Yes, this semantic argument has indeed become tiresome. In the context of the thread, if there were no better plans then the answer can only be 'yes, it was necessary'.
And 'necessary' is the magic word here. To counter the idea that it was necessary to force a surrender, there are only two options- to establish that it did not make them surrender, or to establish that there was a better alternative.
Let's keep it to that, please.
Originally posted by Ushgarak
Yes, this semantic argument has indeed become tiresome. In the context of the thread, if there were no better plans then the answer can only be 'yes, it was necessary'.And 'necessary' is the magic word here. To counter the idea that it was necessary to force a surrender, there are only two options- to establish that it did not make them surrender, or to establish that there was a better alternative.
Let's keep it to that, please.
Fair enough.
I still don't see why the cities were the only targets that would work. They obviously didn't care about their civilian's lives, nor had we hid the fact that we were perfectly willing to bomb civilians, so it couldn't have been shock value that forced a surrender.
It seems to me the "shock" was revealing a massive super weapon they couldn't stand against.
Originally posted by Bardock42
I was wondering about that too. Did they consider dropping it on a less populated area or were there valid arguments against trying that.
It is more logical to assume it wouldn't have shaken the Emperor enough to get him to surrender.
Even after the first bomb destroyed Hiroshima, they didn't surrender, and after the second, many of the generals still wanted to fight on. If the Emperor hadn't chose to surrender on his own, the war would have continued even with the cities destroyed.
Just to also point out, its not like they chose specifically densely populated areas. They didn't nuke Tokyo, for instance. Both cities had strategic reasons for being targeted beyond "shock".
But those strategic reasons were not the main goal, and they were not the reason the Japanese surrendered.
So what changed the Emperor's mind? If it wasn't shock value and it wasn't military installations, why surrender when before he was perfectly willing to sacrifice as many men and resources as necessary?
Originally posted by TacDavey
But those strategic reasons were not the main goal, and they were not the reason the Japanese surrendered.So what changed the Emperor's mind? If it wasn't shock value and it wasn't military installations, why surrender when before he was perfectly willing to sacrifice as many men and resources as necessary?
who said it wasn't shock value? my point was that the merciless slaughter of civilians was not the primary goal of the American army, else there were much more populated cities they could have targeted.
Originally posted by inimalist
who said it wasn't shock value? my point was that the merciless slaughter of civilians was not the primary goal of the American army, else there were much more populated cities they could have targeted.
What shock value is there in killing civilians when you've been doing that for quite some time already, and on a more massive scale?
Originally posted by inimalist
are you trying to argue there was no shock value in using the atom bomb?
No, I'm trying to argue the civilian deaths were not the cause of the shock value.
It seems more likely to me the shock value came form witnessing a super powerful weapon. It seems to be the only variable that is different from all the other attacks we had made on Japan.
then how do you explain the Japanese not surrendering after the bombing of Hiroshima and the generals wanting to continue fighting after Nagasaki?
If all it took was a demonstration of power, Hiroshima alone would have done it, hell, we could have mailed them videos from the Manhattan Project, and that would have been enough.
Even then, simply just a show of raw power was unlikely to turn the tide of the war, as by this point Japan had less advanced technology and were quickly losing all of their armies. The atom bomb, in theory, wouldn't have been that much of a difference. It took the actual destruction of 2 cities to convince the Emperor (and not the Japanese military) that there was an existential threat to the Japanese people.
Two cities? We had already demonstrated we were perfectly willing to destroy cities. We had been doing it already. The fire bombing of Tokyo is proof enough of that. The emporor was not under the impression that his cities were safe from being destroyed. The fact that we were willing and able to destroy cities and civilians was pretty clearly demonstrated already.
What you have to fill in there with your logic, TacDavey, is where it leads.
Which is to say, if your implication is true, why DID the Japanese surrender? That's the problem with the tack you are taking, because it is tantamount to saying the bomb made no difference, which is pretty much contradicted by the facts as we have them.
Whereas if you accept that the bomb DID make a difference, then the others are just going to go with "and that was only made clear by the way it was used" and then you are back to where you started, still trying to establish either than that bomb had no effect on the surrender or that something less destructive would have had the same effect on it.
It's hard to deny that one giant bomb causing city-wide destruction has a larger impact on people than lots of smaller ones, even if the death tolls are similar. Especially if you think your enemy has lots of such giant bombs.
Originally posted by inimalist
so you are saying you can see no reason why the psychological impact of nuking a city would be different than firebombing one?
I think the difference would be in the show of power from the bomb. Not the amount of civilian's killed. Which should suggest we can send the same message without killing the civilians.
Originally posted by Ushgarak
What you have to fill in there with your logic, TacDavey, is where it leads.Which is to say, if your implication is true, why DID the Japanese surrender? That's the problem with the tack you are taking, because it is tantamount to saying the bomb made no difference, which is pretty much contradicted by the facts as we have them.
Whereas if you accept that the bomb DID make a difference, then the others are just going to go with "and that was only made clear by the way it was used" and then you are back to where you started, still trying to establish either than that bomb had no effect on the surrender or that something less destructive would have had the same effect on it.
It's hard to deny that one giant bomb causing city-wide destruction has a larger impact on people than lots of smaller ones, even if the death tolls are similar. Especially if you think your enemy has lots of such giant bombs.
Impact in what way, though? They obviously cared little for their civilians. We had shown that we had no problem bombing them and they had lost plenty of them already. So it seems like they should be able to be removed somewhat safely from the equation.
I think the atomic bombs were the reason the Japanese surrendered. But not because we bombed civilians, but because we showed we had a super powerful weapon. I don't think that needed to be demonstrated on such a high amount of civilians.
But what else was a super-powerful weapon going to do that also had not already been demonstrated? Destroy industry? We'd done that. Destroy military forces? We'd done that too. If your tack is that it can't have been civilians because we'd already been killing them, then I am afraid you have kinda trapped yourself as we had already done any other military target on the same scale as the civilian deaths. You'd remove everything from the equation. It doesn't work.
The Japanese did care about civilian deaths, I am afraid- it is what brought them to the negotiating table. The difference the bomb made is very mundane, sadly- nukes could kill them even faster, more easily and more shockingly then before. It's hard to say convincingly that this could have been shown without being done directly.
Originally posted by Ushgarak
The Japanese did care about civilian deaths, I am afraid- it is what brought them to the negotiating table.
That brings us back the square one, though: loads of civilians had already been killed and it was demonstrated that it could have continued like that.
It wasn't just the killing of civilians that brought them to the "unconditional surrender" table: it was mostly just the shock of using such a weapon: civilian or military alike.
I feel it was much more psychological than anything else. And it took two. Is it possible that they could have been deployed on less civilians and more on military? I really don't know but I don't think so. Part of me wants to say the targets selected were chosen to minimize civilian casualties whlie maximizing destruction to the military machine of Japan. We have Kyoto as an example of a target considered and reject to back that point up.