It’s literally the dumbest argument. It would’ve been fucking SOLDIERS who suffered. Even if you accept the idea that a ground invasion would’ve caused more suffering than NUKING TWO FUCKING CITIES, we’d be talking largely about military casualties. Even if you accept the pro-bomb argument it basically boils down to “we think American soldiers are worth nuking little fucking babies and children”.
I know there was conscription in WWII, but Jesus Christ, THEY NUKED BABIES.
The firebombings of places like Tokyo was just as bad if not worse than the Nukes, though imho. They get all the attention because of the sheer destructive awe, but for example the firebombing of Tokyo over 2 nights in March 1945 left 100,000 dead, a million homeless, and burned out 16 square miles. The heat from the flames causes a convection system of hot air to rise extremely rapidly and displace the colder air, which forms basically a mini-hurricane made out of fire, where even if you are trying to shelter indoors, the flames will bust through the windows and suck you out into the conflagration.
If I recall correctly from the Oliver Stone special, one of the higher ups in the US airforce referred to the raids directly as "terror bombing raids" or something to that effect in official documents
Even if you accept the idea that a ground invasion would’ve caused more suffering than NUKING TWO FUCKING CITIES, we’d be talking largely about military casualties.
We killed plenty of civilians at Dresden and in Tokyo, long before we dropped a nuke.
And quite a few of the WW2 ground troops were drafted. Kids as young as 16, handed a gun and shoved up on to a beach as cannon fodder. Younger than that, on the Japanese side, fighting a rear guard against a collapsing eastern front.
The whole affair was insane. Japan's military was defeated at Midway. Their industrial capacity on the mainland had been smashed six months earlier, through continuous aerial bombardment. Their imperial ambitions had been extinguished and they were already suing for conditional surrender. But Americans didn't want surrender, they wanted conquest. What Truman's government believed was that they would literally need to genocide the population of the country in order to secure it.
The nukes expedited the transformation of Japan into a vassal state.
It’s literally the dumbest argument. It would’ve been fucking SOLDIERS who suffered. Even if you accept the idea that a ground invasion would’ve caused more suffering than NUKING TWO FUCKING CITIES, we’d be talking largely about military casualties. Even if you accept the pro-bomb argument it basically boils down to “we think American soldiers are worth nuking little fucking babies and children”.
I know there was conscription in WWII, but Jesus Christ, THEY NUKED BABIES.
The firebombings of places like Tokyo was just as bad if not worse than the Nukes, though imho. They get all the attention because of the sheer destructive awe, but for example the firebombing of Tokyo over 2 nights in March 1945 left 100,000 dead, a million homeless, and burned out 16 square miles. The heat from the flames causes a convection system of hot air to rise extremely rapidly and displace the colder air, which forms basically a mini-hurricane made out of fire, where even if you are trying to shelter indoors, the flames will bust through the windows and suck you out into the conflagration.
If I recall correctly from the Oliver Stone special, one of the higher ups in the US airforce referred to the raids directly as "terror bombing raids" or something to that effect in official documents
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Yeh but it’s not a binary choice of firebomb or nuclear bomb. You can just not bomb babies?
We killed plenty of civilians at Dresden and in Tokyo, long before we dropped a nuke.
And quite a few of the WW2 ground troops were drafted. Kids as young as 16, handed a gun and shoved up on to a beach as cannon fodder. Younger than that, on the Japanese side, fighting a rear guard against a collapsing eastern front.
The whole affair was insane. Japan's military was defeated at Midway. Their industrial capacity on the mainland had been smashed six months earlier, through continuous aerial bombardment. Their imperial ambitions had been extinguished and they were already suing for conditional surrender. But Americans didn't want surrender, they wanted conquest. What Truman's government believed was that they would literally need to genocide the population of the country in order to secure it.
The nukes expedited the transformation of Japan into a vassal state.