However, in the end I came to the conclusion that the nuclear strikes weren’t necessary, and I wouldn’t have ordered them simply because a the war was already incredibly one-sided, and an invasion wouldn’t have been necessary in the first place since Japan was already on its last legs.
If I’d have been president I’d continue the (not very) strategic bombing and implement a blockade. Japan has very few natural resources and relies a lot on imports, so this would have hamstrung their military effectiveness. It would have taken a bit longer but based on my half-remembered research from almost 30 years ago it would have worked without an invasion or nukes.
IMHO the nukes were signals to Stalin that he better stop at Berlin.
Firebombing wooden cities night after night? All good carry on.
Poison gas? Whoa WTF are you some kind of monster.
There was a weird little side note in a debate about using nuclear weapons in Vietnam. Someone in the Pentagon on the pro side said, more or less: War is total. People die. If you’re killed in a war, it makes absolutely no difference whether it was from being shot, or stabbed, or blown up by a nuclear bomb. People die and that’s the end for them. That’s war, that’s what we’re talking about, don’t get all squeamish about it now.
I don’t agree with bombing Vietnam obviously, but I do feel like there’s an essential point about war there that is often papered over; people become horrified by some things about war while remaining fine with other things.
War is weird, but ultimately the concern is generally escalation/normalization of weapons. If nukes get normalized, then every military worth its salt needs one, and can use them, and that means suddenly warfare becomes much, much more bloody as a matter of averages, not just as a matter of a bomb or two vaporizing a few hundred thousand people in the occasional high-intensity war.
Yeah, agreed. I think it’s by far a good thing that we’ve been lucky enough so far that they haven’t been used beyond that one time.
I actually think there’s an unspoken factor that is why people actually treat nuclear weapons so differently: There is no way in the modern day that any leader anywhere in the world can start a nuclear war and be sure it won’t come back and impact them and their family. Unlike other war things, it’s never safely insulated in some faraway place happening to other people.
It would be nice to think that the taboo is because of the horrible consequences, but we’re doing things with horrible consequences every day. I think it’s because of the pure calculus of what might happen to me and people I care about, right away.
I mean, the problem with nuclear weapons are for the survivors. I assume getting turned into physics by a nuclear bomb isn’t really painful. Then there’s dying from the shockwave which is probably considerably worse already.
I think the non-use of nuclear weapons was a bigger deal in the Korean War. For various reasons, both sides chose to not use nuclear weapons. This included the one President that chose to deploy nuclear weapons in World War II.
The Korean peninsula could have easily become an irradiated wasteland.
That would’ve worked, but “working” would involve a large portion of the civilian population of Japan starving to death.
The use of the nukes was dual purpose, and yes, one of the purposes was to show to the Soviets that we not only had nukes but were willing to use them.
The other purpose was to demonstrate to Japan that continuing the war was hopeless, regardless of the number of schoolgirls with machine guns they had. It was to show that we didn’t need to invade to flatten their cities. One plane, one bomb, one parking lot. Perhaps luckily for all involved they did not know we did not have the capability readily available to make any more atomic bombs just yet.
The difference was scale. It would have likely taken nearly all of the air assets the Allies had around Japan at the time to flatten one city with firebombs, and the Allies would have taken some losses in aircraft.
Now project out the idea that each of the dozens of planes used in a firebombing a city each only carried one bomb with the same flattened city as a result. It was projecting the idea that all cities in Japan could have literally been flattened in one day.
Now, we didn’t have the bombs or the air force assets to do that at the time, but that wasn’t known to the Japanese. Hiroshima was hit, then three days later Nagasaki. It would appear at the time as though the Americans were going to keep going every three days with a new city flattened with nothing the Japanese could do to prevent it except surrender.
The Japanese weren’t exactly known for surrender. It’s easy to arm chair judge but I’m doubtful anything less than terrifying overwhelming force would have been enough. Sometimes there’s only bad options.
But either you’d be strategically weakening the country to give invading forces an easier time, at which point you’re throwing civilians into the meat grinder anyway, or you’re starving the country until it devolves into literal anarchy, because the only people in the position to surrender were entrenched enough that they’d be the last one to see their power structure fall apart.
I really don’t get Truman’s calculus to use the bomb except to inflict massive casualties, which may have been what he wanted to show the Soviets after all — Truman was willing to obliterate entire populations.
Since there were plenty of other examples of this (ex Dresden) with conventional explosives and fire bombing, I’m pretty sure he just wanted to test his new toy.
Unfortunately a brighter future sometimes requires brutal action, but you can never tell in the moment whether you saved something or are just a monster
Then how does the war end, in your scenario?
If I’d have been president I’d continue the (not very) strategic bombing and implement a blockade. Japan has very few natural resources and relies a lot on imports, so this would have hamstrung their military effectiveness. It would have taken a bit longer but based on my half-remembered research from almost 30 years ago it would have worked without an invasion or nukes.
IMHO the nukes were signals to Stalin that he better stop at Berlin.
There were studies done on the loss of human life that a blockade without an invasion would incur.
It was horrific. Literal millions of deaths were projected.
The terror bombing (and that’s what it was, by 1945) was considerably bloodier than the atomic bombings.
War is weird.
Firebombing wooden cities night after night? All good carry on.
Poison gas? Whoa WTF are you some kind of monster.
There was a weird little side note in a debate about using nuclear weapons in Vietnam. Someone in the Pentagon on the pro side said, more or less: War is total. People die. If you’re killed in a war, it makes absolutely no difference whether it was from being shot, or stabbed, or blown up by a nuclear bomb. People die and that’s the end for them. That’s war, that’s what we’re talking about, don’t get all squeamish about it now.
I don’t agree with bombing Vietnam obviously, but I do feel like there’s an essential point about war there that is often papered over; people become horrified by some things about war while remaining fine with other things.
War is weird, but ultimately the concern is generally escalation/normalization of weapons. If nukes get normalized, then every military worth its salt needs one, and can use them, and that means suddenly warfare becomes much, much more bloody as a matter of averages, not just as a matter of a bomb or two vaporizing a few hundred thousand people in the occasional high-intensity war.
Yeah, agreed. I think it’s by far a good thing that we’ve been lucky enough so far that they haven’t been used beyond that one time.
I actually think there’s an unspoken factor that is why people actually treat nuclear weapons so differently: There is no way in the modern day that any leader anywhere in the world can start a nuclear war and be sure it won’t come back and impact them and their family. Unlike other war things, it’s never safely insulated in some faraway place happening to other people.
It would be nice to think that the taboo is because of the horrible consequences, but we’re doing things with horrible consequences every day. I think it’s because of the pure calculus of what might happen to me and people I care about, right away.
I feel that reaching your conclusion on that basis would have been all but impossible without the benefits of hindsight.
Also, long-term effects were not known then
I meant in reference to the post-war attempts at nuclear restraint, not Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I mean, the problem with nuclear weapons are for the survivors. I assume getting turned into physics by a nuclear bomb isn’t really painful. Then there’s dying from the shockwave which is probably considerably worse already.
And then there’s the radiations…
I think the non-use of nuclear weapons was a bigger deal in the Korean War. For various reasons, both sides chose to not use nuclear weapons. This included the one President that chose to deploy nuclear weapons in World War II.
The Korean peninsula could have easily become an irradiated wasteland.
That would’ve worked, but “working” would involve a large portion of the civilian population of Japan starving to death.
The use of the nukes was dual purpose, and yes, one of the purposes was to show to the Soviets that we not only had nukes but were willing to use them.
The other purpose was to demonstrate to Japan that continuing the war was hopeless, regardless of the number of schoolgirls with machine guns they had. It was to show that we didn’t need to invade to flatten their cities. One plane, one bomb, one parking lot. Perhaps luckily for all involved they did not know we did not have the capability readily available to make any more atomic bombs just yet.
One minor point: We had already flattened their cities with firebombs, so they knew we could do it without invading.
The difference was scale. It would have likely taken nearly all of the air assets the Allies had around Japan at the time to flatten one city with firebombs, and the Allies would have taken some losses in aircraft.
Now project out the idea that each of the dozens of planes used in a firebombing a city each only carried one bomb with the same flattened city as a result. It was projecting the idea that all cities in Japan could have literally been flattened in one day.
Now, we didn’t have the bombs or the air force assets to do that at the time, but that wasn’t known to the Japanese. Hiroshima was hit, then three days later Nagasaki. It would appear at the time as though the Americans were going to keep going every three days with a new city flattened with nothing the Japanese could do to prevent it except surrender.
That would result in millions starving to death. There were no good options.
The Japanese weren’t exactly known for surrender. It’s easy to arm chair judge but I’m doubtful anything less than terrifying overwhelming force would have been enough. Sometimes there’s only bad options.
But either you’d be strategically weakening the country to give invading forces an easier time, at which point you’re throwing civilians into the meat grinder anyway, or you’re starving the country until it devolves into literal anarchy, because the only people in the position to surrender were entrenched enough that they’d be the last one to see their power structure fall apart.
I really don’t get Truman’s calculus to use the bomb except to inflict massive casualties, which may have been what he wanted to show the Soviets after all — Truman was willing to obliterate entire populations.
Since there were plenty of other examples of this (ex Dresden) with conventional explosives and fire bombing, I’m pretty sure he just wanted to test his new toy.
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So the best case we’d have ended with another North Korea pariah state.
Unfortunately a brighter future sometimes requires brutal action, but you can never tell in the moment whether you saved something or are just a monster
Japan as another USSR satellite to be stripped for parts
Not comment-OP, but here’s a credible scenario: https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-japan-stalin-did/
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Geopolitically it was beneficial for the US to end the war without the Soviets getting involved, because then we’d have had two Iron Curtains
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