Not a new revelation, but the article pulls from good sources and it’s nice to see this myth repudiated in a mainstream outlet.
Not a new revelation, but the article pulls from good sources and it’s nice to see this myth repudiated in a mainstream outlet.
What nation is going to prefer the death of its own citizens over the death of civilians of a country they are at war with? Did the Soviet Union treat Nazi Germany with that kind of grace?
The Soviets might have actually been justified in dropping the bomb if they had it since the Nazis were fighting to exterminate them, something that can’t be said of Japan towards America at any point, let alone near the end of the war, and don’t tell me America even slightly cared about the Chinese being slaughtered or the Korean slaves they would blow to ash.
But the myth about the Soviets being especially cruel to the Nazis is one of many fascist myths propagated to reverse the roles of victim and genocidaire, let alone the idea that they did anything so cruel as eradicate the better part of two entire major cities of civilians along with most traces of their existence. There is no comparing the conduct of the two countries in WWII, and the fact that people believe the Soviets were substantially worse is a product of Cold War revisionism.
I’m not talking about Soviets being especially cruel, but taking actions to preserve their own forces over protecting civilians of countries they were at war with.
I don’t think you can really equivocate between “accepting that there will be civilians who die when you fire artillery at military targets” vs “vaporizing civilians by the tens of thousands in an instant to make a point”.
It’s also, again, completely false that the bombs even protected American soldiers, let alone anyone else.
It can when the numbers of casualties under your direct command number in the hundreds of thousands while the death rate of the belligerent side doesn’t meaningfully change between the two options. A landing in Japan was never going to be as easy as the landing in Normandy, and the landing at Normandy was the most logically difficult of the war.
I think you’ve already been told this, but that’s a false dichotomy based on bald-faced lies. Japan was already trying to conditionally surrender! Literally just take their offer and let them keep their stupid Emperor (which the US let them do anyway!) or wait a little and let the Soviets make more progress and see if that changes Japan’s attitude at all. As someone else said, it’s 200,000 mostly civilians dead over semantics and sticking it to the Reds. It is unjustifiable.
The three options were invasion, bombing until submission, and accepting a conditional surrender. Conditional surrender was off the table.
The US was already in the process of leveling Japanese cities due to strategic bombing and would have continued to do so if it didn’t drop nuclear weapons. A blockade was also implemented, in part to starve the population into unconditional surrender.
It is funny how much anti-nuclear people focus on the dropping of two bombs when they were only a fraction of the total deaths caused. And try, those two bombs were a major part of the deliberations on the Japanese side when deciding to surrender in which we have first account records while the decision was being made.
Why? You are accepting the framing of the US military when it is overwhelmingly obvious from how negotiations transpired after the bombs were dropped that there was no particular use for unconditional surrender! They still kept their Emperor! Again, it’s 200,000 dead for semantics and sticking it to the Reds, and you clearly have no answer to that.
“It is funny how” Yeah, I’m sure you’re just rofling over firebombed slaves and children. People mainly focus on the bombs because the case of the bombs is extremely simple, as we’ve demonstrated in this conversation where you completely ignore the reality of the situation in favor of arbitrary axioms that question-beg your desired conclusions. I’m not in favor of how the US conducted most of the war against Japan, but that’s a much larger topic that is tangential to the rest of the thread. Fighting a war against Japan was plainly justified, but the way the US approached it – by annihilating as much of the population as it could manage both through indiscriminate bombing and, as you say, blockades that starved the population, served as a grim foreshadowing of what the US would do to Korea and then Vietnam.
I’m accepting the premise of the Allied powers including the Soviet Union. Japan had hoped that the Soviet Union would meditate a peace after the war with Germany given that the two countries made peace with each other in the 1941. There were even preliminary negotiations that the Soviet Union dragged on in July 1945. Then, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan roughly around the time that the bombs were dropped.
And Japan wasn’t just arguing for the emperor. There were other conditions to the surrender, including no occupation and internally trying Japanese for was crimes instead of an international tribunal. Those conditions were unacceptable. By the time there was only one condition, an atomic bomb had been dropped.
Soldiers and civilians are the same, I am very smart
I never said that.
How else to interpret that? Were you suggesting Japan at the end of WW2 posed a risk to US civilians?
No. I said that a country is going to value the lives of its own people over the lives of others in making military decisions. This isn’t just an American thing.