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3fingersreid
6 hours ago, jonesy said:

One of the most barbaric acts in human history. Truman should have been up for war crimes. 

 he did have to weigh up the amount of allied soldiers deaths in invading the Japanese homelands though and he was also showing Russia a bit muscle , maybe warning them as to what would happen IF they thought about moving further west?
I watched a programme on tv yesterday , one of the history channels, it was clear the scientists didn’t really grasp the power ,destruction and long lasting devastating consequences.of “ Little Boy”. I still shudder at the way the early tests were carried out , using soldiers watching the test bombs detonate but giving them sun glasses to protect them 😱

 

I'm sure the soldiers fighting in the Pacific and especially the POW’s in the Japanese camps wouldn’t have been against it ,

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8 hours ago, jonesy said:

One of the most barbaric acts in human history. Truman should have been up for war crimes. 

:spoton:

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The Japanese were already in talks with the Allies to end the war.

Many Japanese cities had already been destroyed by firebombing them.

The Japanese air force had even stopped trying to intercept these mass raids as they hardly had any fuel left and were keeping it all for fighting off an invasion force.

The Yanks wanted to drop the nuclear bombs anyways, more as a message to Stalin than for any strategic wartime gain.

The Soviets didn't like that Japan might find peace with the Americans and British, as they had planned to move all their armies east and capture huge swathes of Asia, from Manchuria to Korea and possibly even the northern island of Hokkaido.

So, at the Cairo and Yalta summits of the Big Three, they demanded that any Japanese surrender had to be unconditional.

That forced the Americans and British to consider weapons of mass destruction to force an unconditional surrender.

Operation Olympic, the planned invasion of the Japanese home islands, called for mass deployment of chemical and biological weapons to kill as many Japanese as possible in the days before the landings. 

Huge stockpiles of phosgene, mustard gas, tear gas and cyanogen chloride had been built up in Luzon, the northernmost island of the Phillipines.

In the end they plumped for nukes as an attempt to force a surrender without having to invade.

So yes, in hindsight, the nukes probably saved more lives in the long run as they avoided the millions of deaths that a full scale invasion would have cost. 

The day after Hiroshima was bombed, the USSR declared war on Japan.

The Allies had cracked the Japanese codes and discovered that the Japanese thought that the Allies only had one or two bombs and that they could absorb the death toll and wait for the invasion.

After all, they'd already suffered the loss of more cities and lives due to conventional bombings.

Nagasaki was hit soon after, as a sign that the USA had more bombs ready to go (a bluff, as although they had more being built in factories, little boy and fat man were in fact the only two bombs they had).

The bluff worked and before the USSR could capture much territory, the Japanese surrendered and Japan was occupied, halting the Soviet plans for conquering land.

The USSR/Japan war only lasted about three weeks.

As we all know, Korea was divvied up between the USSR and USA, which led to another war only 5 years later.

So the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was really nothing to do with Japan at all, it was aimed at the USSR.

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11 hours ago, jonesy said:

One of the most barbaric acts in human history. Truman should have been up for war crimes. 

 

Disagree.  The bombing of Hiroshima pales in comparison to the murder of 6 million Jews in Europe, so it wasn't even the most barbaric act in WWII.  And the "Rape of Nanking', perpetrated by the Japanese on Chinese civilians, plus the treatment of Allied PoWs was definitely barbaric as well as militarily pointless.  

 

Countless books have been written on the subject, and the rights and wrongs have been debated ad infinitum, so I'm not going to rehash it all again.   But, in my view, Truman had no choice.  He was C-in-C of US forces and was sworn to preserve American lives.  After the slaughterhouses of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, when the Japanese defenders showed zero signs of surrender and died almost to a man, along with many thousands of Americans, a quick end to the war was an option he couldn't ignore. Truman, plus all Americans, viewed the situation in 1945 very differently than we do today through the lens of history.  

 

If the invasion of the Japanese home islands had been necessary, two things are certain: 1) all Allied PoWs would have been executed immediately, the orders had been issued and 2), more Japanese would have died in the resulting battles than died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In addition, American planners were estimating two million American casualties. Truman didn't have a choice.

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8 minutes ago, Maple Leaf said:

 

Disagree.  The bombing of Hiroshima pales in comparison to the murder of 6 million Jews in Europe, so it wasn't even the most barbaric act in WWII.  And the "Rape of Nanking', perpetrated by the Japanese on Chinese civilians, plus the treatment of Allied PoWs was definitely barbaric as well as militarily pointless.  

 

Countless books have been written on the subject, and the rights and wrongs have been debated ad infinitum, so I'm not going to rehash it all again.   But, in my view, Truman had no choice.  He was C-in-C of US forces and was sworn to preserve American lives.  After the slaughterhouses of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, when the Japanese defenders showed zero signs of surrender and died almost to a man, along with many thousands of Americans, a quick end to the war was an option he couldn't ignore. Truman, plus all Americans, viewed the situation in 1945 very differently than we do today through the lens of history.  

 

If the invasion of the Japanese home islands had been necessary, two things are certain: 1) all Allied PoWs would have been executed immediately, the orders had been issued and 2), more Japanese would have died in the resulting battles than died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In addition, American planners were estimating two million American casualties. Truman didn't have a choice.

Could it not be argued that with the Russians joining the fight against Japan, the losses could have been mitigated? I've seen some academics argue that the Russians joining the fray was a bigger sway to getting Japan to surrender than the bombs. 

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5 minutes ago, Normthebarman said:

Could it not be argued that with the Russians joining the fight against Japan, the losses could have been mitigated? I've seen some academics argue that the Russians joining the fray was a bigger sway to getting Japan to surrender than the bombs. 

 

Who knows how active the Soviets would have been? It could be that they merely wanted to stake a claim on some Japanese territory, and there is a running dispute to this day between Japan and Russia over the Kuril Islands.

 

And, bizarrely, the Soviets had gone from allies of the Americans in May (when Germany surrendered) to potential adversaries in August. Soviet support of America in the war on Japan was uncertain.

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5 minutes ago, jonesy said:

Fair enough. 
 

I’ve read quite a bit on it due to my degree, and there’s a lot of arguments for both sides.
 

Ultimately, they had a good idea that they were unleashing something which would not only end the war (good) but which would have long term implications for the innocent women and children of those two cities for years to come (bad). 
 

Horrible weapons.  

 

 

 

No argument there.  And because of the horrors the world witnessed in August 1945, they've never been used since.

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2 minutes ago, jonesy said:


Which makes, in my opinion, America effectively ‘showing off’ by dropping atomic bombs on cities even more disgusting. Japan was in retreat. They were, in part, doing it to intimidate the Soviets. 

 

Japan was definitely in retreat and defeat was inevitable.  But if defeat was to be inflicted using conventional military methods, the casualties on both sides would have been staggering.  Mind you, I doubt if the Americans were too concerned about casualties on the Japanese side.  They had fire-bombed Tokyo, after all, resulting in civilian casualties much worse than Dresden. But the prospect of two million American casualties made it an easy decision for Truman.

 

That's an interest thought about impressing the Soviets.  It's an angle I haven't heard before.

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Ibrahim Tall
28 minutes ago, jonesy said:


Which makes, in my opinion, America effectively ‘showing off’ by dropping atomic bombs on cities even more disgusting. Japan was in retreat. They were, in part, doing it to intimidate the Soviets. 


I wouldn’t disagree but there’s an argument that that very intimidation was necessary rather than just for ‘show’. There was pretty strong arguments on both sides for a continued war between the USSR and the Western Allies. The Soviet army was primed and in position at that point to continue steamrolling through Germany into the rest of Europe, the threat of a Russian Hiroshima took that off the table.

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If they hadn't of dropped the bombs that day, they would have found an excuse to drop them another time.  Perhaps Vietnam, USSR or Cuba?   The Americans needed to show the world that they had both the ability and the desire to drop these WMDs.  

 

No other nuke has been dropped since then. The world, collectively, learnt a lesson that day and there is the argument that there has never been a nuclear war due to it.  Imagine if the first time was against the USSR in 1962... What would have happened?  

 

Personally, I think that all war is crap and killing innocent people is out of order.  But - possibly, it did stop so many others from dying. 

Edited by Bigsmak
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Yes, it's almost 15 minutes long but it's well worth a watch.

Totally mental.

And it only covers the history of nuclear explosions up to 1998.

 

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41 minutes ago, Cade said:

Yes, it's almost 15 minutes long but it's well worth a watch.

Totally mental.

And it only covers the history of nuclear explosions up to 1998.

 

 

Mesmerising. 

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John Findlay
3 hours ago, Ibrahim Tall said:


I wouldn’t disagree but there’s an argument that that very intimidation was necessary rather than just for ‘show’. There was pretty strong arguments on both sides for a continued war between the USSR and the Western Allies. The Soviet army was primed and in position at that point to continue steamrolling through Germany into the rest of Europe, the threat of a Russian Hiroshima took that off the table.

General Geoege Patton didnt want to stop in Berlin. He wanted to go all the way to Moscow.

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On 07/08/2020 at 16:22, jonesy said:

Yeah, it’s all difficult to prove now, but there’s also evidence that Soviets were knackered and the race to Berlin had basically stretched the resources from both sides. I doubt either side were in much of a position to continue. 
 

I had a really good book on the subject of Europe in and around the end of the war and can’t find it for the life of me. Can’t even remember the title :(

 

I've had a similar experience.  I've just moved house and to simplify things I disposed of 200-300 books.  One of them was called "Day One", and it was all about what we've been discussing on this thread.  And I gave it away. :wacko:

 

One of the suggestions considered was to drop the bomb in a mountainous area of Japan, rather than a city, as a warning.  But they really weren't sure that the bomb would detonate, which would make the US look foolish, so the idea was put aside.

 

 

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On 08/08/2020 at 00:33, Bigsmak said:

If they hadn't of dropped the bombs that day, they would have found an excuse to drop them another time.  Perhaps Vietnam, USSR or Cuba?   The Americans needed to show the world that they had both the ability and the desire to drop these WMDs.  

 

No other nuke has been dropped since then. The world, collectively, learnt a lesson that day and there is the argument that there has never been a nuclear war due to it.  Imagine if the first time was against the USSR in 1962... What would have happened?  

 

Personally, I think that all war is crap and killing innocent people is out of order.  But - possibly, it did stop so many others from dying. 

Douglas McArthur wanted to use nukes in Korea when the Korean war was going badly for the US.  Had a full scale argument with the President about it.  Thankfully McArthur didnt get his way.

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Sawdust Caesar

Read a wee story the other day about a salesman who had went to Hiroshima on business the same day the bomb was dropped. He survived  it and returned home to his home in Nagasaki in time for the second bomb being dropped. He survived that as well and lived in to his old age. Probably the only person to have survived through 2 nuclear attacks.

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