Atomic Bomb In WWII

  • Thread starter Thread starter BCven86
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
B

BCven86

Guest
Did the Church support or condemn the use of the atomic bomb (after it was dropped of course) at the end of WWII?
 
This is a very interesting question. I’m not sure what the official standpoint is, but it seems to me that there are two major considerations (everyone feel free to add more if I’m missing anything):
  1. Many innocent people were killed.
  2. The alternative was a coastal invasion, which would have resulted in much more loss of human life.
 
The general opinion among the wise, as I understand it, was that we probably shouldn’t have done it. Not everyone agrees (especially those who are or have been in the military, from my experience), but that’s just the way it is. Weapons of mass destruction are almost never going to be looked upon favorably by the Church, simply because of what they are.
 
BCven86 said:
Nothing was put out officially by the Church though?
Click to expand...
I heard that the Bishops of the US did exactly that, putting out a statement approving of the US actions in WWII, sometime just after the war.

There’s so much to say on that subject of the bomb. According to the programs I’ve seen on the History Channel, giving information that has only recently been declassified, both Japan and Germany were racing to develop an atomic weapon to use against the US, even though generally they were losing the war on their respective fronts.

You can focus on the atomic bomb, but the more general issue that has been discussed since 1945 has been the attack of the US on civilian populations that occurred in that war. The non-nuclear firestorm attacks on Toyko were more devastating, in terms of damage and loss of life, as I seem to recall.

The atomic weapon is fearful from the standpoint of its efficiency in killing, compared to other methods. Is it, arguably, “merciful” to simply vaporize people in a moment, as the weapons did?

In the old “All in the Family” TV sitcom, Archie’s liberal-leaning daughter was arguing with hard-boiled Archie about all the hand-gun murders that were occurring in New York City. Archie did not miss a beat, and came back with a retort: “Would you have been happier, little girl, if they was pushed out of windows?”

We stand dangerously close to the edge of a nuclear confrontation, particularly in the Middle East. The US used the weapon in defense, to end a war. The prospect of these weapons being used offensively is almost too much to think about.

For one thing, the excess radioactivity from the blasts would circle the globe in about two days. If the use of the weapons was even moderately extensive (back and forth), the globe might be plunged into a nuclear winter, with clouds encircling the earth for even a couple years.
 
Caesar517 said:
This is a very interesting question. I’m not sure what the official standpoint is, but it seems to me that there are two major considerations (everyone feel free to add more if I’m missing anything):
  1. Many innocent people were killed.
  2. The alternative was a coastal invasion, which would have resulted in much more loss of human life.
Click to expand...
I was listening to an historian on this subject last week on C-SPAN, he pointed out that the USSR entered the war against Japan the same time we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, invading Manchuria with 1.5 million troops.
Any invasion would have been of the Japanese homeland would have been by the US and the USSR, leading to a Japan divided like Germany. The Sovs would have certainly gotten Hokkaido, the northern island. Dropping the bombs avoided this.

Does this make dropping the bombs more moral? Preventing the communists seems like a good side benefit.
I also think it’s a mistake to get hung up on the atomic bombs just because they were atomic. We fire-bombed Tokyo, causing greater death and devastation than in either Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
In Germany toward the end of the war the US & UK were conducting round-the-clock bombing of Germany – they had run out of military targets and the bombing was to break civilian morale. If a bombing campaign targeting the civilian population isn’t a war crime, please tell me why not.
 
didymus said:
I was listening to an historian on this subject last week on C-SPAN, he pointed out that the USSR entered the war against Japan the same time we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, invading Manchuria with 1.5 million troops.
Any invasion would have been of the Japanese homeland would have been by the US and the USSR, leading to a Japan divided like Germany. The Sovs would have certainly gotten Hokkaido, the northern island. Dropping the bombs avoided this.

Does this make dropping the bombs more moral? Preventing the communists seems like a good side benefit.
I also think it’s a mistake to get hung up on the atomic bombs just because they were atomic. We fire-bombed Tokyo, causing greater death and devastation than in either Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
In Germany toward the end of the war the US & UK were conducting round-the-clock bombing of Germany – they had run out of military targets and the bombing was to break civilian morale. If a bombing campaign targeting the civilian population isn’t a war crime, please tell me why not.
Click to expand...
If your referring to the detruction of Dresden, that was all UK in retalliation for the bombing of London. The UK purposely bombed that city into oblivion, strictly for revenge.
 
Dragoro said:
If your referring to the detruction of Dresden, that was all UK in retalliation for the bombing of London. The UK purposely bombed that city into oblivion, strictly for revenge.
Click to expand...
The Dresden Fire Storm was a joint Allied operation. U.S. bombers participated as well. Read here.

I think it’s a good point that a massive aerial bombing can do just as much damage as a nuclear warhead. The development of the atomic bomb just made it much easier.
 
As I stated in a post on this forum about the Crusades, it is not always possible to “turn the other cheek” and we have had to justifiably go to war at times in human history. The regrettable and sinful actions in the Crusades and the carpet bombing of cities and the use of the atom bomb in retrospect are easily judged wrong by most people, but retrospect is a whole lot different than making decisions in the heat of battle. It was certainly retrospect that gave us the Geneva Conventions after WW I and unfortunately we have not yet reached a “Geneva Convention” stage on nuclear weapons and causing collateral damage to civilians.

The Pope and Catholic Bishops have certainly made a judgement that as long as we have nuclear weapons and might possibly be tempted to use them war is in essence not even thinkable. We have been extremely fortunate and blessed that given the number of nukes out there that someone has not used them again.

In some ways I think the result of the two bombs dropped on Japan and the vastly more powerful weapons in hand have given pause to the temptation to resort to them again. Having them as a deterrent is one thing, but actually using them in war is another.
 
BCven86 said:
Did the Church support or condemn the use of the atomic bomb (after it was dropped of course) at the end of WWII?
Click to expand...
From the CCC (5th Commandment):

2314 “Every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation.”[GS 80 #3.] A danger of modern warfare is that it provides the opportunity to those who possess modern scientific weapons especially atomic, biological, or chemical weapons - to commit such crimes.
 
Keep in mind that we have the benefit of hindsight. At the time, we didn’t know what kind of damage would be done by the bomb (and yes, I realize we tested one before Hiroshima and Nagasaki).

Even with the atomic bombs being used, there was still no guarantee of Japanese surrender, although it did the trick. When Japanese began using kamikaze attacks against our fleet, it could be argued that the Japanese were willing to risk even more atomic attacks as long as they inflicted as much damage on us as possible even if their defeat was inevitable.
 
LRThunder said:
Keep in mind that we have the benefit of hindsight. At the time, we didn’t know what kind of damage would be done by the bomb (and yes, I realize we tested one before Hiroshima and Nagasaki).

Even with the atomic bombs being used, there was still no guarantee of Japanese surrender, although it did the trick. When Japanese began using kamikaze attacks against our fleet, it could be argued that the Japanese were willing to risk even more atomic attacks as long as they inflicted as much damage on us as possible even if their defeat was inevitable.
Click to expand...
Their intention was to try to make our land invasion so costly that we wouldn’t do it. But the good end (their surrender) did not justify the use of evil means (the dropping of atomic bombs on cities and the indiscriminate killing of civilians).
 
miguel said:
Their intention was to try to make our land invasion so costly that we wouldn’t do it. But the good end (their surrender) did not justify the use of evil means (the dropping of atomic bombs on cities and the indiscriminate killing of civilians).
Click to expand...
I struggle with this. Is a land invasion truly less evil? We would have had to destroy and capture cities as well. Would the Japanese have used a scorched-earth policy? I think a full-force land invasion would have resulted in more innocent loss of life than the two atom bombs did.
 
miguel said:
Their intention was to try to make our land invasion so costly that we wouldn’t do it. But the good end (their surrender) did not justify the use of evil means (the dropping of atomic bombs on cities and the indiscriminate killing of civilians).
Click to expand...
There is some question on if there was a lack of discernment.

The target of the attack was the Japanese 5th Army Group. This Army Group was the Command and Control center for home island defense.

THAT was why Hiroshima had not been targeted during the war, as they 5th Army Group played no part in any major op.

So yes, there was a valid and important military target there.

And does anyone think that it was the civilians who were directly targeted, that is, if the Army Group was destroyed, but, my some miracle, there were no civilian casualties, would Truman have considerd the operation a failure, or a sucess beyond his hopes.
 
miguel said:
Their intention was to try to make our land invasion so costly that we wouldn’t do it. But the good end (their surrender) did not justify the use of evil means (the dropping of atomic bombs on cities and the indiscriminate killing of civilians).
Click to expand...
It’s called being between a rock and a hard place: invade and risk millions of casualties on both sides or drop the atomic bombs, saving more lives in the long run? In any case, as has been shown, the bombing of Tokyo and bombings of Dresden actually killed more people than the atomic bombs did. The only reason the atomic bombs are getting the brunt of the criticisms is because of the radioactivity part to the weapons. But if mass killing using atomic weapons is wrong, then the Tokyo bombing has to be criticized just as much.

As I said before, we have the benefit of hindsight, President Truman didn’t when he ordered the bombings. I don’t think he took great pleasure in doing so; he was faced with an impossible decision.
 
Caesar517 said:
I struggle with this. Is a land invasion truly less evil? We would have had to destroy and capture cities as well. Would the Japanese have used a scorched-earth policy? I think a full-force land invasion would have resulted in more innocent loss of life than the two atom bombs did.
Click to expand...
A land invasion would certainly have been more costly to our troops, and to the Japanese themselves very likely. Was it absolutely necessary to invade Japan? We pretty much had them defeated outside of Japan. IOW, was the choice only between invading Japan or nuking them until they surrendered? Or could we have negotiated a treaty to end the war without invasion?
 
Brendan said:
There is some question on if there was a lack of discernment.

The target of the attack was the Japanese 5th Army Group. This Army Group was the Command and Control center for home island defense.

THAT was why Hiroshima had not been targeted during the war, as they 5th Army Group played no part in any major op.

So yes, there was a valid and important military target there.

And does anyone think that it was the civilians who were directly targeted, that is, if the Army Group was destroyed, but, my some miracle, there were no civilian casualties, would Truman have considerd the operation a failure, or a sucess beyond his hopes.
Click to expand...
Dropping a bomb on the 5th Army Group where some civilian casualties occur is very much different than dropping an atom bomb on a city. I don’t think it’s possible to make this rationalization when we’re talking about dropping an atom bomb on a city. This is precisely what the Church condemns in CCC 2314.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top