Little Nemo: Which is, of course, what happened. But the option for Germany was left open, it was not off the table at that point. I suspect strongly that by late '44, Roosevelt and Churchill expected the bombing of Germany to be unnecessary, given their best estimate of when things would be ready. This is after D-Day was successful, after all.
But I don’t think, given Mr. Tibbets’ orders, that it was entirely ruled out quite yet. One can always not drop a bomb that one has planned to drop, but it’s very hard to drop a bomb that hasn’t been planned to drop.
Mark it down as being prepared for the fluid nature of war?
Yes, Iris Chang, but by ANY by the Japanese accounting, it was still PLENTY horrific enough. And the thing was … absolutely UNNECESSARY most of it. The Japanese army leaders just wanted to make sure their soldiers were ruthless and hard enough to take any orders given to them, so they set them on the civilian population of Nanking like a bunch of damn animals. Mass bayonetings, mass rape, torture, murder … what matters how many tens of thousands of people were tortured, raped and butchered, it was a prolonged experiment in horror and torture, and totally not necessary. I think the Rape of Nanking all by its lonesome was enough to justify ANY act of self-defense to keep the Japanese from taking power in the loathsome fascist form they had taken.
Not specious, sound. That’s why it gets repeated. And will be ultimately the judgement of history.
It’s wonderful how you can so easily sweep aside the uncertainty that existed for US leaders at that time with a wave of your hand. The American leadership knew the island-hopping campaign had been a slow, nasty war of extermination with the Japanese troops not giving in even though they had no rational chance of surviving, forcing more American lives to be lost in rooting them out. They looked at Okinawa, and what a party that was. And they looked at mainland Japan and thought about millions of Japanese fighting with whatever they had on hand and they were plenty worried. Frankly, given all that came before, it was probably pretty close to a no-brainer to drop the bomb. I know you can’t and don’t want to see that, but it’s fairly rational, when you realize that the primary concern of American leaders was protecting American lives, not Japanese lives. The Japanese gave up the right to complain about ANYTHING that might happen to them several years earlier …
The Japanese government of WWII was not a representative government (the civilian government having been essentially overthrown by a military coup). And saying that the firebombing of Tokyo (and many other cities) was to “make the Japanese people lose the will to keep fighting, not to kill people” is a pretty lame rationalization, equivilent to a mugger claiming that he didn’t shoot his victim to kill him, only to take his wallet. The firebombing campaigns of Japanese cities, the domestic structures of which were largely stick and rice paper construction, was explicitly designed to cause horrific damage and kill large segments of the population, which were mostly civilians whose support for the war effort was limited and often enforced.
We can discuss the necessity or lack thereof of the campaigns–although frankly, they had little impact on the ability of Japan to support military efforts, whereas destruction of Japanese naval capability and elimination of petroleum and metals going into the Japanese islands is what effectively curtailed the Japanese threat to American forces in the Pacific–but the fact remains that acts that are knowingly or intentionally targetting civilians are outside the conduct of what had previously been considered “legitimate” warfare and were justified by the morally ambiguous concept of “total war”. That the opposing parties of the Axis powers did the same is not an ethical justification. The United States does not hold a unique moral high ground on the manufacture and proliferation of nuclear weapons, and many of the scientists and engineers involved in the Manhattan Project later regretted their actions as contributing to an amoral institution of disproportionate destruction, which they performed due to a combination of national loyalty and revulsion of the fascist threat in Europe. Heisenberg could make the same claim, and with the same moral and ethical reservations.
Curiously ignored are the statements about American activities in Okinawa. The Okinawans (or more properly, Ryukyuans) weren’t ethinically Japanese, didn’t support the war effort beyond agricultural imports and indentured service, had virtually no native war-making capability, and were only part of the Japanese Empire due to annexation in 1879 that was tacitly supported by the United States. Despite this, a quarter of the native population, nearly all civilians, perished in the once of the largest and bloodiest battles of the Pacific, the Battle of Okinawa in April-June 1945, for the crime of being previously subjugated by the Empire of Japan. After the war the Ryukyu Islands was administrated by the United States for 27 years, in which the population had only token representation and was effectively under marshal law.
That is 66 divisions-plus. A full-strength US division was about 18,000 men strong.
Even at 50% of that number Japan would have had over half a million defenders on
the ground.
Then there were Japanese air assets:
(from link, my emphasis):
Per Wiki prior to surrender apprx 2800 Kamikaze attacks hit 402 ships, sinking 34 to 57
(sources disagree on #sunk), killing 4900 and wounding 4800.
As for equipping the troops they had, the USSR lost over 9,000 killled and 24,000 wounded
in less than two weeks fighting in Manchuria after the bombs were dropped. Do you suppose
the Japanese Home Islands were less well-equipped for defence than Manuchria ?
Do you give a damn about any losses except Japanese losses???
You do know, don’t you, that Japan was inflicting continuous casulaties, including civilian casualties,
on the Allies in China, Burma, Indonesia and the Philippines right up until the bitter end?
Nonsense. In Truman’s words everyone in the country was afraid of going through
a repeat of the Okinamwa campaign “from one end of Japan to the other”. For your
information Okinawa cost about 400 US lives per square mile.
Garbled. Japan was at peace with the USSR until the day Nagasaki was bombed.
Actually, Secretary of War Stimson’s diary made note of the inevitable fact that
USSR would be impressed by US possession of the bomb, and its demonstrated
willingness to use it. However, I have provided matter of historical fact that the
US had urgent reason to use nuclear weapons even if the USSR had not existed.
That’s because books by Okinawans are far more critical of the Japanese treatment of Okinawans. In modern day, they aren’t fond of the US military, to be certain. But if they don’t feel a great need to complain about the US during WWII, then I don’t see the need.
Except those were arbitrary numbers that got used for propoganda purpposes. It’s not like some guy ran a bunch of scenarios and cane up with that estimate and handed it to the President.
Personally, I think that the evidence concerning Heisenberg is scanty enough that it would be unjust to draw either conclusion from it. You’ll end up risking either calling a hero a bastard, or calling a bastard a hero, and I’d rather do neither.
Let us say that Heisenberg was a brilliant physicist with an unfortunate loyalty to a nation taken over by fascists, at least a partial willful blindness to the end goal of the Nazi leadership, and an uncertain command of ethics. Rather than being a “bastard” or a “traitor”, this makes him a somewhat flawed persona; in other words, a fairly typical human being, albeit with a profound gift for understanding quantum field theory and nuclear physics.
No, they were not arbitrary, but were based on statistical extrapolation from battlefield data,
and available to the President by circulation to the Secretary of War and the JCS:
Now, numerous subsequent casulaty estimates are cited by the link, ranging from affirmation
of the estimate of over million to as low as 100,000 for the 1st 90 days. However, as of July 1945
Secretary of War Stimson and JCS Chief Marshall both believed that 1,000,000 was entirely possible,
and they were the highest ranking under Truman, and were in daily contact with him.
My impression is that Heisenberg didn’t feel atomic research represented a moral dilemma. He mistakenly thought that the production of a working atomic bomb couldn’t happen in the near future. So his attitude was that he was essentially conducting a theoretical research program rather than developing a weapon.
Well the big difference is that during the Stalinist years (the only time when soviet union was really comparable to Nazism in terms of crimes against humanity), it would have been actual suicide to rebel against the not just not career suicide. Stalin put his head of secret police, Beria, in charge of the Soviet nuclear program, any kind of objection on behalf of the scientists involved would have been suicidal.
And most importantly of all, he DID raise objection. albeit when the political had changed from Stalin’s years, but it was still a very brave thing to do. That’s what makes him less culpable than Heisenberg.
Saying “it takes this many of our guys to kill one of their guys” is faulty logic. “We lost X” men on X battle and assuming all other conditons are equal (or worse) is bad.
It doesn’t matter. If we had told the Japanese they could keep their Emperor, this MAY have been avoided. In the end, guess what? Still had an Emperor.
Two bombs. Not one, but TWO. And one was sped up because of weather! Real humane. Real friggin’ humane and unnecessary.
Why? Why would any commander in his right mind assume that conditions are going to be better when invading the Japanese home islands?
“Hmm, in previous battles, we lost one soldier for every Japanese soldier killed. Let’s completely throw this information, collected from actually fighting the Japanese forces, out of the window and pull a figure out of my ass.”
Seriously: what source of information, other than previous battles fighting the forces you are preparing to engage, should a commander in the field use to estimate casualties?
FYI: Operation Downfall, the planned Allied invasion of Japan, assumed that up to 15 nuclear weapons would need to be used to pacify the Japanese defensive forces.
Especially when it’s reasonable to assume that the Japanese were going to fight much harder in Japan than they had fought for obscure islands in the Pacific.
And after the war when the Americans saw the preparations Japan had been making to resist the invasion, the consensus was that their worst-case scenario probably underestimated the casualties. The American estimates had assumed Japan was running out of military equipment and supplies because they were seeing units running short of these items. The reality was that the shortages the Americans were seeing were due to the stockpiling of equipment and supplies in Japan for its defense.
The reasonable underlying assumption was that US casualty rates were not likely
to improve against an enemy defending his home ground. Hence the argument is
neither arbitrary or illogical as you claim now.
The Japanese were informed, generously, by the 7/26/45 Potsdam Declaration that: Potsdam Declaration Text
“The occupying forces of the Allies shall be withdrawn from Japan as soon as these objectives have been accomplished
and there has been **established in accordance with the freely expressed will of the Japanese people **
**a peacefully inclined and responsible government.” **(emphasis added)
If the Japanese has asked if they might by their freely expressed will retain their
Emperor, the atomic bombings may have been avoided. May have, but I doubt it,
since the Japanese military wanted at least one final battle on Japanese soil even
after Nagasaki and the entry of the USSR into the war against them. They were
overruled only by the unprecedented intervention of the Emperor.
The only obligation we had was to reduce to a minimum our own expense in blood
and treasure, and that left no room for humaneness on behalf of a fanatic enemy
who failed to make good use of the three days grace it had between the two atomic
bomb attacks.
Nazis like Heisenberg are culpable for co-operating with the Nazi regime, but the fact so many did is more an indictment of the human condition rather than anything else. Its an ironic part of the human condition that physical courage is so much more prevalent than moral courage.
Why does everyone always fixate on the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while ignoring the much more horrific bombing of Tokyo? If we hadn’t had the atomic bomb, we would still have reduced Hiroshima and Nagasaki to rubble. The point of the atom bomb was not that we could destroy cities; the point was to make it look easy.
This raises a legitimate point, and is worth another thread.
OK.
Nuclear weapon potential encompasses both the destruction of entire cities,
and the ease with which cities may be destroyed. These complemetary potential
elements are in no tension with each other, and treating them as if they were
does not add value to the discussion.