As callous as it is to say, I'm really glad we dropped the bomb on Japan. Otherwise, I doubt people in general and presidents would truly understand the power they are wielding and how careful they should be with that power. That amount of devastation needed to be displayed when only one side had the Bomb. If it's first public use was during the Cold War, I'm not sure we'd still be here.
Just finished part 2. His description of how Khrushchev favored Kennedy and then after meeting him feeling he could take advantage. Well... um.
Finished. What a startling reminder of the importance of diplomacy, and how nuanced it can be. In this current climate, it's pretty scary.
I have a theory that thusfar is exclusively mine i believe but it sort of comes down to this. we got nukes at about the perfect moment in human history. Unless it got to the total end of a war the first round would imo always be more than one side using a ton of em. To boot WW2 was traumatising enough in itself that the major parties were sort of pushed away from war.
In college I had an American history class with a professor that spent two classes arguing that America was morally indefensible for dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This was a 200 level class that people took to fill out their basic history requirement. So there were like 150 people in it. She wasn't smart enough to point out that more civilians died in the fire bombing raids of Tokyo. Mostly she just yelled at people who pointed out that it ultimately saved more Japanese civilian lives than if the war had continued. Never brought up the projections of US military casualties for invading the Japanese home islands. She also had a rule that if you missed a discussion group you failed the class, and athletes weren't excused if they had to miss for traveling to games. There were Lady Vol basketball players in the class, but it was in the Fall. I suspect if a UT football player wanted to major in history and had to miss, her "rule" would have been shown to be utter bullshit.
They are debatable. But I'm of the opinion that if the war went even 2-3 months longer, conventional bombing of Tokyo and other major industrial cities would have killed more civilians.
Another major piece of the equation is that, at the time, the soviets had plans to invade the Japanese home islands from the Asian mainland. If we hadn't ended the war quickly and they had so much as established a beach head, they would have had claim to Japan after the war. We could have been faced with 2 Berlins
It is all conjecture. But there was an attempted military coup to prevent the Emperor from surrender. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyūjō_incident Also, the bomb helped prevent the Soviets from taking enough of Japan to where they would have a say in the post-war government.
Memoirs from Japanese soldiers paint a very different outlook about "fighting to the death!" than the image our (and their) military leaders kept showing
I mean, there was that Japanese solider still fighting in Indonesia till 1974. Their bases were cut off from communication, but the soldiers were still fighting to the last man, and urging the civilians to do the same. We had this enormous problem in the Korean War, because the US army had never had to deal with mass numbers of prisoners of war. We weren't involved in that process in WW1, and in WW2 we were dealing with young and beaten German soldiers whom we share a closer cultural identity and had people that could speak the language. In the Korean War, we couldn't properly sort the hardline North Koreans from the Chinese soldiers that were originally loyal to Chiang Kai Shek, but had been forced to fight on their behalf. So there were constant murders in our POW camp. They even took the American general in charge of the POW camp hostage. http://www.historynet.com/war-behind-the-wire-koje-do-prison-camp.htm
My point has nothing to do with that theory that we had to drop the bomb to save American and Japanese lives at the end of the war. I'm talking about right now. We have pictures of what an atomic bomb does to people and to an entire city. We have a point of reference instead of just seeing a mushroom cloud being tested out in the desert somewhere. I don't think people in general or world leaders would tip toe around the bomb in a world where that never happened. I'd imagine world leaders would be itching to use it and if both sides had the weapon when someone pulled the trigger then who knows what happens.
Many historians think it wasn't even necessarily the devastation of the bombs that forced their surrender, but the idea that we had many more of them that made them realize they were defeated. What is really crazy to think about is the relative weakness of those weapons. The bombs dropped on Japan were 15 and 20 Kilotons respectively. By the 70s and 80s we were arming ICBMs with 50-100 MEGAton yield warheads. By modern standards, the atomic weapons used in WWII could almost be considered tactical nuclear weapons.
Thatsnottrue.gif The largest weapon we ever developed was 25 megatons. It was retired in 76 and after that our largest operational ones were 9 megaton. Your point still stands though
I think we are both wrong. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba The soviets detonated a 57 megaton warhead in 1961. So obviously we COULD go very large. In fact, in the podcast, Dan says the soviet leadership had to be convinced to reduce the yield to 57 from a planned 100 Megaton. But you are correct in that that was not standard by any means. That said, the magnitude of power increase from Hiroshima to the Tsar Bomba is crazy
Nagasaki and Hiroshima were spared the conventional and incendiary bombing that the other Japanese cities were subject to. The powers that be wanted them pristine to show the full effect of the new bombs. Had the war continued and we not used the atomic weapons, those cities would have been hit just as hard as the rest, resulting in significant loss of life. Dropping the second bomb three days later made absolutely no sense from a tactical standpoint. The Hiroshima bomb was a brand new weapons which destroyed lines of comunication in addition to everything else. If you can't use the phone or telegraph, how else would the Japanese have found out about the extent of the damage? The allies owned the skies and we are 20 years before Sputnik. There simply wasn't time for the Japanese government to come to the realization that they were defeated. With another week maybe, but not three days. The fact that the Manhattan Project team came up with two different types of weapons was likely the main driver in the decision to drop on Nagasaki - they simply wanted to test both before he war ended.
This isn't the 1400 where they had to travel by horse. I'm pretty sure they had a good idea what happened at Hiroshima.
How? And who had a good idea? Tojo, the Empirer and the rest of the military brass who were hiding from our bombers, themselves? I'm not saying they didn't know about the bomb, in saying the extent of the damage caused by this terrible new weapon wasn't able to be adequately determined in such a short amount of time.
They had radios, they had planes, army officers actually flew over Hiroshima after the town went dark. Now if the Japanese high command refused to believe the reports of the destruction, that's on them but to act like they didn't know what had happened is false.
Also Japan unconditionally surrendered on August 14th. So apparently they were able to figure out pretty damn quickly what happened after Nagasaki.
There is no one reason why we dropped the first bomb plus the second. Dan covered it pretty well. It was a culmination in circumstances to end the war/test them/save American lives in theory, ect. The cities were going to be bombed with an atomic weapon or fire bombed either way most likely. I don't think one is more morally wrong than the other.
I can't remember if this podcast (Fall of Rome) was linked before itt: https://fallofromepodcast.wordpress.com/ His name is Patrick Wyman. Does anyone have an opinion on him?
I listen to it. I like it. It's really good as he focuses on much more localized issues than the overarching reign of the rulers. It's a bit different approach which is cool also - if you need a Dan Carlin fix, he was on History on Fire pod http://static1.squarespace.com/stat...2288675/HOF-Episode-19-FeaturingDanCarlin.mp3
I was hoping he'd play a larger role in the pbs doc on the Great War. Really enjoyed it, but wish Dan was more involved
New ep of Common Sense was released this morning. Gave a HH update at the end. Sounds like it's going to be a while for a new Hardcore History. Basically said after a while he realized the topic just wasn't going to work, scrapped it and is going w plan B. He didnt sound too excited about it. Also said he has something coming up that will take him away for a bit. This all sucks
The History on Fire guy mentioned that he talked to Dan about upcoming podcasts so they would not overlap. He wanted to discuss a certain topic and Dan had the same idea so Dan decided to dump it so HOF could cover it. Wonder if it's the same one he dumped.
Funny that he talks about how long things take as I am sitting here wishing I could push the speed of his voice x2.