this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2023
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We also nuked two cities, for reasons much less honorable or necessary than the one we are told.
Don´t tell that to the average US American though, they really hate hearing this truth.
I’m super-fun at parties 😐
Any respected historian on the subject will tell you that it's way more complicated and nuanced than your average social media user is aware of. If, like Truman, you honestly believed that using atomic bombs on Japan would ultimately result in less loss of life, on a purely mathematical basis it was the only moral decision.
The idea of using the most powerful weapon in existence, a weapon with destructive powers never seen before, that of all weapons can kill the most people in one hit - 140.000 people in Hiroshima alone - to "reduce loss of life" and then telling yourself that it was the moral thing to do, must require some serious mental gymnastics, lmao.
You'd think one would have been enough
What's the reason then?
Two reasons, I think:
Close. What they were worried about was a hot war with the Soviets. There was also a great deal of uncertainty about Japanese willingness to continue to fight. It's simply not the case that they had clear unambiguous intelligence on Japanese leadership's intentions, which makes sense since there were several schools of thought among the Japanese.
Japan was not closer to conditionally surrendering to the USSR instead of the US. Even if they were that doesn't magically make their war with the US end.
The reason for the bombs being dropped is very clear and you're free to read countless books, articles, papers on it.
Yes but not every choice during WW2 was about countering communism. We supplied them with an absolute ton of weapons and cutting edge vehicles, planes during the war. The threat of the axis/fascism far outweighed the threat of communism spreading at the time.
I’ve read the same arguments & documents as every other red-blooded American, but unlike most I’ve also read the counterarguments.
Weren't the nukes also dropped because Japan's highest-level commanders were dead-set on fighting more or less to the end, which would have caused horrific loss of life on both sides?
Also, I don't remember reading this theory, but I would guess some of those commanders also felt like something 'magical' might happen to save the motherland, hearkening back to Kame Kaze's taifuns that saved Nippon from Mongol invasion on two occasions, centuries earlier.
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That is the standard argument we’re given, yes: that it would ultimately save lives compared to a conventional war. You can find dissenting views from Noam Chomsky & Michael Parenti & Howard Zinn & others, including the US government’s own analysis, if you care to.
There's also the 'Ask Historians' analysis, which posits that there were at least three major ideas about how to handle a nuclear bombing entertained between the principles deciding.
While it's tempting to look at the situation in retrospect and agree with the report that 'yes obviously there wasn't a need to bomb to elicit a surrender' that nevertheless doesn't mean that the majority of the deciders were fully on board with that understanding & approach, unlike Ike.
Without doing a deep dive, the AH approach makes about the most sense to me and seems consistent with history, in which there was a level of uncertainty and multiple players & arguments going in to the final decision.
Btw, that first link barely mentions the matter, and the second link is far too subjective to be of much use, far as I can tell.