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Jaguar
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Montgomery County, MD
Apr 2000
time: 00:33
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quote:
Originally posted by General Ludd
 How do you figure? Wether there was a rational basis or not, the fact remains that the Nazis improved germany a great deal. They did it with the blood of innocents, but the ends justify the means, right?
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WTF? A "Nazis weren't that bad" argument?
quote:
So you think every civilian - or even a majority of civilians - killed by the allies where all factory workers? You think that if you burn a city to the ground or level it with a nuke, that you only kill the people making guns and ammo?
But, again, even if this where true.... see first part of this post. |
No. Many were probably employed in food production, food which supplied the armies. Many probably produced tanks, planes, and vehicles to carry troops around. Many produced uniforms for the army.
You should know your 20th century history. Almost all commodities were scarce during WWII because the vast majority of civilians were manufacturing things for the army. Very few were in the private sector making normal civilian goods, hence the shortages.
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molly bloom
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Lundenwic
Oct 2001
time: 15:33
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quote:
Originally posted by Verto
Killing civilians was not considered an honorable tactic by the United States. However, because of the heavy losses and risk taken during American daytime bombings, we realized we had to carry out nightime bombings, which meant more widespread damage. Over time, this changed into the doctrine of destroying the entire morale of the country. |
I find this unsupported by the evidence of the bombing campaign in Asia, either in Japanese occupied China, or the home islands of Japan.
Dropping napalm on largely wooden cities is not a way of minimizing civilian casualties, nor is it a 'surgical strike'.
Right. Killing civilians is something we will hopefully never have to do again.- Jaguar
Do you mean as part of policy, Jaguar, or 'accidentally'?
Either way, I don't think such a major change is likely.
This is a quote from 'Total War' about Le May's bombing campaign in Asia:
'On 10th March he sent in waves of bombers which flew abnormally low: this was a protection against anti-aircraft guns, which were abundant in Tokyo.
(The Japanese did not have their guns adjusted to radar, so they were manually operated, effectively rendered useless by this strategy)
....
On this one raid the Americans distributed 2 000 tons of bombs. In this savage assault they used a device of air attack which had been perfected over Germany. The explosions which they employed raised intense heat on a large scale. As a result they caused violent storms of air currents, which were utterly beyond control, and proved one of the most lethal factors in this kind of attack. This one raid is estimated to have caused 125 000 casualties. It was estimated that 40 per cent of the city was destroyed in under three hours. Over a million people were made homeless.'
Peter Calvocoressi and Guy Wint: Total War publ. Pelican Books 1972
In fact at the beginning of the war, Great Britain and France had agreed to restrict bombing to strictly military targets as a result of a plea from Roosevelt, but this was only if the Germans did so too.
'....upon the understanding that these same rules of warfare will be scrupulously observed by all of their opponents. I request an immediate reply.'
President Franklin D. Roosevelt
http://www.dannen.com/decision/int-law.html#E
Guernica (the theory)
http://www.pbs.org/treasuresofthewo.../1_bombing.html
became the practice at Warsaw
http://www.centennialofflight.gov/e...ombing/AP27.htm
and Rotterdam
'On Tuesday the Germans made it known that if the Dutch didn’t immediately surrender they would begin to systematically bomb the country’s cities. '
http://www-lib.usc.edu/~anthonya/war/rott.htm
If the Germans did not scruple to attack civilian centres of population as a terror tactic (and to strafe refugee columns in France, and before the war to threaten the Czech government with the bombing of Prague if they did not give in to German demands) then for France and Great Britain to have played 'nice' would have meant a Third Reich from Lwow to Liverpool.
Coming from a town which had its preserved mediaeval centre destroyed by German raids it makes it easier to understand the willingness of the Allies to reply with mass bombing.
It doesn't make it any more palatable to consider the deaths of German civilians, but if I had to choose between my father in Coventry and an anonymous German in Hamburg, I'll pick my father every time.
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Q Cubed
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t3h y3ll0w p3ril
Apr 1999
time: 23:33
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personally, i find the argument "it was the better option" and any of its relatives ("more people would have died in operation olympic"; "war is hell, they knew it"; "japan wasn't going to surrender, we had to"; "it saved american lives--and japanese lives") to be abhorrent and cowardly.
why? the moment of silence isn't about what could have happened, it's about what did happen. the fact that yes, the atomic bomb was probably the best decision given the information at the time shouldn't even factor into it. it doesn't matter that the atomic bomb stopped my godfather from possibly getting killed, it doesn't matter that my mother's country got its first gasp of freedom after it.
what matters is that something this brutal and horrific happened, and to deny the terror of an atomic weapon, to shrug, offer a few weak "eh, it happened, so what?"s, and to shuffle away paying attention only to numbers game...
hell, i think it was the best option, and somewhat karmic, but that doesn't mean i'm happy it had to happen.
but, let's just say fukitol, because i'm certain that those of you who think it was completely right won't be convinced, and pretty much don't care to remember it. why would you? there's so many things wrong in the world today, why waste a moment on something that happened fifty-nine years ago? it's history.
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MRT144
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Seattle Washington
Oct 2002
time: 21:33
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quote:
Originally posted by Park Avenue
You want silence for Nazis? |
we know you do
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SnowFire
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New York City, NY
Jan 1970
time: 00:33
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Mr. Fun: What did you say that you want a response to? You originally decried the existence of this thread, basically, by saying we should stop talking, which wouldn't make for much of a reply. After that you said short, factual statements I think we all agree with.
What might be questioned is whether an impartial court would have found him guilty.
That's a great question, and one we will sadly never know the answer to. Since there was no trial, and McArthur's governments went to lengths to quiet down any people saying bad things about the Emperor, a lot of the evidence that would have been gathered is missing.
What can be said for sure is that the Emperor was weak in his opposition to the war, and probably should have taken steps to end the war sooner... but that's not a crime, merely being either cowardly or over-optimistic. If he got in the planning of some of the war crimes... well, it seems likely, but I don't think we'll ever prove it.
Q Cubed: The problem is, you've won already. I agree that we should honor the bombings regardless of the fact that they were probably the right decision, but at this moment, too much is made over them and not enough is made over other parts of the war.
In the WWII era, yes, killing civilians was a valid tactic. However, killing civilians that you had already captured was not, because they obviously couldn't help the enemy war effort.
Pretty much the heart of the matter. The Allies didn't tend to commit atrocities in the rare times they occupied enemy territory (when reclaiming Italy & Germany, mostly), and when they bombed them, they were still supporting the war effort. The Japanese, and the Germans on the Eastern front, did hideous, horrible things to their new subjects.
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Q Cubed
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t3h y3ll0w p3ril
Apr 1999
time: 23:33
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quote:
We didn't shy away from killing of civilians, but the primary intent was the destruction of militaraly useful industrial capacity. |
which is why kyoto, a non-industrial town, was also a potential target, and why in nagasaki, which was only a port and not too industrial, was targeted... and where the bomb detonated there, it hit the burakumin and the catholics, both of whom were not exactly part of the military-industrial complex.
no, what the atomic bombs were meant to do was not destroy the military-industrial capacity, but to show the japanese government that we could easily demolish their cities one by one until they gave up the fight.
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MichaeltheGreat
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Apolyton Grand Executioner
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mooning the house that Ruth built.
Oct 1999
time: 21:33
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quote:
Originally posted by Q Cubed
quote:
We didn't shy away from killing of civilians, but the primary intent was the destruction of militaraly useful industrial capacity. |
which is why kyoto, a non-industrial town, was also a potential target, and why in nagasaki, which was only a port and not too industrial, was targeted... and where the bomb detonated there, it hit the burakumin and the catholics, both of whom were not exactly part of the military-industrial complex.
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Kyoto was not a potential target. The cities of Nara, Kyoto, Kamakura and Nikko had been excluded from bombing by US forces due to their major historic and cultural significance and lack of military targets.
Perhaps you're thinking of Kokura, the original target for the Nagasaki bomb?
And Nagasaki was not merely a port, there was a naval base and several military-industrial fatories of various Mitsubishi and Mitsui companies, and several other items. Ground zero in Nagasaki was an aerial identifiable landmark (typical of WW2 bombing practice) formed by the shape of some of the dredged dock and port facilities, and in the approximate center of the major industrial and military facilities in the city. Most of the city population lived in the hills surrounding the harbor, not in the primarily commercial-industrial harbor basin.
quote:
no, what the atomic bombs were meant to do was not destroy the military-industrial capacity, but to show the japanese government that we could easily demolish their cities one by one until they gave up the fight. |
And if you read the post of Molly's which I quoted and to which I replied, the subject was the use of low-level incendiary attacks and the bombing campaign in general.
The target list for the a-bombs was a lot narrower than for bombing in general, because the Japanese had relatively litttle heavy industry concentrations left at that stage of the war, and Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Niigata, Fukuoka and Kokura were pretty "rich" target areas among what was left to bomb.
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Big Dave
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Texas
Apr 1999
time: 23:33
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quote:
Originally posted by Verto
Sadly, many do. Some have come to believe the Japanese were on the doorstep of surrender and the US needlessly used the bombs to scare off Russia, get revenge for the Japanese atrocities, etc. |
A brief review of history will disabuse that notion. The US/Allies lost over 100k troops invading Okinawa. The Allied losses invading Japan herself would have been staggering compared to what we lost taking Okinawa. Dropping The Bomb was justified (or creating a firestorm ala Dresden) but I'm glad I'm not the one who had to make that decision.
And yes, it's worthy of a moment of silence. As is Dresden, Pearl Harbor, the World Trade Center, the slaughter of infants by Antiocus Epphinies, and many other moments in human history.
Did you know we've had roughly 57 years of peace in the past 3,000 years? It only takes one to start a fight, after that you're a victim or a combatant.
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