Once again, it was not the actual outcome of the weapon going off (lots of people and stuff being obliterated) so much as the time it took. It takes days or even weeks to actually flatten a city, and that can be countered with AA and anti-bomber aircraft. This bomb instantaneously vaporized an entire city. That is why they gave in.
Also, why in god's name would you think letting the Russians take over more land is a better outcome?
edited 4th Sep '11 5:05:32 PM by USAF713
I am now known as Flyboy.Their fighters couldn't operate at the altitudes the B 29s were flying at.
Their anti-air guns were out of ammo since we'd wrecked their factories nonstop.
All it would have taken? "You can surrender to us, or we can let Uncle Joe go to town on you, and he's got the population to not give a shit about your last-stand kamikaze shenanigans." But hey, I left the link to the War Department's analysis, and they said we only needed to be patient until about November. You can argue with their conclusions.
Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.Well, hopefully the threat of being annexed by Soviet Russia would have scared the Japanese into surrendering to us instead, since we wouldn't break up their industrial leadership completely. Or launched a ruinous invasion.
Communist Japan could have had some WEIRD fucking propaganda though.
Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.I
'd so hard when I realized what this was referring to.
I think the War Department is being severely optimistic on the willingness of Japanese leadership to surrender, and a popular revolt, unlikely as it was, would only have resulted in about the same, if not more, amount of death anyhow.
Also, a Soviet-controlled Japan would have resulted in so much geopolitical crap later. Not to mention all the people who would have been cleansed.
No matter what you do, a shitton of people are going to die. This is the option we chose. At the very least, it showed us why we must never use nukes again. That, I think, is worth it, all things considered and thinking about how this choice was a Morton's Fork...
I am now known as Flyboy.- Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo, July 13 1945 wiring to the Japanese ambassador in Moscow.
Seriously, read the links I dropped. They were done, they knew it, and we knew they knew it. The hardliner's position was actually to surrender after sufficiently bloodying the American's noses with a last stand defence. Now, you had to be a special kind of bastard to throw away civilian lives, much less those of your own troops, on a fight you can't win just for the sake of pride, but the point being was that even those guys understood surrender would have to happen quickly.
Problem being that they brainwashed their army into never surrendering. It took a good smack to the face (the nuke) to make them realize that there were, in fact, battles that honor wasn't worth winning over. Just because the leadership wasn't quite drinking its own Kool-Aid anymore at the end doesn't mean the troops weren't still doing it...
Bad assumption. People are stupid, and the Japanese might have surrendered to the Soviets just to spite the Americans, who, after all, wanted revenge for Pearl Harbor and associated bullshit on the part of the Japanese. Remember, hindsight is 20/20; the Japanese had no clue how we'd treat them. The Soviets were a known factor, on the other hand, and had no personal reason to want to kill all the Japanese, unlike, say, the US or China...
Once again, Humans Are Morons. The nuke was inevitable. At least we had first-hand experience with which to say, without a doubt, that it was a really bad thing. I got a good backstory once on an alternate history where we went with Downfall instead of H&N, and the later nuclear war was not pretty. Fiction, yes, but it was based on very hard Alternate History, and the world can now thank us for, if nothing else, giving us a reason to make sure the Cold War stayed cold.
I am now known as Flyboy.Wherever it had to go off, I wish no civilians had to lose their lives to one. Or anybody, really. It's not like the guys who saw the initial tests, free of casualties as they were, couldn't tell that this thing was bad news.
Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.Yes. Yes, we did need to drop the nukes. The alternative would have been an invasion of Japan, which would have been a hundred times worse than the destruction of two cities; see the Allied occupation of Okinawa for an example of what would have happened all over Japan. Sometimes there is no nice guy choice to take: dropping the bombs saved American lives, which are the lives that the American military should be concerned with protecting, and it arguably saved Japanese lives, as well, since an invasion would have left Japan utterly ruined as a result.
edited 4th Sep '11 8:48:35 PM by tropetown
Taoist, the Japanese had no reason to believe the US would be any better. Look at the concentration camps. We were pissed after Pearl Harbor. As far as they knew, we would march in and kill all of them. At least the Soviets only actively killed a certain subsection of the people. Classism isn't as bad as racism, when it comes down to numbers.
I personally think that if there was anybody that "deserved" a nuke in World War Two, it was the Soviets, with Hitler's Germany coming in second. I think the very idea of someone deserving a nuke is rather ridiculous, however. We made the nuke first, and Japan was unlucky enough to be the target. We can't change that, and we can be glad that it gave us the knowledge that nuclear weapons must never be used again, or at least, never again so long as we want to continue living as a species...
I am now known as Flyboy.The Japanese military was as bad as the Nazis, if not worse: at least the Nazis had their own twisted, ideological reasons for acting the way they did. The Japanese military committed unspeakable atrocities for literally no reason at all (actually, I'd say that putting the pressure on the soldiers to either win, or not come back, and having them under that kind of mental stress, day in and day out probably contributed to some degree). There wasn't even a charismatic demagogue constantly stirring them into committing these actions; everything they did, they did purely out of their own inherent dickishness. Here's a link, if you're interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes
As for the Soviets being worse than the Nazis, well, since the Soviet Union didn't have a vicious racial policy or an inherently racist, genocidal ideology behind them, no, they weren't worse. Not that they were saints, mind you, but they were definitely not as bad as the Nazis. The Japanese civilians, on the other hand, were not responsible for the actions of their military, so they arguably didn't deserve a nuke (though dropping the nukes was necessary to forestall further bloodshed); the German people allowed the Holocaust to go on in front of them, the Japanese people had nothing to do with their country's brutal imperialism.
edited 4th Sep '11 9:34:00 PM by tropetown
I say the Soviets because they were willing to sacrifice three times what Hitler managed for the sake of "progress." They're the ultimate combination of Hitler's ideological insanity and Japan's random dickishness...
I am now known as Flyboy.Yes, but keep in mind that: a) it was over a much longer period of time, b) was done more out of ruthlessness than active malice, and c) did, in the end, work out: had Stalin not been so brutal, it's possible that the Soviet Union wouldn't have been ready for the Nazis. It's probable that Stalin went too far, but nobody can say that what he did didn't end up working out for the Soviets in the end.
Communism is a system doomed to fail, anyhow; the only way it could be made to work is through Stalinism, more or less, which isn't even pure Communism, but a practical realization of an impossible dream.
edited 4th Sep '11 9:38:41 PM by tropetown
The ends do not justify the means.
And I now end this derail with the Roosevelt-grade ANTI-TRUST HAMMER OF DOOMY DOOM!!!
@Barkey: about the Purple Hearts, here is a quote from The Other Wiki:
Nearly 500,000 Purple Heart medals were manufactured in anticipation of the casualties resulting from the invasion of Japan. To the present date, all the American military casualties of the 60 years following the end of World War II—including the Korean and Vietnam Wars—have not exceeded that number. In 2003, there were still 120,000 of these Purple Heart medals in stock.[50] There are so many in surplus that combat units in Iraq and Afghanistan are able to keep Purple Hearts on-hand for immediate award to wounded soldiers on the field.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall
Well, on the one hand, it would be pretty cool to get a Downfall Heart. On the other hand, as a pilot, getting wounded to get it... wouldn't end well...
I am now known as Flyboy....fly planes.
Really, I think they actually skimped. Downfall would have had casualties in the millions. Whoever makes the Purple Hearts must have been feeling pretty optimistic...
I am now known as Flyboy.
And that's just on the Allied side: the Japanese would have lost over ten times that amount. All things considered, Operation Downfall would have been the bloodiest part of World War II, which is saying a lot; since the effects of nuclear fallout weren't well-understood at the time, and they wanted to use tactical nuclear weapons, the death toll on both sides would have risen exponentially.
edited 4th Sep '11 10:50:31 PM by tropetown
I'm still gonna trust the Air Force logistics experts trying to do the best wartime analysis the War Department could pay for
when they said:

Sorry, still don't buy the argument that the bombs were necessary. The real game changer of the time was the Soviet invasion of Manchukuo on the same day as the Nagasaki bombing, which ended the last source of resources for Imperial Japan. I don't see how the nuke itself was the deciding factor.
Here's
an interesting place to start reading, though as always Wikipedia should not be taken at face value. I'll let you judge the United States Strategic Bombing Survey
's opinion instead: