Not a new revelation, but the article pulls from good sources and it’s nice to see this myth repudiated in a mainstream outlet.
Not a new revelation, but the article pulls from good sources and it’s nice to see this myth repudiated in a mainstream outlet.
This article references the existence of lots of alternatives for ending the war but doesn’t identify any of them. Anyone know what other methods or paths specifically would have led to the war ending in just a few weeks and without an invasion of Japan, as mentioned in the article? Genuinely curious, not arguing the claim.
The Japanese were already negotiating to end the war. The sticking point was over the U.S. demand for unconditional surrender vs. the Japanese insistence on preserving their emperor in some form. The eventual surrender did keep the emperor, so the atomic bombs didn’t impact that issue.
Vaporizing 200,000 civilians over semantics
JK it was to show the Soviets we had the bomb and were willing to use it
Both completely deranged sentiments
The Western Allies slowed their approach into Germany because it was agreed between them and the Soviet Union on what the occupation zones should have been prior to the invasion.
In a humanitarian gesture, should the Western Allies have accepted a German surrender in which Germany surrendered only on the condition that they would be occupied by the Americans?
Yes? What kind of stupid question is that
Do you mean like from a moral perspective or from a self interest perspective? A surrender to the west and solely western occupation would not have been accepted by the soviets, with good reason.
Not to mention the fact that it would have been primarily soviets doing the land invasion, and the US didn’t want to get beaten to the punch twice in a row.
That whole narrative smacks of racism and cowardice
"We had to kill 200k civilians or else we would have had to invade the mainland and risk the lives of our soldiers, who are expected to risk their lives. White lives matter. Anyway they were fanatical, the women would have hurled themselves off of cliffs, dashed their babies against rocks and even the children would have taken up bayonets. How many of our boys would have died? 200,000?
What nation is going to prefer the death of its own citizens over the death of civilians of a country they are at war with? Did the Soviet Union treat Nazi Germany with that kind of grace?
The Soviets might have actually been justified in dropping the bomb if they had it since the Nazis were fighting to exterminate them, something that can’t be said of Japan towards America at any point, let alone near the end of the war, and don’t tell me America even slightly cared about the Chinese being slaughtered or the Korean slaves they would blow to ash.
But the myth about the Soviets being especially cruel to the Nazis is one of many fascist myths propagated to reverse the roles of victim and genocidaire, let alone the idea that they did anything so cruel as eradicate the better part of two entire major cities of civilians along with most traces of their existence. There is no comparing the conduct of the two countries in WWII, and the fact that people believe the Soviets were substantially worse is a product of Cold War revisionism.
I’m not talking about Soviets being especially cruel, but taking actions to preserve their own forces over protecting civilians of countries they were at war with.
I don’t think you can really equivocate between “accepting that there will be civilians who die when you fire artillery at military targets” vs “vaporizing civilians by the tens of thousands in an instant to make a point”.
It’s also, again, completely false that the bombs even protected American soldiers, let alone anyone else.
It can when the numbers of casualties under your direct command number in the hundreds of thousands while the death rate of the belligerent side doesn’t meaningfully change between the two options. A landing in Japan was never going to be as easy as the landing in Normandy, and the landing at Normandy was the most logically difficult of the war.
I think you’ve already been told this, but that’s a false dichotomy based on bald-faced lies. Japan was already trying to conditionally surrender! Literally just take their offer and let them keep their stupid Emperor (which the US let them do anyway!) or wait a little and let the Soviets make more progress and see if that changes Japan’s attitude at all. As someone else said, it’s 200,000 mostly civilians dead over semantics and sticking it to the Reds. It is unjustifiable.
The three options were invasion, bombing until submission, and accepting a conditional surrender. Conditional surrender was off the table.
The US was already in the process of leveling Japanese cities due to strategic bombing and would have continued to do so if it didn’t drop nuclear weapons. A blockade was also implemented, in part to starve the population into unconditional surrender.
It is funny how much anti-nuclear people focus on the dropping of two bombs when they were only a fraction of the total deaths caused. And try, those two bombs were a major part of the deliberations on the Japanese side when deciding to surrender in which we have first account records while the decision was being made.
Soldiers and civilians are the same, I am very smart
I never said that.
How else to interpret that? Were you suggesting Japan at the end of WW2 posed a risk to US civilians?
No. I said that a country is going to value the lives of its own people over the lives of others in making military decisions. This isn’t just an American thing.