https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-japan-stalin-did/
The very rare good article from foreign policy dot com
A good chaser for that is the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, which started during the war and ended after, so you had military + civilian experts + access to Japanese records:
The report also concluded that: "Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."
You’re assuming that the ardent supporters are acting in good faith and not just exhibiting their thinly veiled genocidal urge (about half of Americans)
Nothing you can do about the fascists right now. You have to bring around those who may be receptive, though.
here's the other one about backpack nukes as part of a US Gladio-like program
https://archive.li/8tvhv
guess they had to take it down from their site because they couldn't have too many good articles
Wdym that paper a few weeks back told me that foreignpolicy was a tankie website
My perspective has been that the reason it was done was to demonstrate an ability and willingness. The U.S. knew is was in position to dominate the world and the bomb made it clear who was the new boss, testing wasn't enough.
This is correct, the bomb was primarily a threat to Russia and China. Which is why both expedited development of nuclear arms after the war. They knew that if they didn't the US would use them (almost certainly would have in Korea and Vietnam without deterrence and MAD back channels)
I doubt it was a threat to China given China wasn't communist yet
If the bomb was only tested and not dropped, would the bomb have been dropped in Korea?
Almost definitely IMO, but you should listen to season 3 of blowback to get an idea of the Korean War and who was pushing to drop the bomb and who was not. Its important to note that the bomb at that point was undergoing the shift from Atomic fission bombs to Hydrogen thermonuclear bombs.
I know that the politics behind the deployment of nuclear weapons in Korea, but would that be defendable politically without a mobilized public willing to make the use of nuclear weapons taboo?
Name a weapon banned in war that wasn't deployed in war.
IIRC a lot of the gasses that were used in WW1 were banned before they were even used, or similar gasses to them were outlawed/banned in a wide blanket.
This is a really insane opinion. It is, however, also an incredible fact.
Its been a well-established fact that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were functionally just weapons test sites, conducted for the purpose of intimidating Stalin and discouraging their invasion of Hokkaido by way of Korea.
Even then, one could argue that the firebombing of Tokyo and Dresden (and the saturation bombing of Korea ten years later) were significantly crueler by scale. We didn't need nuclear weapons to break the back of a country. Nor were we reluctant to wage hideous slaughter across a countryside with conventional munitions for the next 80 years.
Dresden had weapon fabrication sites, had military command infrastructure and was part of the war of aggression. Lets not try to speak about comparisons of cruelty when the scale is so large. Though in terms of Nazi Germany plenty of Germans did support "the war effort" till it turned back on them. Also in Dresden at most 25k died, however Nazis and other reactionaries try to create a wrong perception about it for various propagandist reasons, including saying "Dresden is just like 'the use of the atomic bomb'". Victims themselves do that more seldom than reactionaries.
Bei den Luftangriffen auf Dresden vom 13. bis 15. Februar 1945 wurden bis zu 25.000 Menschen getötet.
Of course I want to have "humane wars", as victims are persons, plenty of innocent within them, but in war against Nazis and Fascist powers like that the rational to discuss is rather why did the US use the bomb? In my opinion mostly to show off and to show it to the world. "Saving lives" was something that came after as argument. The US was about as interested in saving lives in the invasion of Japan as it was in Vietnam.
Dresden also saved some innocent lives by targeting the Gestapo and military rail:
Da die Bomben auch das Zentralgebäude der Gestapo zerstörten, konnte diese die vom 14. bis 16. Februar angesetzte Deportation der letzten 198 Juden aus dem Regierungsbezirk Dresden nicht planmäßig durchführen. Etwa 40 Juden starben im Dresdner „Judenhaus“ durch Bomben, während andere trotz Nutzungsverbots in Luftschutzräumen überlebten. Sie mussten jedoch in den Folgetagen aus der Stadt fliehen, da die Gestapo weiter nach ihnen suchte. Etwa 70 Dresdner Juden entkamen so dem Holocaust.[12][36] Darunter waren Henny Brenner,[37] der später berühmte Puppenspieler Josef Skupa[38] und der Literaturwissenschaftler Victor Klemperer, der damals in sein Tagebuch schrieb:
„Wen aber von den etwa 70 Sternträgern diese Nacht verschonte, dem bedeutete sie Errettung, denn im allgemeinen Chaos konnte er der Gestapo entkommen.“[39]
Translated:
Since the bombs did destroy the headquarter of the Gestapo they couldn't deport the last of the 198 Jews living in the central government district of Dresden to extermination camps. Around 40 Jews did die in the Dresdner "Judenhaus" due to the bombs, while others survived in air raid shelters, however those had to flee in the next days as the Gestapo did actively search for them (even in the chaos of those days [Note: German civilians did support the Gestapo with those things even at that point, as they did before the attacks]). Around 70 jews managed to escape the Shoa that way. One of them was Henny Brenner, the world famous puppet master Josef Skupa and literature scientist Victor Klemperer, who wrote in his diary of those days:
For those of the 70 star carriers, exempted from death, for them this night was salvation, in the all encompassing Chaos they could escape the Gestapo.
Then dozens of bombers didn't bomb Dresden that night, instead they bombed Prague, but the crew was misnavigating.
The allies weren't masterminds. With those errors giving them that is giving them much to much credit.
The press office of Berlin's foreign office did even before the war end suggest to inflate numbers and make Dresden a central propaganda piece:
Am 7. März 1945 wies die Presseabteilung des Berliner Auswärtigen Amtes die deutsche Gesandtschaft in der neutralen Schweiz an, ab sofort in ihrer Pressearbeit zur »Zerstörung Dresdens« die Angabe »Eher 200.000 als 100.000 Todesop- fer« zu verwenden. 29 Zu diesem Zeitpunkt war bereits eine intensive und erfolgreiche Kampagne der deut- schen Auslandspropaganda im Gange, die mit dem Beispiel Dresden den »angelsächsischen Bombenkrieg« als zentrale Anklage gegen die Kriegführung der Alliierten zu positionieren suchte. Meldungen über die »unerhörten Opfer an Menschenleben« in Dresden, die vor allem über die Presse der neutralen Staaten lan- ciert worden waren, fanden rasch eine weltweite Verbreitung. 3
On 7. of March (two month before end of war in Germany) the press office told the German Emissaries in neutral Swiss from now on use the terms "Destruction/Annihilation of Dresden" and use numbers "More likely 200k than 100k dead victims" [at this point the official statistically established numbers in Dresden were betwen 22k-32k], at this point a somewhat successful campaign against the "anglo saxon bomb war" was running and a central piece in their arguments against allied warfare. News articles about "outrageous loss of human life were quickly found in press organs of neutral states and soon in international press organs, too.
It is a matter of weather and material and they did throw enough bombs to hit important targets. It is a game of chance and they did hit the Gestapo office, they hit the rails, they hit factories of the army still in use, hit army garrisons, hit police which enabled deserters to flee in the coming days (at that point the Nazis would draft child soldiers to fight), did effectively destroy anti air capabilities of the Germans, did destroy the strategic command lines, telecommunication and logistical lines for the East, which at that point wasn't necessary for the Soviets to win, but did actually save lives over there.
If you bomb other nations and try to make civilian population cover and try to instrumentalize attacks on regions that are still war relevant and still enable the Shoa (and even for luck or not did save 70 lives of Shoa victims) are completely legitimate. The German Nazi state used its civilians as shields and also hindered people trying to leave cities.
Talk about the severity and effectiveness is online in nearly all cases is effectively carrying water for Nazis. I know of people who were (as communists) in concentration camps which were happy with the means to further and quicker bring Nazi Germany down. The Nazis did actually start to kill more people in camps to have less people being able to charge them in potential future lawsuits, as Nazis did fear death, prison, revenge and retribution.
After the air attacks the recruitment of Volkssturm members was drastically reduced, too.
Talk about the severity and effectiveness is online in nearly all cases is effectively carrying water for Nazis
the assessment the allies made of their own air campaign after the war determined strategic bombing was ineffective at destroying specific targets.
There are a lot of other german cities which were attacked/razed and were less deserving than Dresden, which became a rallying cry for muh concerned citizens. (Although its sad for the beautiful architecture tho).
Sure. But Slaughter House 5 was about Dresden so that's the one everyone remembers.
the invasion of Hokkaido was a pipe-dream, only hazily possible through US tendered landing craft, and not close to prepared on a timeline that'd actually compete with the US for the occupation
Sorry, I hope that's for others, I already knew. I was shitposting.
If nuking Japanese civilians was justified because of their empire's genocide than Europe and the US should be turned to ash
Luckily for us, it wasn't justified
Oh, yeah I feel so sorry for the USA starting multiple wars of conquest and committing atrocities that make the nazis look like boyscouts. We're still using the purple hearts made in advance of the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. If it saved lives in the 3rd world it was worth it.
What's the obsession with the planes anyway? Diversified guerilla tactics were far more destructive and killed many more people, but they're somehow a non-issue?
Fuck imperial USA, I just wish Osama flew more planes into buildings
This is the perfect reply. Just twist their logic against them.
I tried to use this logic, too, somehow I missed this post. Well done, FlakesBongler!
USA starting multiple wars of conquest and committing atrocities that make the nazis look like boyscouts
No need to compare the US to Nazis, their atrocities are their own.
The US atrocities outside the US do also not make Nazis look like boyscouts.
I just copy-pasted the original comment with a few nouns changed out
I am fully aware that the Great Satan is it's own evil
Federation is fucking wild folks, bait is back on the menu.
Love 2 advocate for glassing a nation.
Takes like this must be some of the benefits of federating that I've heard so much about.
if your posting can't match ours, then your only choice is defederation
Lemm.ee doesn't even block the fascists at exploding heads. Kind of telling how you're frothing over them blocking a leftist instance, isn't it?
Please review the section for proper conduct. https://hexbear.net/PPB
you'll be defederated
That's not how defederation works, dipshit.
oh no, the nazis don't want to play with us!
face the fucking wall, shitbag
If all it takes to get defederated is not being pro-nuking civilians I reckon it'd probably be a good thing if it happened
Tbf the basic gist I got from dot world preemptively defederating from y'all was because they like licking NATO's boot too much.
If it saved allied lives it was worth it.
So it wasn't worth it? Because the evidence is clear that the bombs were not necessary for and did not accelerate their surrender
You say bloodthirsty shit so proudly and with absolutely no self awareness, in the same breath that you condemn monsters you are yourself a monster advocating for the murder of hundreds of thousands of civilians that bear no responsibility.
If it saved allied lives it was worth it.
Simply not invading Korea and Vietnam would have saved far more lives (even just American lives) than the bombs dropped in Japan.
Hell, accepting Japanese terms of surrender and beginning the peace talks months earlier would have saved more American lives.
I just wish we'd had more a-bombs ready to drop on them.
The bulk of the dead on the main islands were civilians, as the army was oversees occupying the mainland. By the time they got home, the war was over and the US had functionally taken over their command. They were then turned to the purpose of... killing more Japanese domestic civilians in order to suppress a communist revolt. Japan - along with the rest of the Pacific Rim - returned to military dictatorship staffed by the remnants of the old Japanese army.
The people primarily made to suffer were those who could not or would not join combat.
do you understand the difference between the state that rules over a people and the state's military, versus the actual civilians who just live there? because only one of those two groups actually died to the atom bombs, and it wasn't the people committing the atrocities. those people got inducted into the American military apparatus instead.
they were literally already ready to surrender. they only asked for one condition, which they were granted after the bombs were dropped anyway -- that the emperor would be allowed to live.
B-but the historian youtube guy told me that only the army on the mainland cared about the soviet invasion. The civilian government only surrendered because of muh atomic bombs. So boooth sides.
I'm sure all the innocent civilians (including many inarguably-innocent children) that we vaporized appreciated the message 🙄👍 And the firebombing being more destructive isn't a valid excuse, it's just an additional (and analogous) atrocity. Two wrongs don't make a right! Are you seriously arguing that the fact that we don't discuss the firebombings as much makes it OK to have dropped nuclear ordinance on entire cities?
I obviously agree that Imperial Japan and its military was responsible for unknowable amounts of harm, but there must have been some way to show off the capabilities of nukes from the tests to the world and at least give them a chance to surrender before going to this extreme step.
What's the correct number of babies to atomize to punish an emperor who we keep in power?
Japan only surrendered after the Soviets tore up their treaty and made landfall
By the way, what do you think about the September 11 attacks?
I love how liberals pretend everyone who died in the bombing were members of Unit 731 or veterans of Nanking, no motherfuckers all the flash shadows on the walls we're ordinary Japanese working class people
All the genociders got off scot-free and were sipping champagne with US capitalists and intelligence agents ten years after the war, liberals have Saturday morning cartoon conception of history
not to "well actually" you, but it was even worse than that. a significant fraction of the victims were literal korean slaves. we nuked a slave quarters.
- Show
Liberals? In my Hexbear? It's more likely than you think
