The Effectiveness of Allied Bombing during WWII and was it Justified?

[Farnan]

Not to mention the invaluable supplies America sent Stalin's way. I'd like to see how well the USSR would have done without American trucks. Five in eight Russian trucks were supplied by the Americans. And that's not all:

http://ww2-weapons.com/History/Produ...Lend-Lease.htm

Nikitn likes to make stuff up. Don't worry about his post. I showed earlier how after US involvement the number of German Divisions in the West increased by 40 while the number in the east shrunk by 60.

And Okinawa it was 1/16 which is double the ratio of killed to captured compared to Stalingrad which is spectacular. Especially considered Soviet vs US treatment of POWs

[humble]

had the primary purpose of the mass killing of civilian populations.

The primary mission was to disrupt production. This includes elimination of transport links, moving populations away from the factories, diverting resources to repairing housing damage & even destroying the workers.
It worked.
The fact you believe it to be a 'war crime' is interesting but of no consequence at all because it is not nor ever was, a War Crime.
Germany did not fight to the last bullet or the last solder Berlin did but well over 100 active Divisions surrendered in May 1945. The will to resist was eroded.

bombing raids for that purpose alone can be considered war crimes.

What you 'consider' has no bearing on the reality. Get used to the idea you are wrong.

[humble]

. The USAF strategic bombing campaign had a much more pronounced effort on the war because it targeted Germany industry and German supplies and destroyed the Luftwaffe through the long-range fighters which escorted the bombers, as opposed to the RAF campaign whose purpose was what strategic bombing was originally intended for: bombing enemy cities to force the enemy to surrender. The RAF terror bombing in the end did little to win the war.

The US bombed just as many civilian targets as the RAF. They called their civilian targets 'Marshalling Yards' to hide the fact.

From Carl A. Spaatz and the Air War in Europe by Richard G. Davis. Smithsonian Institution Press, , 1994.



A further look at Eighth Air Force operations has revealed two egregious

examples of the gap between bombing practice and stated bombing policy: the
target categories "city areas" and "marshaling yards." The two most cited Eighth
Air Force statistical summaries that cover the entire war do not list a target cate-
gory "city areas" or "towns and cities." Both summaries were prepared from
the same set of data within a month of the end of the war in Europe.
Monthly statistical summaries of the Eighth’s operations prepared during the
war, almost contemporaneously with the events they recorded, tell a different
story. The Eighth Air Force Monthly Statistical Summary of Operations, gener-
ated at the end of each month from May 1944 to April 1945, listed a "city areas"
target category. For calendar year 1944, the summary reported that the Eighth
dropped 43,611 tons on "city areas." Nor did these reports make any bones
about their targets. The report for the May 8, 1944, Berlin raid baldly states,
"Berlin city area attacked. Bombing raid done through 10/10 undercast on PFF
markers. Believed that the center of Berlin was well hit." After reaching a
high of 9,886 tons (41 percent incendiaries) in July 1944, when the Eighth con-
ducted a series of H2X raids on Munich, the monthly "city area" totals steadily
declined to 383 tons in December.
A summary in a working paper from a USSTAF file, "Review of Bombing
Results," shows a similar dichotomy according to time period. From January
1944 through January 1945, the Eighth dropped 45,036 tons on "towns and
cities." From February 1945 through the end of the war, this summary
showed not a single ton of bombs falling on a city area. Unless the Eighth had
developed a perfect technique for bombing through overcast,[ such a result was
simply impossible. Obviously, the word had come down to deemphasize reports
on civilian damage. For instance, when Anderson cabled Arnold about USSTAF’s
press policy on the Dresden controversy in February 1945, he noted, "Public rela-
tions officers have been advised to take exceptional care that the military nature
of targets attacked in the future be specified and emphasized in all cases. As in
the past the statement that an attack was made on such and such a city will be
avoided; specific targets will be described."

[Nikitn]

And who defeated them? The American and British. most German aircraft and pilots were stationed on the Western Front, not the Eastern front. I never claimed the bombing of the fuel industry is what devastated the Luftwaffe. The Luftwaffe having to engage American and British bombers constantly day after day was what broke them.

And the bombing as i showed, was effective. Albert Speer himself said the bombing of the Romanian oil fields nearly crippled the entire Germany Army as my source stated.

The bombing offensive was providing little results (other than easy targeted mass-murder of civilians) until the luftwaffe was worn out after 6 years of combat on several fronts. Obviously if the luftwaffe ceased to exist the bombers would be able to start attacking the really high-valued targets without being slaughtered.

The thing is it cost the western allies enormous amounts of slaughter and resources to actually reach this point, resources that could be used to, for instance, speed up the invasion of France.

6 months and 2800 destroyed or damaged? The BoB lasted 3 months and had 2000 German aircraft destroyed. And meanwhile you fail to mention the Soviets lost over 20,000 aircraft in this period. again, the Russians did a better job getting themselves shot up than shooting down Germans.

Seriously vanoi are you trolling? The BoB was a short operation (and the Germans lost 1,8k, not 2k, planes) where the Germans tested the British resolve. The type of war seen in OP Barbarossa was intense combat that would last for 4 years! Losing 2800 planes per 6 months is not a "small deal", especially considering the Germans kept losing them at a higher and higher pace as the war dragged on.

And the Germans recovered form this while the Russians didn't and would lose another 14,000 aircraft the next year.

Is this mighty vanoi speaking? On what grounidng are you telling me the Soviets didn't recover? Their air-force kept pounding the luftwaffe until it was defeated in 1944.

Thats in 1942. In 1941 they lost 20,000, 7,500 of which was lost in air combat.

Can we please stop with the idiocy and fantasies? The Soviets lost 46,000 planes in total throughout the war, not 300,000.

I am not saying the Russians had no real contribution to the destruction of the Luftwaffe. They very much helped, but it was the American and British that crippled the Luftwaffe permanently, not Soviets.

No, it was a gathered contribution of the 3 that did it. German losses of around 5,000 planes per year (if the casualty rate from Barbarossa remained) in the Eastern front really did lift the Soviet contribution to killing the Luftwaffe to the same level as either the British or the American one. Sure, the total western ally tally was indeed greater than the Soviet, but nevertheless it is hard to imagine the luftwaffe being defeated by the Western allies at all if it wasn't pressed in the East.

Oh yes it is. The Americans and British drew away German forces that would have otherwise been fighting the Russians, especially the Luftwaffe. I'd also like to have seen Britain survive Germany's unrestricted submarine warfare without US help.

Okay, but "drawing away forces" and being a minor pain is not the same as being responsible for 85% of Nazi Germany's casualties. And come on, the British were never in reality close to losing the Atlantic war. You are vastly overestimating your country's contribution.

Not to mention the invaluable supplies America sent Stalin's way. I'd like to see how well the USSR would have done without American trucks. Five in eight Russian trucks were supplied by the Americans. And that's not all:

http://ww2-weapons.com/History/Produ...Lend-Lease.htm

Nobody is denying the US contribution was significant. What is denied is that the LL was critical to winning the war. The trucks, for instance, could be produced domestically quite easily by shifting production from armoured vehicles.

Fact of the matter is the Soviets had already defeated the Germans at Kursk, and thus decided who would be the winner in the East, way before the major US LL shipments became available in late 1943.

Farnan,

Nikitn likes to make stuff up. Don't worry about his post. I showed earlier how after US involvement the number of German Divisions in the West increased by 40 while the number in the east shrunk by 60.

Oh I'm sorry Farnan, I wasn't aware US Army grunt-school is the prime authority on the WW2 contributions of USA lmao. My bad. Please show me where I 'make stuff up'.

[Stavroforos]

Guys, this isn't a thread about who won WWII or who contributed more, the US or the USSR. It's about strategic bombing.

[Farnan]

Nobody is denying the US contribution was significant. What is denied is that the LL was critical to winning the war. The trucks, for instance, could be produced domestically quite easily by shifting production from armoured vehicles.

Fact of the matter is the Soviets had already defeated the Germans at Kursk, and thus decided who would be the winner in the East, way before the major US LL shipments became available in late 1943.

http://english.pravda.ru/history/12-...6-roosevelt-0/

Even Pravada disagrees with you. Kind of funny when your view is more pro-Russian in this regard than ing Pravada

Farnan,


Oh I'm sorry Farnan, I wasn't aware US Army grunt-school is the prime authority on the WW2 contributions of USA lmao. My bad. Please show me where I 'make stuff up'.

Nice straw man.

First percent of casualties:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_...Search_Service

The number of German killed by the Soviets is 67% not 85%. The Soviets and their subordinate armies had at most 30% of the Captured Germans. The amount of Germans captured by the Western Allies outnumbers the total killed in the war.


Now looking at German movement of divisions. http://www.axishistory.com/134-campa...n-world-war-ii

As you can see there were a significant push of German divisions westward after US intervention. The Soviets had the greatest ground conflict contribution but to pretend they won alone is idiotic.

[Nikitn]

http://english.pravda.ru/history/12-...6-roosevelt-0/

Even Pravada disagrees with you. Kind of funny when your view is more pro-Russian in this regard than ing Pravada

Can you stop putting words into my mouth and outline the part where the veteran claims the USSR would lose without the LL? Because that's what I was discussing, and not if LL was worthless or not.

First percent of casualties:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_...Search_Service

The number of German killed by the Soviets is 67% not 85%. The Soviets and their subordinate armies had at most 30% of the Captured Germans. The amount of Germans captured by the Western Allies outnumbers the total killed in the war.

R. Overman specifically states he estimates that 67% of the casualties suffered in the last part of the war were suffered in the East.

According to Krivocheev's research of German archives, the Germans lost roughly 4,137,000 soldiers in the east (including dead POWs). If you add to that the 215,000 or so dead Soviet traitors, you get losses in the range of 4.3 million soldiers. If using R. Overman's data, the Germans have lost in the order of 4.2 million in the East (including collaborators and POWs). That's roughly 77% percent or so of total dead, so I guess I misspoke when I said "German casualties". I probably heard that 85% number from total total land losses for the Axis, or something. Regardless, the point still stands that the vast majority of German forces were lost in the east, including the hardened veterans created from Germany's early victories.

As for the amount of captured soldiers: The Germans surrendered in droves to the allies in late 1944-1945 out of fear of the Soviets, making the number of captured soldiers completely irrelevant.

Now looking at German movement of divisions. http://www.axishistory.com/134-campa...n-world-war-ii

As you can see there were a significant push of German divisions westward after US intervention. The Soviets had the greatest ground conflict contribution but to pretend they won alone is idiotic.

And how many of those divisions in the west were 2nd hand garrisons or divisions sent to rebuild? Regardless I was not claiming the Soviets won alone, but rather:

1) The US contribution was not necessary for victory.
2) The Soviets bore by far the brunt of the war in Europe. This is where the war was decided.

[Erebus Pasha]

Just to reiterate, this thread is about the effectiveness of allied bombing during WWII and not who made the biggest contribution to winning that conflict. If you want to discuss other subjects related to the Second World War then you're more than welcome to open a new thread.

[Gaidin]

Everybody's sort of forgetting the other half of the bombing campaign that was done as well. The cities weren't all that were bombed, especially when you had as much supplies as the Allies and functionally had the ability to drunkenly wave your hand at a map and say "hit them!" as opposed to carefully prioritizing your targets like the Axis. They bombed more than the cities, and bombing the cities had their own affects on supply. They bombed the major roads, the rails, the bridges. Hell if it had more than four lanes or if it crossed a gorge, or if it helped transport a train, it got bombed, no matter where it was, city or wilderness. It was the first time this kind of bombing campaign was ever attempted, both city or wilderness, anywhere. Some generals thought this would win the war. It was, in the end, one of the most useful military experiments ever done, because it made supplying the front one of the most expensive exercises and risks for the Axis ever. Sort of like crossing the Med was in the last months of Africa. It did exactly what they wanted it to do, so it didn't really even have mixed results, the thing is, the army was still there. Hence, the concept of boots on the ground and no military ever getting past its need for it because it was going to come down to a fight.

Stop focusing on the three or four cities you want to focus on, because the bombing campaign of the Second World War was so much more than those cities. Stop focusing on the Atomics because the bombing campaign was so much more for all that was the straw that broke the Japanese camel's back. If you want to talk about the effectiveness of allied bombing, you need to actually talk about allied bombing. Not the few cities you don't like the fact that they bombed in attempt to create a biased sample out of the strategy.

[Vanoi]

No, that does not follow. It is one thing to want to surrender. It is something different entirely to be so stupid as to not plan for an invasion.

no, it does follow. You still don't seem to understand that Operation Ketsu-Go was not a general defense plan. It was a plan specifically made to counter the American's own Operation Downfall. Cause as many causalities as possible to force an armistice that would give them peace conditions more in their favor. Does that sound like a general defense plan to you?

Firebombing was already working. They were "not afraid of firebombing"? What? Because they had seen it before? That doesn't even make any sense. Of course they were afraid of firebombing. It was completely devastating to all cities targeted, and like I said, Japan had already been brought to its knees - by firebombing. By your logic they might as well have shrugged at the nuclear blasts and said, "meh, it's no worse than the firebombings".

Brought to their knees? What . Terror bombing did not once break the morale of the Germans or Japanese.

http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/a.../win99/ash.htm

In retrospect, the CBO was moderately successful. It indirectly led to victory by damaging the German economy and industry; it achieved air superiority over the Luftwaffe in Europe; and it created an "indirect effect" by dislocating Wehrmacht efforts toward defense, making them unavailable for other purposes. It achieved its objectives of assisting indirectly with the Battle of the Atlantic and creating favorable conditions for Overlord.⁵⁰
From the standpoint of morale, however, the CBO's success in breaking the enemy's will to resist was questionable.⁵¹ Some authors have suggested that Allied and Axis aerial attacks on people showed, ironically, that civilian resolve may have been stronger than that of soldiers.⁵² Morale bombing undeniably caused significant suffering, insecurity, and lack of confidence in Nazi propaganda, but this still had no appreciable effect on behavior. The United States Strategic Bombing Survey concluded that "depressed and discouraged workers were not necessarily unproductive workers."⁵³ Apparently, British strategists were incorrect in assuming that the German people would be less resilient than the British.⁵⁴


Likewise, aerial bombing of similarly resilient Japanese civilians and soldiers proved to be a very difficult way to break the enemy's will. Here again, suffering and dislocation did not necessarily translate into a behavioral change, as indicated in a captured diary of a Japanese soldier who wanted some Japanese air cover against constant and "especially fierce" aerial bombardment: "Oh God, please send us some planes--even if it is only one. . . . No matter what happens, I shall live through to do my best to once again renew my spirit and my pledge. I'm not afraid of their planes, their mortars, their shelling--this is the spirit of Japan--I will fight on."⁵⁵ Against such an indomitable spirit, aerial bombing achieved only mixed success.

Thus, the morale bombing of World War II remains a contentious topic in the history of airpower.⁵⁶ Without decisively affecting the enemy's will or morale, terror bombing produced, in the words of one author, "a torrent of destruction without precedent."⁵⁷ It also cost the lives of thousands of airmen so that 55 years after the fact, students of history are still asking if the results were worth the price.

That last bolded quote comes from a Japanese soldier himself. Terror bombing to break the enemy's morale had no success whatsoever.

As for Germany, Germany was never so extensively firebombed as Japan, and in Germany's case other weapons were also brought to bear. Nor was Germany an island nation. It is not a comparable at all. Japan's morale was at a low point, they all knew the war was lost. Some preferred death to surrender, but this was mainly due to the belief that they would be tortured and killed by the allies.

Never extensively firebombed. Do you know anything about the strategic bombing against Germany? The British and Americans firebombed German cities to the ground. The difference between Japan and Germany is that firebombing was far more effective in Japan due to them making all of their buildings out of wood. Did the Japanese realize they were in a bad situation? Yes. But did that mean they no longer wished to fight? No.

Not close at all? They had been trying to surrender for over a month, but their pleas fell on deaf ears. The Americans insisted on an unconditional surrender (which they were very close to accepting), and the Soviets refused to even answer them.

BS. I want a source for this claim. They pleas fell on deaf ears because again they did not want to accept the surrender terms from the Americans. they wanted to Keep the emperor and the Imperial system along with it. That was not going to happen.

You were on Iwo Jima and Okinawa? Well then, you'd remember that over 7000 Japanese surrendered at Okinawa. During the war, between 20 000 - 50 000 Japanese soldiers surrendered - the bulk of them toward the end.

7000 surrendered out of a garrison of 100,000. That means the rest of the 93,000 soldiers continued to fight on and not surrender. I mean sorry, but you ca look at every battle the US fought in the Pacific and the Japanese surrendering rates were very low. You claimed droves of Japanese were surrendering and sorry, but they were not. In both Iwo Jima and Okinawa the vat majority of Japanese did not surrender.

[Ludicus]

Had the US nuked North Vietnam,...

Precisely. That´s my point...are the western moral values clear superior to all others? even if the myth that the atomic bombing had ended the war were historically accurate no historical or political justification can legitimate the criminality of the mass indiscriminate killing of civilians.

Keep in mind that -according to some historians - the allied armies expended more destructive force against the civilian German/Japanese population than against the German/Japanese armies. Read below,

"At the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, the issue of the indiscriminate bombing of many Chinese cities by Japanese Imperial Forces during the Asia Pacific War was never raised, despite repeated wartime condemnation by the US government of Japan’s aerial attacks on Chinese civilians.

It is obvious that the reason for not bringing this matter before the court lay in America’s own conduct against Japanese civilians, which took the form of the most extensive aerial campaign against civilians, destroying sixty four Japanese cities with incendiary bombs and two with atomic bombs. The fact that the Nazis’ indiscriminate bombing of various cities in Europe and England was never a topic of criminal investigation at Nuremberg was probably due to the same reason.

In the end, Judge Pal from India, was the only person, among eleven judges who presided over the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, who made a critical comment on the atomic bombing, albeit briefly. In his dissenting judgment, he wrote:

"It would be sufficient for my present purpose to say that if any indiscriminate destruction of civilian life and property is still illegitimate in warfare, then, in the Pacific war, this decision to use the atom bomb is the only near approach to the directives of German Emperor during the first world war and of the Nazi leaders during the second world war"

The Asia Pacific Journal.
The Atomic Bombing, The Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal


----
Peter Kuznick, history professor at American University,
(the moral issues)

"When Harry Truman was briefed on the atomic bomb for the first time on April 13 by Jimmy Burns, he says it’s not a bigger weapon. It’s a weapon that’s great enough to destroy the whole world. When he got briefed on April 25 by Stimson and Groves, he says the same thing again, that maybe we shouldn’t use it if we can develop it because we can end life on the planet. When he gets briefed on how successful the Alamogordo test was on July 25 at Potsdam, he says this may be the fire destruction prophesy that Euphrates Valley era after Noah and his fabulous ark. So we’re not dealing with a bigger, more powerful bomb"

"I take students to Hiroshima and Nagasaki every summer since 1995 and we spend a lot of time at the museums. As you know, they’ve got an institution in Japan that we don’t have in the United States, it’s called Peace Museums, which have a very conscious bias. And if you go to the museums – the A-Bomb Museum in Hiroshima, which I work with, or the A-Bomb Museum in Nagasaki, which is actually much more effective – you get to see some of these methods of presentation of moral issues, as well as social consequences. And from my standpoint as a historian, I think these are key things that we can size, that we have to take on directly"

-----

Now, the argument

The bomb saved American/Japanese lives

Well, soviet entry into the war was indeed a shock to the Japanese ruling elite.We have the Japanese sources saying that if the Russians come into the war, the war is over, we have to surrender. Prime Minister Suzuki "I can’t wait—if we miss today, the Soviet Union will take not only Manchuria, Korea, Karafuto but also Hokkaido; they will destroy the foundation of Japan. We must end the war; we can deal with the U.S" (quoted in Hasegawa's book).
What really influenced them to end the war? the fear of Soviet invasion? the bomb? well, there is no evidence to show that the Hiroshima bomb led either Togo or the emperor to accept the Potsdam terms:

The End of Pacific War: Reappraisals, Hasegawa, 2007,

The argument presented by Asada and Frank that the atomic bombs rather than Soviet entry into the war had a more decisive effect on Japan’s decision to surrender cannot be supported.
The Hiroshima bomb, although it heightened the sense of urgency to seek the termination of the war, did not prompt the Japanese government to take any immediate action that repudiated the previous policy of seeking Moscow’s mediation.

Contrary to the contention advanced by Asada and Frank, there is no evidence to show that the Hiroshima bomb led either Togo or the emperor to accept the Potsdam terms. On the contrary, Togo’s urgent telegram to Sato on August 7 indicates that, despite the Hiroshima bomb, they continued to stay the previous course. The effect of the Nagasaki bomb was negligible. It did not change the political alignment one way or the other. Even Anami’s fantastic suggestion that the United States had more than 100 atomic bombs and planned to bomb Tokyo next did not change the opinions of either the peace party or the war party at all.

Rather, what decisively changed the views of the Japanese ruling elite was the Soviet entry into the war. It catapulted the Japanese government into taking immediate action. For the first time, it forced the government squarely to confront the issue of whether it should accept the Potsdam terms. In the tortuous discussions from August 9 through August 14, the peace party, motivated by a profound sense of betrayal, fear of Soviet influence on occupation policy, and above all by a desperate desire to preserve the imperial house, finally staged a conspiracy to impose the “emperor’s sacred decision” and accept the Potsdam terms, believing that under the circumstances surrendering to the United States would best assure the preservation of the imperial house and save the emperor.

This is, of course, not to deny completely the effect of the atomic bomb on Japan’s policymakers. It certainly injected a sense of urgency in finding an acceptable end to the war. Kido stated that while the peace party and the war party had previously been equally balanced in the scale, the atomic bomb helped to tip the balance in favor of the peace party. It would be more accurate to say that the Soviet entry into the war, adding to that tipped scale, then completely toppled the scale itself.

Anyway,

according to Samuel Walker, the former historian of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission,

"The invasion was not scheduled until November 1, 1945, just about three months after the bombing of Hiroshima and in that time there were many other ways in which the war might have ended, and in my mind probably would have ended.

So, it wasn’t a question of using the bomb in August versus authorizing an invasion in November that would have been absolutely necessary.

If the invasion becomes necessary, if we have to invade Japan, if such and such happens and we have to invade...The invasion was always conditional.

That’s a major flaw with the traditional view along with the fact that they... that not only don’t they recognize the fact, or acknowledge the fact that there were other ways the war could well have ended.

...Truman was heavily dependent on what he heard from his senior advisors, and especially his most trusted advisors. There is no evidence that they ever told him, Mr. President, you have a stark choice between authorizing the bomb; or authorizing an invasion that’s going to cost hundreds of thousands of American lives.

It just did not happen that way, and frankly, it astonishes me that there are still some scholars who insist that is that case. The evidence and what we know about conditions in Washington, as well as in Tokyo, I think make it clear beyond doubt that this was not the case"

[Gaidin]

Anyway,

according to Samuel Walker, the former historian of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission,

Your quotes are annoying because they don't quote, but anyway. 90% of people that actually have a clue don't really say that because, well, they have a clue. It wasn't really about 'if else'. Hilariously enough you were, as far as what research could possibly have revealed at the time, looking at a bomb that simply destroyed much more much more quickly. Nobody knew the other effects of it. You don't learn those effects after three bombs, especially when two of them are dropped in hostile territory and you can't get near them with measuring equipment you can't possibly have invented yet because you haven't had people accidentally walk near it to, you know, collapse five hours later from radiation. Nobody. You were looking at a traditional bombing campaign, as horrible as it might have been, just that we only needed four planes for those two cities, two of them observers.

[Colossus]

Ludicus, if Hasegawa's argument is so strong, why does he still acknowledge the 'twin shocks' of the bomb and the Soviet invasion?

Well, soviet entry into the war was indeed a shock to the Japanese ruling elite.We have the Japanese sources saying that if the Russians come into the war, the war is over, we have to surrender.

Such a shock that War Minister Anami is reported to have claimed that 'the inevitable has come at last'. It's important not to stress the argument that the Japanese were intended to negotiate through the Soviets too far; these are the same Soviets that were known to be have been sending offensive forces to the East for two months.

there is no evidence to show that the Hiroshima bomb led either Togo or the emperor to accept the Potsdam terms

This would be the same Togo who claimed that 'the introduction of a new weapon, which had drastically altered the whole military situation, offered the military ample grounds for ending the war'. Togo then pushed the cabinet to accept the Potsdam terms (which the Japanese interpreted to include the retention of the emperor), only to be refused.

Kido claims that after the atomic bombing, Hirohito said that 'we must bow to the inevitable... we should lose no time in ending the war'.

Who appealed to the emperor to end the war at this stage? Togo. Togo and Suzuki, assembled the war council with Hirohito's encouragement - it remains an unknown why it took so long for the council to actually meet. Susuki was pressed into action before the Soviet invasion.

Hasegawa's work, good as it is, does not adequately dispel that of Richard Frank, nor the comprehensive article by Sadao Asada (read it if you haven't and are able to). Both Hasegawa and Asada are actually quite balanced in their views; both refer to the 'twin shocks' as being crucial, and neither discount either factor, despite their differing interpretation, because neither offer the polarised nonsense that ignores half the sources. However, Asada's methodology, which emphasises chronology and progression, is especially convincing. On the other hand, efforts by Hasegawa to literally count how many sources mention either factor or both (which include someone talking to their doctor about it) do not have the same effect.

Asada's argument is subtle; it does not claim that the atomic bombings suddenly made the Japanese decide to surrender, because half of them wanted peace anyway. I find Hasegawa somewhat flawed in that it considers the minds of the ruling elite being 'changed', when actually, some always sought peace, while others were still determined to fight after both events. Where you think the scales tipped in this process is open to interpretation, but to deny the role of the atomic bombings as a factor is folly. Hasegawa himself, while he clearly favours the Soviet interpretation, does not go this far (or if he does, he later restrains himself and states that both were important).

[Ludicus]

Your quotes are annoying because they don't quote.

What?

------

90% of people that actually have a clue don't really say that

Oh, I see. Samuel Walker a distinguished historian, doesn´t have a clue. Judge Pal´s sentencing statement ("this decision to use the atom bomb is the only near approach to the directives of German Emperor during the first world war and of the Nazi leaders during the second world war") sums up this sad horror/terror story quite well, in my opinion.

Btw, in case you missed it, some years ago President Obama’s State Department under the direction of Hillary Clinton, sent the Japanese a letter saying that Obama wanted to apologize in person for the USA’s World War II actions (but he is not an American "patriot",he is not even American! - insert irony here) . He was right. Sadly, the warmonger mentality still strongly prevails - from the news,

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Philip Weiss on October 23, 2013
Adelson says Obama should fire ‘atomic weapon’ at Iran, not negotiate
Last night in New York, Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire supporter of Israel, said that the U.S. should fire a nuclear weapon at Iran rather than negotiate.

Just war theory sets forth a moral framework for warfare and rejects the notion that "anything goes" during times of war. This guy also "doesn´t have a clue":


The Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute is an educational partnership between Yale University and the New Haven Public Schools designed to strengthen teaching and learning in local schools and, by example, in schools across the country. Just War Theory and the Wars of the 20th Century

Excerpts,

The Bombing of German Cities

This point is certainly germane to a discussion of how the decision to bomb civilians came about because it was used as a justification for the bombing of civilians by the British in the early years of the war. The decision was made in the desperate months after the fall of France when Britain stood alone and invasion by Germany seemed imminent. At the time the bombing of cities was seen as the only way British military forces could strike at Germany and possibly forestall defeat.

The nature of this act was dictated in part in the early years of the war by the limitations of Britain´s Bomber Command. Lightly armed and without the benefit of a long-range fighter escort, British bombers were committed to nighttime raids in order to avoid being shot down by German fighters. This fact along with the lack of the proper navigational equipment meant that only one third of all British bombers got within five miles of their targets in 1941.

The strategy was a result of more than just technological limitations, however, for the leadership of Britain, including Winston Churchill, believed that terror bombing could indeed win the war by turning the German people against the Nazi leadership. Thus the strategy was not changed when the ability to hit targets with greater accuracy was developed later in the war nor when the tide had turned and victory by the Allies was all but assured.

The bombing of Germany did indeed become a terror, although it never brought about a popular uprising. One of the most appalling examples of this strategy was the firestorm created in the German port city of Hamburg in July 1943 as the result of four nights of area´s bombing.

By the time the fires had died down 62,000 acres were burned, 80 per cent of the buildings were destroyed and 30,000 people (20 per cent of whom were children) were killed. Similar firestorms were ignited in eight other German cities over the next two years including Dresden which was destroyed in the closing months of the war when Germany´s armies were already defeated.11 Altogether some 600,000 German civilians died from bombing in the war and 800,000 were seriously injured.

American Bombing of Japan

While the British carried out a strategy of area bombings, the Americans held to a strategy of precision daylight raids in Europe that, in theory, kept civilian deaths to a minimum. Against Japan, however, the Americans changed that strategy to one which closely matched the British. Beginning in February 1945 the Army Air Force switched from high-level daylight strikes to low level bombing at night using incendiaries - tactics that were intended to burn entire cities.

Contributing to the destructive effects of these tactics was the lack of any Japanese air force by 1945 to oppose U.S. bombers and the fact that Japanese cities were built largely of wood and paper which burned so much better than European stone and brick.

The devastation and civilian death tolls were to surpass even the shocking destruction in Germany. In March a single raid on Tokyo killed almost 100,000 people and burned 16 square miles. The firestorm was so intense that the city´s canals were brought to a boil. Over the next four months, Japan´s five largest cities had been destroyed at a cost to civilians of 260,000 killed and between 9 and 13 million homeless.

In the context of such loss and destruction, the decision to use atomic weapons against Japan was not really a change of strategy or a significantly greater violation of the war convention -- it was simply a more efficient way of performing the same task. Nevertheless, the use of the Atomic Bomb was dramatic and it represented such a greater potential for destruction that it brought many of the previously ignored moral questions to the fore.

Several top American military leaders and technical advisors raised profound moral questions about using such a weapon. One member of an advisory panel on the issue stated that it introduces the question of mass slaughter, really for the first time in history. Mass slaughter was of course already a part of the strategic plan, but now the issue was more difficult to avoid.

Strategic bombing in World War II essentially was a decision to kill people not because of their military role, but because of their nationality.

------
@ Colossus

I appreciate your contribution to this subject . A very good post.
Historical analysis/interpretation is not an easy task ("there are facts, only interpretations") but you see, the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians is- under any circumstances - a moral obscenity.

[humble]

At the time the bombing of cities was seen as the only way British military forces could strike at Germany and possibly forestall defeat.

It was a response to German raids on British civilians. The UK was not facing 'defeat' after the BOB either It seems your 'teachers' can't even get the basic facts right.

[Gaidin]

What?

------

Oh, I see. Samuel Walker a distinguished historian, doesn´t have a clue. Judge Pal´s sentencing statement ("this decision to use the atom bomb is the only near approach to the directives of German Emperor during the first world war and of the Nazi leaders during the second world war") sums up this sad horror/terror story quite well, in my opinion.

Btw, in case you missed it, some years ago President Obama’s State Department under the direction of Hillary Clinton, sent the Japanese a letter saying that Obama wanted to apologize in person for the USA’s World War II actions (but he is not an American "patriot",he is not even American! - insert irony here) . He was right. Sadly, the warmonger mentality still strongly prevails - from the news,

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Philip Weiss on October 23, 2013
Adelson says Obama should fire ‘atomic weapon’ at Iran, not negotiate
Last night in New York, Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire supporter of Israel, said that the U.S. should fire a nuclear weapon at Iran rather than negotiate.

Just war theory sets forth a moral framework for warfare and rejects the notion that "anything goes" during times of war. This guy also "doesn´t have a clue":


The Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute is an educational partnership between Yale University and the New Haven Public Schools designed to strengthen teaching and learning in local schools and, by example, in schools across the country. Just War Theory and the Wars of the 20th Century

Excerpts,

Do you see the things you quoted missing? Yea. Guess why. Now, respond to the rest of my post instead of cherry picking little things out of the single point I made.

Also, why do people keep cherrypicking cities the allies bombed out of the war and creating a biased sample out of this? Do I need to repost my statement yet again?

[Stavroforos]

Which was, incidentally, a German response to British raid on German civilians.

[Ludicus]

Do you see the things you quoted missing?

Anything relevant? Not really.

Let´s try again: ( full excerpt)

The Bombing of German Cities


This point is certainly germane to a discussion of how the decision to bomb civilians came about because it was used as a justification for the bombing of civilians by the British in the early years of the war. The decision was made in the desperate months after the fall of France when Britain stood alone and invasion by Germany seemed imminent. At the time the bombing of cities was seen as the only way British military forces could strike at Germany and possibly forestall defeat.9 The nature of this act was dictated in part in the early years of the war by the limitations of Britain�s Bomber Command. Lightly armed and without the benefit of a long-range fighter escort, British bombers were committed to nighttime raids in order to avoid being shot down by German fighters. This fact along with the lack of the proper navigational equipment meant that only one third of all British bombers got within five miles of their targets in 1941.


The strategy was a result of more than just technological limitations, however, for the leadership of Britain, including Winston Churchill, believed that terror bombing (or what one of Churchill�s advisors preferred to call �dehousing�) could indeed win the war by turning the German people against the Nazi leadership.10 Thus the strategy was not changed when the ability to hit targets with greater accuracy was developed later in the war nor when the tide had turned and victory by the Allies was all but assured.
The bombing of Germany did indeed become a terror, although it never brought about a popular uprising. One of the most appalling examples of this strategy was the firestorm created in the German port city of Hamburg in July 1943 as the result of four nights of �area� bombing. By the time the fires had died down 62,000 acres were burned, 80 per cent of the buildings were destroyed and 30,000 people (20 per cent of whom were children) were killed. Similar firestorms were ignited in eight other German cities over the next two years including Dresden which was destroyed in the closing months of the war when Germany�s armies were already defeated.11 Altogether some 600,000 German civilians died from bombing in the war and 800,000 were seriously injured.12


American Bombing of Japan


While the British carried out a strategy of �area bombing� the Americans held to a strategy of precision daylight raids in Europe that, in theory, kept civilian deaths to a minimum. Against Japan, however, the Americans changed that strategy to one which closely matched the British. Beginning in February 1945 the Army Air Force switched from high-level daylight strikes to low level bombing at night using incendiaries - tactics that were intended to burn entire cities. Contributing to the destructive effects of these tactics was the lack of any Japanese air force by 1945 to oppose U.S. bombers and the fact that Japanese cities were built largely of wood and paper which burned so much better than European stone and brick. The devastation and civilian death tolls were to surpass even the shocking destruction in Germany. In March a single raid on Tokyo killed almost 100,000 people and burned 16 square miles. The firestorm was so intense that the city�s canals were brought to a boil. Over the next four months, Japan�s five largest cities had been destroyed at a cost to civilians of 260,000 killed and between 9 and 13 million homeless.13


In the context of such loss and destruction, the decision to use atomic weapons against Japan was not really a change of strategy or a significantly greater violation of the war convention -- it was simply a more efficient way of performing the same task. Nevertheless, the use of the Atomic Bomb was dramatic and it represented such a greater potential for destruction that it brought many of the previously ignored moral questions to the fore. The weapon had not even been developed for use against Japan, but as a deterrent to its use by Germany should that nation develop one.


Several top American military leaders and technical advisors raised profound moral questions about using such a weapon. One member of an advisory panel on the issue stated that �it introduces the question of mass slaughter, really for the first time in history.�14 Mass slaughter was of course already a part of the strategic plan, but now the issue was more difficult to avoid.
The debate over the legitimacy of the atomic bombings of Japan generally revolves around what it was going to take to get Japan to agree to an unconditional surrender and what that might cost in American and Japanese lives. Those who supported the use of the bomb took the utilitarian view that it would end the war quickly and thereby save even greater numbers of American and Japanese lives by avoiding an Allied invasion of the home islands.

They point to the ferocious suicidal defense of Okinawa as proof that the costs would be very high. Those in opposition question whether an invasion would even have been necessary if the demand for unconditional surrender had been altered to allow for the survival of the Emperor.

Another alternative that was seriously considered at the time was a demonstration of the bomb in a sparsely populated area. (An excellent classroom resource on the decision to drop the bomb is the video, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. See resource list below.) �In the context of jus in bellum, however, the issue still comes down to the legitimacy of targeting civilians and this line had already been crossed. Utilitarian considerations, such as the doctrine of double effect, only apply if the intended target is indeed military.

Strategic bombing in World War II essentially was a decision to kill people not because of their military role, but because of their nationality.

[Colossus]

@ Colossus

I appreciate your contribution to this subject . A very good post.
But you see - in my opinion - the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians is a moral obscenity.

Thanks. I actually agree with you in principle in terms of targeting civilians, yet still favour the opposite interpretation of Hiroshima - though assessing the effect in separation to the morality. When discussing the atomic bombings, rather than seeing them in isolation, I feel that it comes with the qualifying statement that the moral code of the Second World War had long since been redefined, both in theory before the war, and in practice during the war, due to the perceived potential of the bomber. Given that, I prefer not to direct any distinct criticism at the bombing of Hiroshima without also criticising the general approach of those such as LeMay in Japan (of course, there were other Air Force figures who favoured different approaches, the same can be seen in the RAF). Nagasaki is surely easier to criticise in hindsight, given that it was largely unnecessary to achieving anything, as were the further B-29 raids that took place. However, at the time, there were strong calls that this was required to maintain the pressure on Japan to accept the terms.

In terms of strategic bombing against cities, of the two rationales behind it before it was practised, it is the case that bombing does not have an adverse effect of the morale of people or their governments, while it can have the opposite. It can be argued, as has been done in this thread, that strategic bombing damages the general war effort, by disrupting workers and factories, and occupying defensive resources, which in terms of fighters, could be employed elsewhere in the war. However, if this argument is made, one surely has to consider whether carrying out such bombing in the first place is a good use of resources, given that it cost bombers, pilots and munitions which could also have been employed elsewhere.

Those arguing in favour of strategic bombing against cities are making indirect claims about its effectiveness, which some doubt altogether when balanced against resources put it. However, what does not seem to be in doubt is the damage caused by the Oil Campaign and more specifically devised attempts to disrupt the German war economy. The effects of these measures is acknowledged by historians and members of the Nazi government themselves, notably Albert Speer. However, it is hard to make such concrete statements about attacking cities as vague military targets - hence the controversy such actions have caused. Indeed, even Harris claimed after the war that while he did not want to prioritise it, the campaign against German oil production was a success - he simply felt it was a gamble at the time.

[Gaidin]

Anything relevant? Not really.

Let´s try again: ( full excerpt)

<yawn> your quote still disappears when I quote it, so I still can't reply to it point by point. So I'll still reply for the purposes of Allied Bombing in general, as that is the topic of the thread.

Everybody's sort of forgetting the other half of the bombing campaign that was done as well. The cities weren't all that were bombed, especially when you had as much supplies as the Allies and functionally had the ability to drunkenly wave your hand at a map and say "hit them!" as opposed to carefully prioritizing your targets like the Axis. They bombed more than the cities, and bombing the cities had their own affects on supply. They bombed the major roads, the rails, the bridges. Hell if it had more than four lanes or if it crossed a gorge, or if it helped transport a train, it got bombed, no matter where it was, city or wilderness. It was the first time this kind of bombing campaign was ever attempted, both city or wilderness, anywhere. Some generals thought this would win the war. It was, in the end, one of the most useful military experiments ever done, because it made supplying the front one of the most expensive exercises and risks for the Axis ever. Sort of like crossing the Med was in the last months of Africa. It did exactly what they wanted it to do, so it didn't really even have mixed results, the thing is, the army was still there. Hence, the concept of boots on the ground and no military ever getting past its need for it because it was going to come down to a fight.

Stop focusing on the three or four cities you want to focus on, because the bombing campaign of the Second World War was so much more than those cities. Stop focusing on the Atomics because the bombing campaign was so much more for all that was the straw that broke the Japanese camel's back. If you want to talk about the effectiveness of allied bombing, you need to actually talk about allied bombing. Not the few cities you don't like the fact that they bombed in attempt to create a biased sample out of the strategy.