Utterly stupid. Pack of lies. We took 27,000 casualties at Iwo Jima. We took 50,000 more on Okinawa.
Bet none of the guys who were going to land and fight on the home islands, sail around them for another year, or fly above them agreed with this.
Go over these opinions. Ike, spent his time in Europe. What the hell did he know about Japan? Ever hear Joe Stillwell or USMC Vandegriff opining about the ETO?
LeMay? Angry that the bomb was seen as the death blow rather than his fire raids.
Also, all the others made these statements in the 1950s when the order of the day was “make nice with Japan because of Korea and Cold War” so there was some ass kissing going on.
As for Leahy; Truman’s Memoirs: Year of Decisions, Leahy was skeptical about the atomic bomb, saying: “That is the biggest fool thing we have ever done. The bomb will never go off, and I speak as an expert in explosives.”
Lots of post war agendas happening. But no fighting men thought any such thing. Between Iwo Jima and Okinawa we lost 20,000 dead, and 55,000 wounded. Jap resistance was increasing. Geezer officers born in the late 1800s had the luxury to think that way. Men facing death, or another year in the Pacific for a starvation of Japan blockaid didn’t.
This is childish America hate and comes up every year.
I think your post hits closer to the truth than much of what we hear about this.
I referenced that in my post, that the bombs changed everything in a military perspective.
Since the people who uttered those quotes were largely honorable men, it isn’t easy to consider this aspect, but a lot of warfighters didn’t like the idea that someone pushing a button might take the place of men fighting things out as they always had, albeit with different weapons every time.
In 1945, there wasn’t yet Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, Operation Iraqi Freedom, etc.
They might well have thought in 1945 that the bomb made them obsolete.