10 ms·

I love UFO stories, and I love history, and I love pseudo-science. Hell, I even like counter-factuals. What if Lee had won at Gettysburg? What if Patton had act

I love UFO stories, and I love history, and I love pseudo-science. Hell, I even like counter-factuals. What if Lee had won at Gettysburg? What if Patton had actually commanded the Normandy invasion? And so forth. But these things are the province of speculation, not knowledge. Think for a minute about what this essay is asking "What if action X did not end the war in the Pacific?" Well dang, Action X could be just about anything. The fact of the matter is that all of the actions, taken together, were the reason for the war to end. Yes, Stalin played a big role. But it's not an either-or situation; it's an amalgam. The logical structure of trying to support a statement such as "The Bomb Didn't Beat Japan" is flawed. It's like saying the landing on Tarawa didn't beat Japan. Well no, and yes. The assertion itself is flawed. While I love all sorts of semi-non-fictional essays, I have a little warning bell that goes off when I'm mostly through an essay and the essayist starts telling me a story about how I've been misled. Smells of a political agenda and manipulation. Japan was threatened on many fronts and made the best choice it could. That much is clear. Atom bombs did not cause as much building and population damage as the fire-bombing did. That's also clear. But atom bombs represented one thing that Stalin and fire-bombing did not: the end of Japanese culture. A few dozen atom bombs would not only have made huge holes in the landscape, it would have erased the culture of Japan. Nobody is finding comfort in simplistic stories. In fact, the more details people know, the happier I am. But dropping the bombs on Japan saved millions of both Japanese and allied lives. It served as a quick end to a long war, and it saved thousands of allied prisoners whom the Japanese were ready to execute. It also allowed the great Japanese culture to continue. Most serious historians don't get into counter-factuals, except maybe as fiction. It just doesn't work.

mcantelon 13y ago
>But these things are the province of speculation, not knowledge. Here's the opinion of the leader of the US military at the time. "It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons." -Fleet Admiral William Daniel Leahy (May 6, 1875 – July 20, 1959), the senior-most United States military officer during th Second World War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_D._Leahy#Atomic_bomb http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_D._Leahy#Atomic_bomb The bomb was dropped not to win the war, but to intimidate the USSR.
- hga 13y ago
  By the time Leahy published that, nuclear weapons were an existential threat to the US Navy, see e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolt_of_the_Admirals http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolt_of_the_Admirals
- Scramblejams 13y ago
  When I read these revisionist pieces, I often see the same phrase you quoted: "ready to surrender." If someone is "ready to surrender," what does that mean? Well I'll tell you what it certainly doesn't mean: It doesn't mean that they've _actually_ surrendered. What a lot of revisionist writings gloss over is that yes, certain parts of the Japanese leadership were "ready to surrender." But it is well documented that some were only ready to surrender if conditions X and Y were met. Others were only ready to surrender with conditions Z and A. And of course others weren't ready to surrender at all. Yet until a credible leadership figure actually _offered_ unconditional surrender, it was going to be war as usual. And so if this phrase, "ready to surrender," is taken alone (notwithstanding its distinguished source), then it is facile in that it deliberately ignores both the wide diversity of opinion which existed within Japanese leadership, and the complex process which was necessary for the leadership to converge and make a firm, unified political decision.
  - soperj 13y ago
    When they are actively trying to surrender, then they're probably "Ready to surrender". The US wouldn't negotiate because the bombs were on the way. What were the conditions? Because if they were "you help us rebuild" or "and we get a grill-cheese sandwich" then really they're not much. Plenty of peace treaties have taken place with conditions.
    - Scramblejams 13y ago
      "Negotiate?" The US had no appetite for negotiation at that point -- only unconditional surrender was acceptable. I won't do your research for you, but various factions within the Japanese leadership wanted to put lots of significant things on the table, like maintaining the seat of the emperor, the existing political structure, etc. All were showstoppers to the US.
kaonashi 13y ago
>But dropping the bombs on Japan saved millions of both Japanese and allied lives. This assumes an invasion of the island of Japan would somehow have been a necessary goal.
- mercurial 13y ago
  I don't know what options US high command were favouring in case the bombs failed for some reason, but if their strategic goal was "unconditional surrender", it is reasonable to expect them to plan an invasion of Japan, considering that firebombing was failing to do the trick.
- greedo 13y ago
  Despite the best efforts of airpower advocates, there's nothing like planting your boots on the soil of an enemy's capitol to demonstrate that you've defeated them. "You may fly over a land forever; you may bomb it, atomize it, pulverize it and wipe it clean of life – but if you desire to defend it, protect it, and keep it for civilization, you must do this on the ground, the way the Roman legions did, by putting your young men into the mud." T.R. Fehrenbach This Kind of War, 1963
chipsy 13y ago
I have to agree. The way the article ends with the bogeyman, "What if we didn't fear nukes as much?" has a circularity to it. What "nuclear warfare" meant in 1945 was obviously different from what it became just 15 years later - a political football that diverted people's attention, vs. an entire strategic doctrine that acted to encourage low-level proxy wars and interventions, while discouraging the "total war" practice that was conventional through the World Wars.
sumodds 13y ago
I loved the first part of the argument, that many a time causality is not from one source but multiple (often overlapping and even contradictory sources). But towards the end, you sort of do the exact opposite :). The assertion that "But dropping the bombs on Japan saved millions of both Japanese and allied lives". Allied life, I can understand that, but Japanese life. Also the assertion that the bomb somehow magically safeguarded the Japanese culture.
lsd5you 13y ago
I think there is a contradiction in one of the things that you say. You say that counter-factuals are speculative and not useful, yet later you say the bomb saved millions of lives - that itself invokes a counter factual. i.e. The millions who would have died if the bomb hadn't been dropped (we speculate). Is it even possible to imply any causality without a counterfactual? You can obviously take things too far and start speculating on an alternative time line, but the immediate turn of events is surely a legitimate area of speculation (even for 'serious' historians) and I would say the decision to surrender in japan is one of those.
kybernetikos 13y ago
When you have the fact that the Japanese had already sent delegations to negotiate a surrender, that everyone who wrote at the time either knew that Japan was trying to surrender or was confident that they would surrender as soon as Russia entered, and that the US Strategic Bombing Survey also concluded that the bombs were unnecessary, we're getting outside the realm of your standard counter-factual here. It's much more like saying 'well, this body was stabbed through the heart and then burned, but they almost certainly would have been dead even without the burning' than 'some complex series of actions occurred and we have no idea which of them was actually relevant in the resulting outcome'.
gruseom 13y ago
This comment is contentless. It doesn't address a single specific thing the article says. Instead it offers woolly generalities ("Japan was threatened on many fronts and made the best choice it could. That much is clear") and platitudes ("all of the actions, taken together, were the reason for the war to end. Yes, Stalin played a big role. But it's not an either-or situation"). It sounds like it's saying something; indeed, it sounds like it's saying something wise and avuncular. But I've read it three times and can't find a single part that is saying anything at all, other than where it repeats exactly the bromide about how the Pacific war ended that the OP is critiquing ("dropping the bombs on Japan saved millions of both Japanese and allied lives. It served as a quick end to a long war")—ironically, right after it says "Nobody is finding comfort in simplistic stories". If you're going to respond to a critique, shouldn't you answer what it actually says? It's unfair to put the article in the same bucket as "UFO stories". No one who has read it (and is being fair) would describe it as "speculation". It isn't anything like counterfactual fan fiction. Almost the entire piece does nothing but cite facts, such as: the dropping of the nuclear bombs does not figure significantly in historical records of the Japanese leadership's discussion about surrender; the Japanese war council decided on August 8 not even to discuss the Hiroshima bombing; damage to Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not out of scale with the earlier fire-bombings of other cities; Japanese leaders had expressed a willingness to sacrifice their cities if necessary; Japan's war strategy was predicated on the Soviets staying neutral; and so on. Are these wrong? If so, how? Are there other, more important facts omitted? If so, what are they? The negative responses to this article so far are so insubstantial that they form a defense of it by omission. I'm very curious now to hear a credible counterargument. Surely there is one?
- asperous 13y ago
  >"Think for a minute about what this essay is asking "What if action X did not end the war in the Pacific?" I think it was addressing the overall idea of speculation in historical events.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - 13y ago
jokoon 13y ago
> Nobody is finding comfort in simplistic stories. In fact, the more details people know, the happier I am. But dropping the bombs on Japan saved millions of both Japanese and allied lives. It served as a quick end to a long war, and it saved thousands of allied prisoners whom the Japanese were ready to execute. It also allowed the great Japanese culture to continue. Yeah the US played ball by nuking japan. But saying it saved japanese people and their culture because it quickly ended the war, it's a little fast. I mean we're talking about nukes, not some poker games, those are war decision, you're still talking like the winner won because it took the best decision. Nuking is not a good decision, but it was a necessary one at the time. You're saying it like japan also thought "yeah, you nuked us, that really saved us, thanks !". When I read "bombs saved japanese", it sounds a little weird. At least the article offer the reader some opportunity to think about the japanese perspective. > Smells of a political agenda and manipulation. UFO and conspiracy theories at it again ! The internet is never holding the truth, it's mandatory to not believe everything, it applies especially for this article. Consider the alternative like an opportunity to explore perspectives, not just like another one of those "deviant zealot".
alexqgb 13y ago
Did you even read the article, Daniel? Contrary to your assertion, the essay is not asking "What if action X did not end the war in the Pacific?". It is stating - categorically - that the commonly accepted narrative is based on an insufficient accounting of the facts, and that this narrative is unsustainable in the face of a more complete record of what actually happened. Here's the key passage: "It didn't take a military genius to see that, while it might be possible to fight a decisive battle against one great power invading from one direction, it would not be possible to fight off two great powers attacking from two different directions. The Soviet invasion invalidated the military's decisive battle strategy, just as it invalidated the diplomatic strategy. At a single stroke, all of Japan's options evaporated. The Soviet invasion [of Manchuria] was strategically decisive -- it foreclosed both of Japan's options -- while the bombing of Hiroshima (which foreclosed neither) was not." Again, that's not "speculative" or "pseudo-historical" writing. And there's no way an attentive reader of good will could characterize it as such. Now, you may dispute the veracity of the facts. Or you could bring additional facts to bear. And you may reasonably disagree with the writer's conclusions. But for a guy who is ostensibly adverse to arguments that "smell of a political agenda and manipulation", you do yourself no favors by (a) seriously misrepresenting the basic nature of what's being said, and (b) responding to your straw man in the most inappropriately condescending manner possible. (Seriously, lumping this in with UFO conspiracies, as though the Soviet military were what? A figment of unreliable imagination?) If you want to see some real slimeball rhetoric, sir, look no further than your own remarks. The only good thing about dishonesty of this sort of is the amusingly ironic dearth of self-awareness that it also represents.
- jbooth 13y ago
  It's also noteworthy that the Japanese troops in Manchuria were, from most accounts I've seen, their most veteran land-based army. And the soviets, having fought the Germans for the past 6 years, basically cut through them like butter. That will make you reconsider your position.
  - Asterick6 13y ago
    ^except that's wrong. The best of the Kwangtung army stationed in Manchuria was already shifted to Kyushu and the southern islands of Japan to prepare for the possible US invasion. >"Most of Japan's best troops had been shifted to the southern part of the home islands. Japan's military had correctly guessed that the likely first target of an American invasion would be the southernmost island of Kyushu. The once proud Kwangtung army in Manchuria, for example, was a shell of its former self because its best units had been shifted away to defend Japan itself." It wasn't that the best troops were defeated; just that Japan couldn't fight a war on two fronts. Once the Soviet Union invaded, they had no other viable options other than surrender or fight a losing battle. However, even if the author's analysis is correct, I still think it best to believe that the nuclear weapons were the main cause but the other variables also influenced the outcome.
contingencies 13y ago
Foreign Policy is the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations, a group summarized as early as 1986 by Noam Chomsky (who won a 2005 poll as the world's top public intellectual, invented modern linguistics, and is an outspoken critic of US government) as essentially the business input to [United States] foreign policy planning. The question, then, is which business interests are served by a given Foreign Policy story? Speculation may be made in this case if we ascribe significance to the near simultaneous release of The New Digital Age by Eric Schmidt (Google CEO) and Jared Cohen (Council of Foreign Relations member and head of Google Ideas; somewhat spooky in and of itself), which Julian Assange variously described as a startlingly clear and provocative blueprint for technocratic imperialism and an enticement to Western soft power. One of the advanced praise writers for the book (aside Kissinger, Blair, Clinton, Albright and Bloomberg - who, it must be noted, recently declined presidential candidacy as billionaire and 7th richest American to run New York) was General Keith Alexander, who is the present Director of the NSA (former Deputy Chief of Staff, Army; formerly Commanding General, U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command; Director of Intelligence, US Central Command; Deputy Director for Intelligence, Joint Chiefs of Staff). Jacob Applebaum (of The Tor Project, also Wikileaks affiliate) described General Alexander as the most powerful man in the world and a fucking liar for claiming to congress that the NSA does not routinely intercept the communications of US citizens. Why has this article been published by Foreign Policy in the current climate? The author has been developing these ideas awhile (http://cns.miis.edu/staff/wilson_ward.htm http://cns.miis.edu/staff/wilson_ward.htm).
anuraj 13y ago
There is no excuse for killing innocents - in the name of whatever - America lost more than it gained by that single inhuman act of dropping Atom Bomb. War machines are still rattling - world peace is farther - But hope of a humanity not obliterated by the narrow confines of nation states and their propaganda and marching towards the goal of being at peace with itself and the universe lingers and that is what drives people like me.
auctiontheory 13y ago
But atom bombs represented one thing that Stalin and fire-bombing did not: the end of Japanese culture. What does that mean, and how is it supported by the historical evidence in the article or elsewhere?
hef19898 13y ago
The view point of what I had in history about WW2 and the Cold War in Germany about the use of atomic bombs against Japan was that 1 - Japan was already defeated and it was only a question of time 2 - Atomic bombs didn't drop on Germany because the Third Reich surrendered before 3 - The US needed an actual use case to assert the damage and potential of this as yet unknown weapon 4 - It was as much about threatening the sowjets as it was about ending the war in the Pacific if not more so What I know about the late days of the second world war is that they were regarded by both the future NATO allies (read the Commonwealth and the US) and the Sowjets as the basically the first days of a future conflict between these parties. Germany and Japan didn't play much of a role in this picture any more. So what the US got from the use of nuclear weapons was much more than just the japanese surrender. It was a stronger position compared to the Sowjets and the garantee that the war in europe didn't continue on after the German surrender. In order to prevent this, the western allies even slowed their advance to Berlin to allow the Sowjets their successes. Which doesn't mean they didn't have their fair share of it anyway. But that is just my point of view and I'm no historian. And finally to the point about saving lives. I've grown tired of nationalistic people stating an unverifiable estimate of probale deaths as the herois reason to kill any number people right know. You don't save people by killing others and it is certainly not heroic. I know that the victors writes the history, but this argument mostly comes up in cases where some really bad things have to reinterpreted.

mcantelon 13y ago

>But these things are the province of speculation, not knowledge. Here's the opinion of the leader of the US military at the time. "It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons." -Fleet Admiral William Daniel Leahy (May 6, 1875 – July 20, 1959), the senior-most United States military officer during th Second World War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_D._Leahy#Atomic_bomb http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_D._Leahy#Atomic_bomb The bomb was dropped not to win the war, but to intimidate the USSR.

hga 13y ago
By the time Leahy published that, nuclear weapons were an existential threat to the US Navy, see e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolt_of_the_Admirals http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolt_of_the_Admirals
Scramblejams 13y ago
When I read these revisionist pieces, I often see the same phrase you quoted: "ready to surrender." If someone is "ready to surrender," what does that mean? Well I'll tell you what it certainly doesn't mean: It doesn't mean that they've _actually_ surrendered. What a lot of revisionist writings gloss over is that yes, certain parts of the Japanese leadership were "ready to surrender." But it is well documented that some were only ready to surrender if conditions X and Y were met. Others were only ready to surrender with conditions Z and A. And of course others weren't ready to surrender at all. Yet until a credible leadership figure actually _offered_ unconditional surrender, it was going to be war as usual. And so if this phrase, "ready to surrender," is taken alone (notwithstanding its distinguished source), then it is facile in that it deliberately ignores both the wide diversity of opinion which existed within Japanese leadership, and the complex process which was necessary for the leadership to converge and make a firm, unified political decision.
- soperj 13y ago
  When they are actively trying to surrender, then they're probably "Ready to surrender". The US wouldn't negotiate because the bombs were on the way. What were the conditions? Because if they were "you help us rebuild" or "and we get a grill-cheese sandwich" then really they're not much. Plenty of peace treaties have taken place with conditions.
  - Scramblejams 13y ago
    "Negotiate?" The US had no appetite for negotiation at that point -- only unconditional surrender was acceptable. I won't do your research for you, but various factions within the Japanese leadership wanted to put lots of significant things on the table, like maintaining the seat of the emperor, the existing political structure, etc. All were showstoppers to the US.

kaonashi 13y ago

>But dropping the bombs on Japan saved millions of both Japanese and allied lives. This assumes an invasion of the island of Japan would somehow have been a necessary goal.

mercurial 13y ago
I don't know what options US high command were favouring in case the bombs failed for some reason, but if their strategic goal was "unconditional surrender", it is reasonable to expect them to plan an invasion of Japan, considering that firebombing was failing to do the trick.
greedo 13y ago
Despite the best efforts of airpower advocates, there's nothing like planting your boots on the soil of an enemy's capitol to demonstrate that you've defeated them. "You may fly over a land forever; you may bomb it, atomize it, pulverize it and wipe it clean of life – but if you desire to defend it, protect it, and keep it for civilization, you must do this on the ground, the way the Roman legions did, by putting your young men into the mud." T.R. Fehrenbach This Kind of War, 1963

chipsy 13y ago

I have to agree. The way the article ends with the bogeyman, "What if we didn't fear nukes as much?" has a circularity to it. What "nuclear warfare" meant in 1945 was obviously different from what it became just 15 years later - a political football that diverted people's attention, vs. an entire strategic doctrine that acted to encourage low-level proxy wars and interventions, while discouraging the "total war" practice that was conventional through the World Wars.

sumodds 13y ago

I loved the first part of the argument, that many a time causality is not from one source but multiple (often overlapping and even contradictory sources). But towards the end, you sort of do the exact opposite :). The assertion that "But dropping the bombs on Japan saved millions of both Japanese and allied lives". Allied life, I can understand that, but Japanese life. Also the assertion that the bomb somehow magically safeguarded the Japanese culture.

lsd5you 13y ago

I think there is a contradiction in one of the things that you say. You say that counter-factuals are speculative and not useful, yet later you say the bomb saved millions of lives - that itself invokes a counter factual. i.e. The millions who would have died if the bomb hadn't been dropped (we speculate). Is it even possible to imply any causality without a counterfactual? You can obviously take things too far and start speculating on an alternative time line, but the immediate turn of events is surely a legitimate area of speculation (even for 'serious' historians) and I would say the decision to surrender in japan is one of those.

kybernetikos 13y ago

When you have the fact that the Japanese had already sent delegations to negotiate a surrender, that everyone who wrote at the time either knew that Japan was trying to surrender or was confident that they would surrender as soon as Russia entered, and that the US Strategic Bombing Survey also concluded that the bombs were unnecessary, we're getting outside the realm of your standard counter-factual here. It's much more like saying 'well, this body was stabbed through the heart and then burned, but they almost certainly would have been dead even without the burning' than 'some complex series of actions occurred and we have no idea which of them was actually relevant in the resulting outcome'.

gruseom 13y ago

This comment is contentless. It doesn't address a single specific thing the article says. Instead it offers woolly generalities ("Japan was threatened on many fronts and made the best choice it could. That much is clear") and platitudes ("all of the actions, taken together, were the reason for the war to end. Yes, Stalin played a big role. But it's not an either-or situation"). It sounds like it's saying something; indeed, it sounds like it's saying something wise and avuncular. But I've read it three times and can't find a single part that is saying anything at all, other than where it repeats exactly the bromide about how the Pacific war ended that the OP is critiquing ("dropping the bombs on Japan saved millions of both Japanese and allied lives. It served as a quick end to a long war")—ironically, right after it says "Nobody is finding comfort in simplistic stories". If you're going to respond to a critique, shouldn't you answer what it actually says? It's unfair to put the article in the same bucket as "UFO stories". No one who has read it (and is being fair) would describe it as "speculation". It isn't anything like counterfactual fan fiction. Almost the entire piece does nothing but cite facts, such as: the dropping of the nuclear bombs does not figure significantly in historical records of the Japanese leadership's discussion about surrender; the Japanese war council decided on August 8 not even to discuss the Hiroshima bombing; damage to Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not out of scale with the earlier fire-bombings of other cities; Japanese leaders had expressed a willingness to sacrifice their cities if necessary; Japan's war strategy was predicated on the Soviets staying neutral; and so on. Are these wrong? If so, how? Are there other, more important facts omitted? If so, what are they? The negative responses to this article so far are so insubstantial that they form a defense of it by omission. I'm very curious now to hear a credible counterargument. Surely there is one?

asperous 13y ago
>"Think for a minute about what this essay is asking "What if action X did not end the war in the Pacific?" I think it was addressing the overall idea of speculation in historical events.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- 13y ago

jokoon 13y ago

> Nobody is finding comfort in simplistic stories. In fact, the more details people know, the happier I am. But dropping the bombs on Japan saved millions of both Japanese and allied lives. It served as a quick end to a long war, and it saved thousands of allied prisoners whom the Japanese were ready to execute. It also allowed the great Japanese culture to continue. Yeah the US played ball by nuking japan. But saying it saved japanese people and their culture because it quickly ended the war, it's a little fast. I mean we're talking about nukes, not some poker games, those are war decision, you're still talking like the winner won because it took the best decision. Nuking is not a good decision, but it was a necessary one at the time. You're saying it like japan also thought "yeah, you nuked us, that really saved us, thanks !". When I read "bombs saved japanese", it sounds a little weird. At least the article offer the reader some opportunity to think about the japanese perspective. > Smells of a political agenda and manipulation. UFO and conspiracy theories at it again ! The internet is never holding the truth, it's mandatory to not believe everything, it applies especially for this article. Consider the alternative like an opportunity to explore perspectives, not just like another one of those "deviant zealot".

alexqgb 13y ago

Did you even read the article, Daniel? Contrary to your assertion, the essay is not asking "What if action X did not end the war in the Pacific?". It is stating - categorically - that the commonly accepted narrative is based on an insufficient accounting of the facts, and that this narrative is unsustainable in the face of a more complete record of what actually happened. Here's the key passage: "It didn't take a military genius to see that, while it might be possible to fight a decisive battle against one great power invading from one direction, it would not be possible to fight off two great powers attacking from two different directions. The Soviet invasion invalidated the military's decisive battle strategy, just as it invalidated the diplomatic strategy. At a single stroke, all of Japan's options evaporated. The Soviet invasion [of Manchuria] was strategically decisive -- it foreclosed both of Japan's options -- while the bombing of Hiroshima (which foreclosed neither) was not." Again, that's not "speculative" or "pseudo-historical" writing. And there's no way an attentive reader of good will could characterize it as such. Now, you may dispute the veracity of the facts. Or you could bring additional facts to bear. And you may reasonably disagree with the writer's conclusions. But for a guy who is ostensibly adverse to arguments that "smell of a political agenda and manipulation", you do yourself no favors by (a) seriously misrepresenting the basic nature of what's being said, and (b) responding to your straw man in the most inappropriately condescending manner possible. (Seriously, lumping this in with UFO conspiracies, as though the Soviet military were what? A figment of unreliable imagination?) If you want to see some real slimeball rhetoric, sir, look no further than your own remarks. The only good thing about dishonesty of this sort of is the amusingly ironic dearth of self-awareness that it also represents.

jbooth 13y ago
It's also noteworthy that the Japanese troops in Manchuria were, from most accounts I've seen, their most veteran land-based army. And the soviets, having fought the Germans for the past 6 years, basically cut through them like butter. That will make you reconsider your position.
- Asterick6 13y ago
  ^except that's wrong. The best of the Kwangtung army stationed in Manchuria was already shifted to Kyushu and the southern islands of Japan to prepare for the possible US invasion. >"Most of Japan's best troops had been shifted to the southern part of the home islands. Japan's military had correctly guessed that the likely first target of an American invasion would be the southernmost island of Kyushu. The once proud Kwangtung army in Manchuria, for example, was a shell of its former self because its best units had been shifted away to defend Japan itself." It wasn't that the best troops were defeated; just that Japan couldn't fight a war on two fronts. Once the Soviet Union invaded, they had no other viable options other than surrender or fight a losing battle. However, even if the author's analysis is correct, I still think it best to believe that the nuclear weapons were the main cause but the other variables also influenced the outcome.

contingencies 13y ago

Foreign Policy is the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations, a group summarized as early as 1986 by Noam Chomsky (who won a 2005 poll as the world's top public intellectual, invented modern linguistics, and is an outspoken critic of US government) as essentially the business input to [United States] foreign policy planning. The question, then, is which business interests are served by a given Foreign Policy story? Speculation may be made in this case if we ascribe significance to the near simultaneous release of The New Digital Age by Eric Schmidt (Google CEO) and Jared Cohen (Council of Foreign Relations member and head of Google Ideas; somewhat spooky in and of itself), which Julian Assange variously described as a startlingly clear and provocative blueprint for technocratic imperialism and an enticement to Western soft power. One of the advanced praise writers for the book (aside Kissinger, Blair, Clinton, Albright and Bloomberg - who, it must be noted, recently declined presidential candidacy as billionaire and 7th richest American to run New York) was General Keith Alexander, who is the present Director of the NSA (former Deputy Chief of Staff, Army; formerly Commanding General, U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command; Director of Intelligence, US Central Command; Deputy Director for Intelligence, Joint Chiefs of Staff). Jacob Applebaum (of The Tor Project, also Wikileaks affiliate) described General Alexander as the most powerful man in the world and a fucking liar for claiming to congress that the NSA does not routinely intercept the communications of US citizens. Why has this article been published by Foreign Policy in the current climate? The author has been developing these ideas awhile (http://cns.miis.edu/staff/wilson_ward.htm http://cns.miis.edu/staff/wilson_ward.htm).

anuraj 13y ago

There is no excuse for killing innocents - in the name of whatever - America lost more than it gained by that single inhuman act of dropping Atom Bomb. War machines are still rattling - world peace is farther - But hope of a humanity not obliterated by the narrow confines of nation states and their propaganda and marching towards the goal of being at peace with itself and the universe lingers and that is what drives people like me.

auctiontheory 13y ago

But atom bombs represented one thing that Stalin and fire-bombing did not: the end of Japanese culture. What does that mean, and how is it supported by the historical evidence in the article or elsewhere?

hef19898 13y ago

The view point of what I had in history about WW2 and the Cold War in Germany about the use of atomic bombs against Japan was that 1 - Japan was already defeated and it was only a question of time 2 - Atomic bombs didn't drop on Germany because the Third Reich surrendered before 3 - The US needed an actual use case to assert the damage and potential of this as yet unknown weapon 4 - It was as much about threatening the sowjets as it was about ending the war in the Pacific if not more so What I know about the late days of the second world war is that they were regarded by both the future NATO allies (read the Commonwealth and the US) and the Sowjets as the basically the first days of a future conflict between these parties. Germany and Japan didn't play much of a role in this picture any more. So what the US got from the use of nuclear weapons was much more than just the japanese surrender. It was a stronger position compared to the Sowjets and the garantee that the war in europe didn't continue on after the German surrender. In order to prevent this, the western allies even slowed their advance to Berlin to allow the Sowjets their successes. Which doesn't mean they didn't have their fair share of it anyway. But that is just my point of view and I'm no historian. And finally to the point about saving lives. I've grown tired of nationalistic people stating an unverifiable estimate of probale deaths as the herois reason to kill any number people right know. You don't save people by killing others and it is certainly not heroic. I know that the victors writes the history, but this argument mostly comes up in cases where some really bad things have to reinterpreted.