German industry at the time was pretty decentralised, and even if you’re just bombing houses that creates refugees who have to be moved, accomodated, etc. Additionally, there really isn’t anything else you can do with the heavy bomber fleet the Allies had at the time - nobody could hit precision targets in the weather of winter 1944/45, so both the US and UK spent the winter on area bombing of cities. They were the only two with powerful bomber forces, so they were the only two to use them.
You mean they have to bomb just coz they CAN to bomb?
Not have to bomb, but will bomb. If you’re in an existential war like WW2 (i.e. the very survival of your nation is at stake) you aren’t going to decide not to use a weapon because it isn’t very nice to those on the receiving end. The modern angst about collateral damage and laws of war is very recent, well past WW2, and I’m not altogether sure if it’s a good thing or not.
agree. In the war for existence it should be stopid not to use all the possible means for victory. The other hand is - are those mean effective/needed or not at the moment. Germans may start in desperative situation of 1945 to use the chemical wearpon, but they seems folowed to certain rules of the war.
and of course, you have to balance the advantages with the disadvantages - for example, is potentially losing some heavy/medium bombers worth bombing a few people’s houses?
The losing of few superexpensive four-engine bombers can’t be economicaly justified by the burning the district of civil’s buildings.But if the aim is say the industrial or military district ( that was the SAME during the war) is probably legitime ( just in terms of brindings the maximal effect on enemy, not the moral side , of course).Though the economical side of strategical bombings raids doesn’t look enough clear and simple to me.
But nations did decide not to use weapons which weren’t very nice to those on the receiving end, before, during and after WWII. For example, aspects of chemical warfare which were often used in WWI were not used in WWII by Allied and Axis powers which had the means to use them. Similarly, dum-dums were avoided and more recently phosphorous bombs and even land mines which were used in past wars are voluntarily not used now.
There are elements of the laws of war and humanitarian law (although much of the latter applied to war and events preceding and during WWII wasn’t really invented until the Allies thought it up in the lead up to their post-war war crimes trials) which might explain some of this, but on the other hand the Germans and Japanese in WWII completely ignored both of those areas of law on a huge scale but chose not to use some chemical and other weapons available to them.
I think it’s a more complex issue than having the means to use a weapon in an existential war determines that a given nation will use it.
I suspect that one important consideration in choosing to use a weapon is simply possessing a weapon for which there is no proportional counter, be it the Allied heavy bomber forces in Europe or the atom bomb in Japan or the V1 and V2 against Britain, which encourages the possessor to use it without fear of a roughly equivalent or worse response with the same weapon. Contrast that with, say, mustard gas which all major combatants had in WWII but the use of which threatened a form of “mutual assured destruction” in the same or wider theatres.
From an abstract humanitarian viewpoint it is a wonderful and most desirable thing, and I’m all in favour of it.
From a practical and pragmatic viewpoint, I concur that I’m not sure if it is a good thing or not, if only as evidenced by a recent but (in my view) fortunately failed prosecution of some Australian soldiers for killing Afghan civilians in a building in the course of the Australian soldiers killing the Afghan civilian who was firing at the Australian soldiers from that building. In WWII, Korea, or Vietnam it wouldn’t have rated more than a mention in an after-action report, if it was mentioned at all. Not to mention, for example, the thousands of French civilians killed by the Allies in various operations before, during and after D-Day. All of this must be horrible beyond understanding if you haven’t been there, and undoubtedly worse if you have, but that’s the nature of war.
Thing is, by the time of the really contentious raids in 1945 the industrial infrastructure to make heavy bombers was all built up, and the resources could not easily be diverted into something else. The choice then came down to building the bombers or building nothing at all (with the resultant savings being of benefit postwar). The option of e.g. building more tanks instead simply didn’t exist - it would have taken several years to convert the infrastructure.
Concerning this complex issue, I would like to recommend Day of Deceit
By Robert Stinnett.
It’s a well documented and fascinating book that might just give you some knew insight into the war with Japan.
Um, no. It isn’t actually. From Wiki:
Day of Deceit…First released in December 1999, it received a cautiously positive review in the New York Times[1] and is frequently referenced by proponents of advance knowledge theories.[2] Historians of the period, however, in general reject its thesis, pointing to several key errors and reliance on doubtful sources.[2]
Most actual historians think it is a flaming pile of sensationalist, profiteering shit…
Are they the historians who claim the Resun-Suvorov’s “Ledocol\IceBreaker” is a serious factorial book?
Nickd,
I am aware of the statements from Wikipedia, but before we throw the whole book out the window I think we should examine more than one perspective about its content.
In reading other reviews I came across a site that presents a couple of different view points.
Here’s a link. http://http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2005/12/07/day-of-deceit/
Whether or not you accept the book as a credible source,
it raises some good questions and is worth the read.
Truce, it’s not just Wiki I’m going on. He’s been denounced by several major historians as being little more than a speculative hack at best, and an irresponsible lying douchebag that bears false witness at worst. I’m not a fan of such distortions and misinformation. And I’m well aware of Antiwar.com as I was sort of anti-(Iraq) war myself. But believe it or not, the U.S. isn’t always the evil hare-bringer of the Four Horsemen some would have us believe. It actually can be a fragmented, dysfunctional bastion of multilayered incompetence of the sort that led to both Pearl and 9/11. Besides, the conspiracy theory makes no damn sense anyways! If the U.S. had foreknowledge of the attack, then why not put the forces on full alert on Saturday night, Sunday morning?
And if I want to read a book where a guy just basically makes shit up and distorts facts, I’ll write it myself. I’m much more interesting…
Not sure I follow man. I am looking at the thesis on Wiki, interesting.
I can say I’m not a big fan of apologist myths such as those that would have us believe Hitler launched Barbarossa to head off a Soviet invasion of Eastern Europe and Germany…
*After reading the Wiki link now, I follow…
I can see that you are not open to reasoning about the author and his work, that’s fine; I will disagree for the moment and do some more research about the sources and info in Day of Deceit.
As for foreknowledge of the attack, It seems that Roosevelt was aware of what was going to happen, and made little effort to prevent war with Japan. From some of his speeches and other statements he made, it’s clear that he wanted that war, and only needed a reasonable provocation; which he got after successfully engaging in subtle military actions against the Japanese during the months leading up to December 7th.
I don’t know anything about such actions.
Could you elaborate?
Sure, this is the information I have available thanks to 9/11 reviews.com
-The Us Naval intelligence, chief of Japan desk planned and suggested “8 insults”, which should bring Japan into the war with the US.
President Roosevelt executed this plan immediately and also added some additional insults to further enrage the Japanese.
The most serious one was total blockade of Japanese oil Imports, as agreed between the Americans, British and the Dutch. FDR also declared an all-out embargo against the Japan and forbade them the use Panama Canal, impending Japan’s access to Venezuelan oil.
Further more The Flying Tigers Volunteer air group successfully fighting the Japanese in China with some 90 fairly modern P-40Bs was another effective provocation that is not generally acknowledged by historical accounts of ww2, most of which fail to mention any air combat action prior to 7th December 1941. But at the time the Japanese had already lost about 100 military aircraft, mostly bombers, on account of the Tigers.
After Pearl Harbor these squadrons were some of the hardest hitting in the US Service.
The attack on Pearl Harbor followed some 6 months later. Having broken the Japanese encryption codes, the Americans knew what was going to happen, when and where, but the president did not dispatch this information to Pearl Harbor. Americans even gave their friends the British 3 Magic decrypting machines which automatically opened encrypted Japanese military traffic. But this same information was not available to the commanders of Hawaii. The movement of the fleet was also visible in the very effective radio direction finding network. Japan had an alliance with Germany, and the Germans upheld their promises by declaring the war against the USA right after the Japanese declaration.
Two scapegoats, the navy commander Admiral Husband Kimmel, and the army commander Lt. General Walter Short were found incompetent and demoted as they were allowed to retire. Short died 1949 and Kimmel 1958. In 1995, the US Congress re-examined this decision and endorsed it. Then in 2000 some archive information came to light and the US Senate passed a resolution stating that both had served in Hawaii “competently and professionally”. In 1941 they were denied vital information, and even on presidential orders purposefully mislead into believing that the Japanese feet could be expected from the southwest. These commanders have yet to be rehabilited by the Pentagon.
You may wish to check your facts a little about the Flying Tigers for a start.
The ex RAF (in reality French 1940) order P40B used by the Flying Tigers.
The P-40B was not equipped with a gun sight, bomb rack or provisions for attaching auxiliary fuel tanks to the wing or belly. Much of our effort during training and combat was devoted to makeshift attempts to remedy these deficiencies. The combat record of the First American Volunteer Group in China is even more remarkable because its pilots were aiming their guns through a crude, homemade, ring-and-post gun sight instead of the more accurate optical sights used by the Air Corps and the Royal Air Force.
FIRST COMBAT (which was after Pearl Harbour)
The Third A.V.G. squadron moved to Rangoon on December 12, 1941, to join the R.A.F. in the defense of Rangoon. The First and Second squadrons flew from Toungoo to Kunming on the afternoon of the 18th. The first combat for the A.V.G. occurred over southern Yunnan Province on December 20, 1941. In their first combat, a combination of the First and Second Squadrons, shot down nine out of ten Japanese bombers with a loss of one A.V.G. aircraft. The second engagement brought the Third Squadron onto action over Rangoon on December 23, with the R.A.F. flying beside the Tigers. The total haul of Japs was six bombers and four fighters. The R.A.F. lost five planes and pilots and the A.V.G. lost four planes and two pilots.
I am not really sure if I get the point of your comment.
Sounds like you’re saying it’s unlikly that the p-40bs could have successfully destroyed Japans military aircraft. 
The point is, you said and I quote
The P40B was not a modern fighter it was an older design ordered by the French, passed to the British when France fell and Britain happily allowed the Chinese to buy in return for getting more modern versions of the P40 instead.
The Flying Tigers did not shoot down any Japanese aircraft until after Pearl Harbour and you claimed they had shot down around 100 prior to pearl Harbour as a ‘Casus Belli’
If a basic checkable fact like that is wrong maybe the rest of the claims that are harder to check are likewise iffy.