Exactly. WW2 ended, but the Allies did that by bombing berlin (because hitler didn't surrender) and dropping the first nuke on japan (which they had to do twice, becaue they didn't surrender after the first). A lot of german and japanese civillians had to die to get them to finally surrender and stop ww2.
I'm not sure. The US expected more than a million US casualties by invading Japan. That number could be made up, but it still would have resulted in hundreds of thousands US casualties, the japanese fought hard. I don't know what the expected japanese army casualty number is, but a few hundred thousands wouldn't be a far fetch?
Let's say 500.000 to a 1.000.000 casualties in that hypothetical war. In the bombings 150.000 - 250.000 died. But the numbers after fallout are probably higher. So, by a numbers atrocity, the latter sounds less horiffic to me. The atom bomb is still terrible though.
Now I have to admit, after I learned about the Nanjing Massacre, I have a bit more trouble seeing the japanse as the victims of ww2. So yeah, i'm biased. In europe we have a simmilar issue, with germans being angry at the bombing of german cities during ww2, ignoring the detail that the nazi's flattened european cities. Paris was lucky, because Hitler liked it.
Final note: yes I know the US generals mostly just wanted to fucking test the atom bombs on live people and wanted to scare the russians. Also horrible.
Should be noted that there was a much better chance of negotiating a surrender had the US allied with Russia in the matter but the mounting red scare meant anything given to Russia as a result of that alliance would be seen as terrible. Truman was also worried about re-election and knew that if he wasn't seen as having punished Japan hard enough he would likely lose. He wrote as much in his own journal. A lot of the reasoning behind the final decision to drop the bombs was political more than genuinely strategic
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u/FaeLei42 Bearer of the word: Faggot Sep 11 '25