Posted on 05/27/2016 2:40:37 PM PDT by GraceG
All these threads about Hiroshima got me to do some thinking.
What would have happened had by some miracle we didn't drop the nukes on Japan and they had surrendered after a the equivalent amount of firebombing but right before an invasion.
Some libs would think this would have been the "best Case Scenario" but I think it would have been a disaster! This is why:
After the two nukes hit Japan many news reels in the months and years after it showed off to the whole world the absolute horrors of what Nuclear Weapons could do. We saw images of Kimonos being burned into the flesh of Japanese women, Children who were blinded by the flash of the blast, and wide panning panoramic of entire sections of the cities that were flattened and burned to a crisp. The whole world had a few years of peace to catch their breath and see all the naked horror of what atomic weaponry could do. As a result the atomic weaponry became a "weapon of last resort", a weapon to only use when all other options had been thoroughly exhausted.
Now let's move back to to the "Best Case Scenario" of Japan Surrendering without needing to use the Atom Bomb....
The atomic weapon program, the "Manhattan project" would have still remained very secret to the US citizenry and everyone else in the world who wasn't a military official, the Soviets would have continued their program and would soon have the bomb around the same time they normally would have acquired it.
Based only on limited testing the impact of the bomb on civilian targets would have been only theoretical and there wouldn't be as much of a taboo on using it.
Enter the Korean War....
The atomic bomb would have been used in the opening stages of the Korean War, and probably on Military target, not the horror of a civilian target (remember at this point the US military was developing the atomic bomb to be deployed via artillery ).
Instead of two hard choices at the end of the war it would have turned into multiple "easy choices" in the opening days of the Korean war, the nuclear exchange would have been far far worse by the time Korea ended... Maybe the Korean War would have ended sooner, but if it dragged on there would no doubt have been many more nuclear exchanges....
A dangerous precedent would have been set...
We should thank Truman and the citizens who were sacrificed to end the brutal Japanese aggression in Hiroshima and Nagasaki for showing the world the Destruction of atomic weapons...
A terror that directly lead to the policy of MAD " Mutually Assured Destruction" that kept the soviet war machine in check for over 50 years!
Yes, the Soviets invaded and still hold the Kurile Islands, but afterward they were demanding possession of Hokkaido, which MacArthur denied.
[[ If we had never hit the nips w/the big one we never wouldve had all those Godzilla movies.
I love those! ]]
Comment of the day!
Not really, he was fired because he actually wanted to win and take China from Mao.
It was never a war, it was a police action and it didn't end, we are just in a cease fire mode. We have ended every conflict with a cease fire since MacArthur accepted unconditional surrender of Hirohito.
Ask and ye shall receive!
Maybe we should nuke Detroit....
Well you are correct on it being a Police Action just like Vietnam was not a war but something else. MacArthur also thought he was higher than Truman in how to conduct the conflict in Korea. There was a lot of animosity between the two.
Twice, before they quit and then only because the Emperor demanded it, the generals would have continued to the death.
[ People tend to forget that the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, not to end the war against Japan, but to stop the Soviets from invading Japan and stealing it away from us. Per the Potsdam Agreement dealing with the ending of WWII, the Soviets were not to make a move against Japan and go beyond the 38th parallel divide in Korea. The bomb was dropped the same day the agreement was up, and the Soviets were poised to invade Japan but the bomb was dropped to stop the Soviets from doing so. The Soviets were already on the move to invade, moving their equipment towards Japan. A second bomb might have been used against the Soviets if they didn’t stop. Effectively kept the Soviets out of Japan after WWII. ]
Excellent Point! People today don’t realize all the moving parts that WWII had... it was very complex and even the most studied scholar has overlooked overlooked things...
[ FYI, I had a class on the then-recent diplomatic history of the US, circa 1981, with a prof who was retired State Dept.
One day, when discussing the Korean War, he told us something that he said, You wont see in any history texts. Specifically, he said that after Ike had won the 1952 election, but before he was inaugurated, he was very upset about the continued carnage and about the plight of US prisoners. So he passed word, very discreetly, to the Norks, that if they didnt release ALL of our prisoners very shortly after he got into office, hed nuke their asses even further back into the Stone Age than they already were. Needless to say, they took seriously this threat from a former 5-star general who had literally led millions of men in an all-out assault against Festung Europa. Our guys were released not terri bly long after Ike assumed office.
I am sure that the willingness of the Norks to be serious about negotiations had something to do with what happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Russian and Chinese worries about riling up a nuclear-armed US. ]
that is an awesome story!
Yeah, the Tragedy of the Korean War was that it was the first “UN War” and the first of many UN wars that is STILL being fought today....
If I had been President in August 1945, I would have dropped both bombs and slept very soundly the night afterward.
HOWEVER.
It is 71 years later, and I don’t think it’s a criticism of Truman, nor is it an excuse of Japanese war crimes, to acknowledge that the consequences of the firebombings of Hamburg, Dresden, or Tokyo and the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki visited enormous and terrible suffering on people, including children, who were themselves powerless to change the course of German or Japanese war policy.
Almost never mentioned anymore. We also don't talk about how cruel our citizens can be even to fellow Americans i.e..the so called Civil War.
The nukes were pinpricks vs. the firebombing.
I understand why they did them. But I am glad I wasn’t the one making those decisions. Those raids were, in a word, horrific.
And the libs bitch about Dresden. Sometimes understanding history isn’t fun.
Despite all the agreements to not use chemical or biological weapons, Japan was developing chemical and biological weapons to use against us. They tested them on Chinese and American POWS.
Nuking Japan was an object lesson that he evidently heeded.
Too bad they murdered Patton before he could beat the drum enough to get the Allies to finish the job in Russia.
I read where that happened. There was some sort of fight among the generals. They were going to equip the populace with bamboo spears to ward off our guys should we have invaded. There were stories about some guys crying in relief after they heard about the atomic bombing knowing that the war was over and they didn’t have to invade. It was said that at least a million Japanese would have died if we invaded plus our loss of life; look how terrible Okinawa was.
Which is precisely why the Left was opposed to the bombs, it wasn't out of any love for the Japanese.
And probably your cousin would have been a casualty. Without the A-bomb the invasion timetables didn’t envision an end to the Pacific War until ‘48 — at the earliest. Look at how few Soviet soldiers survived at the front the entire war. US troops would have had a similar experience.
Gen. Pershing advised his fellow allies not to offer an armistice to the Germans because they hadn’t been defeated on their own soil. Paraphrasing, he said “we’ll be back here in 20 years doing it all over again”. He was only off by a little over a month.
Very true, it led to the "Stabbed in the Back" meme, which the Nazis were able to exploit on their road to power.
Iwo Jima and every small island they occupied. We were losing a ship and a half every day during that campaign.
The ship I serve on in 1965 had taken a kamikaze attack and survived.
How were they any different than the suicide bombers of today? The Japanese were unbelievably cruel and fanatical.
I have heard all the stories about MacArthur's vanity, fact is he was much brighter than Truman, who feared he would enter into politics.
His command was left in the Philippines as fodder, no wonder he didn't trust the politicians.
I remember Movie Tone news showing MacArthur returning and all they could do was complain about the audacity of him having" I shall Return" on the cigarette packs because he didn't say We.
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