Were The A-Bombs Justified?

[Dogmeat]

The atomic bombs were justified just as firebombing was. If you want a single unjust act look at what China did. Millions of innocent Chinese civilians murdered by the Chinese government with no particular strategic gains. Naturally when you read about Chinese casualties this atrocity is pinned on Japan.

Actually it's normally pinned on the Kuomintang Chinese Nationalists. This is important, because a big part of the supposed legitimacy of the Chinese Communists rests on the illegitimacy of the Kuomintang.

I'll further say that the firebombing was certainly not justified, because it was demonstrated by American reconnaissance to not be achieving its primary aim. And yet it was continued.

[Sovaal]

The atomic bombs were justified just as firebombing was. If you want a single unjust act look at what China did. Millions of innocent Chinese civilians murdered by the Chinese government with no particular strategic gains. Naturally when you read about Chinese casualties this atrocity is pinned on Japan.

Actually it's normally pinned on the Kuomintang Chinese Nationalists. This is important, because a big part of the supposed legitimacy of the Chinese Communists rests on the illegitimacy of the Kuomintang.

I'll further say that the firebombing was certainly not justified, because it was demonstrated by American reconnaissance to not be achieving its primary aim. And yet it was continued.

Then pretty much nothing the US was doing to Japan up to the bombs where justified because they weren't reaching their primary aim.

[Oil exporting People]

So in other words, you admit your original claim was false.

I said most likely as I have no evidence. But considering that the US was a racist shithole back in the days. With Jim Crow laws and segregation it is not plausible to assume the Americans dropped the a-bomb for racist reasons.

This literally makes no sense.

[Dogmeat]

Actually it's normally pinned on the Kuomintang Chinese Nationalists. This is important, because a big part of the supposed legitimacy of the Chinese Communists rests on the illegitimacy of the Kuomintang.

I'll further say that the firebombing was certainly not justified, because it was demonstrated by American reconnaissance to not be achieving its primary aim. And yet it was continued.

Then pretty much nothing the US was doing to Japan up to the bombs where unjustified because they weren't reaching their primary aim.

Ugh. No.

Japanese factories were (relatively speaking) hardened structures. So it was figured that it would be easier to kill the workers who operated the factories in their nearby homes, then it would be to destroy the factories. This was the aim of the firebombing. It might have worked under normal circumstances, but the US attacks on Japanese convoys had created enormous supply shortages, which caused huge numbers of workers is less vital industries to be laid off. And the Japanese simply shipped these workers in to replace the dead ones.

American air reconnaissance demonstrated that the factories were not slowing production as a result of the firebombing, and yet it was continued.

[Sovaal]

Then pretty much nothing the US was doing to Japan up to the bombs where unjustified because they weren't reaching their primary aim.

Ugh. No.

Japanese factories were (relatively speaking) hardened structures. So it was figured that it would be easier to kill the workers who operated the factories in their nearby homes, then it would be to destroy the factories. This was the aim of the firebombing. It have worked under normal circumstances, but the US attacks on Japanese convoys had created enormous supply shortages, which caused huge numbers of workers is less vital industries to be laid off. And the Japanese simply shipped them in to replace the dead ones.

American air reconnaissance demonstrated that the factories were not slowing production as a result of the firebombing, and yet it was continued.

I'm not talking about the firebombings, I'm talking about the blockade of Japan, of which the primary aim was to force them to surrender yet the Japanese decided to keep on fighting despite the fact that they where on the brink of famine.

[Dogmeat]

Ugh. No.

Japanese factories were (relatively speaking) hardened structures. So it was figured that it would be easier to kill the workers who operated the factories in their nearby homes, then it would be to destroy the factories. This was the aim of the firebombing. It have worked under normal circumstances, but the US attacks on Japanese convoys had created enormous supply shortages, which caused huge numbers of workers is less vital industries to be laid off. And the Japanese simply shipped them in to replace the dead ones.

American air reconnaissance demonstrated that the factories were not slowing production as a result of the firebombing, and yet it was continued.

I'm not talking about the firebombings, I'm talking about the blockade of Japan, of which the primary aim was to force them to surrender yet the Japanese decided to keep on fighting despite the fact that they where on the brink of famine.

Well, I was talking about the firebombings. Which I will contend were less justified then the use of nuclear weapons.

[Oil exporting People]

Also, I should note at this point that the entire plan for invading Japan was probably about to be abandoned; the Navy and Army Air were coming out against it in favor of blockade and bombing, while MacArthur's estimates were being exposed as forgeries to lend support to his desire to do the invasion. Operations against Taiwan, Korea, and port cities in China as well as general Commonwealth operations in Southeast Asia were being planned/carried/proposed regardless and in place of Olympic and probably would've been carried out instead. With that said, the point still stands that bombing the ever living shit out of the Japanese with atomics was far better than allowing this to come to pass, as the 1945 rice harvest was already looking to be one of the worst in the modern era and that's without the crops being directly attacked with chemicals as was planned as well as attacking the transportation network which too was planned; the end result of this efforts would've been massive starvation, especially since the blockade had, as others have noted, become total at this point.

[Pope Joan]

Graveyard of the Fireflies is a moving film about life for young people in Japan at that time.

From their perspective the bomb was a horror but so was the protracted war, slow starvation, erosion of infrastructure, degradation of social and economic conditions.

[Dogmeat]

Graveyard of the Fireflies is a moving film about life for young people in Japan at that time.

From their perspective the bomb was a horror but so was the protracted war, slow starvation, erosion of infrastructure, degradation of social and economic conditions.

NO! Never again.

Just watch In This Corner of the World. It's just as good, and you won't have to go to therapy afterwards.

[The Foxes Swamp]

no

[Shofercia]

What's hard for me to grasp is that you quoted "muh hobby wargamer" and you're lividly demanding that I accept "muh hobby wargamer" as the truth and the light. I find this to be rather hilarious. It's also why I can no longer take you seriously. The other point that I am repeatedly making, is that the article doesn't repudiate the point that the Soviets advanced quite a bit, prior to the surrender, while losing less than one percent of the armed forces. There's nothing stating that said pace of advance couldn't continue, had there been no surrender.

The only person that's brought up "wargamer" is you,

From the actual article:

"...with my background in both professional and hobby wargaming, I am particularly focused..."

that's page 97. Of your very own source. You do read your sources, right Oil Exporting People? In this thread you've failed at math, at logic, are you failing at reading too?

namely because you have to characterize it as such to hide the fight the author in question has a PhD from King's College in London

The article you cited was written in 2014. His PhD dissertation research was submitted in 2017. Why must you continue to humiliate yourself, Oil Exporting People? Do you not understand that first comes 2014, then 2015, then 2016, and then 2017? Do you want me to explain how temporal issues affect History?

and the article in question was peer reviewed by a team of historians, also with PhDs, for publishing in the Royal Swedish Academy of War Science Proceedings and Journal.

Wow, you italicized and bolded it. Well clearly, if an online poster bolds and italicizes something, on NSG, that just becomes law /sarcasm. You didn't actually source the peer reviews.

Now, we've already established you don't understand what peer review is,

You haven't established jack shit, aside from your pathetic attempt to claim that 1.43 rounds to 2, that was so bad, it wasn't even funny. It was fake news.

but to be clear that means people who actually have qualifications to know what they are talking about as opposed to you.

And so, after claiming that his 2017 PhD was somehow relevant to his 2014 article, you're now devolving to name calling. I am beginning to understand how Donald Trump felt when he was debating Marco Rubio.

It's also clear you don't understand what the "Wargammer" bit is, which you somewhat laughably believe is somehow related to boardgames. Allow me to correct your ignornance on the matter via this article from the RAND corporation.

I have no idea what Wargammer is. I know what wargaming is, considering that I've cited Lt. Gen. Paul van Riper, (see how my sources are generals and colonels rather than PhD candidates and wargamers, excuse me, wargammers,) several times on NSG.

It's also extremely telling to everyone who has read this debate so far has been the fact that you've attacked the author, not the source.

The source stated:

"...with my background in both professional and hobby wargaming, I am particularly focused..."

That's from the source. That's what I've been attacking. If you fail at reading comprehension of your very own source, Oil Exporting People, that's on you, not on me. Although it is hilarious that you are so desperate, that you had to resort to banal hypocrisy, by whining that I'm attacking the author, not the comments, while attacking me. The fact that I'm attacking a direct quote from your source, only adds to your humiliation.

Accept the fact you're wrong because people who actually have the intellectual abilities here are saying so; to do otherwise is to make a fool of yourself.

You might want to look into the mirror dear.

Never said I read the entire article. The claim was, and I quote for your reading comprehension needs:



That's not the equivalent of reading the entire thing. And the parts I read was about a guy bragging about "muh hobby wargaming" in a military article. Sometimes reading a part of it is enough.

I posted the article at 4:21, you responded to someone else at 4:23, and then to my post at 4:29.

The claim that I read parts of it came in 4:55. At 4:29 I stated the following: So you're preferring the word of a hobby wargamer over that of a US Intelligence Officer? Desperate much?

That was true. In the article, the author, Johan Elg, admitted that he was a hobby wargamer, at the bottom of page 97. I read that. At the same time, Col. Glantz was a US Army Officer. Even though I took the words directly from you article, you'll now claim something else, because when you're desperate, Oil Exporting People, you just make shit up.

You had absolute zero time to read any major parts of it, and you passed judgement based on that; quite frankly, you pulled that in college classroom you'd be laughed out of the room.

Actually, for those of us with reading comprehension skills, eight minutes is a lot of reading time. It's also rather hilarious that you think that when I'm responding to people on NSG, that's all I'm doing. You've moved from "muh wargamming historian" to "muh timestamps, yuh timestamps" - which is so sad, that it's hilarious once again.

It's also very fucking telling the story has changed from you claiming you responded at 4:55 to imply you had read lots of it to now going back and saying you just read parts of it.

Actually, at 4:55, I said that I read parts of it. Here's the actual quote:

I read parts of it, and it's making excuses, while imagining a grand conspiracy between the USSR and the US during the Cold War to pretend that the Red Army was greater than it actually was. You're going to need a tad more than "aliens" to convince not to trust Glantz. It whines about Japanese being demoralized by surrender, but fails to explain the rapid Soviet advance prior to surrender. It speaks in platitudes, like pointing out that shock value is first worn off at the tactical level. It's a joke.

You've lied repeatedly on this point, and we both damn well know it.

By saying that I read parts of it, and quoting a post saying that I read parts of it, I'm now not somehow being honest. Damn. Like I said earlier, you sound like you're very 420 friendly in this thread.

I understand how rounding works. I also understand that 1.43 doesn't round to 2. Do you understand how rounding works? Because let's see here, you take 770, divide that by 540, and you get 1.43, which doesn't round to 2. Rounding. It's a math skill. Learn it.

770/450 = 1.7
770/399 = 1.92
770/375 = 2.05
770/500 = 1.54

Reading comprehension is your friend.

Indeed, it is my friend, but it does not appear to be your friend. If you're going to take the highest Soviet casualty estimate, you should also take the highest Nazi casualty estimate. If you're going to take the lowest Soviet casualty estimate, you should also take the lowest Nazi casualty estimate. You haven't been doing that. You've attempted to count only Nazi killed, while counting Soviets killed, wounded and captured, and after I called you out, you've shut up on that point. Good job. According Glantz, Soviet casualty range: 520-770 thousand. According to Glantz, Nazi casualty range: 450-540 thousand.

Using actual numbers, as per the rule of statistical equivalence, we get:

520/450 = 1.16
770/540 = 1.43

Your first estimate takes the highest Soviet casualties and the lowest Nazi casualties. Your second estimate compares Frieser's estimate to Glantz's estimate. The two might have counted POWs differently. It's best to compare Glantz to Glantz to be consistent. Your third estimate compares Zaloga to Glantz. Again, they might've counted casualties differently, specifically missing casualties. Your fourth estimate is actually not what Isaev said, and is bullshit. On the other hand, my estimate compared low counts by Glantz to low counts by Glantz, and high counts by Glantz to high counts by Glantz.

You do realize that if the main reason that the armed forces aren't advancing is because they ran out of gas, means that once they get gas, the advance will continue, and if the only thing that stopped their advance is the lack of gas, then the original plan for advance was successful. You're praising a source that the Red Army bungled the advance based on "muh hobby wargamer" but then admitting that the advance was more successful than expected, because the stop occurred because they ran out of fuel.

Uh, no and this shows how utterly lacking in military knowledge you are. They bungled the logistics so bad they ran out of gas, and how to use surrendered Japanese trains weeks later to secure their objectives; that the operation was that badly supplied and planned reveals it was horribly managed and absolute bungled. They also had yet to score any major victories on the Japanese and were on the hinterlands of Manchuria, which is major because Manchuria is the size of Western Europe.

It seems a bit odd that the very same command cadre who didn't bungle fuel logistics against Nazi Germany, somehow bungled fuel logistics against Imperial Japan. It seems a bit odd that "muh hobby wargamer or wargammer" somehow had more valid intelligence than the US Army Colonel. It seems a bit odd that someone who attempted to count Nazi killed casualties vs all Soviet casualties, who claimed that 1.43 rounds to 2, who cites a 2017 PhD to validate a 2014 article, who didn't even realize that the writer he's citing admitted to being a hobby wargamer on page 97... if only there was something else you lied about, that would really be humiliating for you, Oil Exporting People, wouldn't it? That's coming at the end of the post.

If I was to plan a long trip, and you claimed that my car was in bad shape, and the only reason I stopped was because it ran out of fuel, all I have to do is to wait for AAA to fill up the tank. That doesn't actually mean that the car is in bad shape. Only that I was speeding, and not paying attention to the gas tank. If the armed forces stop an advance for lack of fuel, they wait for fuel to arrive, and continue. This really isn't hard to grasp for those of us who get History from Historians, not "muh hobby wargamers" no matter how Slavic the publican journal was.

It's extremely telling you failed to cite a single city the Soviets took after I dared you to point it out such to me. Here, I'll restate the claim and also extend another opening: name me one, just one, major encirclement the Soviets achieved prior to the surrender. Major herein meaning at the divisional level, preferably two or more divisions.

You failed to cite a single time that your hobby wargamer contradict any of Glantz's specific analysis. You're demanding capture of large cities, but there weren't many in the Soviet path. The distance from Harbin to Russia's border is about 500 kilometers. Soviets advanced, Japanese retreated or dissolved. They didn't put up a fight. You're just jealous that the USSR captured more Japanese POWs in two weeks, than the allies did in four years. It's ok to be jealous.

Also, one last thing, Oil Exporting People:

That article is actually from a peer reviewed journal that used recently declassified Soviet data

Oh really? Is that what the article claims? Because the actual article claims that the problem was that the Japanese bullshitting of the campaign, and actually cites two Japanese sources, both from the time that the USSR was still around, was not given proper weight. It complains that a 1974 Japanese article wasn't translated.

In all of my time on NSG, Oil Exporting People, I have never saw anyone fail as much as you failed in that post. And that's quite a record. To recap:

1. Regarding Operation Bagration Casualties:

Instead of comparing low/high Glantz casualties for Soviets to low/high Glantz casualties for Nazis, you've done almost everything else; you attempted to compare Nazi killed to Soviet killed/wounded/missing, attempted to compare Frieser/Zaloga to Glantz, misquoted Isaev, and Wikipedia having the wrong number is no excuse because the source is linked, and attempted to round 1.43 to 2. Epic Fail Oil Exporting People. Epic Fail.

2. You attempted to use a 2017 PhD dissertation to justify a 2014 article, where the writer admits to hobby wargaming.

3. You whined about me attacking the author, not the article, (even though I was attacking a quote from the article,) and then proceeded to attack me, rather than my quote, thus demonstrating desperate hypocrisy.

4. You claimed that the article uses recently declassified Soviet Data, without mentioning which data was recently declassified; your article, on the other hand, was talking about sources between 1950s and 1974 in Japan, when the USSR was still around.

5. You claimed that there was no way I could read a single page in 5 minutes. If you're a slow reader, that doesn't mean the rest of us are.

Do you really want to keep going here?

[Kubra]

Japan probably would not have surrendered under the terms offered (unconditional surrender) without some seriously horrendous casualties after an invasion. Moral shock is often a much greater factor than simple numbers: folks are more likely to stand their ground to the last if they're just picked off over time instead of taking a hit unless something happens that really scares em. And, weird to say, folks are less likely to care about casualties from good ol' nitrocellulose and trinitrotoluene. Dying in the usual ways is just that: usual.
I mean heck, tip for any future dictators itt: if you wanna massacre a city don't use chemical weapons, you're gonna get folks real mad at you. Just put in the time to bomb the place down properly, folks will care a lot less so long as you're using the acceptable methods of massacre.

[The Lone Alliance]

Also, I should note at this point that the entire plan for invading Japan was probably about to be abandoned; the Navy and Army Air were coming out against it in favor of blockade and bombing, while MacArthur's estimates were being exposed as forgeries to lend support to his desire to do the invasion. Operations against Taiwan, Korea, and port cities in China as well as general Commonwealth operations in Southeast Asia were being planned/carried/proposed regardless and in place of Olympic and probably would've been carried out instead. With that said, the point still stands that bombing the ever living shit out of the Japanese with atomics was far better than allowing this to come to pass, as the 1945 rice harvest was already looking to be one of the worst in the modern era and that's without the crops being directly attacked with chemicals as was planned as well as attacking the transportation network which too was planned; the end result of this efforts would've been massive starvation, especially since the blockade had, as others have noted, become total at this point.

Clearly we should have done it instead, then we'd have threads saying "Was deliberately starving the entire population of Japan to death wrong"?

And it'd likely have the same people in the thread making the same arguments...

[Estanglia]

Absolutely not. I believe that the USA had no right whatsoever to drop nuclear bombs on a nation which had no nuclear bombs itself. Even then no nation has the right to use this type of bomb unless the other nation has attacked them first.

Pearl harbour.

[Hurtful Thoughts]

Absolutely not. I believe that the USA had no right whatsoever to drop nuclear bombs on a nation which had no nuclear bombs itself. Even then no nation has the right to use this type of bomb unless the other nation has attacked them first.

Pearl harbour.

By extension, there was a small crowd initially suggesting the nukeage of Afghanistan back in '01 to '02, until they were politely told there was nothing to nuke.

[Russo-Austria]

No. Omway

[US-SSR]

Justified why? For ending the war with Japan?

That end was accomplished by the Russian attack, which proceeded as promised 90 days after the end of the war with Germany. Recently disclosed Japanese documents prove that the Japanese leadership believed the only way they could carry on fighting would be by negotiating a separate peace with Russia. After that proved impossible they would have had to come to terms, even unconditional surrender. (In the event their surrender was not strictly unconditional as the position of the Emperor was assured beforehand.)

The US knew it had a weapon of unimagined power, however, and wanted to demonstrate it, not to the Japanese necessarily, but to Russia, then shaping up as its main rival for global influence. Longer heads in the US knew the bomb would have to be dropped before or soon after the scheduled Russian attack or the opportunity to use it could be lost. The first bomb was to be dropped on Kyoto, a more valuable military target than Hiroshima, but Truman's War Secretary nixed that because he had spent time in that city and didn't want it destroyed. The site of ground zero was chosen to maximize general destruction, not to target military installations.

Truman stated he "decided" to drop the bombs but in fact he never directly approved the strikes on either Hiroshima or Nagasaki. His order that no more bombs be dropped was his first positive action on the subject. He merely allowed the military's plans for the A-bombs to proceed until that point.

If the purposed of the A-bombs was to end the war with Japan there is no sense in which dropping them was justified. Even if the Japanese had not surrendered soon after the Russian attacks as they had planned to do, Japan had no navy, no more kamikazes and no way to survive a blockade that would have cost many fewer lives than an invasion--the choice for the US was not binary, invade or bomb were not the only options available. The destructive power of the weapons and the likely knock-on effects of radiation sickness, burns, etc. were well known.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki represented the use of uniquely destructive weapons against an unprotected civilian population, not in order to win a war, but to impress one of the US's allies with an eye to the postwar world. Arguably the atomic bombing of Japan is the most heinous war crime unpunished.

[Big Jim P]

Yes, they were justified.

[Juristonia]

Absolutely not.

[Washington Resistance Army]

Absolutely not.

What would you have done instead?

[Helensburgh]

Yes, it saved lives and prevented a tedious and costly invasion of the mainland islands.

[Frievolk]

Justified? No
Necessary? Probably.

[NERVUN]

Define justified.

It wasn't a good thing. It didn't end the war, at least not the way it is usually taught in US schools. It brought it to a faster end, and allowed Japan to (eventually) emerge the way it did, take that as you will. It wasn't the evil act that it has been accused to be (No, there's been no actual evidence that the US's primary purpose was to scare the Russians, though no doubt it was in the calculations). It seems, honestly, that as with a lot of weapons systems in WWII, no one actually sat down and debated the use of this and it wasn't until afterwards that when the horrors were first scene was that debate held. The cities were indeed military targets, but they were also civilian. They killed, horrifically, a lot of people, so did a lot of other weapons. The only difference is of course they unleashed a sword that still hangs above our heads.

All that said, and as I've said again and again and again on this, it was the least bad out of a bunch of bad choices. It has lead to a very mixed bag of results. But there are also a lot worse ones out there.

[Isilanka]

I totally second what had just been said above.

It's easy to give judgments after the fact, when we have an all-knowing view of the historical period we're discussing, having data that was hidden/non-existing at the time or unavailable, and we know exactly the outcomes of the decisions taken.

[Risottia]

No, they were a war crime just like any other terror bombing in WW2 and before, starting with Guernica, and then with Rotterdam, Coventry, London, Berlin, Dresden, Milan, Hamburg, Tokyo and whatnot.
They were coherent with the general disregard for civilian lives and rules of war almost every country (Norway would be an exception) showed, to various degrees, in WW2. But "they did it too" isn't an excuse.