Today marks the 70th anniversary of the surrender of Japan ending World War II. The deadliest conflict in human history with possibly 100 million (mostly civilians) killed. Many have come to remember this war as the last good war where there was little moral ambiguity but I question whether there is such a thing as a "good war". To me the bigger message about this war is how modern industry was wedded to medieval barbarism to literally incinerate men, women and children. So while we celebrate the brave men who crawled up beaches in Normandy and Okinawa the legacy of World War II to me is in those people who were annihilated at Auschwitz, Stalingrad, Nanjing and Hiroshima. The horror of those places is one of the reasons why no major powers since have fought an all out war. While there may be necessary wars I don't think there is ever a good war.
It was called a good war to cover up the **** we did to each other. The barbarism from both sides escalated as the war continued without end. Sympathy for the Japanese would be greater if they'd own up for their war crimes against humanity like the Germans. Without that, the U.S. doesn't have to own up to anything for that period.
I forgot who said it but didn't one of the US Generals say that if the Allies had lost the war that they, Allied Generals, would rightfully be put up for war crimes for things like the firebombing of Dresden?
Can you really put bombings in the same sentence as the Holocaust though? Both were horrific, but the goal of bombing was not genocide.
I am confused by your question. Are you suggesting that the US should not have entered into World War II? Obviously it was not good that the war was started by Germany and her allies, so it is not a good war from that perspective. Once each country was attacked by the Axis powers, certainly it is good for them to fight back. It is surely also good to resist nations participating in things like the Holocaust and the Rape of Nanjing, yes? From that perspective it is a "good" war. In all wars there are going to be actions taken that can be criticized. Should we have attacked the industrial base of Germany to destroy the will and ability of the German people to wage war instead of fighting only against the German military? Our doctrine now would seem to indicate that unrestricted bombing of an urban center is forbidden, but we would still destroy weapons factories and stockpiles, logistical targets like train stations and bridges, etc. With the weapons available at the time, was the firebombing of Dresden the only way we could do that? Does the fact that Germany was not only the initial aggressor, but also participating in horrendous human rights abuses, change the calculus in determining what is just? With regard to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, some of the same questions apply. Does Japan's aggressive entry into the war and the human rights abuses targeted at neighboring Asian countries as well as US POWs justify responses that would otherwise not be justified? Additional questions that were not present on the Western Front include the suicidal defense of territory to the last man. Did the fact that the Emperor was calling on resistance in the home islands down to the last woman and child justify the demonstration that resistance was absolutely futile in the face of American technology? These are obviously questions without empirically testable answers, being of a philosophical rather than scientific nature. I tend to think that overall the participation in the war by the US and the other Allies was just, though there were individual events that should not have occurred. The use of atomic weapons likely saved lives in the long term, both in creating a quick Japanese surrender and in cowing the Soviets in the short term.
The main reason for dropping the bombs was that it would have shaved off 3-5 years of fighting, rather than the other questions of the Japanese hitting the Americans first or the war crimes they committed around Asia. The latter are just gravy to make the two nuclear bombings easier to swallow.
The Germans murdered tens of millions of civilians. The Japanese fought to the death for every inch of soil. They both brutalized and murdered POW's on a regular basis. The barbarism and savagery of the Allies was necessitated by the type of war the Axis powers were fighting. We weren't going to win that war with gentlemanly warfare. I used to believe the firebombings and the atomic bombs weren't necessary but the more I've studied what happened and heard real life accounts it became pretty evident to me that they were absolutely necessary.
My father as part of the 17th airborne got to be one of the first to leave Europe and come home. This was done for all units that were to be involved in the invasion of Japan. It's safe to assume that without the Atomic Bomb, I might not be writing this post as my father would have been among the first into Japan as part of Operation Downfall, the invasion of Japan. IMHO, the war's biggest legacy echoing in our world right through today was the creation of Israel. I wonder what our world would look like today if the Nazis had never existed. Certainly, the Middle East would look vastly different.
Not necessarily the case as the Japanese were considering surrendering prior to the bomb drops and were looking for more favorable terms. When the Soviets joined the war the next day Japan surrendered. Japan stated that was the event that sealed the deal. Maybe the bombs in reality were - but the U.S. had been doing far more damage with conventional weapons.
The bombs also played a role in showcasing its power to the Russians. I seriously don't know whether we needed to drop a second one, but that they did probably cemented the post-war psyche of Japanese. It wasn't a fluke. I don't generally buy into the "Japanese were considering surrendering" argument as terms by allies were total surrender, which the Japanese did not want to do. "Considering surrender" is one thing...Drawing the war out so that the Americans would experience war fatigue and thousands of newly minted PTSD veterans so that they can keep their dirty spoils is another. And given how Germany was torn up and divided after the war, the Japanese might've been spared a split East/West Russian occupation. What the Russians did to the Germans for retribution was pretty grisly and largely unspoken. Given how 50+ million Russians died from that war, I guess it's considered a writeoff on the moral equivalency scale. Just goes to show that moralizing and reasoning war is a futile waste of time. Let the history books report the facts and circumstances, but lead a careful ear when someone starts reciting certain lines and pinning a cause to it.
The Japanese did not submit to unconditional surrender. They were able to make the condition that the emperor would stay in place. The U.S would have bombed Japan back to the stone age before any invasion took place even without nukes. I don't think Japan would have gone through that. The evidence suggested that there were two camps with in Japan - those who wanted to surrender and those who did not. Once Russia entered the war Japan knew that their hope that Russia would help serve as a mediator with the U.S. was not going to happen.
In preparation for the invasion of Japan, the US placed an order to cover the number of expected Purple Heart medals that such an invasion would generate. Obviously the invasion didn't happen, but the order was placed, and the military took delivery of all these medals. This supply lasted up until 2004, when the first new order for Purple Hearts was placed in more than 50 years. All of the wounded and killed in Korea, and Vietnam and all the smaller conflict in between - were given medals that the War Department genuinely projected would be used in an invasion of Japan. This is actual money spent and not really advertised - this isn't some hyperbolic recolection, or some vague sinister unprovable supposition. I guess you can argue that they were wrong in projecting those losses, but at the time they genuinely were planning for the idea that the ground invasion was going to be a bloodbath. It wasn't just an idea floated for show or to make the use of the bombs look better.
Wasn't Nagasaki part of Truman's bluff, though? The second bomb suggested to the Japanese that the US had an arsenal of them at their disposal when, in reality, they had three. Couple this with the Soviet declaration of war and the Japanese were put into a situation they had not prepared for. They believed the US had the capability to immediately destroy their cities at any given moment with one bomb.
You're missing my point. As I said there may be necessary wars but not good wars. What I am arguing against is the idea that war is something that should be glorified but rather something that even is something that should be avoided. I certainly believe the Axis should've been fought and am even recognize the need for dropping the A-Bomb, on Hiroshima at least Nagasaki is much more controversial. To often people believe that war is good when there is a clear moral objective but as World War II shows while pretty much everyone agrees that the Axis powers were evil we should also remember that while the Allied cause was just the means to fight were of very questionable morality. Back in the late 90's when I was backpacking through Java I met a tour group of US WWII vets and their families. I talked for awhile with a man who had been in the Marines and fought in the Pacific. We confided in me that while the Japanese were brutal the Marines also did things that were as brutal. He didn't go into detail but it was clear it was something that haunted him to that day.
Yes there is a high likelihood that a ground invasion of the home islands might've cost millions of lives both Allied and Japanese. It is part of the terrible calculus that tens of thousands of lives were incinerated in the blink of an eye with tens of thousands more left to die agonizingly from radiation and other side effects of the bomb to save those millions.
You can't judge decisions out of context. My Dad, who served in the Pacific 3 1/2 years without ever seeing the US and was part of the Army Air Force occupation troops, would have gladly killed every man woman and child in Japan to end the war and come home. He thought just buying a Japanese car was still an act of treason until his death in 2002.
I don't know who might have said it. But, I also don't think that Axis powers ended up getting convicted for war crimes for the bombing raids they conducted. If they didn't get convicted, I don't know why we would -- other than the fact that it'd be the Third Reich and Imperial Japan deciding it.
