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.
Good point. Patton wasn’t exactly alone in his observation that war was a grand human endeavor, terrible, but magnificent, reaffirming values, etc. Interestingly enough, the exact same debates were had reference the belt fed machine gun.
There’s an interesting book out there called the social history of the machine gun. Fascinating, but there are leaders who really do like the idea of soldiers moving off in glorious combat.
They aren’t like normal people