70 Years Since Hiroshima

POSTED BY: Magonsdaughter
UPDATED: Saturday, August 8, 2026 10:26
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MAGONSDAUGHTER

Saturday, August 8, 2015 5:20 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by kpo:

The point of the allied bombing campaigns was generally to degrade the enemy's ability to wage war. Destroy its factories, munitions stores, transport hubs, military facilities etc. Bombing targets were always chosen with these things in mind.

The allied bombing campaigns might seem cold-blooded and vindictive, and to an extent they probably were. But that doesn't mean they were pointless slaughter. They undoubtedly shortened the war and thereby saved lives, possibly even more than they killed.

Yes, that's how slaughter is usually justified. I'm sure that 9/11 was carefully and strategically planned with a particular outcome in mind, but because Americans were the target, the loss of thousands of civilian lives is regarded as an abhorence rather than a necessity.

Acts of military violence/terrorism generally serve a purpose. Whether you can justify them or not, depends on which side you are on.

Dresden was a controversial exercise in use of military force - because the idea was to cause choas due to civilian evacuation, but also because the city had "100,000 and 200,000 refugees fleeing westwards from advancing Soviet forces were in the city at the time of the bombing."

Also evidence that strafing of fleeing civilians was part of the stragegy ordered " British historian Alexander McKee in Dresden 1945 (1982) quotes eyewitnesses who state that strafing did occur.[65] According to an RAF webpage on the history of RAF Bomber Command, "[p]art of the American Mustang-fighter escort was ordered to strafe traffic on the roads around Dresden to increase the chaos and disruption to the important transportation network in the region". "

Although there is a later claim that Dresden was chosen due to its military and industrial targets, the method of incendiary bombing meant that the whole city was turned into a firestorm and destroyed. There is little doubt that vengence also played a part in this strategy.

I guess its hard to look down the years of history and second guess decisions made in the light of the desperation, fear and hatred experienced by those involved, but I think we need to be careful, more careful, to avoid seeing it in a black and white manner, ie that all Allied actions were justified, even the purposeful mass slaughter of innocents, because in the end that what tyrannies everywhere always do....justify the abhorrent.

Quote:
Operation Gomorrah killed 42,600 people, left 37,000 wounded and caused some one million German civilians to flee the city.[3] The city's labour force was reduced permanently by ten percent.[3] Approximately 3,000 aircraft were deployed, 9,000 tons of bombs were dropped and over 250,000 homes and houses were destroyed. No subsequent city raid shook Germany as did that on Hamburg; documents show that German officials were thoroughly alarmed and there is some indication from later Allied interrogations of Nazi officials that Hitler stated that further raids of similar weight would force Germany out of the war.

Other things that need to be considered when looking back at this controversial aspect of history:

1. WWII was total war - countries throwing everything they had at each other in a life or death struggle (particularly in the case of Britain which faced down Nazi Germany almost alone at one point). You don't sweat too much about enemy civilian casualties when your entire nation, and way of life, is on the edge of the precipice.

2. For several years after the fall of France and before the Allied invasion of Italy there was no 'Western front' - only limited campaigns in North Africa, Greece, the Balkans etc. Consequently for a long time there was no direct way for Britain and later America, to wage land war against the Nazis. Thus, the only way to fight the Nazis and degrade their ability to wage war, besides supplying the Soviets with massive amounts of war material, was to bomb German industrial cities.

3. Nazi Germany and Imperi

KPO

Saturday, August 8, 2015 6:17 AM

Quote:
Dresden was a controversial exercise in use of military force

Definitely. It definitely aided the Soviet advance and shortened the war, but the cost was too high, considering victory was already inevitable at that point. Dresden was the point where the Allies themselves began to re-examine the strategy of firebombing German cities. I think most people would agree that the Allies went too far here. If you want a more interesting moral conundrum consider one of the many bombing raids against the city of Hamburg - a large port and industrial city home to munitions factories, oil refineries, U-boat pens...

Consider the stranglehold Germany had over Britain for years in the Atlantic with its U-boat campaign: its indiscriminate targeting of merchant shipping aimed at starving Britain into submission. Churchill said after the war that the U-boat threat was 'the only thing that ever really frightened me'. Was Britain therefore morally justified in launching desperate, all out attacks at German port cities like Hamburg, from which the U-boats were launched?

Quote:
but I think we need to be careful, more careful, to avoid seeing it in a black and white manner, ie that all Allied actions were justified, even the purposeful mass slaughter of innocents, because in the end that what tyrannies everywhere always do....justify the abhorrent.

I agree, let's judge everything on its merits, not on whether it was done by the 'bad guys' or the 'good guys'. But the morality is complex. I think if the Allies had fought the Nazis with a determination not to do anything 'abhorrent' they likely would have lost.

It's not personal. It's just war.

SECOND

Saturday, August 8, 2015 7:04 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by kpo:

Other things that need to be considered when looking back at this controversial aspect of history:

What did these bombs cost?

5.5 trillion dollars was the price calculated by the Nuclear Weapons Cost Study Project Committee in 1995 dollars. That is 8.6 trillion dollars in 2015. The national debt is 18.1 trillion dollars. www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

In September 1951, Senator Brien McMahon laid out the argument for investing heavily in nuclear weapons. "The cost of military firepower based on atomic bombs is hundreds of times cheaper, dollar for dollar, than conventional explosives," he explained.

Senator McMahon, then the chairman of the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy, was right that a one-megaton nuclear weapon cost less than conventional bombs containing two billion pounds of TNT. But in giving short shrift to the expense of delivering the nukes, the Connecticut Democrat missed the forest for the merest of saplings.

www.brookings.edu/about/projects/archive/nucweapons/weapons

KPO

Saturday, August 8, 2015 7:57 AM

$5.5 trillion seems to be the figure for the cost of the entire US nuclear weapons program from 1940 to 1996. When you consider that one of the major powers was going to develop these weapons at some point, it's just as well that the USA did it first (before the Soviet Union).

It's not personal. It's just war.

SECOND

Saturday, August 8, 2015 9:04 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by kpo:
$5.5 trillion seems to be the figure for the cost of the entire US nuclear weapons program from 1940 to 1996. When you consider that one of the major powers was going to develop these weapons at some point, it's just as well that the USA did it first (before the Soviet Union).

France also has the H-bomb. America could surely have used either France or Russia as an excuse for America's over-sized nuclear stockpile in 1995. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction

But the French did not get swept up in America's mania & rationalizations for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. France stopped building nukes after a total of 210 tests and a peak stockpile of 540 (in 1992). The USA could have shown good sense and built fewer bombs and saved trillions of dollars, but it was so committed to the idea that the A-bomb won the war that it couldn't stop until it had built 100 times too many bombs and bomb delivery systems.

There were (and are) certain American politicians who swallowed the idea that North Korea, North Vietnam and Iran could be defeated exactly the same as Japan, with A-bombs. Do you really think that only Russian diplomacy and nukes kept America from using the Bomb again? America would have tried it again and again if they truthfully believed A-bombs won WWII, Russia or not. It's obvious that people in the White House for the last 70 years don't believe the myths about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But if Ted Cruz or Trump get elected President, maybe those myths will get tested for truthfulness.

MAGONSDAUGHTER

Saturday, August 8, 2015 2:23 PM

Seriously scary who could get into the White House.

SECOND

Saturday, August 8, 2015 6:11 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
Seriously scary who could get into the White House.

Do any of those Republican fatheads, all claiming that carbon dioxide does not change climate, believe in Nuclear Winter? http://science.howstuffworks.com/nuclear-winter.htm We only have scientists' words and calculations for belief in Nuclear Winter and Republicans don't believe scientists. Because the Bomb won the war with Japan, there really is no reason NOT to nuke Iran. Then President Trump can nuke Gaza for Israel. According to myth, fire in the sky was a sign from Heaven, so the Japs surrendered. So will ISIS, if the mushroom cloud myth is true.

And don't forget the Neutron Bomb, a cleaner/safer/humane bomb. Trump can use it on Detroit to clear it of pests and the poor. http://io9.com/though-it-seems-crazy-now-the-neutron-bomb-was-intende-
1636604514

Quote:
The neutron bomb would be designed for tactical use to offset the Warsaw Pact's three-to-one advantage in tank forces. The army requested neutron warheads for its Lance short-to-medium-range tactical missile and its 8-inch and 155 mm artillery pieces.

But, it was President Jimmy Carter who would inherit the program and make the final decision about deployment. There was just one small problem: nobody had bothered to tell Carter that the weapon was being built. The president found out about it the same way as the rest of the world ….he read about it in the Washington Post.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

SIGNYM

Saturday, August 8, 2015 11:19 PM

Quote:
The point of the allied bombing campaigns was generally to degrade the enemy's ability to wage war. Destroy its factories, munitions stores, transport hubs, military facilities etc. Bombing targets were always chosen with these things in mind.

Bullshit. The bombing of Dresden was a pure act of terror. There were no factories, no rail hubs, no military encampments, or fuel facilities.

Allied bombers (British, primarily) would bomb the buildings in one run, and then ... when people had fled to the parks, zoos, and other open spaces, would bomb and strafe those in a second and third run. The effort was clearly ... clearly... to kill as many civilians as possible.

I know this was discussed, but you need to see this for yourself.

It was the same thing with Nagasaki. Part of the selection process of the target cities was that they be relatively intact (because what's the point of bombing a rubble field?) and of sentimental value to the Japanese. Oh, and it would be nice if it had some military value. Hiroshima fit all three criteria, but Nagasaki was not a military target.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/08/hiroshima-nag
asaki-atomic-bomb-anniversary/400448/

-------

There is a lot of information out there about how many [American] lives were "saved" by atomic-bombing Japan ... not once, but twice in succession!

The Emperor, it is bruited, was on the verge of surrender. Japan's army was spent. There are questions about using the second bomb - wouldn't the first have been enough to demonstrate its power?

The only explanation that makes sense to me is that the USA used the atomic bombs to warn off RUSSIA. By agreement with the west, Russian forces were invading Manchuria. However, they were also storming down the Kamchatka, and had made landfall on the Kuril Islands.

Despite what people think now, it was the Russians who won the European-theater war. In the end, the Germans were forced to retreat across a 1000-mile front as fast at their tanks and trucks -and men - could run (or walk, or hobble). Again, unlike today, the military command of the USA took a realistic assessment of the situation. Russia had come out of the European theater better-equipped to fight than when it went in, able to churn out tanks and planes and trucks and troops faster than they were being consumed in war. Russia's army had a huge numeric advantage over the Japanese, and once ensconced on the Japanese islands they would have been very difficult to dislodge. The USA would have once again been negotiating for a piece of the pie (as in Yalta) instead of occupying the whole empire (kingdom) of Japan.

The concept was that an American demonstration of sheer brutality and willingness to kill would stop the Russians in their tracks. The second bomb was to induce a question in Russian minds as to HOW MANY atomic bombs the USA had.

--------------
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

JEWELSTAITEFAN

Sunday, August 9, 2015 12:34 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by kpo:
'Act of terror' can be interpreted two ways - as a 'terrorist' act, or more simply and literally, an act that inspires terror.

The Hiroshima bombing was not a terrorist act, but it's hard to argue that it doesn't fit the second definition. The whole point of it was to terrorise the Japanese government and nation into surrender.

Still no.
It was not an act of terror, nor terrorism. Which are both the a=same thing, by the way.

It was not an act of terror. It was an act of negotiation. Japan had refused to make any negotiations, other than to make clear that they would fight and kill to the end, no matter their own casualties. They insisted upon suicidal strategy. The first bomb helped them see the error of their ways and plans, yet they still insisted upon their suicidal strategy. They still refused to make any negotiations. The second bomb on the 9th (70 years ago now in Japan) helped them see the futility of their plans, that they really would just continue to decimate themselves with little or no casualties to us.

That isd not an act of terror. That is an act of education. A demonstration of a promise that perhaps they had not believed or understood clearly until we made good on our promise to defeat them.

JEWELSTAITEFAN

Sunday, August 9, 2015 12:48 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
The Allies waged acts of terror against civilians in world war 2, the bombing of Dresden...the unpaletable side of war is that at times the aim is to kill as many civilians as possible in order to demoralise.

I suppose it depends upon whether you think the means justifies the ends in these matters.

Your logic fails completely. Trying to imagine strategy and causes to fit your pre-ordained effects and conclusions does not serve your argument well.
Dresden was filled with factories producing weapons and military equipment to wage war upon the world. It had a rail distribution which served to disperse combat troops to wage war upon the world - a logistical sweet target. Trying to hide these military targets amidst "civilians" who are waging war against the world is a poor argument from you, but might be why you would support Hamas firing missiles from schoolyards amid children so you can blame the defenders for children dying when the combat launchers were eliminated.
Targeting valid and critical sweet juicy military targets in wartime is not the same as targeting "civilians" at war with the world, and for you to not understand that simple concept speaks poorly of you and your mental ability.

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