Is Nuclear War Wrong?

[Albert Tatlock]

My belief is that the Japs wouldn't have surrendered without them. So better loads of them dying than loads of us - end of. Conventional warfare might well have dragged the war out by a couple of years the way they usually dug in, feared being captured by the enemy and had willingness to fight to the last man (and even woman and kid in a land invasion of Japan).

 

You can't uninvent things - so better the allies got the technology first in my book - otherwise we'd all be playing on Japanese game machines and driving German cars by now.

[La_Dolce_Vita]

My goodness I hope the world never again slips into total war. The decisions involved at such times cost millions of lives. No doubt Churchill and Rosevelt and Truman made many bad decisions, Stalin too. But Hitler and Tojo and their ilk forced those decisions to be taken. Iwo Jima wasn't enough to make the Japanese surrender, Okinawa neither, the fire bombing of Tokyo neither, Hiroshima neither, only with Nagasaki was peace just able to conquor war.

 

Japan had already lost the war, all that was required was a formal surrender to get the Japanese out of China and stop the Russians moving into Japan. If bombs weren't used then it would have taken a lot longer for the Japanese surrender, or they never might have done so, but they were no longer have been a war-making power. They had no resources and no merchant marine. Now Russia would have invaded or possibly would have bombed Japan if America did nothing. But is it more acceptable to burn thousands of civilians so this does not happen?

 

The bombing was simply the best option to satisfy British, American, and Chinese interests in my opinion. It made sense to save American lives and keep the Russians out. But it wasn't necessary.

 

Neutron bombs, they're the boys. Much better than poopy old atom bombs - goodness me. None of these things are OK. I was wondering about the British Empire last night, how come we ended up 'owning' far off places?

 

Not so sure about that. Neutron bombs don't differ that much from normal nuclear weapons and they're more useful for actually fighting a nuclear war, which means they are far less use to the nations that have nuclear weapons.

 

I do think that nuclear weapons have probably averted a world war.

[Cret]

Not read the whole thread but in terms of the question in the thread title - I watched 'Threads' recently, and although it's an old film now it's pretty horrific.

 

Nobody wins once rockets like that start getting flung about, and usually over something that's really stupid.

[La_Dolce_Vita]

Not read the whole thread but in terms of the question in the thread title - I watched 'Threads' recently, and although it's an old film now it's pretty horrific.

 

Nobody wins once rockets like that start getting flung about, and usually over something that's really stupid.

 

Well far more effort is spent trying to win by threatening to use the weapons.

[P.K.]

Well far more effort is spent trying to win by threatening to use the weapons.

Not so. They made sure any war would be unwinnable by both sides.

 

Nuclear weapons have kept a relative peace in Europe for the last 60+ years. It wouldn't surprise me at all if that wasn't a record.

[La_Dolce_Vita]

Well far more effort is spent trying to win by threatening to use the weapons.

Not so. They made sure any war would be unwinnable by both sides.

 

Nuclear weapons have kept a relative peace in Europe for the last 60+ years. It wouldn't surprise me at all if that wasn't a record.

 

That isn't what I meant. In having nuclear weapons both the U.S. and the Soviet Union were able to thwarts the other's plans. I think they were able to deter and coerce.

 

And certainly the strategic planners in the Soviet Union and the United States were not of the opinion that a war was unwinnable, especially for the first 15 years of the Cold War and less so further on.

 

In latter half of the Cold War, deterrence theory was based on the thinking that if you can make an accurate and devastating counter-force strike, yet still maintain a secondary counter-value capability you need not worry too much about your enemy. The difficulty was in achieving this, maintaining it, and especially for the United States there was a need for it to be credible. Credibility was the United States' weakeness, not capability.

 

60 years? What about the Balkans during the 90s? I certainly do not think that since the end of the Cold War nuclear weapons are what has been preventing conflict. I would believe that to be greater european economic integration.

[Cret]

I suppose we all just have to hope that no short arses with horse faced wives and a penchant for tic-tac-toe start playing silly beggars again hacking defense computers!

[P.K.]

60 years? What about the Balkans during the 90s? I certainly do not think that since the end of the Cold War nuclear weapons are what has been preventing conflict. I would believe that to be greater european economic integration.

It looks to me as though you fail to grasp the difference between tactical and strategic nuclear weapons. And there was no room for either in the Balkans hence my statement that NBC capability has kept a relative peace in Europe. In any event the Balkans were essentially a civil war, not a European one.

[manshimajin]

I also read Max Hastings' book Nemisis a while ago - highly highly recommend it. I found it just a numbing book about the scale of total war - truely sobering.

 

Japan had been warned that it faced destruction, it refused to surrender still planned on a war of attrition on the main Islands; it still insisted on the right to maintain its armed occupations of China and Korea; even after the first bombing it did not surrender - this to me puts a lie to any claim that it would have surrendered after a demonstration off Tokyo Bay or similar. After the second bombing the surrender was nearly stopped by a coup attempt by the war party.

One of the difficulties we face is 'retrospective' judgement. Noone is saying that the consequences of total war as waged in WWII are anything other than horrific but it is difficult for those of us who did not participate to make simplistic judgements about the decisions taken at the time. Maybe in similar circumstances we would not make the same decision today - maybe we would if we thought it was going to bring a frightful war to a full stop.

 

I fully agree about the Hastings book - if you want to get a perspective on the events surrounding the latter stages of the war in the Pacific and the invasion of the Japanese homeland it is an excellent source - and up to date in its research. I also read a book a couple of years ago on the attempts by some of the Japanese Army to stage a military coup (as mentioned by Chinahand) and to kidnap the Emperor. These events are repeated in the Hastings book. There is no doubt that there was a group in the military in Japan who felt that they could force the Americans into a negotiated peace settlement due to the enormous losses that the US Army would have sustained when it invaded Japan. They felt that this would have been amplified by the fact that the war in Europe was over and US troops would therefore have been less willing to fight to the bitter end.

 

Having lived in Japan my other thought is that whereas the defeat of Germany led to Germans accepting that the National Socialist system was evil, the Japanese (in the main) still feel that they were 'victims' in the war - in part due to the economic sanctions before the war and to a large extent because of the dropping of the A-bomb. This of course has been reflected in their relationships with neighbouring states post-war and in things like the blocking of 'revisionist' history books for schools and the issues associated with the Yakazuni Shrine.

 

I wonder if the A-bomb had been available earlier whether it would have been used against a German city?

 

Edited to add: I just noticed I made the classic mistake of saying 'before the war' - of course China had been suffering from Japanese attacks since 1931 and full blown war from 1937 so the sanctions imposed were due to the Japanese attacks on China.

[La_Dolce_Vita]

It looks to me as though you fail to grasp the difference between tactical and strategic nuclear weapons. And there was no room for either in the Balkans hence my statement that NBC capability has kept a relative peace in Europe. In any event the Balkans were essentially a civil war, not a European one.

 

I don't see your point at all about tactical nuclear weapons. How so? I was discussing the use of nuclear weapons as deterrents and you mentioned about such wars being unwinnable.

 

I certainly would agree with you that conflict in Europe because of the US-European and Soviet antagonisms did not come about largely due to deterrence. Though economic integration has played the greatest part in preventing European nations from waging war against each other.

[Sebrof]

I trully wish the bombs had never been dropped, but I can't condemn Truman for ordering their fall.

 

Thank God they were dropped. Many more people would have died had they not been.

 

S

[La_Dolce_Vita]

I trully wish the bombs had never been dropped, but I can't condemn Truman for ordering their fall.

 

Thank God they were dropped. Many more people would have died had they not been.

 

S

 

Yeah, but was an invasion necessary? What if the US did not invase and left Japan in isolation?

[Chinahand]

There would have been hundreds of thousands of deaths in China, Korea, Malaya etc as the Japanese took food from the locals to continue their occupation.

 

Don't forget millions of Japanese were under arms throughout continental asia not just in containable islands. Japanese troops had made successful advances in Yunnan attacking Kai Shek's supply lines and could have caused great difficulty if they moved into Burma etc etc etc.

[La_Dolce_Vita]

There would have been hundreds of thousands of deaths in China, Korea, Malaya etc as the Japanese took food from the locals to continue their occupation.

 

Don't forget millions of Japanese were under arms throughout continental asia not just in containable islands. Japanese troops had made successful advances in Yunnan attacking Kai Shek's supply lines and could have caused great difficulty if they moved into Burma etc etc etc.

 

Yeah, I see your point, I know there were millions of Japanese throughout Asia. Those armies need food.

 

Though again, I wonder what these armies could have achieved. With no further weapons supplied from Japan and completely disconnected from the Home Islands, would they have fought on throughout Asia?

Not sure if the difficulty in shifting them out of Indochina even after Japan unconditionally surrendered speaks for itself.

[manxman2]

the correct thing was to tell them too evacuate the cities first then show them the destructive power of a hydrogen bomd the japanese would of listened and evacuated the second city after seeing the first disintegrated in a nano second....