The A-Bombs

Just the US involvement. FDR was swearing as late as 1940 that we were not going to send soldiers to war. Then in 1941 Germany's U-boats sink some US merchant ships.------------------
No webpage found at provided URL: www.hells-handmaiden.com

As far as I could gather Hitler had no reason to attack America. His Pact Of Steel (though it did not cover Japan when made) only enforced countries to help if an enemy attacked one of them. Japan, however, initiated an attack on America. Germany did not need to help, and may have escaped the US's wrath had it not helped Japan. But Hitler made his decision without consulting any of his advisors.

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Well, the US had an oil embargo in place...

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As a result Japan's takeover of Northern Indochina, we did put an embargo on oil. This was 1940. In 1941, Japan took Southern Indochina and we froze Japanese assets, prevented them from buying oil. This second move would be the crippling one. Remember that Indochina was then a French colony, and so the Japanese were attacking our allies in the European war. Also, remember that Japan had an alliance with Hitler, as of 1940.------------------
No webpage found at provided URL: www.hells-handmaiden.com[This message has been edited by John, 08-05-2003]

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But Hitler made his decision without consulting any of his advisors

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Which was a somewhat fortunate (for the allies) habit of his.If he had listened to Heinz Guderian the whole D-Day landing
operations could well have failed.

As a kind-of reply to my own message... An editorial in the New York Times today suggests that Japanese historians are generally of the consensus that the atom bombs were largely responsible for the end of the war because they shocked the hard-line military majority into accepting surrender.Not that it's the final word on the subject, but I did find it interesting. Like I said it's only an editorial so the scholarship may not be impeccable.

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An editorial in the New York Times today suggests that Japanese historians are generally of the consensus that the atom bombs were largely responsible for the end of the war because they shocked the hard-line military majority into accepting surrender.

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The fact remains that surrender came only after, and immediately after, the Emperor demanded it.War Minister Anami was certainly the most extreme hard-liner in the government. He didn't accept the call for unconditional surrender, even after both bombs had dropped and the Soviets had declared war and invaded. When the Emperor's status had been assured by the Allies, Anami sent troops to the Imperial Palace in a last-ditch effort to keep the Emperor from giving the order to surrender. However, Hirohito escaped and expressed that it was his wish that the Cabinet accept the terms of surrender. Anami obediently complied, then returned home and committed ritual suicide.------------------
En la tierra de ciegos, el tuerco es el Rey.

I think the article suggested that Hirohito felt that the detonations gave him a pretext for ordering surrender that he didn't have before.But sure, it probably wasn't necessary. Was WWII neccesary, though? We probably could have stayed out of it, ourselves.

Not wanting to sound catty or owt, but America seems to have developed a habit of doing that. ------------------

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All the boys think she's a spy

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This theme has come up in a new topic.Moose

I know one of the plans, made as an alternate plan if the a-bomb development failed, called for paving over Okanawa, use it to firebomb most of japan while a major troop build up was commenced. The final invasion was estimated to be several million troops. Rumours at the time said that the japanese were arming everyone they could and telling them to do everything do defend the homeland. Estimates figures the final version would cost several hundred thousand american lives, and probably over a million japanese casualities. I know that this wasn't the main or only reason for dropping the bomb, but many figured it the atomic bombs would save lives, specifically american lives.

Can I ask where you came about your knowledge of this plan?Before, during, and after the decision to use the atomic bombs was made, the overwhelming opinion among high-ranking US military officials was that the Japanese were defeated. This page gives you the distinct impression that by late July 1945 the American government and military insiders knew that it was only a matter of time before the Japanese gave up. This opinion seemed to be shared by people like General Eisenhower, General MacArthur, Truman's Chief of Staff Admiral William D. Leahy, Undersecretary of State Joseph Grew, and Assistant Secretary of the Navy Ralph Bard, among others.After the war was long over, there were bound to be rationalizations for using a defeated civilian populace for atomic testing. The military didn't consider estimates of American and Japanese casualties relevant when they made the decision to use atomic weapons, because they realized it was unlikely such an invasion would be necessary.regards,
Esteban Hambre[This message has been edited by MrHambre, 03-24-2004]

The allies had overwhelming air superiority. Attacks on Hamburg, Dresden and Berlin with over 1000 bombers, killed roughly 50,000 people in each city as a result of one night's bombing. Many of them died as a result of firestorms.Similarly, cities were being destroyed in Japan. Whether these cities were destroyed by 1,000 bomber raids or one atom bomb, is to some extent irrelevant.It is difficult to criticise decisions taken at that time and under those conditions. I would like to think that dropping the bombs did shorten the war and saved many lives. But it is all hypothetical now. What happened happened.

My understanding was that mainland Japan had not been invaded for 1500 years. This was a source of pride for Japan. An invasion by Americans would have been met with a civilian uprising, which could have meant Japanese charging foxholes with nothing other than pitchforks. This is what the Allies were facing if they were going to invade mainland Japan. As was shown during the invasion of Japanese held islands in the Pacific, the Japanese were willing to die to the last man, even if they were civilians. Japans thought that no army had the fortitude to withstand the atrocity of having to kill a ill-equiped army of civilians rushing well fortified positions.Also, after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we made one of the biggest bluffs of all time. We had one more A-bomb ready to go, but we told them we had numerous bombs ready to go and could produce many more within months. These were lies, but they seemed to work nonetheless. A good poker face may have ended the war just as much as the A-bombs did. The Japanese had probably lost more people to firebombing during the war than in Nagasaki and Hiroshima combined, it was the pure devastation of continuous A-bombing that scared them into a surrender, and this fright was encouraged by our bluff.However, I still think the Japanese leaders saw the writing on the wall. They had the choice of surrendering or suffer the humiliation of an invading army on Japanese soil. The A-bomb was something they were not prepared for, and made surrendering a much more viable option. Before the A-bomb, they would have preferred to fight off an invading army. After the Bomb, they decided that surrender was less humiliating than being bombed into extinction.

I've never made it a point to criticize the morality of the decision to use the atomic bombs. Obviously that's a debate in and of itself. However, there are many sources available that give a pretty clear picture of what the basis for the decision was, and I wanted to explore how necessary the bombs were to ending the war. The fact remains that the surrender only came only after the Emperor demanded it.You're absolutely right that the protracted firebombing of Tokyo was just as destructive as the atomic bombs would later be. The fact that the conventional bombing took place before the Allied victory at Okinawa in June is a significant point. By July, the Japanese were cut off from their resources in the south Pacific, and had already sent an envoy to the Soviet Union so that Moscow could mediate peace terms between Japan and the Allies.After the first atomic test at Alamogordo in July, it seemed Truman and Secretary of State Byrnes set their sights on calling for Japan's unconditional surrender. They removed language from paragraph 12 of the Potsdam Declaration that was clearly a provision suggesting their Emperor would not be tried as a war criminal:

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This may include a constitutional monarchy under the present dynasty if it be shown to the complete satisfaction of the world that such a government will never again aspire to aggression.

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The language that remained was calculated to generate a refusal from the Japanese:

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There must be eliminated for all time the authority and influence of those who have deceived and misled the people of Japan into embarking on world conquest...stern justice shall be meted out to all war criminals...

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I submit that the call for unconditional surrender was made, against the advice of many top-ranking American military officials, in order to use Japan's refusal to surrender as an excuse to test atomic weapons. General Marshall and General Groves were both in charge of the Manhattan Project, and had been responsible for raising an amazing $20 million from Congress for this secretive plan. The two cities targeted for the bombs had been largely avoided during the firebombing earlier in 1945. Both cities had military installations on their outskirts, but the detonations were planned and executed in the populated center of each city. Hiroshima's bomb was uranium, and Nagasaki's plutonium.The correspondence from Japan's Minister in Switzerland to U.S. Secretary of State Byrnes on 10 August only requests clarification on one point: the Emperor. After receiving assurances that his fate was in the hands of General MacArthur, Emperor Hirohito requested that the Japanese government accept the surrender. Even those who strongly opposed surrender complied. If the Allies had really wanted to end the war as quickly as possible, they would have made this stipulation in the original declaration. The evidence seems clear that this was not the intention of the U.S. government at the time.regards,
Esteban Hambre[This message has been edited by MrHambre, 03-24-2004]

Mr Hambre,Perhaps the US wanted the unconditional surrender in order to remove the hawkish regime headed by the Emporer? Leaving a imperialistic regime in place could have resulted in a reoccurance of forced colonialization after the country was back on its feet. In this light, unconditional surrender could have filled another role. I don't discount your theory at all, but the offering of an unconditional surrender could have been the means to two ends.