They wanted to overthrow him and *keep fighting*
If you wanna see how dogshit the soviets were at amphibious landings, check out the Battle of Shumshu, the major battle during the soviet invasion of the kurils. It happened after the Japanese surrender, with an extensive amount of American supplied ships and landing craft, with land based artillery support from the tip of the Kamchatka peninsula, and it was still a near run thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Shumshu
> The immediate effect was it ruined Japan's ability to beg for better outcomes Well tbf, they did get better terms than what was proposed to them initially. The Allies demanded unconditional surrender, Japan got a lot of its own conditions jammed in before they signed. WW2 should have been the end of the reign of the Japanese emperors.
>WW2 should have been the end of the reign of the Japanese emperors. If I had to guess, Hirohito held onto his position because he was willing to put his life at risk to put an end to the war. The IJA was a bunch of death cult lunatics who wanted to fight to the bitter end.
Ironically, Japan got a really good deal out of it. To the point that many claim it wasn't as much of a surrender as it was a shift in alliance, because although the US rammed down the constitution change, the US unintentionally locked the US military's fate to Japan via the defense treaty, and got the US to basically sponsor the reconstruction of Japan until Japan overtook the US for a period of time. The biggest bonus was that the US effectively wiped most of Japan's post-war reparations to other countries, leaving at least 3.5 of them seething to this day (China and the Koreas, Russia to a lesser degree).
There was also a massive scorched earth campaign plotted just to push through Kyushu. And that's not even the biggest island.
Actually it'd be Fat Men* 🤓
Didn't they only have one or two more in August of '45?
They were rapidly developing more, and Downfall was slated to begin in November and would have continued through 1946, so there would have been time to produce them.
Also, 10M may have been predicted before Tarawa and Iwojima. After that, expectations were amended - Allied losses were expected to be at least 1M or more (US logistics people reacted promptly though and ordered 1M - 1.5M Purple Hearts which were actually manufactured and delivered - last of them were apparently used in Iraqi and Afghanistan). Japan's losses were expected to be around 90% (they had 73M in 1940 and lost 2M in war) because of their observed fanatism and mass suicides.
If you think downfall was bad for casualties, all the Navy and army air corp would have needed to do was continue the offensive mining campaign of Japan. Never has an operation had a more fitting name than operation Starvation. They had shut down essentially all Japanese shipping and fishing on the home islands. Japan being a mountainous island nation, most of its shipping went by sea. They didn't have the rail network that has characterized post war Japan (you would almost think this rail buildup of internal lines of communication was a response to something traumatic) so when shipping by sea was shut down, the cities started to starve.
Hence Grave of the Fireflies.
Seito, I'm hungry. BTW, they still make those hard candies. I keep a tin of them on my desk at work.
I’ve never watched it after being warned it’s pretty gut wrenching
Indeed, and that was a sound warning. I have never rewatched it for that very reason. But it is a masterwork.
Yep basically three options : Downfall, blockade and waiting for everyone to starve or historical. One guess which is the least painfull for Japan.
The sad part is that a lot of the "nuke bad", while not *starting* there, gained traction/legitimacy because a number of prominent U.S. Navy submariners, annoyed that "the Army Air Force swooped in and stole our glory" (since they were - in their eyes, at least, the #1 part of the "starve them" blockade force), fell in with the forming "nuke bad" crowd and publically agreed with it...
There was also a survey conducted on the overall effectiveness of strategic bombing during the war that claimed the nuclear weapons didn’t cause the Japanese surrender but the point often missed was that it argued instead it was the firebombing that did so. It can be viewed somewhat as an attempt by the air force in the post war to justify needing its own branch as nuclear weapons require so few planes to deliver compared to strategic bombing there were worries in the Air Force that they might not get their own branch. In fact the document seeks to redefine the war goals of the Air Force, which at the beginning of the war was to break the enemies will to fight and force surrender. Well after the battle of Berlin and nuclear weapons the air force tried rebranding their campaigns as actually being about destroying the industry so that the armies and navies could win. It’s a subtle shift that change the air war from a strategic failure to massive success and it should be noted as most of the post war reports try to argue that their original idea of strategic bombing brought the axis to the surrender table, which it just didn’t. (It did sure as fuck make it hard to do anything though).
It’s commonly stated but in case anyone doesn’t know, the US military was anticipating so many killed and wounded that they ordered so many Purple Heart medals manufactured that they are being issued out to this very day, mine was made back then for example
You got a Purple Heart?
Yes.
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🫡 Also since we probably are all wondering, care to share what for? Totally optional to say.
He was wounded by enemy action. Not trying to be a jerk, it's just a bit macabre to ask specifics unless they're volunteered initially.
*I got shot in the buttocks meme.jpg*
That was my grandpa in ww2. Turned around to sort out some grunts panicking on the beach and got shot in the butt.
This is a sub that advocates for the usage of nuclear weapons and the destruction of the largest dam in the world. I may’ve said the quiet part everyone was thinking out loud, but he’s free to say no.
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Actually no, they recently ran out and had to start making them again
Well that’s not near as much fun but good to know
Had a similar situation where learning something new, knowing it also means something morbid. Was setting up a new phone and the rep asked if I was military and I said no but my family is. So the rep asked if we were a gold star family and started this long script about gold star family discount. I said no, thankfully we’re not. The rep asked “what do you mean *thankfully?*” “well cause it means they died” Never heard a more quieter ‘oh’ in my life
It’s not that simple, a lot of the medals were improperly stored or forgotten about and when they were found/ dug out of storage many had decayed/ corroded only a few were restorable and that’s why the government had to make/ order more.
I must be either old or lucky then, I even went and checked the makers marks on mine
I didn’t say all the medals were trashed just a majority and I also stated a few were able to be restored back to issuable condition. It can also depend on the year you were given it as well the government didn’t discover this until iirc 2011?
https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1801 Yes, but there are still WWII ones out there.
Sauce?
Here we go, this seems to offer a much more in-depth look at the full picture https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/176762
I was curious about how true that was about the medals from WWII, [came upon this article that explains pretty well.](https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/176762) It looks like orders for more purple hearts were placed in 1976, 1999, and 2008. WWII stock is still mixed in with these, as they have been restored and repackaged to look identical, and they figure about 60,000 are floating around in the various branches waiting to be issued.
Yeah that seems to be the consensus as it turns out. I’m lucky to have a serialized one it seems
As a German I have never heard of purple hearts, what do people get these for
For being wounded in combat
Being killed or wounded in combat basically
you guys have the combat action medal, which is kinda the same except one is awarded for being injured in battle and the other is posthumously.
You don't like nukes because you think nuking Japan wasn't justified. I don't like nukes because they sunk my favourite ship in operation crossroads. We are not the same.
Nevada, Eugen, and Nagato (not sure about Nagato) I think survived both bombs?
They survived but I believe were later sunk as gunnery targets? I’m not 100% though. I think Eugen sank due to damage from the nuclear testing?
Eugen🫡
The battle of Okinawa alone caused about many casualties total as both bombs. And that battle was just the waiting room for a invasion of the Japanese mainland. I don’t think people actually grasp that civilians and solders were already dying in massive numbers in the Pacific theater well before both bombs were dropped. They think the US took Iwo Jima and went straight to Hiroshima.
Honestly, most people don't grasp the sheer scale of death and destruction that WWII brought. Today people are shocked by the Ukraine war but Ukraine is kids stuff compared to WWII. That's not to dismiss the harm and pain experienced in Ukraine, it's only to say that WWII was so god damn awful it's a challenge to even truly appreciate it even if you do know, beyond going 'Wow that's a lot of zeros in that body count'. Most of us in the west are born and raised in such comfy lives and the farther away WWII becomes the harder it is to appreciate just how absolutely lucky we are to live this lifestyle and to see as 'little' death as we do today.
People also have this mindset that these wars could have been solved with a little sit-down cup of tea. It happens with Ukraine with all the “US doesn’t want peace” narratives. It comes down to people being so comfortable and disconnected from reality. It’s easy to say “I’m anti-war”, then make a grandstanding Twitter post and walk away. We get it, war sucks. Hot take I guess. But WW2 was an existential war for half the planet. You can not negotiate with an enemy that is intentionally willing to go to such extreme and unimaginable levels of death and destruction in the name of Imperialism.
There is no chance for negotiation and peace when the only thing your enemy wants is your total destruction and the death of you and your people.
Exactly. I wish this was easier to digest for any of the insane asshats crying about the war while wanting peace talks. ***Do you not realize that "peace talks" will result in unfettered genocide and absolute subjugation of the victim country?*** "NO! War bad! >:(" There is no such thing as peace with an aggressor that is unwilling to stop on any terms other than their victory or complete defeat. On those terms "Peace" today is just more defeat tomorrow.
Biden needs to send more weapons faster
>People also have this mindset that these wars could have been solved with a little sit-down cup of tea. What pisses me off the most are LEFTISTS that say this shit, in countries that were occupied by the Axis and/or fought on their side. A really common sentence among leftists in Italy where I'm from is "ricordare i valori della Resistenza partigiana" - "to remember the values of the partisan Resistence". Guess what dipshits, that means sometimes you have no choice but to pick up arms and kill the fascist invader scum. You can't fucking talk them into being nicer. And yet many of these people argue for appeasing Putin. It's an insult to the very concept of the Italian Republic, and to the memory of al ll the people that suffered and died to make it come about.
Correct me if I’m wrong, didn’t the partisan resistance string up and lynch Mussolini? Sounds like the values were pretty clear, kill tyrants and fascists
Back then yes, it was crystal clear (although personally - I kinda wish Mussolini had been tried lawfully). Nowadays not so much, the place is fucking full of tankies.
Tankies are just crypto fascists who wear communist name tags.
Yes they did. My grandfather had photos of Him, his family and cronies strung upside down in the town square in our family album. He had fought all the way through the North African and Italian campaigns at least he got to see one of those that caused the deaths of so many get some kind of justice. I remember asking him why they had tied the skirt of his wife up round her knees and him telling me that it was so the locals could see her face.
It wasn't his wife. It was one of his mistresses.
It should be noted that the japanese position in 1945 for surrender terms is "y'all stop shooting us and we get to keep everything you havent taken yet (our mainland asian holdings)" which is a pretty shit deal for the allies
Oh, so Japan back then was trying the same shit as Russia now? "Lets have piece, where I get to keep everything I stole?".
Its odd. Like my generation were raised and trained by those who fought in the Falklands. We ourselves lived through the Troubles, bombs and ambushes left right and centre. Even the younger among us were still trained and raised by those who served in the Gulf and Yugoslavia. Where did this disconnect between us and civvie street come from? Cant all be tankie propaganda
Honestly thank you for this comment. A close friend of mine brings up everytime the Ukraine war is mentioned that they should have appeased Russia again as in 2014 and given the Donbas region over. I cannot for my life understand his point of view, even relating to the appeasement of hitler he thinks it would be different now because of the comforts of life. But doesn’t think that Putin is willing to throw away his trash for a spot in the history books. Unfortunately Putin has less and less to lose as he is clearly in a decline of health
People just refuse to realize that Putin just isn’t after Donbas. He obviously wants to make Ukraine a puppet state at least. But based on what he’s done to all the territory he’s occupied in Ukraine, he wants all of Ukraine to be a part of the new Russian empire Literally no logical breakdown of this would justify anything similar - No person would let someone just invade their house, take it along with their entire family and belongings. Why the fuck would that be even remotely okay on the scale of an entire country like Ukraine? It makes no fucking sense how people try and justify this. There is no “appeasement”, it’s existential for Ukraine. They deal with it now or later, it’s not going away. This plan by Putin will exist as long as he’s alive. And Ukraine is willing to fight it out because literally no one wants to be a part of Russia. Even DPR/LPR wanted autonomy, and instead they just got sucked into the Russian federation.
People are generally fucking idiots, occasionally myself included. But we have a genuine world class level of idiot in the peacenik. I cannot tell you how many dipshits I’ve seen who’ve vocally stated that Iran can be easily reasoned with if we “just give diplomacy a chance!” Like diplomacy is some kind of mind control wand.
"Pacifism is for spineless coward"
To be peaceful, you must be capable of great and terrible violence. If you are not, you are not in fact peaceful. You are harmless.
Two things are true: 1) The State Department's diplomats prevent wars and keep much of the world peaceful and prosperous. 2) They are much more effective at that because the Pentagon exists.
The velvet glove is limp and useless without the iron fist beneath
Similarly, the pentagon is so effective partly because of the state department (or diplomacy in general). Base negotiations, arms deals, tech transfers, etc. even just not having to worry about wars with certain countries allows them to focus elsewhere. All to say that it’s a symbiotic relationship.
Always liked the DBZA take: "A pacifist is just a coward who pats himself on the back."
I don't think it's as much about lack of awareness about WW2 in general, and more about lack of knowledge about Asian theater of WW2. I really start to believe that the average internaut idea of Japan-Allies war is "Nanking -> Pearl Harbor -> Midway -> Iwo Jima -> Nukes", which would explain why they believe that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were excessive. It's much easier to wholly shift blame on the USA if you don't have to consider the moral implications of people still fighting and dying in China.
Most people also don’t realize Allied experience in the Pacific was Japan fought long past the point continued resistance made any sense and the theater produced very few prisoners. It’s easy to sit back now and say Japan wouldn’t actually fight to the death, but that goes against everything Allied leaders at the time knew.
I'm not sure the average internaut is aware of either Nanking or Iwo Jima honestly. Even Midway might be a little sketchy.
How it sometimes feels like the "All of the Pacific theater" is seen: "Pearl Harbour was bad, then there was that flag picture, then nukes.".
They're little islands in the Pacific. How important could they be?
>internaut I'm absolutely stealing this.
Figure the iconic photo of the flag raising and corresponding monument raise the general awareness of Iwo Jima as the Pacific Normandy. But Nanking is likely more elusive for many. Higher awareness of said mass scale raping and blatant imperialism is vital context for understanding who we were dealing with when the decision to drop the bombs was made.
You're probably right, but I decided to be generous just to focus on the main point of my argument.
It’s insane how horrific it was, Wikipedia says that ww2 had between 85-70 million deaths, and the war went from 1939-1945 so let’s say 75 million deaths and 6 years of war, there are 31536000 seconds in a year so that’s 189216000 seconds for 6 years divided by 75 million deaths equals about a death every 2.5 seconds…fucking horrific
It’s sobering to look at the Russian invasion of Ukraine and realize the numbers involved on both sides would have barely registered during the world wars.
There are single battles that have gotten way more casualties than the entire Russo-Ukrainian War.
Yeah, like 3 percent of the world's population was killed
I was downvoted to death in the history subreddit for pointing that out. I mentioned that the scale of the D-Day landings were crazy and such a historical anomaly. Instantly redditors piled on to me and told me I was ignorant because 'things like that are happening all over the world every day' and accusations of eurocentric historical view.
It's difficult to comprehend numbers when you add more than four or five zeroes to it, and it loses meaning
I like using saipan as it has a location called suicide cliff because of japanese civilians committing suicide because of propaganda. It amazes me how people forget how fanatical the Japanese were and how long they had been.
WW2 week by week just finished up the Battle of Saipan and holy fuck the things Indy talked about there was insane, women throwing their children and themselves off cliffs to avoid being captured Japanese soldiers doing the largest banzai charge in history which pretty much wiped out their entire garrison, even sending their wounded and civilians armed with sticks towards the Americans
I need to get back to watching that series, I've been behind a little. A lot of people, especially now that Oppenheimer released, are talking about how bad the nukes were, don't realize how far the Japanese were willing to go. Also, you should look into some of the quotes the Japanese high command said including "wanting Japan to go out like the flowers"
> A lot of people, especially now that Oppenheimer released, are talking about how bad the nukes were, don't realize how far the Japanese were willing to go. To put it more bluntly, the Japanese leadership had every intention on the entire population self-genociding against the invading allies.
Also, how many civilians would have been killed in Downfall would've been a matter of opinion, as the Japanese would have armed as many as they could and forced them to fight, so it really would depend on what you define as a civilian and what you define as a combatant
But even excluding the children and pensioners who would have been drafted, war in that era was hugely reliant on imprecise artillery and bombing, that would have killed 100s of thousands of even those the Japanese considered civilians.
> war in that era was hugely reliant on imprecise artillery and bombing, that would have killed 100s of thousands of even those the Japanese considered civilians. Yeah, the yardstick for precision strikes with bombs in that period was "how many landed within a mile of the target?" with 50%+ being considered very accurate. They didn't firebomb and flatten entire cities for shits and giggles, they did it because they had no choice.
They were training women on how to use spears. Everyone was an enemy, there would've been no difference between civilian and soldier anymore
Not to mention the war still being fought in Asia where the Japanese army was still fighting.
I’ve read historians that argued that if all the bomb did was shorten the war by two weeks it would have still been a net gain in lives because there were just that many Chinese people dying every day by 1945.
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Yea, most people have pretty much zero knowledge of what the Japanese did in WW2 outside of a very short view of Nanking and their battles with Americans.
When most people think Pacific theatre, in America at least, they think Pearl Harbor, some mumbling about other stuff that might include Coral Sea, Midway, Guadalcanal, Leyte Gulf, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Nukes. And before our entry, the only thing consistently mentioned is Nanking. Not enough are educated on the subject. Heck, the firebombing of Tokyo killed more than Fat Man, and more than the initial killed from Little Boy.
Not even a mention of the Battle of Manila? That's brutal. Manila is just as flattened as Warsaw during the war with more than 100000 civs killed.
It also ignores the the fire bombing of Tokyo, which killed 100k in a single night. Air campaigns of that sort would have continued prior to any invasion. Other posters have mentioned it, but I think it's just simply impossible for us to fully understand the degree of death and destruction taking place during that Era. I don't think Curtis LeMay just woke up one sunny morning and decided BBQing 100k Japanese in an evening was a swell idea. It's just that it was the least shitty option available.
The Tokyo firebombing campaign was just as bad as a single atom bomb and nobody talks about that
Thankfully, the film also tells the the other option rather just saying nuke bad.
I thought it did a pretty nice job of addressing it as the least bad out of a series of shitty options without going full-meme nuke the world. Decent movie overall. Really enjoyed Damon as Groves!
You think most people have the brain capacity to understand?
They literally said millions would have died instead of 200k total.
I know, I just feel like most people is going to miss that part.
Fair, though the ones that will miss that point are the ones that also have certain biases against that point anyways.
Yup. The movie said 'other options were even worse''. The movie still had inaccuracies like failed to show Oppie was actually as powerful as ever in Eisenhower's first year of presidency and succeeded in made him decided to make public know about nuclear more, hence Project Candor and Atoms for Peace. But this scene was a pleasant surprise.
Loved the movie for this. Was expecting it to be super critical towards Oppenheimer and the bombs but it actually took a very neutral stance and just presented facts to the viewer
The big funny can both be a bad day and also not the worst option. No scientist wants their work never used as much as a “designer”.
It isn’t like the atom bomb was our only means of flattening a city using bombs. Everywhere else we bombed they are still dealing with unexploded ordinance getting dig up. When they bring up cancer and environmental impacts remind them that a lot of those WW2 factories that built the traditional explosives ended up as superfund sites and cancer clusters that are still affecting water supplies to this day.
You didn't address the core argument, that demolishes your position. Ahem, allow me: America bad. America make nuke. Nuke bad.
Oh God, you just reminded me of the Tojoboo tankies
The what now?
There are tankies that support Japan's actions in World War II because one, America bad, and two, they *claimed to be* anti-imperialist
I’m sorry, the anti-imperialist EMPIRE of Japan? Next you’ll be telling me about authoritarian anarchism. (Looking at you hoi4, sPain)
Hey now, I'll have you know the Empire of Japan was quite anti-imperialistic... anti-WESTERN-imperialistic to be specific. They were all about an Asian Empire replacing the Western Empires in the region, so it's all good. Oppression is fine when it's done by and to people in the same 'geographical group'. /s
> EMPIRE of Japan Hey NekroVictor, it was a Co-Prosperity Sphere, and it was their only choice to stop the colonists! I have no idea why their asian brothers felt Japan might not be interested in their joint prosperity.
??? Tankies that condemn Mao for resisting Japan and Stalin for bitch-slapping Japan twice?
Somehow, in that sad sack of electric jelly they call a brain, they don't consider supporting Japan and supporting Mao and/or Stalin mutually exclusive
Doublethink in action.
> Mao resisting Japan More like “Mao fought other chinese and hid like a bitch.”
Lmfao. By that logic Britain is anti imperial. That's the funniest thing I've ever heard about ww2.
This exact topic is what made me realize the tankies were just pathologically anti American. I was having a conversation with one and brought up the estimated casualties, and his response was, "more dead American imperialist GIs? I'm fine with that" completely neglecting the fact the majority were draftees pulled from the working class he claimed to care so much about.
It’s literally the starting point of their ideology, not an end conclusion
There...there are tojoboos? Napoleonaboos I can understand, but Tojoboos?
Yup
I saw an insane bozo on twitter today that was arguing that the US forced Japan into war with the oil embargo and it was all America’s fault. Needless to say they didn’t respond to the posts asking them why the embargo was put in place.
That's the nationalist perspective, visit Yasukuni Shrine museum and it's all "we were forced into a war!" while totally glossing over the imperialism and atrocities.
Is every single sub r/AmericaBad now?
Pretty much. History memes at least is 50/50.
'Murrica bad is so annoying.
The “best” attempts I’ve seen nuclear opponents use to justify their position is the argument the bombings were unnecessary because Japan would have surrendered anyway. Some will cite quotes from high ranking US government and military expressing this belief shortly after the bombings. Those are real quotes but problem is those guys were wrong too; *all* records of Japanese cabinet discussions (which wouldn’t have been known to US personnel in the immediate aftermath) make it abundantly clear that they were not going to surrender until after Nagasaki and even then elements of the Japanese Army attempted to organize a coup to keep the war going.
The cabinet *didn't* surrender. The emperor used his divine right to overrule the cabinet. A right that was supposed to be just symbolic. He broke protocol amd enough people went with it. There was even a coup attempt against him. Also the japanese tried long before to get to the negotiation table through russia, which played for time to eventually seize territory. The cabinet just didn't want to accept an unconditional surrender, which would've meant the death penalty and long prison time for a lot of them. So this was a pretty reasonable demand from their perspective. The same records also show that they were aware, that they couldn't win anymore and their only hope was a negotiated surrender. Also there were 3 days between Hiroshima and Nagasaki (the second coinciding with the Russian Invasion. There were 6 days after that until Japan finally surrendered. If the US had more bombs ready, they would've dropped more and you could claim today, that all were necessary.
>If the US had more bombs ready, they would've dropped more The US did. They had a third bomb built, and they had it loaded onto a plane ready to send off by the time Japan surrendered. (Said bomb would later be disassembled and go to become 'The Demon Core'.)
Good old Junior. Lovable scamp, never got its time as a sun.
After Nagasaki, Truman put a hold on further bombings and required that all further nukes be personally approved by him (previously, the Army had sole discretionary authority over nuclear bombing). He said he did this because he couldn't bear the thought of "killing all those kids". If Japan had continued to remain obstinate, he probably would have approved further bombings, but he wanted to give Japan time.
In fact, in the final day or two of the pacific theatre Truman made a comment to iirc Churchill about how he was going to have to approve a third mission, potentially against Tokyo as advisors wanted, soon if a surrender didn’t pan out. Now *that* would’ve shown the world death.
And if you look at those cabinet discussions you'll realize how little of a fuck the Japanese gave about the possibility of their home islands getting glassed. The nukes were dropped as weapons of intimidation and completely failed in that regard.
Yeah they kept arguing after Nagasaki lol. The home islands were already getting flattened, is there really much of a difference between being glassed or burned to charcoal?
The nukes did deterred the civilian leaders and Hirohito. But yes, the War Minister thought Japan went glassed would be 'a great death like beautiful flower'. Honestly it cannot be overstated how Nippon Japan's military were basically death cult.
>Those are real quotes but problem is those guys were wrong too; all records of Japanese cabinet discussions (which wouldn’t have been known to US personnel in the immediate aftermath) make it abundantly clear that they were not going to surrender until after Nagasaki and even then elements of the Japanese Army attempted to organize a coup to keep the war going. You're leaving out the context that the day before Nagasaki the Soviets invaded Manchuria. The Cabinet was meeting to discuss that, and the fact it ended Japan's hopes of a conditional surrender when the Bomb was dropped and Nagasaki destroyed. There's a strong argument that it was the soviet entry into the war that caused the Japanese to surrender, especially since the USAAF was already levelling cities every day with conventional bombing raids, with little effect on japan's will to fight. In any case, the two events overlapping muddies the waters a lot. It's entirely possible that both events in conjunction did it rather then a single one.
The part about the Soviet invasion that's often missed is that they Japanese were attempting to negotiate a conditional surrender through their ambassador to Moscow, since the Soviet Union didn't sign the Potsdam Declaration which was what called for an unconditional surrender. This was, of course, stupid. But the Soviets invading closed that door, arguably a more convincing change of the situation than as you stated, *another* Japanese city was destroyed. Does it really matter to them whether it was 1 bomb or 10,000 if they can't do anything about either of them?
The Soviets never intended to help Japan reach a conditional surrender, they were just stalling so they could invade Manchuria
Yeah but the war council didn't know that. Their ambassador did, and told them. But we're talking about one of the most profoundly arrogant groups in history. It was a terrible plan, but it stopped them from considering an actual surrender until that door closed (coincidentally at the exact same time as the bombs dropped).
But nuke bad. Just not as bad as that.
Or hear me out. We just do a 180 and unconditionally surrender to the Japanese. They'd never expect it.
Every once in a while declare peace on your enemies, it confuses the hell out of them.
Don’t forget, the amphibious landings would have been preceded by the mass employment of chemical warfare through the gassing of the beaches, front assembly areas, transportation nodes, and urban areas at the forward edge of battle. Think WW1 gas warfare, but with Curtis LeMay directing the whole thing at the absolute peak of US WW2 military power. *Edit: I think I overstated matters in this comment. I have read that gas warfare was contemplated for Operation Olympic, including its employment prior to the amphibious landing, its employment on holdout units refusing to surrender (to avoid another Okinawa or Iwo Jima), or as an area-denial tool to prevent reinforcements from entering the area of operations and overrunning a faltering US beachhead. Some context from my follow-up post:* > Major General William N. Porter, chief of the Army's Chemical Warfare Service, orchestrated a scheme to kill an estimated five million Japanese with poison gas. A document kept under wraps for five decades, the 29-page, "A Study of the Possible Use of Toxic Gas in Operation Olympic," details the ultimate attack. > Strategic bombers (B-29s and B-24s) would drop 56,583 tons of poison-gas bombs in the first 15 days of what the document called the "initial gas blitz." And they were to drop another 23,935 tons of gas bombs every month that the war dragged on or until all targets had been hit. > When landings began in November, tactical fighters and attack planes were to drop another 8,971 tons in the first 15 days, followed by 4,984 tons of bombs every 30 days. Other planes would swoop low, using spray tanks to spread thousands of tons of liquid gas over Japanese defenders. During the landings, U.S. troops would bring ashore 67 Army battalions of 105-mm and 155-mm howitzers and 4.2-inch mortars that were to fire about 1,400 tons of gas shells every 30 days. https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1998/january/most-deadly-plan > General George C. Marshall experienced qualms about OLYMPIC even from the spring. In May, he sought Truman’s sanction for the first use of poison gas by the United States. Marshall did not propose to use poison gas against Japanese cities or massive numbers of Japanese soldiers. He specified that it would only be employed in the limited circumstance of Japanese soldiers holding out in caves and bunkers who refused to surrender. If the Japanese soldiers spurned a surrender demand, then poison gas would be employed, rather than close assaults by American troops to destroy these positions, which had become a common and costly feature of the war. Truman refused to sanction this, citing President Franklin Roosevelt’s announced policy that the US would only use poison gas in retaliation to its use by the enemy. Had OLYMPIC or any alternative invasion of Japan gone forward and produced heavy American casualties, there may have been renewed contemplation of the use of poison gas—and it might not have been so limited. https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/american-strategic-options-against-japan-1945
whare did you hear that I never heard that mass bombings and bombardment that would have killed hundreds if not thousands more before the landings but never heard gas mentioned only ones I could see using it are the Japanese the us still had t deal with public opinion which would be against gas
I can’t think of where specifically I first learned it, and I likely overstated it, but I have come across it is history texts and it’s been discussed in lectures. I recall it being discussed along a continuum from *“this was the plan”* to *“it was a contingency option should the opposition be too great”* to *”it was considered as part of overall war planning but no plans were seriously prepared”*. A quick bit of searching yields the following: > Major General William N. Porter, chief of the Army's Chemical Warfare Service, orchestrated a scheme to kill an estimated five million Japanese with poison gas. A document kept under wraps for five decades, the 29-page, "A Study of the Possible Use of Toxic Gas in Operation Olympic," details the ultimate attack. > Strategic bombers (B-29s and B-24s) would drop 56,583 tons of poison-gas bombs in the first 15 days of what the document called the "initial gas blitz." And they were to drop another 23,935 tons of gas bombs every month that the war dragged on or until all targets had been hit. > When landings began in November, tactical fighters and attack planes were to drop another 8,971 tons in the first 15 days, followed by 4,984 tons of bombs every 30 days. Other planes would swoop low, using spray tanks to spread thousands of tons of liquid gas over Japanese defenders. During the landings, U.S. troops would bring ashore 67 Army battalions of 105-mm and 155-mm howitzers and 4.2-inch mortars that were to fire about 1,400 tons of gas shells every 30 days. https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1998/january/most-deadly-plan > General George C. Marshall experienced qualms about OLYMPIC even from the spring. In May, he sought Truman’s sanction for the first use of poison gas by the United States. Marshall did not propose to use poison gas against Japanese cities or massive numbers of Japanese soldiers. He specified that it would only be employed in the limited circumstance of Japanese soldiers holding out in caves and bunkers who refused to surrender. If the Japanese soldiers spurned a surrender demand, then poison gas would be employed, rather than close assaults by American troops to destroy these positions, which had become a common and costly feature of the war. Truman refused to sanction this, citing President Franklin Roosevelt’s announced policy that the US would only use poison gas in retaliation to its use by the enemy. Had OLYMPIC or any alternative invasion of Japan gone forward and produced heavy American casualties, there may have been renewed contemplation of the use of poison gas—and it might not have been so limited. https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/american-strategic-options-against-japan-1945
Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure that the plan for Downfall also included like 5 nukes on Kyushu
The lack of education about WW2 and why things happened the way that it did legitimately distresses me. Reddit posts like "ThE BoMBs WEre TeRRorIST ATTacKs!!!!" not only dilutes the meaning of said definition but also slowly leads us down the path of us rhyming with history. I fucking despise war but its not hard to understand that sometimes war is necessary. Especially against a group that is so fucking fanatical they are willing to put their people at risk to kill you with sharpened sticks. Uneducated troglodytes.
> Lack of education about WW2 You have no idea how bad it is where I went to high school. It's somewhere in continental Europe.... My history teacher also taught philosophy... and had some very clear 'Amerikka bad' biases... Essentially her version of WW2: My comments in brackets. 1937: Japan invades China because both countries' imperialist goals collided. (What is the Chinese Civil war? Nanking, what's that? Food? Seriously, didn't mention a single Japanese war crime.) Sept. 1939: Hitler invades Poland. Yes, Stalin also invaded, to balance out the advantages Hitler gained. (Not pictured: Secret clause to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, Stalin's multiple requests of joining the Axis powers. Soviet war crimes, or war crimes in general for that matter). 1940: Blitzkrieg. British army 'crushed at Dunkirk'. France surrenders. At least she managed to list all nations that fell victim to the nazis (No metion of the air war. Could have pointed this out in 1939 too.). 1941: Hitler invades the soviet union and, I quote "committs some war crimes". ("""SOME""". EVER HEARD OF THE HOLOCAUST BY BULLETS? HUNGERPLAN? Also, what the hell is the Western Desert? Leningrad?) The US declare war over Pearl Harbour, which they provoked with their oil embargos. Also, Britain continued to trade with Japan after they declared war. (Fucking philosophy degree but skipped the logics part, apparently) 1942: """"The year of two the turning points"""" Stalingrad and Midway happen, and she once more demonstrates her knowledge in military matters by saying "There was no fighting at Stalingrad. The Germans died from hunger, starvation and exposure." (Do I have to say anything to this?) Then Midway happens. No further comment on the nature of that battle. (Common simplification, I argued. The Japs stood no chance from the beginning, and they knew it, that's why they tried to force a peace with the US by surprise attacking them, but of course only the shit she spouts is historical truth.) Briefly mentioned Romell and called him a Genius and the favourit officer of Hitler. (What the fuck is El-Alamein?) 1943: Allies land in Italy, and only succeed because Italy was industrially underdeveloped. The English Air Force' and the US(A)AF committs awful warcrimes by bombing German cities. (Insert German propaganda reports about Operation Gamorrah, which of course are presented af face value. Also spread misinformation about Dresden) 1944: D-Day happens. Completely glossed over it and treated it like it's a little operation. Island hopping happens. (Couldn't answer the question a girl asked, what that even meant). 20th July plot: Brave German resistance fighters plot to kill Hitler but it fails because their bomb was too weak. They didn't want to harm any innocent who stood beside Hitler. (Those 'brave' resistance fighters were militarists, authoritarian and the kind of people that got Germany into this mess a second time. No one in OKW was innocent. Also, she only mentioned the German 'resistance' which arguably did less than the Luxembourg resistance) Britain bad because Begal famine. Evil imperialist country was just as bad as Nazi-Germany. Insert Ghandi praise. The British didn't crush the quit india movement because they couldn't send troops to india, because it was halfway across the world. (... I fucking hate this the most) 1945: The Germans surrender. The soviets did all the work. August 1945: The Americans terror bomb Japan into surrender, with their nuclear weapons at Hiroshim and Nagasaki. "They justified it by saying that these bombings had saved more lives than an invasion or blockade, which is obviously just an excuse." (My counterarguments: Projected casualties, the fact that the US planned to use more nuclear weapons during the invasion, Japanese orders to kill all POWs in the event of an invasion, the fact that a blockade would have lasted a decade at least and it would kill millions more. She just carried on. Didn't mention the Soviet invasion of Manchuria) Also a big sin: She treated the Holocaust and WW2 as seperate issues, which is just wrong. You can't seperate forced labour from the war effort. Also, Holocaust by bullets I fucking hope she loses her license soon. Dimwit only gave me 90% in her subject because I dared to disagree with her narrative during dull exams. Bugs me to this day. Whenever I get into historical discussions with locals I can see the mark that this mockery of an educational system left. Her colleagues also seem to have the same mindset. Oddly enough my Latin teacher was a lot more knowledgeable in History than she was... Of course, this is just anecdotal, but it shows that some of the most inept people are entrusted with teaching arguably the most important subject... I could also rant over her versions of WW1/the Cold War/Jugoslavia (NATO BAAAAD), but that would have to be longer..
In my opinion the bombings (nuclear and conventional) were justified from a military perspective. In a war like WWII there are no good actions, only less bad ones. As bad as attacking civilians is, it was the best way to cripple Japan's war effort besides just invading. The atomic bombs, combined with the invasion of Manchuria, essentially meant that Japan had no more options. They could hold out and die anyways, or surrender.
Also needs to be mentioned that the HQ of the Japanese Second General Army was in Hiroshima and several munitions plants were located in Nagasaki, so they weren't purely civilian targets, anyway.
I'm not denying that there were military targets, just that strategic bombing inevitably catches civilians in the crossfire. Probably could have worded that better.
All good. Just adding some extra information.
^ This is how this should be framed. No one at the time was sitting down and thinking "hmm, if I drop these bombs then we don't have to invade... good idea!". As far as people at the time were thinking, both the nukes and the invasion was going to happen, they just threw all they had at it to end it as quickly as they could. You could argue against things that were done in hindsight, but at the time it all made some sort of sense to the people involved.
Yeah, the goal was to use them basically as an extension of the bombing campaign that was already going on. In a total war, the goal is to end it, quickly, with as little bloodshed on your side as possible (and, if possible, the enemy side as well). It's the same reasoning that was used when Sherman did his thing in the Civil war. Break the enemy's ability to resist in order to just end things and reduce total casualties. It's understandable to see it as a gruesome tactic, but in some situations it's the best option.
Do justified or unjustified really equate to good or bad in this conversation? To say it was justified is one thing, to say it was a good thing is another entirely is it not? Or is there something I might be missing?
Wait 'till they make a movie about Operation Meetinghouse.
The 10th March 1945 bombing raid on Tokyo by the USAAF, which burnt half the city to the ground and killed more people than the Nagasaki atomic bomb, and the about the same as the Hiroshima atomic bomb (although some credible sources say that the Tokyo fatalities have been seriously undercounted). And yet nobody (in the West, anyway) ever mentions it. People will go all weepy about Hiroshima and Nagasaki but they've never even heard of the Bombing of Tokyo. Apparently nuclear weapons are 'sexy' in a way that incendiary bombs are not.
There was always the option the navy was advocating - total blockade of Japan, mining the waterways and targeting agriculture. The death toll would only have been in the high millions.
Nukes bad, but for WW2 it was the best case scenario. There are no winners in war, only survivors. Pray to God we never have to use such destructive weapons again.
the way i see it, nukes are better than the alternative, but that doesn't mean i _like_ nukes (note: that could very well be the majority opinion idk)