Hey Japan wanted the US in the war and they got what they wanted. Innocent people get killed in all wars. It does suck, but that is the price of war. Blame the Japenese government at the time for what happened, it is their fault.

I think an element of surprize always works best when dropping 10000 tonne of tnt over a country that wanted nothing short of world domination.

more casualties in the bombing of Dresden . . here are reports from the survivers of the nuke attacks . . makes ya think ab bit . . here's the Dresden attack

dumbass.

Thanks. Now go read something else than wikipedia.

yeah... this all makes total sense. a bunch of dipshit pornographers in the year 2007 have it all figured out and can say without reservation that they could have ran WWII much better and ended it on a happy note. Japan only slaughtered millions because ... well, as you already know, "it wasn't their fault". they weren't fanatical psychopaths.

once we build a pornographer time machine, You... the chosen ones could finally go back in time and create that perfect world you speak of, where no child ever cried, no puppy ever died and where butterflies live forever.

jesus. you guys are fucking idiots.

debate is one thing... but proclaiming and idea as fact that says "if you would have done it my way, it would been a perfect ending to a perfect war" is extremely retarded.

dumbass.

In other words, the nuclear bombs were revenge?

dont minimize us. there are some very intelligent and cultured people on this board, maybe 10-15% of the total users, there was a lot of power in trumans hands at the time and its been one of the most debated topics ever

Yep, tokyo fire bombing killed a shitload too, more than the nuke attacks I think. Though it's a bit different with widespread bombing -- all those bombs did the same dmg that just one nuke did.

jesus.... you really need to get a grip.

:disgust :disgust :disgust :disgust

its one thing to debate something. its another to state "if they would have just done it my way, the outcome would have been exactly as i planned it and all would have been ok" - if no one can see the idiocy of such a position, then no amount of explaining is going to help.

At time time we did not have an abundance of nukes. We could not waste one on a farm. Also, that may have caused us to have to use more because Japan wouldnt have been as terrified. Having to use more of an new/unproven weapon increases the odds of one being a dudd. That could cause them to fear us less. Finally, they could have had a similar weapon ready or close to ready. No time to waste & no time to give them by saying "ok sonny, we are gonna drop this on you in a week if you dont give up". That would give them a week. Finally, every day the war went on after we could have stopped it American soldiers would be dying for a bad reason.

Thanks for asking.

You are ignorant scum if you don't have time for a 2 minute read. No one should waste their time trying to educate a fool who has made up his mind regardless of the facts. They should be labeled 'trash' and hope they don't have offspring.

How can you debate something without having an opinion on the matter?

interesting that only baddog here has some comprehension of the historical basis of the decision to drop the bomb.

fact, the japanese were warned, and civilians were warned.

dropping the bomb was regrettable, and saved tens of thousands of civilian lives the world over.

it stopped the pacific war and got the germans to throw in the towel.

the USA did not start any of that shit, they just finished it.

not exactly . . . Germany surrendered in April/May I believe, Japan in August.

Germany surrender in May 45. The bombs over Japan were dropped in August. So...??

The Germans had invented a time viewing device and allowed them to see what was going to happen a few months off. Duh.

Must have been the super-magic-enigma.

listen Nastrodamus, unilaterally declaring yourself right and others wrong in a perverse and misguided discussion centering on your heart felt belief in the idea "what definately would have happened if they would have done it my way" and your continued confusion of your opinion and fact, is not debate.

its absolutely impossible to know what might have happened had another course of action been chosen. you can only guess and suppose.

You mess with the best, you die like the rest.

We dropped the bomb for two very good reasons, neither of which was to get Japan to surrender.

1) Revenge for Pearl Harbor. The Japanese dragged us into a war that cost us an untold number of American lives and an enormous amount of our treasure.
Why? We wouldn't sell them oil. (Gee that seems like a funny parallel considering what today's and tomorrow's wars will be fought over)

2) We wanted Stalin to know we had the bomb. It was our way of saying don't fuck with us, we have it and we have the balls to use it. We knew the cold war with the Soviets was coming and this was our way of keeping them in check.
Considering who won the cold war you could make the argument that this strategy worked.

I discuss on the facts of what happened, the alternatives that existed - wellknown ones at that time, and which alternatives that were chosen.

Truman choosed the bombing instead of the diplomatic solution. After the war, Truman himself created a panel (The United States Strategic Bombing Survey) and they made this declaration, I quote:
"Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945 and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."

Im "sorry" for sounding "selfcentred", but just like the declaration, it is also my personal belief that the diplomatic solution would be better for everyone. If others think it was right to bomb the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, well.. thats their opinion.

I'd also like to add this.
Truman's responsibility (and every other president's responsibility) is to THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.
Not the citizens of countries that have attacked us.

Sure I can sympathize when "innocent" people die, no matter what nationality they are, however, when the commander in chief makes a military decision he needs to decide what will end the conflict with the lowest loss of AMERICAN LIVES.

You can argue all you want about how many Japanese people would have died had the war stayed conventional, but the bottom line is that ALOT of American lives were saved, and that was and should have been Truman's only concern.

All who do not agree with you must deserve to be annihilated...but you, your family, and those you hold precious, never deserve to die.

Q: What if you were born in an aggressor country, but were an innocent civilian?

ADG Webmaster

Not that I agree that it was good, but at least it was some of the truth.

Don't move your family next to a ship/bomb/tank making factory.

you dont know what alternatives existed or how realistic any of them were. you are just some kid in the year 2007 playing war on a message board called "go fuck yourself" in between playing some 12yr Korean gamer Half Life or whatever the fuck.

you are not there. you are not in their shoes. you are not the president and military command and advisors weighing out all possible options, their potential effectiveness and the high cost of failure. you are not considering the issue from the standpoint of a military and administration that is fighting a world war in Europe and being attacked and invaded at home. you are not running or defending a nation. you are not worried about the continued cost of war. you are not weighing other potential threats. you can't possibly begin to put everything in its proper context because you're not there, you are not looking at a million unknowns regarding the future, you are not sitting there blind, with horrible intelligence trying to defend a nation from a fanatical enemy who had comitted more attrocities than the Nazis ever dreamed of. you are not looking at the financial burden on the economy and the costs of supporting the effort in Europe. you are not an administration that is totally alone in the world, trying to end a war they didn't start. this is what is just silly. you are just some guy in the year 2007 taking a few tid bits out of wikipedia.com to try and over simplify one of the worlds biggest catastrophes and 10's of millions dead.

its so juvenile to say "if they would have just done XYZ, things would have been better" because above all other things, that simply can't be proven.

Yes, I was not there, but I know what happened. Its called history. And its well documented.

Btw, I've been to military academy and served in the war at Balkan. So, don't jump to your own conclusions about people, if you don't know them. And if you can't debate with people without insulting them because they are right, then don't debate. Its easier that way.

right... its called history. its well documented. yet you only quote snippets of it out of context to try to make an indefensible argument thats not only completely ingorant, but can't be proven.

as i said early on... its not "debate" - its you declaring yourself right "because...." and everyone else "wrong... because..."

Don't be a dipshit. you have no interest in debate at all, you simply want to argue under the guise of "debate" because you think you can win. nothing more.

fucking moron ... "i went to military school..." i guess being a discipline problem as a child, gives you special insight into the mind of the president and military leaders in the year 1945.
:1orglaugh :1orglaugh

Stain on humanuty
 

When such a bomb goes off, it shows us humanity has failed

Learn some history first.

At the Casablanca Conference, we agreed that only an "unconditional surrender" would be allowed. There would be no room for surrender terms.

Good thing it hasn't happened since, then.

Maybe something was learned from it after all.

Whatever... you have not contributed with anything constructive on the issue in this discussion. Only personal insults.... Enjoy it.

Exactly. And that is my point. If the terms were different they would have surrendered.

The reason it hasn't happened since is because the Soviet Union got the bomb soon after the US did, then the H-bomb after that. It's not like the US could have went around nuking without the very real risk of getting nuked themselves.

I don't see how you or anyone else for that matter can sit here 60-odd years later and say for certain what would or wouldn't have happened "if only yaddayaddayadda..."

It's one thing to say doing something different during a certain point in history may have caused a different result, it's quite another to discount every other opinion on the table and set yours up as unilaterally right.

Fact is, unless you were in the room when those decisions were made you don't truly know each and every extenuating circumstance that had to be considered. The country's highest elected officials of the time came to the conlclusion that I expect didn't come lightly, nor was it a spur-of-the-moment decision. It was planned, thought out, debated.... opportunities for the enemy to surrender were made several times prior to the plan being executed, yet here we are this many decades later and we have armlchair quarterbacks not just second-guessing everything but actually stating outright that their way "WOULD HAVE been better".

No offense, but can't you sort of maybe see how kind of...um... laughable that is? :D

Unconditional surrender is the only real surrender. Not having an unconditional surrender in WW I probably contributed greatly to the beginning of WW II.

Japan would not surrender unconditionally. They would not give up monarchy. But they would surrender if they could keep the emperor on the throne. Truman ignored this. Bombs felt. And thats it. Rest is emotions.

This is not guessing. Its history. Its facts. Its recorded. Its been to court and panels. Truman and Eisenhower said it themself. Churchill wrote about it in his books. What more can we ask for?

Having an opinion that diplomacy works, at least it should be officially tried, is not laughable IMO.

Japan had no interest in losing gracefully. I say all's fair in love and war...

And in your mind that is somehow the US's fault?

Fact is, your countrymen are dying by the thousands every day and have been for over 3 years, .... every DAY. Now you have this new technology that, if used, could bring about an end to the war and save millions of lives around the world. You give the enemy several.... SEVERAL mind you, chances to surrender, yes -- uncondistionally... because that was what was needed.

They refuse.

I hazard a guess that had they taken the time to poll the entire US population on this, more than half would have voted to drop the nukes and force a surrender and end the damn thing once and for all.


Now can we all stop crying about it?

The only other meaningful fact is that there isn't a damn thing you or anyone else can do about it, it happened, it's done. Get over it and quit badgering the Americans about it, I'd say 99.9% of those you are arguing with weren't even alive for the event. No one here is responsible.

Cheers. :D

Since Denmark only had 3,000 civilian and military deaths in the entire war you probably hit on something unfathomable to him.

Well, I think 'unconditionally' was not needed to end that war. It was all about throwing the throne or be nuked. I can understand the anger at Japan after all they did, and that the public wanted to humiliate the emperor and his people. Fair enough at that time, but the price - sacrifice of hundred thousands of people - was too high IMO.

Your opinion is noted.



Well I'm out for the night. In 15 mins I'll be nestled all snug in my bed,

visions of mushroom clouds dancing in my head.

We were overrunned by the Germans in few hours. I think it was very bad odds :1orglaugh

Unfucking believable. I wonder if Kyoto has a statue somewhere of Stimson fucking his bride.

Did Denmark have an unconditional surrender with Germany? I mean, what do they teach you about that? I know my German friends said not much talk about WW II is done in German schools.

Hole Scandinavia was neutral until Germany attacked Denmark and later Norway (Sweden continued to be neutral). Denmark had really no military, and we were given an ultimatum. The ultimatum was rejected, but accepted when the bombflights flew over the country.

WW II had turned to bombing civilian targets earlier. All the european ones are quite famous (Dresden the most famous).

Earlier, over 70,000 were killed in Tokyo in just one night of conventional firebombing. Roughly the same number as that killed in Nagasaki.

Cilvilians killed in WW II. 32,327,100
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

So if civilian casualties at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were less than 1% of the civilian casualties of WW II and if the bombing of cities started 5 years earlier including the mass fire-bombing of cities - why would a warning even be necessary? Should the British have dialed up the Germans and told them when and where to expect every air attack so they can evacuate even though it would have increased the air defenses against them and so decreased the probability of success? Pretty dangerous job already. Over 100,000 Allied bomber crewmen were killed over Europe alone.