Well, the intensity shouldn't have anything to do with it. 1 civilian or 1,000,000 shouldn't matter. Playing with numbers is a blatant disregard of human life. I'm sure there are people who say that the last raid on Tokyo was worse because more people died than in Hiroshima. That argument is bullshit, sorry, how can anyone, who wasn't there, even say that? What gives people, born after the war, the right to come up with something like that? I don't think that the average citizen from Hiroshima, Tokyo, Dresden, Coventry or Nanking cared about that when he tried to survive somehow. I dare anyone to go up to a survivor and say that right into his or her face.
My grandmother told me how the air raids were for her, the sirens, the running, people praying in the evening "God, please no air raid tonight". And Kapfenberg (my hometown) is only a small industrial city, yet I think the fear of the people from what could possibly come upon them was the same as the fear of the people in Tokyo or Hamburg or Nanking or London.
I wouldn't want to trade positions with any of them, not in Tokyo, not in Hiroshima, not in Nanking, not in Kapfenberg...
And well, sorry, no bombs have ever been dropped to save lives, that's merely propaganda to justify massmurder.
The nuclear weapons were a sign towards the USSR "Look what we've got". I don't think many people know how close the western allies and the USSR were to a war inside the war when they reached Austria in March/April 1945.
Yugoslav forces and British troops made a race for the province of Corinthia. The Tito troops wanted parts of it for their "Greater Yugoslavia", and the British had their own interests and saw those endangered by a "Greater Yugoslavia". The British arrived 30 minutes before the Yugoslavs, but both parties made camp in the capital, full scale displaying their weapons at each other.
Churchill gave the order that the Yugoslav forces had to be removed from Austria, if neccessary, by force. Alexander, at that time in charge of the British army in the south, wasn't sure if the troops would fight the Yugoslavs with the same enthusiasm. And Churchill wrote back "They will warm up once the shooting starts". A war inside the war was possible. In the end Stalin gave in, but not before storming into what was later the British zone and steal what was still intact of our industry.
That was in April/May 1945. By July/August 1945 the relationship between the western allies and the USSR was already pretty bad. After all, it was all about influence and power in Europe. And I'm sure that Churchill and Roosevelt (and later Trueman) knew very well who would be the future enemy once the war would be over.
I still think that the reactions of the military part of the US high command clearly show that there was no military reason for Hiroshima and Nagasaki (MacArthur, for example, said he wasn't even asked). I also doubt that an invasion was ever a real option. There was no reason to invade, laying siege on the islands would have been enough. Cut the country off from all imports, give it a few weeks or months, done (and the US surely had the means to do that). And in August 1945 there wasn't much left of a Japanese infrastructure. The last air raids were done against basically no air defence (there were still a few fighters and pilots left, but those were pretty much insignificant, except for people like Sakai, etc, who had one ort wo B-29 kills in the end of th war, but over all, unimportant).
I don't see any moral or military justification for both nukes.
I still see the use of both nukes as someone, who's already on the ground, getting kicked in the ribs. That's not brave or heroic. That's unneccessary and pretty pathetic.
The way I see it, you can save 100 men by sacrificing one of your own, yep. But that only applies for the military. Killing civilians, no matter how many and for whatever reason is a warcrime and should be punished. We did it in the war, the Russians did it, the Japanese, the British, the Yugoslavs, the Danish, French, Norwegians and the Americans too. Everyone did it. Everyone committed warcrimes, that's the way it is. That's how modern warfare goes. (I know for myself, from urban warfare training, that I will shoot at a noise in an urban scenario. It could be a civilian, but it could also be a hostile and I'm not taking that risk, sorry.)
The raid on Dresden, for example, didn't shorten the war, nor did it change anything. It was a direct attack on civilians. And it didn't change anything. "Moral bombing" never worked, it usually had the opposite effect, troops started to fight back harder. It didn't work after Adlertag against the British Islands, and it didn't work against Germany or Japan. American bomberfleets basically annihilated several Japanese cities. Did the troops stop fighting because of it? No. Did parts of the military want to stop fighting after Hiroshima and Nagasaki? No. Eventually the emperor with moderate parts of the military got his way, but that's it. And well, the German situation wasn't much different. You had fanatics fighting till the end. There was heavy combat even in April/May 1945, and some (mainly SS units) continued with terror even after the truce (ultimately they failed, because people had enough of it and the allies forces outnumbered them vastly).
Anyway... I should stop ranting lol
My grandmother told me how the air raids were for her, the sirens, the running, people praying in the evening "God, please no air raid tonight". And Kapfenberg (my hometown) is only a small industrial city, yet I think the fear of the people from what could possibly come upon them was the same as the fear of the people in Tokyo or Hamburg or Nanking or London.
I wouldn't want to trade positions with any of them, not in Tokyo, not in Hiroshima, not in Nanking, not in Kapfenberg...
And well, sorry, no bombs have ever been dropped to save lives, that's merely propaganda to justify massmurder.
The nuclear weapons were a sign towards the USSR "Look what we've got". I don't think many people know how close the western allies and the USSR were to a war inside the war when they reached Austria in March/April 1945.
Yugoslav forces and British troops made a race for the province of Corinthia. The Tito troops wanted parts of it for their "Greater Yugoslavia", and the British had their own interests and saw those endangered by a "Greater Yugoslavia". The British arrived 30 minutes before the Yugoslavs, but both parties made camp in the capital, full scale displaying their weapons at each other.
Churchill gave the order that the Yugoslav forces had to be removed from Austria, if neccessary, by force. Alexander, at that time in charge of the British army in the south, wasn't sure if the troops would fight the Yugoslavs with the same enthusiasm. And Churchill wrote back "They will warm up once the shooting starts". A war inside the war was possible. In the end Stalin gave in, but not before storming into what was later the British zone and steal what was still intact of our industry.
That was in April/May 1945. By July/August 1945 the relationship between the western allies and the USSR was already pretty bad. After all, it was all about influence and power in Europe. And I'm sure that Churchill and Roosevelt (and later Trueman) knew very well who would be the future enemy once the war would be over.
I still think that the reactions of the military part of the US high command clearly show that there was no military reason for Hiroshima and Nagasaki (MacArthur, for example, said he wasn't even asked). I also doubt that an invasion was ever a real option. There was no reason to invade, laying siege on the islands would have been enough. Cut the country off from all imports, give it a few weeks or months, done (and the US surely had the means to do that). And in August 1945 there wasn't much left of a Japanese infrastructure. The last air raids were done against basically no air defence (there were still a few fighters and pilots left, but those were pretty much insignificant, except for people like Sakai, etc, who had one ort wo B-29 kills in the end of th war, but over all, unimportant).
I don't see any moral or military justification for both nukes.
I still see the use of both nukes as someone, who's already on the ground, getting kicked in the ribs. That's not brave or heroic. That's unneccessary and pretty pathetic.
The way I see it, you can save 100 men by sacrificing one of your own, yep. But that only applies for the military. Killing civilians, no matter how many and for whatever reason is a warcrime and should be punished. We did it in the war, the Russians did it, the Japanese, the British, the Yugoslavs, the Danish, French, Norwegians and the Americans too. Everyone did it. Everyone committed warcrimes, that's the way it is. That's how modern warfare goes. (I know for myself, from urban warfare training, that I will shoot at a noise in an urban scenario. It could be a civilian, but it could also be a hostile and I'm not taking that risk, sorry.)
The raid on Dresden, for example, didn't shorten the war, nor did it change anything. It was a direct attack on civilians. And it didn't change anything. "Moral bombing" never worked, it usually had the opposite effect, troops started to fight back harder. It didn't work after Adlertag against the British Islands, and it didn't work against Germany or Japan. American bomberfleets basically annihilated several Japanese cities. Did the troops stop fighting because of it? No. Did parts of the military want to stop fighting after Hiroshima and Nagasaki? No. Eventually the emperor with moderate parts of the military got his way, but that's it. And well, the German situation wasn't much different. You had fanatics fighting till the end. There was heavy combat even in April/May 1945, and some (mainly SS units) continued with terror even after the truce (ultimately they failed, because people had enough of it and the allies forces outnumbered them vastly).
Anyway... I should stop ranting lol