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Mel Mudkiper posted:Yeah this is something I have thought about. This is what occurs to me, that it's because we (as in humanity) have seen the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that we're able to better understand what nuclear bombs do. And this puts us in a bit of an odd position when it comes to symbolism vs. outcomes. Because even if I might say that if you really look at it the firebombings killed more people, and the continued blockade might have killed more people, the fact that you and many others believe a nuclear weapon to be symbolically worse than those things has undeniably helped humanity to avoid using nuclear weapons.
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Aug 7, 2015 04:29
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Also, as I think came up earlier in the thread, the Japanese understanding was that the Emperor would not be able to keep his throne following the surrender, which would have been very symbolically damaging to the nation. That undoubtedly delayed their willingness to surrender.
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Aug 7, 2015 04:46
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VitalSigns posted:To deprive the enemy of the means to carry on the war. In what way is a blockade not against civilian targets? Intent, or effects?
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Aug 7, 2015 05:07
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"Did the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki damage the Japanese government's willingness to continue the war to an extent at least proportionate to the cost of lives potentially lost in the continued war had the bombs not been dropped" is a hell of a math problem.
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Aug 7, 2015 06:56
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CommieGIR posted:There was more to it: The Americans and British were keenly aware that the Soviets could be in Japan within 10 days and did not want to risk another Berlin issue. Hello, say what now?
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Aug 7, 2015 06:58
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Orders or no orders we'd do well to be skeptical of any Soviet ability to actually carry out an invasion of Hokkaido.
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Aug 7, 2015 07:08
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CommieGIR posted:The Soviets were conducting small scale Amphibious landings in Manchuria during that time, but yeah, I don't know if they could do a large scale invasion. It's a question of distance, isn't it? It's not my understanding that the Soviets possessed the sealift capacity and practical experience needed to make an opposed landing on Hokkaido, especially since there's not a major port at the closest land they controlled on Sakhalin.
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Aug 7, 2015 07:17
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KaptainKrunk posted:Indiscriminate bombing of civilians already makes the U.S. look bad. Just because Imperial Japan was worse doesn't make firebombing or the dropping nuclear weapons aimed explicitly at civilians any better. How people aren't understanding this is beyond me. Executing POWs doesn't end wars, does it? Actually tends to make your opponents less willing to surrender.
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Aug 7, 2015 07:19
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ninotoreS posted:Some objective context: I feel skeptical about the casualty estimates portrayed here.
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Aug 7, 2015 07:24
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Austrian mook posted:The first bomb can be defended as a necessity of war, since a lengthy land war would have resulted in more casualties. What I don't understand is that people defend the bombing of Nagasaki only 3 days later. Always seemed like a hasty move, what do you have to lose by giving Japan a week to negotiate a surrender? Oh right, America doesn't negotiate. It similarly has always seemed an unnecessary and risky move. Give the opponent time to make the decision you want, and promise that there's more to come. Three days, when you're already disrupting internal communications? It seems very possible that one bomb would have been enough. There are some decisions that are uncertain enough that caution and the need for confidence dictate choices, but this doesn't seem to be one of them.
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Aug 7, 2015 07:43
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Chomskyan posted:Well according to the US Strategic Bombing Survey, a post war investigative body made up primarily of individuals with a military background, the US only had to wait. If they had the Japanese would "certainly" have surrendered by December 31st 1945 and "in all probability" surrendered by November 1st 1945. Alternatively the US could have done an invasion of Kyushu and from there taken the Tokyo plain. Declassified documents show that the highest credible death toll (out of those presented to Truman) was expected to be about 46,000 american soldiers. Even if we assume twice as many Japanese died in the fighting it still would have had a lower death toll than the (conservatively estimated) 250,000 or so people who ultimately died from the bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Then the 20/20 hindsight comparison is to estimate how many people would have died from continued fighting (and blockade) between August and November and go from there, isn't it? Does anyone have that number?
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Aug 7, 2015 07:48
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Fojar38 posted:Why is starving Japan slowly more humane than nuking them? Cart before the horse. How many would have starved? More or less than 250,000?
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Aug 7, 2015 07:57
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Fojar38 posted:Which do you think would be better at convincing an autocratic military junta that resistance is futile? Nukes or starving civilians? It's impossible to make a blanket prediction about that.
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Aug 7, 2015 08:01
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Fojar38 posted:That's why Kyoto was spared actually. I've suggested a method for determining that: did more people die in the bombings than would have died had the war continued to the point experts are best able to estimate?
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Aug 7, 2015 09:11
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VitalSigns posted:So what wouldn't qualify as primarily a military purpose under this definition? There's at least some military value in ISIS rolling up into a village and beheading a bunch of people to terrorize the rest into helping them, nbd I guess? But that question doesn't even apply because that doesn't actually work in anything but the shortest term.
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Aug 7, 2015 11:24
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VitalSigns posted:Okay how about what happened to Corinth. That certainly made a bunch of other cities think twice about rebellion. Display of overwhelming force, check. Discouraging others from fighting against you, check. Fine to do? I don't know enough about that to say, sorry.
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Aug 7, 2015 11:35
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I've never heard that before about the unconditional surrender requirement, and if so then, uh, wow.
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Aug 7, 2015 14:11
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botany posted:Source please. Er, my understanding of the situation is that you're actually making a positive claim here--firebombing and blockade were the status quo, if you have a source indicating that would have changed then you should share that.
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Aug 7, 2015 15:51
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Anosmoman posted:If you, somehow, knew that wiping out ISIS' Capital would cause ISIS to disintegrate and cease to exist as a fighting force would you push that button? I must be confused here because that question inherently can't be answered yes or no by definition.
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Aug 7, 2015 15:58
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Off the top of my head I want to say phosphorus, at the time. Why do you ask?
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Aug 7, 2015 16:06
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I think the distinction is that you're not directly dropping fire on people but instead starting fires in their houses, but it still seems to me like you're burning people to death in any event. Whether one or the other is more terrorizing is a matter for a whole different potential thread--and if either is being used as a terror weapon I already think that's an immoral act.
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Aug 7, 2015 16:14
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CommieGIR posted:They switched to firebombing because regular bombs were not having any real effect upon the Japanese industrial groups. Right, that's my understanding and it's not using them as terror weapons in the case of WWII.
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Aug 7, 2015 16:19
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icantfindaname posted:Right, and the firebombing was also not an immediate or decisive factor in causing Japan's surrender I think I want to ask for a citation for this because Smash's post was all about the atomic bombings and not the effects of the firebombings.
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Aug 7, 2015 16:36
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My Imaginary GF posted:Here's an argument for nuking Japan: They deliberately and unprovokedly attacked Pearl loving Harbor Aw, but why do you care? I bet Hawaii was one of those poo poo territories that didn't contribute to Democrats.
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Aug 7, 2015 16:42
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VitalSigns posted:This boring question is asked and answered on every page: no one is arguing that the London Blitz or the Rape of Nanking was good so no one is arguing about it. To the extent of my understanding, the bombing of Dresden was also immoral.
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Aug 7, 2015 16:44
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My Imaginary GF posted:It is never immoral to burn nazis alive. It is never immoral to burn Nazism as an ideology. Individual people you take or leave as you want, man. Shoot the SS, hang the leaders, whatever. You burn civilians and old buildings and you just make more urns and rubble.
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Aug 7, 2015 16:51
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crabcakes66 posted:There was basically no such thing as a difference between military and civilian targets in WW2. There doesn't have to be, especially within the limits of the time's technology, but there often was.
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Aug 7, 2015 16:53
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icantfindaname posted:Germany is an even worse case to argue in support of strategic bombing, because war production actually increased through the bombing campaigns through 1944 The cliffs notes is that it's actually easy to argue that that was despite the bombing campaign and an impressive achievement for them, not a point against bombing.
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Aug 7, 2015 16:56
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VitalSigns posted:They were not chosen for the military advantage from destroying them, they were chosen because they were some of the last non-flattened cities in Japan so they would showcase the destructive power of the bomb. This is documented. Documented in this thread even. Yes, and: documenting the destructive power of the bomb can be considered a legitimate military end.
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Aug 7, 2015 17:16
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Mel Mudkiper posted:This is kind of a stretch though. By that rationality kidnapping 100 civilians and leaving their headless bodies hanging from bridges is a legimate military end It probably isn't but I can't declare that 100%.
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Aug 7, 2015 17:19
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VitalSigns posted:Getting Spain to withdraw from Iraq was a legitimate military goal, so the Madrid train station attacks were justified. Apparently. How many people was Spain killing in Iraq?
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Aug 7, 2015 17:23
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Mel Mudkiper posted:If demonstrations of willingness and capability for violence are legitimate as military action where do we draw the line? At the demonstrations that bring a less quick end to the war than the lives they cost justify, but I don't know why you want me to state that tautology out loud.
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Aug 7, 2015 17:28
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A Winner is Jew posted:Is a war crime ever justifiable though? If it's justifiable it is by definition not a war crime. That's part of why we as a culture understand that winning nations cannot commit war crimes. That's not ideal but it's the reality we've been operating in since we failed to prosecute Bomber Command and the Eighth Air Force at the Nuremberg Trials.
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Aug 7, 2015 17:51
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Mel Mudkiper posted:I think this is confusing principles with practicality. Something can still be criminal even if a governing body lacks the ability to prosecute it. Realistically, the winner gets away with what the loser can't. But this is a debate of historical retrospect, actions matter more than consequences. My point is that calling something a winning nation does a war crime is counterproductive because people's understanding is commonly that that can't be true. A winning nation commits crimes against jtself when it prosecutes a war in an immoral way.
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Aug 7, 2015 17:59
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A Winner is Jew posted:Like the unrestricted submarine warfare that the US engaged in in the Pacific? I mean that was absolutely a war crime with the officers that carried it out not only admitting it but also giving the German crews that did it in the Atlantic a pass on it after the war. I think it's much more solid ground to say that submarine warfare had a useful military purpose than the bombing of Dresden did, but my understanding could be as wrong as anyone's.
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Aug 7, 2015 18:01
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VitalSigns posted:I see what you're saying, but where do you draw the line then? Possibly, sure, but I don't have the information to hand to answer the question to my own satisfaction right now. But I suspect that even an answer of "possibly" is significant to you, so go ahead with that.
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Aug 7, 2015 18:13
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My Imaginary GF posted:That was all that was left before we firebombed; in WW1, there were others left because we didn't firebomb. They witnessed the luftwaffe lose the battle and their homes destroyed. They knew they lost because we firebombed. If anything, we didn't firebomb enough. No, they didn't fight us again, by definition we firebombed enough even by your standards. I mean, I think if anything we firebombed too much, but I don't know how you got that we firebombed too much.
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Aug 7, 2015 18:22
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rudatron posted:You're debating whether dropping the bomb was a moral choice, what you know at the time is part of that morality. From the perspective of the US, Japanese soldiers had fought to suicide and had continued to participate in a war they knew must have known they couldn't win. Internal divisions and what the Imperial Command was ~really thinking~ is irrelevant, you act based on what you know and see. This is a fair point, honestly.
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Aug 7, 2015 18:26
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FeedingHam2Cats posted:I feel like there's a difference between militarily destroying Japan's ability to resist and killing hundreds of thousands of civilians in terror bombing campaigns Yeah, just maybe.
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Aug 7, 2015 20:18
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Genpei Turtle posted:Oh, they would have waltzed into Hokkaido virtually unopposed. The entirety of the Japanese armed forces were dug in in Kyushu in preparation for a potential US land invasion (which they thought were weeks or months off). The north flank was completely undefended when the Soviets declared war--they had a 5-year neutrality pact which the Soviets unilaterally broke; the Japanese were banking on them holding to the treaty and thus left their northern holdings with just a token force. The Soviets were just days away from Hokkaido, and the Japanese didn't have the logistics to move the entirety of their forces up north to blunt any assault. Their infrastructure was in tatters, their navy and air force was destroyed, and moving a sizable force across the islands just wasn't going to happen. What's more, they couldn't, even if they had the capacity; moving any forces northward would weaken their southern defenses, making an American invasion all the easier. The Soviets could have sent a skeleton crew into Hokkaido and still have the place locked down tight. Two forces which had no capacity to do what they were attempting. It would have been the greatest comedy of errors in the history of the war.
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Aug 7, 2015 20:25
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