Would you consider the atomic bombs a war crime?

From a communist perspective there is no need for the Red Army to occupy China, Mao proved perfectly capable of doing it without the USSR's direct involvement. On ythe other hand the Soviets have practically no anphibious capability so any action against Japan would require US help.

 

Wellesley (he wasn't Wellington yet) did allright in his time and so did the Japanese in 1905, of course in the second instance you could state that tzarist Russia was not an asian country. An early western sponsored "coalition" also did ok at time of the Boxer rebellion. The Japanese in China had really "bitten more than they could chew". From a colonialist invader's pespective having to deal with millions of "hostile natives" is a tough undertaking, even if when you can easily destroy the command infrastructure, and the Japanes lacked the capability to do even that, less densely populated areas are easier pickings.

The Mao - Stalin relationship was complex to say the least, if Ciang had done better it's possible Mao could haver gotten more support but historically I don't think he got much, most weapons one sees in the hands of Mao's troops are of Japanese origin. A scenario with Stalin defeating the Japanese and then taking on Ciang is really unlikely, and I doubt very much it had any influence at all on the decision to drop the bombs.

 

Stalin was much too smart to do the actual fighting if he could help it. Besides Mao didnt need help, Chiang was the best ally Mao could have hoped for.

 

nanking was a war crime... hirosima was a bitchslap!


In that moment It seems that it was the only way to stop the Japanese war machine and end the war once and for all.

Whether I agree with it is a whole different story

 

Probably so, but if the Japanese wouldn't have surrendered, Tokyo would eventually have been hit. What about the emperor then?

 

Is this still going on???

It was the only good thing to do :not to do it,would be a crime .

 

The Japanese were militarily defeated after the Battle of The Philippine Sea if not before and their leadership knew it, yet they refused to surrender.

We killed more in the fire bombings of Tokyo. They didn't surrender then.

Except for the few cities we saved for atomic attacks we destroyed a majority of their major city centers prior to Aug 6. They didn't surrender then.

The Japanese were infamous on the battlefield for feigning surrender and then murdering our troops as we tried to take them prisoner. They negotiated in bad faith at the beginning of the war. They murdered millions of Chinese civilians under their occupation. How could we trust them enough to negotiate a peace with them?

We warned them that we would destroy them if they didn't surrender, they refused.

We could have blockaded them and starved millions to death and they likely would still not have surrendered without being invaded or nuked. How humane would that have been?

Their use of Kamikaze troops, including the last mission of the Yamato, proved they were willing to die rather than surrender.

They trained their women and children to use pitchforks and brooms to fend off our pending invasion. Would it have been any more humane to have killed them then?

There would have been vast more Japanese killed and maimed in an invasion than were casualties of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Russia was a horrible foe to face in war, they didn't care how many of their soldiers were killed as long as they killed the enemy in greater numbers. How many Japanese would have been raped tortured and killed by the Red army if they invaded after declaring war?

I see far, far more responsibility falling on the Japanese military leadership for the fate of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and for that matter every other city we destroyed and every citizen of theirs that we killed conventionally than could be laid on our shoulders.

War crime by the US? Hardly. We did what we needed to do to destroy one of the most cruel, vicious and bloodthirsty military forces ever seen on this earth.

 

What we were really worried about was Japan suing for peace with Russia...and Russia adding Japan to its growing list of post war territory...what WWII was about anyway.
It is harder to predict the past, than it is to predict the future.
Nobody knows what would have happened if... A would have done X to B.
Does not really matter. After Dresden and the Tokyo Fire Bombings.....there were No More moral lines to cross. We had already done the worst.
The A-Bombs were just a show on the stage of world dominance.
Japan was to become a colony of USA capital...bank loans...war reparations...seizure of foreign capital that Japan had occupied during the war....and not Russia.
The World Bank was not set up to "help people"...it is a leverage of their lives and assets.
Be very careful of who you go to war with. The real loosing starts when the war ends.
best

 

They weren't even at war until mid August of 45. This simply doesn't make sense.

I doubt this was more than a minor concern if that. Now the Soviets adding more to their possession in continental Asia was likely becoming a concern by the end of the wary.

At best that's a gross simplification. A worst it is completely fallacious.

 

To expand on some of lwd's points:

The 'the US used the atomic bombs in response to the Soviet invasion of Manchuria' argument has been soundly disproved in dozens of sources. A quick google search turned up this article by the Center for Strategic and International Studies that offers a decent overview of the factors and complexities behind the atomic bombings: http://csis.org/blog/understanding-decision-drop-bomb-hiroshima-and-nagasaki

Another point: Hiroshima was bombed on August 6th, and the Soviets invaded Manchuria on August 9th. The Soviets were not actively involved in the Pacific War until after the first bomb was dropped.

As for 'WWII was about stopping the Soviets', this is completely wrong. It is partially correct if you look only at the very late-war period, but even then it is still a gross oversimplification.

I don't understand what you mean, but I sense a lot of revisionism here. Essentially all revisionist sources about the bombings are inaccurate, relying upon non-period data or playing to emotional undertones. In fact, I've yet to see one revisionist article that I agree with (and this includes museum exhibits around the world dealing with this topic).

Please elaborate on this. It is generally acknowledged that 'showing off' to the Soviets was a tertiary objective of the bombings, but I have never seen this trumpeted as the sole reason for their use.

 

In order for the use of the atomic bombs to be a crime, a law must have been violated. So, I wonder, which law was broken?

Regards,
Marc
www.digitalhistoryarchive.com

 

In war many things are temorarily viewed as "patriotic" and the right thing to do. There is no point discussing if it was a war-crime. We should discuss whether it should be a war crime. I particullary like this from a war-correspondent.

Independent's acclaimed war correspondent Robert Fisk, on the front page of that paper, in which he writes:

On the surface, it's all very simple. Most of us seem to believe the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a war crime. I certainly do. The Japanese were already talking of surrender. That Caesar of British historians, A J P Taylor, quoted a senior US official. "The bomb simply had to be used -- so much money had been expended on it. Had it failed, how would we have explained the huge expenditure? Think of the public outcry there would have been . . . The relief to everyone concerned when the bomb was finished and dropped was enormous."

The US of course is the only country in history to have used an A-Bomb against another nation. They claim to be saving millions of American Lives. The 2 Japanese Cities were Military Targets. A country with a dying economy, a dying Military and a dying control over the Pacific. The American's could ahve just destroyed the Economic prospects of Japan forcing them into a economically fueled defeat and not a military one.

Sorry,

I refuse to believe there was no other way. The Immediate death of 60,000 and 80,000 people in 1 attack only?

But then there is the side which, like the US Generals will argue if the US hadn't done it some other country would do it. The effects of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have shaped this planets history. The A-Bomb was a trap, the first country to unleash its wrath on another would be the hated, even if the actions were justified.

BTW, Nazi Germany also had a Nuclear program running and I wonder what could have happened if they had completed it.
This is a no-win situation.

No disrespect sent towards the veterans and soldiers who died fighting in the Pacific, I just personally believe that the A-Bomb was the hardest and the most cruelest decision made by man in History. It is like the man who made the Machine-Gun expected it to end wars.

Hope you guys understood what I am trying to say.

 

Whether what should be a war crime? Use of nuclear weapons or Hiroshima/Nagasaki? There's 7 pages of the latter already.

 

There were other alternatives. They were weighed in the whole, and found wanting. The loss of life, of American, Allied (Australian, Chinese, New Zealand, Indian, British, etc) and Japanese would've been much greater. Even counting civilian lives. The political consequences would've likely been much more dire, and the repercussions for the world worse.

Besides, it was two attacks, not one. The 6th August, and 9th August. It still took Japan until the 15th August to Announce it's surrender. Few, if any, actually expected Japan to surrender after these attacks.

If you believe there was another, different way, please explain and show how this other way would lead to the loss of less lives.

Consider that the Battle of Shumshu took place after the surrender, (18th- 23rd August) and cost 772 lives, after which the Soviets began to appreciate the some of the difficulties associated with seaborne invasions.