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Why does the first part need to be rehabilitated? With whom is it controversial? I've never heard of this controversy before. First, a decapitating strike agai
by sershe 5y ago
Why does the first part need to be rehabilitated? With whom is it controversial? I've never heard of this controversy before.
First, a decapitating strike against Soviet Union /could/ have made sense given the information at the time - imagine you could decapitate Germany in 1935, how many lives would that have saved? Hindsight is 20/20, before that you couldn't be 100% sure that one of the two architects of WWII was not going to try again.
Second, I personally really like Feynman's quote on von Neumann "von Neumann gave me an interesting idea: that you don’t have to be responsible for the world that you’re in. So I have developed a very powerful sense of social irresponsibility as a result of von Neumann’s advice.". I think it's one of the best takes on these issues in most cases.
- mr_toad 5y agoThere would be no decapitation. If the allies were capable of surgically removing a government they would have done it with Germany or Japan. The prevailing military doctrine at the time was ‘total war’, and it was implemented with strategic bombing campaigns. The weapons were so inaccurate that they simply kept dropping bombs until everything was destroyed. Any war on the Soviet Union, either nuclear or with conventional firebombing would have caused massive civilian casualties.
- sershe 5y agoSure; and there were massive civilian casualties in WWII. If WWII could be prevented at the cost of e.g. entirely obliterating Berlin in 1935, it would be "worth it", strictly as a matter of lives lost and saved. Would it prevent WWII? That's a valid subject for debate, and the debate would have gone differently in 1935 than now with the benefit of hindsight. Ditto for 1946.