Who is the most famous/infamous/ahead of the rest in their field?

[Tywin et al.]

58 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

 

Okay but is your argument that a city full of civilians the only option they could have chosen. As the first target. 

 

The rub is the Japanese had numerous major military installations placed in civilian centers. My grandfather was an intelligence officer in the Marines and witnessed the aftermath of one of the two bombings personally. He said it was one of the most sickening things he ever witnessed, but at the same time the assessments at the time were that far more people on both sides would have died if they tried a traditional invasion.

[SeanF]

2 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

The rub is the Japanese had numerous major military installations placed in civilian centers. My grandfather was an intelligence officer in the Marines and witnessed the aftermath of one of the two bombings personally. He said it was one of the most sickening things he ever witnessed, but at the same time the assessments at the time were that far more people on both sides would have died if they tried a traditional invasion.

Reading “Savage Continent” by Keith Lowe, it’s plain that a lot of British and American soldiers were horrified, once they reached cities like Hamburg, Bremen, Cologne, Essen, that had been bombed repeatedly.  They thought the cities would look like the East End of London or Coventry.  Instead, they encountered miles of rubble. And some of them were ashamed at what had been done.

But, the shame dissipated as the news and films of what had taken place in the concentration/extermination camps spread.  And, that’s very much how people felt about Japan.  Since 1931, the Japanese Army had simply displayed utter barbarity.

[SeanF]

1 hour ago, polishgenius said:

 

Okay but is your argument that a city full of civilians the only option they could have chosen. As the first target. 

 

I think it was within the range of reasonable targets.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

The bombing is a controversial topic, especially considering:

1. The day before Nagasaki, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, which terrified the Japanese. 

2. The invasion of the home islands was scheduled for early November; 3 months after the bombs were dropped.

Given the state of their military in the summer of 1945 and the fact that they were the only axis country left standing, a lot could have happened in that 3 months. 

What isn’t controversial is that Leslie Groves had an opinion on Truman and the bomb:

Quote

As far as I was concerned, his decision was one of non-interference–basically, a decision not to upset the existing plans.”

”As time went on, and as we poured more and more money and effort into the project, the government became increasingly committed to the ultimate use of the bomb.”

”Truman did not so much say ‘yes’ as not say ‘no.’ It would indeed have taken a lot of nerve to say ‘no’ at that time.”

Le May, a guy who had no problem with dropping bombs on cities, was skeptical of the bombings’ impact on the Japanese surrender. He’d already bombed the shit out of most of that country anyway. 

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

4 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

One thing I've never understood about Rome, all the great men were not called Marcus (Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Caesar, Augustus) for about 100 years.

Pretty much everyone a step below in fame/achievement was. It's like there was a glass ceiling for Marcus/Mark. 

Crassus was a “Marcus”.

… maybe that’s why. 

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

18 minutes ago, Madame deVenoge said:

Speaking of the Japanese -

Unnamed Japanese doctors did an incredible amount of, and atrocious and not just ethically impermissible, but from a humanitarian standpoint, completely impermissible and unacceptable, set of medical experiments that put Josef Mengele to shame.

Apparently, we - the US, and all Western powers - signed some sort of agreement allowing us to use the….results…of the experiments, without ever naming Japan as a bad actor.

And these experiments were done mostly on US and Euro POWs, that’s pretty bad sh1t.

Germany too. A lot of what we know about treating hypothermia came from Nazi experiments on living prisoners. 

Morally, it’s a shit sandwich. 

[IheartIheartTesla]

Regardless of the merits of Hiroshima, the debate of which I wont enter into, Nagasaki was a war crime. You'll have a tough time convincing me otherwise, and I hate that the two are lumped together. 

At any rate, many scientists involved in the war effort and Los Alamos continued to go to Japan post-war for conferences and such. I presume it was partly from guilt and partly to assist in rebuilding efforts (for instance, Feynman was famously enamored with Japanese culture and made numerous trips there and tried to learn the language). Happy my brethren did that much at least.

[Kalbear]

25 minutes ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

Germany too. A lot of what we know about treating hypothermia came from Nazi experiments on living prisoners. 

Morally, it’s a shit sandwich. 

We're getting a whole lot of wonderful results of treating disease, disease vectors and how efficacious vaccines are by the natural experiment of US states choosing or not choosing to vaccinate. Morally horrible, massively bad for society and health outcomes, scientifically super useful. 

[Jaxom 1974]

2 hours ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

The bombing is a controversial topic, especially considering:

1. The day before Nagasaki, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, which terrified the Japanese. 

 

Wasn't this also a factor in dropping the bomb? Or am I reading the wrong history? 

Edited September 23, 2023 by Jaxom 1974

[Tywin et al.]

4 hours ago, Madame deVenoge said:

And these experiments were done mostly on US and Euro POWs, that’s pretty bad sh1t.

I don't think that's correct. The Japanese were terrible to the Chinese and many others in SE Asian countries, it's just not what we focus on when learning about WW2 in the US. It's possible they killed more Asians than the Germans killed Jews. You're right though they did some incredibly sick things. I recall a few different docs describing how they'd cut limbs off and sew them on to someone else's body to see what happened. And like the Germans they did a lot of temperature torture "in the name of science."

37 minutes ago, Madame deVenoge said:

Also, it probably says something horrible about me that I don’t care about people who were able to get vaccinated but chose not to. Their fates are their own.

Nah, it doesn't say anything about you negatively in my book. I get not wanting to be the first in line, but once it's shown to be safe and effective not getting your jabs is on the individual. 

Edited September 23, 2023 by Tywin et al.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

4 hours ago, Kalnak the Magnificent said:

We're getting a whole lot of wonderful results of treating disease, disease vectors and how efficacious vaccines are by the natural experiment of US states choosing or not choosing to vaccinate. Morally horrible, massively bad for society and health outcomes, scientifically super useful. 

Yeah, you're not wrong. Then again, I don't get my information from facebook clickbait so what do I know?

What I was talking about is whether or not to use the knowledge gleaned from grotesque human experiments. On the one hand, the knowledge exists. It will never not exist. It can help people. On the other hand, Nazis. 

3 hours ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

Wasn't this also a factor in dropping the bomb? Or am I reading the wrong history? 

The Americans would never admit to dropping the bomb to awe the Soviets but, yeah, that was probably part of it. Also likely a desire to end the war before the Soviets got too close to the home islands. 

ETA: Since Soviet archives have opened up, we now know with certainty that Japan was trying to convince the Soviets to act as mediator in peace talks with the USA; starting no later than January of 1945. Unbeknownst to them, The Soviets were quietly moving troops to the asian mainland after Germany surrendered.  The Russian declaration must have come as a massive shock to them. 

Edited September 23, 2023 by Deadlines? What Deadlines?

[SeanF]

10 hours ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

Crassus was a “Marcus”.

… maybe that’s why. 

There was Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, however, who was an excellent commander and politician. And would have succeeded Augustus as Princeps, had the latter died in his lifetime.

[SeanF]

11 hours ago, Madame deVenoge said:

Speaking of the Japanese -

Unnamed Japanese doctors did an incredible amount of, and atrocious and not just ethically impermissible, but from a humanitarian standpoint, completely impermissible and unacceptable, set of medical experiments that put Josef Mengele to shame.

Apparently, we - the US, and all Western powers - signed some sort of agreement allowing us to use the….results…of the experiments, without ever naming Japan as a bad actor.

And these experiments were done mostly on US and Euro POWs, that’s pretty bad sh1t.

Unit T731 mostly conducted its experiments on Chinese POW’s and civilians and they cut a deal with the US after the War.

Edited September 23, 2023 by SeanF

[DanteGabriel]

17 hours ago, SeanF said:

Reading “Savage Continent” by Keith Lowe, it’s plain that a lot of British and American soldiers were horrified, once they reached cities like Hamburg, Bremen, Cologne, Essen, that had been bombed repeatedly.  They thought the cities would look like the East End of London or Coventry.  Instead, they encountered miles of rubble. And some of them were ashamed at what had been done.

But, the shame dissipated as the news and films of what had taken place in the concentration/extermination camps spread.  And, that’s very much how people felt about Japan.  Since 1931, the Japanese Army had simply displayed utter barbarity.

As someone from the other side of the Pacific, whose mother was born while her family hid in the hills from the Japanese army and whose uncle barely escaped beheading, I have never questioned the rightness of nuking Japan, which I guess is one place where I differ from many of my liberal compatriots.

I doubt you'll find many people in east Asia who disagree with use of the bomb to end the war.

[polishgenius]

I feel like there's a weird binary presentation on the side of those defending the use of the bomb where it was either 'drop it on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, straight away, exactly the way it happened' or 'the war goes on unavoidably for years and years and costs hundreds of thousands more lives'

I may be missing something but colour me sceptical that that was the case. Is it possible that Japanese attitudes and positions would have eventually forced the use of the bomb on a city to prove the US were serious even after a conspicuous demonstration of what it could do against a less populated target? Sure, maybe. But we'll never know, will we.

 

Like, they specifically chose Hiroshima as the first target because it had been relatively untouched until then so they could more clearly see the damage the bomb, specifically, did. That doesn't sound like strategy, that sounds like an experiment.

 

 

 

[Zorral]

As well the cited over and over purpose for choosing these cities was to execute the greatest harm specifically on the civilian population of Japan. Not the military at all. Truman was entirely engaged by that goal.

[Maltaran]

9 hours ago, SeanF said:

There was Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, however, who was an excellent commander and politician. And would have succeeded Augustus as Princeps, had the latter died in his lifetime.

The second triumvirate had two Marcuses, Octavian was the only one who wasn’t.