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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 al
by 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 agoGermany 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 agoHence blockade and sanction. No need to invade.
- flerchin 5y agoMore than 200k still would have died under that scheme as well.
- user-the-name 5y agoWould they?
- flerchin 5y agoYes
- user-the-name 5y agoAnd how do you know that?
- flerchin 5y agoYou're welcome to find the original sources. There are several excellent books on the topic. I suggest using Google to find one that piques your interest. You definitely seem like the type to "do your own research" Mr Just-Asking-Questions guy.
- dralley 5y agoI fail to see how that would have led to a more humane outcome for the civilian population. The military controlled the government, they get first dibs on resources, not the civilian population.
- user-the-name 5y agoWhy did they need to unconditionally surrender?
- flerchin 5y agoMostly to free Korea, Burma, and China.
- user-the-name 5y agoWhy would that be needed for that? "Conditional surrender" doesn't mean there are no conditions the other way.
- flerchin 5y agoJapan rejected losing the occupied territories.
- user-the-name 5y agoAnd nothing other than murdering thousands of civilians with an atomic bomb could change that?
- Alenycus 5y agoA blockade and air raids also causes deaths. The literal name for the blockading operations with mines around Japan was Operation Starvation. Sometimes there are only bad options available. The bomb was the best choice
- robbomacrae 5y agoThanks for the interesting reading! I took a dive and it turns out Operation Starvation was remarkably effective and arguably should have been used earlier [0]. Also it didn't actually lead to any deaths from starvation [1]. Here are some excerpts. "After the war, the commander of Japan's minesweeping operations noted that he thought this mining campaign could have directly led to the defeat of Japan on its own had it begun earlier. Similar conclusions were reached by American analysts who reported in July 1946 in the United States Strategic Bombing Survey that it would have been more efficient to combine the United States' effective anti-shipping submarine effort with land- and carrier-based air power to strike harder against merchant shipping and begin a more extensive aerial mining campaign earlier in the war. This would have starved Japan, forcing an earlier end to the war." [0]&[2] "While some of the main actors (the UK, the US, Germany, and Japan) escaped famine..." [1] "In Britain, Germany, and Japan, rationing was effective; even though food availability was sharply reduced almost everywhere, few literally died of hunger. Britain and Germany managed to maintain food consumption per capita at about 3,000 calories throughout the war. In Japan consumption fell from a norm of 2,000 calories per capita before Pearl Harbor to 1,900 calories in 1944, plummeting to 1,680 calories by the war’s end." [1] 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Starvation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Starvation 1: https://voxeu.org/article/famines-wwii https://voxeu.org/article/famines-wwii 2: https://www.anesi.com/ussbs01.htm https://www.anesi.com/ussbs01.htm