Didn't the Germans have that pile reactor deal? Also the heavy water plant in Norway they had that. So I'd agree they likely could have produced a dirty bomb. The Japanese also considered a dirty bomb attack on California using the I-400 submarine launched M6A Seiran aircraft.

keepin a pulse on the dirty bomb
 

Its pretty simple, both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were legitimate military targets (look up the list of Military HQs, Industry, naval docks, munitions factories etc) that were in both cities as noted below. the civilian deaths were collateral casualties in a legal air raid in both cases (the laws of war allow this, the onus is on the defender to site legit targets away from civilians).

Hiroshima - During World War II, Hiroshima was a city of considerable military importance. It contained the 2nd Army Headquarters, which commanded the defense of all of southern Japan. The city was a communications center, a storage point, and an assembly area for troops and was a major naval base.

Nagasaki - The city of Nagasaki had been one of the largest sea ports in southern Japan and was of great war-time importance because of its many and varied industries, including the production of ordnance, ships, military equipment, and other war materials. The narrow long strip attacked was of particular importance because of its industries.

Massacring civilians in reprisal as per the Waffen SS in Normandy is a war crime and punishable by death.

RE the defence of Nazism, I won't even bother refuting the idiocy.

"As to willingly let them starve - I never said that and honestly I think it is a very different thing to drop 2 bombs, killing thousands, or be passive about it and give things a CHANCE to maybe work out not as bad as we all predict today."

You state, as quoted above, that it not immoral to let the children starve,
as long as you have the option of "being passive" to pretend that you didn't cause their deaths. 2 things come from this,

1. you don't know what a blockade is, it is actively sinking or turning back all shipping, so your moral cover is gone - you are killing them, just on delay.
The other thing that comes out of the discussion is that it is all about your feelings rather than facts - Chinese, Malays, Singaporeans being raped, tortured or murdered and you can stop it, but it's no problem as long as you don't do anything that makes you feel bad about yourself.
POWS tortured, starved and murdered, all good as long as you feel good.
Millions of Japanese men women and children to starve in the blockade, no problem as long as you don't do anything "active" that makes you feel bad about yourself, no matter how farcical the excuse that you didn't do it to them.

I also note you have still failed to answer the question, if, since nothing justifies the atomic bombs, the invasion is necessary - would you volunteer to be in the first wave up the beach and die with the other 250,000 or so allied troops you'd condemn to that fate? yes or no will do.

All cool then! :yeah:

With this sort of thinking, you can nuke every single country on this planet you are at war with - since it is totally 'lega'l and that justifies everything.
Hell, and I'm breaking my head here, it is all so easy in the end! :up:

It would help if you were prepared to think rather than try to be a smart arse as all you've done is demonstrated your ignorance.

Precision guided weapons have removed the need for massive bombs (or masses of bombs as per WW2 conventional air raids) to destroy relatively small targets (in fact many countries are now using smaller bombs [and in some cases concrete filled weapons] to reduce collateral damage) because the massive blast effect is not needed to compensate for a basic lack of accuracy any more.

Also, I note you are still dodging the question I asked, which suggests that you lack the courage of your convictions.

What? Are you fantasizing now?
That is not even remotely what I said and I have a completely different point of view on this issue.
Being passive is not actively killing them.
In case of a blockade the responsibility for the casualties (especially in the scenario we speak of) goes towards the Japanese government.
They can make this end any day, any moment - hence any casualties are on their account.

Dropping a nuclear bomb and accepting the instant death of some 70.000 civilians is nothing but murder, you can try to sugarcoat this as much as you want, it doesn't change its very nature.

Just read the above... and just stop trying to make me a villain with some hidden agenda using a "moral cover". I start to wonder what you're actually on about... :hmmm:

Ok, at this point you start to massively piss me off.
How twisted are you actually?
My point of view is rather simple, so I must assume you simply deny to understand it at this point and feel the need to take what I said and twist it in a way it suits your own point of view?
Sorry, won't be a apart of this crap.

I also note that you must have reading comprehension problems and reading what you just said while I was writing this gives me the feeling that I hit some nerve as you now retreated to use personal attacks and passive aggressive behavior instead of addressing the topic.

Are you serious right now?
You were the one not posting in two days after I addressed you.
This is not how debates work. You can't just pick what you like and demand answers, you gotta answer for your own crap as well and you so far never addressed what I said/asked, you just tried to find 'something' that somehow suits your point of view even if it means to twist my words or make the wildest assumptions.

Doesn't matter at this point, I am completely done with you and won't pursue this debate any longer. Days ago, I clearly made my point, as did others. You are the only one here blaming others of being ignorant while failing to accept different view points.

Way to go!

I don't know... On the one hand, i see all the invasion evidence and all the reasons for believing it was right, and on the other, it feels like a monstrous act of cruelty. I just don't know...:shifty:

Well.. cities as legitimate military targets?
IMHO bombing any civilian target or threaten to do so, is taking civilians as hostages.
There is almost no city which would not be a legitimate military target nowadays, from chocolate bars to ball bearings, all help to support the evil enemy, right?

So London was also a legitimate target, for all those ammunition factories, headquarters a.s.o. in WWI, and II ?
Ironically, the bombing of civilians in WW2 began with a tragic error, inviting Churchill to do what he and the military wanted to do all along. The order or parole sent to the armed forces was "Total Germany", which meant the declaration of a total war, right from the beginning.

On the other hand as things developed, such bombings of civilians would have happened sooner or later anyway, after the declaration of war. They had already taken place in WW1.. (started with the french i think though i may be wrong, to bombing cities in the Ruhr area, Friedrichshafen, and then, of course, England), and especially the german bombing raids in Poland at the begining of WWII.
You cannot see the bombing between England and Germany, without looking at Poland.

They did it first, so we are just doing what they did. Justification, not much better morally, but a reason.


As i said before, there were political reasons to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki and maybe rightly so, to prevent more dying, but imho the military really wanted to try out their new toys (as Einstein wrote) and see the real effect. And we should not forget that japanese people were effectively dehumanized, in propaganda. Not too much people protesting, if the population knew about it at all.
Real military reasons to bomb a city's population? I doubt it.

Pile reactor, that's the bugger. In a beer cellar, of all places. :haha:
Yeah, they had the plant at Vemork, although we managed to break it sufficiently that they declared it too much of a security risk to develop heavy water in Norway and moved production into Germany. :yep:
I've heard of the Japanese plans, also IIRC they considered sending out the plague to California, or something similar that Unit 731 would have cooked up during their human experimentation. :nope:

Incorrect, the Luftwaffe was bombing civilians long before London.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombin...n_World_War_II

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Guernica

Oh, and the first bombing of a city, was from a German Zeppelin onto the city of Liege on the 6th August 1914.

Hiroshima was a war crime, Nagasaki was a war crime, London bombings was awar crime, Dresden bombings was a war crime, the sacrifice of Coventry was a war crime, firebombing Tokyo was a war crime, Katyn forest was a war crime, Auscwitz was a war crime, Japaneese occupation of China was a war crime, German retaliation against resistance was a war crime, resistance no prisoner policy was a war crime, Dražgoše was a war crime....

WAR IS A CRIME

But I wish it was as simple as that.
We will sooner leave this behind if we just accept that it was wrong but done.
That's it. Shamefull display of violence and disregard for human life that was done and the only thing that can be done about it is not being repeated.

And not to go on a moral crusade here, I should be honest and say i'd done the same. If I can win the war with fever of my losses but at a great cost to the enemies nation, I'd do it. The people gave me a mandate to serve and protect and I'd do it even if I have to damn my soul.

Coming back to the Blitz, briefly, Catfish does have a small point, although I don't think he realised it.

Initially, London targets outside of airfields was off bounds, on orders by Hitler, I think the two main reasons for this was fear of retaliation since he knew that the RAF had its own dedicated strategic bombing wing which was protected by the English Channel, so unlike the French strategic bombing wing (which wasn't that brilliant, tbh) it couldn't have its airfields overrun, and the second main reason was that it wasn't necessary to the goal of destroying the RAF. The main targets were RAF airfields, and Kent infrastructure as a prelude to the infamous sea mammal.
In return, the RAF was bombing primarily coastal cities along the French and German coastline as well as industrial targets in the Ruhr. Then came the famous Croydon cock-up, and as a response Bomber Command went after Tempelhof airfield in Berlin. The damage was minimal, but it made the Luftwaffe change targets from RAF airfields to London.
This much most people know, but one must take a look at London to see what the Luftwaffe were after. Fortunately, we have a device for that:

http://bombsight.org/#15/51.5050/-0.0900

Now, it's often said that the East End of London suffered the worst in the Blitz and it's not incorrect, because the East End were the primary compenents of Londons industry were located. Gas stations, the docklands, railway yards, it was all around there, and it was all bombed on a regular occasion throughout the Blitz. The other targets were mainly symbolic at first, and usually the bombs missed. Generally speaking though, the Luftwaffes targets were industrial in nature, but bombing accuracy as it was in 1940 meant that the factories plus everything around them were hit.
Even Coventry, the infamous attack which destroyed the cathedral, the main targets were industrial in nature, but since it was done at night and with incendiaries, then accuracy was minimal. Likewise the RAF raids on Germany were aimed at industry and generally failed miserably at achieving anything of value.
So, as the wikipedia article on the Blitz puts it:

The Luftwaffe switched from trying to accurately bomb industrial targets to just blanketing the whole area with bombs and hoping that one of them actually hit the target. If the homes of industrial workers were hit, then that was all the better too since it would help disrupt industrial activity.

The RAF took a not dissimilar objective in their attacks against coastal cities and industrial targets in the Ruhr, but officially was not aiming against clusters of civilian housing until 1942 and the Raid on Lubeck.
1942 was when things changed, 'Bomber' Harris became head of Bomber Command, and the 'Area Bombing Directive' was issued, and RAF Bomber Command decided to go down the same failed route as the Luftwaffe had tried. :/\\!! As a result the Luftwaffe launched their Baedeker Blitz which focused on cultural rather than industrial targets, but with most of the Luftwaffe tied up in the Soviet Union it didn't really have much of an effect.

Personally, I think that Strategic bombing of cities in an attempt to undermine civilian morale was a pointless and failed objective. Even trying to bomb industries in an accurate manner was a difficult proposition but we were working on methods to increase night bombing accuracy and had more effort been put into them and the Pathfinder force then we might have been able to avoid the whole tactic of flattening entire cities just to destroy twelve factories, thus giving the enemy free propaganda. :nope:

Still, as Betonov put it, war is a crime, a crime against humanity, and sadly that's a lesson that we still haven't fully learnt as a race. :/\\!!

Yes, i mentioned that further down, however here i meant the bombings solely between England, and Germany. This is why i wrote you cannot see these bombings without looking at Poland (and Guernica).
But the bomb dropping on houses at London near the harbour by a Ju87, was done unintentionally. I am sure either side would have soon found another pretext though.


Oh, yes: http://www.luftfahrtarchiv-koeln.de/...f_Luettich.htm
Germany was the only power at that time, to have a possibility to do that at all. The Entente would certainly have held back later with their bombings, had not Germany bombed Liège. :-?

I believe by then the Ju87s weren't in the battle because they'd be shredded so badly. IIRC it was one of the big three level bombers (Do-17, Ju-88 or He-111) that bombed London by mistake whilst looking for Croydon airfield.
That being said, both sides were bombing industrial targets up until 1942, it's just that the method of bombing meant that civilian targets were hit as well. However, like we've both seen, the first to actually deliberately target civilian populace was the Luftwaffe...in Europe anyway. Pretty sure the Japanese were bombing cities, towns, villages, anything that moved in China pretty much from the start.


Was I arguing that? :03: Just pointing out that it wasn't the French that started the bombing, although they did have one of the first official strategic bombing wings, but the Germans had the first unofficial bombing wing, the 'Ostend Carrier Pigeon Detachment' which was formed within the first month of the war, whereas the French 'Group de Bombardment No. 1' was created in September 1914. The first Entente bombing of a city, was conducted by GB1 in December 1914.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strate...ng_World_War_I