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Several comments here about what is the missing X factor - why did these guys get along. The quoted story takes place during World War II, and they were develop

• avazhi 5y ago
  Not sure who, besides the Japanese at the time, have really criticised the outcome. Even now the Japanese seem to at least understand why it had to happen. It was the difference between Nazi fascism winning global hegemony or not. I don’t think there’s a serious argument that it shouldn’t have happened.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • psd1 5y ago
    I'm not well read on the topic, and I do tend to agree with you, but I can imagine an argument like: - nuclear threat is a serious cost to productivity and well-being - the bomb merely brought forward a conclusion that was already looking inevitable There's an obvious counter that some nation likely would have developed nuclear weapons independently - America was merely the first. Nonetheless, I think it's not a given that the bomb was a positive.
  • pegasus 5y ago
    There are very convincing historical arguments on why the bomb was both unnecessary and also why it didn't in fact play any role in Japan's surrender (it sound unlikely, but conventional bombing raids were annihilating Japanese cities at such a clip that Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn't even register as anything different with the decision-making group; they decided to capitulate when the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and all hopes of avoiding unconditional surrender were dashed). Google brings up plenty of reading material.
    • kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
      Listen to at least the end of the “Supernova in the East” episodes of Hardcore History.
    • PaulHoule 5y ago
      Those arguments decontextualize the war and are self-defeating in that the Allies were willing to give Dresden and other cities a treatment not much different from Hiroshima in the end. At the scale of 2 bombs, the a-bomb was wasn’t a revolution in war, that wasn’t going to happen until solidly in the mid 1950s where there was a large supply of devices that were practical use. Another factor was that the U.S. thought it was very possible we’d be going to war with Russia and was slow to demobilize so there was definitely the intent to intimidate the Soviet Union even that early.
    • pegasus 5y ago
      Adding this link: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-08-05/hiroshima-anniversary-japan-atomic-bombs https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-08-05/hiroshima-a...
  • robbomacrae 5y ago
    Plenty do criticize the outcome and with reasonable justification. Your reasoning doesn't take into account that when the nukes were dropped Nazi Germany had already unconditionally surrendered. Sure, it was too costly to invade Japan.. but in retrospect, blockading and sanctioning might have achieved the same goals without indiscriminately obliterating 200,000 innocents.
    • flerchin 5y ago
      Germany did not unconditionally surrender until Hitler was dead and Berlin was overrun. Japan would have done the same. More than 200k innocents would have died.
      • robbomacrae 5y ago
        Hence blockade and sanction. No need to invade.
        • flerchin 5y ago
          More than 200k still would have died under that scheme as well.
          • user-the-name 5y ago
            Would they?
            • flerchin 5y ago
              Yes
              • user-the-name 5y ago
                And how do you know that?
                • 5y ago
  • pokepim 5y ago
    [flagged]
  • GlennS 5y ago
    Depends what you mean by "the outcome" here. If you mean developing the bomb, then fine. If you mean dropping the bomb, then that seems pretty controversial. I thought it was pretty well established that the USA knew Japan was willing to surrender, but dropped the bomb anyway?
    • alecbz 5y ago
      > the USA knew Japan was willing to surrender, but dropped the bomb anyway? This is the opposite of what I usually hear? I've heard things about how Japan was getting ready to fight to the last man, starting to arm civilians. I have heard that the emperor was maybe willing to surrender, but that the country was essentially being run by the military leadership, who would ~never see surrender as an option.
      • GlennS 5y ago
        Well, that's what Truman said.
        • deleted 5y ago
          [deleted]
    • HWR_14 5y ago
      I'm pretty sure the US thought that every man between 16 and 65 was going to be given a weapon and fight for every inch of Japanese soil. That at the time it was considered likely that we would have to fight a long war of attrition across the island losing hundreds of thousands of Americans and being forced to kill uncountable Japanese conscripts.
      • SamReidHughes 5y ago
        We never had to do that. We could have simply not invaded the main islands. Furthermore, we could have offered a peace agreement that ends the war without occupation of Japan.
  • IgorPartola 5y ago
    That is wrong. The difference was how quickly Japan would lose the war after Germany was already a non-factor. The cost was how bloody the defeat would be and the calculation was that the bombs would result in fewer lives lost overall. Japan wasn’t going to win one way or the other.
  • lr1970 5y ago
    > It was the difference between Nazi fascism winning global hegemony or not. I don’t think there’s a serious argument that it shouldn’t have happened. By the time nukes were dropped on Japan [0] in August 1945 nazi Germany was defeated, the war in Europe ended, Soviets attacked Japanese army in Manchuria [1] on August 9-th -- the day of Nagasaki bombing. Dropping bombs on Japan had one main purpose - to show the Soviets who is the boss and prevent them from invading and occupying Japan before the USA can do it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_a... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet–Japanese_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet–Japanese_War
    • stdbrouw 5y ago
      That's a pretty bizarre reading of history. The Soviet Union declared war on Japan because Stalin had promised Roosevelt and Churchill at the 1943 Tehran conference, so this was not some sort of surprising or unwelcome development.
      • vkou 5y ago
        The surprising development was just how quickly the Manchurian front collapsed against the Soviet Union. The Kwantung Army, and Japan's ability to continue the war, even in a defensive capability completely fell apart in 7 days. Japan was utterly reliant on supplies and raw materials from its Chinese and Korean puppet states. Between that, and the amphibious attacks against Korea, the Kurils, and Sakhalin, the US was on a pretty short clock to end the war before communism had a chance to move in, and settle down. Stalin respected the pre-agreed partition of Europe, but neither Postdam, nor Tehran said very much about who would be in control of what part of the Japanese empire after the war... And in practice, this meant that when the war ended, possession, in the form of 'whose army is parked where' was nine tenths of the law. The United States was not at all interested in seeing an East/West Japan partition. North/South Korea was bad enough.
      • lr1970 5y ago
        It was not surprising for sure, but Truman who succeeded Roosevelt was not keen seeing Russians meddling in Japan when it was already on a brink of defeat and surrender. Nukes can cool off Stalin's appetite quite effectively.
• PaulHoule 5y ago
  What I hear is that these people are really listening and paying attention. In so many normal conversations people are repeating over and over again because they assume it goes in one ear and out the other and they are right.
  • gumby 5y ago
    I think most conversations are each person waiting for the other person’s mouth to stop moving so they can make their own point. I.e. no listening, just talking. Worse in larger groups.
    • ehnto 5y ago
      I find part of the issue is how fleeting opportunities for intimate conversation are. It's been a long time since I've sat down with a drink, a friend and a few hours to kill. I have friends and do a lot of things, but they're all activity based. I do love that, but it can make conversation pretty shallow. Another part of the issue is the internet, for many reasons, but specifically related to this is that it's killed people's curiosity and their ability to discuss a topic for fun. The internet gives people their opinions, and answers any ambiguity in an instant. Want to know what the best tire for your bike is? No need to discuss it, the internet told them what's correct, case closed.
      • gumby 5y ago
        Covid has had an effect. I like to do things like ski, backpack and such with my friends. We'd usually drive up together in a car, or couple of cars, which gave time for all sorts of yakking. With Covid you're supposed to take individual cars.
      • helloworld11 5y ago
        "I find part of the issue is how fleeting opportunities for intimate conversation are. It's been a long time since I've sat down with a drink, a friend and a few hours to kill. I have friends and do a lot of things, but they're all activity based. I do love that, but it can make conversation pretty shallow." It's rather curious to me to see how others live their lives in ways that they're limited on details that I take for granted as normal and regular. I see many people here describing activities that I haven't done in years or ever too, and then run into something like your comment above, where sitting down with a friend for a drink and a few hours of conversation is a rare thing, though in my case I usually find the time to do it at least once a week to refresh and relax, and have done it without interruptions for years now. Just an observation on these differences between lives in general.
• jdrc 5y ago
  Also, these were the only guys who were trying seriously, they were on a mission,and in a military environment
• searealist 5y ago
  An alternative theory is that they all got along because they were mostly Ashkenazi Jews from central Europe, especially Hungary.