[QUOTE=smiling bandit]
It was essentially one man’s decision. The populace didn’t just give up because the Emperor said to; the only reason they kept fighting was because they saw no other option. When the Emperor gave them one, they simply collapsed. It was no longer a matter of fighting for survival; there was no goal to fight for, even glory. The Emperor took that away, and knew he could take it away, and chose to do so. They just fell down afterward.
[/quote]
But the implications of that conclusion are rather strange, for if true, the death of the Emperor would have made the subjugation of the Japanese all but impossible short of near genocide.
Not necessarily so. For one thing, Hirohito didn’t have a cult of personality like Hitler or Stalin. He was important because he was the Emperor not because of his person. If he had died, he would have just been replaced by a new Emperor who would have been just as venerated as was.
And even in societies with a genuine cult of personality government, it’s usually the case that the cult rarely outlasts the person. Once you kill the leader, the spell is broken.
If anything, a person that overthrows a powerful leader assumes greater stature - by vanquishing the person that was considered all-powerful, you prove that you are even more powerful. It worked for Cortes and Pizarro.
[QUOTE=Little Nemo]
There’s a pretty fine line between bombing “infrastructure” and bombing people. It’s hard to blow up a train or a factory or a bridge without blowing up the people inside it. And bombing accuracy was non-existent during WWII - the Germans actually had a unit during the war whose job was to analyze where the Allied bombs had fallen and then try to figure out what target they were trying to hit. In some cases the bomb pattern was so loose they couldn’t even pinpoint the “target” down to a specific city.
In reality, the strategic bombing campaigns of WWII served mainly as a form of attritional warfare. We kept building bombs and planes and aircrews and the Germans had to keep building fighter planes and anti-aircraft guns and new cities. The side that quits first loses.
[/QUOTE]
Yes - it was a genuine case of “fight it there so we don’t have to fight it here.” The German resources that went to anti-aircraft defenses and fighter 'planes would have been better spent either on bombers to attack Britain or Allied troops, or on fighters to provide air cover for German forces, or on anti-tank defenses and tanks for the Army, or on U-boats, etc. etc.
There is also the effect on British morale that was so vital. Britain needed to fight back against the Germans, and for a long time it was only Bomber Command that was really able to take the offensive. Further, Goering, and to a lesser extent the Nazis, were made a laughing stock by the raids. He had promised no British bombers would be able to attack German cities. It was important both for the Allies home population and for the Germans to be shown that the Nazis were not invincible.
Dresden is a tough one, because of its proximity to the end of the war. But a lot of that comes through hindsight. It was, after all, a legitimate target as a transportation hub, and hindering German resupply of its forces opposing the Russians was an aim (especially as the Russians were claiming there was a deliberate policy of not hindering the Germans in this way.) The war could have gone on longer - we didn’t know exactly how long it would last at the time.
[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
:rolleyes: Avoiding the indiscrimate killing of civilians isn’t the same as not killing people. We do what actually works; destroy the infrastructure and military targets. Don’t blow up the homes of people that the rulers don’t even care about; blow up refineries and factories and bridges, armories and bases. You’ll kill some people of course, but certainly not as many as you would nuking or firestorming a city.
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Lets also remember the difference between discriminate and indescriminate killing isn’t going to be as morally clear cut. Discriminate killing would target munitions workers, including many POWs (I believe), concentration camp inmates, conscripted labor from occupied, Allied countries, and 13-14 year olds pressed into service in anti-aircraft units. These would also be harmed in indescriminate bombing too, obviously, but I am not firmly convinced that bombing only “industrial targets,” which by this stage were dispersed throughout residential areas, would have been much ethically better than the bombing that happened, even if it were practical, which it wasn’t.
[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Except that I see no reason to believe that bombing civilians, except in the special case of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, contributed to winning.
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Really? The loss of workers, bureaucrats, materials, wealth, and the resulting chaos in no case in your opinion drew resources from the war effort? You’ve just claimed implicitly that the British should have allowed Hitler to bomb London at whim. According to you it would have never harmed their war effort, so the bombs raining down around London were just some drain on German resources.
If it comes down to a choice between indiscriminate kiling and allowing a tyrant to take over, I’ll do it. I don’t claim to be morally superior; I just claim that some things are necessary whether or not they are good, and to be willing to make choices which are no chice at all. The price of allowing the enemy to set the terms of engagment is his victory. If the price of losing WW2 is killing Germans or japanese, then that’s what you have to do. The alternative is moral cowardice, a refusal to fight unless you can find a way to do so without getting dirty.
There’s nothing wrong with good clean dirt, as long as you keep it out of the kitchen. When the fighting’s over and the enemy have been crushed, then you can afford to be nice. And I dont’ mean you should engage in deliberate cruelty jsut for the sake of hoping to kill civlians. But if you have to destroy a population center, so be it.
That’s actually quite possible, and was something of a minor concern to the Allied commanders. They opted to avoid bombing around the Imperial Palace for fear that the
[QUOTE=smiling bandit]
Really? The loss of workers, bureaucrats, materials, wealth, and the resulting chaos in no case in your opinion drew resources from the war effort? You’ve just claimed implicitly that the British should have allowed Hitler to bomb London at whim. According to you it would have never harmed their war effort, so the bombs raining down around London were just some drain on German resources…
[/QUOTE]
There is some reason to believe that something very similar did, in fact, happen. The scenario goes something like this: by attacking population centers rather than the crucial, and vulnerable, British airfields Hitler and Goering made a crucial strategic blunder. The Germans found out early what we found out later: strategic bombing is murder on the airmen as well as the civilians
[QUOTE=elucidator]
Then why did they? On the one hand, you contend that such a blockade (which was already in effect) would have starved the children (arguable, but wouldn’t they have been starving already, if a blockade would have done it?..) and on the other suggest that the warlords were immune to the people’s suffering. Then why would an atomic bombing have accomplished a surrender when the firebombing of Tokyo did not?
[/QUOTE]
The military did not. Only when the Emperor made what was I believe the unprecedented action of going on the radio did it end. Why did he do it? I don’t know how much a possible Russian invasion played a part, but I suspect it might have been more the difference in kind of a nuclear weapon. You can make starving children heroes, and say fight on so they don’t die in vain. You can rebuild Tokyo, anyhow I guess it wasn’t the first fire they had, only the worst. One bomb per city is unanswerable.
I agree with those who say bombing of civilians rarely if ever accomplishes the desired objective. This may have shocked him into sanity.
A lot depends on your viewpoint of Hirohito. As I mentioned earlier, I’ve read about three or four books on him, and the viewpoints vary wildly, from passive and unaffected figurehead with a passion for marine biology, to a Nipponese Fu Manchu.
The most effective target the Germans probably could have chosen was the British radar stations. These allowed the RAF to conserve its planes and crews and only strike at the Luftwaffe under favorable circumstances. The German radar was much less advanced that the British radar and the Germans didn’t appreciate how much effect it was having against them.
True, but the radar stations, unlike planes and airfields, were big stationary targets that couldn’t be easily camouflaged or moved. Plus they were easier to damage and harder to repair than an airfield or squadron. So they represented the most vulnerable link in the chain of Britain’s air defense.
[QUOTE=elucidator]
There is some reason to believe that something very similar did, in fact, happen. The scenario goes something like this: by attacking population centers rather than the crucial, and vulnerable, British airfields Hitler and Goering made a crucial strategic blunder. The Germans found out early what we found out later: strategic bombing is murder on the airmen as well as the civilians
[/QUOTE]
Perhaps so, but to argue that ti had no material effect is something else entirely. And it ignores the point: in the case of Dresden, the only way to permanently take out the vital rail center and disrupt any reinforcements which might have held off the Soviets (potentially up to 42 divisions), the Allies needed something far more destructive than ordinary 2000 lb. bombs. And it did work.
Well maybe so, but the Germans did concentrate bombing on British radar stations and concluded (perhaps erroneously) that it wasn’t having the desired effect, so they went back to urban bombing.
[QUOTE=smiling bandit]
Perhaps so, but to argue that ti had no material effect is something else entirely. And it ignores the point: in the case of Dresden, the only way to permanently take out the vital rail center and disrupt any reinforcements which might have held off the Soviets (potentially up to 42 divisions), the Allies needed something far more destructive than ordinary 2000 lb. bombs. And it did work.
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Having made no comment on Dresden, I don’t quite take your point.
[QUOTE=elucidator]
Having made no comment on Dresden, I don’t quite take your point.
[/QUOTE]
My point is that you are ignoring your own comments. It most certainly did have a material effect on the war. Dresden is one example. Starategic bombing did cost the British and Americans a lot of air resources. But it cost the Germans much more over the course of the war.
[QUOTE=elucidator]
All of which, of course, you can prove. Proceed.
[/QUOTE]
You might want to check Alan Levine’s “The Strategic Bombing of Germany, 1940-1945”. He argues that strategic bombing of Germany was effective in 1940-41 in helping Britain’s morale, by providing one of the few ways that the British could actually strike back against the Germans, and then in 1943-44, it played a vital role in tying down German troops and forcing the Germans to withdraw troops and resources from the front lines, and that in 1944, strikes on German oil and transportation infrastructure paralyzed the German economy and crippled German war industry.
It’s not a bad book, and it’s actually pretty critical of a lot of the bombing campaign, arguing that it was less effective than it could have been due to fundamental mistakes in British air doctrine, as well as overcaution by Harris.
Strategic bombing also effected the policies of the war leaders in ways difficult to predict beforehand.
The Germans were able to continue a strategic bombing campaign, of a sorts, in '44, using the V1 and V2 ballistic missles targeting the southeast if England.
The popular pressure for the military to do something about stopping these attacks shaped Allied post-Cobra operations. The V1/V2 bombings, while dramatic, were not going to change the overall outcome of the war, or the campaigns going on at the time, but comsiderable resources were directed at wrinkling them out. If Patton is to be believed, concentrating on clearing the well defended channel coast to close down the V1/V2 launch pads, instead of backing the offensive through Alsace-Lorraine, may have actually lengthened the war by allowing the Germans to regroup and dig in, in that (Alsace/Rhineland) area.
But anywho, todays Americans don’t look at targeting civilian areas like they did in WW2. (At least, I know I don’t have the stomach for it.)
The folks then were treated to constant images of all out, unrestricted warfare, with air campaigns and major land battles, which involved the deaths of hundreds of thousands of troops (let alone any civilians caught in the crossfire), being reported in the papers and newsreels. I imagine that after a while, a person in the lesser affected areas (a.k.a. “the homefront”) can become a little more numb to the numbers, and a mind set of “whatever it takes to end this” sets in. (A person caught in the front lines has more immediate concerns, and is not as interested in the overall picture as they are with their own survival.)
The sheer brutality of modern total war seems to be a bit overwhelming for an average individual to deal with.