now there is talk of Iran

My Grandad who fought in the Far East in WWII and would never talk about his experiences was probably quite glad of the 'testing' of the Nuclear bombs.
As it ended the war quickly and he lived for several more decades as a result.

 

The Hiroshima "Thin Man" bomb used uranium, and the mechanism involved firing a uranium "bullet" from one end of the bomb at a uranium "target" at the other, the combination making critical mass for a self-perpetuating fission reaction. "Fat Man" consisted of a hollow plutonium sphere with a solid plutonium ball in the centre. Explosive charges around the sphere caused it to implode on to the ball, creating critical mass. This is much trickier to achieve technically (if the implosion isn't uniform, the bomb may actually not go off at all). However, it is much more compact and is the key to the much smaller modern warheads - without it, multiple warheads on a missile wouldn't be possible. In addition, it's relatively easy to make a thermonuclear device from such a bomb, by adding a source of hydrogen for the H - He fusion reaction, which drives the sun. The heat from the atomic bomb sets the fusion reaction in motion and releases even more energy.

 

An understandable sentiment, but the frustrating thing is that all the opportunities for peace weren't exhausted before that. The Americans were talking about putting the Emperor on trial as a war criminal, a loss of face that the Japanese couldn't accept. What if the Americans had announced a proposal to do what they did in the end, make the Emperor a constitutional monarch, shorn of divinity? In addition, Japan has many small, uninhabited islands - why could the power of the bomb not have been demonstrated on one of those?

Admittedly, radiation and its effects were poorly understood at that time. Perhaps had they known better, the Americans wouldn't have rushed into using it. But the bombing of Nagasaki with Fat Man two days after Hiroshima, before the Japanese had really absorbed what had happened at Hiroshima seems inexcusable to me.

 

There certainly is a lot of controversy around the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. They clearly weren't militarily necessary. IMO the two main motivations behind dropping them were:
1) as people have said already, to test them on real cities with real people.
2) to demonstrate to Stalin that the US had such a weapon and what it could do.

Without wanting to disrespect the people who died and the even greater number who have died or lived wretched lives since through the direct and indirect results of the bombs the fact that they were dropped means people do at least know what destruction they really cause. I think that had we only ever had tests in deserts people in general would have been far more blasé about them and the thought of nuclear war would not be quite as chilling as it is.

Michael.

 

Michael,

Number two is certainly true, not sure about number one. But the main reason Truman gave the go ahead to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was to bring an abprupt halt to the war on Japan, and so end the need for US forces to invade the country (he also didn't want to give Stalin time to turn his attentions eastwards).

The casualties in the Pacific war had been horrendous up to that point, and it was understood that an invasion of Japan would be even more protracted and bloody, for both sides. As odd as it seems, dropping the bombs may have actually saved many more lives, and, yes, they have certainly served as a dire warning ever since.

 

Based on the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, the US forces were predicting US casualties of the order of one million for an invasion of the main Japanese islands. This was one factor in the decision to use the bomb. However, at the time, Japan was totally prostrate. Their air defence was non-existent, US submarines were preventing most supplies of anything getting through and US fighter-bombers roved and wrecked at will on the main islands. And the fire raid on Tokyo by B-29s killed more people than died in Hiroshima (discounting later radiation deaths). Perhaps a reasonable offer would have saved a lot of lives - nobody knows because it was never made. And, as Michael says, the bomb was a demonstration to Stalin not to push too hard.

I still think that turning a small Japanese island into glass would have been a much better way to do business.

 

I'm glad somebody pointed out that Germany declared war on USA first and not the other way around.... citing WWII as an example of US aggression is ridiculous IMO. Hitler and Nazism were evils that had to be fought and defeated, even if the USA was not directly threatened at the time.... if Fascism had conquered Europe in the 1940's (and with German armies on the outskirts of Moscow in December 1941 that is what seemed was going to happen), the world would be a worse place today and in the long term even the USA would have been under threat from it.

Sadly, there is no comparison to be made between the USA then and USA now. In the 1930s FDR saved the USA from political extremism with corporate semi-socialist economic and social policies - the New Deal, then went on to help save us from Fascism. But the USA now is itself becoming a major threat to world stability.

 

The Japanese couldn't quite believe it, Alan. All they wanted was a mutual defence pact that said that one would come to the aid of the other if either were attacked. We can be grateful that Hitler made two giant errors, either of which would have individually destroyed him, but he speeded things up by committing them both (a) declaring war ion the world's biggest industrial power, and (b) attacking the Soviet Union. The scale of the war in the east totally dwarfed the western war - I think the figure is that something like 90%+ of all German casualties occurred on the Eastern Front. The arrival of the Americans ensured that the Russians stopped at the Elbe rather than the Channel (and they would have had lots of eager helpers - remember how many Maquisards were Communists with nothing to lose). Had the US not entered the war, the Nazis would have been defeated, but the nature of that defeat would not have been a comfortable one for the west.

 

Yes, its all very well to state that argument with the benefit of hindsight.

But at the time, it looked like the Soviet Union was going to be defeated. In 1941, nobody knew what was going to happen in 1945.

Also nobody seems to pay attention to the massive amount of US manufactured material that was shipped to the Soviet Union... the Red Army made massive use of US manufactured equipment, including tanks and planes, but especially trucks for troop movements.

Oh come off it.... all the Japanese wanted was a mutual defence pact and a vast Asian Empire which they exploited ruthlessly making the German occupation of Europe look like a picnic. How many millions of Chinese, Koreans and others suffered and died under Japanese rule? Millions upons millions. It was Japanese territorial aggression in the far east that led to the US embargo which led to the Japanese attempt to knock the US out of the Pacific so they could further their Imperial ambitions without hindrance.
The West tends to forget about the Asian aspect of WWII, remebering it as an imperial catfight between 2 pacific naval powers. But it wasn't like that for the Chinese and Koreans.

 

After the war, the USA financed the rebuilding of much of Western Europe, and was largely responsible for the re-democratization of Germany and the democratization of Japan (which most people at the time believed was not possible).

We Europeans tend to underestimate just how nasty a regime the post-war Soviet Union was and we had that luxury because we were protected from it by the US. In fact, as the US protected Western Europe until the fall of the Soviet Union, we've never needed a 'grown-up' foreign policy of our own.

As 'children' we could complain about the US war-mongering against the forces of Communism but I doubt if many of us would have celebrated if Western Europe had fallen under Soviet control. It's interesting also how we've turned a blind eye to the moral and ethical shortcomings of our own policies, happily supplying arms to any regime capable of signing a cheque - particularly true in the case of the 'highly moral' French, whose entire foreign policy has, in fact, been led by the scent of the dollar.

So perhaps "the USA now is itself becoming a major threat to world stability", as so many now believe, and perhaps the USA is still acting as a 'parent-protector' for its European dependents. Frankly, until we have to start looking after ourselves, how can we possibly tell?

 

It didn't really. Remember rhe words of Kutuzov in "War and Peace" when Napoleon took Moscow - "They have only taken a city". Look at a map of Russia and see how far west is Moscow. Already the Russians had moved their war production east of the Urals. Hitler should have listened to Erich von Falkenhayn of the German General Staff in the first world war - "An advance on Moscow takes us nowhere". The German advance units reached the tramlines of Moscow and then were hit by fresh armies that they didn't know existed. They never again came so close to Moscow.

The US certainly did supply many trucks and armoured vehicles, but most of the Russian stuff came from themselves, including the war's best tank the T-34.

Come off what? We were not talking about Japanese imperial ambitions in Asia (or the Southeast Asian Greater Co-Prosperity Sphere as they called it, or something like that), but solely about the details of the German-Japanese pact made in 1941. The Japanese were getting ready to move against the USA by launching a pre-emptive strike on Pearl Harbor, so that, as you say, the US could not threaten either their invasion plans or their oil supplies (one of the key goals was the oilfields of Batavia). The Japanese ambassador asked what the German position would be if Japan were attacked by the USA, and Hitler said that, if it came to a war between Japan and the USA, Germany would promptly declare war on the USA. This was far more than the Japanese expected. (See Shirer, "Rise & Fall of the Third Reich")

 

Ah, that's what you meant. Fair point.

 

Anyway.... was it wrong for the USA to get involved in the 2nd World War against Germany? Even if it was inevitable the Soviet Union would overcome and defeat Germany (and I do not think it was inevitable), should the USA have stayed out of it? I don't think so. The USA involvement in WWII was not an act of aggression.

I disagree wholeheartedly with current US foreign policy and pray that they don't make any other interventions anywhere else after the current Iraq debacle.
However, disagreement and disaffection with the USA today should not be allowed to turn into Anti-Americanism or be allowed to change our perception of history, a history where a completely different set of circumstances applied.

 

I totally agree. I find it quite incredible that anyone has suggested it was.

Michael.

 

Did anyone say it was? If so, it's silly. Roosevelt would have liked to help beleaguered Britain, but his hands were tied by strongly isolationist sentiment in the USA. Things were moving to a more pro-British stance courtesy of the admiration of Churchill's defiant stand and the Battle of Britain and the fact that a shooting war had already started with U-Boats in US territorial waters (a US warship had already been sunk by a U-Boat in late 1941, before Pearl Harbor). Hitler's crazy and completely unnecessary declaration of war against the world's greatest industrial power finished it off.

 

It was mainly the above comment that set me off.

 

Aha, yes, just a little misinformed. Hitler looked down his nose at the Americans, as did the Japanese, who also thought the Americans soft and spoiled. The latter were warned by Admiral Yamamoto, who had been an attaché at the Japanese Embassy in Washington and who knew (and liked) America and Americans, but they didn't want to know. Hitler was similarly misguided about the Soviet Union - "Kick in the door," he said, "and the whole rotten structure will come tumbling down." It happened, but not to the rotten structure he'd intended.

 

[Hopefully] all you want to know about atomic weapon design:

http://www.searchspaniel.com/index.php/Nuclear_weapon_design

fascinating stuff..

 

Though towards the end of the war, the Japanese authorities found it convenient to change tack and portray the approaching US army as murderous devils. Hence the bitter combat on Iwo Jima, etc, which saw Japanese soldiers fighting to the death and the civilians throwing themselves off cliffs rather than be taken alive by the Americans.

 

Now this one you must read..

http://www.searchspaniel.com/index.php/List_of_nuclear_accidents