if you could retroactively end the life of any single person

Or the first man.

On second thought -- if I had this power I would save it... and just use it as a threat -- so I could create world peace...

Yeah but what if you had to prove you had it a time or two in order to make the rest of the world understand what you could do with it?

thus the Cold War started.

I agree with you Kimmy. I'm just saying we should not have dropped them on non-military targets. You have to agree with me on that right? The only reason we got away with doing it was no one knew how destructive it would be since it had never been done before and its never been done since which validates my point.

Allied forces did a lot of "revenge bombing" in WW2...by design:

"Die Flächenbombardierung forderte mehr als 600 000 Tote, darunter fast 80 000 Kinder." = The firebombing of major German cities killed more than 600,000 people including 80,000 children from Spiegel.de.

Done at the behest of Sir George Gilbert Scott, Operation Gomorrha I believe it was called, focused on residential neighborhoods in major German cities - Hamburg, Berlin, Dresden, to name a few, the amount of tonnage and density was calculated to create firestorms in these areas so intense even the rivers were on fire. More than 90% of many German cities were burned to the ground. I'm not defending Hitler by any means but this is a clear-cut case where a decision was made by the high command of the Allied forces to deliberately target and obliterate civilians.

Casualties for WW2 were much higher than six million - virtually every country in the war lost half of its population....the number I am seeing is 40,000,000 dead, some of them:

Soviet Union 13.6m soldiers 7.7m civilians
China 1.3m soldiers 10m civilians
Germany 3.3m soldiers 3.8m civilians
Poland 850k soldiers 6m civilians (incl. concentration camp victims)
Japan 1.5m soldiers 300k civilians
US 295k soldiers
UK 326k soldiers 62k civilians

When the bomb was dropped on Nagasaki/Hiroshima, the war with Japan was pretty much completely done....some now believe the primary reason was to intimidate the Soviet Union and an invasion would not have been necessary.

-doug

There would have been NO bombing of Germany and NO deaths of children had Germany not attacked the world.

Japan, from what I remember of my history studies of that period, were offered numerous times the chance to surrender and put an end to the war. They refused each and every opportunity, including those offered after the first nuke was dropped but before the second became necessary.

They brought it on themselves.




I see the one good thing that comes from the nuking of Japan, aside from it putting an end to the war, is that it can continue to serve as the one example of what nuclear war would result in. Any country looking to start the kind of catastrophe that either of the world wars caused need only refer to newsreel footage of the aftermath at those two cities to figure out what is being risked.

Btw, both of those cities contained numberous munitions factories and military instalations that were supporting the Japanese war effort. To say that they were "civilian targets only" is erroneous.

i hate long replies

i revote eminem

Well, killing Hitler might have saved a shitload of Greeks, but you're right.... eminem would be next on my list.


Thought you loved rap?

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

eminem is not a rapper, but a white wannabe seeking for music identity.

Thefly,you can kill only one.....so in real terms you cannot guarantee world peace.

Exactly, then they would of dropped the bomb on the US then.

True, and there would have been no attack by Germany in WW2 had there been a less punitive Treaty of Versaille, and there would have been no attack on Germany on Europe in WW1 had the good Archduke not been assassinated and...history is a vicious cycle.

As I understand it, Japan tried to surrender but the US insisted on an unconditional surrender. Their navy was gone, their defenses broken, they were pretty much done for.


That's one way to look at it. But it also touched off an arms race between the Soviet Union and the United States that lasted nearly fifty years and created a weapon which now is in the hands of many unstable nations who barely have control over them. We will never know, but if Truman had desired something less than unconditional surrender, Japan's 1944 overtures of surrender may have been accepted and the bomb never used. The program may have been shifted away from weapons or abandoned - Truman believed the biggest benefit of nuclear technology lay in the field of energy. 53 years later, just over 20% of US power is nuclear based, we have nuclear waste everywhere, and just went to war at least in part over oil. Idealism and potentially deadly technologies don't mix.

I was erroneous. However, neither city was on the original list of targets, largely because they wanted to avoid killing so many civilians without also destroying what little was left of Japan's military capacity. At last one was apparently chosen for weather reasons from what I've been reading, and another reason they were chosen is they had not been damaged by conventional bombing significantly, they wanted accurate BDA.

-doug

Interesting theories. However, my impression of Hitler's pre-war posturings is that he would have done what he did no matter what terms the Versaille Treaty dictated. As for WWI, you could be very likely correct. I can't say for certain, but memory suggests to me that an unconditional surrender was called for, meaning that anything less simply wasn't in *our side's* best interest. Words like "if" and "may have" don't seem to hold a lot of weight with me when debating about this subject. As you said, we will simply never know what might have been. The other item here that has already been mentioned in this thread is that had the USA not developed the technology, it would have been developed eventually, and by a far less desirable nation. It seems to me that history took the safest course possible and that had to be good enough.

There was no way to drop a bomb effectively during WW2 and NOT have some civilian casualties. You don't think that Pearl Harbor was composed of only military personnel do you? Or that all of England, Berlin, or Normandy was strictly civilian?

In a time of war, if a country chooses to go to war, the rules change so far as I see it.

Case in point -- the majority of the German people didn't care for what Hitler stood for or what he was doing -- but they didn't stop him from doing it either did they?

Sean Hannity

Hitler was a mere soldier at the end of WW1. The Versailles Treaty saddled Germany - already humiliated and defeated - with War Reparations that would have been difficult even if the country had not been bankrolling a major war. Hitler's Nazi party never found success until the Great Depression, during which his party was able to gain some seats democratically and use murder and intimidation to gain control of the government.

It's interesting, I've been re-reading some history because of this thread and one of the things historians cite as the reason why the democratic process was easy to dismantle was in part because Germany at that time didn't really have a democratic tradition. Hmmmm....no democratic tradition, under dictatorial rule forever, country in shambles...now why does that sound familiar

-doug

This 28 yr old Speed addict. I'll kill him right now if I ran in to him. What a pussy? He had to beat the shit out of a 15 yr to feel good. He was my mom's roommate! Next time I run in to him, he is dead!

jDoG

The Japanese targeted the Naval base in Pearl Harbor only, to the best of my knowledge.

The rules of war are outlined in the Geneva Convention.

http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/His...s/geneva1.html

The Germans under Hitler were as oppressed as the Iraqis under Saddam. If a German told Hitler to Go Fuck Himself during that time the Gestapo would execute the person on the spot. That totalitarian style of government always keeps the populace in check.

The Pearl Harbor attack was not the only one. At least five fir trees were maimed and injured when a Japanese plan to bomb the west coast from a balloon was launched (no, I didn't make that up) The Japanese doctrine of preemptive war wasn't a complete surprise, either, as US naval vessels sank some minisubs in Pearl before the main attack.

The Geneva Conventions are rarely followed to the letter, even by "benevolent" powers, witness the "evacuation" (read: detention) of 110,000 Japanese+ in WW2.

-doug

The apostle paul

Visualize Whirled Peas.

More very good points. One thing though.... you almost make it sound as if the conditions of reparation after WWI were overdone or outrageous....... I don't think so. The death and carnage and utter desctruction that Germany imposed on the world merited every one of those conditions in my opinion. I believe that Hitler, once in power, used those harsh reparations *as per the treaty of Versailles* as an excuse to his own ends to accomplish much of what he did. To suggest that those conditions were the "cause" isn't really quite accurate.

Let's look at what he did do: Instead of pumping money out to repay and cover the Versaille conditions, he chose to pump millions into rebuilding and amassing a brand-new military, complete with a massive air force, a navy that was second to none at the time, and an amy that boasted the world's largest and deadliest tanks. Millions went into all that. Millions. Had the USA pulled a "Bush" and gone in full force back in say, 1938, and removed Hitler from power, one wonders how the years '39 to '45 would have been different, how many lives would have been saved.


In light of that I find it no great surprise at all that the US found itself justified in it's pre-emtive measures on Hussein. None whatsoever. Maybe people are starting to realize that history IS in fact a vicious cycle and are taking a few steps to prevent certain things from happening again. Would Saddam have stockpiled weapons and eventually caused a major world war? Thankfully, we may never know.

Darth Vader

Maybe you need to re-read the Treaty of Versailles - http://history.acusd.edu/gen/text/ve...rcontents.html

The germans got screwed royally and it imposed severe hardship and humility on an already impoverished nation. Many of my jewish friends even agree with this, they lost teritorry to both France and Poland as well as severe limitation on economy, military, plus they had to pay war reparations to just about every WWI participant.

Friend, you've got some reading to do..

Here's an excerpt illustrating that the punishment was so severe everyone knew Germany (a wealthy industrial nation) did not even possess ther resources to pay the other nations let alone help itself out of global depression:

ARTICLE 231.


The Allied and Associated Governments affirm and Germany accepts the
responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage to
which the Allied and Associated Governments and their nationals have been
subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of
Germany and her allies.


ARTICLE 232.


The Allied and Associated Governments recognise that the resources of Germany are
not adequate, after taking into account permanent diminutions of such resources
which will result from other provisions of the present Treaty, to make complete
reparation for all such loss and damage.

--------------------------------

Edit: It even states in the last paragraph that the reason Germany cannot pay reparations is because of loss resulting from this document

good call

What if one of those burned books contained the recipe for gunpowder and history would accelerate and by now we would be battling Terminators in the Matrix pumped up on radioactive juice like the Hulk or Spiderman..

The problem with the reparations is that rather than being designed - as Woodrow Wilson had wanted them to be - more to ensure peace in Europe, they were designed to humiliate Germany. Land they previously had sovereignty over was taken away from them, their military was reduced to men with shovels, and the economy was ransacked. When the Depression hit their money was so worthless there were literally people protesting by wallpapering their rooms with it (I've seen pictures). Even before Hitler came to power, the leader of Germany was working to try and peacefully back off of the war reparations bill which was cut twice to no avail. A quote

"Hayek, who was working at a statistical research institute, needed 200 pay raises in eight months. Money was cheaper than wallpaper. Million-mark notes lit stoves. Shoes that cost 12 marks in 1913 sold for 32 trillion marks in 1923. In Hitler's favorite beer keller, a glass of beer cost a billion marks. Hyperinflation wiped out the savings of the middle class."

Desperate times create desperate measures - ultimately the economy created Hitler. The United States was, like most of the world, destitute in 1938 - 17.9 percent unemployment according to one source.

Iraq, I am not sold on. Preemptive war is against International Law, for one thing. Another is that even though weapons inspectors weren't given more time to find the elusive WMDs, the US is getting all the time in the world and still hasn't found a thing. Invading a sovereign nation in any circumstance creates an international outcry and makes things unstable. If we'd invaded Germany in 1938 - a sovereign nation - and somehow been successful (impossible - figures I am seeing the US military was 10-20% of the size of German military and was in a panicked gear up in case the war came home), what would have happened next? Soviet perception that they were next?

The comparison of Saddam to Hitler is like comparing a Yugo to a Mercedes...Saddam was a cheap thug who got off on torturing his own people, not a charismatic psychopath with a crack military force numbering over a million. If we hadn't gone, I would bet that twenty years could go by and nothing would change with him. The sanctions, his repression, would eventually have led to his overthrow most likely at some point, and the end result would be the same as it's going to be now - a new, Islamist radical leadership. As soon as America pulls out - and it will, they're already talking of pulling out of Afghanistan - history will repeat itself. There is no democratic tradition there, just a long history of conquest and repression. And then there will be another invasion, another pullout, another takeover...

-doug

I'm somewhat familiar with that treaty and it's harsh conditions..... and I still say bullshit. Maybe I'm not the one that has the reading to do if people think that anything is too harsh for the poor poor Germans in light of the massive death toll that WWI caused because of their bullshit. Simplistic? maybe, but sometimes the simple view is the best view. They fucking deserved everything they got in my opinion, and more. Nothing can repare the millions of lives that war took. No reparation on Earth can fix the dammage that was caused to millions of families, a legacy that is still with us.

Would my own grandfather have lived a few years longer had he not taken home 5 chunks of schrapnel from the battle of Vimy Ridge? Quite possibly yes.

WW1 had some of the WORST battles EVER in war time. The invention of chemical warfare and its widespread use was horrific. Absolutely bloody horrific. Given those circumstances I don't think Versailles was that far out of line.

You lose a war you know what you are going to get. Period.

If the German people had stood up en masse to Hitler and said no, that would have been the end of it. No non third world country has enough soldiers and guns to stop a revolt of its population. When its citizenship allows itself to be placed under the yoke of oppression then they bear a tremendous amount of the blame. Prime example, those fucking French cowards who surrendered without a battle to Hitler.

Then you look at what the Russian people allowed themselves to be subjected to and you can perhaps see that it was indeed necessary to have a Hiroshima and a Nagasaki. The place wasn't important, just that it happened and that we were the first to do it.

And KRL -- a military base isn't comprised solely of military personnel you know?

pathfinder

lol yeah me too

Tell that to my nuclear warhead, ehm...

my very large penis.

I'm pretty sure I'm gonna start a bunch of "oh yeahs" and "how could we have forgotten that bitch" with my vote.
CELINE DION

Kenny Rogers for closing all his Kenny's Roasters. Damn I miss that chicken.

I don't know if that's true but if one takes the 50 million WW II casualties and spread it over 7 years (1939-1945), that's 20,000 war deaths per day for 7 years.

You talk about 3200 civilians killed as if it is a bad thing. That's mind-blowingly low. Iraq said that 35,000 civilians died in 1991 war. Other estimates are lower but still more than four times the 2003 numbers. All the predictions of hundreds of thousands of Baghdad refugees fleeing to Jordan were false.

203 US soldiers killed. 243 US soldiers were killed in one terrorist bombing in Lebanon in 1983. It's conceivable that such a thing could still happen today. Before the war,some people were estimating up to 10,000 US soldiers would be killed because of the dangers of urban combat. What happened?

I think it should be remembered that the bombing of Hiroshima wasn't enough to make the Japanese surrender nor the Americans to not drop another one a few days later on Nagasaki.

Every war in history has done two things - set the stage up for the next war, and created technologies which kill more people more effectively. I've been to Europe, and the second world war is still there in a very palpable way - especially in Germany, where you go to a train station and find a small sign detailing how many Jews were deported to Auschwitz from there, or you find yourself face to face with something like Nikolaikirche or Gedaechtneskirche, churches which are today just shells, burned/bombed out where 30K or 40K innocent civilians died complete with "Nie wieder" documentation (Never again). Even going to the zoo in Berlin, you are faced with a special exhibit that tells you something like 13K animals were there in the thirties, that number was down to 90 in 1945 when the zoo itself became a battleground.

I was ideologically very antiwar before going there; after staying there two months, there is almost no war I would support. Sure you can argue, they deserved it, yada yada, but unless you've been there, you can't really feel what it means, Germany, the Netherlands... There are still bunkers from WW2 in the fields in some countries. Dresden and Berlin were left in ruins by the Soviets, my friend told me when we visited, virtually no restoration was done. Going there made the Second World War all too real, and that wasn't helped by special exhibits at the Imperial War Museum in London where kids can smell what mustard gas smells like, and get to experience what it's like to be trapped in the Underground (subway) while German bombs rain down on your city. Europeans are much more grown up about this than Americans because it is difficult to avoid reminders of the past when you're walking on streets where centuries of death have played out.

-doug

Japan was defeated. There was no real need for this or the first. The "official version" is revisionist history from everything I've read.

-doug

3,200 in a few months is absurdly high for a "sanitary" war. They have no electricity, and it's summer...these numbers are bound to skyrocket in the next few months and I'm willing to bet it will become difficult to get statistics in another couple of months since effectively there is no rule of law there unless you're in a US/UK command bunker. As far as soldiers killed, that number may also increase dramatically as long as the administration insists that the resistance isn't organized (where are those 100K refugees??)...that 75 or so have died in "peacekeeping" - on average more than one a day - is disturbing to say the least, we aren't being given an honest assessment of the situation on the ground.

-doug