"Yea but if we didn't do it, the Germans would have"

[Cisco]

I heard two guys arguing at a party the other night about why we dropped the bomb and one of them was saying we had to because if we didn't, the germans would. The other was saying the Germans had absolutely nothing to do with it because it was so long after V-E day. Or maybe he was saying we had to go ahead with the Manhattan Project because of the Germans. Anyway, while the latter fellow seems to make more sense, I know the former to be a pretty smart guy, so is there any factual basis for saying "if we hadn't done it, the Germans would have"?

[Telemark]

The Germans were busy working on their atomic bomb during the war. It was a real possibility that they would succeed and it would have certainly had a major affect on the outcome.

[Sauron]

The Germans were working on their own version of an atomic bomb; in fact, at least one (and probably more) commando raids were carried out to disable their production of heavy water, and slow down their bomb-making efforts.

I think Hitler had hoped to mount an atomic bomb on a V-2 rocket and hit London, but I don't have a specific cite for that. I seem to recall reading it, though.

We didn't drop the two bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki because of the Germans, though. That action was done in an effort to save the lives of U.S. GIs. Japan wouldn't have surrendered unless the U.S. invaded her home islands, and casualty projections for such an invasion were incredibly high. Dropping the bombs was seen as a way to shorten the war and save American lives.

[Spiny Norman]

Shooting from the hip, here:

The Germans were far behind on their nuclear research, but there wasn't really any way of knowing this during the war. They had, after all, produced some very high-tech weaponry.

The commando/resistance action against the heavy water plant in Norway was spectacular, BTW.

IIRC, the Manhattan project was carried out without a specific target in mind - it was simply a matter of adding another weapon to the Allied arsenal.

I agree with Sauron on the reasoning behind the US use of the Bomb. Looking over the losses in the Pacific theatre, the thought of conquering mainland Japan Iwo Jima style would have anyone looking for a faster way out.

S. Norman

[kunilou]

There are some accounts that suggest some German scientists were trying to sabotage Nazi development of an atomic bomb. From those stories, and the accounts of destroying heavy water facilities, we can pretty solidly infer that there WAS development going on. So while the Germans might not have been as far along as the U.S., there's strong evidence that they were developing a bomb, and Hitler being Hitler, little doubt that he would have used it.

As for dropping the bomb on Japan, IIRC after the horrific battle of Okinawa, military experts estimated 2,000,000 U.S. casualties and at least a six month battle to invade the Japanese homeland. Harry Truman often said the decision to use the bomb was the easiest of his Presidency.

[Myrr21]

Another big part of dropping the Bomb was oour less-than-ideal relations with the USSR. We wanted to show that we were really big and scary, and a land invasion would give them time to get their forces there and have some claim to Japan (note the problems that this caused with a divided Germany).

[tomndebb]

Harry Truman often said the decision to use the bomb was the easiest of his Presidency.

Possibly easy before it happened. (I would be curious to see a reference.) He is also on record as having indicated that he always had regrets concerning that action.


Had the Germans developed the bomb, I believe they would have certainly used it.

On the other hand, between internal and external sabotage of their program, the Germans were probably years away from developing the actual bomb. The heavy water experiments for which so many Britons and Norwegians gave their lives to stop was a dead end (although no one could have known it at the time).

[evilhanz]

Japan had an active atom bomb program. It's not known how far the research progressed, but all accounts suggest they were far behind the US but ahead of Germany. The program was headed by Yoshio Nishina who had worked under Bohr. It began in 1940 and was called either "F-Go" or "No. F". Here's a very interesting article on the Japanese efforts http://vikingphoenix.com/public/Japa...5/jp-abomb.htm Robert Wilcox wrote a book entitled "Japan's Secret War", based on recently declassified documents. His conclusions are subject to debate. It seems that American military intelligence was only dimly aware of these efforts before the end of the war or discounted the program as unlikely to succeed.

There was even some collaboration between Germany and Japan on this front. Towards the end of the war, when it was clear Germany would fall, a U-boat was interecepted and brought to Portsmouth, NH. It was carrying 1,200 pounds of uranium oxide. There were two Japanese officers on board who were allowed to commit suicide. The uranium oxide eventually found it's way to the Oak Ridge laboratory.

[Sn-man]

From what I remember from school ,in 1939 Albert Einstein sent a letter to FDR. The letter basically explained the concept of an A-bomb and urged the president to develop the atomic. The letter does suggest that the Germans were in the process of development.

As far as Japan is concerned, the second bomb was dropped 3 days after the first one. Japan had not agreed to surrender and the US chose to drop another bomb. My history teacher presented the thought of a two fold reason. #1 The US could do ”it” again. And more importantly #2 The US WOULD do “it” again.

[mrblue92]

Sn-man just beat me to some of this, but here goes...

IIRC, the Manhattan project was carried out without a specific target in mind - it was simply a matter of adding another weapon to the Allied arsenal.

Oh? I suppose it depends on whose perspective you are viewing the project from. I was under the impression that the reason it began was due to pressures that Germany was attempting to develop atomic weapons (remember Leo Szilard's & Einstein's interactions with FDR). Once Germany was defeated, Oppenheimer and some of the others were somewhat reluctant to continue research, but did so anyway under pressure from General Groves.

I think I have probably posted something similar on this before, but the decision was to either drop 2 bombs on Japan or none. IIRC, this was because they wanted to test the two different designs. A US Army Air Force study at the time had indicated that the A-bombs were unnecessary; that continued fire-bombing would have had the same effect eventually, no invasion required. (Isn't fire-bombing so much better? )

However, John Galbraith (a member of a civilian commision initiated by FDR to examine the effects of the air war) indicates in Stud Terkel's The Good War that neither course was necessary. Japan was ready to surrender and was making back door peace gestures when the bomb was dropped. Japanese were concerned about maintaining some appearance of honor and felt absolutely bound to keep the Emperor in charge. Unconditional surrender was a difficult option to accept.

I tend to agree with Sn-man's teacher. The A-bomb was really the ability to send the Soviets and the Japanese a big message at the same time: "Don't piss us off."

[john_e_wagner]

I think the primary reason in using the bomb was to scare Russia. At that time Japan was all but defeated. Although at the time I'm sure the president would have vaporized Japan to save American soldiers. Eisenhower however was against using the bombs. He felt that they were not needed. Japan had already tried to negotiate a surrender but were unwilling to lose their Emperor. (They did not lose the Emperor.)

The positive thing about using the bomb on Japan was that it probably prevented WWIII. If we had not seen the devastation caused by the radiation, it's use would have been acceptable in Korea, Cuba, or Vietnam.

[Lemur866]

While the Manhattan project may have been started without a specific enemy in mind, most of the Jewish physicists who worked on it had a very specific enemy in mind.

See Richard Feynman's book, "Surely You're Joking...". He decided to work on the project because he was worried about Germany, and so did lots of others.

Also: while Japan might have been ready to surrender, how was the US supposed to know that unless Japan offered to surrender? They did not offer to surrender. We dropped the bomb. They dithered. We dropped another bomb. They surrendered.

We have to remember that although the guys on the Manhattan project understood what the bomb was about, to the political leaders (ie Truman) it was just a really big bomb. We had been firebombing Japan and Germany for years already. The moral distinction between destroying a city with a thousand bombs and destroying a city with one bomb is not that great.

[mrblue92]

Let me clarify that when I said I agreed with Sn-man's teacher, I meant the A-bomb as a message, not in the details about dropping two bombs. As I said, the choice was to drop 0 or 2 A-bombs when the decision came to Truman.

[Alessan]

FTR, one of the main reasons the German fell so far beyond in their A-bomb research was that they had exiled most of their best nuclear physicists in the '30s. A nice case of evil defeating itself.

[friedo]

Originally posted by mrblue92
Let me clarify that when I said I agreed with Sn-man's teacher, I meant the A-bomb as a message, not in the details about dropping two bombs. As I said, the choice was to drop 0 or 2 A-bombs when the decision came to Truman.

One of my history teachers told me that, essentially, this was for two reasons. One was to test the two different designs. The other was because the Americans thought, "If we drop one bomb, they'll think we only have one, but if we drop two bombs, they'll think we have an enourmous supply."

[KeithB]

If you really want the answers to *all* of these questions in more detail than you could possibly imagine, read "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes.

We dropped two bombs quickly in a row to let Japan think that we had an unlimited supply and could keep up the pace indefinitely. In fact, it would have taken us months to build more bombs because of a lack of fissile material.

We did not need to "test" two designs. The fat man *was* tested at trinity and it worked just fine, thank you very much. The little boy was not tested because the understanding of the physics of the thing was so complete that there was no doubt that it would *not* work.

[Speaker for the Dead]

What I heard was that Hitler had the option of putting his resources into rockets (V-1 and 2) or the atomic bomb. He decided that most of them should be put to rockets. I may be wrong though.

[Saltire]

There is evidence that the German atomic program had ended in the middle of the war, with no significant results. There were two reasons for this. One, the Allied raids had severely damaged their ability to produce the heavy water they thought they needed, and two, the Science ministry was afraid to tell Hitler about the project.

I have a book around here somewhere called "The Second Creation." It details the history of twentieth-century physics. The authors quote the guy who had to decide whether to go ahead with the research. The scientists told him that the project could be completed in two years (which would have still been before the end of the war, I believe). He knew that if he approved the project, Adolf would have insisted they produce the bomb in six months. Since he knew that was impossible, and he knew that Hitler would have him and his staff shot if they didn't do it, he shut down the research, saying that the studies so far indicated the bomb was not feasible.

So, Hitler was probably never aware that the bomb could be completed.

[hansel]

Originally posted by john_e_wagner
I think the primary reason in using the bomb was to scare Russia. At that time Japan was all but defeated. Although at the time I'm sure the president would have vaporized Japan to save American soldiers. Eisenhower however was against using the bombs. He felt that they were not needed. Japan had already tried to negotiate a surrender but were unwilling to lose their Emperor. (They did not lose the Emperor.)

I discussed this topic with my Japanese boss, who grew up in the ruins of Tokyo following WW II.

He said that, while there were some doves in the military high command at the time who were urging surrender before Japan was completely destroyed, there were hawks who wanted to fight to the death. The defining aspect was the dominant warrior culture, which prevented anyone from appearing weak-willed before the hawks. Therefore, they all supported the noble idea of death in battle to each other's faces, effectively (if not sincerely) putting the military firmly in the "no surrender" camp. Without the support of the military, it was impossible for the emperor to negotiate a peaceful surrender (which he wanted to do). Indeed, while the surrender was being signed on an American battleship, kamikaze pilots were readying airplanes at a nearby airfield to destroy the signing ceremony and prevent the surrender and the shaming of their nation, their military, and their emperor.

He said, were he in Truman's position, he would have dropped the bombs, too.

[mrblue92]

We did not need to "test" two designs. The fat man *was* tested at trinity and it worked just fine, thank you very much. The little boy was not tested because the understanding of the physics of the thing was so complete that there was no doubt that it would *not* work.

Boy, I really do seem to recall testing being involved in the actual decision making process, but I suppose I could be wrong. Perhaps it was testing the effects of both types on full scale cities and a live population. And ISTR there being some concern by the military top brass of one or both being a dud. I do know Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been among a few cities virtually untouched by American bombers so the full effects could be evaluated.

[John Bredin]

"Indeed, while the surrender was being signed on an American battleship, kamikaze pilots were readying airplanes at a nearby airfield to destroy the signing ceremony and prevent the surrender and the shaming of their nation, their military, and their emperor."

Whoa! Never heard that before! So what happened? I mean they obviously *didn't* attack the surrender ceremony, so who or what stopped them?

[Qwertyasdfg]

Originally posted by Telemark
We didn't drop the two bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki because of the Germans, though. That action was done in an effort to save the lives of U.S. GIs. Japan wouldn't have surrendered unless the U.S. invaded her home islands, and casualty projections for such an invasion were incredibly high. Dropping the bombs was seen as a way to shorten the war and save American lives.

What kind of numbers do we mean? Millions of GIs dead/wounded? Also, how many Japanese troops and civilians?
Is it true that they would have armed the people?

[justinh]

IIRC, little man was an uranium bomb and fat boy was plutonium. They were 2 different designs by different teams of scientist. so the testing theory would have some merit. the military (or president) would not have trusted the scientist's assurances that it would work based on a mathematical equation.


And the difference between fire bombing and A-bombing is that fire bombing had been going on for a while with no immediate effect. fires in Japans' cities were commonplace and understood. but the A-bomb was a new phenon. The radiation aspect didnt even come into play until after the war. Japan only knew that there was a new explosive device that was powerful enough to take out an entire city.

[Sauron]

Originally posted by Qwertyasdfg

What kind of numbers do we mean? Millions of GIs dead/wounded? Also, how many Japanese troops and civilians?
Is it true that they would have armed the people?

I don't have casualty projections in front of me, but for some reason the 2 million figure rings a bell. That's American killed and wounded. Japanese would likely have been much higher.

Japan was "arming the people" -- at least to a certain extent. Civilians were trained with sharpened bamboo poles and such to charge the beaches, presumably in an attempt to drive the Army and Marines back into the sea. The loss of civilian life would have been very high. I don't know if it would have been higher than the loss of life in bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki, though.

Originally posted by John Bredin
"Indeed, while the surrender was being signed on an American battleship, kamikaze pilots were readying airplanes at a nearby airfield to destroy the signing ceremony and prevent the surrender and the shaming of their nation, their military, and their emperor."

Whoa! Never heard that before! So what happened? I mean they obviously *didn't* attack the surrender ceremony, so who or what stopped them?

I don't know if the kamikaze rumor is true, although it sounds somewhat feasible. However, the U.S. was on guard against just such a strike. A massive air armada passed over the bay prior to and during the signing -- literally thousands of planes, stretched from horizon to horizon, in a tremendous show of force. Anyone foolish enough to launch an airplane in the face of that would be obliterated before they got fully airborne.

[The Hamster King]

Originally posted by justinh
IIRC, little man was an uranium bomb and fat boy was plutonium. They were 2 different designs by different teams of scientist. so the testing theory would have some merit. the military (or president) would not have trusted the scientist's assurances that it would work based on a mathematical equation.

The two devices differed primarily in what their fissile materials were and how the critical mass was assembled.

Little Boy was essentially a cannon. It fired a uranium slug into a socket in a uranium target. It was even at the time considered to be an inefficient, brute-force method for generating a nuclear blast, but one that could be virtually guaranteed to deliver some sort of explosion, even if the theoretical calculations about how the critical mass would behave were off. (They weren't.)

The more elegent Fat Man worked by compressing a subcritical mass of plutonium into a supercritical state by setting off carefully timed and shaped explosive charges that created a spherical implosion. There were many more ways that it could have been a dud (the timing of the implosion had to be near perfect), but the original Trinity test had also used a plutonium implosion device so the bright boys at Los Alamos already knew the theory was sound.

In a nutshell -- there wasn't any point in doing a comparason of the two types of devices. The scientists already knew that Fat Man was a better design (a bigger bang with less fissile material) and they had proved that it would work with Trinity. Little Boy was a legacy from early in the program when it was intended as a brute-force insurance policy in case the plutonium implosion design hit some sort of roadblock. It wound up being used anyway primarily to give the Japanese (and the Russians) the impression that the U.S. had atom bombs to spare and could drop them at will.

Of course, it is true Hiroshima was left untouched by U.S. convential bombing raids so that the effects of the nuclear blast could be easily studied ... .

[ElDestructo]

I find this topic very interesting. I think that when they write histories of the United States in the future they will point to the Manhattan Project and Truman's decision to drop the bomb as one of the great turning points--right up there with the Civil War and the Revolution. I think it's the real moment when we made the transition from Republic to Empire.

We had expended so much blood and treasure to make the damn thing, it was ineveitable that it would be used. The most interesting question is why did we choose Hiroshima and Kyoto (Nagasaki, IIRC, was the secondary target. Kyoto was saved because of unacceptable cloud cover) At the time they were described as military targets. War production, etc. But really they were chosen because they hadn't been bombed much. The generals wanted a pristine city to test out their new toy. Everything of any real value to the Japanese war machine had already been bombed several times over. So why choose civilian targets? Wouldn't it have been much more effective to choose a heavily fortified target? "Hey! Look what we can do! You can build all the concrete bunkers you want, and we can use just one bomb!" What if an atomic bomb had been used on one of the fotress islands like Iwo Jima? IIRC, there were several more of those close to the Japanese mainland. Wouldn't that prove the point that the war was lost without killing 200,000 more civilians?

My theory: We dropped the bombs to end the war. We chose the targets to scare the world.

[Sauron]

I have GOT to start bringing my copy of "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" to the office if I'm gonna respond to this thread any more.

I don't recall exactly, but I believe the bombs weren't available for use until shortly before they were actually dropped. They weren't available for use on islands like Iwo Jima, because Iwo had already fallen.

The theory that we selected civilian targets to scare the world could be accurate; I don't know. But based on my limited knowledge of the subject, I think the primary aim was simply to shock the Japanese into surrendering. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were military targets, if you consider that much of Japanese industry at the time was small, home-based shops. That was one reason the U.S. used firebombing tactics, rather than traditional bombing; there weren't many large factory sites left to hit.

[justinh]

I think a big influence was the unfamiliarity and wariness of the Japanese Bushido code. This was the first time the US ( and all western civilizations?) had encountered institutionized suicide. There is a big difference between soldiers off to fight in a war/battle/mission that they probably wont return AND building planes that are flying bombs directed by pilots. These people didnt give up. they just died. after the horrific sites at small islands like IWO JIMA, the task of facing an entire nation was overwhelming.

[KeithB]

There was a big difference between fire-bombing and the bomb.

First, fire bombing involved hundreds of planes over several days. The bomb took one plane. After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a lone high-altitude B-29 cuased panic in the streets, when before it would have been dismissed as a recon mission.

Also the effects of a fire-bombing could be inconsistent. If you were "unlucky" you only got a bunch of little fires that were easy to put out. If you were "lucky", you got a firestorm which destroyed whole neighborhoods and melted the asphalt in the street.

At the time the differences in conditions were poorly understood, so firebombing could not be relied upon.

[tomndebb]

ElDestructo

But really they were chosen because they hadn't been bombed much. The generals wanted a pristine city to test out their new toy. Everything of any real value to the Japanese war machine had already been bombed several times over. So why choose civilian targets?

Your first sentence needs to be turned around. They hadn't been bombed much because they were being saved as potential targets. Hiroshima (at least) was not a civilian target. It was a major staging area for Japanese troop movements and had a large re-supply center. The submarine war and defensive posture of the Japanese army had rendered the job of moving troops out of Japan rather pointless. (They were not advancing on the battlefields, so they had no need to send out replacements to extend their lines and, while they surely could have used reinforcements to defend their positions, they couldn't ship the troops without having the transports sunk.)

Had we invaded, they could have definitely used the troops, the supplies, and the organization based at Hiroshima to defend themselves.

On the other hand, Hiroshima was not a manufacturing center, so there was not a need to bomb them to destroy new aircraft or munitions while we were advancing across the Pacific.

On the other hand, your final conclusion is probably accurate.

justinh

fire bombing had been going on for a while with no immediate effect. fires in Japans' cities were commonplace and understood.

I'm not exactly sure what you meant by this. The level of fire-bombing that occurred was certainly not "commonplace" or anything that the Japanese "understood." The May(?) assault on Tokyo killed more people than the A-bomb. The Japanese had no experience of anything as devastating as the nightly B-29 attacks. It is also not true that it "had no effect." As a terror weapon it probably did not make the people want to simply give up (any more than German strikes on Britain or Allied strikes on Germany or U.S. strikes on Hanoi made people want to surrender--for some reason, "terror from the skies" simply never has had the demoralizing effect that its planners assume), however, Japanese industry was totally disrupted, despite an excellent move to distributed manufacturing.

[Chas.E]

Originally posted by ElDestructo
The most interesting question is why did we choose Hiroshima and Kyoto (Nagasaki, IIRC, was the secondary target. Kyoto was saved because of unacceptable cloud cover)

You are misinformed.

Kyoto was taken off the target list due to political objections over bombing one of the primary centers of Japan's religious history.

Nagasaki was bombed, but due to clouds over the target, the bomb missed and landed just over a ridge of mountains, in a suburb of Nagasaki. This shielded Nagasaki from the brunt of the blast, and ironically, the bomb landed right on top of surburban industrial areas which were slums for forced-labor workers (primarily koreans and chinese) and also a large enclave of Japanese christians.

For more details about Nagasaki (which IMHO has been largely ignored compared to Hiroshima) look at this site:

http://www.exploratorium.edu/nagasaki/mainn.html

[Milton De La Warre]

Mr Wagner's point about having an illustration of the horror of the a-weapons is well taken. HAd we not used it then, we'd probably have used it in Korea. Or Vietnam, or somewhere. And by then, it wouldn't have been a comparatively small 20kt "firecracker". Imagine instead a 15 megaton "city buster" --the biggest the US has ever had, or the 50 megaton monster the Soviets developed.

Truman's decision was easy IMHO because had he decided not to do so (drop the bomb) how would history and the American people view a President who chose NOT to use a weapon that could have saved any number of American soldiers' (and Japanese soldiers' and citizens')lives or shortened a totally horrible war by even a day?

There were proposals and plans (in the absence of more general knowledge of atomic weapons) in the works to use posion gas and biological weapons on the Japanese people. Articles like "Cook 'em better with gas" were even published in the general press. The thought was that Japan had set a precedent by using such weapons in China (quite true), so their use "in retalition" was OK.

"Regular" bombing was seriously hurting the Japanese, and also (and often unmentioned) the losses due to American submarines and (sea) mines had considerably reduced the Japanese ability to wage war effectively. Probably anyone else would have given up sooner, but the Japanese were determined to wage war INeffectively, if need be. They did issue instructions and provide training to the civilians on how to kill and destroy the American invaders. They also had their own version of Gotterdammerung, which I forget the word for, but it translates as "Shattering of the Jewel". That speaks for itself.

Projected casualties for the overall invasion of Japan were in the millions of dead on the Japanese side; I believe 4 to 5 million initially. Estimates for the allied side started at 100,000 killed and wounded, but were raised and raised again in the aftermath of Okinawa (50,000 casualties) and Iwo Jima (I forget how many, but way too much for a tiny island). I do know invasion plans basically wrote off at least one of the US divisions slated to be in the first assault as it was assumed that after two or three days of fighting, it would essentially cease to exist as a viable force. Just the blood necessary for transfusing the wounded was to require three entire ships.

Additionally, troops were scheduled to be transferred from the European theatre for the invasion. Many of these felt they'd already done their bit and would not survive another campaign. Allied commanders were very seriously concerned about the possibility of munity among these guys. The saying "Golden Gate in '48" was somewhat common as the thought was that the war would run at least that long.