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When the alternatives of nationalism are to fight to the very last man, and cause 8 times the number of casualties. ( Perhaps somewhat more...). Hirohito knew t

When the alternatives of nationalism are to fight to the very last man, and cause 8 times the number of casualties. ( Perhaps somewhat more...). Hirohito knew that the military was going to do that.

_trampeltier 1y ago
With your logic, it would be ok for Isreal to nuke Gaza now ond for Russia to nuke the Ukraine.
- mrheosuper 1y ago
  If UKR was fascist and on the path to genocide everywhere, it's acceptable to nuke them.
- nelox 1y ago
  Again, no, not necessarily a war crime.
- wiseowise 1y ago
  Both Israel and Russia are aggressors in the wars. It’s really not comparable. Would Ukraine have every right to use atom bomb if it had one? Absolutely.
  - albulab 1y ago
    "Both Israel and Russia are aggressors" Yeah, for anyone with more then one functioning brain cell, Russia attacked Ukraine. Gaza attacked Israel. Both Muslims and Russia are the same axis.
- albulab 1y ago
  Gaza is an existential threat to Israel more then Japan ever was to the U.S. so, yeah.
kketch 1y ago
You are saying the responsibility for the instant incineration of hundreds of thousands of civilians lies with the bombed, and not the bomber?
- TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
  One thing that's rarely considered is that by any metric Japan had already lost the war. And what's interesting - and definitive - about both Japan and Germany is that the regimes kept fighting when this was obvious. There was plenty of insanity to go around, but it takes an extra special kind of insanity to ignore defeat when outmatched by a superior force, and when continuing to fight will cause massive casualties for your own population when failure is already guaranteed. This isn't just irrational, it's compulsively self-harming. At the same time it's recognised now that Germany and Japan both had very limited prospects of victory in WWII. There were voices in the military in both countries making this point before the fighting started. But the regimes chose irrational violence for irrational ends, with horrific self-destructive consequences. What killed millions wasn't the weapons, it was the culture of mass delusion that made the weapons necessary. It's the nature of authoritarianism to deny reality until pushed into collapse. That's the only real enemy in war, and we're still fighting it today - unsuccessfully.
  - southernplaces7 1y ago
    >At the same time it's recognised now that Germany and Japan both had very limited prospects of victory in WWII. I'd beg to differ about this being widely recognized. For Japan perhaps, but even they could have considerably forestalled their eventual defeat if they'd done a few logical things better, or won the battle of Midway (which they should have won numerically and tactically, if they'd been a bit more careful with their encryption and estimation of U.S naval force disposition), or prioritized their targets at Pearl Harbour more carefully, or maybe better, not even bothered to attack it in the first place while performing the rest of their conquest of Asia. As for Germany, it could have outright won the war. No debate at this point has settled that this isn't so. Indeed, at several key points Germany emphatically had both means and opportunity to secure its total hegemony at least over Europe and its surroundings in a way that would have resulted in a Nazi-version alternative to the dual superpower bipolar world that instead existed between the USSR and USA after 1945. Fortunately this didn't happen, since as bad as the USSR was (especially under Stalin) I'd hate to imagine an alternative in which the other hegemonic nuclear power is one built on the even more murderously fanatical legacy of Hitler, Himmler or Heydrich and the rest.

When the alternatives of nationalism are to fight to the very last man, and cause 8 times the number of casualties. ( Perhaps somewhat more...). Hirohito knew that the military was going to do that.

_trampeltier 1y ago

With your logic, it would be ok for Isreal to nuke Gaza now ond for Russia to nuke the Ukraine.

mrheosuper 1y ago
If UKR was fascist and on the path to genocide everywhere, it's acceptable to nuke them.
nelox 1y ago
Again, no, not necessarily a war crime.
wiseowise 1y ago
Both Israel and Russia are aggressors in the wars. It’s really not comparable. Would Ukraine have every right to use atom bomb if it had one? Absolutely.
- albulab 1y ago
  "Both Israel and Russia are aggressors" Yeah, for anyone with more then one functioning brain cell, Russia attacked Ukraine. Gaza attacked Israel. Both Muslims and Russia are the same axis.
albulab 1y ago
Gaza is an existential threat to Israel more then Japan ever was to the U.S. so, yeah.

kketch 1y ago

You are saying the responsibility for the instant incineration of hundreds of thousands of civilians lies with the bombed, and not the bomber?

TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
One thing that's rarely considered is that by any metric Japan had already lost the war. And what's interesting - and definitive - about both Japan and Germany is that the regimes kept fighting when this was obvious. There was plenty of insanity to go around, but it takes an extra special kind of insanity to ignore defeat when outmatched by a superior force, and when continuing to fight will cause massive casualties for your own population when failure is already guaranteed. This isn't just irrational, it's compulsively self-harming. At the same time it's recognised now that Germany and Japan both had very limited prospects of victory in WWII. There were voices in the military in both countries making this point before the fighting started. But the regimes chose irrational violence for irrational ends, with horrific self-destructive consequences. What killed millions wasn't the weapons, it was the culture of mass delusion that made the weapons necessary. It's the nature of authoritarianism to deny reality until pushed into collapse. That's the only real enemy in war, and we're still fighting it today - unsuccessfully.
- southernplaces7 1y ago
  >At the same time it's recognised now that Germany and Japan both had very limited prospects of victory in WWII. I'd beg to differ about this being widely recognized. For Japan perhaps, but even they could have considerably forestalled their eventual defeat if they'd done a few logical things better, or won the battle of Midway (which they should have won numerically and tactically, if they'd been a bit more careful with their encryption and estimation of U.S naval force disposition), or prioritized their targets at Pearl Harbour more carefully, or maybe better, not even bothered to attack it in the first place while performing the rest of their conquest of Asia. As for Germany, it could have outright won the war. No debate at this point has settled that this isn't so. Indeed, at several key points Germany emphatically had both means and opportunity to secure its total hegemony at least over Europe and its surroundings in a way that would have resulted in a Nazi-version alternative to the dual superpower bipolar world that instead existed between the USSR and USA after 1945. Fortunately this didn't happen, since as bad as the USSR was (especially under Stalin) I'd hate to imagine an alternative in which the other hegemonic nuclear power is one built on the even more murderously fanatical legacy of Hitler, Himmler or Heydrich and the rest.