Posted on 08/19/2011 2:21:26 PM PDT by mojito
What ended World War II?
For nearly seven decades, the American public has accepted one version of the events that led to Japan’s surrender. By the middle of 1945, the war in Europe was over, and it was clear that the Japanese could hold no reasonable hope of victory. After years of grueling battle, fighting island to island across the Pacific, Japan’s Navy and Air Force were all but destroyed. The production of materiel was faltering, completely overmatched by American industry, and the Japanese people were starving. A full-scale invasion of Japan itself would mean hundreds of thousands of dead GIs, and, still, the Japanese leadership refused to surrender.
But in early August 66 years ago, America unveiled a terrifying new weapon, dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In a matter of days, the Japanese submitted, bringing the fighting, finally, to a close.
On Aug. 6, the United States marks the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing’s mixed legacy. The leader of our democracy purposefully executed civilians on a mass scale. Yet the bombing also ended the deadliest conflict in human history.
In recent years, however, a new interpretation of events has emerged. Tsuyoshi Hasegawa - a highly respected historian at the University of California, Santa Barbara - has marshaled compelling evidence that it was the Soviet entry into the Pacific conflict, not Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that forced Japan’s surrender. His interpretation could force a new accounting of the moral meaning of the atomic attack. It also raises provocative questions about nuclear deterrence, a foundation stone of military strategy in the postwar period. And it suggests that we could be headed towards an utterly different understanding of how, and why, the Second World War came to its conclusion.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
You speak the truth my friend and do so wisely..
Cruelty? I don't think I brought up the subject of cruelty. If you mean sadism, or the desire to inflict torture as revenge, or pleasure in others’ pain: no. I don’t know much about Truman’s sentiments, and his interior life cannot enter into my judgment, which to be just, must not rest on subjective states of mind, but on choices and acts.
But if you mean “choosing a target=city strategy in order to influence the elite with the shock and scope of the destruction,” then yes, he chose indiscriminate destruction as a means to an end. That is the moral objection.
There are countervailing elements (the civilians were told in a leaflet to evacuate, as they were in all the cities; in fact Hiroshima was full of evacuees from other cities. Very many cities had already been substantially destroyed. Where could they go? Nowhere. Could they go? Of course not); in the aftermath, measures were eventually taken to support people’s survival rather than their extermination); but that happened after the objective of unconditional surrender was gained; and that does not alter the choice of target=city as a means to an end.
”Furthermore, I don't believe that heads of state can commit the crime of murder against the civilians of another nation with whom they are at war. Murder is a crime that exists only within the jurisdiction of the laws of a state, not between states. “
This is an equivocation based on the idea that murder depends on legality. That is but one sub-definition, an illegal killing, and cannot be the major or decisive one: not after all the legal but unjust killings by states and their agents, as well as non-state actors in the 20 century. Murder is an unjust killing, and one classic way to kill unjustly is to fail to make a distinction between military targets and whole cities or extensive geographic areas, together with their populations.
I don’t know what you are referring to, when you say the "laws of war as they have been expounded since the 17th century” raise no objection to massacres. G.E.M. Anscombe of Oxford, who had scrutinized moral views of war since Aristotle and was considered an authority on the subject, said that the decision to kill an innocent person as a means to an end has been widely regarded as murder since classical antiquity, "and we pay tribute to these [concepts] by our moral indignation when our enemies violate them." (Anscombe said this in a famous 1958 essay criticizing Truman, and was neither a leftist nor a pacifist.)
I myself have never read any laws of states, international laws, or Natural Law philosophy which puts forward the idea that massacre of noncombatants is acceptable in time of war. It certainly violates Just War criteria since Vitoria (Renaissance). You’ll have to send me a link or quote me chapter and verse if you want to convince me otherwise.
Hey, I'm here to learn.
(And it's past my bedtime. Yikes. G'night.)
Furthermore, even if the statement was accurate, it would have no meaning. If you were to examine German operations in WWII the only example you could find of their army defeating a similar sized opponent, at least on paper, would be the Battle of France, which is misleading since the forces that actually clashed in the German breakout through the Ardennes were not evenly matched. The Germans were not on equal footing defeating the Poles, the Dutch, Belgians, Norwegians, nor British before the battle of France. They overwhelmed the Russians during the early stages of Barbarossa and when the numbers were evened out they lost big. The German military lost the Battle of Britain despite having superiority in numbers for Pete's sake!
I wasn't seriously suggesting that you weren't being "serious"..
I need to dig out LH book and reread it..or at least reskim through it..possibly I didn't state his ENTIRE thesis accurately..
Battles are never equal...there are always advantages and disadvantages, and the great commanders exploit them. Also,"size" isn't perhaps the right term to use....the training, battle experience, and equipment of troops is FAR more important than mere troop strength..
“The Russians waited until they knew it was over then declared war to gobble up as much territory as they could.”
Well yes. Until that time however the imperial hardliners believed their mainland forces could be used to assist in the defense of Japan. The simultaneous declaration of war and attack by the Soviets dashed that illusion.
In Manchuria the IJA was overrun on a wide front by vastly superior land and air forces. At that point there was no hope of avoiding defeat. Surrender was rational to save their Asian forces and the home island from certain destruction.
It’s a credible argument.
The Soviet theory makes perfect sense...or at least as much as saying they had a secret negotiation with Nimitz that paid off. They agreed to stop fighting if Nimitz agreed, and MacArthur acqiesced, the the Americans would not confiscate all their Samurai swords or any of the broomsticks they were training their women to use in wave attacks on machine gun nests.
Here's a thought experiment: Company A has been ordered to take position B, and on the success of their accomplishing this objective rides the success of the entire battle, and the lives of their fellow soldiers and their countrymen.
The lieutenant considers his options as to how to best accomplish his task, in which he knows he'll take many casualties. He decides that the best way is to destroy point C, an area he knows contains many civilians, and that his operation will necessarily result in many civilian deaths. His alternative is to confront a heavily fortified position, take even more casualties, and jeopardize his ability to accomplish his critical mission. He decides to destroy point C; civilians die, but the mission is a success and results in a decisive victory in which Company A has played a vital part.
You would consider such a man a war criminal. I'd consider him a hero. By the same token, you consider Paul Tibbets a war criminal: I consider him a hero. You're entitled to your point of view, but fortunately most Americans agree with me.
P.S. Gertrude Anscombe was a pacifist.
Begin with a different framework.
Instead of basing morality upon relative values, first identify the immutable.
There have been and always will be many, many, many deaths and casualties in warfare which are perfectly just, but never a consequence of individual judgment.
Likewise, God not only judges individually, He also judges groups. Hang around unrighteous groups and be prepared to suffer consequences which might never have been directed at a particular individual, but the unrighteous behavior of a group. That isn’t being indiscriminate, but rather discriminate on a different scale.
A flash mob might think they won’t be held accountable, but when deadly force is applied to that size of group, it is likely many kids who joined in on a lark may find themselves in a slaughter.
Murder is a crime against the State and God. Use of deadly force to defend the State or the just and righteous immutable laws of God when they are threatened by the unrighteous is not murder, although legitimate killing may occur. This is only one of many good reasons to remain in fellowship with God, to study His Word, and meditate upon His Word. Without that obedience, then relative morality becomes the norm, which is no better than the worst immoral action.
I know I ought to know this, but why did we attack civilians and not drop the bomb on some big collection of soldiers?
thank you
In Europe, US troops played an important role, but it was not just a US victory — the Soviets broke the back of the Wehrmacht in Stalingrad, by destroying an entire army there. The Germans had no men to replace those lost in the East.
Exactly. I now live in Warsaw and the Soviet cemetaries here are large as in the rest of Eastern Europe and the Western part of Russia.
The conflict WAS in the East, most of it on Polish/Ukrainian/Belarussian territory and it was bloody awful.
These lands are soaked with the blood of armies from 1914 to 1945.
The size of the battles were enormous, the numbers killed, the tanks, artillery used here far outnumber that in Western Europe
And, unfortunately the Eastern Europeans remember that FDR sold them out...
The aftermath of the war was chaos in the East
During the war it was no better -- the Belarussians and Ukrainians initially welcomed the Germans as liberators from the Soviets, but the Germans slaughtered them, so the locals turned against them and more got slaughtered. Then the Soviets returned and slaughtered even more locals. horrible, just horrible
The Poles were hated by the nazis who wanted to obliterate them from the map. I remember the second time I went to the Warsaw Uprising Museum (if you drop in to Warsaw do visit this) -- with some German students and the guide was enthusiastically talking about how the Germans ripped up the cobblestones to take to Germany. Each street in Warsaw -- each and every street has got one sign or more that says "here in xx/1944, 300 or xx people died, murdered by the Germans/Nazis" -- and there are always flowers and candles there
The city of Warsaw was obliterated by the Nazis during the uprising -- picture show that 70% of the buildings were ruins, the ghetto area burnt to the ground. And during this time the Soviet army was calmly watching across the Vistula river
What I don't know, but speculate on, is what if the US had NOT done that
Remember that the Wehrmacht's back was broken in Stalingrad.
if the US had not supplied the USSR, what could have happened?
The German army was strong enough to take Moscow, but could they have handled the winters? they could have marched up to Siberia and down to Iran
But the Germans had one big problem -- they had very few allies in Eastern Europe as they slaughtered the Ukrainians and Belarussians. Yes, they had the Hungarians, Bulgarians, Croats and Romanians as nominal allies who were more concerned for their own patch of land, but there was a strong movement in Poland (agreed, it had no chance of throwing off the Germans at their top strength) and sooner or later the natives would rise up and overthrow the Germans
Good points, both of you guys
Her navy is rusted and can barely control her ports, let alone project power.
Her airforce, while large is also rusting and decaying -- with the recent decision of India to move to other weapons suppliers, the MIS and Sukhoi factories may shut or move to India. And the Russians can't afford the new airplane development
Their army, while large, is filled with conscripts, not professionals and badly trained conscripts that too
They also have a huge border to defend and since the native Russians are getting increasingly xenophobic against Kazakhs, Georgians and other Caucasians, they have to protect against those southern borders too
Plus the Russian army is in Tajikistan, Kirghizia, Abkhazia and Transdniester
The Russian economy is a petro-economy, not much depth, even if they are put in the BRIC club they do not compare to China or India or even Brazil in all-around developing zones and industries
I strongly propose to my friends a re-creation of the idea of międzymorze -- an alliance of nations in Eastern and Central Europe: Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Belarus, Western Ukraine (Eastern is nearly completely Russian), Romania+Moldavia, Hungary, Slovakia,Bulgaria, serbia as a bulwark against both the East and the West --> it's not a practical idea now, I agree, but it's an exciting one.
Another exquisitely detailed post from a freeper — this is an FR discussion at it’s best, with knowledgeable folks helping me (and others) learn. Thank you!
agreed. Perhaps if we had listened to France after WWI and fought into Germany (the Brits were opposed as they wanted "balance" in Europe), perhaps we could have avoided a lot of this -- the "stab in the back" conspiracy theory would never have arisen
I don't see an issue if they were side-blow casualties in a war, but to specifically target them worries me --> yes, yes, I do think that this is what ended the war and saved our soldiers lives (as I argue with my Japanese brother-in-law to be, that ultimately the US wanted to save as many of it's own soldier's lives, which is what every country should aim for "your aim is not to die for your country but to get the other sob to die for HIS")
I think (if I'm understanding him correctly) Mr. Hasegawa's point is that the war criminals at the head of the Japanese government were so depraved, that they actually weren't forced by any concern over massive civilian casualties. -- yes, but this was not canon fodder as the Soviets did, the Japanese REALLY believed in what they were doing, the people were fanatical and not pushed into fighting.
They truly loved their country and thought they were doing the right thing following orders -- we can still see this disciplined approach in the way the Japanese recovered from the earthquake). They would have fought tooth and nail against every American soldier, and "they" would have included women and children --> they were conditioned to see us as evil monsters hence the tragedy in Okinawa.
Again, a thoughtful answer from a freeper. Thank you -- i had never thought of that
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