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Thread: Why was it okay for America to nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

  1. #141
    Mayer's Avatar Domesticus
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    Default Re: Why was it okay for America to nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

    Quote Originally Posted by 95thrifleman View Post
    Your comments all seem to be just bsed on this petty, jealous concept "we started a total war, the enemy used our tactics and where better at it, MUMMY!"
    False, the german and japanese air forces did not have a doctrine of strategic bombardment or the large multi-engined bombers to execute such a policy.
    Also hasn't your kindergarten teacher ever told you that something wrong doesn't become right, because someone else started it?


    Quote Originally Posted by 95thrifleman View Post
    Also you create the strawman of city bombing to try and say victor's justice was unfair and unequal. The fact is neither Germany nor the Allies considered city bombing to be warcrime. Not a single German was indicted for the bombing of British, French, Russian, Dutch or Polish cities.
    Even the German atrocities against British and American pows and the extensive use of Slavic pows as slave labour has been largely fogotten and ignored by history. The only thing that Germany still gets flak for is the organised, industrial genocide of an entire race of people.
    Your attempts to justify and equate the holocaust to Dresden were telling but ultimately fail.
    We don't talk about all the atrocities against the German pows or the Japanese soldiers(which were often executed on the spot) either.
    Similarly if the axis had won, the Holocaust wouldn't be considered a war crime, but humane killing with gas. You wouldn't be able to scream "Holcaust, war crime on industrial scale, we should kill 4 million germans for it".
    The US had gas chambers too:
    Last edited by Mayer; February 22, 2019 at 10:30 AM.
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  2. #142

    Default Re: Why was it okay for America to nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

    Possession is nine tenths, most particularly after the sell by date.

    If you want stolen property returned, you need leverage, and regardless of how liberal minded and charitable most people are, it's not going to happen, whether it takes the form of public opinion, or a foreign Peacekeeping Force.
    Eats, shoots, and leaves.

  3. #143
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    Default Re: Why was it okay for America to nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

    Even the German atrocities against British and American pows and the extensive use of Slavic pows as slave labour has been largely fogotten and ignored by history.
    Thats not true. German Generals of Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS were sentenced for killing of POW. And thats totally justified.

    Not ok is, that US soldiers or british soldiers weren't persecuted for doing the same with german POW.

    United States:

    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

    • Laconia incident: US aircraft attacking Germans rescuing the sinking British troopship in the Atlantic Ocean. For example, the pilots of a United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) B-24 Liberator bomber, despite knowing the U-boat's location, intentions, and the presence of British seamen, killed dozens of Laconia 's survivors with bombs and strafing attacks, forcing U-156 to cast their remaining survivors into the sea and crash dive to avoid being destroyed.
    • Unrestricted submarine warfare. Fleet Admiral Nimitz, the wartime commander-in-chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, provided unapologetic written testimony on Karl Dönitz's behalf at his trial that the U.S. Navy had waged unrestricted submarine warfare in the Pacific from the very first day the U.S. entered the war.
    • Canicattì massacre: killing of Italian civilians by Lieutenant Colonel McCaffrey. A confidential inquiry was made, but McCaffrey was never charged with an offense relating to the incident. He died in 1954. This incident remained virtually unknown until Joseph S. Salemi of New York University, whose father witnessed it, publicized it.[12][13]
    • In the Biscari massacre, which consists of two instances of mass murders, US troops of the 45th Infantry Division killed roughly 75 prisoners of war, mostly Italian.[14][15]
    • Operation Teardrop: Eight of the surviving, captured crewmen from the sunken German submarine U-546 were tortured by US military personnel. Historian Philip K. Lundeberg has written that the beating and torture of U-546's survivors was a singular atrocity motivated by the interrogators' desire to quickly get information on what the U.S. believed were potential cruise missile or ballistic missile attacks on the continental US by German submarines.[16][17]
    • The Dachau liberation reprisals: Upon the liberation of Dachau concentration camp, about a dozen guards in the camp were shot by a machine gunner who was guarding them. Other soldiers of the 3rd Battalion, 157th Infantry Regiment, of the US 45th (Thunderbird) Division killed other guards who resisted. In all, about 30 were killed, according to the commanding officer Felix L. Sparks.[18][19] Later, Colonel Howard Buechner wrote that more than 500 were killed.[20][21]
    • Near the French village of Audouville-la-Hubert, 30 German Wehrmacht prisoners (probably German Army soldiers) were killed by U.S. paratroopers.[22]
    • In the aftermath of the Malmedy massacre, a written order from the HQ of the 328th US Army Infantry Regiment, dated 21 December 1944, stated: No SS troops or paratroopers will be taken prisoner but will be shot on sight.[23] Major-General Raymond Hufft (US Army) gave instructions to his troops not to take prisoners when they crossed the Rhine in 1945. "After the war, when he reflected on the war crimes he authorized, he admitted, 'if the Germans had won, I would have been on trial at Nuremberg instead of them.'"[24] Stephen Ambrose related: "I've interviewed well over 1000 combat veterans. Only one of them said he shot a prisoner ... Perhaps as many as one-third of the veterans ... however, related incidents in which they saw other GIs shooting unarmed German prisoners who had their hands up."[25]
    • Secret wartime files made public only in 2006 reveal that American GIs committed 400 sexual offenses in Europe, including 126 rapes in England, between 1942 and 1945.[26] A study by Robert J. Lilly estimates that a total of 14,000 civilian women in England, France and Germany were raped by American GIs during World War II.[27][28] It is estimated that there were around 3,500 rapes by American servicemen in France between June 1944 and the end of the war and one historian has claimed that sexual violence against women in liberated France was common.[29]
    • On April 22, 1945 American soldiers killed several Waffen SS soldiers who had been taken prisoners of war in the German town of Lippach. Members of the same unit are also alleged to have raped 20 women in the town.[30]


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied...#United_States

    Chenogne Massacre:

    The Chenogne massacre was a war crime alleged to have been committed by members of the 11th Armored Division, an American combat unit, near Chenogne, Belgium, on January 1, 1945 (shortly after the Malmedy massacre), during the Battle of the Bulge. According to eyewitness accounts, an estimated 80 German prisoners of war were massacred by their American captors: the prisoners were assembled in a field and shot with machine guns. It was one of several war crimes which were, or are alleged to have been, committed during the Battle of the Bulge by members of both Allied and Axis forces.[citation needed]

    The events were covered up at the time and none of the perpetrators was ever punished. Post war historians believe the killings were based on senior commanders giving verbal orders that "no prisoners were to be taken".[1]

    Background

    On December 17, 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge, soldiers from the Waffen-SS gunned down 80 American prisoners at the Baugnez crossroads near the town of Malmedy. When news of the killings spread among American forces, it aroused great anger among front line troops. One American unit issued orders: "No SS troops or paratroopers will be taken prisoners but will be shot on sight." Given this background, the killings could be considered an act of reprisal. [2][3]

    At Chenogne, the prisoners of war killed were members of the Führerbegleitbrigade and 3rd Panzergrenadier Division, not SS.[4]

    Eyewitness

    S/Sgt. John W. Fague of B Company, 21st Armored Infantry Battalion (of the 11th Armored Division), in action near Chenogne describes American troops killing German prisoners:
    Some of the boys had some prisoners line up. I knew they were going to shoot them, and I hated this business.... They marched the prisoners back up the hill to murder them with the rest of the prisoners we had secured that morning.... As we were going up the hill out of town, I know some of our boys were lining up German prisoners in the fields on both sides of the road. There must have been 25 or 30 German boys in each group. Machine guns were being set up. These boys were to be machine gunned and murdered. We were committing the same crimes we were now accusing the Japs and Germans of doing.... Going back down the road into town I looked into the fields where the German boys had been shot. Dark lifeless forms lay in the snow.[5]
    Cover-up

    The official post-war history published by the United States government states that while "it is probable that Germans who attempted to surrender in the days immediately after the 17th ran a greater risk" of being killed than earlier in the year, even so, "there is no evidence... that American troops took advantage of orders, implicit or explicit, to kill their SS prisoners."[6] However, according to George Henry Bennett and referring to the above statement; "The caveat is a little disingenuous", and he proceeds to note that it is likely the orders to shoot prisoners (given by the 328th Infantry regiment) were carried out, and that other US regiments were likely also given similar orders.[7] But the killing of SS prisoners had become routine at the time for some units. The 90th Infantry Division at the Saar "executed Waffen-SS prisoners in such a systematic manner late in December 1944 that headquarters had to issue express orders to take Waffen-SS soldiers alive so as to be able to obtain information from them".[8]


    In July 2018, KQED-FM radio aired an episode of Reveal series called "Take No Prisoners: Inside a WWII American War Crime" in which Chris Harland-Dunaway investigated the Chenogne massacre. According to his sources, US soldiers shot about 80 German soldiers after they had surrendered (roughly one for each killed in the Malmedy massacre).[9]. Harland-Dunaway refers to General George S. Patton's diary in which the latter confirms that the Americans "...also murdered 50 odd German med [sic]. I hope we can conceal this".[10]
    According to a declassified file Harland-Dunaway got access to, a soldier named Max Cohen described seeing roughly 70 German prisoners machinegunned by the 11th Armored Division in Chenogne. Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force General Dwight D. Eisenhower demanded a full investigation, but the 11th Armored were uncooperative, saying "it's too late; the war is over, the units are disbanded." Ben Ferencz, an American lawyer who served as a prosecutor at the Nuremberg Tribunal, upon acquainting himself with the declassified report said: "it smells to me like a cover-up, of course."[9]


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chenogne_massacre


    Ike was honorable man which is his failed try to investigate this.


    UK:

    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
    On 4 May 1940, in response to Germany's intensive unrestricted submarine warfare, during the Battle of the Atlantic and its invasion of Denmark and Norway, the Royal Navy conducted its own unrestricted submarine campaign. The Admiralty announced that all vessels in the Skagerrak, were to be sunk on sight without warning. This was contrary to the terms of the Second London Naval Treaty.[36][37]
    In July 1941, the submarine HMS Torbay (under the command of Anthony Miers) was based in the Mediterranean where it sank several German ships. On two occasions, once off the coast of Alexandria, Egypt, and the other off the coast of Crete, the crew attacked and killed dozens of shipwrecked German sailors and troops. None of the shipwrecked survivors posed a major threat to Torbay's crew. Miers made no attempt to hide his actions, and reported them in his official logs. He received a strongly worded reprimand from his superiors following the first incident. Mier's actions violated the Hague Convention of 1907, which banned the killing of shipwreck survivors under any circumstances.[38][39]
    During Operation Overlord, British line of communication troops conducted small-scale looting in Bayeux and Caen in France, following their liberation, in violation of the Hague Conventions.[40] Looting, rape, and prisoner execution was committed by British soldiers in a smaller scale than other armies throughout the war.[41] On 23 May 1945, British troops in Schleswig-Holstein were alleged to have plundered Glücksburg castle, stealing jewellery, and desecrating 38 coffins from the castle's mausoleum.[42]
    The "London Cage", a MI19 prisoner of war facility in the UK during and immediately after the war, was subject to allegations of torture.[43] The Bad Nenndorf interrogation centre in occupied Germany, managed by the Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre, was the subject of an official inquiry in 1947, which found that there was "mental and physical torture during the interrogations" and that "personal property of the prisoners were stolen".[44]
    The Italian statistics record eight rapes and nineteen attempted rape by British soldiers in Italy between September 1943 and December 1945. Various sources, including the Special Investigation Branch as well as evidences from Belgian reporters, said that rape and sexual harassment by British troops occurred frequently following the invasion of Sicily in 1943.[45] In Germany, rapes of local women were committed by British and Canadian troops.[citation needed] Even elderly women were targeted.[citation needed] Though the Royal Military Police tended to turn a blind eye towards abuse of German prisoners and civilians, rape was a major issue for them. Some officers, however, treated the behaviour of their men with leniency. Many rapes were committed under the effects of alcohol or post-traumatic stress,[citation needed] but there were cases of premeditated attacks,[citation needed] like the assault on three German women in the town of Neustadt am Rübenberge or the attempted gang-rape of two local girls at gunpoint in the village of Oyle, near Nienburg, which ended in the death of one of the women when, whether intentionally or not, one of the soldiers discharged his gun, hitting her in the neck.[46] There were also reports of "sexual assault and indecency" committed by British soldiers against children in Belgium and the Netherlands, when a number of men were convicted of these crimes while fraternizing with Dutch and Belgian families during the winter of 1944–1945.[46]


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied...United_Kingdom


    Canada:

    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
    The Razing of Friesoythe took place on 14 April 1945 during the Western Allies' invasion of Germany towards the end of World War II. In early April, the 4th Canadian (Armoured) Division, advancing into north-west Germany, attacked the German town of Friesoythe. The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders of Canada captured the town. During the fighting the battalion's commander was killed by a German soldier and it was rumoured that he had been killed by a civilian.

    Under this mistaken belief the division's commander, Major General Christopher Vokes, ordered that the town be razed in retaliation and it was substantially destroyed. The rubble was used to fill craters in local roads to make them passable for the division's tanks and heavy vehicles. A few days earlier the division had destroyed the centre of Sögel in another reprisal and also used the rubble to make the roads passable.
    Little official notice was taken of the incident and the official history glosses over it. It is covered in the regimental histories of the units involved and several accounts of the campaign. Forty years afterwards, Vokes wrote in his autobiography that he had "no great remorse over the elimination of Friesoythe". There has been no investigation by Canadian authorities of the event.

    Context

    In early April 1945 the 4th Canadian (Armoured) Division, part of II Canadian Corps, moved out of the eastern Netherlands as the Western Allies launched their invasion of Germany in the wake of the crossing of the Rhine in Operation Plunder. The Canadian official history described the circumstances as buoyant as it was recognised that the end of World War II in Europe was close.[1] On 4 April, the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders of Canada, part of the 4th Canadian (Armoured) Division, made an assault crossing of the Ems river and captured the town of Meppen, suffering only one casualty. German prisoners included several 17-year-old youths with less than eight weeks military experience.[2]


    Battle for Sögel

    The division advanced a further 25 kilometres (16 mi) to Sögel, which the Lake Superior Regiment (Motor) captured on 9 April. The following day it repulsed several German counter-attacks before the town was declared cleared.[3][4] Some German civilians joined the fighting and were believed to have killed several Canadian soldiers. Major General Christopher Vokes, the divisional commander, believing the civilians needed to be taught a lesson, ordered the destruction of the centre of the town.[5] This was accomplished with several truck-loads of dynamite. Soldiers of the division started referring to Vokes as "The Sod of Sögel".[6]
    Investigation established that German civilians had taken part in this fighting and had been responsible for the loss of Canadian lives. Accordingly, as a reprisal and a warning, a number of houses in the centre of Sögel were ordered destroyed by the engineers to provide rubble.

    — The Victory Campaign, C. P. Stacey (1960)[4]
    Battle for Friesoythe

    The Canadian advance continued across the Westphalian Lowland, reaching a strategic crossroads on the outskirts of Friesoythe on 13 April. As it was early spring the ground was sodden and heavy vehicles could not operate off the main roads.[4] This made Friesoythe, 20 miles (32 km) west of Oldenburg, on the river Soeste, a potential bottleneck. If the Germans were to hold it, the bulk of the Canadians would not be able to continue their advance.[7] Most of the population of 4,000 had evacuated to the countryside on 11–12 April.[Note 1] Several hundred paratroopers from Battalion Raabe of the 7th Parachute Division and a number of anti-tank guns defended the town.[7][8] The paratroopers repelled the first attack by the Lake Superior Regiment, which suffered a number of killed and wounded; German casualties are unknown.[9]

    Vokes ordered the resumption of the attack by the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders (Lieutenant-Colonel Frederick E. Wigle). The Argylls conducted a flanking night march and launched a dawn attack on 14 April. The attack met only scattered resistance from a disorganized garrison and the Argylls secured the town by 10:30 a.m. During the attack, a small number of German soldiers caught Wigle's tactical headquarters by surprise at around 8:30 a.m. A firefight broke out, resulting in the death of Wigle and several other soldiers. A rumour circulated that a local civilian had shot Wigle.[10][11][12]

    Destruction of Friesoythe


    Vokes was furious when he heard of Wigle's death and wrote in his autobiography "A first-rate officer of mine, for whom I had a special regard and affection, and in whom I had a particular professional interest because of his talent for command, was killed. Not merely killed, it was reported to me, but sniped in the back". Vokes wrote "I summoned my GSO1... 'Mac,' I roared at him, 'I'm going to raze that goddam town. Tell 'em we're going to level the ing place. Get the people the hell out of their houses first.'"[6][13]

    The Argylls had spontaneously begun to burn Friesoythe in reprisal for the death of their colonel.[14] After Vokes issued his order, the town was systematically set on fire with flamethrowers mounted on Wasp Carriers. Other soldiers fanned out down side streets, throwing phosphorus grenades or improvised Molotov cocktails made from petrol containers into buildings. The attack continued for over eight hours and Friesoy was almost totally destroyed.[10] As the commanding officer of The Algonquin Regiment later wrote, "the raging Highlanders cleared the remainder of that town as no town has been cleared for centuries, we venture to say".[15] The war diary of the 4th Canadian Armoured Brigade records, "when darkness fell Friesoythe was a reasonable facsimile of Dante's Inferno".[16]

    The Canadian official history volume states that Friesoythe "was set on fire in a mistaken reprisal".[17] The rubble was used to reinforce the local roads for the division's tanks, which had been unable to move up due to the roads near the town being badly cratered.[18][19]
    Several attempts were made to find passable roads to carry the vehicles, but the main highway between Cloppenburg and Friesoythe was seriously cratered near the latter town, and the small roads would not stand up to the traffic.[18]
    Civilian casualties and damage

    During the fighting around Friesoythe and aftermath, ten civilians from the town and another ten from the surrounding villages were killed.[20] There were reports of civilians lying dead in the streets.[10] According to one German assessment, 85–90 per cent of the town was destroyed during the reprisal.[21] The Brockhaus Enzyklopaedie, estimated the destruction to be as high as 90 per cent. The town's website records that of 381 houses in the town proper, 231 were destroyed and another 30 badly damaged.[20] A few days later, a Canadian nurse wrote home that the convent on the edge of town was the only building left standing.[22] In the suburb of Altenoythe, 120 houses and 110 other buildings were destroyed.[20] In 2010, Mark Zuehlk suggested that, "Not all of Friesoythe was burnt, but its centre was destroyed".[16]


    Aftermath

    The Argyll's war diary made no mention of their afternoon's activity, noting in passing that "many fires were raging". There is no record of the deliberate destruction at division, corps or army level.[16] The war diary of the division's 8th Anti-Aircraft Regiment records "the Argylls were attacked in that town yesterday by German forces assisted by civilians and today the whole town is being systematically razed. A stern atonement ..."[16] On 16 April the Lincoln and Welland Regiment attacked Garrel, 10 miles (16 km) south-west of Friedsoythe. After a German act of perfidy the mayor surrendered the town but the first tank to enter was destroyed by a panzerfaust the battalion commander, Wigle's brother-in-law, ordered that "every building which did not show a white flag be fired".[24] In the event the village was spared.[25]

    The Canadian army official historian, Colonel Charles Stacey visited Friesoythe on 15 April and in the Canadian Army official history, "There is no record of how this [destruction] came about" (1960).[16][26] Stacey commented in 1982 in his memoirs that the only time he saw what could be considered a war crime committed by Canadian soldiers was when
    ... at Friesoythe, the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders of Canada of this division lost their popular commanding officer... as a result a great part of the town of Friesoythe was set on fire in a mistaken reprisal. This unfortunate episode only came to my notice and thus got into the pages of history because I was in Friesoythe at the time and saw people being turned out of their houses and the houses burned. How painfully easy it is for the business of "reprisals" to get out of hand!

    — Charles Stacey[27][Note 2]
    After the war the Vokes said, referring to a discussion with the Canadian High Commissioner in London regarding the sentencing of convicted German war criminal Kurt Meyer, "I told them of Sögel and Friesoythe and of the prisoners and civilians that my troops had killed in Italy and Northwest Europe".[6] Vokes commented in his autobiography, written forty years after the event, that he had "[a] feeling of no great remorse over the elimination of Friesoythe. Be that as it may".[6][28] The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders was awarded the battle honour "Friesoythe", as were The Lake Superior Regiment (Motor) and The Lincoln and Welland Regiment.[29] There was no investigation by Canadian authorities of the damage or the civilian casualties. In 2010, Mark Zuehlke wrote "No evidence of a deliberate cover up exists".[16]

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razing_of_Friesoythe


    The fighting civilians in Sögel were very probably "Volkssturm", old man and young youths in many cases without proper uniforms.


    The killing of western pows was not the norm. It were the deeds of some ultra fanatics, "200 %" germans.

    The massmurder of soviet pows on the other hand were in line with the planned nazi conquest of "Lebensraum Ost".

    And the convictions of german generals because of war crimes are totally justified, but left a sour taste because of closing both eyes in front of own war crimes.

    So german neonazis can rant till today about "injustice of Nuremberg" and "victory justice".

    @Mayer: If i read your posts, i become purple because of being ashamed as german.
    Last edited by Morticia Iunia Bruti; February 22, 2019 at 12:18 PM. Reason: added "as german"
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  4. #144
    Mayer's Avatar Domesticus
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    Default Re: Why was it okay for America to nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

    Quote Originally Posted by Harley_Quinn View Post
    Thats not true. German Generals of Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS were sentenced for killing of POW. And thats totally justified.

    Not ok is, that US soldiers or british soldiers weren't persecuted for doing the same with german POW.
    I agree

    Quote Originally Posted by Harley_Quinn View Post
    @Mayer: If i read your posts, i become purple because of being ashamed.
    Why should you? The others are not ashamed either
    The only thing 95thrifleman has convinced me of, is more evidence that our culture of guilt is wrong and biased.
    HATE SPEECH ISN'T REAL

  5. #145
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    Default Re: Why was it okay for America to nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

    @mayer: Ever been in Auschwitz?

  6. #146

    Default Re: Why was it okay for America to nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

    Offer of surrender.
    "The Japanese Government are ready to accept the terms enumerated in the joint declaration which was issued at Potsdam on July 26th, 1945, by the heads of the Governments of the United States, Great Britain, and China, and later subscribed to by the Soviet Government, with the understanding that the said declaration does not comprise any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as a Sovereign Ruler."

    Before the US chose to acept that, it again read latest the MAGIC intel:
    "You are well aware of the fact that as a final move toward the presavation of the national structure[ie the Emperor and Imperial system], diplomatic negotiations have been opened.....unless the aforementioned condition is fulfilled, we will continue the war to the bitter end"

    Note the SU entry and the use of nukes made no difference to the sanctity of the Emperor.

    Byrnes replied
    "The ultimate form of government of Japan shall, in accordance with the Potsdam Declaration, be established by the freely expressed will of the Japanese people".

    Japan had its assurance for the Emp and surrendered.


    Prompt and Utter Destruction: Truman and the Use of Atomic Bombs Against Japan


    Samuel Walker "The Japanese agreed to surrender on the sole condition that the emperor be retained. The terminology did not say constitutional monarch, but there was nothing in there about him retaining the prerogatives of his office as there was before. On that basis the war ended."

    "The invasion was not going to begin until on or around November 1, and a lot of could’ve happened between August and November of 1945. Also the view that if an invasion had been necessary, it would’ve cost hundreds of thousands of lives: there’s simply no contemporaneous evidence that supports that argument. It was made after the war as a means to justify the use of the bomb against a really small number of critics, who in the late ‘40s, early ‘50s, were saying that perhaps the bomb wasn’t necessary. It’s also beyond question that the invasion was not inevitable. I mean, the idea that Truman had to use the bomb because if he didn’t the only other option was an invasion is simply wrong. So, the traditional view in its pure form, that Truman used the bomb to avoid an invasion, simply doesn’t hold up."



    "No one in a position of authority or knowledge, and certainly not his chief and military advisors, told him in the summer of 1945 that if you don’t use the bomb, an invasion is inevitable and it’s going to cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Estimates for lives lost that were projected by military experts in the summer of 1945 were far less than that, and the numbers are far from hard evidence. But there’s no evidence whatsoever that he was ever told that hundreds of thousands of lives would be the cost of an invasion of Japan. That was something that came about later."


    "The fundamental question is, Was the bomb necessary? In view of the evidence now available, the answer is yes and no. Yes, the bomb was necessary to end the war at the earliest possible moment. And yes, the bomb was necessary to save the lives of American troops, perhaps numbering in the several thousands. But no, the bomb was probably not necessary to end the war within a fairly short time without an invasion of Japan. And no, the bomb was not necessary to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of American troops"


    https://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlest ... ssonID=475

    Harry S. Truman Library & Museum teaching class.

  7. #147

    Default Re: Why was it okay for America to nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

    Quote Originally Posted by Just answer the question View Post
    Why don't you do it again?
    Why would we want to? They got the message the first time around.

  8. #148

    Default Re: Why was it okay for America to nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

    [QUOTE=Mayer;15748687
    The only thing 95thrifleman has convinced me of, is more evidence that our culture of guilt is wrong and biased.[/QUOTE]

    Now this is interesting, something we agree on.

    I don't feel the Germans should have a culture of guilt. You guys started a war, murdered 6 million Jews and paid for it. Your nation was flattened, cut into two and the men responsible where (mostly) tried and convicted.

    Germany ed up and paid for it. They shouldn't be made to feel eternaly guilty, especialy generations born decades afterwards.

  9. #149

    Default Re: Why was it okay for America to nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

    I doubt that American Military Intelligence could predict exactly how any mass invasion of the Japanese Home islands was going to be like, as they would have heard about instructions to all the Japanese people to resist, even if they just picked up a bamboo spear, but it had the potential to be a bloodbath, possibly on both sides.

    And if you could coach a kid to to take a bomb to the invaders and blow themselves up, something that has happened in West Africa and Afghanistan, options tend to narrow.
    Eats, shoots, and leaves.

  10. #150

    Default Re: Why was it okay for America to nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

    Quote Originally Posted by 95thrifleman View Post
    Why would we want to? They got the message the first time around.
    Maybe they forgot the message and need to be taught again.

  11. #151

    Default Re: Why was it okay for America to nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

    Quote Originally Posted by 95thrifleman View Post
    Germany ed up and paid for it. They shouldn't be made to feel eternaly guilty, especialy generations born decades afterwards.
    America has ed up as well, how come they have never paid for it?

  12. #152
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    Default Re: Why was it okay for America to nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

    Quote Originally Posted by Just answer the question View Post
    Why don't you do it again?
    Yeah this thread is pretty crap. Just railing at the US for some poorly framed false equivalenicies is not a conversation, it's just yelling. Not undstanding the answers isn't Socratic, it's just juvenile.

    If the question is "are states hypocritical in the application of moral standards?" the answer is duh. If you are confused by loyalty, chauvinism, double standards, well maturity and experience may bring the context for grasping the complexity of adult life.
    Jatte lambastes Calico Rat

  13. #153

    Default Re: Why was it okay for America to nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

    Quote Originally Posted by Cyclops View Post
    If the question is "are states hypocritical in the application of moral standards?" the answer is duh.
    I don't ask questions with obvious answers and I am sick and tired of people whining about their problems; I've already heard the problems, now I want to talk about the solutions and I believe that's more mature than complaining.

  14. #154

    Default Re: Why was it okay for America to nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

    Quote Originally Posted by Just answer the question View Post
    Maybe they forgot the message and need to be taught again.
    You don't even know what the message was. You have no interest or knowledge of history just a rabid anti-american bias.

  15. #155

    Default Re: Why was it okay for America to nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

    Quote Originally Posted by Just answer the question View Post
    America has ed up as well, how come they have never paid for it?
    They have done, just not in the ways you want them to.

  16. #156

    Default Re: Why was it okay for America to nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

    Post war the US made it a crime against humanity to bring the people to the ovens, but it was ok to bring the ovens to the people.

  17. #157
    conon394's Avatar hoi polloi
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    Default Re: Why was it okay for America to nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

    America has ed up as well, how come they have never paid for it?
    You head the answer already. You don't pay until you loose so badly somebody can dictate terms to you. The US likely came close in 1812. Britain was tired and the US manged some really good naval building and winning battles on the Great Lakes (and a privateer campaigner that is unheralded and was causing havoc for British shipping insures). If more roused for war and if fortune favored the crown in the Northwest territories its not inconceivable that the British could taken them. And likely Maine and the US might have ended bottle up in more or less its early boarders. By the US walked by the grave with little thought of that. In any case again the answer is in your other thread. The and UK and USSR did not loose WW2 and thus their actions are by definition OK. Why were the Thirty tyrants at Athens potentially subjected to trial and execution. Because they lost a civil war to Thrasybulus and his democratic followers.

    Why try something more productive. Take Aeschylus' famous dictum from the Oresteia 'Better than Worse in the eyes of fair judge' Now apply that to the US and all great powers from 1492 onward (seems fair since you do like go on about land stolen from First Nations. Now score them all rationally and dispassionately - both good and bad. Use real sources step away from the internet rant crack. Be thorough.

    Actually 95thrifleman is right. Combine the collapse of the USSR with the the budget state the US was in under Clinton the US had tremendous room for actions and or investing in itself effectively and acting in the world. The Iraq war blunder has cost the US vastly not just in blood and treasure, but in reputation and lose of credibility on the world stage. Trump is a corrupt buffoon who is eroding the norms of government with his crew of corrupt grifters, but I think in retrospect George Bush Jr will be seen as a worse president in terms of what he cost the US (assuming Trump only lasts one term)
    Last edited by conon394; February 23, 2019 at 07:17 AM.
    IN PATROCINIVM SVB Dromikaites

    'One day when I fly with my hands - up down the sky, like a bird'

    But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at such a place; some swearing, some crying for surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left.

    Hyperides of Athens: We know, replied he, that Antipater is good, but we (the Demos of Athens) have no need of a master at present, even a good one.

  18. #158

    Default Re: Why was it okay for America to nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

    Quote Originally Posted by conon394 View Post
    You head the answer already. You don't pay until you loose so badly somebody can dictate terms to you.
    Yeah, I know that, my question is, why hasn't the world made you loose so badly somebody can dictate terms to you?

    In fact, I'm going to ask that tomorrow maybe.

  19. #159
    Morticia Iunia Bruti's Avatar Praeses
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    Default Re: Why was it okay for America to nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

    Bush junior is Claudius, Trump is now Caligula, but could become Nero.^^
    Cause tomorrow is a brand-new day
    And tomorrow you'll be on your way
    Don't give a damn about what other people say
    Because tomorrow is a brand-new day


  20. #160

    Default Re: Why was it okay for America to nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

    Quote Originally Posted by 95thrifleman View Post
    They have done, just not in the ways you want them to.
    How?

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