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.

Haven't read the whole thread, but, yes, YABU to compare the two.
War is never that simple.
Looking at an event with hindsight makes things look a lot different too.
It was horrific - I don't think anyone would disagree, but you have to study the whole history of the time.

I'm not sure how relevant the distinction between civilians and military personnel is when you have mass conscription like in WW2?

Most of the soldiers were civilians, just civilians forced into war.

I don't think it's automatically 'less bad' to kill someone who has been forced into military service than to kill someone who has not been forced into military service.

I learnt about the slave trade at school, and we went to the museum in Liverpool.

But it's easier to talk about the slave trade now because it was such a long time ago. The people at fault are names in history books, it's much easier to admit that 'we' were wrong. WW2 is still very recent in comparison and there is still a lot of emotion involved.

Jeez I think some people need to look up the dictionary definition of genocide. It's not simply killing a lot of people - it's about systemically trying to wipe out a whole group of people (eg by race, ethnicity) without mercy. This is why the Holocaust is genocide and the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima are not. The U.S. were not trying to wipe out the Japanese in the way the Nazis sought with the Jews. They were trying to bring the Japanese to their knees and force surrender to bring a swift end to a horrific, bloody conflict. The two are simply not comparable. I personally feel that at the time the dropping of the bombs was the right course of action and undoubtedly saved many lives in the long run.

It's also worth remembering that we are considering the actions of the Americans with the gift of hindsight. We know now that the affects of the bombs continue to today but this was not something that was known at the time. Look at all the Hollywood movies like Howard Hughes' infamous The Conqueror that were filmed in the desert on or near old atomic testing sites leading to many involved dying of cancer in the years and decades to come. No one at the time foresaw the impact that actions would have for future generations.

Brilliant point Soloula

soloula is right about the definition of genocide.

I can't say that the bombing of Hiroshima is right but I think the OP is being unnecessarily inflammatory. The US was at war with the Japanese - and the Japanese were the initial aggressor. The Nazis were not at war with the Jews - they decided to systematically wipe out a whole ethnic group of people, many of whom were their own citizens.

What happened in Hirishoma was not humane

Very little that happened in that war was humane. It was horrendous. But you don't seem to be reading anything that people are writing. No one thinks it was a good thing, no one thinks it makes anyone be look good. But given the situation at the time what would you have done?

There's a podcast on this called 'logical insanity' that I enjoyed. Well, not enjoyed exactly, but you know what I mean.

The Nazis were not at war with the Jews - they decided to systematically wipe out a whole ethnic group of people, many of whom were their own citizens

Yet again, I'll recommend one of the greatest essays written on the topic of the Holocaust, Clive James' magisterial demolition of Daniel Goldhagen's "Hitler's Willing Executioners". Humane, informed, wonderfully written.

www.clivejames.com/evenaswespeak/hitler

and the equally essential postscript:

www.clivejames.com/evenaswespeak/goldhagen

Our post-Hannah Arendt imaginations are haunted by the wrong figure: for every owl-eyed, mild-mannered penpusher clinically shuffling the euphemistic paperwork of oblivion, there were a hundred noisily dedicated louts revelling in the bloodbath. The gas chambers, our enduring shared symbol of the catastrophe, were in fact anomalous: most of those annihilated did not die suddenly and surprised as the result of a deception, but only after protracted humiliations and torments to whose devising their persecutors devoted inexhaustible creative zeal. Far from needing to have their scruples overcome by distancing mechanisms that would alienate them from their task, their killers were happily married to the job from the first day to the last. The more grotesque the cruelty, the more they liked it. They couldn’t get enough of it. Right up until the last lights went out on the Third Reich, long after the destruction made any sense at all even by their demented standards, they went on having the time of their lives through dispensing hideous deaths to the helpless.

Off topic slightly, but can I recommend Carl Jenkins' beautiful and moving Armed Man's Mass for Peace? There is a particular section trying to reflect on Hiroshima and its aftermath that it is well worth a quiet listen.

To compare the bombing of N & H to the Holocaust is just fucking offensive and unintelligent.

This thread has been really interesting. I'm not the OP, but thanks to those who have posted links and references to more info. I'm embarrassed at how little I truly know about a period of history we studied in school (so I perhaps pretended to myself I understood). No, I certainly don't believe Hiroshima is comparable to nazi genocide, but I feel better informed now

Please don't read Clive James' articles uncritically! He is not an historian, Goldhagen on the other hand is, and a well respected one at that. If you are interested, do read Hitler's Willing Executioners and if you wish to make your own judgements the original documents are available in Nazism vols 1-4. The best books written on the topic and accessible are by Kershaw, try the Hilter biographies or The Nazi Dictatorship. Please if this interests you read up on it and don't rely on some of the ill informed opinions you will find on the Internet.

For essays about the decision to drop the bomb, Hiroshima in History and Memory edited by Hogan is one of the best.

We know now that the affects of the bombs continue to today but this was not something that was known at the time.

Look at the cancer rates of the ppl who worked on the Manhatten project. They really didn't know or they never would have got so close.

Many people more knowledgeable than me have posted. However the fundamental are pretty simple.

The bombing of two cities in Japan were an attempt to end a war, not annihilate a population. That is why the Marshall plan was put in place after the surrender, rather than the Japanese put into concentration camps and Gas chambers. The bombing also has to be put into the context of all sides targeting civilians to break morale (which was ineffective anyway).

I don't really understand the point of this thread other than to diminish the holocaust. I guess I don't want to censor free speech but the OP is really just ignorant anti semitism,

Having spent the second half of my 20's in NYC's left-wing academia (by virtue of my husband's post at Columbia), I would say that it's an article of faith amongst them that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were unnecessary. I don't think what the OP says is particularly controversial, apart from some unremarkable distinctions that have long since been made in this thread.

I have never seen this equivalence made before by anyone who actually knows what genocide means.

There is sadly a section of people who will minimise the holocaust due to ignorance or prejudice. It comes up all to frequently. Yes, in this case the OP appeared to be unaware of what genocide means but similar and even more damaging arguments are sadly not uncommon.

Obviously, General Heydrich's plan was never completed, because the Nazis lost the war. Even today, I suspect we only get a tiny idea of what might have happened had they won it.

There is sadly a section of people who will minimise the holocaust due to ignorance or prejudice.

I don't think the OP was minimising the holocaust by their comparison, rather over-stating (if such a thing is possible) the nuclear strikes.

In the moral context of the mid-20th century, post-Guernica, military operations against civilians with a military objective were universally regarded as if not acceptable, at least inevitable. The point about the holocaust is that aside from its eliminationist intent, it was militarily not only pointless but actively stupid: the German tied up substantial industrial and personnel resources in the holocaust, and failed to extract even the most basic slave labour work for most of the time (the Mittelwerk is a late, and notable exception).

The concentration camps were mostly not the Mittelwerk, they were simply getting people to do pointless things while being beaten and starved until they died. Later they cut out the middle section and just killed people within hours of arrival. A rational but evil government would have kept the victims alive as slave labour while being indifferent to some deaths; the Nazis saw the death of Jews as more important than, say, the weapons they might be forced to make. Even the Gulags made at least a pretence of operating factories and farms, and were not designed (at least post-Stalin) with the sole intent of killing people, they were just unconcerned about the death rate.

There's a very interesting counterweight to Goldhagen called 'Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland' by Christopher R Browning. He's a historian, and he's pretty convincing.

If you want to read about the short-lived wartime Japanese empire, you can try one of the various books about China, or 'That's How it Goes: The Autobiography of a Singapore Eurasian' by Jock Oehlers (part of this is up on Google Books). Or one of the dozens of books by former POWs.

'about life in the short-lived', I meant to write.

YABU. The invasion of the Japanese islands would have cost uncountable numbers of Allied lives. Dropping both bombs was a necessary and justified military action.

The Japanese themselves showed no consideration for innocent women and children - go and Google "The Nanking Massacre". The lowest estimate of the number of innocent civilians killed by the Japanese Army starts at 30,000.

I do think it's a bit saddening how readily the horror of the mass civilian deaths are being dismissed by many here.
Leaving aside the rationale, the justifications, the fact is that hundreds of thousands of people died and most of these would have been entirely innocent of any wrong-doings of their government. Whatever the rationale, their deaths remain an absolute tragedy.

SamJohnsonsBoy I know very well what the Japanese army did in Nanking. It was appalling. But.... there are innocents, small children, on all sides in a conflict and their mass killing is reprehensible. Those lives lost in Nanking by themselves do not justify killing children because they happen to share a nationality with the perpetrators.