Patton leads German troops against USSR?

[jamespowers]

We were in a state of formal, declared war with Japan. The morality of the bomb can be debated, but either way it was a legal act of a legal war. The USSR was our ally in that war, not our opponent, and without a formal declaration of war against them, any attack on them -- let alone a nuclear attack -- would have been both immoral and illegal. You would never, ever have gotten that declaration of war in 1945.

No, we would have to wait until 1950 to have a "police action." We could have done the same thing there and we wouldn't have had to worry about a "police action" later. It could have been done under several auspices over the treatment of the people in East Berlin and subsequently East Germany, not to mention Poland etc. Instead we had West Germany in a condition of an economic miracle by 1955 while East Germany was a depressed prion state where millions of people were used as forced labor and either starved or died as a result. No miracle---just death and destruction. The SED was just wonderful for Germany. :doh:

 

[hatguy1]

"Patton strikes me as a man a bit like Churchill: flourished in a war situation, but a bit lost in peacetime."

Yep. Can't argue with that. Patton was the last of the great warrior generals. He only took territory and didn't give it back. He didn't mince words and he didn't try to play diplomat or statesman. Knew his purpose and that was to fight and to win.

 

[hatguy1]

The A-bombs of the late 40's weren't as spectacularly powerful as we imagine today. Partially due to years of Japan bleating about being the only 'victim' of nuclear war to trump all the war-crimes they ever committed.

I've always found Japan's attitude about the a-bomb a little hypocritical. Nay, make that a lot hypocritical. They weren't any more a victim than the thousands of our sleeping soldiers and sailors and the civilians at Pearl Harbor who they sneak attacked in the pre-dawn hours of December 7..... (2500 died, 1000 wounded according to http://www.history.com/news/5-facts-about-pearl-harbor-and-the-uss-arizona)

 

[hatguy1]

The long term ill effects of those bombs on people in surrounding areas have been well documented. Realpolitik aside, their effectiveness remains debateable.... but that's all old ground.

I don't see how you think they weren't effective. Japan would've never surrendered without having the a-bombs dropped on them OR an outright invasion of the Islands of Japan. That was predicted to cost a million or more lives on both sides. Seems to me that the A-bombs brought the War to a speedy conclusion with less loss of life than if they hadn't been used.

 

[Big J]

I don't see how you think they weren't effective. Japan would've never surrendered without having the a-bombs dropped on them OR an outright invasion of the Islands of Japan. That was predicted to cost a million or more lives on both sides. Seems to me that the A-bombs brought the War to a speedy conclusion with less loss of life than if they hadn't been used.

I'm going to have to disagree with you on that. 1945 US Stategic Bombing Survey is a great document that makes the case that will surrender (written before August 45) due to USN submarine blockade, before end of 45. The A-bombs, IMHO, were primarily a show of strength to Soviets who were romping through Japanese held Manchuria.

The US didn't want post-war Japan partitioned like Germany.

Still, having been to the Hiroshima Peace Museum, and having seen sillouttes of children flash burned onto wooden doors and screens, I was full of sympathy until the day one of my girls brought home a text book from school that literally said; 'It was a bright, sunny day in Hiroshima, when without warning the US dropped the worlds first atom bomb on the peaceful city'.
In Japanese schools, history classes literally devote more time and pages to Hiroshima than they do to the combined total years (1905-1945) of Japanese Imperialism.
N.B. Nagasaki only gets a one sentence mention, since after making Hiroshima look so bad, they don't want the students piping up and asking why the government didn't surrender immediately after Hiroshima. This is what happens when you staff the post-war Ministry of Education with former secret police.

Hiroshima remains the ultimate trump-card that gets thrown in every non-Japanese face when they ask about Japanese war-crimes (interestingly, March 45 fire-bombing of Tokyo killed more people, but that's been forgotten). Hiroshima is the symbol of the 'war that Japan was forced to fight by the US' and is a symbol of US 'racism against Asians'.

This conveniently overlooks the fact that the Japanese were working on thier own bomb at the time of surrender, having received 'heavy water' via U-boat from Germany. Occupation US troops threw 3 Japanese centrifuges into Tokyo bay, and there they remain.

It's worth noting that it is the position of many prominent Japanese politicians (including the current Prime Minister) that the Tokyo war crimes trial was simply 'victors Justice'. The Prime Minister himself said last year that the 1068 convicted war-criminals enshrined at Yasakuni are 'not criminals under Japanese law'. These people are desperate to get a US President to visit Hiroshima to 'prove' to the Japanese public that America accepts that it did something wrong, which is why right now at the UN the Japanese ate demanding that the new Nuclear Non-Proliferation Convention includes a mandatory visit to Hiroshima by signatory heads of State, and Japan is considering Hiroshima as host city for its G20 meeting.

By hook or by crook, they want a US President in Hiroshima to serve as 'proof' that the US is 'sorry for doing something bad'.

Great ally we got.

 

[jamespowers]

I'm going to have to disagree with you on that. 1945 US Stategic Bombing Survey is a great document that makes the case that will surrender (written before August 45) due to USN submarine blockade, before end of 45. The A-bombs, IMHO, were primarily a show of strength to Soviets who were romping through Japanese held Manchuria.

The US didn't want post-war Japan partitioned like Germany.

Still, having been to the Hiroshima Peace Museum, and having seen sillouttes of children flash burned onto wooden doors and screens, I was full of sympathy until the day one of my girls brought home a text book from school that literally said; 'It was a bright, sunny day in Hiroshima, when without warning the US dropped the worlds first atom bomb on the peaceful city'.
In Japanese schools, history classes literally devote more time and pages to Hiroshima than they do to the combined total years (1905-1945) of Japanese Imperialism.
N.B. Nagasaki only gets a one sentence mention, since after making Hiroshima look so bad, they don't want the students piping up and asking why the government didn't surrender immediately after Hiroshima. This is what happens when you staff the post-war Ministry of Education with former secret police.

Hiroshima remains the ultimate trump-card that gets thrown in every non-Japanese face when they ask about Japanese war-crimes (interestingly, March 45 fire-bombing of Tokyo killed more people, but that's been forgotten). Hiroshima is the symbol of the 'war that Japan was forced to fight by the US' and is a symbol of US 'racism against Asians'.

This conveniently overlooks the fact that the Japanese were working on thier own bomb at the time of surrender, having received 'heavy water' via U-boat from Germany. Occupation US troops threw 3 Japanese centrifuges into Tokyo bay, and there they remain.

It's worth noting that it is the position of many prominent Japanese politicians (including the current Prime Minister) that the Tokyo war crimes trial was simply 'victors Justice'. The Prime Minister himself said last year that the 1068 convicted war-criminals enshrined at Yasakuni are 'not criminals under Japanese law'. These people are desperate to get a US President to visit Hiroshima to 'prove' to the Japanese public that America accepts that it did something wrong, which is why right now at the UN the Japanese ate demanding that the new Nuclear Non-Proliferation Convention includes a mandatory visit to Hiroshima by signatory heads of State, and Japan is considering Hiroshima as host city for its G20 meeting.

By hook or by crook, they want a US President in Hiroshima to serve as 'proof' that the US is 'sorry for doing something bad'.

Great ally we got.

Wow! Revisionist history is nuts.

Fortunately U-234 never delivered her cargo of Uranium oxide powder to Japan. The sub surrendered May 14, 1945 if they had not then Japan would have had the final materials and knowledge to make the bomb. :eeek: Fortunately we got it first.

 

[Big J]

Wow! Revisionist history is nuts.

Fortunately U-234 never delivered her cargo of Uranium oxide powder to Japan. The sub surrendered May 14, 1945 if they had not then Japan would have had the final materials and knowledge to make the bomb. :eeek: Fortunately we got it first.

I never met a revisionist who didn't seem mentally unwell!

 

[Edward]

"Revisionism" is a difficult term in itself, of course.... history is always being discovered, re-evaluated, as new evidence emerges. "Revisionism" is most commonly a catch-all pejorative, for the dismissal of anything which doesn't suit the preferred narrative. Which isn't to say that the holocaust deniers aren't nuts, of course!

I don't see how you think they weren't effective. Japan would've never surrendered without having the a-bombs dropped on them OR an outright invasion of the Islands of Japan. That was predicted to cost a million or more lives on both sides. Seems to me that the A-bombs brought the War to a speedy conclusion with less loss of life than if they hadn't been used.

My comment re effectiveness being debatable was in reference to the claim above that it can't have been all that bad for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as people live there now. Though certainly those bombs had nothing on what is available now, they were quite extreme. I struggle to imagine that relapolitik nowadays would allow such a direct attack on civilians.

Whether the bombs were necessary is entirely debatable. The Japanese military high command were poised to surrender - the one condition they had was retaining the emperor (which the West ultimately allowed), but the Allies were demanding an unconditional surrender. It might be argued that nevertheless the bombs still brought the war to a faster end. This was strategically advantageous to the US, at a time when relapolitik involved supporting the nationalist Chinese government against the Maoists; it sent an undeniable message to Moscow ('we have these and are prepared to use them'), and also, as the bombs dropped represented two distinctly different variations of the technology, provided a live field-test.

The only thing we can say for certain in terms of the "saved more lives" argument is that it save more American military personnel lives - which was, unsurprisingly, a higher priority for the US that Japanese civilians. I can't imagine a similar calculation being made on that scale nowadays - times have changed, and theres a world of difference between a volunteer, professional army and one of conscripts - but it was a completely orthodox way of thinking at the time. It certainly succeeded in achieving that aim, if we assume that the Japanese overtures to conditional surrender would continue to be unacceptable to the US.

Most textbooks for kids teach a pretty skewed version of war in my experience, though, yes, the Japanese system does seem still to push a rather more skewed version than others who simply play down anything negative on their own side.

 

[Big J]

"Revisionism" is a difficult term in itself, of course.... history is always being discovered, re-evaluated, as new evidence emerges. "Revisionism" is most commonly a catch-all pejorative, for the dismissal of anything which doesn't suit the preferred narrative. Which isn't to say that the holocaust deniers aren't nuts, of course!



My comment re effectiveness being debatable was in reference to the claim above that it can't have been all that bad for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as people live there now. Though certainly those bombs had nothing on what is available now, they were quite extreme. I struggle to imagine that relapolitik nowadays would allow such a direct attack on civilians.

Whether the bombs were necessary is entirely debatable. The Japanese military high command were poised to surrender - the one condition they had was retaining the emperor (which the West ultimately allowed), but the Allies were demanding an unconditional surrender. It might be argued that nevertheless the bombs still brought the war to a faster end. This was strategically advantageous to the US, at a time when relapolitik involved supporting the nationalist Chinese government against the Maoists; it sent an undeniable message to Moscow ('we have these and are prepared to use them'), and also, as the bombs dropped represented two distinctly different variations of the technology, provided a live field-test.

The only thing we can say for certain in terms of the "saved more lives" argument is that it save more American military personnel lives - which was, unsurprisingly, a higher priority for the US that Japanese civilians. I can't imagine a similar calculation being made on that scale nowadays - times have changed, and theres a world of difference between a volunteer, professional army and one of conscripts - but it was a completely orthodox way of thinking at the time. It certainly succeeded in achieving that aim, if we assume that the Japanese overtures to conditional surrender would continue to be unacceptable to the US.

Most textbooks for kids teach a pretty skewed version of war in my experience, though, yes, the Japanese system does seem still to push a rather more skewed version than others who simply play down anything negative on their own side.

Edward, I agree with pretty much everything you wrote, except the third paragraph.
This idea that the Japanese were ready to surrender, and only didn't because the US wouldn't guarantee the safety of the Emperor is a post-war Japanese Anti-American myth. It has been propagated since the immediate post-war period by the Japanese, since it puts full responsibility for not ending the war before Hiroshima squarely on the shoulders of the Americans. The Japanese military junta of the war was never prepared to accept unconditional surrender, since they wanted the US to allow Japan to keep it's occupied territories in natural resource rich Manchuria. 'Protecting the Emperor from the barbarians' is a convenient excuse to cover their greed and wasting of Japanese lives.

The Japanese only ordered troops in the Pacific to fight to the last man, and conduct suicide missions and 'banzai charges' against US troops because they hoped that they could drain the US will to fight and force the US to agree to a conditional surrender. Japanese troops in China were never ordered to fight to the last man, and were allowed to fall back. As Eastwood's film 'Flags of our Fathers' excellently shows, the US really was losing the will, and the financial resources to take Japan to the final round, and Japan knew it. Hence the vicious fighting at Iwo-jima and Okinawa; the Japanese leadership was testing the US to see if they really had enough left in them to go through with an invasion. Not surprisingly, Iwo-jima and Okinawa were so costly in terms of US lives and treasure that the A-bomb seemed like a perfect solution from a US point of view.

The fact that the Japanese gambled that if they resisted brutally, then the US would cave-in, was a massive mis-calculation since the US had the A-bomb, and called their bluff. In that respect, the Japanese should accept responsibility for the bombing as it was brought on by their brutal suicide resistance. But of course, they don't.

 

[Edward]

I'm not a fan of the "you made us do it" argument, though. I'm a stickler for the notion that all sides in warfare need to take responsibility for their own actions. (Which can, to some extent, include being provocative too, I guess - poke the bear and all.)

 

[Big J]

I'm not a fan of the "you made us do it" argument, though. I'm a stickler for the notion that all sides in warfare need to take responsibility for their own actions. (Which can, to some extent, include being provocative too, I guess - poke the bear and all.)

Seriously, the Japanese thought that if they were vicious enough, then the US wouldn't have the guts or cash to go through with an invasion, and would give then a conditional surrender that let them keep Manchuria. So what were we supposed to do? They brought it on themselves.

 

[AmateisGal]

Seriously, the Japanese thought that if they were vicious enough, then the US wouldn't have the guts or cash to go through with an invasion, and would give then a conditional surrender that let them keep Manchuria. So what were we supposed to do? They brought it on themselves.

Not only that, but the first bomb still didn't convince them to surrender. That was utter madness on their part, IMO.

 

[Big J]

Not only that, but the first bomb still didn't convince them to surrender. That was utter madness on their part, IMO.

+1

Hence the myth that they honorably fought on to protect the Emperor (since the US wouldn't give them a guarantee of his post-surrender safety), making it a racist US war-crime that went unpunished due to 'victors justice'.
Since the same families that were the government during the war have remained the government for the entire post-war period, the fact that they thought we were bluffing even after Hiroshima means that Nagasaki doesn't get a look in, in terms of taught Japanese history, and in terms of the way they remember the war as a society. No national holiday for Nagasaki, but Hiroshima gets one.

 

[AmateisGal]

I've encountered a few of these Japanese nationalists on Twitter and it's really frightening what they believe. I guess it's the same for Holocaust denial. It makes you wonder, though, why they choose not to believe. Is it because they can't fathom that mankind, or their "side", could be the perpetrators of such evil? Is it a refusal to accept the truth? Probably a bit of both.

 

[LizzieMaine]

As far as I'm concerned Japan sowed the wind when it marched into Manchuria in the first place. It reaped the whirlwind at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While I'm not oblivious to the uniquely-horrific aspects of the Bomb, the fact that its short and long term effects on those two cities was a powerful deterrent from anyone ever using nuclear weapons again makes it justifiable. In that respect it didn't just save "thousands of American lives," it saved millions, if not billions of lives around the world.

I'm not Harry Truman's biggest fan either, but I have no doubt that FDR would have made the same call.

 

[hatguy1]

Not only that, but the first bomb still didn't convince them to surrender. That was utter madness on their part, IMO.

I've heard it credited more to the shock value of the magnitude of the bomb's destruction which theretofore had never been seen in anything outside a thousand plane raid or something on that scale. Certainly not from a single plane raid or single bomb.

 

[hatguy1]

"'It was a bright, sunny day in Hiroshima, when without warning the US dropped the worlds first atom bomb on the peaceful city'."

That's the height of hypocrisy in one statement. Someone should remind them that the same could've been said about them attacking the peaceful fleet anchored in Pearl Harbor while our troops slept on a sunny Sunday morning. And if they hadn't done that, or raped Nanking and Manchuria and all the other stuff the Empire of Japan had done, then perhaps we wouldn't have had to resort to using such a weapon to bring them to the surrender table.

 

[jamespowers]

"'It was a bright, sunny day in Hiroshima, when without warning the US dropped the worlds first atom bomb on the peaceful city'."

That's the height of hypocrisy in one statement. Someone should remind them that the same could've been said about them attacking the peaceful fleet anchored in Pearl Harbor while our troops slept on a sunny Sunday morning. And if they hadn't done that, or raped Nanking and Manchuria and all the other stuff the Empire of Japan had done, then perhaps we wouldn't have had to resort to using such a weapon to bring them to the surrender table.

And then we found out about Unit 731..... :eeek: Their stupidest ideas came with the incendiary balloons they sent over trying to create massive forest fires---didn't happen.

Their scariest idea that never got deployed were Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night. Stupidly they tried to cover up Unit 731 atrocities by letting the plague infested test animals loose. 30,000 people in the Pingfang area died as a result. Better them than us.

 

[jamespowers]

I've encountered a few of these Japanese nationalists on Twitter and it's really frightening what they believe. I guess it's the same for Holocaust denial. It makes you wonder, though, why they choose not to believe. Is it because they can't fathom that mankind, or their "side", could be the perpetrators of such evil? Is it a refusal to accept the truth? Probably a bit of both.

It is one of those----I reject reality and replace it with my own----situations.

 

[Big J]

I've encountered a few of these Japanese nationalists on Twitter and it's really frightening what they believe. I guess it's the same for Holocaust denial. It makes you wonder, though, why they choose not to believe. Is it because they can't fathom that mankind, or their "side", could be the perpetrators of such evil? Is it a refusal to accept the truth? Probably a bit of both.

It all goes back to the post-war education system. To ensure that Japan became an 'anti-communist bastion' in Asia, the Japanese were given amazing latitude in reorganizing their own institutions after the war. Like I said, war-criminals like the present Prime Ministers Grandfather were let out of prison and the CIA funded the creation of their political party, which has held power for all but 5 of the post-war years. These criminals released from prison then staffed the ministry of education with former Kempeitai in order to ensure that Imperial ideology survived the occupation period and was transmitted to the next generation.

As a result, Japanese war-crimes aren't taught in Japanese schools. Pearl Harbor is taught as an 'the Americans tricked us into starting the war' event.

Since Japanese grow up knowing only this, they find any mention of war-crimes to be something they believe is a lie, since they were never taught about it at school.
The four times elected mayor of Tokyo (who resigned in 2012 and became a national politician until he retired last year), the Mayor of Osaka, the Mayor of Nagoya (those are Japan's 3 biggest cities), the Chairman and two of the directors of the national broadcaster, have all denied Japanese war-crimes as 'anti-Japanese lies' and that 'China and Korea have bribed or brainwashed the west to teach lies to their children'. It's absolutely absurd.

In addition, to the current PM's grandfather being a war-criminal, the current deputy PM's family made it's money from wartime use of POWs to work in the family owned mines.

There is a total top-down effort to hide and distort the truth because those at the top have benefitted from those crimes.

What really bends my mind is when I see groups of young ladies parading up and down demonstrating that it's all lies, and Japan did nothing wrong in the war, and Japan should return to the Imperial system. Don't these women realize that they only have the vote because GHQ gave it to them?

It's not refusal to accept the truth. It's 70 years of being lied to about the truth.