Is it immoral to use nuclear weapons in war?

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Also if you haven’t read him yet check out William Appleman Williams.
 
This being my hobby for as far back as 1956, and books being my milieu, yes, I know what condition the Japanese were in by the summer of 1945. They were defeated. They were not going to surrender. To avoid a repetition of what occurred after WWI, and a negotiated peace, we were going to force an unconditional surrender. The longer this took, the more deaths occurred, across the theater. Fewer deaths preferable. One plane, one bomb, twice. End of war. Good.
 
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You have read Miller or Williams? Alperovitz is a good guy from what I’ve gathered. His book America Beyond Capitalism looks interesting. Books are my life, man.
 
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Yes. WAR PLAN ORANGE is. And - surprise- BANKRUPTING THE ENEMY has been on my want list (which is only in my head, for weeks.
 
You are one the right track with books. But I been doing it for 65 years. Total holdings, all areas, estimated at 30 thousand plus. It keeps me off the streets.

I’ve read Miller/ PLAN ORANGE) and BANKRUPTING THE ENEMY has been on the list to get, as I stated… I’ve read short stuff by Williams. I’ve read Alperovitz.
 
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Dude if you’ve never downloaded the Amazon app do so. You can put together a list of books you want.
 
Looks like the financial pressure was to deter Japanese aggression… that’s what a blurb about the book says. “Bankrupting the Enemy”.
 
That’s cool. I used to write them down, myself. I have a feeling we’re more similar than our disagreements let on, i.e. book nerds and all.
 
Cool. It’s always nice when you start out a thread with disagreements and you realize in the end you’re not so far apart as it seems. God bless you, sir.
 
Well, I’m not so sure we are very close together. But thank you.
 
Because I posted that it was immoral to target cities and civilians , and you quoted that in your defense if the nuclear bombings of Japan.
 
GKMotley said:
They were defeated. They were not going to surrender.
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The soviets were going to force them to surrender in relatively short order.

Despite you “knowing” they were not going to surrender, there seems to be ample evidence of PM Tojo engaged in dialogue with several different parties concerning that very subject.

I’ll just have to concede that you know more about the intentions of Tojo than Tojo himself.
To avoid a repetition of what occurred after WWI, and a negotiated peace, we were going to force an unconditional surrender.
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You mean a surrender where the victorious parties dictate 100% the term of surrender? Which, coincidentally, was the backdrop of Versailles, setting in motion WW2 before the treaty ink ending WWI was completely dry?

Or am I misinformed about that as well?
The longer this took, the more deaths occurred, across the theater. Fewer deaths preferable. One plane, one bomb, twice. End of war. Good.
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If the aim is the reduction of American dead, it was cheaper and easier to sit back and let the Ruskies mop up. It’s exactly what they were doing.

Or, as recent history suggests, we should take two of these awesome weapons, drop them on relatively unscathed areas - not so we can destroy military targets but so we can see the effects of these things in a near-pristine setting (which would not have been the case for fire-bombed Tokyo) and send a message to our seeming would-be adversaries the Soviets.

Getting Japan to surrender was a minimal part of the calculus. After all, they were an island nation with no navy and nearly no oil and steel to create another one. Their ability to make war had ended.
 
To drag this back to the modern day, as far as I’m aware UK doctrine is assured second strike, which is why our missiles are launched at sea. The problem I have is that beyond deterrent effect, it’s a futile weapon that is built solely for vengeance if it is ever deployed. Although theres no knowing what the UKs actual strategy in event would be because of the letters of last resort system.
 
i would say it is immoral to use nuclear weapons. Not just using nuclear weapons, but according to the teaching of Pope Francis, even just the possession of nuclear weapons is immoral.



"The use of nuclear weapons is immoral, which is why it must be added to the Catechism of the Catholic Church . Not only their use, but also possessing them: because an accident or the madness of some government leader, one person’s madness can destroy humanity.”
 
StudentMI said:
Another good book.

Do you have the Naval Institute Press book on how we antagonized the Japanese for years before Pearl Harbor? The name escapes me at the moment.
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What does that have to do with allowing an attack to take place with no declaration of war?
That is a day that will indeed live in infamy, and there is no getting around it.
Hiroshima was hit by a devastating bomb, but the residents knew they were targets. (Survivors, in fact, say that the people living there wondered why they alone had been spared the bombings that other places engaged in military production had all been suffering.)
 
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One of these days, I’m going to get back upstream to one of your posts, without being distracted.

But I’ll do this one.

I assume you’re thinking of Togo and Sato. The Japanese “peace” faction in the Saiko Senso Shido Kaigi (which varied, but was usually about half, led by Togo, opposed by the “Four Conditions” faction of Anami, Toyoda and Umezu) , with the Emperor’s tacit approval, was attempting to feel out the Russians, as to whether they might be willing to intercede for a negotiated peace. This was primarily done by Togo’s directions to the Japanese ambassador to Moscow, Sato. Togo hoped the Russians, though they had announced earlier in the year that the peace accord between Japan and the USSR would not be renewed when it expired in 1946, might be helpful in obtaining a soft landing , rather than total surrender. Sato rightly saw that what was going on was not a sanctioned effort of the entire Supreme Council, nor was it, as Togo admitted, an attempt to surrender in any sense and must not be presented to the Soviets as such. As Sato told Togo repeatedly, the idea of a negotiated peace was a chimera. The Russians were not interested. Sato’s insistence that the only course was the acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration was accurate. But it was out of reach.

Tojo was not in the cabinet when the contact was initiated with Moscow. Hadn’t been for over a year That was Togo’s doing. One can learn a good deal about it from a number of books, Frank’s DOWNFALL being an excellent one, and Kort’s COLUMBIA GUIDE TO HIROSHIMA AND THE BOMB another. It has a goodly selection of the intercepted messages.

As to the WWI comparison, you seem to be looking in a mirror in some sense, but yes. We were not going to repeat the errors of negotiated peace, harsh war indemnities, and walking away from the resulting mess, leading as Pershing said to having to do it all over again in 25 years. We would achieve unconditional surrender, occupy the country and restructure the kokutai. Which we did.

We had no interest in allowing the Russkies to put another Iron Curtain on their far eastern exposure. What was coming in Europe was bad enough. Here, we could draw a line.The bomb made that possible.

Getting Japan to surrender, as soon as possible, to reduce the ongoing blood bath (Giangreco, again) was the primary point. Keeping the Bear at bay was another.
 
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Repeating. None of the target cities were selected for the military assets present. The target was the will of (basically the Anami faction) of the Saiko Senso Shido Kaigi.
 
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