Japan didn’t really succede in threatening the US much and I am a bit puzzled at why the US would be so determined to make Japan surrender whereas this attitude was lacking in Korea and Vietnam.
Japan did indeed go feral and attack a lot of places but in all fairness they didn’t manage to do much to the US and never put the US in the position of a life or death struggle. It’s not as if the US was losing the war at that point.
[QUOTE=Cojimar 1945;105904]Japan did indeed go feral and attack a lot of places but in all fairness they didn’t manage to do much to the US and never put the US in the position of a life or death struggle. It’s not as if the US was losing the war at that point.[/ It was not for Pearl Harbor alone that we used the Bomb on Japan, It was also for those peoples, and nations who were unable to defend themselves against the Axis.Although the murderous attack on Pearl Harbor was enough for most of us, it was for every man, woman, and little child’s suffering at the Axis’ hands that we did what was needed. go speak of fairness to those people, or the surviving family of those lost at Pearl, or Manchuria, or the Phillipines.
The U.S. had the means to end the war without further endangering Allied troops. Why should we suffer even one more loss to put an end to their murderous rampage? Peter Pan sophistry has no place in this question.
So why hasn’t the United States used nuclear weapons in the conflicts that have occured since World War II such as Korea and the Iraq conflicts?
“Unconditional surrender” was the agreed upon dictum of all of the major Allied conferences. And so, Japan was considered no different than Germany in this respect.
It was actually Roosevelt that called for a complete victory, and destruction of the Axis political order, basing this notion on the precedent of the surrender of the Confederacy at Appomattox Courthouse at the end of the US Civil War…
No such goals were stated for either Korea or Vietnam. Both wars were fought as limited “police actions” with the aim of protecting a sovereign (if vastly imperfect) ally against what was perceived categorically (rightly or wrongly) as “communist aggression.”
Because the Soviet Union/China had them. And the horrors at Nagasaki and Hiroshima were never taken lightly, nor was the radiation fallout problem fully understood in 1945…
To end the Korean situation, Truman did finally tell the N.Koreans,Enough is enough, either cut a deal, or we will deploy. They cut the deal.The sovies, and the Chinese did not at that time possess working nukes. As far as Iraq goes, it isnt the type of situation that requires such force as yet,hopefully never will.
If you would study history from the historical reseaches but not from the holliwood “masterpieces” like “Pearl Harbor” with comic Ben Affick in main role you should learn that the attack of US military base in 7 dec 1941 was pure MILITARY action, very bold , insolent and succesfull IMO.
The Japanese targeted the US military ships , airfields and bases ( and hospitals).
According to the Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_Harbor_Attack
the overal casualties were “2,333 military and 55 civilians killed” i.e the percantage of perished civilians were under 2% ( those people were mostly service of the base and hospital).
The Attack of Pearl Harbour indeed has nothing common with the cruel bombing of Japane cities in last months of 1945 by the napalm/nuclear bombs - where OVER 90% of victims were the civilians ( half of them women and children).This were pure terrorist actions directed AGAINST population- nothing more.
Sorry but only sick man could justify the A-bombing by the “revenge” for Pearl Harbor IMO.
Cheers.
True Nick the US was stopped by the possible soviets nuclear contr-attack in the 1951.
As far as i know the Mackartur demanded from the Washington to drop the dozen of bomb to the ceveral cities of Nothern China after the Chinas joined the N.Koreans in 1951. But the US president refused it mostly coz the soviets could get the Koreans the nuclear bomb ( or openly joined the war).
The most interesting issue in this time was the MORAL condition of the hight US military command - they were stopped NOT BY THE FACT THAT the millions of innocent people would die - they were stopped by the FEAR of possible nuclear revenge.
What if the Soviets had no the Bomb- would the US command so bast…ds. to kill the millions of people in populous China and Korea - that’s is a question;)
Cheers.
Agreed on MacArthur, but I’m not convinced you’re right in your reasons why Truman refused to let him use nuclear weapons (indeed, any weapons against China).
MacArthur was treating the Korean war as a purely military conflict with no political overtones, and when the Chinese “volunteers” joined the war MacArthur immediately wanted to attack China. This would of course have been the appropriate military response - China at the time was extremely vulnerable to the USAF, whether using conventional or nuclear weapons. However, the political situation (and I would agree with Clausewitz here that war is a continuation of politics by other means) meant that it would be stupid to attack China from both a military and political point of view. All of the US allies were against it (to the extent that when MacArthur was relieved, all of the UN forces except the US ones held impromptu celebrations) for the simple reason that they were only just beginning to recover from WW2 and attacking China would have embroiled them in yet another global war.
Hence the fiction adhered to by both sides that China wasn’t a party to the conflict - it suited both. The UN (and hence the US, which both drove the UN war effort and was controlled by it) didn’t want the political effects and military stretch caused by a “wider war”. China didn’t want to have it’s industrial development knocked back 20 years by getting into an open war with most of the rest of the world.
Sure pdf you right here the China was very vulnarable for any US attack not only the nuclear.And certainly the political situation forced the US hight command not to attack the China.
But what was the reason of UN( i.e. US) irresolution toward the China?
I think you should agree - the only one power- the new world war III i.e the answer of the USSR (who in this way get the legal right to help its ally - the communist China).
Hence as i’ve mentioned above not the Highest Human principles stopped the Washington but the simple possible war retribution of the USSR.
This is what Rising Sun told about - fear of MUD.
Cheers.
Fear of retaliation by the USSR would certainly be sufficient to deter the US from widening the war by attacking China. The point I’m trying to make is that it may have been overkill - I think it’s quite possible that the problems involved in fighting merely China (which would of course force the US to at least try and occupy it - a huge task) would be sufficient to deter the US.
There are very, very few cases where states go to anything approaching war for humanitarian reasons, or take wartime decisions for anything approaching the “highest human principles”. The UK intervention in Sierra Leone a few years ago is one of the few that qualify IMHO.
I’m not sure China was vulnerable to anything except a nuclear attack.
Mao had flogged Chiang’s crew by then and was in control.
Mao’s forces had been the most effective against the Japanese, and in uniting the fairly disunited Chinese people and forces against the Japanese.
The Japanese had shown 1931-45 that trying to defeat a disunited China was an enormously difficult, maybe impossible task, in which the Japanese as a more ruthless military force than the Americans never succeeded.
The Japanese never fought a united China of the sort that Mao created from 1949.
Americans were past war weary by the early 1950’s. They wanted to enjoy the post war prosperity which was dawning.
America needed a total war to have any hope of defeating a united China under Mao if it didn’t nuke China.
The Americans didn’t need it, or want it, nor would the American people have tolerated it.
The American people might, just might, have tolerated nuking China but they wouldn’t have tolerated the total war that was needed for a conventional conflict so soon after WWII when, to the average American, it wasn’t a fight they needed to get into or that involved any issues that made it worthwhile to send millions of their men to China for no good reason.
Well i.m agree with both you guys in this way.
Sure nobody wanted in the world the new total war . The problems of pacifications China by the Japanes in 1931-45 made unpossible do it without A-bombing.
Therefore IMO the MackArthur demanded the nukes bombing for the China - this was necessary for the military victory over Billion population China.
However my point is not touching the military issue in this fierce war.
I notice your attention to the moral rules of this period- when it was abslutly normal to plann to use the a-bombs after mainkind has alreafdy knew about terrible figures of victims in Hirosima from radiation.
To put it bluntly in terms of casualties the nuclear weapons of the late 1940s and early 1950s weren’t very much different from the capabilities of Bomber Command and the USAAF in 1945. Either could destroy a city (mostly by burning it down) and cause huge casualties among people who died in very nasty ways, and leave the survivors with horrible burns. Depending on whose numbers you rely on, then the Tokyo fire raid probably caused more casualties than either of the nuclear bombings.
Ultimately it was only the development of extremely large nuclear weapons and their deployment in huge numbers that caused mankind to think again about the concept of destroying population centres from the air. And it was only the development of guided weapons - laser guided bombs mainly - that finally made conventional bombing accurate enough to make nuclear weapons obselete for just about everything short of destroying cities.
Thankfully humanity has finally managed to claw it’s way out of the frankly obscene concepts of Douhet that slaughtering civilians is somehow more humane than killing combatants. There are still some remnants of this - notably in the way some powers still have nuclear weapons - but frankly I think this is a product of the technology and that they will in all probability never be used in anger.
And do not forget about Iraq - was it not the “human reasons” for invasion:)
You absolutly right , actually the human reasons is the latest that states think about befor military actions:)
However the nuclear bombing is the exceptional case- do you agree?
The death of millions peoples - is this not exceptional case? . Do not forget we hanged Nazy criminals for the mass murdering of millions. The one of the most importaint blame for them was the violation of any human rights and rules of the war.
So does it mean we need ignore this rule themself?
You might be correct in your thoughts except for the little problem of there not being a declaration of war presented by the Japanese. The scam was to present the declaration 30 minutes prior to the attack. (enough time to “legitimize” the attack without affecting its success)That did not happen. the declaration was presented 90 minutes after the attack began, making the entire act one of vile piracy, and murder. No amount of massaging can dilute that truth. It really does not matter who, whether military or other, committed the acts. Its still now, and always has been murder. The only sad thing in it all is that they could have stopped the deployment merely by surrendering, but chose not to. After the attack, it was thought that they had awakened a sleeping giant, and that is true. And the sleeping giant shoved a very large lightning bolt up their collective backsides.
Personally I am actually strongly in favour of using military force to intervene in humanitarian situations. However, that does carry an obligation to intervene where the humanitarian situation is worst, rather than where it is politically convenient to do so - something nobody does right now. There are innumerable places in Africa we should have intervened in years ago before Iraq, not to mention places like Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge.
Ummm… One of the fundamental principles of war is that for violence to be legal it must have a military effect. The nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki clearly did have a military effect - Japan surrendered, with Hirohito citing the nuclear bombings. The Holocaust had no military effect whatsoever. This isn’t to say that the nuclear bombings were morally OK (I’m deeply ambivalent about that one, and thankful we live in a world where they are no longer likely to happen) but rather they have an arguable case for legality. The Nazis did not have one for the Holocaust, and I think you’re wrong to compare the two even as a debating position.
Agreed.
The difference between Hiroshima etc and the Holocaust is that the first was clearly a military action in the course of war and the second was just a civilian government’s exercise in genocide, which happened to occur during a war but was unrelated to it.
It irritates me that the Holocaust is consistently bound up with WWII in much history and almost all popular journalism and comment. It had nothing to do with it. It was an internal exercise. The war was an external one.
Thats true tankgeezer.
The dastardly Japanes attacked suddenly.
However do you ever know for instance the Germany attacked the USSR in 22 june of 1941 - without any declaration of war at all.
Simply in 4 hours of morning- the thousand of bombers dropped the bombs to the soviet airfields- the MOST of soviet pilots even have not a enought time to take fighters off.
Exactly this reason was the main that determined the lost of 60-80% of soviet aviation in FIRST hours of war.
This was INSOLENT and cinically military attack - BUT IT WS MILITARY attack.
This was DIRECT resaul of the lacks of soviet command - nobody explain it by the dastardly Germans soldiers and officers.
So the Japanes were even more “noble” than the Germans were.They’ve give the americans the WHOLE half of hour to take off the fighters;)
Indeed the lack of USA military command and intelligence was the reason of so terrible defeat in the Perl Harbour.
Like and Soviet command were responsible for the great loses of firs stage of war.
From the pure military sence both Japanes and Germans did RIGHT- the sudden attack was the resault of the military success.
Cheers.