I don't understand your point either but I can live with that. We don't have to agree on everything and live still goes on.:yep:

To me it's a numbers game. Over all I think the Nukes were the option with the least casualties on BOTH sides. An invasion of Japan would most likely have cost millions of lives considering how the invasions of other home land islands worked (military units fighting to the last man, civilians committing mass suicide, the announcement of executing all POWs, horrific medical situation with shortage of everything). I think a bit over 200.000 lives lost, as tragic and regrettable/disgusting as it is, is the lower price to pay than any alternative that I can think of. So the nukes would actually be my choice to end the war, simply because they allow MORE people to be alive once it's over.

Earshplittenloudenboomer...
 

Regardless of any assumptions or what ifs in regard to using such a devastating weapon, I try to comfort my tormented id in the knowledge that it only had to be used twice. After Hiroshima was reduced to glass, the Japanese still tried to sue for peace. Stalling tactic? You bet it was. So Nagasaki got the horns of the bull too. It wasn't until the Japanese were overtly informed that Tokyo would be next in line that they finally saw the light.


Edit: Captain hindsight says: Count your lucky stars... We could have dropped both bombs on Tokyo and called it a day.

Tokyo wasn't particularly suitable as a target; much of it was burned to the ground over-night several months before in a firebombing raid that killed more people than either atomic bomb.

True, but it was their capital city after all and finishing it off by turning it into radioactive glass would have driven the point home in a big way.
IIRC they immediately cried "uncle" when told of the next target after Nagasaki. They had no defense against it whatsoever.

It created an insurmountable fear in those people. I have conversed with a former GI who was stationed in Japan during the post war occupation. He related a story of an incensed crowd of civilians getting a little uppity with them and all he had to do was make a gesture with his hands and mouth of another huge explosion and they settled down mach schnell.

Let's just take a moment to consider Tsutomu Yamaguchi

http://38.media.tumblr.com/4d0fbc1a7...3d7lo3_540.gif

Three kilometers from two nuclear explosions and he lives to the ripe old age of 93. :o

I guess the direction of war is never a task for the squeamish and it's easy to pontificate 70 years later, when you're not caught up in the pressure of events. The U.S. had already participated in a massive bombing campaign which had killed about three-quarters of a million German and Japanese civilians, and to which public opinion had raised few objections. It is much easier to justify the the decision to drop the atomic bombs than the continued fire-raising offensive of the Twentieth Air Force in Japan. The preoccupation of debate with the necessity of using using the bombs had meant that it always gets judged strategically against the looming invasion of the Home Islands, rather than the actual air bombardment underway at the time and with which it was unavoidably linked in the minds of the policy-makers at the time.

Cold as it may seem, General Curtis LeMay regarded the Hiroshima and Nagasaki raids as merely an addition ( and a redundant and unwelcome addition) to a campaign he felt his B-29s had already decisively won. If anything he was annoyed that they diminished the credit given his conventional bombers for flattening Japan.

I always find it...amusing is perhaps the word, that Le May would receive the Japanese Order of the Rising Sun after the war, perhaps for his services in city redesigning? :doh:

Yeah, that's kind of like enshrining General Tecumseh Sherman on Stone Mountain, Georgia for burning Atlanta. :O:

Quote:

that I wouldn't be posting at :subsim: if not for the bomb

Quite the contrary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall
In Nipponese that's "Saw the Right" They can't say L...:x

Of course, that's not forgetting the possibility that the Allied invasion force would have been scattered to the four winds by Typhoon Louise which smashed into Okinawa as a Cat. 3 (185kmh/115mph winds) around about the time that the invasion was due to begin. This in turn would have given extra support to the Japanese who would have seen it as a sign from the Shinto gods in the same manner that the Mongolian fleets were scattered by the 'Kami-kaze' at Koan and Bun'ei. :dead: Their resistance would have increased even more. :nope:

One of the great fears of the Joint Chiefs was that historically no Japanese government had ever surrendered or, even if one did, that Japan's armed forces would comply with that surrender. Had Downfall gone ahead, the emperor might at some point been spirited away for "his safety" possibly squelching the only spark of hope for any sort of organized capitulation. If there was no organized surrender, the Joint Chiefs warned in a policy paper that they foresaw "no alternative to annihilation" of the between four and five million Japanese combatants in the home islands, on the Asian continent, and across the Pacific.

So, you have naval blockade that might result in starvation and disease for the millions on Japan with maybe millions more dying in China, the Netherlands East Indies and other Japanese occupied areas as the protracted conflict drags on.

You have a costly invasion pending that could take months if not years, might even entail the tactical use of atomic weapons and would reduce what was left of Japan to cinders.

And then you have the dropping of the two atomic bombs, which along with the Soviet invasion of Manchuria just might shock someone in authority in Japan into surrender.

The atomic bombs were awful. The alternatives seem much worse.

Having read all the posts here , it's seems clear everyone is saying basically the same thing. War, especially in a nuclear context is an ugly thing and maybe that's a good thing.

Hopefully that ugliness will make war something to be avoided. We have more important things to consider such as environmental and climate issues anyhow. I think it will take the collective intelligence of all people in the world to work that one out.

I was born post WWII, but not that far after WWII. My parents had witnessed WWII. My father was officer in the Waffen SS and proud of that.

From what I've learned during all my years about history, when it comes to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the possibility of bombing Germany with nukes, Robert Oppenheimer comes to mind:

"We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." I suppose we all thought that, one way or another."

Let's just hope NEVER again.

:hmm2: :o99 !


And yesterday, the West commemorated the Nagasaki bombing.

A plutonium bomb delivered from the skies, leaving 74.000 people dead in a fraction of a second - not counting wounded people, most of whom did not survive.

http://b8.uk.icdn.ru/c/compdrag/5/44361925hnn.jpg

Hm... Well, fair enough ! :)

Raising another matter now. According to the official version of the event - which I'll admit to be true for now -, what happened on June 10, 1944 in Oradour ? :hmm2:
Waffen SS destroyed a village and massacred its inhabitants to make an example out of it. Their goal ? People say it was to terrorize the population so that the resistance stops harassing german troops going northward on their way up to la Normandie. So, the SS is said to have acted that way at Oradour in order to put an end to the kleinkrieg, the resistance's war - that was indeed supposed to allow members of the resistance to avoid more difficulties and disasters, as well as to save many lives.

http://b8.uk.icdn.ru/c/compdrag/6/44361926glr.jpg

Ah ? And can you enlighten me on what basis it is any different, please ?
Both wanted to put an end to a war, didn't they ? :hmm2:

Look carefully, dig a bit deeper into the subject.
The final excuse will always be the same : "Allies were fighting for civilization, while Germans for their part were fighting for the bad side : the cause of criminal nazism".
I'll respond to that through some answer from Hjalmar Schacht. Acquitted at the end of the Nuremberg trials, during the hearing he said :

Let's remind you that the british ambassador in Germany Sir Nevile Henderson, in his april 20th 1939 report, admitted :

It is indeed interesting to take note that, in order to persuade the German People of the criminal nature of the national-socialist ideology, winners of this war showed them photos taken at the liberation of concentration camps, saying things like "Here lies what Nazism led to".
However, that propaganda was quickly refuted - on march, 11th 1946, Rudolf Höss, once inspector of concentration camps, basically said :

So, in fact, in order to demonstrate the allegedly criminal aspects of national-socialism, the Allies did nothing less than relying on a situation in Germany they were themselves largely responsible for - when it comes to cynicism, you can't do better than that. http://b8.uk.icdn.ru/c/compdrag/0/41904500Ulv.jpg

As soon as 1948, Maurice Bardèche clearly posed the problem :

Today, however, converging repressive laws and significant social pressure prevent all free and open debate and discussion around this question. Disregarding laws and breaking the taboo about this subject actually can be a threat to anyone. And what if National-Socialism had actually been truth and progress or, at least, a form of truth and of progress ?..

Authorities don't want anyone to ask this question to himself, since only the negative response is allowed. But what lies ahead, behind that will to prevent open discussion related to the subject ? :hmm2:

The answer to that question especially can be found at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, among other places. Thousands of dead people in a fraction of a second, as well as horrendously mutilated people...

http://b8.uk.icdn.ru/c/compdrag/6/44362636Wko.jpg

Did he just defend Hitler? :hmmm:

August, I believe you have an Indiana Jones picture to post... :yep:

interesting discussion.

I read in "Wages of Destruction", that by early 1942, both Speer and Friedrich Fromm (of Valkyrie fame, but at that time chief of Army Armament) had both been briefed by German scientists and well understood the potential of the atomic bomb, but both came to the conclusion that Germany could not afford to spend billions on a weapon that would take years to develop.

One documentary I saw once, when Discovery was still about documentaries, was that they found out after the war, that the Germans went about building the bomb completely wrong and would never had worked.


@Alex: you realise that the Nazi eguenics principle would not let you live ??
Jews, gypsies and Slavs were not the only ones on the list. Mental cases were also on the kill list.

fergit the Bomb: Curtis Lemay! it's the thought that counts???!!
 

...but the firebombing campaign against Japan, directed by LeMay between March 1945 and the Japanese surrender in August 1945, may have killed more than 500,000 Japanese civilians and left five million homeless. Official estimates from theUnited States Strategic Bombing Survey put the figures at 220,000 people killed. Some 40% of the built-up areas of 66 cities were destroyed, including much of Japan's war industry. The remaining Alliedprisoners of war in Japan who had survived imprisonment to that time were frequently subjected to additional reprisals and torture after an air raid. The massive bombing also hit a number of prisons and directly killed a number of Allied war prisoners LeMay was aware of the implication of his orders. The New York Times reported at the time, "Maj. Gen. Curtis E. LeMay, commander of the B-29s of the entire Marianas area, declared that if the war is shortened by a single day, the attack will have served its purpose."The argument was that it was his duty to carry out the attacks in order to end the war as quickly as possible, sparing further loss of life. He also remarked that had the U.S. lost the war, he fully expected to be tried for war crimes.. [wiki]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ng_leaflet.jpg
A "LeMay Bombing Leaflet" from the war, which warned Japanese civilians that "Unfortunately, bombs have no eyes. So, in accordance with America's humanitarian policies, the American Air Force, which does not wish to injure innocent people, now gives you warning to evacuate the cities named and save your lives." :timeout: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...0px-SunIII.jpgafter the war Lemay received the Order of the Rising Sun Grand Cordon...go figure!:salute: "PoRitics as usuar" including what really happened to aircrews imprisoned at Hiroshima and Nagasski...http://www.us-japandialogueonpows.org/HoroshimaPOW.htm

Careful we don't stray into Wolfenstein territory here, especially if we start talking about 'Die Glocke' :haha:

In regards to the Nazi bomb, IIRC their first major project was to build a reactor, like the Allies 'Tube Alloys' and 'Manhatten' but IIRC the reactor, if indeed it was ever built, suffered a problem and was shut down.
What didn't help was that whenever the Allies got wind of anything that could be used in the making of a nuclear bomb or reactor by Germany they sent a load of Lancasters or B-17s over to bomb it into the dirt.
That being said, I wouldn't have been surprised if they were close to creating at the very least a dirty bomb.