We should have just like Sherman should’ve turned west from Savannah and not stopped until he reached the Pacific. No more half measures
this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2025
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Unlikely. There wasn't the same level of racism against Germans.
Man, we utterly flattened Germany with a sustained campaign of strategic bombing, and seriously considered ethnically cleansing a good portion of the country after the war. If it seemed like Nazi Germany was going to hold out for another million Allied casualties, you bet your ass they would've had a can of sunshine opened on them.
"It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons." -Admiral William D. Leahy, 1950
The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace before the atomic age was announced to the world with the destruction of Hiroshima and before the Russian entry into war.... The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in the defeat of Japan. - Chester W. Nimitz, 6 October 1945 Commander-in-chief of the US pacific fleet in WWII
First, the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing. Second, I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon - Dwight D Eisenhower 1963
Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated. - US Government Strategic Bombing Survey, 1946
Another myth that has attained wide attention is that at least several of Truman's top military advisers later informed him that using atomic bombs against Japan would be militarily unnecessary or immoral, or both. There is no persuasive evidence that any of them did so. None of the Joint Chiefs ever made such a claim, although one inventive author has tried to make it appear that Leahy did by braiding together several unrelated passages from the admiral's memoirs. Actually, two days after Hiroshima, Truman told aides that Leahy had 'said up to the last that it wouldn't go off.'
Neither MacArthur nor Nimitz ever communicated to Truman any change of mind about the need for invasion or expressed reservations about using the bombs. When first informed about their imminent use only days before Hiroshima, MacArthur responded with a lecture on the future of atomic warfare and even after Hiroshima strongly recommended that the invasion go forward. Nimitz, from whose jurisdiction the atomic strikes would be launched, was notified in early 1945. 'This sounds fine,' he told the courier, 'but this is only February. Can't we get one sooner?'
The best that can be said about Eisenhower's memory is that it had become flawed by the passage of time.
Notes made by one of Stimson's aides indicate that there was a discussion of atomic bombs, but there is no mention of any protest on Eisenhower's part.[74]
Even after both bombs had fallen and Russia entered the war, Japanese militants insisted on such lenient peace terms that moderates knew there was no sense even transmitting them to the United States. Hirohito had to intervene personally on two occasions during the next few days to induce hardliners to abandon their conditions. That they would have conceded defeat months earlier, before such calamities struck, is far-fetched to say the least.
The Strategic Bombing Survey outright ignored material that didn't fit their conclusion on the Pacific War, and I am aware of no serious trend in modern historical academia that regards the atomic bombings and the Soviet invasion and the impending American invasion to be immaterial in Japan's surrender.
First, I trust the numerous first hand accounts of actual leaders of the time over this one historian acting like their memories aren't great fifty years after the fact.
Second, the imminent Soviet invasion absolutely was a material factor. One of the reasons why the nukes were used were to end the war before the Soviets could invade so they couldn't dictate any terms of surrender.
First, I trust the numerous first hand accounts of actual leaders of the time over this one historian acting like their memories aren’t great fifty years after the fact.
This may be shocking, but leaders often lie. Only Eisenhower's memory was impugned in that statement. Sorry that contemporary accounts don't back up their later politiking.
Second, the imminent Soviet invasion absolutely was a material factor.
Then why the fuck did you quote
Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated. - US Government Strategic Bombing Survey, 1946
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The bombing was strategic, not melting entire cities of mostly civilians.
Huh, a Dresden denier. Never seen one of those before. Weird.
I haven't, although I should have made more consideration for that. There's still plenty of degrees here, just like how the firebombing of Japan was also brutal. I think you'll agree that the wholesale evaporation of a city to a nuclear bomb is a little different than bombing a city too hard yeah?
I think you’ll agree that the wholesale evaporation of a city to a nuclear bomb is a little different than bombing a city too hard yeah?
No, not really. More people died in the firebombing of Tokyo than in either Hiroshima or Nagasaki (at least according to some estimates). The main real difference the atom bomb represented was making it a lot easier to inflict such damage with one plane instead of 334 and the implications of that for the future of warfare, not the actual damage done to Japan.
not melting entire cities of mostly civilians.
Uhhh...
The allies carpet bombed multiple cities, my confused friend.
I would assume that the whole continent going red in response would have not been out of the question if that happened however.
I mean, nuking an European city would have been the ultimate permanent propaganda tool for the USSR why we need to band together against such barbarism.
Even if in that city it was literally Hitler?
And millions of German workers, with friends and family all over the continent.
It would have went beyond ideology, and it would have dwarfed the Holocaust in being the defining evil of the war as remembered by Europeans.