I mean to say that the first A-bombs dropped in Japane didn’t played any role as 'dramatic example" of what may be. Certainly it was demostrated the monstrouse damaging power of a-bomd but it hadn/t any influence to the first post war (1945-1953) period. Becouse it can’t prevent USSR attack just becouse USSR hadn’t enought forces to attak US in this period.
You try to justify the a-bombing of Japane as the main reason (your words …was largely due) of the prevention the Nuclear war, right?
So Nicdfresh this is wrong, becouse for understanding of “demonic A-power” it was absolutly not nesecary to tested it on the alive peoples.
Hundreds of experimental range testing which made all states with participation of animals and dummis clearly chowed danger radiation and othe factors of nuclear wearpons.
It was probably a RB-29. They suffered proportionally heavy losses to MIGs in the Korean War…
We’ll have to agree to disagree on that one. The Soviet conventional superiority was significant and the US and NATO over-reliance on nuclear weapons for deterrence was exposed during this period as the US had abolished conscription prior to the Korean War and had severally neglected her conventional forces.
But I think it’s fair to say that the devastation wrought by WWII was a significant factor in keeping the Cold War cold…
I wasn’t trying to “justify” anything. I was stating what I perceive to be a simple fact --laboratory experiments on pigs and monkeys will not present a dramatic demonstration of horror that an actual combat mission will, nor was the long term threat posed by radioactive fallout understood, nor taken seriously, by anybody during the 1930s-1940s. If mere conjecture and research alone could demonstrate the horrors of war, than WWI would never have been fought, as certainly the high commands of all nations should have foreseen the devastation that machinegun fire and heavy artillery would wreak on their forces conducting attacks with outmoded 18th century tactics. But they clearly did not foresee this…
I mean not laboratory experiment but experimental Nuclear and Termonuclear open explosions ( on the air and on the land) which made US,USSR,Britain,France and China. Total is over 300(!!!) since 1945 to the forbidden of open testing till it seems in the 1971.
It were builded a handrets makets of towns,cars, wearpons, airsrafts and ets SPECIALY for study of damaged factors and destructive effect of the A- and H- bombs.
The datas gets absollute clear view to the application of this wearpon. Not the Hirosima.
Cheers.
Hi, I’ve been out of action for a while guys, so I’ve got a bit of catching up.
At this point I agree with Chevan, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki did little to effect post war doctrine, other than convince the US they needed more such weapons to remain the pre-eminent world power, and to convince the USSR to acquire such weapons as a counter.
The nuclear arms race was thus created with the hawks of both sides firmly convinced at first nuclear war was winnable.
Regards Digger.
Good to see you back man.
At this point I agree with Chevan, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki did little to effect post war doctrine, other than convince the US they needed more such weapons to remain the pre-eminent world power, and to convince the USSR to acquire such weapons as a counter.
No, no, no. The real reason that the US was convinced that she needed more nukes was not out of “dominance,” but because they were (rather incorrectly) seen as a cheap form of deterrence to a Soviet land invasion of Western Europe. The predominate thinking was that conventional forces were essentially obsolete and so the US ended conscription shortly after WWII and relied on atomic weapons to counter the growing Soviet advantage of land forces in Europe, and the perceived “bomber gap.” The deterrence factor was also considered necessary since the the US forces logistics necessitated that the Atlantic would have to be crossed.
The Soviets also managed to hide their numerical inferiority for a time due to the “Iron Curtain,” and their inherent advantage when it came to espionage and intelligence gathering. The proof of American desperation to get a handle on Soviet warhead and bomber numbers is shown through the large number of unaccounted for American Airmen that lost their lives flying reconnaissance missions in unwieldy transports. This also seen in Ike’s “open skies” proposal rejected by the USSR. It took the Korean War and Task Force Smith to wake up the US to the need of a larger, conscript army, with tanks, as something more than as a “trip wire force.”
The nuclear arms race was thus created with the hawks of both sides firmly convinced at first nuclear war was winnable.
Regards Digger.
True to an extent. thank God cooler heads such as Khrushchev, Eisenhower, and Kennedy prevailed…
No, no, no. The real reason that the US was convinced that she needed more nukes was not out of “dominance,” but because they were (rather incorrectly) seen as a cheap form of deterrence to a Soviet land invasion of Western Europe.
[sarcasm]
Of course US never wanted to be super power and dominate the world, it is evil communist that forced them be one.
[/sarcasm]
The biggest mistake we make today is to judge the past by the standards of today.
By the standards of that time there was nothing wrong with what they did. I’t was war. There were no laser guided bombs, and no such thing as precision bombing.
Of course the US wanted to be a power. But in fact, the bombs were seen as a relatively “cheap” form of deterrence in lieu of large conventional forces…
Perhaps this would explain why conscription ended after WWII and spending on conventional forces was drastically reduced?
And as opposed to the USSR: which spent large sums of money on both nuclear research and a large standing conventional army?
Maybe you are right, US considered nukes as cheap alternative. OK. But I am talking about the goal of the attack. I do not think that we can agree on this one. I can not prove my point right now. But you can not disprove mine either.
But I know one thing, the govenements try to look far ahead (or at least try) so for me the rason for dropping the the A-bombs can be found, if we look at period of 10 years after the drop. Because I beleive they considered not only the immidiate result but also impact on the future years. And then for me it is clear that nukes were supposed to be much more than just cheap weapon that just blows a specific place up. It was a political tool.
Berst regards
Igor Korenev
Now lets look to the figures
According to the Historical Tables. Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Executive Office of the President of United States. US Government Printing Office, Washington D.C., 2006.
http://www.aquilonclub.ru/text/200607201239.htm
-the war budget of USA in 1953 ( Korean war) increased and reached the 53 billions or 69% all of state budgetary expenditures.
-In 1968 (Vietnam war) 82 billion or 46% of all state expenditures.
And the for Nuclear wearpon programm - no more 5-8% of war budget!!!
So although it was the relatively “cheap” wearpon US continie to spend the giant part of war budget for the conventional army.
P.S. For the compare in USSR the war budget never exceed 15-20% of state expenditures since 1949.( here is the interesting article http://www.contr-tv.ru/common/1089 )
Cheers.
Of this, there is no doubt…
Cheers…
Firstly, I was speaking of the period prior to the Korean War (1945-1950), which was when the US began to heavily fund its conventional forces (after the “Task Force Smith” debacle in 1950. There was no conscription in the US between WWII & Korea (unlike the USSR). And I have to look at some of those figures…
There was no any agressive plans in USSR in this period ( unlike in USA and Britain , look just to operation"Unthinkable" or nuclear bombing of USSR cities in 1949 so called operation “Dropshot” http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3901/is_200408/ai_n9428831)
After 1945 Soviet army also was partially reduced. But due to the USSR hadn’t yet the own a-bomb (till 1949) the Soviet Army had the low limit ( lower of which the defence of state would be suffered).
hm, some arguments here seem a bit strange or even sensless to me: cities like tokyo were attacked BECAUSE THEY WERE DEFENDED? hey, cities were defended indeed, but because they were attacked! if you try hard you will always find any sort of reason to bomb and burn thousands of civilians (who cares anyway, it`s “them”) and this is also a bit strange. no matter if it is the “they started”-argument or the one that says “we had no other options to shorten the war”. beside any context that sure must be seen at that time, MOST of the civil-bombings were - to my opinion - a war crime.
to make it short at least: it seems as some try to find excuses for real war crimes like the fire bombing of tokyo that is discussed. maybe I am wrong, but as I said before some arguments (I mean also those in other threads) sound like cheap excuses for things that were really avoidable.
jens
OK, we can all agree that war is terrible, a lesson usually learned on the lee side of the storm and not in the van. It is interesting to note that more people (civilians and otherwise) were killed in the fire bombings than were killed by the two atomic bombs that were dropped.
Having said this, there was in my mind a strong whiff of racism on both sides in this war. While probably true thatAmericans saw the Japanese as being a funny brown-skinned semi-subhuman species, there is no question that the Japanese viewed us as unworthy of standing in their pathway to glory.
Knowing now what we were not sure of knowing then, we would likely recoil from engaging in this again, which helps to explain why no further atomic bombs have been dropped since 1945. The morality or lack of it in an opponent is no excuse to jettison your own sense of morality or ethics or simple fair play, which certainly happened on our side in the war against Japan and to a lesser (slightly) degree against Germany. Curtis LeMay remarked to a fellow officer that if we were the defeated nation, “We would have a lot of war crimes to answer for” and he was the architect behind the fire bombing of Japan!
War begets a kind of craziness in the victors even when it’s obvious who is winning. One wonders whatever happened to magnanimity.
Consider also the fact that the atomic bomb was intended to be used originally against the Germans, not the Japanese. Had Germany still been a combattant nation at the time that the bomb was finally proven viable, it would first have been used there. I hate to be cynical about this, but I sense a simple truth behind the fact that the bomb represented a titanic investment on the part of the US, and the US wanted some kind of return on its investment. Sounds horrid, I know, but there it is. Add to that the fact that the Japanese were even then refusing to surrender and its people were still under the grand illusion that it was not near defeat, plus the calculations of the US military that it might have as many as a million casualties as a result of invasion and the use of the bomb became a practical inevitability. Who can say with any certainty that in the same position, they would not have been very tempted to use it? A million potential casualties against none? You decide.
Now, finally, this: if Japan had surrendered at the same time as Germany, the bomb would not have been dropped on Japan because it simply was not an operational weapon yet. Stubbornness sometimes leads to terrible unintended consequences.
Sorry Mate even after two A bombs the Japanese High Command didnt want to surrender, they still thought only of fighting on, when the Japanese Emperor finally told them to surrender a group of Junior Officers tried a Coup to “protect” the Emperor, and to continue the war, it was only because the General commanding the palace guard didnt join the coup that it failed, so YES the sea blockade by the americans was extremely effective, and had pretty much wiped out the Japanese merchant marine, the resulting loss of raw materials SHOULD have forced a surrender BUT it didnt.
Such is war when fighting fanatics, any logical and sane leader would have seen his country was stuffed and couldnt fight any longer.
Even the Nazi Doenitz knew Germany couldnt fight on and surrendered
To understand why decisions during WW2 were made, you cannot look at them from today’s viewpoint and todays attitudes
Our thinking and attitudes are dramatically different from the generation of that era