Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: wegman58

WW I showed the horror of chemical weapons; no major war has seen them used since - barbarian savages have but not the major powers.

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The judges at Nuremberg found it appropriate to apply the rules laid down in the Hague Convention to everyone, not limited to those who ratified it. The moral understanding of the appropriate use of bombardment was there.

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ORIGINAL: Justus2

I am very interested in this debate, I've read some on the final days of the war, and recently signed up for a course at our local university on this topic (looked like an interesting elective):

History 440: WMD and Hiroshima in History and Memory
This course will examine the first and only use of what would later be called a “weapon of mass destruction,” namely the atomic bombs that President Harry S. Truman used to end the Second World War against Japan. Drawing on original source documents, and essays by a diverse assortment of leading scholars, we will examine the military and political context surrounding Truman’s decision to drop the bombs. We will also consider alternative strategies for ending the war, look at how historians have debated those strategies, and examine how Americans, and the Japanese, have remembered the atomic bombings in the years since the war ended. After reviewing and discussing the relevant literature, students will have a chance to put themselves in place of one of Truman’s colleagues in 1945, review all alternative strategies for the president, and give their own recommendation for the best way to bring the war to a conclusion.

I am hoping for an unbiased look, but I am interested in hearing the perspectives that the other students bring to the course. For those interested, here's the reading list:

Hiroshima in History and Memory by Michael J. Hogan (the instructor for the course)
Hiroshima by John Hersey
Prompt and Utter Destruction: Truman and the Use of Atomic Bombs against Japan, Revised Edition by J. Samuel Walker

England expects that every man will do his duty. Horatio Nelson October 1805

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ORIGINAL: tocaff

On Tinian Island on a fateful day in August 1945 my father and the rest of his crew were lazing around as they weren't scheduled to fly their B-29 anywhere. An officer appeared and told them to report to Operations. Once there they were told that they were a Super Dumbo, an observation plane, and would that they would also report any downed planes. They were issued dark goggles and told that there would be a bright flash that they weren't supposed to look at. Their plane was loaded with gas and that's it. They were part of a mission over Nagasaki. There would be a weather plane, 2 Super Dumbos, a plane with a bomb and later another plane for damage assessment. My father's bewildered crew boarded, took off from Tinian's North Field and tried to figure out what was going on. A single plane with one bomb? They witnessed the second A bomb used in anger. They were initially horrified by what they saw and on the way back to Tinian reported a downed P-47. By the time they landed they had realized that they had witnessed a chance to end the war. They wanted one of these bombs for every B-29 so that Japan could finally be defeated and then they could go home.

Revisionist history would tell us another story. It is impossible for us, today to put ourselves into the shoes of the men fighting against Japan in 1945 as the values were totally different due to the monumental struggle that had been going on for years. To judge another time by the values of today is flat out wrong, just as judging one culture by another culture's standards is wrong.

Does the USA owe Japan an apology? To my thinking, no.

I don't intend this to be a political football,

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and now would be rightly classed as a "war crime."

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The truly ironic twist to that non-Abomb scenario is that millions of Japanese may have perished through famine and disease.

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ORIGINAL: pontiouspilot

If Truman actually knew the true state of the Japanese war capacity he may well have never used the A-bomb and most certainly would not have pressed for a Soviet entry into the Pac/Chinese theatre. In point of fact there was not even any need to invade the home islands. Japan was so thoroughly attrited that they could do little to extend any offensive operations. The Allied Generals and Admirals were fixated on the notion that Japan had to be invaded in the conventional sense. The economy and basics of civilization were in utter collapse. A further year of air and naval blockade and even the Japanese Army would have been forced to see that reality. The truly ironic twist to that non-Abomb scenario is that millions of Japanese may have perished through famine and disease.

I just finished a quite decent book on the last few weeks in Japan: The Fall of Japan by Wm. Craig.

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ORIGINAL: Revthought

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ORIGINAL: pontiouspilot

If Truman actually knew the true state of the Japanese war capacity he may well have never used the A-bomb and most certainly would not have pressed for a Soviet entry into the Pac/Chinese theatre. In point of fact there was not even any need to invade the home islands. Japan was so thoroughly attrited that they could do little to extend any offensive operations. The Allied Generals and Admirals were fixated on the notion that Japan had to be invaded in the conventional sense. The economy and basics of civilization were in utter collapse. A further year of air and naval blockade and even the Japanese Army would have been forced to see that reality. The truly ironic twist to that non-Abomb scenario is that millions of Japanese may have perished through famine and disease.

I just finished a quite decent book on the last few weeks in Japan: The Fall of Japan by Wm. Craig.

That's true, but only if you reject metanarratives and the notion of absolute humanist values, which I do not. Even without appealing to religion if it is wrong to make war on civilian populations, then it was always the case that it is wrong. You cannot appeal to time, or culture to negate this. Otherwise, everything becomes relative and you can never pass judgement on anything outside of particular cultural contexts. So genocide in Bosnia can only be judged in reference to a very specific cultural frame of Bosnian Serbs in the 1990s, or the actions of ISIS become "crimes" only in the context of that particular culture.

In other words you lose all power to critique the world based on notions of justice and the concepts of right and wrong. You paralyzed and forced to concede things like female castration on the basis of culture and time.

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ORIGINAL: desicat

"I would make this war as severe as possible, and show no symptoms of tiring till the South begs for mercy." William Tecumseh Sherman

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ORIGINAL: Revthought

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ORIGINAL: pontiouspilot

If Truman actually knew the true state of the Japanese war capacity he may well have never used the A-bomb and most certainly would not have pressed for a Soviet entry into the Pac/Chinese theatre. In point of fact there was not even any need to invade the home islands. Japan was so thoroughly attrited that they could do little to extend any offensive operations. The Allied Generals and Admirals were fixated on the notion that Japan had to be invaded in the conventional sense. The economy and basics of civilization were in utter collapse. A further year of air and naval blockade and even the Japanese Army would have been forced to see that reality. The truly ironic twist to that non-Abomb scenario is that millions of Japanese may have perished through famine and disease.

I just finished a quite decent book on the last few weeks in Japan: The Fall of Japan by Wm. Craig.

That's true, but only if you reject metanarratives and the notion of absolute humanist values, which I do not. Even without appealing to religion if it is wrong to make war on civilian populations, then it was always the case that it is wrong. You cannot appeal to time, or culture to negate this. Otherwise, everything becomes relative and you can never pass judgement on anything outside of particular cultural contexts. So genocide in Bosnia can only be judged in reference to a very specific cultural frame of Bosnian Serbs in the 1990s, or the actions of ISIS become "crimes" only in the context of that particular culture.

In other words you lose all power to critique the world based on notions of justice and the concepts of right and wrong. You paralyzed and forced to concede things like female castration on the basis of culture and time.

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ORIGINAL: Big B

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ORIGINAL: desicat

"I would make this war as severe as possible, and show no symptoms of tiring till the South begs for mercy." William Tecumseh Sherman

No criticism of you desicat - but I have NEVER held with Uncle Billy's maxim of Total War against civilians.

War has enough horror... I never saw a good excuse to visit every plague possible on innocent civilians....and I feel that civilians are generally innocent.
There's got to be lines drawn as acceptable practice in war.

And when it's over - Lee & Jackson look so much more appealing and noble for insisting on paying for provisions acquired in Maryland and Pennsylvania than Grant and Sherman in pillaging the South... The legacy of war lasts many many generations

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ORIGINAL: desicat

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ORIGINAL: Big B

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ORIGINAL: desicat

"I would make this war as severe as possible, and show no symptoms of tiring till the South begs for mercy." William Tecumseh Sherman

No criticism of you desicat - but I have NEVER held with Uncle Billy's maxim of Total War against civilians.

War has enough horror... I never saw a good excuse to visit every plague possible on innocent civilians....and I feel that civilians are generally innocent.
There's got to be lines drawn as acceptable practice in war.

And when it's over - Lee & Jackson look so much more appealing and noble for insisting on paying for provisions acquired in Maryland and Pennsylvania than Grant and Sherman in pillaging the South... The legacy of war lasts many many generations

War is horrible and that is why it needs to end as fast as possible. Extended insurgencies are bloody over decades. From the Napoleonic period on the industrialization of the military war complex has blurred the lines between the civilian and military resistance.

The days of the old British punitive campaigns are gone, I don't like the idea of total war, but unless one side or the other wins we condemn both sides to continued conflict over the course of lifetimes. I think the US in WWII did its best to conduct total war (to achieve unconditional surrender) in as humane a manner as possible - yet the bombing of Germany and Japan, and unrestricted submarine warfare in the Pacific, and yes, the use of the atomic bomb ultimately saved lives - American included.

No offense taken by the way. The American Way of War is a very good book and you may find it an interesting read.

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In other words you lose all power to critique the world based on notions of justice and the concepts of right and wrong. You paralyzed and forced to concede things like female castration on the basis of culture and time.

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ORIGINAL: Revthought

The Soviets did not want the war to end before their enterance into the Asian land war, and the United States... Well come to your own conclusions. My thought is they wanted to use the atomic bomb to test, and then demonstrate to the Soviets, the destructive power of the weapon.

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ORIGINAL: desicat

"I would make this war as severe as possible, and show no symptoms of tiring till the South begs for mercy." William Tecumseh Sherman

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ORIGINAL: Big B

No criticism of you desicat - but I have NEVER held with Uncle Billy's maxim of Total War against civilians.

War has enough horror... I never saw a good excuse to visit every plague possible on innocent civilians....and I feel that civilians are generally innocent.
There's got to be lines drawn as acceptable practice in war.

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ORIGINAL: Amoral

napalm is a chemical weapon. Agent Orange is a chemical weapon. Unless you are saying the US is a nation of barbarian savages?

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ORIGINAL: TulliusDetritus

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ORIGINAL: Revthought

The Soviets did not want the war to end before their enterance into the Asian land war, and the United States... Well come to your own conclusions. My thought is they wanted to use the atomic bomb to test, and then demonstrate to the Soviets, the destructive power of the weapon.

This is a classic misconception. As if Stalin was doing a Mussolinesque move: when he joined the war when France was in her death throes (Germany's gonna swallow everything! I must do something and do it now ).

It IS the other way around. FDR basically harassed () him big time so that Uncle Joe unleashed his hordes. Stalin managed to find excuses to not attack Japan until the Tehran Conference in 1943 IIRC. Then he promised he would unleash his hordes (once the nazis were finished). Which he did.

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ORIGINAL: Alpha77

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ORIGINAL: Big B

No criticism of you desicat - but I have NEVER held with Uncle Billy's maxim of Total War against civilians.

War has enough horror... I never saw a good excuse to visit every plague possible on innocent civilians....and I feel that civilians are generally innocent.
There's got to be lines drawn as acceptable practice in war.

Yup.

However....... I read above how cruel the firebombing and atomic bombs were. Which is true.... and horrible way to die. But we also need to see human nature. They always will fight each other. And look at acient times of warfare, or Napoleonic times. Now in these times the civilians suffered too. Not as much as in WW2, but for sure there was plunder of territories. So civilians would starve. Millions starved in the 30 year war too. And as for methods of killing, is being hacked to pieces by swords less cruel then blown apart by a bomb ? So war was always cruel from the beginning of times. Or burning down villages in the middleages perhaps with some people stil inside the houses? That is litterally "fire bombing" in a more primitive form. Only the scale and areas affected of cause changed with technology.


The case of the atomic bomb IMHO can not be made with 100% certainty. IF the Japanese were ready to surrender and bombs still were dropped is another case as they wanted to fight to the end. Now we can not really know *IF* they wanted to surrender. And perhaps the Allied leaders didnt know this either. So they had to make sure - in this case with a-bombs. Otherwise they would have firebombed more cities to the ground and the blockade would cause perhaps starvation too. I do not know how reliant the Japanese were in the food department.

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ORIGINAL: postfux

I dont see a problem comparing ancient times with modern ones. Society and weapons are more sophisticated but people stayed the same.

What did the Romans do after the first (or second) phonician war or the first (or second or third) macedonian war? They didnt crucify everyone or such. They reduced their enemies ability to fight and trade and therefore eliminated them as a threat and a major power. And they made them pay reparations.

Perhaps they went too easy or too hard on Carthage or Macedonia but it was always the other side who wanted a rerun, for obvious reasons.

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ORIGINAL: postfux
In total war a weapon that can be built will be built and used. That is pretty much the nature of total war.

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ORIGINAL: robinsa

As for what the Japanese intentions were and their thought process I truly recommend (I know Ive recommended it before in threads like this..) John Tolands - The Rising Sun as it gives a nuanced picture. There is even an audiobook for the lazy one.

I agree with Big B. War has enough horrors. Even IF the bombing raids were needed to end the war quickly it is a VERY tough sell morally when it comes to sacrificing innocent people. Remember, these were ordinary families, father, mothers and children who just wanted their families to survive.

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ORIGINAL: Amoral

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ORIGINAL: wegman58

WW I showed the horror of chemical weapons; no major war has seen them used since - barbarian savages have but not the major powers.

Napalm is a chemical weapon. Agent Orange is a chemical weapon. Unless you are saying the US is a nation of barbarian savages?

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ORIGINAL: Revthought
Though, as Churchill came pretty close to ordering the death of tens of millions of people through the deployment of weaponized anthrax in Germany. I'm glad he decided not to because, it would have been pretty difficult to spoil the moral high ground the Allies had during the war against the Nazis in the eyes of history; just look at our use of nuclear weapons.

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ORIGINAL: postfux

Comparing Versailles to concentration camps is perhaps not what you wanted to express but it doesnt help validating your argument.

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ORIGINAL: postfux
Arming heavy bombers and using them to strike your enemy in the hope of helping your war effort or hindering the enemies is an act of war. A pretty cruel one that in the way it was done is only thinkable in a total war setting. Moral has nothing to do with it. If it can be done it will be done. I hold the people responsible that paved the way to total war and not the ones who did lead it. I do think there were some highly proplematic characters among them.)

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ORIGINAL: postfux
I think the most important lesson of WWII is to avoid escalation in international relations especially in armed conflict and not that the allied bomber fleets were criminal organisation.