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Originally posted by Joobs:

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Originally posted by Oralloy:

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Originally posted by Lett328:
I don't believe that there was any prospect that the Americans would have risked American lives in an invasion of Japan - it was just a post facto rationalisation for the dropping of atomic bombs.

Well, all the historians say you're wrong.

Maybe at one time they did but not now. The good old freedom of information act in America has provided us with the truth and reason the Bomb was dropped. And few if any military historians will deny it.

Nope. All the historians still say that the main reason for dropping the bombs was the hope it would shock Japan into surrendering before we had to invade.

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Originally posted by Joobs:
At Yalta Russia had said they would join in the Pacific campaign within 3 months of the European campaign ending. Following what had happened in Europe with Russia annexing the countries it liberated the Americans did not want a similar thing to occur and hence Russian influence in the East. (Their reds under the beds paranoia had begun.) To avoid this they had to make the Japanese surrender before the Russians joined the Pacific campaign.

By that stage there never was any real intention of a US military invasion of the Japanese mainland. The Americans had formulated a plan to invade in Nov but they had also estimated that this invasion would cost approx 1.4 million allied lives. More importantly though, their intelligence had intimated that the Japanese war machine was almost finished and that they could not continue beyond Nov 1942 so they knew they could just sit it out and wait rather than invade.

No, our intelligence gave no indication as to whit it would take to make Japan surrender, and we still planned to invade.

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Originally posted by Joobs:
Unfortunately the agreement made at Yalta meant time was against them. They had to make the Japanese give in earlier. An invasion was out and conventional bombing although destructive really wasn't enough. What they needed was something bigger. Of course they had this in the Atomic Bomb.

We would have nuked Japan on the same schedule regardless. The key was whether Japan surrendered or not.

As long as they hadn't surrendered, they were going to get nuked as soon as the bombs were ready.

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Originally posted by Joobs:
So they dropped it and the Japanese surrendered on 14 Aug 1945. The Russians did actually join in the Pacific campaign. The did this on 8 Aug just 2 days after the first Bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and the day before the second Bomb hit Nagasaki. During their campaign the Russians destroyed the Japanese Army in Manchuria and took N Korea whilst the US took over S Korea. The Japanese surrendered on 14 Aug thereby halting the Russians and thus providing the Americans with their desired aim.

Some historians have also conjectured that the use of the Atomic Bomb (in particular the second) also had a secondary motive of sending a message to the Russians. How much truth there is in that part is anyones guess though doubtless the Russians noted the fact.

They did hope that the Soviets would be intimidated by the bombs and start behaving, but the point of dropping them on the Japanese was to try to make Japan surrender.

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Originally posted by Allan D:

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Originally posted by Oralloy:

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Originally posted by IonaGabby:
People usually refer to World War II as a ‘good war’, one in which good (the Allies) triumphed over evil (the Axis powers). But how can the Allies be considered untainted when they initiated actions with horrific consequences, including:
• the RAF and USAF firebombing of German cities such as Hamburg and Dresden

That should be RAF firebombing. US bombers didn't burn any German cities, unless you want to consider the government district of Berlin.

The Americans took part in the bombing of Dresden and normally didn't use incendiaries because they generally bombed by day whereas the RAF bombed by night.

The American bombers focused on trying to hit the Dresden railyards and did not take part in the firestorm that destroyed the city.

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Originally posted by Allan D:
The Americans certainly had no compunction about firebombing Japanese cities

Indeed.

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Originally posted by Allan D:
and the fire-bomb raid on Tokyo in February 1945 probably cost around 129,000 lives, more than died at either Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

I usually hear Tokyo estimated at 100,000.

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Originally posted by IonaGabby:
People usually refer to World War II as a ‘good war’, one in which good (the Allies) triumphed over evil (the Axis powers). But how can the Allies be considered untainted when they initiated actions with horrific consequences, including:
• the RAF and USAF firebombing of German cities such as Hamburg and Dresden
• the rape and murder of German civilians by Soviet troops at the end of the war
• the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and, especially, Nagasaki by the United States.

According to Niall Ferguson, ‘We allied ourselves with a dictator [Stalin] who was every bit as brutal as Hitler. We adopted tactics that we ourselves had condemned as depraved, killing prisoners and bombing civilians.’

Was it worth it? Or do you think, like the Italian writer Primo Levi, who spent a year in Auschwitz, that no peace could ever efface the crimes that had been committed in the war – by both sides?

No it wasn`t worth it, quite the contrary in fact.
A needless war which resulted in the destruction of Germany and the loss of the British Empire.
The direct consequence of this war is the reduction of Europe to a Third World continent and the loss of its territorial imperative.
Instead of praising Churchill people should reassess his actions in the light of their far flung consequences.

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Originally posted by Tarnhari:

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Originally posted by IonaGabby:
People usually refer to World War II as a ‘good war’, one in which good (the Allies) triumphed over evil (the Axis powers). But how can the Allies be considered untainted when they initiated actions with horrific consequences, including:
• the RAF and USAF firebombing of German cities such as Hamburg and Dresden
• the rape and murder of German civilians by Soviet troops at the end of the war
• the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and, especially, Nagasaki by the United States.

According to Niall Ferguson, ‘We allied ourselves with a dictator [Stalin] who was every bit as brutal as Hitler. We adopted tactics that we ourselves had condemned as depraved, killing prisoners and bombing civilians.’

Was it worth it? Or do you think, like the Italian writer Primo Levi, who spent a year in Auschwitz, that no peace could ever efface the crimes that had been committed in the war – by both sides?

No it wasn`t worth it, quite the contrary in fact.
A needless war which resulted in the destruction of Germany and the loss of the British Empire.
The direct consequence of this war is the reduction of Europe to a Third World continent and the loss of its territorial imperative.
Instead of praising Churchill people should reassess his actions in the light of their far flung consequences.

Dear Tarnhari, you are a first class berk. As much as it pains me to defend a tory but churchil did not start the war and neither did britain. The british empire would have been lost if we hadn't fought anyway. What was churchil to do in 1940? Make peace with germany?

The fire bombing of civilians in germany was quite acceptable. It must be said though that there was a resistance movement in germany so they were not all bad. Japan however is a different matter. There was no resistance movement in japan. It’s just a pity that the yanks tested there first atom bomb in the Nevada desert rather than on a major Japanese city.

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Originally posted by Fil2:
The alternative would have been for the Allies to have done nothing which would've been equally unforgiveable and probably resulted in even more death and suffering.

I fail to see how Britain starting a world war and refusing to consider Germany`s peace overtures with the resultant loss of millions of lives and the destruction of a continent reduced `death and suffering`?

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Originally posted by Stormer88:

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Originally posted by Fil2:
The alternative would have been for the Allies to have done nothing which would've been equally unforgiveable and probably resulted in even more death and suffering.

I fail to see how Britain starting a world war and refusing to consider Germany`s peace overtures with the resultant loss of millions of lives and the destruction of a continent reduced `death and suffering`?

Are you saying it is better to appease violence than confront it?

War of The World - WWII was it a 'good' war? Absolutely for Britain's delusional left. By being forced to ally with the communists against the fascists, socialism in Britain was given a tremendous boost. How else do you explain the inexorable march toward our present political situation. Orwell's novel" Nineteen Eighty-Four has been taken as a blueprint rather than a cautionary tale. We now have more CCTV cameras and government databases than any other nation on earth. In the name of public safety lawful citizens have been disarmed again and there seems no end to the "offensive" weapons the prohibitionist want to ban. In fact the gun prohibitionist nearly got ahead of themselves in 1940 as the Battle of Britain neared, the citizens were not armed to “fight them on the rooftops.." per Churchill. Thanks to the efforts of the American NRA and the American Committee for the Defense of British Homes thousands of arms were collected and sent to England. A few were returned after the war and one can now be viewed in the National Firearms Museum in Fairfax, Virginia. The rest have been confiscated and destroyed as a result of subsequent firearms legislation.

In the USA, a country born out of the Age of Enlightenment, they had the good sense to write a Bill of Rights enumerating some of the rights for the common people in an attempt to supplant the arbitrary authority of aristocracy. Sadly some Americans now talk about our fathers and grandfathers who fought in World War II as winning the costly battles for Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness but losing the war. The the War on Terror proceeded by the War on Drugs is being used on both sides of the Atlantic to erode civil liberties at an astonishing rate. The electronic media is undoubtedly a catalyst by sensationalising every act of violence in our relatively safe and peaceful country.