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>"Even if the US bombed the USSR and prevented a counterstrike the US would have been worse off." Von Neumann may have been advocating for a strike before the

by nickff 5y ago

>"Even if the US bombed the USSR and prevented a counterstrike the US would have been worse off." Von Neumann may have been advocating for a strike before the Soviets had operational nuclear capabilities. >"You don't get to subtract 100M people out of 2.7B , the 2nd country in GDP and expect things to remain as they were before." It is unlikely that an American nuclear strike would have wiped out the entire population of the Soviet Union; one would expect a targeted strike on critical government and army facilities, or something like what happened against the Japanese. >"Also the entire world would have reacted, anticipating that they too were going to be nuked as soon as they did something which would have even remotely alerted paranoid Uncle Sam. " The rest of the world didn't conquer and subjugate all of Eastern Europe, then steal from them and kidnap people in large numbers.

WitCanStain 5y ago
It's interesting to appeal to the plight of Eastern Europeans given that they were also on the list of targets. The Soviets are harming Eastern Europeans, we must nuke the Eastern Europeans!
GDC7 5y ago
> It is unlikely that an American nuclear strike would have wiped out the entire population of the Soviet Union; one would expect a targeted strike on critical government and army facilities, or something like what happened against the Japanese. USSR lion share of the population is/was in Moscow and St. Petersburg. A decapitation strike would have killed many in those 2 cities for sure. Add the fires, the confusion, the famine and the fact that you must followup with an invasion because nukes radiations dissipate fast and other countries around would see it as a huge opportunity to expand. It's easy to imagine the countries of the Marshall plan abandon said plan and saying "screw it! We'll get the eastward land instead" 100M is not far fetched. > The rest of the world didn't conquer and subjugate all of Eastern Europe, then steal from them and kidnap people in large numbers. The US is magnanimous . Meaning like some guy who got out of the hood and lets it slide when somebody dents his Ferrari. Had that person missed on a lucky break and still be in the hood, his reaction would be very different and much more violent , and it doesn't even need to be a Ferrari, just a light fender bender on a Civic will cause trouble. The US is magnanimous because of its standards of living , not the other way around.
jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago
> or something like what happened against the Japanese. By the time the nukes were dropped, the 60 or so largest cities in Japan had been decimated by bombing (Kyoto was famously spared largely because of the sympathies of a single officer). When Tokyo was firebombed over 100k civilians were burned alive in a single night, the overwhelming majority of them women, children, and old men. Justified as it may have been, we shouldn't promote a mythology that WW2 was a clean and narrowly targeted campaign by the allies. There's an excellent documentary by Errol Morris named The Fog of War that has McNamara's very frank commentary on these issues. You also can find some letters Churchill wrote where he was engaging with these questions, such as asking himself if the fire bombing was morally much different from the use of chemical agents during WW1. Any sort of pre-emptive strike by the US vs the USSR would have been similarly ugly, with very real human cost to ordinary people with no agency in the situation.
- hef19898 5y ago
  I'd expect, if there would still have been functioning-ish USSR forces after the strike, assuming the first strike wouldn't have targeted central Europe as well, a near-suicidal conventional counter attack against Germany, France and UK and US forces in continetal Europe. With the expected result in civilian losses. Overall, a very bad idea. Because how much damage would you really do with a handful of nukes against the USSR?

by nickff 5y ago

WitCanStain 5y ago

It's interesting to appeal to the plight of Eastern Europeans given that they were also on the list of targets. The Soviets are harming Eastern Europeans, we must nuke the Eastern Europeans!

GDC7 5y ago

> It is unlikely that an American nuclear strike would have wiped out the entire population of the Soviet Union; one would expect a targeted strike on critical government and army facilities, or something like what happened against the Japanese. USSR lion share of the population is/was in Moscow and St. Petersburg. A decapitation strike would have killed many in those 2 cities for sure. Add the fires, the confusion, the famine and the fact that you must followup with an invasion because nukes radiations dissipate fast and other countries around would see it as a huge opportunity to expand. It's easy to imagine the countries of the Marshall plan abandon said plan and saying "screw it! We'll get the eastward land instead" 100M is not far fetched. > The rest of the world didn't conquer and subjugate all of Eastern Europe, then steal from them and kidnap people in large numbers. The US is magnanimous . Meaning like some guy who got out of the hood and lets it slide when somebody dents his Ferrari. Had that person missed on a lucky break and still be in the hood, his reaction would be very different and much more violent , and it doesn't even need to be a Ferrari, just a light fender bender on a Civic will cause trouble. The US is magnanimous because of its standards of living , not the other way around.

jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago

> or something like what happened against the Japanese. By the time the nukes were dropped, the 60 or so largest cities in Japan had been decimated by bombing (Kyoto was famously spared largely because of the sympathies of a single officer). When Tokyo was firebombed over 100k civilians were burned alive in a single night, the overwhelming majority of them women, children, and old men. Justified as it may have been, we shouldn't promote a mythology that WW2 was a clean and narrowly targeted campaign by the allies. There's an excellent documentary by Errol Morris named The Fog of War that has McNamara's very frank commentary on these issues. You also can find some letters Churchill wrote where he was engaging with these questions, such as asking himself if the fire bombing was morally much different from the use of chemical agents during WW1. Any sort of pre-emptive strike by the US vs the USSR would have been similarly ugly, with very real human cost to ordinary people with no agency in the situation.

hef19898 5y ago
I'd expect, if there would still have been functioning-ish USSR forces after the strike, assuming the first strike wouldn't have targeted central Europe as well, a near-suicidal conventional counter attack against Germany, France and UK and US forces in continetal Europe. With the expected result in civilian losses. Overall, a very bad idea. Because how much damage would you really do with a handful of nukes against the USSR?