Allied Terror bombing of Germany

Yeah...I do not see there is any evidence that ..."Hiroshima/A-Bombs forced Japan to surrender".
All evidence of the time shows Japan was on its last legs, and was seeking surrender with only one condition....retention of the Emperor.
Both Szilard and Urey tried to meet with Truman to advise against the bomb, as it had become unnecessary to win the war.
They were routed, like many, to the real President.....Byrnes, in Spartanburg, North Carolina.
He, and the rest of The White House, knew Japan was defeated, and that the bomb(s) would serve to make the spreading of Russian influence in Europe more controllable/manageable.
As Groves stated....."from the time I took over this project, there was never any illusion on my part that Russia was our enemy, and the project was conducted on that basis".

Nobody knows how many would have died with an (unneeded) invasion of Japan. Figures from The White House started in the several thousands, and progressed to The Milllion mark as the bomb time got near.

 

Where do civilians live ? ... cities....where is military industry based ? factories are located in cities. Of the 40,000 so-called "civilians" killed in the Hamburg raids for example, how many actually had jobs in the shipyards constructing Uboats? How do you separate 'military industry' and 'civilians' in a society primed for 'total war' ? . By 1943 every German was an entirely legimate target

 

There is plenty of evidence for "Hiroshima/A-Bombs forced Japan to surrender".

However, there is also plenty of evidence that the Japanese surrendered because of the Soviet entry into the war.

Many, myself included, can argue just as well, that it was a combination of all three - Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the Soviet entry into the war.

Japan was on it's last legs with the loss of the Marianas...and the Japanese knew it.

The "surrender terms" being bantered around varied from three conditions for the "peace" faction to six for the "militant" faction. The retention of the Emperor was only one of these. Neither side could agree on terms, and the "attempts" at surrender were half-hearted and lacked "official" backing.

IIRC, Szilard and Urey were worried, and rightly so about a post-war arms race, and not that the bomb had become unnecessary to win the war.

Actually, that opinion only pertained to Byrnes, and not "the rest of the White House."

Of course, Groves testimony is almost 10 years after the fact...During the AEC's hearings on Oppenheimer's security clearance, April 12 - May 6, 1954, at the height of the Cold War. 10 years of events can make one quite prescient as to what one was thinking way back when.

Yes, the casualty figures varied greatly. However, the fighting was getting tougher and casualties were getting higher with each leap closer to Japan.

 

Yes...I would be of that opinion as well. The A-Bombs were probably the "last straw".
Japan had Communist troubles of their own at that point. Lots of their people were homeless and hungry...not to mention dead.
Russia was knocking at the door...and America seemed to be willing to spend the lives to keep on coming.
Whether it was one plane and one bomb .....or 200 planes and 3000 bombs...much of Japan could no doubt see the inevitable conclusion.
So they gave in.
I am sure you are right...a combination of things.....plus the possibility of more A-Bombs must have been chilling.

My disagreement with The A-Bomb won the war scenario is... that it was not that definitive. Japan was not fighting happily along, and then all of a sudden decided to throw in the towel after (just because of) the two bombs.
Again, your summation is probably better than mine.....LOTS of complex issues in play from a Military and Diplomatic standpoint.
Thanks

That is to say...if the Allies had dropped those 2 bombs in January 1944, I do not think the Japanese would have surrendered as they did in 1945.
Now, if we had (in 1944) another 4-5 bombs to drop after the initial 2.....that may have been a different story.
It is all conjecture, but you get the point of view I have.
Thanks Again

 

Haven't they spend the both bombs and after Nagasaki there were no more bombs, for a while?

 

If, by "a while", you mean 10 days or so, then you would be correct. A third bomb was completed, and waiting to be shipped. It was estimated that it would be dropped on or about August 19, 1945. Production for September would be three with a possible fourth for September, followed by three more in October, and every month thereafter.

However, how to use the next bombs was a matter still under discussion when the Japanese decided to surrender. The main question involved building up a stockpile to use for tactical support of the expected invasion of Japan, or to continue to drop them on industrial centers as each one was completed.

 

I think we have discussed this subject once, you, OpanaPointer and some other guys, I guess. But 3.000 bombs? :sunglasses-peek:

 

Probably more than once, and across more than a few forums.

I may be incorrect here, but I believe that Denny is is saying that whether it was one Atomic mission(1 plane, 1 bomb) or one firebombing mission(200 planes, 3,000 bombs)...But I could be wrong on this point.

 

You are right: now I can also see that Denny was speaking figuratively.

 

Sorry...I may have expressed that in a vague manner.?
I was thinking that, at that point in the war, I am not sure the Japanese would distinguish (as far as surrendering) between a single B29 dropping One A-Bomb.....or 200 B29 dropping 3000 (just arbitrary numbers on my part) "normal" bombs.
The devastation was similar. Japan was being beaten to a pulp, and the Japanese could not defend against either method.

 

Considering the purposeful acts and intentions by the Nazis and Germans to torture, cause suffering, savage and vindictive acts of reprisal, and to kill and basically annihilate entire groups of people, they definitely deserved to reap the whirlwind.

 

Don't worry Denny -- I am not a native speaker and I sometimes miss the point.
A rational government wouldn't have even consider attacking Perl Harbor, but as they already did, the right time for Japan to surrender would have been immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor -- to avoid everything they had to endure before the bitter end.

 

That's funny.
Poor Churchill might have had a heart attack if Japan had surrendered on Dec, 8, 1941

 

Yeah, that's right. Japan surrenders, Hitler doesn't declare the war on the United States and Churchill remains almost alone -- with Uncle Joe. Things could have gone utterly wrong if Hitler and Tojo were rational people. Long live the Imbeciles!

 

I don't think anyone would've accepted a surrender on the 8th December.

Japan was screwed any which way.

They had scarcity of resources (rubber, steel, fuel), fighting a war in China, and concerned about both the Soviets and the US, and the Germans had already proven to be capricious, unreliable friends.

 

Actually NO. If you want an excelent examle of why not early in the war the British bombed a Danish city. At that point they weren't even suppose to bomb land targets, ships tied up at ports were off limits, and of course Denmark was neutral at the time. Simpy looking at the area bombed tells you little.

Wrong again. Nagasaki and Dreseden were just as necessary and justified as Hiroshima. None of the above were war crimes then or now.

By the end of 43 it was clear that Japan had lost certainly by mid 44 it was clear that Germany had lost. Both facts are irrelevant as they had refused to surrender. The evidence that the Soviet invasion was the key to Japan's surrender is lacking. It likely played a role but IMO more of a role in preventing the post anouncement coup being successful than in pushing Japan into surrendering. It is far from clear that Japan would have surrendered in "a few days" certainly with in months but how many is an open question.

But that was a condition they weren't going to get. The allies had agreed on unconditional surrender and the atomic bombs were critical in getting that when they did.

A nation is not defeated until it admits it is.

In part that was because of the experiances at Iwo Jima and Okinawa. I'm not sure what numbers you are actually talking about but I've not seen any that were less than 10's of thousands and that's for US fatalities alone. There is an open question of whether the invasion would have gone ahead as scheduled or been delayed until the spring of 46 or not happened at all. In any case the Japanese and allied casualties would certainly have been greater than the historical ones.

From what I've read HIrihito wanted to surrender starting no later than the Spring of 45. From all I've read the atomic bombs (both of them) were what empowered him to make the order and get away with it. Certainly the Soviet invasion didn't hurt and it may have (and likely did) cut down on any support for the abortive coup that tried to prevent the surrender.

 

Testimony and statements from Japanese military and government officials stated that pretty much every civilian, no matter what age or gender, would have been turned into Kamikazes to meet the invading American force with whatever weapons they could muster, not to mention the million plus military that was left, and you don't think they would have had Kamikaze pilots on land and guerrilla fighters in every burned out building a la Stalingrad, I have no doubt believing we would have lost at least in the 6 figures. That other argument is for American apologists and guilt-ridden people. We were in a war for survival, we sacrificed everything as did every nation Allied or Axis, They attacked us first even though Yamamoto was upset because the diplomats were supposed to give the declaration of war a half hour before Pearl Harbor but thge time somehow got mixed up. I watched the Oliver Stone documentary and though I am a fan, and I surely believe the JFK hit was not just Oswald and much bigger plot (guys running around with fake secret service badges in street clothes and non-standard suits scaring people away from certain areas in Dealey when all Secret Service agents were present and accounted for), but I in no way believe the fanatical Japanese would have surrendered any sooner had it not been for the bombs. I've seen the argument that all they had to do was keep Hirohito before the bombs and they would surrender, but even after 2 bombs and before Hirohito's radio address, fanatical military guys were trying to infiltrate the palace to steal the taped speech. Maybe Hirohito wanted to surrender before the bombs, but the fascist militarists still held the power.

 

It's more of a matter of principle.

Harris could have said e.g. we are targetting the factories, but by doing so we are unfortunately going to hit the civilians too. Too bad but that can't be avoided.

Instead he said like he said: the civilians are the targets too, and not just collateral damage.

The end result is more or less the same, but still different in principle.

I'm sure we all would appreciate if you shaped your post a bit more carefully with proper quoting...

I use your numbering, although they are a bit confusing...

1. Really? In Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Germany... That is - mass murders, deportations to camps, rapes etc. And many of the soviet nations were in fact occupied countries, so one could add e.g. Ukraine, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan to the list of terrorized countries.

3. If the USSR had capitulated in 1941 a lot of lives would have been saved.

4. Of course it has. And my point was not that the German cities were legitimate military targets but that Harris (and Churchill?) stated all civilians were the targets too.

5. Did Dresden make the war any shorter? Not likely. Thus waste of effort and human lives - of bomber crews too. Did Nagasaki make war any shorter? Nope. Thus waste of etc.
Did the leaders of the UK and the USA know that the war was practically over by Dresden and Nagasaki and that those bombings were useless? Most likely yes.

5. That's only semantics. If one states that the city civilians are the targets and then orders a bombing of a city, it automatically means targetting of civilians.

6. But that was not the case. The German civilians were killed intentionally at least by the British.

The soviets did kill civilians INTENTIONALLY everywhere. What is large scale? Murders in millions/hundred of thousands were made within the forced borders of the USSR. Murders in thousands/tens of thousands outside of them. Does it make any difference whom a dictatorship murders? To me it doesn't.

 

1)Ukraine,Armenia,etc were longer a part of the Russian empire than Bavaria,Hannover,etc a part of the German empire.

3)If the SU had capitulated in 1941,millions more of people would have been killed .

4) In WWI Germany started air attacks on British cities,which were for 100 % terror attacks,thus the Germans should not whine .


I was interrupted


5)The aim of Dresden was not to shorten the warresden was a military aim where were living German civilians,as was Coventry:there was no difference between both .

Besides: the German civilians were legitimate military aims : without the German civilians: no Auschwitz, no Coventry,That the war was practically over by Dresden ? (translation ; the war was not over : every day,British civilians died by German rockets who were made with the support of German civilians):totally irrelevant ,the same for Nagasaki : the Germans did the same as Hamas did in Gaza : Hamas attacked Israel with rockets fired from areas where were living civilians,and whined when Israel attacked these areas .


That Stalin gave the order to kill Soviet citizens is irrelevant : he did not give the order to kill German civilians,there was no Soviet General Plan Germany : when Ehrenburg was exhorting the Soviet soldiers to kill ALL German civilians, he was reprimanded by Stalin himself,because Stalin knew he needed the support of the Germans after the war . But,when the German experts discussed the General Plan Ost,they knew that from Rastenburg there would be no reprimandes,but incitations to go faster and not to remain in the phase of discussing,but to transform paperwork in acts .