To think that those who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima were no better than the nazis who masscred the jews

[ReallyTired]

The dropping of the the two bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were genocide. The bombs were diliberately intended to kill unarmed civilians. Neither target was military. There was no need for nuclear weapons as Japan was already on its knees.

It is well documented that the primary political strategic motivation for dropping the bombs was to the desire to threaten the Soviet Union who were on the verge of invading Japan from the north.

The loss of lives of US soldiers in protracted land invasion was a factor but the experience of the division of Europe by the invasion of soviet forces from the East was something he US wanted to avoid in the Pacific.

The selection of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was because they were important military industrial sites. Tokyo WAS DELIBERATLEY NOT SELECTED as it was a civilian population with little military significance and the old capital of Kyoto was also spared by the intervention of the US war secretary who had spent his honeymoon there years earlier and knew of the potential destruction of historical cultural sites.

The conventional bombing of Japanese cities caused fire storms in burning paper/wood houses that killed faR more people.

It is no comparison at all to the Holocaust.

He had also been in the raid that damaged the V3 weapon site - if that had been operated by the Germans, London could have been obliterated in hours.

The V3 wasn't workable at scale, and when used to attack Luxembourg killed a handful of people for hundreds of rounds fired. Like the V2, it appealed to Hitler's taste for wonder weapons, but the resources it consumed for its effect were militarily absurd. Similarly, the V2 was dramatic, but in terms of resources per tonne of warload delivered it was hundreds of times more expensive than the RAF main force, and Germany by 1944 simply didn't have the resources to squander on fringe projects: ballistic missiles like that only really make sense if you have nuclear warhead or precision guidance, and the Germans had neither. Throwing a tonne of explosives, at vast expense, into a ten mile radius is pretty close to pointless. The V3 didn't even achieve that: the warload was tiny, the accuracy laughable and the reliability very poor. The idea it presented an existential threat to London is a wild exaggeration.

Agree with you MoreBeta.

Apart from your first few words.
The theory you quote is no more or less accurate that all the other 'well documented' explanations.

Tokyo WAS DELIBERATLEY NOT SELECTED as it was a civilian population with little military significance

Tokyo was deliberately not selected because it had been razed to the ground by Operation Meetinghouse in March, and any hope of assessing the effect of nuclear weapons on cities would have been negated by the huge pre-existing damage. Meetinghouse killed more people than either of the atomic raids (about 88 000, with a million people rendered homeless), so claiming that there was some sort of moral scruple involved in not re-servicing it with a nuclear weapon makes no sense.

There was also a concern that a nuclear strike on Tokyo would have decapitated the government and military, which would have left no-one to surrender: one nightmare would have been an atomised Japanese military fighting on at division level with no central authority able to call a surrender even if they wanted to.

Yes it was terrible but remember, it wasn't the yanks that started that war. Many many more would have died if they hadn't done it. The 6 million Jewish people who died and all the others who suffered so badly at the hands of the evil bastard nazis were also civilians. The Japs were just as brutal as the nazis, the UKs cites were getting bombed night after night by the Germans. War is brutal. It was terrible about the innocent Japanese, it was also terrible for the Londoners who suffered more than any other UK City. but over all I think the Holocaust has to be the top of the list of abhorrences of that war.

Meta Thank you. Most informative.

Re an earlier post, I agree let's leave the ICC out of this as a red herring but if anyone is interested, may I recommend a book called "The Velvet Glove - the decline and fall of moderation in war" by Michael Glover.

The Japanese leaders were culpable for the 2nd one because had they surrendered after the first one as they should have done, the second one wouldn't have happened.

Op I wrote my dissertation on why the use of the atomic bomb was condoned.
Yes one of the reasons for using it was to intimidate Stalin (a mass murderer in his own right).
When the bomb was first being made the intention was to use it on Germany but it was decided that there would be less international comeback afterwards if they used it on Japan instead.
As for civilians they were targets by all sides throughout the entire war. The firebombs actually killed more Japanese than the a bombs did.
Before they were dropped the Japanese people were being trainee to fight the Americans with bamboo spears. Their own government would have made them casualties. They had been indoctrinated to believe the Americans were devils and that capture would be worse than death.
You cannot compare it to the holocaust and it was not genocide.

When the bomb was first being made the intention was to use it on Germany but it was decided that there would be less international comeback afterwards if they used it on Japan instead.

Don't be silly. Neither the implosion nor gun assembly weapons were ready before July 1945. The gun assembly weapon was limited by availability of a critical mass of U235; the construction of Little Boy required the entire US stockpile of fissile uranium and even then it was at the very limits of workability. The much more complex implosion assembly weapon was limited by not being tested until July 16th because the physics of it are a lot more complex and the work just hadn't been done (there was serious doubt right up until the last about the calculations for the explosive lenses).

The war in Europe finished in May 1945.

There was no decision such as you describe, for the simple reason that the war was over in Europe before there was a usable nuclear device.

The Japanese were gearing up to surrender to Russia (who they felt they could get more reasonable terms). Germany had been defeated by Russia, and Russia was gearing up for serious involvement in the Pacific theatre.

The U.S had intercepted Japanese communications to the Russians outlining this. Prior U.S foreign policy had slacked and they had lost out on the exploitation of Asia (that we Europeans had grown wealthier from) in the previous century and they had a desire to increase their interests in the region.

The U.S needed the Japanese to surrender to them, and they were unwilling to do so if it meant they lost their Emperor as state head. The U.S dropped the bombs to ensure total capitulation (before the Russians could weigh in), they simply couldn't do it by conventional means in the time frame.

Oh and they dropped two bombs I stead of one as they had slightly different designs and among other things wanted to see which worked best.

Metacentric I'm not being silly. The French and British had been researching the bomb for years. When France was occupied the scientists that had been working on it were taken to Britain along with a supply of heavy water needed. Robert Oppenheimers memoirs explain all this... And the document written by one of churchills military chiefs explains the decision to use it in Japan rather than Germany. Yes the bomb wasn't actually ready in time to use against Germany, but that was the original plan...

Yes the bomb wasn't actually ready in time to use against Germany, but that was the original plan...

Exactly. That was the original plan. The idea that it wouldn't have been used in Europe first had the war in Europe still been going on is the silly part. You're claiming that the switch from targeting Germany to targeting Japan was based on moral scruple and PR. It wasn't: it was based on finishing whichever war needed finishing.

Yes timing prevented there being an actual Japan or Germany decision, but when they were deciding whether to use it on Japan they decided they would be in much less trouble after the war than if they were to use it on Germany. I don't think they would have used it on Germany if it had been ready say several months earlier as by then they were thinking of post war consequences.

Hm, so if Japan had managed to surrender to Stalin, that would have gone well, wouldn't it? I mean, given his reputation for love 'n' mercy 'n' all. The same Stalin who was so keen to wipe out the entire Polish intelligentsia.

Whatever had happened, it's unlikely Japan would have gone down without a land war, complete with huge casualties on both sides: the cabinet was split, with a 'peace' faction and a 'war' faction, so surrender to the Soviets was not, in reality, remotely likely. The population was being primed and trained to resist a land invasion.

Where is this information coming from? The first recorded discussion of the targets for the bomb was in May 1943 when Japan was discussed as the target, not Germany. Prior to that the only discussion about Germany was of total war in the context of whether Germany were also developing the bomb. You must remember that many of the scientists working on the U.S. Nuclear Programme were German, most notably Werner Von Braun, and therefore they were aware of the advances in nuclear science made on Germany prior to the war.

You must remember that many of the scientists working on the U.S. Nuclear Programme were German, most notably Werner Von Braun

Where is this information coming from, indeed? You mean he was simultaneously developing the V2 at Peenemude for for the Nazis and developing nuclear weapons at Los Alamos for the Americans? How did he commute: by flying saucer? When did he fit in running V2 manufacturing at the Mittelwerk, on his days off?

Seriously: you're criticising other people's facts while claiming that the architect of the V2 was working for the Americans during the war? Are you on glue?

Oh, and it's spelt Wernher. And he never worked on nuclear programmes anyway, either in Germany or the US, as he didn't have even undergraduate knowledge of it.

Oh pipe down Metacentric it was a brain fart! I haven't studied the scientists since A Level and got the name wrong, line up the firing squad. Obviously I was referring to Frisch and Teller. For someone as ill informed as you, uou certainly are willing to assassinate others. It's fine, keep to your wiki version of history said with lots of authority and no knowledge!

Has anyone seen the movie "Shadow Makers" on Oppenheimer and their race to develop nuclear fusion? Fascinating and chilling.

Obviously I was referring to Frisch and Teller.

Teller, the well known German? That must have come as a surprise to his parents.

Most (there are exceptions, such as Klaus Fuchs) of the Germans involved in the bomb programme (I suspect you mean Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls) were Jewish emigres, who were out of Germany by 1933 or shortly afterwards.

Frisch had moved to London by 1933, Teller (a Hungarian Jew) to the US shortly afterwards, Peierls never went back to Germany having been in Cambridge when Hitler came to power, Bethe moved to Cornell via Manchester after the expulsion of Jews from Germany civil life.

None of them worked on any Nazi programme, because (a) Hitler dismissed nuclear physics as "Jewish science" and pretty much ignored it and (b) they were mostly Jewish, so were thrown out of universities anyway within a few weeks of Hitler coming to power. Fuchs was a communist, so hardly more popular.

Frisch had some connections via his aunt (probably the obviously screaming case of a woman denied a Nobel Prize), but they didn't know much about any bomb programme the Germans had because there never was a serious German bomb programme. The work on fission done before the war didn't require you have special connections to know about it, as the Germans published it in the mainstream literature, and such work as was done after the start of the war wasn't known outside Germany (and was, we now know, crap anyway).

There a lot of debate about what Heisenberg told Bohr, but it's pretty obvious from the transcripts of Heisenberg's reaction to news of Hiroshima that he genuinely didn't have Frish and Peierls's insight into the much lower bound on the mean free path which made an air-delivered weapon plausible. There was never a workable design for a bomb, nor its underlying physics, nor any way to produce the materials in quantities required for a deliverable weapon, never mind the vastly larger amounts Heisenberg and other's misapprehensions about the requirements for a critical chain reaction would have had them attempting to produce.

Yes dear, some of my year 9 students can articulate the point clearer than you. Teller did his PhD in Leipzig and moved to the States in '35. I didn't say they were involved in nuclear weaponry in Germany, that they would be aware of the developments in 'nuclear science'. I don't even know where to start putting you right on Frisch, he was very involved in the developments in Germany right up to the war having a close connection to Hahn via Mittner. So no, thanks I haven't been sniffing glue but you are a tiresome, ill informed bore. I shall now retire from this thread because you are only interested in using it to show off what you think you know. Come back when you are able to critically assess what you read and have an informed opinion, anyone can read Wikipedia and regurgitate it.

Not sure how Japan would have surrendered to the Soviet Union as they were not at war. The Soviet Union declared war on Japan the day the Nagasaki bomb was dropped (9/8/1945).

"Are you on glue?"
"you are a tiresome, ill informed bore"

Historical debate at it's very best!

There's been lots of discussion here. Not from the op, mind.

"Are you on glue?"
"you are a tiresome, ill informed bore"
Mumsnet at its best.

I just saw this on Twitter which is an interesting contribution to the debate: theconversation.com/why-do-we-pay-so-much-attention-to-hiroshima-and-nagasaki-45848

My view is that it's not good looking at things through the prism of the early 21st century. People were fighting for their lives in 1945.