In 1945 an American planning staff estimated that the invasion of Japan would cost between 250,000 and 500,000 casualties. After the war, some politicians casually made this "half a million dead" and later "a million dead." In any event, any estimate of casualties includes killed, wounded and missing. The original estimates were a not-unreasonable figure based on recent American experience with fanatical Japanese defenders of Saipan, the Philippines, Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and one that a postwar examination of Japanese plans for the defense of the home islands tends to bear out. There was no indication that the Japanese would fight any less strenuously if their home islands were invaded. Indeed, it was a safe bet that the fighting would have been even more costly.

The Japanese consistently demonstrated a marked reluctance to surrender, either on the battlefield or at the negotiating table. The American people, in light of Germany's surrender in May 1945, were eager to get the war in the Pacific over with as soon as possible. The voters were making this wish quite clear to their elected officials and the chief among these, Truman, was listening intently. He had been told that a blockade of Japan might have to go on for a year or more before Japan finally gave in. The American people would have none of this and wanted something done. Nuclear weapons were simply another incentive for the Japanese to surrender, and no one was sure they would be any more persuasive than the recent fire bomb raids (which killed more people than the atomic bombs).

In August 1945, as far as the U.S. could tell, Japan was not going to surrender without further encouragement. Considering that the Japanese Army was still making plans and moving troops for the defense of Honshu when the Emperor ordered a surrender, even Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren't enough encouragement for some people.

It is unfortunate that we had to unleash the Nuclear fury, but, as you said, it really saved lives in the end. We still draw flak for using it though, I get it all the time in these forums about how the US cannot lecture Iran about being responsible with nukes when we are the only ones to ever use them. Granted, this is an immature way of looking at it, but if thats how people think, thats how people think.

Originally, there were two strategies for defeating Japan, starvation or outright invasion (we'll get to the third strategy, the one that was finally used, in a while). A couple of things have to be considered while discussing these:

a. Japan was critically short of every kind of raw material, including food, from the first day of the war. After securing the "Southern Resources Area" the Japanese no longer had a problem with regard to access to raw materials, save in the matter of food. The problem was transporting the stuff to the Home Islands, where about 85% of the industry of the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" was located. Since the Japanese had difficulties with shipping availability even before the submarine campaign began to bite, they were never able to import as much as they needed.

b. Food was in short supply in Japan even before Pearl Harbor. Full rationing was introduced in April 1941. Overall, about 20% of Japan's rice, 65% of its soybeans, and 100% of its sugar had to be imported before the war. Korea was the big source of rice and soybeans, the Japanese taking most of the Korean crop. However, Korean harvests were bad in 1939-1941, about 20% less than usual, and they continued poor during the war, even as Japanese agricultural output fell due to mobilization. So although the Japanese just took a larger share of the Korean crop (leaving the Koreans to eat animal-feed or starve), they still didn't have enough food.

By July 1945, between mining, aerial bombing, and submarines, the blockade of Japan was almost totally effective. The official daily food ration for one person was 1200 calories, when 1500 is considered the minimum to sustain an adult. A continuing blockade was very seriously considered as the means to bring about the end of the war. The problem was that it was believed that the Japanese would hang on until 1947 (some estimates said 1949 or even 1950) before surrendering. This was not considered politically acceptable. The American people were tired of war, and wanted it over as soon as possible. Germany had already surrendered, and a plan that involved dragging the war on for several more years would have little chance for public acceptance.

Invasion was the obvious choice. With the forces already in the Pacific reinforced with troops from the European theater, invasion appeared to be the fastest way to end the war. MacArthur wanted to invade Japan. He would finally be in the position of being the Supreme Commander in the Pacific once the invasion started.

You might find references to estimates of only 10,000 American dead for the invasion of Japan. This was a number that Douglas MacArthur proclaimed would be most likely. MacArthur was lying through his teeth with the 10,000 number. He picked the bottom range of an optimistic forecast, pretended that the number was for the entire campaign (Operation Downfall) instead of the first stage (the invasion of the southern Island of Kyushu, Operation Olympic), and made it seem that the word "dead" was actually "total casualties." Marshall, the Army Chief of Staff, told MacArthur to his face that the 10,000 casualties wasn't believable and MacArthur backed down. The only reason for MacArthur using 10,000 was to make it appear that the invasion of Japan would be a walkover and to bolster his chances to become Supreme Commander Pacific.

More realistic estimates were for 250,000 to 500,000 American casualties. These numbers are quite reasonable. First of all, that's total casualties, i.e., dead, wounded, and missing. In WW2 there were approximately 4 wounded for every death, so the figures for deaths would be ~62,500 to ~125,000. The numbers were derived by the joint CINCPAC [Nimitz]/CINCSWPAC [MacArthur] planning staffs and by the Joint Chiefs of Staff J-3 staff in Washington. That's why Marshall told MacArthur his 10,000 number was bogus, because both Marshall's staff and MacArthur's staff had said so. The 250,000 to 500,000 casualties were derived from studies of the casualty rates at Saipan, the Philippines, Okinawa and Iwo Jima.

A good discussion of these numbers is found in John Ray Skate's The Invasion of Japan: Alternative to the Bomb (Columbia, University of South Carolina Press: 1994), particularly Chapter 6.

The main purpose for dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was to prevent upwards of half a million American casualties.

It's one of those things that fall under "hindsight is 20/20".

How many casualties would Operation Olymic have caused (for both sides)? Impossible to really know.

How long would the war have gone on without the bombs? Would Olympic even be necessary? Again, impossible to really know.

Couldn't you just blockade the Japanese islands? Sure, but if you're worried about human suffering, how many tens or hundreds of thousands would have died of starvation, disease or etc before the country folded?

IMO, from Truman's chair at that time, dropping the bombs was the best option.

Truman is my favorite president. Ultimately, he had to make the decision. The bombing ended the war, yes the casualties were great, but as mentioned, many more could have died had the bomb not been dropped. Japan had the "Never Surrender" creed ever since the samurai era. If it was a land invasion, they would have fought to the last man, or commit suicide rather than surrender to "outsiders".

YNCS, why did you open this topic again? We discussed that before again and again. it always ended in a stalemate between the supporters and the foes of that action.
However I think Truman was a war criminal dropping the bombs. And his main reason doing so was to show Stalin his new toy. Also the bomb was a radical weapon. The causes were not totally known but in some way predictable.
But we should at first start the reasons why dropping a bomb:
1. Operation Olympic. I do not doubt in the casuality predictions of 250000- 500000 dead. In fact I think ot might be higher and perhaps also the whole operation might have failed. Also not included the Japanese losses. So it would be legitime to reach the target with other means.
2. To impress Stalin. The cold war was just beginning when Hitler died. He was the connection and without that the alliance broke. Such a motive is not legitime.
But even if we accept both as valid motives, we have to see if this was neccessary to achieve with dropping the bombs on the cities.
1. If you bomb another town with nukes you have good reasons for doing so. It must be the ultima ratio (better but wrong Latin: Ultissima ratio). If there are other means they have to be taken. Also if they seem not so useful as the consequence of a nuke are way too great. So were there any other means available?
Yes. Truman could have ordered to bomb an uninhabitant or only slightly populated island near to the Japanese home islands. Perhaps also one of the Kurile islands (to make sure Stalin saw the causes himself). That would have caused the same: If the Japanese knew about the new weapon and about the destruction abilities they would have surrendered and Stalin saw it, too. However the toy had to be tested before.
You might now say again, yes, but the Japanese could have intercepted the bomber, or the bomb might not have worked or it would not be enough. While the first two can be denied by the fact that this possibility existed also before, and indeed the US had the possibilities to minimize that risk, we have as only valid, as it seems now, reason, that it might not be enough. Also the japanese did not surrender even after Hiroshima. Yes, true. But the time for doing so was just too little. Two days. Heck, no real government can make a decision after such an attack within two days! Also I suspect the US only wanting to test a new weapon.
Additionally the Japanese were already willing to surrender. Only one condition was sent: To keep the emperor. This was also caused by the Shinto religion. This was granted later by MacArthur. So even before dropping the bomb a surrender could have happened, but was indeed not accepted by the US.
O know about the concerns of some generals, but even if we say a surrender was not possible, a bombing of an uninhabitant island had to be done before. And only after that the nuking of a city.
At least Nagasaki was a crime.
2. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were attacked totally. I mean not only a factory or yard but the whole city. As such the Hague Conventions of 1907, as the US were and are member of it, forbid in Art. 25 the attacks on undefended cities, this was against international law and a war crime.

I know we will now discuss here endless the nuking. We will come to Dresden, Warsaw and Rotterdam. And we will have great disputes.

YNCS you knew about the consequences, why did you reopen such a debate?

Adler

And you do realise that by using the nukes the US made a world history first, one that is inherently problematic, as long as we consider nukes to be weapons of a different order than what we previously had?

Which is why the Japanese feel they have been singeled out for special treatment, i.e. been victimised.

The fact that people in the US still will defend it and people in Japan will use it as a building block in their modern sense of a national identity is testament to the fact that this isn't just an "historical fact" (and "historical" here in the sense of "no longer relevant for the present situation").

This is about how people use history. All involved are doing it. Here the nukes are assumed to potentially say something relevant about both the US and Japan, but the perspectives aren't really reconcileable. Which is often the case with the parts of our past that are still being kept "hot".

I know how the justification for the US using them looks of old. We all do by now. It's rather a good one I think. Now, how do you propose to sell it to the Japanese who think differently? Or is that not your concern, as long as you have demonstrated that the use was justified to yourself?

Don't take this wrong. It's a devil of a question. As far as I'm concerned no one here's beholden to actually bite on this, unless they feel like it.

But it does relate to the problem of how we use history and what it means for different people in the here and now. Which is the reason the WWII nukes keep cropping up with regular intervalls, with more or less pulling of beards and umbrage taken each time.;)

this topic has been beaten to death i think...

don't get me wrong, i've got my own opinions about it. however, i also see absolutely no reason why such a thread should've been opened. been there - done that and it ain't pretty...

I did my A-Level history dissertation on this very subject, 3000 words including evidence, if anyone's interested.

This should be interesting.

*Grabs the popcorn*

Verbose raises a new and interesting point - How I'd sell it to the Japanese?

I'd point out that the alternatives would have caused as many if not more civilian and military losses. Oh and remind them that their own military and government probably wouldn't have thought twice about doing it to the USA if they got the chance. I also very much doubt you'd see the same agonising in Japan afterwards given that there would have been no post war occupation and for want of a better word re-education. In other words if the Japanese had dropped the bomb you'd find that most modern Japanese people would be quite happily justifying the attack too. They'd probably argue that in light of the Tokyo fire raids and the destruction of their fleet they were merely acting in self defence in order to achieve a reasonable peace.

In war you do what you think is necessary to win it as soon as possible with as few casualties as possible whilst still achieving your aims. If the Japanese think they were victimised then they need to go and find other history books to understand what their country did that made the Allies go to that extreme in the first place. Perhaps its not only the west that needs to try and understand the others motives...

I also don't really consider my thoughts on the events to be a justification or otherwise of the bombings. They are merely an opinion and each person must form their own based on all of the available evidence. I can no more justify the bombings than I can fly to the moon by flapping my arms. Its my opinion that on the balance of things the bombs were the best way of ending the war, whether anyone else agrees is entirely their choice. I'd merely tell them why I believe that and let them judge for themselves. What I dislike is people who don't study the subject very much or people who misrepresent the facts to suit their argument.

I won't bother with other discussions much since its hard sometimes to get people to agree on evidence such as what the Japanese wanted before surrendering, even when you link to sources to support your point.

I can't believe that yet again we see people trying to defend the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The use of atomic weapons in this way was obviously completely indefensible, even taking into account what the US forces knew or believed about Japan and the war at the time.

Let's grant that both a protracted blockade and an amphibious invasion were highly undesirable (and, yes, let's grant that the entire Japanese nation would have committed suicide before surrender, as some Americans still seem to think, even though it's absolute rubbish). Let's also grant the incredibly contentious principle that in war, when trying to minimise casualties, the life of an innocent civilian child takes no higher priority than that of an adult professional soldier (a principle that presumably underlies all claims that the bombings were justified because they saved lives, since they saved the lives of American soldiers at the cost of the lives of Japanese civilians). As Adler17 points out, the obvious thing to do then would be to drop an atomic bomb on an uninhabited island and say to the Japanese, "If you lot don't surrender right now we'll drop one of these on you." Then, if they failed to do this, this might be the time to start thinking about dropping one on Japan itself. But to do this first, without giving any indication of the power of the weapon beforehand, is absolute insanity. I can't believe anyone could think otherwise.

Then, of course, even if the bombing of Hiroshima were defensible, what on earth is the justification for bombing Nagasaki immediately afterwards? Even if annihilating hundreds of thousands of civilians in the blink of an eye is justifiable, I can't quite see the logic behind doing it again before anyone's had a chance to surrender.

Claims along the lines of saying that the Japanese did terrible things to people they invaded, or that they'd have done the same if they'd had the bomb, don't seem to me to be very strong points. If the Americans had argued like that then they'd have just abandoned any pretence to moral high ground in the war. Saying that it's all right to do to someone else what you think they might do to you doesn't strike me as a very moral way of arguing.

It may be worth considering that the only people I've ever heard try to defend the atomic bombings today are Americans, which suggests to me that the attempt isn't exactly objective. I'd recommend to those who try this that they go and watch Barefoot Gen and then see what they think.

Just to clarify somewhat my last post was not related to justifying the bombings. Rather it was part of showing Japanese people that the bombings weren't something that only America would have done, nor is the support for the bombings anything that wouldn't be seen in Japan had they carried them out. In other words trying to make them understand the reasons why the bombings occurred.

Oh and as you well know I'm not American, I don't agree with Nagasaki though.

Ah well, I wasn't including you in my over-generalisation, since you'd said you weren't trying to justify it!

But still, I'm not sure what the point is of saying that it's not something that only America would have done. Given that we can probably all agree that there's nothing peculiarly evil about Americans, I'm not sure why anyone would think otherwise to start with. Besides, I don't really think that speculating about what a certain government would have done in very different circumstances really counts as history, which is what this forum is meant to be about. In fact there's a strong case for saying that counterfactual conditionals don't have truth values at all - but that's really going OT.

privatehudson,

that was a fine post you made there. well put. i'd have to say that i am in agreement w/ your points as any type of carange like that is dicey.

this is an ugly topic i think and it often develoves into 'high horse' mentalities w/ some people...

Plotinus:

It was an attempt to respond to Verbose and explain the bombings to Japan as I said. You'd be suprised at just how many people are convinced the Americans only bombed Japan purely to play with their new toys. If they'd done as you suggested and bombed an isolated island you'd still find people miffed at the thoughtless Trueman and the environmental issues he caused.

I don't subcribe to the theory that either "they would have done it" or "they did just as bad" justifies a damn thing but I do happen to think that it shows up some of the reasoning used by the Allies and demonstrates that the belligerent and (by 1945) desperate Japanese government did not think so very different from the US one. How else should we explain to Japanese people if not by explaining the reasons behind the bombings, be they justified or percieved?

We speculate on alternatives all the time, given the nature of the Japanese government and their actions in the war to that point I doubt that my speculation is especially far fetched. Of course the concept of them having a nuke is but... well it was only a throw-away point really. No more extreme a concept certainly than assuming the Japanese would consider surrender upon seeing an isolated island nuked. I think that if we restricted ourselves to non-speculative history we quickly bore ourselves by only discussing articles or "what's the best tank" threads.

That what-if's make history interesting IMO as long as the discussion is informed. Why it could be argued that its one of the major reasons to play CIV after all ;)

Well, it doesn't demonstrate that the Japanese government would have done anything; it's only a consideration that they would have. At best, it's a motive for the Americans at the time. Which, presumably, is your point.

And yes, of course if Truman had dropped a bomb on an uninhabited island it would have been a Bad Thing from an environmental point of view, but it would have clearly been a lot less of a Bad Thing from every other point of view. Of course we don't know how the Japanese government would have reacted to such an action, although I don't see why they would have been less prepared to surrender in the face of a nil-casualty detonation than they would in the face of a detonation that killed many tens of thousands - surely the rationale behind surrendering is to prevent it happening again, a rationale which is constant irrespective how many people die in the first blast.

But even so, if there were a good chance (or indeed a slim chance) that a nil-casualty detonation would spur them to surrender, this is clearly the thing to do before you start blowing the skin off civilians and melting children's eyeballs. And that's why I don't think any attempt to "sell" the action could be successful, irrespective of the nationality of the person doing the buying.

I don't think you understand the point I've been trying to make.

Its got nothing to do with wether the bombing was right or wrong but entirely about trying to make Japanese people see why the action was taken by showing them all the facts around the case. Its to show Japanese people that had it been the other way around they would probably now be defending the action rather than the Americans. If they can understand that they'd have supported a similar action they may come to understand why Americans support Hiroshima.

I'm not interested in discussions on if its sellable because I'm not selling. I'm trying to explain how I would try to make a Japanese person understand why it occurred and why I take the view that I do, that's all.

To draw a comparison, explaining to a German why the Red Army rampaged across East Prussia is not the same as defending it.

I understand entirely that you're not seeking to justify the bombings. But it seems to me that you're saying two different things and you're rather confused about what you are trying to do. On the one hand, there's the claim that the American government in 1945 believed that, had the shoe been on the other foot, the Japanese would have used the bomb. And on the other hand, there's the claim that, in fact, had the shoe been on the other foot, the Japanese would have used the bomb. The first claim is a historical claim that may help to explain the decision to use the bomb. The second is a speculative claim that has no bearing whatsoever on the decision to use the bomb. But you seem to be switching between them. For example, you say you want Japanese to understand all the facts about the case. The first claim, if it is true, is one of those facts, and it may help to explain the decision to use the bomb (irrespective of whether that decision was justified in any sense). But the second claim isn't one of those facts, and I don't see its relevance to anything. And the claim that you make in your last post is the second claim, not the first. Even if your Japanese interlocutor agreed that it were true - which he might well do - where would that get you? It wouldn't, in itself, explain Truman's decision. The only thing that can explain Truman's decision is what Truman believed, not what anyone believes now.

Besides which, are you trying to explain why President Truman ordered the bombing, or why many Americans today think he was right to do so? In your last post you mention trying to show "why the action was taken" but then say that this might help people "understand why Americans support Hiroshima". Well, I hope even most Americans today don't, but whether they do or not, that's clearly a completely different thing. Presumably the second claim I identified above is meant to address the attitude of contemporary Americans rather than the actions of Truman, but as I've already said, I don't think that it does so very adequately.

If I'm unclear its because people keep confusing me by trying to drag me into the wrong type of discussion ;)

I wouldn't say I'm switching between them because they're two seperate and in their context valid points that I've tried to make clear. The first establishes part of the American reasoning and therefore shows part of why it happened. This is important in showing that American actions were not without entirely irrational, nor where they taken in isolation, they were impacted on by Japanese attitudes and actions.

The second may not be a fact but it is reasonable speculation based on Japanese actions during the war, which can be used to demonstrate that it was not just the west that posessed the mentality to make use of such a weapon. It is sometimes easy to dismiss another culture or country who comitted a great crime with the idea that it could never have happened here, however in most cases it quite easily could have. The speculative point is part of this in a similar way that speculation about Mosely suggests that anti-semetism and Facist ideology was not isolated to Italy, Spain, Portugal and Germany.

I would mostly explain why the bombings occurred. I didn't really suggest much about modern Americans other than as a related point about showing that if, under certain circumstances a counter-factual modern Japanese person might support a nuclear attack they may understand better why some modern americans support the actual attacks. Sometimes you have to go to extremes in order that the other person can comprehend a situation where they would take an opposing viewpoint and then work from there.. Although I haven't spoken much about Modern american supporters I would have gone onto that later in any such theoretical discussion explaining about the different types of supporters and their reasoning. Which of these are irrational fools akin to the counter-factual Japanese supporter and which are more rational and have decent reasons for their beliefs.

The overall aim is not to justify or persuade but to show why the pro-bomb westerners feel that way as Verbose posed. You may not especially like counter-factual discussions but I would see this as a valuble asset such a discussion. Demonstrating the facts is but one part of the issue, at some point speculation is necessary and done by everybody on some level.

The second claim has nothing to do with Modern Americans at all by the way.

I need some sleep. :sad:

YNCS, why did you open this topic again? We discussed that before again and again. it always ended in a stalemate between the supporters and the foes of that action. I did it because I wanted to.

However I think Truman was a war criminal dropping the bombs. And his main reason doing so was to show Stalin his new toy. Also the bomb was a radical weapon. The causes were not totally known but in some way predictable.
The myth that Truman decided to use the bombs to "send a message to the Soviets" is simply that, a myth. It rests on the assumption that no one seriously believed Japan would have to be invaded, which is patently untrue. The Soviets knew of the atomic bomb (both officially and unofficially) and the Western Allies knew of Stalin's plans to invade Manchuria. The main consideration was ending the war and saving American lives, not playing diplomatic games or doing warm-up exercises for the Cold War.
YNCS you knew about the consequences, why did you reopen such a debate?

Adler Because the Nanjing Massacre thread looked like it was going to turn into a debate about bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I wanted to keep that thread from going in that direction.

War is hell. I think it is rather silly to pick apart the heroic efforts of men to end a war sixty years after the fact to try to prove that they committed war crimes. This goes from Truman's decision to drop the bombs to all the service men who had to make tough decisions during the war. Some of these decisions may have been wrong and caused unnecessary deaths. But would you really want to go to the autosave directory of the game of life, pick out the 1945 AD save, reload, have Truman not drop the bombs, and then accept the consequences? I wouldn't. I know that, with the actions of President Truman and others, it all worked out in the end. I am not sure if different actions were taken, that there would be as good results.

I have a question regarding the uninhabited island theory:

If the first bomb didn't bring Japan to the table, then why would bombing a remote area do this for:
1) No one there to report it
2) No buildings to see its effect on
In other words, the Japanese government would have no reason to believe that it was a weapon that did really have any power, and second, due to Japan's population density, did such a place exist.

I see the easy answer to this being that the US didn't give them enough time to respond after Hiroshima, but is that really the case? Would such an answer be informed or purely an assumption?

Here's what a typical older generation Chinese person felt about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki...

A paragraph about Iris Chang's aunt:

"My older aunt, my dah ahiee (big aunt), is actually very small. Her wrists are the size of napkin rings, as delicate as rice paper--and the clothes we pass around in our family do not fit her slight frame. She is shy, especially in English. And during one heated family discussion on the American bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in a mid-peninsula Sizzler, she kept quiet. I had pointed out to her rather talkative husband that the U.S. government was still the only government that had dropped the atomic bomb on human beings. Hiroshima, I could maybe see, but Nagasaki too? At this point, my petite aunt spoke up. "I think they should have bombed the whole country!" she bellowed, and then lapsed back into silence. "

War is hell. I think it is rather silly to pick apart the heroic efforts of men to end a war sixty years after the fact to try to prove that they committed war crimes.
And you get Japanese who will say the exact same thing about "their" side.

At first I do not have the time nor the patience or even fun to argue here. The only point I want to add is, that Stalin got "officially" knowledge of the bomb by some remarks Truman said at Potsdam. Not more. From Truman's knowledge he did not know much more, as the program was so secret only the Brits knew about it. That Stalin had spies there, like Julius Rosenberg and (much more) Klaus Fuchs, nobody knew at this point. And nobody knew Stalin had such a program himself at Kharkow.
So the intention to show the Soviets the new toy is not only pure speculation.

Adler

7Ronin has asked me for my dissetrtation, and I'm going to post it here.
I'm afraid, however, that it will be in Word format, as a result of the formatting done on it to comply with exam specifications, and to not get into any trouble with examiners.

It's not as long as I'dve wanted, but it's 3000 words assessing al the sides of the argument.

I think you have to ask yourself two questions:

1) The Japanese didn't know an atomic bomb was dropped at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For them, at first, it was just another fire bomb. So why would the bombing of those two cities have shortenend the war? The Japanese surrendered three days after the bombing of Nagasaki. The true impact of the of the two atomic bombs were still unknown to Japanese.

2) Why has the US suddenly accepted the surrender of the Japanese with the emperor still in place, while they refused this conditional surrender many times in the months before?

I know the answers to this questions, but I'm afraid I will be flamed for this. It's not the prettiest page in US history, but maybe with time, the truth will become acceptable...

War is hell. I think it is rather silly to pick apart the heroic efforts of men to end a war sixty years after the fact to try to prove that they committed war crimes.

And you get Japanese who will say the exact same thing about "their" side.

And they would have a tough time convincing me that all they wanted to was end the war (unless by ending the war you mean conquering everyone so that there is no one left to fight).

And they would have a tough time convincing me that all they wanted to was end the war (unless by ending the war you mean conquering everyone so that there is no one left to fight).
That's fair, since you have no formula for convincing them that this conflict at its root was not one of Japan defending its position in the world against envious and racist westerners either.

It's not a really uncommon view. And a decent argument can be made for it, in the light of both European and US colonial adventures in the region.

But I'm actually a lot less likely to swayed by the Japanese defence for its policies prior and during WWII than I am to accept the US justifications for dropping the bomb.

I'm just pointing out the inherent relativism in historical justification and interpretation. If there's a consensus about something, we'll hardly notice it. But here there's conflict. And neither side is able to find a formula that allows a new mutual consensus view to be reached.

Possibly the patriotic Japanese view of WWII is more "maximalist" than the normal patriotic US view, but not more so than they can be compared.:)

First of all there is a logical chain of thought for dropping the a-bombs. Drop Bombs->Japan Surrenders (unconditionally)->Japan is removed as a threat->a more peaceful world.

With Japanese attrocities such as the rape of Nanking, Batan death march, etc there is no logical chain to other countries removed as a threat->a more peaceful world. (Unless of course the idea was to cause peace by killing all non-Japanese people).

Regular military actions should, of course, are comparable to those of other countries trying to increase its power. Even if you consider such actions justified it should be universally agreed upon that countries who start wars to increase power should expect consequences for their actions caused by other countries attempting to stop them. I for one do not see the difference between the consequence being that a lot of people die from conventional bombing, starvation, hand-to-hand combat, or the atomic bomb.

Also merely because some Japanese think that they were justified does not mean they were. We still punish murderers even if they think that their murder was justified.

I for one do not see the difference between the consequence being that a lot of people die from conventional bombing, starvation, hand-to-hand combat, or the atomic bomb.


I agree. A dead person is a dead person. It is not something to be taken lightly. People can make whatever anti-american claim they'd like, but they must understand President Truman's responsibilities. America's President is responsible to uphold the Constitution, and hence protect the American people. His military experts have given him the numbers 250,000-500,000 American casualties, plus how many million Japanese? After the mass suicides of Saipan, how many Japanese citizen's would you expect to commit suicide? His job was to keep americans from dying, and it also appeared that it could save millions of Japanese lives. Despite this, it was a very difficult decision.

I do not expect that the blockade theory really has merit, but I'd like to hear what its proponents have to say and their evidence. I am not an expert on this, and I do not asert that the bomb was the only way.

I do not expect that the blockade theory really has merit, but I'd like to hear what its proponents have to say and their evidence. I am not an expert on this, and I do not asert that the bomb was the only way.
I think that we should let the leading figures speak for themselves:
(sorry, that sounds terribly patronising; I'm definitely not trying to be :cringe: )

Henry Stimson, the Secretary of War who had been responsible for the bomb:
"Japan has no allies.
Her navy is nearly destroyed, and she is vulnerable to a surface and underwater blockade, which can deprive her of sufficient food and supplies for her population.
She is terribly vulnerable to our concentrated air attack upon her crowded cities, industrial and food resources.
She has against her not only the Anglo-American forces, but the rising forces of China and te ominous threat of Russia.
We have inexhaustible and untouched industrial resources to bring to bear against her diminished potential.
We have great moral superiority through being the victim of her first sneak attack"

Stimson is basically saying that Japan, as she stood in August 1945, was defeated.

Churchill himself agrees:
"It would be a mistake to suppose that the fate of Japan was settled by the atomic bomb. Her defeat was certain before the first bomb fell, and was brought around by overwhelming maritime power"
Churchill has numerous times ogn on record to say he supported Trumans use of the Bombs until his death.

Dwight D. Eisenhower:
"The Japanese were ready to surrender, and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing. I hated that our country be the first to use such a weapon"

Eisenhower's comment is solid. The critisim of that is that it was political: He forced the cease fire in Korea by his remarks regarding nuclear weapons. His political aspirations and intense dislike of Truman are well known.

It sounds like Churchill makes a distinction between Japan being defeated and acknowledging that.

I agree with Stimson that she was defeated.

My critism of the blockade theory is that did anyone in power really believe that Japan would give in to a blockade? That seems very counter to their culture of the time. There is so much evidence that the Japanese had every intention of killing as many Americans-ANZAC-Brits as possible.

nonconformist, I didn't take it as patronizing. I asked for the evidence to be presented, and you presented some.

If anyone is interested, here is some literature that opposes the common view of the dropping of the two atomic bombs:

- Alperovitz, G., The decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth, New York, 1995
- Sherwin, M.J., A world destroyed: The Atomic bomb and the Grand Alliance, New York, 1977
- Takaki, R., Hiroshima: Why America dropped the Atomic Bomb, Boston, 1995
- Wainstock, D.D., The decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb, Westport, 1996
I have a few more, but they are not English sources...

I you would read one of these books, you will see that history isn't always that what most people believe...

BTW, thanks Nonconformist for sharing your essay.

Eisenhower's comment is solid. The critisim of that is that it was political: He forced the cease fire in Korea by his remarks regarding nuclear weapons. His political aspirations and intense dislike of Truman are well known.

It sounds like Churchill makes a distinction between Japan being defeated and acknowledging that.

I agree with Stimson that she was defeated.

My critism of the blockade theory is that did anyone in power really believe that Japan would give in to a blockade? That seems very counter to their culture of the time. There is so much evidence that the Japanese had every intention of killing as many Americans-ANZAC-Brits as possible.

nonconformist, I didn't take it as patronizing. I asked for the evidence to be presented, and you presented some.
Well, there is a lot of evidence showing that the Japanese government was trying to negotiate a surrender (on the sme terms eventually agreed).
However, it is true there were a numnber of hard-liners who wanted massive suicide battles.

At first I do not have the time nor the patience or even fun to argue here. The only point I want to add is, that Stalin got "officially" knowledge of the bomb by some remarks Truman said at Potsdam. Not more. From Truman's knowledge he did not know much more, as the program was so secret only the Brits knew about it. That Stalin had spies there, like Julius Rosenberg and (much more) Klaus Fuchs, nobody knew at this point. And nobody knew Stalin had such a program himself at Kharkow.
So the intention to show the Soviets the new toy is not only pure speculation.

Adler Stalin was given more than a few off-hand remarks about the bomb. According to Richard Rhodes, in his book Making of the Atomic Bomb, Truman told Stalin:
We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world...Anyway, we think we have found a way to cause a disintegration of the atom. An experiment in the New Mexican desert was startling, to put it mildly...This weapon is to be used against Japan between now [24 July] and August 10th.

10 000 tons of T.N.T the noise the blinding flash, and the Mayor of Hiroshima saying what the **** was that- Kevin Bloody Wilson aussie yobbo

The nuking of Japan was a bad decision that was better in IMHO than the other 2 feasable options.

1. Invade
2. Blockade.

Nuking an uninhabitated island isn't really a feasable option methinks. The USA only had 2 a bombs at that point and spent billions in todays currency developing them. An equivilent comparison would be having Hitler demand that Britain surrender in 1940 and then send half the Luftwaffe go bomb some rock off the coast of England and then ditch in the sea due to lack of fuel to send a message that may not work.

If the Americans had targeted a sparsely inhabited island or region as a warning, wouldn't the Japanese military leaders have simply concealed the fact from the population in the hope that the Americans didn't have any more nuclear weapons?

It is best not to assume that the Japanese military leaders would have accepted the hopelessness of their position after the initial demonstration of nuclear weapons on a sparsely inhabited island; these are the people who thought they could win a war against America and the British Empire and Commonwealth while simultaneously fighting a war against China.

It's not a matter of assuming that they would have given up in the face of a nuclear test. Obviously you couldn't have done that. It's a matter of acting upon the possibility that they might have.

If the Americans had targeted a sparsely inhabited island or region as a warning, wouldn't the Japanese military leaders have simply concealed the fact from the population in the hope that the Americans didn't have any more nuclear weapons?

I don't see your point about concealing the test from the Japanese population. The point of conducting it, from the Americans' point of view, would not be to dishearten the Japanese populace but to convince their leaders that they could not win the war, and that to prolong the war would be to risk having a nuclear bomb dropped on a Japanese city. The whole thing could have been kept completely secret from the Japanese public or not - that's not the point. And as for the Japanese leadership hoping that the Americans didn't have any more of them - that consideration would apply just as much to what really happened, too!

Nuking an uninhabitated island isn't really a feasable option methinks. The USA only had 2 a bombs at that point and spent billions in todays currency developing them.

This doesn't make a lot of sense to me either. The purpose of the bomb was to win the war. If that could be done without killing thousands of people, then so much the better. You seem to be suggesting that dropping a bomb on an uninhabited region, in the hope of winning the war, would be a waste! Besides which, if the bombs were so incredibly expensive and had to be hoarded carefully, it's a bit odd that the Americans dropped them on two Japanese cities in quick succession. As I suggested above, even if a single nuclear strike on a Japanese population centre could be justified, it makes no sense to do it twice before the Japanese government have had a chance to work out what's going on.

If the first bomb didn't bring Japan to the table, then why would bombing a remote area do this for:
1) No one there to report it
2) No buildings to see its effect on
In other words, the Japanese government would have no reason to believe that it was a weapon that did really have any power, and second, due to Japan's population density, did such a place exist.

I think it would be pretty easy to do a test that the Japanese government would have to take seriously. The detonation of a nuclear weapon doesn't just knock down any buildings in the vicinity, you know. It leaves a sodding enormous crater. Not to mention an immense mushroom cloud visible from a vast distance away. The Americans could quite easily have detonated the bomb over an uninhabited island near Japan, then told the Japanese to have a quick look at the place and compare it to how it used to look. I'd say that would be a pretty graphic demonstration of the power of the weapon that wouldn't require annihilating any cities.

But as I said, claiming that the Japanese might not have taken any notice isn't really the point. The point is that there would clearly have been some hope that they would have taken notice of this, and while this was a remotely realistic possibility, this is the course of action that should have been taken. Once that's failed, then is the time to start considering evaporating tens of thousands of people - not before.

Unconfirmed, but I heard a story that even after the A-bombing, the Japanese military tried to sell to their people that they have the bomb too, and have already nuked the continental US in retaliation using a fictitious 6-engined giant long range bomber on a one-way mission....

Note: The Japanese had only medium bombers throughout the war. They were working on a 4-engined long range bomber towards the end but it never flew.

On topic: Hiroshima and Nagasaki were indeed tragedies of the highest magnitude, but who are we to judge one way or another? It was a different time, with different considerations.

Good post Plotinus.

Dann, we have to see a time through the light of the time, indeed. But we have to keep the morale standards, once developed. I mean we can say, slavery in Rome was bad, but we can't condamn them for that, because it was another time. One can argue, ww2 was such a time. And indeed all belligerent nations, the powers at least, made huge attrocities. But shall we say, it was goo so? No, at least there was a standard of warfare not to attack civilians, not to nuke or gas them. That was considered as war crime even in 1907 and before.
So yes, we can judge about them! Otherwise we could not judge the Holocaust, the rape of Nanking, Dresden,...

Adler

I have heard of armchair quarterbacks but this thread makes me want to coin the term "armchair presidents" (term gives 126 google results, oh well). It's easy to critisize actions that happened 60 years in the past from the safety of your house and when you are far removed from the thoughts and the realities of the time.

I have already posted what the difference is between real attrocities such as the rape of Nanking and the dropping of the atomic bombs. Also remember that the stigma against the use of nuclear weapons did not and could not occur until after the bombs were dropped. I still maintain that deaths caused by the Bomb are not any different from deaths from more conventional means.


Somewhat off topic...

Do you think that there would be such controversy over the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki if the cold war had never occured and the world never had to worry about a nuclear hollocaust with nuclear weapons that dwarfed those dropped on Japan in terms of destructfullness?

The difference between 'real atrocities' and te dropping of the of a nuclear weapon in part stems from the fact that the bombs were dropped by the side that ultimately won.

Such a diffentiation is, however, cynic; its ultimately leading to the assumption that atrocities for a good cause are not atrocities. And who is to define the good cause? Ah, I see, the winner!

Besides, even if we define military necessities in a wide manner, as we maybe have to do if we don't want to be 'armchair presidents', dropping a nuke is bound to cause 'unnecessary suffering' and to hitting military and civilian targets 'indiscriminately', as prohibited by the Hague Convention.

I don't see, how one can differentiate too much here. A battle is a battle, murder is murder. Whether it be percieved by a field commander or by an 'armchair president'.

The difference between 'real atrocities' and te dropping of the of a nuclear weapon in part stems from the fact that the bombs were dropped by the side that ultimately won.

Such a diffentiation is, however, cynic; its ultimately leading to the assumption that atrocities for a good cause are not atrocities. And who is to define the good cause? Ah, I see, the winner!

I have learned to despise conclusions based on the fact that everything is based on perception. I had a philosophy class where the statement "the sky is blue" would be shot down because the evidence that the sky is blue comes from human interpretation of light seen through the eyes and not the sky itself. Therefore another person might not see the sky is view and therefore saying the sky isn't blue is not wrong. While this line of argument is valid, it is completely useless for the real world. Using this reasoning no one could be convicted of war crimes or any other crime for that matter.

Besides, even if we define military necessities in a wide manner, as we maybe have to do if we don't want to be 'armchair presidents', dropping a nuke is bound to cause 'unnecessary suffering' and to hitting military and civilian targets 'indiscriminately', as prohibited by the Hague Convention.

And now on to the legal as opposed to moral side of the argument. I admit I am not an expert on international law so if there are any discrepancies in the facts and reasoning that I am presenting please correct me.

According to wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki) the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were deemed illegal in Shimoda et al. v. The State based on "Hague Regulations on Land Warfare of 1907 and the Hague Draft Rules of Air Warfare of 1922–1923." The (Fourth) Geneva Convention came into effect in 1950 so it is irrelevant to this discussion. I quite frankly do not see how Regulations on Land Warfare of 1907 has any relevancy to a bomb dropped from an aeroplane in 1945 (air warfare). Then there is the Hague Draft Rules of Air Warfare of 1922–1923. The problem is, these rules were never ratified by the United States or any of the other combatants Source (http://www.airpower.au.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1984/mar-apr/wyman.html).

Then there is the "unnecessary suffering" argument which seems to be the basis of most war crime arguments. Now the Rape of Nanking caused suffering which brought no benefit to Japan except the fulfillment of the desire to cause suffering. The atomic bombs caused suffering in an attempt to end the war. Also most of the suffering was unexpected. The United States had no knowledge of radiation poisoning. Any course of action by the United States would have caused suffering which could be deemed "unnecessary" sixty years later with the possible exception of the United States completely blockading the Japanese Islands and then indefinitely dropping food supplies and medicines from the air. Of course there would be no need for Japan to surrender and hundreds of thousands of civilians would still die on the Asian mainland but at least the United States wouldn't be charged with war crimes.

Fugitive Sysiphus:
The Hague conventions of 1907 could not include aerial warfare as this means were not known. However there is no difference if you use artillery or planes to destroy a city. That's why it was and is acceptable to see that not only protected by the Hague conventions but also as international unwritten law itself.

Adler

So on that argument Paulus should be charged with warcrimes for Stalingrad, Bittrich for Arnhem, the Zkukov and Koniev for Berlin...

I have learned to despise conclusions based on the fact that everything is based on perception. I had a philosophy class where the statement "the sky is blue" would be shot down because the evidence that the sky is blue comes from human interpretation of light seen through the eyes and not the sky itself. Therefore another person might not see the sky is view and therefore saying the sky isn't blue is not wrong. While this line of argument is valid, it is completely useless for the real world.

It's not valid in the slightest. Someone who can't see the sky is entitled to say that they don't know that it is blue; they are not entitled to say that it isn't blue any more than they are to say that it is.

Personally I think Adlers arguements are out of context and with hindsight. Adler would you be honest enbough if you were an american veteran of Okinawa would you favor the use of the A bomb or an invasion of Japan which was scheduled for november 45 IIRC. I'm not saying the Abomb was a nice thing to do but the lesser of 3 evils (Bomb, invade, blockade).

Zardnaar:
No they aren't. If you think all possibilities the nuking of a city was the ultima ratio. I don't say the invading was better, but the nuking was a crime as other means had to be tried before that.

PH: Arnheim, Berlin and Stalingrad were defended cities and are not compareable to Hiroshima or Dresden.

Adler

Zardnaar:
No they aren't. If you think all possibilities the nuking of a city was the ultima ratio. I don't say the invading was better, but the nuking was a crime as other means had to be tried before that.

PH: Arnheim, Berlin and Stalingrad were defended cities and are not compareable to Hiroshima or Dresden.

Adler

Ah Adler so naive and idealistic. In a perfect world I would agree with you. We don't live in a perfect world though. The slight difference is Hiroshima was to end a war vs an aggressive power. While they are war crimes by a modern definition compare the Allied occupation of Japan/Germany vs their occupation of the USSR/China. The allies weren't white knights in shining armor with the big sword of axis smacketh downeth but their motives IMHO were the difference compared to the Axis powers. It was the Axis conduct in occupied territory which to me justifies the use of any means to win the war. In hindsight it could have been different but we don't know do we? Mercy for the enemy wasn't really a high priority in WW2 on either side. Different time different morals and values.

PH: Arnheim, Berlin and Stalingrad were defended cities and are not compareable to Hiroshima or Dresden

Last I checked the Germans didn't surrender Dresden or declare it an open city, in fact during the American raids the Luftwaffe were dogfighting with the USAAF. Stalingrad was flattened by Richthofen's planes early in the campaign causing a firestorm, is that any more justified simply because there were Red Army troops there, even though the raid blatantly didn't target them?

The Germans and Russians in the examples I cited all used indiscriminate artillery/air bombardments during those battles regardless of whether civilians were there or not. The fact that the city was defended doesn't strike me as the point frankly, the city is still blown to bits and the civilians still caught in the middle of it all.

Whether they are as bad is not the point, if you're going to argue that indiscriminately attacking cities with methods likely (or designed) to kill civilians is a warcrime you need to extend that conclusion to actions beyond merely the atom bomb raids.

Zardnaar, with your argumentation you justify all war crimes by the Allies. And that was and still is a wrong argumentation. Although we don't live in a perfect world, we still do have laws also in the case of war. Inter arma silent leges (Cicero; Under the weapons the laws are silent). This is wrong. You say, the Allies were no White Knights, were we all agree, but you make them to that shiny heroes. That the western Allies were the less evil of all, also clear. But that does not justify anything.

PH, at first we should define a city defended or not. You just again took the example of Dresden. I knew that this topic came again. But here there were indeed soldiers in the town. But that can't be a point as so there were no defenceless cities existing in times of war.
What about FlaK? Yes FlaK are weapons to defend. But attacking intentionally civilians is and was a warcrime. So a defence against this is a kind of repressal, which does not make a city defended in the view of the law. Otherwise it is too easy to circumvent the laws.
In the end the intentional attacks on civilians on both sides were war crimes. The city bombings, if intended to attack the civil population and not a factory, were war crimes. City bombings of defended and resisting cities were not.

Adler

PH, at first we should define a city defended or not.

You might like to, I don't think its especially necessary. If the government to whom the city belongs is not immediately about to surrender its legitimate to attack the city in my opinion. Assuming that is that you at least attempt to hit industrial, military and government targets in order to speed that surrender. Do you really think the mother of a child killed by bombing raids is going to feel any better because the enemy didn't mean for it to happen?

You just again took the example of Dresden

No you brought Dresden up, I brought up Stalingrad, Berlin and Arnhem. I merely remarked that whether you consider a city defended depends on which side you are/were on. To the Allies Dresden was a defended city, to the Germans Stalingrad sure as hell was. To either side they were legitimate targets and as far as each was concerned the fate of the civilians were an afterthought.

But attacking intentionally civilians is and was a warcrime

So its fine and dandy to bomb a city knowing you'll kill civilians just so long as you claim not to be going after them?

By Adlers logic virtually every General Allied and Axis who ordered an assault on a city is a war criminal. Not very many cities were decleared open cities. Nuking a city killed less people than conventional bombing and if you really want to wreck the city how about a land assault- Warsaw, Berlin, Stalingrad, Manilla, etc.

By Adlers logic virtually every General Allied and Axis who ordered an assault on a city is a war criminal. Not very many cities were decleared open cities. Nuking a city killed less people than conventional bombing and if you really want to wreck the city how about a land assault- Warsaw, Berlin, Stalingrad, Manilla, etc.

Do tell. Manila suffered less during the Japanese offensive because the Americans declared it an open city and withdrew to Bataan. In contrast the American counterattack a couple years later levelled the city because 1) the US Army threw everything at it: offshore bombardment, planes, artillery, tanks... 2) the Japanese put up a stubborn defense, killing civilians and burning homes as they withdrew inch by inch. My own grandparents' business and home were among those torched. A machinegun was even set up front to mow down fleeing people. My grandparents escaped with their lives only because they fled from the back.

Can you blame them for cheering when they heard of the nuking of Hiroshima nad Nagasaki?

So its fine and dandy to bomb a city knowing you'll kill civilians just so long as you claim not to be going after them?

You know perfectly well that's not what Adler said - he said it's wrong to attack civilians intentionally. People disagree over what it means to do something "intentionally", but I've never heard anyone defend the idea that it means doing something that you claim you're doing, and that if you do something without claiming that it's what you want to do, it doesn't count as intentional. That's behaviourism taken to even greater extremes than usual.

I know what he said thank you, my point was that both sides bombed/shelled cities without much care for civilians. The notion Adler seems to be putting forward was that this is acceptable purely if the prime target was not civilian but I don't think its that simple frankly.

Stalingrad saw a number of examples of where the German army (and to a degree the Red Army) and Luftwaffe either deliberately targetted civilians or didn't go out of their way to attack indstrial/military targets and just flattened everywhere. Is that any more acceptable because the city was occupied by a resisting army? Because Adler seems to be saying so, after all he showed a marked reluctance to criticise the Germans for their actions at Stalingrad or Arnhem and yet no reluctance at all over Dresden.

So what matters to if it was right or wrong? Merely whether the city was occupied by soldiers or if you set out to kill civilians or perhaps both? Ricthofen and his supporters would probably argue that his intent was to destroy the Red Army's ability to defend Stalingrad, so does that excuse the firestorms he started and the immense civilian casualties he caused? Does the damage to the factories excuse it? Excusing raids that caused heavy civilian losses because the enemy garrisoned the area or because some factories were there is a slippery slope. How many civilian losses can be justified to hit a factory or is it simply that any raid is acceptable if you target industrial/military targets, regardless of the civilian cost?

Perhaps claimed was the wrong word but my point is that it is rare to find an air force or army deliberately stating that their aim was to kill civilians (when it is the intent they usually disguise it through wording such as undermining the civilian morale), so people must draw their own conclusions as to the intent. These conclusions often depend on matters other than merely studying the facts. Some Americans will argue that Hiroshima/Nagasaki were targetted for the military aim of ending the war and for their military importance no matter the fact that it was dropped to cause great loss of life. Some Germans will argue that Stalingrad was targetted for its resistance and factories, no matter how indiscriminate it was. Some British people argue Dresden was an acceptable target because it contained industrial complexes.

Ultimately I don't think it matters to those killed whether they died in a raid intentionally targetting them or they died because they lived near to a factory, they're still dead. It matters to people eager to analyse the period but if we're ever going to do that we should at least show some consistency and be critical of all such occurences rather than picking the most prominent.

No, PH, you do misinterprete me. I only said the intentional killing of civilians was and is forbidden as well as the attacks of defended cities.
In ww2 air strikes were not very accurate. That has to be accepted. So only 5 % of all bombs hit their target. That there happened collateral damages on both sides was clear. But when it was not a war crime to bomb cities? Before we discuss the examples here you gave, we should answer this question:
1. If the city is defended. Then also heavy attacks can be conducted to destroy fortifications. But the defences must be more than FlaK and some troops in. The city must be prepared for battle or is preparing to do so.
2. If civilians are the main target.

So we can now discuss the bombings:
1. Stalingrad: The city was preparing for defence and so a legitimate target. If the bombing run was too heavy, nonetheless, as there other ways to destroy the fortifications and not hitting the population so much, might be. However I am no expert in this bombing. If no, the attack was against a defended city and legitime.
2. Dresden: Dresden was attacked at the civilian quaters. Factories were not much hit. As well the firestorm was intended to hit the civilians and not the factories. Also the Germans had no air defence there as Dresden was world known as Florence of the North. So this attack was a war crime.
3. Hiroshima and Nagasaki: A nuke is there to kill. The destruction is one thing but the radiation is another one. Even if the last one was not so known, where I have doubts, but granted this, a civilian target was attacked, as it was clear, the civilian quaters were suffering again most. Also other means had to be taken before nuking. So yes, it was a warcrime.

I took these examples as among them we can discuss at best the whole bombing war. If you want I could add Warsaw 1939, Rotterdam 1940, Operation Ghomorrah and Schweinfurt 1943 as well.

Adler

No, PH, you do misinterprete me. I only said the intentional killing of civilians was and is forbidden as well as the attacks of defended cities.

Under that kind of theory just about any bombing raid was and is forbidden. Perhaps you meant undefended?

If the city is defended. Then also heavy attacks can be conducted to destroy fortifications. But the defences must be more than FlaK and some troops in. The city must be prepared for battle or is preparing to do so.

Let me see if I have this right before commenting, it is ok to randomly flatten a city if its in the front lines and resisting, regardless of how many civilians you know will die? So bombing a city randomly is wrong if its not about to be attacked?

If civilians are the main target.

In answer to my question then does it matter if thousands die if you try to target the industry of a city? Do they fall under the "sh*t happens" category?

The city was preparing for defence and so a legitimate target. If the bombing run was too heavy, nonetheless, as there other ways to destroy the fortifications and not hitting the population so much, might be. However I am no expert in this bombing. If no, the attack was against a defended city and legitime.

Being loosely familiar with the raids it seemed to me that the Luftwaffe used Industrial complexes as mere bombing points to roughly aim for as opposed to specific targets. Richthofen wasn't exactly aiming to kill civilians but surely the absence of any intent to avoid such loss of life is little better. Is the conclusion to draw from this is that Richthofen was in the right because the Red Army were somewhere down there?

On top of this 6th army artillery regularly shelled/bombed/strafed and machine gunned Volga shipping on both the east-west crossing (bringing supplies and men, fair enough game) and west/east crossings (mostly taking wounded back). Was the latter right too, or does Paulus and his men escape blame because the city was resisting at the time? I'm intruiged as to what level of random slaughter you consider acceptable if a city won't give in.

Dresden: Dresden was attacked at the civilian quaters. Factories were not much hit. As well the firestorm was intended to hit the civilians and not the factories. Also the Germans had no air defence there as Dresden was world known as Florence of the North. So this attack was a war crime.

Funny, I could have sworn I mentioned dogfighting over the city, that implies fighter defence to me. Now I see though that the British should not only have targetted industrial sites (fair nuff comment) but also waited until an allied army was camped out near the city first. How close must they be out of interest? I seem to remember vaguely some sort of figure that Geneva or similar decided on.

1. I mistyped and meant undefended :p

2. Again you try to misinterprete me! I only said that attack on defended cities are allowed. If the humanitary situation is too catastrophic it is of course forbidden to attack, even if it is a legitime target.

3. If you attack an industrial target and you hit civilians, until to a certain degree, and you could not avoid that, yes, then sh*t happens. I also said that these kinds of collateral damages are not forbidden. Tragic, but, well, c'est la vie!

4. Oh yes, the three German fighters defending Dresden! And that's why the city is defended. Come on! You can't believe that this is meant with defence! So going that way you will ever find someone in such a great city shooting on the enemy. So according to your definition a city is defended if there is a single man with an old musket firing on a plane! So you can easyily circumvent the whole Art. 25! But that's wrong. A defence can only mean a city preparing to defend an enemy assault. Not more or less. Otherwise the circumvention of Art. 25 is way too easy.

Adler

Again you try to misinterprete me! I only said that attack on defended cities are allowed. If the humanitary situation is too catastrophic it is of course forbidden to attack, even if it is a legitime target.

Its called attempting to gain clarification, if I was interpreting you they wouldn't have been questions, just as you attempted to do in point 4. Now that I have the answers I have another question, how is Stalingrad or Coventry justified? In neither case was the enemy's will or ability to resist lowered and the random bombing's main achievement was mayhem and slaughter of civilians. You seem to think Stalingrad was a legitimate target, so how is this acceptable to you, were the humanitarian losses not enough?

And can you please respond to my points on Paulus and Ricthofen next time.

If you attack an industrial target and you hit civilians, until to a certain degree, and you could not avoid that, yes, then sh*t happens. I also said that these kinds of collateral damages are not forbidden. Tragic, but, well, c'est la vie!

Is this degree is to be determined by comparing expected results to expected losses or "after the fact" actual results to actual losses?

Oh yes, the three German fighters defending Dresden! And that's why the city is defended. ome on! You can't believe that this is meant with defence! So going that way you will ever find someone in such a great city shooting on the enemy. So according to your definition a city is defended if there is a single man with an old musket firing on a plane! So you can easyily circumvent the whole Art. 25! But that's wrong. A defence can only mean a city preparing to defend an enemy assault. Not more or less. Otherwise the circumvention of Art. 25 is way too easy.

If you've been paying attention so far you'd note that I have no interest in the debate on whether a city is defended, that was something you wanted to determine. Now that you have defined it I presume that raids such as Coventry or the Blitz would be a warcrime to you. Presumably the use of V1 and V2 rockets were also a warcrime when used on England. None were anywhere near a front line and in neither case was any more than a vague attempt made to target the enemy's industry. This defenition you have made includes most of the RAFs actions but also a great deal of the Luftwaffe's during the Battle of Britain and in other isolated incidents.

Somehow though we only usually see threads on Dresden and Hiroshima...

PH according to the humanitarian situation in Stalingrad the attack on it was not justified. I only kept Stalingrad as an example of a defended city. I never said, it was justified to attack but a legitime target.
The attack on barges and other ships on the Volga is a bit more problematic. Incoming ships were indeed a fair target. Outcoming ships full of wounded were not in the case of flying a red cross. That's clear as well as the case of river warships. The other cases are not so clear. But if we assume to take the sea warfare in analogue manner, an attack on out coming ships is forbidden if it is known they are only (or at least mostly) transport civilians or wounded. However in the latter case wounded are only specially protected by the Red Cross. Although if it is known that these ships were having only wounded an attack is not justified. So in the end, yes, the attacks on ships outcoming were a war crime by the officers ordering to do so.
The ex ante position has to be taken by the question of the civilian losses in contrast to the military value. And even if this value is very high, a civil presence can lead to an unjustified attack
The Battle of Britain is a good point by you. You expect that I say, yes, it was and so your attacks are justified. Again, we should have a closer look on that.
Germany was attacking at first only RADAR stations and airfields. Then three German bombers lost their course and accidentally bombed London. That was an accident, and IIRC Göring himseld excused for that. The very next night British bomber attacked Berlin. Although three bomber accidentally dropping some bombs can hardly be counted as a serious warcrime, the British started to bomb intentionally German living areas. In the next time German and British started a row of repressalies. OTOH many German bombing, including Coventry, were still having industrial targets, while the British attacked civilian targets. So excluding some repressals, the British civilian losses in the BoB were mostly collateral damages, the British, as they made it intentionally, warcrimes. The US bombing runs, until the very last ones, were also having mostly collateral damages.
In that contrast the firing of V 1 and V 2 missiles was a repressal against Britain for their bombings.

I am interested how you will now misinterprete me.

Adler

Adler one thing you have just mentioned is how things can escalate. Also that bombing raid in 1940 was by Blenheims and I'm not sure if they even killed anyone. The British bombed Germany in retaliation to the Germans bombiung them, Hitler got enraged and ordered English cities to be bombed. Tit for Tat another words.

I don't really get upset about Axis bombing of civilian targetds or about Japanese warcrimes because IMHO the bombing raids of Germany and Japan (and other warcrimes) wiped the slate clean as far as I'm concerned. I also have had Japaneses and German friends who I'm not going to hold responsable for the actions of their grandfathers. One of their grand dads was conscripted into the Wehrmacht and his war was knocking out a T-34 with a panzerfaust.

Violence escalates. If you punch me in the face and don't knock me down I will hit you back and I'm not going to worry to much about the right or wrong of it. You hurt me I hurt you. The nation state is just an extension of mans collective stupidity on a massive scale. In 1939-1942 the Germans swung 1st and they swung hard but didn't deliver the knockout blow. The Allies hit back harder and had the industry to do so.

Its easy to pass judgement 60+ years on in nice warm rooms with moral theory but at the time it seems to be an accepted part of warfare. The rules got thrown out the window very early on in Poland 39. If the Allied bombing of Germany was a warcrime why did the contempory Nazi government give the bomber pilots POW status instead of shooting them once they crashed. Why did the Allies accept German POW's in the blitz of 1940 even though the bomber pilots were "war criminals". Attacking enemy civilians who got in the way seems to be an accepted part of 1940's morality. Most of the Nazi war criminals executed after the war were involved in crimes vs the civilian population in occupied territory. The Allies didn't realy bother with the Luftwaffe bomber pilots or Wehrmacht Generals who ordered assaults on cities. If they wanted to be harsh most of the surviving German high command could have been tried as war criminals instead of just the few of the worst offenders.

Indeed it was an escalation in 1940. So this I really do not see as real war crimes. However starting with Bomber Harris in command this escalted dramatically. From that point German civilian centers were bombed intentionally in large scale. From that on British, and later US, bombers conducted large scale war crimes. So we are on the other level: Who is responsible for that? The small pilots and gunners, or the officers doing so? The pilots were only following their orders. And they had also little possibilities not doing so. Also remember propaganda. So all in all the pilots were and are innocent, unless they did it intentional. I mean, a fighter pilot machinegunning a school, for example.
Also if the Allies also would have tried to punish the bombing runs they soon were in the same situation. The Tu quoque (you too) principle would have severly damaged the trial.
At last I can only repeat what I said: Although the morale levels of a time has to be recognized, we have to recognize also a higher morale level before. So that the whole war was lead uncivilized, does not justify the crimes, as they were recognized as crimes before.

Adler

PH according to the humanitarian situation in Stalingrad the attack on it was not justified. I only kept Stalingrad as an example of a defended city. I never said, it was justified to attack but a legitime target.

You earlier said Paulus should not be tried for warcrimes, Richthofen may have executed the raids but Paulus was in charge on the ground and therefore more aware of the humanitarian and military situation. He was also in charge of the troops responsible for shelling river traffic (which I'll get to in a moment). I presume this means you have ammended your conclusion about him?

The attack on barges and other ships on the Volga is a bit more problematic. Incoming ships were indeed a fair target.

Agreed 100%

Outcoming ships full of wounded were not in the case of flying a red cross. That's clear as well as the case of river warships. The other cases are not so clear. But if we assume to take the sea warfare in analogue manner, an attack on out coming ships is forbidden if it is known they are only (or at least mostly) transport civilians or wounded. However in the latter case wounded are only specially protected by the Red Cross. Although if it is known that these ships were having only wounded an attack is not justified. So in the end, yes, the attacks on ships outcoming were a war crime by the officers ordering to do so.

Only a single comment here. The Red Cross symbol was almost universally ignored on the Eastern front. The Russians generally paid it no heed nor made use of it, and the Germans responded in kind. Whether the ships displayed Red Crosses on the return journey wouldn't have been much use, they'd have been attacked anyway. Regardless of this it would have been relatively obvious that with rare exceptions (fleeing generals with comandeered vehicles etc) that the transports heading east were almost exclusively for wounded personnel.

In other words in principle the red cross sign was needed and should have been heeded, in practice it was flat out ignored or misused.

The ex ante position has to be taken by the question of the civilian losses in contrast to the military value. And even if this value is very high, a civil presence can lead to an unjustified attack

How high is very high?

Germany was attacking at first only RADAR stations and airfields. Then three German bombers lost their course and accidentally bombed London. That was an accident, and IIRC Göring himseld excused for that. The very next night British bomber attacked Berlin. Although three bomber accidentally dropping some bombs can hardly be counted as a serious warcrime, the British started to bomb intentionally German living areas

Well with respect I don't think the Cabinet based (or should have based) their decisions on the appologies of Nazi officials. Does it really matter however how the Germans came to be launching the raids? Its not like they hadn't randomly bombed cities before this event was it? In addition to this your remark about the initial Luftwaffe targets also works both ways. The RAF began the war with a laughably niave concept of aerial warfare and did conduct industrial/military raids throughout the war.

In the next time German and British started a row of repressalies. OTOH many German bombing, including Coventry, were still having industrial targets, while the British attacked civilian targets.

Coventry may have had industrial targets but I find it hard to believe that the Germans were actually making much more than a vague attempt to hit them. Dresden had industrial targets, so did most of the cities of the Reich. If we should criticise the RAF for Dresden (or say Hamburg) the Luftwaffe shouldn't escape blame for Coventry or Liverpool, and especially not the V raids which barely targetted anything.

When you see the widespread damage caused by the night raids on a city you really appreciate that the concept that the Luftwaffe or RAF were trying to damage the industry of the city is almost funny. Randomly bombing cities on the assumption that some bombs might hit a factory or shipyard (whilst knowing that the majority will hit houses, churches etc) is not that much better than deliberately targetting homes. The effect largely remains the same at the end of the day. The luftwaffe must have known that night raids on cities were going to kill more civilians than factories or docks damaged (In Liverpool for example only one dock was ever put out of action for any legnth of time but something like 5000 people died in the Merseyside area during the war, 1,700 in one night) so surely this would count as an unacceptable amount of losses? In fact it almost falls into the argument about claiming one thing whilst doing another. The Luftwaffe over Coventry may have claimed to be attacking industrial targets but surely the lack of interest in precise raids shows their intention to be something else entirely?

And as I have always mentioned the RAF did more than mere terror raids, so let us not generalise with statements such as "while the British attacked civilian targets".

In that contrast the firing of V 1 and V 2 missiles was a repressal against Britain for their bombings.


I do hope that you are not trying to justify their use in that way?

I am interested how you will now misinterprete me.


As I said, I'm attempting to clarify your position, if I'm not understanding it perhaps you should try expressing it clearer.

Indeed it was an escalation in 1940. So this I really do not see as real war crimes. However starting with Bomber Harris in command this escalted dramatically. From that point German civilian centers were bombed intentionally in large scale. From that on British, and later US, bombers conducted large scale war crimes. So we are on the other level:

In all honesty probably the only thing that stopped the Germans from doing the same to the allies was a lack of planes to devote to it. The intention to randomly or deliberately attack civilians both clearly existed in the Nazi regime. The RAF raids escalated the scale but not the intention of either side to lash out at the enemy's cities and population areas. We should not let the Luftwaffe escape criticism simply because they lacked the resources to pull off a really heavy attack.

PH, the Red Cross was widely ignored also by the Western Allies. I have a good source about that and will perhaps make an article about that.
Although I also don't give much about the word of such a Nazi, an incident with only three bombers must have seen as accident. Also the RAF did not attack, except Essen, later to destroy any industrial targets, but civilian targets, as Harris later gladly admitted.
Coventry was attacked to destroy the Rolls Royce Factory there. Dresden was attacked to kill the civilians. There is a massive difference. Also keep in mind that British factories were mostly laying in civilian areas as the houses of the workers should be very near. Also, as you said, it were night raids in both cases. But here again we do have differences: The Germans had an industrial target, the British civilian (to make it clear: after Harris taking command). Also the British later were much more accurate than the Germans before.
So you also ask, how many civilians as casuality are needed to stop an attack. The less important a target is the less civilians are needed. I mean, is there a tank on a market place and a few boys playing football next to it, an attack might perhaps be unjustified. This depends all on the exact case. Is the Austrian in the tank, the attack is justified.
Concerning the V 1 and V 2 attacks, from an international law point of view: Yes, the attacks were justified! So you will say why, and why can the Germans do that while i just attack the Brits to do the verysame. But that's exactly the point: If one party of a war is not keeping the international laws, the other party is allowed to do the very same until the first party is again recognizing the international laws. This is called repressal. As I already pointed out, the British attacks were warcrimes and so against the international laws as it was forbidden to target civilians. So the German attacks with V1 and V2 missiles were a repressal and because of the British attacks justified.
At last a word on the Luftwaffe and their "intentions": Does it justify to say the Germans would have done either, if they could, the same attacks on civilians by the British and later, in 1945, the US? If you have a quarrel with your neighbour and he hates you and your whole family very much, so much, he wants to kill them all, are you allowed to kill his family, if, let's say, he is in prison?

Adler

PH, the Red Cross was widely ignored also by the Western Allies. I have a good source about that and will perhaps make an article about that.

Don't need it thanks, know that already

Although I also don't give much about the word of such a Nazi, an incident with only three bombers must have seen as accident. Also the RAF did not attack, except Essen, later to destroy any industrial targets, but civilian targets, as Harris later gladly admitted.

So you're telling me that the entire RAF only ever attacked civilian targets?

Coventry was attacked to destroy the Rolls Royce Factory there. Dresden was attacked to kill the civilians. There is a massive difference. Also keep in mind that British factories were mostly laying in civilian areas as the houses of the workers should be very near. Also, as you said, it were night raids in both cases. But here again we do have differences: The Germans had an industrial target, the British civilian (to make it clear: after Harris taking command). Also the British later were much more accurate than the Germans before.

Oh come on, the methods the Germans used were hardly going out of their way to avoid civilian losses. In the two major raids over 1200 people died and the factories, although hit were hardly damaged enough to slow production. Not caring about civilian losses and randomly bombing an area is not far removed from deliberately targetting them, especially if you use incendries.

Concerning the V 1 and V 2 attacks, from an international law point of view: Yes, the attacks were justified! So you will say why, and why can the Germans do that while i just attack the Brits to do the verysame. But that's exactly the point: If one party of a war is not keeping the international laws, the other party is allowed to do the very same until the first party is again recognizing the international laws. This is called repressal. As I already pointed out, the British attacks were warcrimes and so against the international laws as it was forbidden to target civilians. So the German attacks with V1 and V2 missiles were a repressal and because of the British attacks justified.

Ok lets get this straight

Allies don't keep international laws (terror bombing), Germans are allowed to ignore them too (V1 weapons) and this is justified.

Japanese don't keep international laws (POWs), Allies are not only expected to stick to them but are roundly criticised for breaking them (Fire Raids, Hiroshima). Germans don't keep international laws either but we're not justified in breaking them apparently.

You can't have it both ways I'm afraid, either the "They are doing it too/they did it first" is justification for both sides or it is not. According to the above logic the British raids were justified because to them the raids on Coventry were warcrimess (and if we're using the "they did it first" I'm sure we can find earlier examples). I think the allies should (and did mostly) keep a better morality during the war but this argument is out of sync with the usual arguments used to oppose atomic bombings.

At last a word on the Luftwaffe and their "intentions": Does it justify to say the Germans would have done either, if they could, the same attacks on civilians by the British and later, in 1945, the US?

According to the logic you've just argued yes! :crazyeye:

On a related topic what German city was going to get nuked or weren't they that far ahead. 2 abombs 1 for Japan, 1 for Germany. Germany surrendered and Japan copped em both. Can't wait until August the 6th.

PH:
I spoke about the campaign Harris launched! It is clear that not all British attacks were warcrimes.
Okay, who started massively to attack civilians as main target? I don't mean some small examples before but as ENTIRE campaign? Harris did. Before, exceptions excluded, mainly industrial and military targets were attacked. Also a last word on Coventry: The US also bombed German cities. They also hit civil areas there and they also used fire bombs. However as they had industrial targets as objective, that civil losses were collateral damages. Sh*t happens. The same is to say for (mostly) the aerial warfare until about Harris got the command. He himself ordered to attack civilians and, with the exception of Essen, all British attacks were targetting civilians. The industrial targets were now only like "sweets" for the British as Harris said himself.
So we do have a whole campaign which is breaking international and human laws by far and in an extent, widely above everything which existed before in aerial warfare. So the Germans were allowed to retaliate with reprisals. The German missile attacks were justified because of the British bombing campaign. But that does not justify that campaign.

Zardnaar:
It was Friedrichshafen, AFAIK.

Adler

Zardnaar:
It was Friedrichshafen, AFAIK.

Adler

Where in the 9 hells of Baator is that?

I spoke about the campaign Harris launched! It is clear that not all British attacks were warcrimes

Thank you, some clarity at last. Phrases like "Also the RAF did not attack, except Essen, later to destroy any industrial targets, but civilian targets, as Harris later gladly admitted." tend to cause confusion.

Okay, who started massively to attack civilians as main target? I don't mean some small examples before but as ENTIRE campaign? Harris did.

According to the logic outlined by yourself this could be justified as an escalated response to German raids. If the Germans can absolve themselves of blame for the V weapons on the basis of reprisal then I'm intruiged as to why you think the British can't do the same. Perhaps size and frequency of raids is the important point but surely that is simply numbers that shouldn't influence whether an action is justified or not.

Before, exceptions excluded, mainly industrial and military targets were attacked. Also a last word on Coventry: The US also bombed German cities. They also hit civil areas there and they also used fire bombs. However as they had industrial targets as objective, that civil losses were collateral damages. Sh*t happens. The same is to say for (mostly) the aerial warfare until about Harris got the command. He himself ordered to attack civilians and, with the exception of Essen, all British attacks were targetting civilians. The industrial targets were now only like "sweets" for the British as Harris said himself.

See here we go again, I'm really not impressed by the way that you keep summing up the entire RAF effort after Harris took control as attacking civilians. Can you at least use a phrase such as bomber command to save confusion for people reading this thread? The RAF's role included more than massive bomber raids after all, so by saying "British" all the time you're certainly not helping avoid confusion. I think I know what you mean but without any clarification this vague wording would confuse any newer members.

The German missile attacks were justified because of the British bombing campaign. But that does not justify that campaign.

As I said, the British no doubt felt that the German raids on the UK prior to the V weapons were enough justification.

Leaving this aside for a moment I'd like to remind you that one argument used to support the Atom Bomb raids is "Well Japan committed warcrimes too". This is remarkably similar to your argument I have just quoted - that one crime can justify another through the theory of retaliation. However some time ago I remember you taking a different stance entirely:

First of all I never excused here a crime the Nazis did! This argument coming is in no way a valid one. A crime is never excused by another. And killing civilians intentionally is a crime even in times of war. Arguing they deserved it because having such a government is arguing the way the Nazis did. So yes the later attacks on British living centers were a warcrime as well as the British and late US attacks on German civilians. There is no excusion

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=117188&page=9&highlight=hiroshima

(page 9, 4th reply by yourself)

Surely an action cannot be both justified and a warcrime, so which is it?

That reminds me btw, you never answered my question on if you'd changed your opinion of Paulus.

At first the British bombing campaign against Germany, I mean here the night attacks, got a new quality. While until February 14th 1942 the British also attacked mostly only industrial targets, that was given up by Harris new carpet bombing strategy. He wanted to hit the civil population to break the German morale. With that a new level was reached, never reached before. With the attacks on civilians as MAIN target of the whole campaign against the Reich, what he did earlier in the Iraq and it was also finally his idea to be accepted in the RAF, he broke international, human and criminal laws. If the enemy is breaking laws you are allowed to do the same! Such a reprisal is only justified as long as the enemy is still hurting the laws. It also does not justify the enemy actions first.
This lead us the next point. I wonder why you don't got it earlier, however indeed both is correct. In the old thread we were debating about the Holocaust and the bombing of German civilians. As in the Holocaust (nearly) no British subjects were killed (and the British command did not care about it), it was no crime against Britain. Thus the terror bombings can't be justified with that. That's why it can't be seen as reprisal either, as a reprisal is only allowed as answer of the very same breaking of law of the other party.
So in the end the Holocaust was a crime, the terror bombings, the Japanese warcrimes and the nuking were all warcrimes. None of it is justified, not as reprisal or anything else.
A last word on Paulus. I did never say he was no war criminal. I only said, Stalingrad was a defended city. As such it was a legitime target. However if the bombing costed too many civilian lifes, and Paulus knew about that (what should be easy to prove), he was a warcriminal. But there is no turning of my opinion.

Adler

Basically Adler you're arguing that the Germans were allowed to break international law (i.e. the random bombing of British cities in an attempt to undermine British morale) because the British did so first and continued to do so. You defend what you admit were warcrimes by the Germans (unless you've changed your mind since) with the excuse that they were only responding to what the enemy did onto them. However when the argument is used to defend the RAF's actions you abandon this reprisal theory and attack the British for responding to what the Germans had done to them.

This weak theory that somehow the RAFs actions were not reprisals because the Germans supposedly attacked industrial targets is just ridiculous. The use of night bombing raids implies that the Germans were out as much to kill civilians and undermine Morale as hit industries. If they were deliberately trying to target British industry they would not have been sending hundreds of planes over on misssions were accuracy was nigh impossible.

On a number of occasions similar to the one I quoted I've seen you repeatedly argue that the Germans or Japanese comitting warcrimes is not a justification for the Allies to do so as well. So how on earth can British crimes allow German ones? In light of this I can only see your failure to treat the German actions with the same contempt as the British as little more than national bias frankly. I'd like to give the benefit of the doubt but you repeatedly find excuses for the Luftwaffe but accept none for the Allied air forces.

A last word on Paulus. I did never say he was no war criminal.I only said, Stalingrad was a defended city. As such it was a legitime target. However if the bombing costed too many civilian lifes, and Paulus knew about that (what should be easy to prove), he was a warcriminal. But there is no turning of my opinion.

Your opinion is hard to determine, when you seek to defend the attacks you appear to defend the man, unless you state otherwise. It was a direct question about Paulus after all which you didn't answer either way.

So for clarity I do not seek to defend Harris.

PH, you have to understand the reprisal: It is a means to force the enemy to stop their actions by retaliating with the same means. That does not justify the first! So yes, the missile attack of 1944/ 45 were no warcrimes as they were reprisals.
The attacks earlier in the war, until 1942, were targetting (mostly) industrial and/ or military targets. As only 5% (at best) of the bombs hit their targets and due to enemy air superiority most attacks occured at night, many more planes had to be used. That character was changed dramatically with Harris becoming commander in 1942. Then the civilian population was the MAIN target. That quality did not exist before. Sure, there were some occasions on which the civil population was attacked, starting with an attack on Mönchengladbach in May 1940, but these were single cases. Now a whole and huge campaign was started to attack civilians. Such an escalation was in no way justified.
Again, as reprisal, eye for eye, such a strategy allowed the Germans to do the same, until the campaign was ceased. Also keep in mind that reprisals are only allowed in such a way to counter the breakings of international law by the other side. So if one side is attacking hospital ships intentionally you are allowed to do the same. But this does not allow you to kill POW or attack civilian targets. So the Holocaust can't justify the terror bombings as well or the other way around.
A last word on Paulus: I already said, the attack on Stalingrad was a warcrime as too many civilians were in danger and indeed hit. Paulus knew about that and is so a warcriminal. However only because of that. As Stalingrad was a defended city it was a legitime target nonetheless.

Adler

The attacks earlier in the war, until 1942, were targetting (mostly) industrial and/ or military targets. As only 5% (at best) of the bombs hit their targets and due to enemy air superiority most attacks occured at night, many more planes had to be used. That character was changed dramatically with Harris becoming commander in 1942. Then the civilian population was the MAIN target. That quality did not exist before. Sure, there were some occasions on which the civil population was attacked, starting with an attack on Mönchengladbach in May 1940, but these were single cases.

You seem to be contradicting yourself - as only 5% of Bomber Command's bombs hit their targets, a massive 95% of the total tonnage dropped by RAF Bomber Command during this period hit non-military targets. As the RAF had a reasonably professional bomb damage assessment outfit they knew that they were hitting civilians. Hence, it seems rather hard for you to claim that Harris's appointment changed the essential nature of the British aerial campaign.

Such an escalation was in no way justified.

Tell that to the citizens of Warsaw, Rotterdam, London and Belgrade (to name just four of the cities in which the German air force deliberetly targeted civilians prior to this date). Like it or not, the German air force started the horrible practice of deliberetly targeting civilians in WW2.

Also keep in mind that reprisals are only allowed in such a way to counter the breakings of international law by the other side. So if one side is attacking hospital ships intentionally you are allowed to do the same.

Actually, that isn't the case. If the other side is behaving badly you don't get a free pass - the laws of armed warfare apply to all signatories in all circumstances. As bringing court cases against the other side during wartime is impractical (to say the least!) reprisals are an informal measure of enforcing detterance, and even then they're almost never authorised as such authorisations are war crimes in and of themself (for instance, the Allied leadership encouraged troops in the Pacifc Theatre to take Japanese prisoners and ensured that these prisoners were treated very well, despite knowing that the Japanese were treating Allied POWs barbarously). Sinking hospital ships is never OK.

So the Holocaust can't justify the terror bombings as well or the other way around.

That's a statement of opinion. Anyway, the Allied leadership didn't use the Holocaust to justify their bombing campaign. They argued that the campaign was necessary as it formed a means of reducing Germany's will and ability to continue the war and would bring home the cost of war to the German population. Hence, they justified their campaign on the grounds that it would speed victory and ensure that Germany didn't start a third world war.

It seems rather strange to be discussing the terror bombing campaigns of WW2 in terms of legal niceties. The war wasn't fought in a courtroom and the strategies used need to be assessed in terms of their morality and effectiveness in bringing the war to a rapid and successful conclusion. Seeing as Hitler's ultimate war aim was to conquer all of Europe and enslave and deliberetly murder the captive population, it's pretty pointless to insist that the Allies shouldn't have ever taken their gloves off in an attempt to bring the war to a speedy end.

PH, you have to understand the reprisal: It is a means to force the enemy to stop their actions by retaliating with the same means. That does not justify the first! So yes, the missile attack of 1944/ 45 were no warcrimes as they were reprisals.

Interesting to see such a change in attitude since the thread I mentioned. Then no warcime could be justified by the actions of the enemy, now they apparently can, but only if the Germans are the ones under the microscope. Thank you for this clarification.

And a reprisal attack is not always launched to deter the enemy from their actions. I seriously doubt anyone in the Nazi heirarchy (except possibly Hitler but he'd believe anything) believed for a moment that launching rockets at England would stop the RAF raids. The motive seems to have been more to undermine morale with random slaughter and chaos, not disimilar to the RAF motives. Since it was known that the British raids weren't casuing a catastrophic collapse of German morale it should have been relatively obvious that the V-Weapons wouldn't either. Quite often reprisals are nothing more than a desire for vengence, so how they count as justification for warcrimes is beyond me.

Now a whole and huge campaign was started to attack civilians. Such an escalation was in no way justified.

Well its no more justified under this logic than the escalation from airfields/radar stations to random night bombing of cities.

Again, as reprisal, eye for eye, such a strategy allowed the Germans to do the same, until the campaign was ceased. Also keep in mind that reprisals are only allowed in such a way to counter the breakings of international law by the other side. So if one side is attacking hospital ships intentionally you are allowed to do the same. But this does not allow you to kill POW or attack civilian targets.

So the reprisal theory only works for select types of crime that you choose then.

So the Holocaust can't justify the terror bombings as well or the other way around.

Haven't seen anyone in this thread arguing that it can frankly, don't see the need to bring it up.

I already said, the attack on Stalingrad was a warcrime as too many civilians were in danger and indeed hit.

Only after I pressed you for an answer on the point, you demurred when I first brought it up. I'm still waiting for a reply as to how close a city needs to be to the front to be a legitimate target since "A defence can only mean a city preparing to defend an enemy assault. Not more or less." is a little to vague.

Long before the British bombed any German cities, about 1150 bombing sorties by German aircraft were flown against Warsaw on 25 September 1939. This was an effort to terrorize the defenders into surrendering. 500 tons of high explosive bombs and 72 tons of incendiary bombs were dropped on the city.

@ YNCS:
The attack on Warsaw was a warcrime. I would have said this until a few months ago, too. But indeed it is wrong. Warsaw was defended and so a legitime target. Also the Germans sent a massage to surrender the city or a bombing will follow. The Poles answered, an ambassador would be on the way. So the attack was at first cancelled. But the ambassador did not arrive. Also he was not stopped at the front. Then, after that was clear, the ambassador would not come to negotiate, the attack was done.
Here it was a defended city and an ultimatum was set, which was also accepted. So the attack on Warsaw was no warcrime. I could give you some sources, but the few I have are all published in German.

@ Case:
No I don't contradict myself. I already said that Harris let not attack factories and hit civilians "coincidentally", but it was the other way, he wanted to hit civilians and hit factories coincidentally. Also carpet bombing is only useful to attack civilian quaters.
I told at YNCS that the attack on Warsaw was not a warcrime. Rotterdam was also defended and indeed did surrender before the attack. Unfortunately due to bad circumstances only half of the bombers got the order not to attack. It was a tragedy and an accident. So it was indeed in May 1940 the attack on Mönchengladbach the first strike to hit civilians! However we should not see, who started first, but who started first to make the exception (until February 1942) to the rule. The cases before might have been warcrimes, but not much out of the extent of earlier conflicts. The targetting of civilians in a whole campaign with over 1.000 bombers each attack were such an escalation, which is not justified by any German attack before. Nor that this was tried anyway by the Bomber Command.
A reprisal is a breaking of the international law to enforce the enemy to stop their breaking of the laws. Thus makes a reprisal not to an atrocity. However, the extent of the original law breaking is not allowed to be greater. So the missile attacks were reprisals. I also suggest before discussing here further on this topic, that you read about reprisal in international law, especially the definition.
Also, as I already said, that fighting for the "good" side does not allow you to commit atrocities. "Inter arma enim silent leges". This is very wrong.

@PH:
You again turn my words! I never said, that only German warcrimes are justified as reprisals! I only said this for one case, the missile attacks. Also these attacks were indeed also lead to stop the allied bombing terror. A reprisal must have that aim, but, as long as it is the only means to stop it and the extent is not passing the other one, it still can follow other aims. However in this case revenge would not justify a reprisal. But indeed one aim was to force the allies to stop the terror bombings. And that's enough.
Concerning the reprisal you should read about it.
Concenring a city near to the front I can't give you an exact value. So it isn't 100 miles or so. A city must preparing for an assault which can start in the next time. More I can't tell you.

Adler

You again turn my words! I never said, that only German warcrimes are justified as reprisals!

Of course not, it just happens to be that any allied cases of reprisal attacks are warcrimes whereas German cases are justified, even though the reasoning and methods behind each are almost identical. You'll come up with endless excuses for the Luftwaffe's actions (Reprisal, we warned them, it was defended, we vaguely tried to hit factories etc) but won't listen to or accept any for allied ones.

I understand your words just fine Adler thank you. I just think that the way in which you fail to turn the same scathing criticism you use on the allies onto the Luftwaffe betrays considerable bias.

Also these attacks were indeed also lead to stop the allied bombing terror. A reprisal must have that aim, but, as long as it is the only means to stop it and the extent is not passing the other one, it still can follow other aims. However in this case revenge would not justify a reprisal. But indeed one aim was to force the allies to stop the terror bombings. And that's enough

I'd like you to try and prove that please. All indications were it obviously would not stop the terror bombings (after all it didn't stop them). Also weren't some fired at Antwerp during the Battle of the Bulge? That hardly strikes me as a reprisal attack.

So the since virtually every German city was defended and bomber command had the highest casualties of the war and Germany could have avoided the bombing by surrendering the Allied bombing campaign was justified.

It doesn't bother me if the Germans bombed Stalingrad or Rotterdam or Warsaw, or Conventry etc. Its war. Doesn't bother me the Allies bombed Germany either. What goes around comes around.

Warsaw was defended and so a legitime target.

From the start of the war all the main German cities were defended by anti-aircraft defences, and these defences were greatly expanded during the war. Hence, if you want to claim that such defences allow open slather on civilian targets (which I don't believe is the case - the convention that 'defended cities' had no rights after they refused to surrender was a medieval institution) you have no right to say that the Allied campaign was a war crime.

The targetting of civilians in a whole campaign with over 1.000 bombers each attack were such an escalation, which is not justified by any German attack before.

The Germans routienly sent hundreds of bombers against civilian targets in British cities in 1940 and 1941, so I'm not sure what you're talking about. If the Germans had been able to amass 1000 bombers and send them against London in 1940-41 there's no question that they would have done so.

Also, as I already said, that fighting for the "good" side does not allow you to commit atrocities.

Why do you qualify your description of the Allies as being good with inverted commas?

i know i'm late on this discussion. however, there have been some good comments by many :goodjob:

i think that the business of war crimes and whom is to blame, etc is dicey. Zardnaar mentioned something along the lines that it is war time and that's just the facts and i agree w/ this assertion to a certain degree. by this i mean that it's hard for me personally to pin war crime charges for V1 rocket attacks. sure they're headed into civilian targets. but my point is that this type of thing pales so large in comparision to places like Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bełżec, and Chełmno among others.

by no means am i trying to minimalize anyone's comments. everyone has made good remarks i think. it's just that i find it alot more arbitrary than what the laws may or may not state. of course, this is simply my opinion...

@ PH:
A reprisal has to be in the extent of the breaking of the law. It is not allowed to be more than that. If we only look on the bombing campaign of Harris this became a campaign not known before nore justified by any German attack before. As the Luftwaffe never flew with 1.000 bombers strikes on British civilians. So this is not justified as reprisal. Simply a war crime.

@ Zardnaar:
In times of war bad thing happen. Indeed. However these cases have to be minimized. The need was known since 1648. After the catastrophe of the 30 Years war there was seen the need to protect the civil population. That was kept until WW2. In the meantime the war law evolved and was a common sense. So in the end both sides commited warcrimes in an extent not known before. But although that were bad times for human rights they still existed and were recognized in civilized countries before. So the common break of them is not justified.

@ Case:
But no German city was up to 1944/45 in the danger of being occupied. The enemy was hundreds or thousands of kilometers away. Also FlaK and air defences are not considered to be a defence in the meaning of Art. 25 Hague convention 1907. Otherwise the whole Art. 25 would be useless. And that was in no way meant and wanted by the signer states. Of course they did not think about aerial attacks. But that does not mean, they are not included of Art. 25.
Also a reprisal is only allowed in the extent of the law break of the other party. Even if the German attacks were illegal, what is IMO wrong (mostly), but given that, they did not attack with 1000 bombers! And not what they would have done is determing the extend but what they did indeed. So in this point the British bombing campaign is not justified as reprisal.
The western allies were committing warcrimes like any other nation, perhaps in a slightly less extent. However IMO there was no side to be counted as white knights. All commited warcrimes and all did that in an extent not known before. So that's why no one really deserved to be the good. Of course the western allies were the best of the bad and I do not want to live under Hitler or Stalin. However as they commited warcrimes in such an extent, and I do not speak of the ones committed in the hot phase of a battle, they do not deserve to be called good without inverted commas.

Adler

If we only look on the bombing campaign of Harris this became a campaign not known before nore justified by any German attack before. As the Luftwaffe never flew with 1.000 bombers strikes on British civilians. So this is not justified as reprisal. Simply a war crime.

Oh please.

The fact that the Luftwaffe only flew 500 strong raids rather than 1000+ is hardly a relevant point, numbers aren't what matter surely but intent? How is launching 500 planes with the intention of murdering civilians any more justifiable than launching 700 or 1000?

Out of interest does anyone know what the strongest RAF raid on a German city was prior to 1942? Because if it was sizeably less than 500 planes surely this would argue that the Luftwaffe were not launching reprisals either.

As the Luftwaffe never flew with 1.000 bombers strikes on British civilians. So this is not justified as reprisal. Simply a war crime.

If you want to claim that the German attacks on British cities were proportional reprisals, then you need to prove that this was taken into account when the raids were planned and that the raids were in fact of equivalent size to the British raids of the time. The massive forces sent against London and other British cities during 1940 and 1941 don't strike me as being either a carefully designed legal measure or proportional to the patheticly small and ineffectual British attacks on German targets in 1940.

What you seem to be in denial of is the simple fact is that both the Germans and British directed heavy air attacks against civilians primarily as a means of reducing their willingness and ability to prosecute the war. The raids weren't some kind of legal dispute and weren't carried out in order to make the other side play by the rules. Rather, they were part of the total war each side waged.

The western allies were committing warcrimes like any other nation, perhaps in a slightly less extent.

Er, no. The Western Allies didn't launch a war of aggression with the ultimate aim of enslaving a continent. Nor did they leave hundreds of thousands of POWs to starve to death. They also didn't murder innocent civilian hostages in reprisals following activities by resistance groups or order the immediate execution of uniformed German special forces captured during commando raids. The armies of the Western Allies are also notable for not helping to carry out the slaughter of entire races like the German armed forces did. To claim that there was only a "slight" difference between the Nazis and the western democracies is ridiculous.

What you seem to be in denial of is the simple fact is that both the Germans and British directed heavy air attacks against civilians primarily as a means of reducing their willingness and ability to prosecute the war. The raids weren't some kind of legal dispute and weren't carried out in order to make the other side play by the rules. Rather, they were part of the total war each side waged. Exactly. Both sides were practicing Total War as described over 100 years previously by von Clausewitz.

Regardless of however many lives it might have saved, it was a terrible crime against humanity.

My fellow americans can't get over this.

At first the German campaign, some exceptions excluded, was aimed to destroy military and industrial targets. The relative high ammount of collateral damages was also caused by the fact, the living houses of the workers were built near to the factories, also to controle them. The British campaign of 1942+ was targetting civilians with more planes and more capable planes as the Germans had no strategic bombers before.
Also you go here on the morale side. But if I would follow your way through I would come to the conclusion, that because of Hitler everything was allowed. The consequence of this, you will surely disagree, is killing all Germans was allowed, therefore a genocide on Germans, too. But on this way you're arguing like the Nazis. You don't see or you don't want to recognize, that the Western Allies commited bad warcrimes. For you all these warcrimes are justified in the end by Hitler resp. the Japanese warcrimes.
I knew, how far that was going on. I warned YNCS not to open this before. However as we all do have contrary points and we all have said our opinion here I suggest to close this discussion before we will attack us personally. The readers can build their opinions on the facts we gave them.

Adler

At first the German campaign, some exceptions excluded, was aimed to destroy military and industrial targets. The relative high ammount of collateral damages was also caused by the fact, the living houses of the workers were built near to the factories, also to controle them

So I guess it has absolutely nothing to do with the Germans attempting to create firestorms in the city for example.

http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/H/history/a-b/blitz01.html

The British campaign of 1942+ was targetting civilians with more planes and more capable planes as the Germans had no strategic bombers before.

Can you please answer my direct questions rather than repeat yourself?

And I don't see any need to close the thread, I think there's an interesting discussion taking place that hasn't heard all the facts yet.

At first the German campaign, some exceptions excluded, was aimed to destroy military and industrial targets. The relative high ammount of collateral damages was also caused by the fact, the living houses of the workers were built near to the factories, also to controle them.
Oh please. The nighttime bombing of London's East End was just to damage the docks and not to kill the people living in the most densely populated part of London?

Total British civilian losses from July to December 1940 were 23,000 dead and 32,100 wounded, with one of the largest single raids occurring on 29 December 1940, in which almost 3,000 civilians died.

Then there were the Baedeker Raids. These were a series of Vergeltungsangriffe (retaliatory raids) on English cities in response to the bombing of the erstwhile Hanseatic League city of Lübeck. The Baedeker Raids were conducted by Luftflotte 3 between April and June 1942. They targeted relatively unimportant strategically but picturesque cities in England. The cities were reputedly selected from the German Baedeker Tourist Guide to Britain, meeting the criterion of having been awarded three stars hence the English name for the raids. Baron Gustav Braun von Sturm, a German propagandist, is reported to have said on 24 April 1942 following the first attack, "We shall go out and bomb every city in Britain marked with three stars in the Baedeker Guide." The cities bombed were Exeter, Bath, Norwich, York, Canterbury, Bury St Edmunds, Cambridge, Great Yarmouth and Ipswich. None of these were major manufacturing cities.

*Edited to change East Side to East End

I used to live in London's east end and I can tell ya, it is pretty much undamaged compared to Dresden. But whatever, the fact that the
Germans didn't behave like they should have doesn't justify Hiroshima.

Regardless of however many lives it might have saved, it was a terrible crime against humanity.

My fellow americans can't get over this.


The means in which people are killed is unimportant and good leaders try to minimize the number of deaths of their own people.

My fellow Americans don't understand this.


I used to live in London's east end and I can tell ya, it is pretty much undamaged compared to Dresden. But whatever, the fact that the
Germans didn't behave like they should have doesn't justify Hiroshima.

The bombing of England was never used to justify the nuking of Hiroshima. This argument is a digression caused by Adler's belief that the bombing of Dresden was a war crime but the bombing of English cities weren't.

PH, I never said that ALL German attacks were justified, however the German campaign had the target not to hit civilians but industrial/ military targets (mostly). The British were the other way round, to attack civilians and not industrial targets.
YNCS, as I already said the Germans mostly attacked industrial targets. And even the US used brand bombs on these attacks. However as most targets were flown against industrial targets and because of civil houses near to them there was such a high rate of civil causalities. However even though 23.000 died this does in no way justify attacks, in which 30.000 died in one attack alone (for example Dresden). There was no justification and your arguments of having a total war and Hitler started it are phrases without any content. You might believe that nonsense but it is dangerosu as you are arguing like Nazis. Indeed there is no justification for the terror bombings.
However the German Baedeker attacks were an answer on Harris new strategy attacking German towns with only a low ammount of industry but a high ammount of cultural and historical value, like Lübeck, 28./ 29. March 1942. Also here incrediences are now used as main weapon. That also did not happen before. The Baedeker attacks were only a responds on that!
BTW the East End has important docks.

Adler

PH, I never said that ALL German attacks were justified, however the German campaign had the target not to hit civilians but industrial/ military targets (mostly). The British were the other way round, to attack civilians and not industrial targets.


Point out to me what the difference is when they use that kind of method.

Also here incrediences are now used as main weapon. That also did not happen before. The Baedeker attacks were only a responds on that!


Well I'm not sure how much German incendries weighed during WW2 but if you read the link I posted it says:

That night, some 24,000 incendiary bombs fell on London and 120 tons of high explosives. Remarkably, only 163 people were killed. But, in all, the fire destroyed an entire square mile of London.

The intention seems to have been to use the incendries to create severe fires throughout the area, so I'd suggest that the Lubeck raids were not the first use of incendries as a main weapon.

This should be interesting.

*Grabs the popcorn*

:lol:

Japan was implemeting new aircraft that was to be be used on the defense of the main island of japan...seen on history channel

imagine the world without the atomic bombs...

millions of people die before japan surrrenders, considering the US beats Japan....Us military forces are severely weaken in defeating Japan

the soviet union isnt scared of United State's nuclear weapons..so proceeds to invade western europe..

western europe had already been devasted...red army sweeps through most european countries...

US is no where strong enough to defeat the soviet union....today the soviet union will stand as the sole world power...:eek:

i an not certain but didnt the use of inciendary devices kill more people in japan then the use of nuclear weapons...-i am not sure