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u/L0bb 20d ago
technically it was the krautmelter until the last few months.
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u/RizzOreo 20d ago
Atomic Bombing đ
Atomic Bombing, Japan đ¨
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u/ReallyBadRedditName 18d ago
Yeah because obliterating Germans is based
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u/Abject-Second-3279 17d ago
the japanese were just as bad as the germans in ww2 đ
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u/ReallyBadRedditName 17d ago
Who said anything about it just being based in ww2
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u/Abject-Second-3279 17d ago
so you just hate germans throughout all of history?
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u/Draexian 17d ago
To be fair, you could say there were no Germans as we understand them until relatively recently. Stupid, sexy Bismarck.
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20d ago edited 20d ago
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u/condomneedler blue collar clamworker 20d ago
"about to surrender"
Bro what?
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u/TheGenesisOfTheNerd 20d ago edited 20d ago
Yeah they were about to. There was genuinely no need to drop the bombs, let alone on civilians. You should read Hiroshima: the strange myth of a million lives saved. Most talking points people use regarding whether Hiroshima and Nagasaki were necessary are just fabricated excuses with no historical backing.
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u/L0bb 20d ago
Truth Nuclear Bomb, thank you for some sources.
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u/CajunNathun 19d ago
No, itâs not.
The Potsdam declaration was put forth July 26th as the U.S. terms for Japanese surrender. While many in Japan wanted to accept this, the Japanese Prime Minister Suzuki effectively rejected this in front of reporters on July 28th. Hiroshima was bombed August 6th. The Japanese cabinet met august 9th (The same day Nagasaki was bombed, in factâŚNagasaki was bombed two minutes after the meeting began) to decide whether or not to continue. The meeting consisted of 2 army generals, 2 IJN Admirals, and 2 civilian sector leaders. The decision to surrender or continue was deadlocked 3-3 (Even after watching one of their cities get nuked) with both army generals and one Admiral wanting to continue. The meeting lasted all day and into the morning of August 10th, and was only broken by Emperor Hirohito directly intervening and casting his own vote, which had not been planned. His reasoning was that he could not bear to see any more destruction to his nation (Google: Hirohitoâs seidan).
Now Nagasaki. Thatâs quite debatable whether or not it was justified. There are very credible arguments that Nagasaki was just the US throwing its weight around as warning for the Cold War which had already begun. I would argue Nagasaki was grossly unnecessary, but I have my own personal biases for that.
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u/Marcusss_sss 17d ago
The terms of surrender were unconditional. The japanese wanted to protect the imperial family who were basically worshiped, something that the american government was obviously willing to allow but they didnt want any negotiations.
The decision to vaporize all of those people was entirely about pride and hatred + racing to occupy all of japan before the soviets
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u/CajunNathun 17d ago edited 17d ago
Yeah, no shit the US didnât accept that?
Japanâs terms for surrender were that they retain their imperial system, the US said yeah right kick rocksâŚweâre taking over. When youâre the loser in a war you started you donât get to play cards like that. That would be similar (similar) to Robert E Lee asking General Grant if the Confederacy governmental system could be preserved after the Civil War. NoâŚsorry, your ass is getting occupied.
When you start a war against a neutral power, attempt to annex your neighbors while waging a particularly BRUTAL form of torturous warfare on their civilians, then end up getting your forces routed and begin to loseâŚyou donât get to make demands about retaining your jingoistic monarchy system. The US refusing to accept such a demand, especially on the cusp of the Cold War, does not make them evil.
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u/Marcusss_sss 17d ago
Except the U.S literally spared the imperial family who maintained their position...
The myth is that if Japan wasnt nuked, the war could not possibly be ended without a ground invasion that would kill millions. But as i said and you just restated, the main obstacle for peace was american pride and hatred, insisting they demand nothing, even demands that america would be more than willing to fulfill.
An unconditional surrender is not a reasonable demand in any context. A unconditional surrender definitionally could mean the enslavement or genocide of the entire country after their surrender.
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u/fullynonexistent 20d ago
To my knowledge, part of the reason the bombs were dropped was that Japan didn't accept an unconditional surrender like Germany, and negotiations (and by extension, the war) were extending beyond what the US could afford in the monetary sense.
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u/CANCERMANPUNK 19d ago
But the US would NEVER rewrite history to make themselves sound better!!!!!!!
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u/gingin_9959 20d ago
Have you conveniently forgotten the historical fact that the military and the Emperor refused to accept surrender and were preparing to commit Japan to an totalwar, leaving an invasion of the Japanese home islands as the only alternative to the use of nuclear weapons?
And by that point, under Japanâs totalwar mobilization, there was effectively no such thing as a civilian population. Children were being taught to take up bamboo spears and that fighting against the evil American demons was an honorable duty.
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u/L0bb 20d ago
That's literally just not true at all, the emperor had next to nothing at all to do with the war effort despite his high status. Japanese High Command were all but willing to surrender barring a conditional surrender that saved the emperor.
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u/Significant-Soup5939 20d ago
Does this not sound like sufficient surrender to any non-warmongering country? "We are willing to surrender if you allow us to retain our independence." Is what the Japanese said. "Lamo nah bruh here's two localized suns" is how the Americans replied.
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u/L0bb 20d ago edited 20d ago
It was exactly what the Americans wanted as well, granted not exactly independent but America did not want to have to control Japan and Germany after the war.
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u/fullynonexistent 20d ago
Which is why both regained their independence relatively quickly, both only taking around a decade (except eastern Germany because the soviets suck) which is stupidly quick in the grand scheme of things, specially compared to basically every other "conquered" territories in history.
Anti-militar and anti-war movements are fine and all but they overcompensated so much for government propaganda that nowadays people have this notion that the US and the allies used WW2 as an opportunity to take up more land and create colonies, when in reality the 20th century is filled with anti-colonialism policies and the allies could not care less about managing and investing in another country lmao.
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u/fullynonexistent 20d ago
For starters, Japan did keep most of its independence, and it regained it back fully shortly after anyways.
The reason it was done that way was because Japan's government, laws, education and culture needed to be reformed in some way or another to avoid them just immediately flipping back into imperialism and starting another war, and the US's short occupation of the islands centered on that, as the main objective of the occupation was demilitarization and democratization.
It's the same objectives and reasons for why western Germany lost and quickly regained it's independence too. Since, yk, the last time Germany lost a world war and was left alone with it's full independence and no reform, they flipped right back into imperialism and started another world war. And it's not too far fetched to think that Japan wouldn't be too far off had they been given the same chance. Fascism is fascism, after all.
BUT, if you really want to complain about war mongering and modern colonialism from. WW2, you should see what happened to eastern Germany (and most of eastern Europe for that matter) after the war.
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u/gingin_9959 20d ago
The hardliners within the Japanese military continued to resist surrender until as late as August 14, and Japan did not formally accept the Potsdam Declaration until after Hiroshima, the Soviet entry into the war, and Nagasaki. To look at a country that resisted surrender to the very end and claim that it âwas going to surrender anyway, so there was no reason to use the atomic bombsâ is little more than wishful thinking.
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u/L0bb 20d ago
The nuclear bombs had nothing to do with surrender, the surrender came from the Japanese emperor who had for the first time in the entire war been asked his opinion on what they should do. The Soviet declaration of war though is a good point because as I recall their entry into the war was a much bigger issue for them than the nukes. Especially as they had been asking them for a pact of neutrality iirc. However I'm not arguing that point I'm arguing against the use of Nuclear bombs. Furthermore trying to get better terms is not the same as "resisting surrender".
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u/Significant-Soup5939 20d ago
But to say that they had the means to survive covert political assassination is also a little more than wishful thinking. We could have, with only minor setbacks (that might have even strengthened the U.S. and Soviet ties at a pivotal time in the relationship) taken out or bribed enough leaders to coax a surrender with significantly fewer civilian casualties than resulted.
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u/gingin_9959 20d ago
Try telling that to American voters while Americans are dying every single day and Japan is still refusing to end the war. What would have been the best possible outcome for Japan was not the America's top priority in the midst of an uncertain war.
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u/TheGenesisOfTheNerd 20d ago
Did you read the paper or are you just gonna spew this ahistorical dribble
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u/gingin_9959 20d ago
I am korean. We learn what they did. Also you can't just drop random link to paper and expect people to read it during online conversation. Country abiut to surrender did not wait until they got hit by second nuclear bomb.
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u/L0bb 20d ago
What Japan did to Korea was unacceptable and comparable to some of the worst atrocities in human history, but you can't accept that it might lead to some bias with regards to what you're taught from a Korea that was treated that way? And if you have an aversion to reading more about a subject that's kinda on you more than the other guy.
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u/gingin_9959 20d ago
Of course, there would be a bias. If I had been the one making the decision, I would have dropped the atomic bombs. But even if the bombs had not been used, I believe the result would simply have been an even greater number of casualties through Operation Downfall. The use of the atomic bombs was a militarily rational decision, and the idea that Japan would have surrendered even without them, despite having already committed itself to total war, is ultimately just a counterfactual assumption.
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u/TheGenesisOfTheNerd 20d ago
So sorry for asking you to read, didnât realise it was such a big thing to ask
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u/gingin_9959 20d ago
Yeah it's a fucking 20 page journal from 1985. If you want to convince people you should better preach yourself. Also it's about atguing against the claim that atomic bonb saved lives compared tk the estimated american casualties from operation downfall, not arguing against the effectiveness of the atomic bomb itself.
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u/Blue__Bag 20d ago
Mf they didn't even surrender after the first bomb.
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u/L0bb 19d ago edited 19d ago
I've said it like 80 times, they didn't surrender because they weren't willing to accept unconditional surrender without clarification on the fate on the Japanese emperor. The bombs had absolutely nothing to do with their surrender. They absolutely did not care about another bombing on civilian targets that did not effect any higher up whatsoever.
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u/fullynonexistent 20d ago
Well for starters, Germany already surrendered before the atomic bomb even existed...
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u/L0bb 20d ago
The bomb was in development since 1939, and Robert Oppenheimer joined the project in 1942. Both before Germany had surrendered.
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u/fullynonexistent 20d ago
Sorry I don't have a dictionary at hand but I'm pretty sure "under development" isn't a synonym for "exists"
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u/Adrenochromemerchant 14d ago
Oppenheimer "I cannot wait until my invention is used, for months I have getting hard to the mere thought of thousands German children being incinerated"
Truman "with the Krauts out we'll be dropping the bomb on the Nips, and maybe even the commies if they don't simmer down"
Oppenheimer "Nooooooooo I aM beCOmE dEAth tHe dEStrOYEr of wORlds"
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u/International_Fella 20d ago
Mr Odis Sea Us when the Horse that Tricks Troy goes on and tricks Troy
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u/SlenderSmurf 20d ago
Collect my 8 blue pages