My point wasn’t about comparing colonial expansion but that Japan was unique in being a militarist expansionist state, which gave a unique flavour to its military colonial expansion.
Even Germany and Italy weren’t run by their armies but by fascist parties which controlled their armies (more’s the pity in Germany’s case and lucky for the Allies - it might have won otherwise).
America and the USSR have never been run by their armies and Britain hasn’t since Cromwell in the 17th century.
You know, there’s a US Marine Corp general (or a senior officer) with many things to say on this subject - he sounds more like Noam Chomsky than a Marine officer, which I think is a good thing. I see if I can find it.
This is incorrect The Russo-Polish war of the 1920 was had no relations to the Stalin. This was crazy idea of Trockij- Bernshtain who virtually ruled the Army at that period, and became the First leader after the sikness of Lenin.
This was a pure adventure - to send the Red Army ( more correctly the band of bad armed crowd) for the help the Germans working class to make the proletarian revolution;)
Sure they were defeated - and later this fact Stalin uised to liqudate the Tuhachevskij - the the stoopid man IMO.
The “agressions” of the 1939 were also not correct defenitions.
The baltic states, Western Ukraine and belorussia were the former Russian impires territories - they “suddenly” got the independence in 1918 when the Bolshevics crushed the former gov and state.
The Agressions of the 1944-45 were also not correct.
The Stalin captured ONLY WHAT the Allies LET him - according the agreements in Yalta and Potsdam conferences.They absolutly voluntary have let the Stalin “liberated” coz they did not wish to fight with Enourmous GErmans Army in the East.
Cheers.
P.S. just do not think i try to justify this Georgian- bast…
Sort of - although I’m not sure if it was fighting the German or Soviet armies they were worried about. To take over control over what became the Soviet empire postwar they would have had to fight both…
Er sorry to dampen the ardour of the guys posting here, but what relevancy does the Spanish American and Russo Polish wars have to Hiroshima?
Interesting though it may be I think that it has maybe strayed a wee bit too far from the topic?
Cheers.
Yea it could look strange - Spanish and Polish wars in this thread.
However dear pdf did you hear my request?
Could find for us the more photos of the germans concentrations camps that were shoted by the RAF intelligence in the 1944-45?
I know for the sure recenly the Britain has declassified this photos?
Cheers.
Sorry, just don’t have the time to do so and unfortunately I’m not likely to get the time in the near future either. Real life is kinda busy right now…
Oh don’t worry pdf.
You right - the personal problems is more importain.
I just though you somewhere seen it
Just to provoke a different line of discussion, what about the consequences of, rather than the reasons for or against, nuking Japan?
One huge consequence was that it made the Japanese generally determined to avoid another war, despite continuing concern about the rightists and their supporters.
Given that millions of Japanese and others died in the war to no lasting advantage to Japan or the world, weren’t the deaths of a few hundred thousand Japanese in Nagasaki and Hiroshima of much greater lasting value if they made it want to avoid another war?
Contrast this with Germany in WWI, when it hadn’t been belted hard enough not to want to try it again.
Cough
Very simplistic and imho it was a grave mistake not to show leniency in victory and listen to Wilson. While I don’t believe in the determinism that Versaille had to
lead to round 2 (though it was a high probability) it definatly works the other way round, meaning don’t look for a scapegoat and the scapegoat has no reason to look for revenge. Bismarck even had the same problem after the franco prussian war, he didn’t want such harsh peace conditions, he knew it could come back to haunt germany. Unfortunatly few people are as farsighted as Bismarck was.
So far as my comment about Germany in WWI is concerned, I’m not talking about what actually happened in or after WWI, or at Versailles and all the other interminable debates about what should or shouldn’t have been done.
The essential problem with ending WWI was that important elements at all levels in Germany simply didn’t believe it had been defeated on the battlefield. These elements were significant in the post-war tumults and were resurgent under Hitler. It was pretty much Hitler’s principal appeal to veterans and their supporters, and his wider appeal to restoration of national martial honour.
In WWII there wasn’t any doubt that Germany was defeated on the battlefield. There was no sign of the problems that followed WWI. Nobody wanted to go through that again, not least because, as in Japan, civilians got to experience the reality of war as well as troops fighting far away.
Much as I detest war, if you’re going to have one, make sure you end it with total victory on the battlefield. Half measures are a waste of time and lives.
So far as showing leniency to Japan goes, it would have been seen as a sign of weakness by a people who never showed leniency to their own troops, never mind the peoples they waged war against. Here’s an example of the mentality that existed even after the atom bombs were dropped.
Yoshioka Yukio’s father died from the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. He recalled that his father “was head of the neighbourhood association, bought all national war bonds he could, and always said ‘Japan will never lose’ “. Even after the atomic attack, “He talked about the Japanese military winning until he heard the imperial proclamation ending the war.” Many people selflessly sacrificed themselves and their families, convinced of Japan’s victory until the very end.
Japan’s Last War: World War II and the Japanese 1931-45, Saburo Ienaga, Australian National University Press, Canberra, 1979, p.126
“head of neighbourhood association” means that he was something like a ?blockfuhrer? in Nazi Germany, i.e a government stooge with a lot of local power in a small area.
Even nuking these people didn’t make them believe they were defeated. It was only when their chief war criminal, Emperor Hirohito, told them to give up that most of them meekly obeyed. Nuking Japan was a necessity to make Hirohito decide to give up, and to tell his people to give up. Once he knew his country was defeated on the battlefield, as demonstrated by nuclear attacks and the Soviet advance in Manchuria, his people followed.
It would have been very different if a negotiated peace, as with Germany in WWI, had occurred which left people like Yoshioka Yukio’s father festering for another go.
Unfortunately the Allies left Hirohito and most of his crew alive to fester for, so far, the next 62 years, but that’s another story.
Problem with that is that all the allies had in mind the treaty of Brest-Litovsk. That had been dictated by Germany to the Russians only a year before, and made the Treaty of Versailles we eventually ended up with look magnanimous. Further, I would question if a generous peace settlement would have had a desirable deterrent effect on other powers. Germany had launched a major war of aggression, tried to take huge territories from it’s neighbours (at Brest-Litovsk) and wrecked a huge portion of Northern France plus most of Belgium, killing most of a generation in the process. In the circumstances a settlement along the lines of “oops, sorry about that, let’s pretend it didn’t happen” isn’t going to work - and may encourage future aggressive war as the state at fault is percieved not to be punished. The fact that the German armies in the field weren’t destroyed but managed to get back to Germany carrying their arms so could pretend they were undefeated would only make things worse here.
IMHO Versailles failed because it tried to be both harsh and generous at the same time. That’ll never work. A properly done “harsh” treaty would have split Germany back up into the seperate states it had been before Bismarck went to work, and above all ensured Prussia didn’t get the Ruhr.
IMHO a generous settlement would never work if the German armies had got back to Germany as anything other than PoWs. To get it to work the Allies should have refused the German request for an Armistice in November 1918, declaring that they would accept only unconditional surrender, and continued fighting until they occupied Berlin. That probably wouldn’t have taken more than another few months given the state of the German Army and war economy of the time, coupled with the revolution brewing at home. In the last hundred days the Allies had decisively broken out of trench warfare, so the Germans could not have stopped them at all. With Germany under military occupation, then you can start on the sort of rebuilding which happened after WW2 - but IMHO not before if you want it to work.
Are we agreeing that if Germany had been convincingly defeated on the battlefield as well as occupied after WWI, then it would have had little prospect of behaving as it actually did after WWI?
Brest Litovsk would’ve had the same effect on german russian relations if it had lastet as Versailles, this politic was just as stupid and could definatly work as a seed for future war. And where did you get the impression germany was per se the aggressor in WW1, which they weren’t quite contrary to WW2. They had their share of responsibility for the politics that lead to the actual outbreak of the great war, but so did russia, france and the austrians and even japan and they all definatly intended to exploit a possible victory to the max (which again was utterly stupid).
And when it comes to France I am actually unable to feel sorry for them.
While the defensive character was the dominant picture of the war for the german public and high command at the start of WW1, the french aimed at the conquest of alsace lorraine (which was none of their business, though they occupied it for 2 centuries) and simple revanche as primary war goals from the very beginning.
The germans then got carried away by their early successes in the west and started dreaming pipe dreams about expanding the empire, european hegemony and such nonsens but they entered the war without a goal for conquest and they weren’t prepared for or preparing war. They even had to cancel all production of fertilizer to get through the first winter with ammo which had a very bad effect on food production in the next years.
Btw. the first troops that crossed any border were russian cavalry troops that entered eastern prussia.
When it comes to the western campaign, that would be called preemptive strike today, the only thing that was definatly not OK in that context was to attack through Belgium, as they were neutral.
But the French are the good guys :rolleyes:
You cannot turn back the time. Partition of germany wouldn’t have worked either, just as such stupid ideas like WW2 morgenthau plan. Germans struggled for unification for centuries and the emotional effect of such a move I can predict with ease: How dare you, but wait, our time will come and you will pay for that.
It would’ve taken longer but the answer could possibly have been even worse than WW2, just imagine german states need 15 years more to get in a position for revenge and add some german physicist finishing the work on nukes as the first in the world. But we wouldn’t have seen the Nazi on the pro side.
The only real way for lasting peace was found after WW2 not by restrictions or anything like it but actual will for cooperation and coexistence on all sides.
It is my believe that this could have been possible even after WW1, the germans felt undefeated but were definatly sick and tired of war and this should and could have been used to ensure a lasting peace. But as you might know from the casual malefiz victory, if you mock and anger your little brother it will ensure a reaction, possibly a violent one. (I exploited that a lot when I was a kid, hihi) This also works in the big picture.
It wasn’t just the effect on the Russians, but how the Allies percieved it which mattered.
Sorry, that was poorly phrased. What I meant to say was that the Allied powers universally (except possibly the US) perceived Germany as the Aggressor. This comes mainly from the Invasion of Belgium and also from the fact that the majority of fighting done by the Germans in WW1 was on other people’s territory - mainly France, Belgium and Russia. Unrestricted U-boat warfare (in contravention of the established “rules” of the time (set up by the RN to suit themselves)) didn’t help either.
Agreed. They weren’t even competent at it either.
Indeed. The attack through Belgium was not bright - it guaranteed the entry of the UK, Empire and probably eventually the US to the war. Without it the UK may very well have stayed out of it (no guarantees, but the Entente was a very loose alliance and the UK wasn’t keen on coming in).
Depends on how it was done. Sure a lot of Germans would be pissed off, but combined with a small army of occupation and the sort of limits on armed forces in Germany imposed in the ToV there wouldn’t be much they could do about it. If the Allies had managed it well Germany wouldn’t be reunited for quite a number of years, and it would probably take several internal German wars to do so. That would give Europe the time to recover from WW1 (something that IMHO it is only just doing right now!).
Of course they weren’t! Everyone knows that they were stabbed in the back by the Jews.:):twisted:
I anticipated that observation, although perhaps from a different quarter.
I think we’re seriously off topic.
I’ll throw in some bait. One element of the American decision to drop the bombs was possibly economic. Throughout 1944 and 1945 the sale of War Bonds declined and theoretically America was facing the prospect of a long campaign in Japan without the finance to support the campaign.
Regards digger.
I can’t imagine where you could have got that idea. 
I’ll throw in some bait. One element of the American decision to drop the bombs was possibly economic. Throughout 1944 and 1945 the sale of War Bonds declined and theoretically America was facing the prospect of a long campaign in Japan without the finance to support the campaign.
I’d dispute that.
The Americans were fully prepared for the proposed invasion of Japan. Money wasn’t an issue. It would have happened if the A bombs hadn’t been dropped.
Despite the view in some circles that the bombs were dropped to impress the Soviets for wider strategic purposes, I’d say that the ramapaging Soviet advance in Manchuria was a more immediate reason to do something to get Japan to surrender before the Soviets advanced too far.
So far as economic motives go, it’s worth remembering that, lost in the mists of time as it now is, the war with Japan started in China and was in part about a contest between Japan and the West for economic interests in China.
The prospect of the USSR grabbing slabs of Manchuria and China as it had grabbed slabs of Europe to its west probably wasn’t too attractive in Washington
Be all that as it may, the historical record shows that the primary purpose of dropping the bombs was to force Japan to surrender.
By 1945 War Bonds accounted for 26% of all US Federal debt. I think each $25 bond earned $6.25 interest. Of course not all bonds were cashed in, but the American economy was introuble if the war progressed into 1946, because the only way to finance the interest was to sell more bonds to service the debt.
Of course this was not the major reason for dropping the bombs, but I believe it was a consideration. America was war weary, it’s industry producing weapons and munitions that would never be used and country wide the infrastructure was faltering under 4 years of record war traffic.
Regards digger