I think he would have. He was no intellectual. The people making the bomb found it very difficult to communicate to decision makers just what this monster was that they had created and I think it is asking too much of FDR to assume he could have had that insight and weighed it against the horrible costs of the war. I am not sure either that the Japanese would have understood the concept of the bomb any better than the American leadership. What would you have suggested - a Powerpoint presentation? In that context, I wonder if he could reasonably have seen this being qualitatively different to, for example, the firebombing of cities already taking place in Germany and - more horribly because of the types of construction used there - in Japan. And remember just how appalling was the experience of the final fall of Berlin and how astonishing the continued resistance of the Japanese military in every action through the Pacific campaign. This was a very violent war. Indescribably so. And when you consider the behaviour of both the Germans and the Japanese, it is very hard to feel less than total, extreme and violent anger. It is an anachronism to ask its participants to view it with the wisdom of our hindsight and even with hindsight and our current affection (really) for both nations as they have become, I for one cannot feel dispassionate.
That said, I look forward to a successor to FDR having the wisdom and the integrity to outlaw these weapons as an affront to humanity. It appears to me, now that we do understand their power and effects, that there is no conceivable way they could be used without committing a war crime of huge magnitude and it follows to me that conspiracy to use them is itself immoral.
Originally posted by kmax87....erm that may have sounded slightly bizarre except for the fact that I took to its logical conclusion the full import of the title "Would FDR have nuked Japan" ie to whit, not that he didn't and would he have dropped the two bombs that Truman authorized, but would he have ever contemplated Nuking Japan off the map. Seems a bit silly now thinking of it that way, but there you are when I looked at the title it just struck me that way......
and render a whole region of the world uninhabitable for how long, and unable to be used and be harnessed into rebuilding this new world order we had to have?
Originally posted by AThousandYoungOf course he would have.
See title.
You think FDR spent years and such enormous resources to produce a weapon that they weren't going to use?
As for finnegan's point, the reason that the bomb was seen as comparable to the firebombings of places like Dresden is because it was.
Was the bombing justified?
Well, consider this.
The battle of Berlin alone caused about a million casualties in dead or wounded soldiers and civilians. Probably about half of those were deaths. And the battle of Berlin started long after the war was tactically over and the outcome no longer in doubt. And there were many other battles that occurred during the invasion of Germany resulting in hundreds of thousands of further casualties.
An invasion of Japan might have been even worse.
The US suffered about 300,000 total deaths during the entire course of WWII. an invasion of Japan almost certainly would have cost at least that many deaths and may have taken years to execute.
If you want to talk about truly controversial bombings by the Allies during WWII, you should start with Dresden, not Hiroshima. The Dresden bombing resulted in similar numbers of deaths and was, even at the time, of dubious military value. In retrospect, the Dresden bombing had virtually no effect of speeding up the end of the war. Hiroshima, on the other hand, had a massive effect in speeding up the end of the war.
Originally posted by kmax87Since when do you worry about your own posts sounding a little bizarre from time to time? 😉
....erm that may have sounded slightly bizarre except for the fact that I took to its logical conclusion the full import of the title "Would FDR have nuked Japan" ie to whit, not that he didn't and would he have dropped the two bombs that Truman authorized, but would he have ever contemplated Nuking Japan off the map. Seems a bit silly now thinking of it that way, but there you are when I looked at the title it just struck me that way......
Of course it is worth remembering that we have Japanese players on this site, at least one of whom had the incomparable decency to lose his game against me. I also have a son living in Tokyo with a Japanese girlfriend and I am struggling with some Michel Thomas lessons in Japanese. Yet my wife's father fought the Japanese in Burma and never recovered from the experience; he called them the cruelest people on earth and had some justice in that. Mind you, he was not a very nice man himself, presumably as a consequence. It certainly helps me to spot the difference between a necessary war, fought hard and without compromise, and genocide which is what nuclear weapons offer.
Originally posted by AThousandYoung(edited to add Potsdam Declaration.)
See title.
1939 09 01: Bombing of Wielun turns WWII into a World War, Luftwaffe, 1K killed.
1939 09 01: Bombing/shelling of Warsaw, Luftwaffe, 40K killed.
1940 09 07: Firebombing of London, Coventry, etc. starts, Luftwaffe (the Blitz).
1940 05 10: Firebombing of London, Coventry, etc. ends.
1940 05 14: Bombing of Rotterdam, NL, Luftwaffe, 1K killed.
1940 05 14: Bombing of Hamburg begins, RAF.
1941 12 07: Bombing of Pearl Harbor, IJNAS (Imperial Japanese Naval Air Service), 2.4K killed.
1943 07 24: Firebombing of Hamburg, USAAF and RAF, 50K killed.
1945 02 13: Firebombing of Dresden, USAAF and RAF, 25K-35K killed.
1945 02 19: B-29 missions against Tokyo start.
1945 02 25: Firebombing of Tokyo, USAF, 28,000 buildings destroyed.
1945 03 10: Firebombing of Tokyo, USAF, 100K killed.
1945 03 17: Firebombing of Kobe, USAF, 9K killed.
1945 04 12: FDR dies suddenly (stroke). ===========================
1945 04 30: Hitler suicides.
1945 05 07: Germany surrenders.
1945 07 20: Attempt to bomb Japanese Imperial Palace misses in overcast.
1945 07 26: Potsdam Declaration (Truman/Churchill/Chiang), This ultimatum stated that, if Japan did not surrender, it would face "prompt and utter destruction."
1945 07 28: Premier Kantaro Suzuki rejects Potsdam Declaration.
1945 08 06: Nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, USAF, 140K killed (inc. deaths up to end of 1945).
1945 08 09: Nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, USAF, 80K killed (inc. deaths up to end of 1945).
1945 08 10: B-29 missions against Tokyo end (last mission).
1945 08 15: Japan surrenders: Emperor Hirohito accepts the Potsdam Declaration.
1945 11 01: Scheduled commencement of invasion of Kyushu (not carried out).
1946 03 10: Scheduled commencement of invasion of Honshu (not carried out).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerial_bombing_of_cities
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firebombing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_bombing_during_World_War_II
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mokusatsu
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyokuon-h%C5%8Ds%C5%8D
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Hamburg_in_World_War_II
Operation Gomorrah caused at least 50,000 deaths, and left over a million German civilians homeless. Approximately 3,000 aircraft were deployed, 9,000 tons of bombs were dropped, and over 250,000 homes and houses were destroyed.[citation needed] No subsequent city raid shook Germany as did that on Hamburg; documents show that German officials were thoroughly alarmed, and there is some indication from later Allied interrogations of Nazi officials that Hitler stated that further raids of similar weight would force Germany out of the war. Hamburg was hit by air raids another 69 times before the end of World War II.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_bombing_during_World_War_II#United_States_strategic_bombing_of_Japan
United States strategic bombing of Japan
The United States strategic bombing of Japan took place between 1942 and 1945. In the last seven months of the campaign, a change to firebombing tactics resulted in great destruction of 67 Japanese cities, as many as 500,000 Japanese deaths and some 5 million more made homeless. Emperor Hirohito's viewing of the destroyed areas of Tokyo in March 1945, is said to have been the beginning of his personal involvement in the peace process, culminating in Japan's surrender five months later.[112]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_bombing_during_World_War_II#United_States_strategic_bombing_of_Japan
Conventional bombing damage to Japanese cities in WWII[111] City ↓ % area
destroyed ↓
Yokohama 58
Tokyo 51
Toyama 99
Nagoya 40
Osaka 35.1
Nishinomiya 11.9
Shimonoseki 37.6
Kure 41.9
Kobe 55.7
Omuta 35.8
Wakayama 50
Kawasaki 36.2
Okayama 68.9
Yahata 21.2
Kagoshima 63.4
Amagasaki 18.9
Sasebo 41.4
Moji 23.3
Miyakonojō 26.5
Nobeoka 25.2
Miyazaki 26.1
Ube 20.7
Saga 44.2
Imabari 63.9
Matsuyama 64
Fukui 86
Tokushima 85.2
Sakai 48.2
Hachioji 65
Kumamoto 31.2
Isesaki 56.7
Takamatsu 67.5
Akashi 50.2
Fukuyama 80.9
Aomori 30
Okazaki 32.2
Ōita 28.2
Hiratsuka 48.4
Tokuyama 48.3
Yokkaichi 33.6
Ujiyamada 41.3
Ōgaki 39.5
Gifu 63.6
Shizuoka 66.1
Himeji 49.4
Fukuoka 24.1
Kōchi 55.2
Shimizu 42
Omura 33.1
Chiba 41
Ichinomiya 56.3
Nara 69.3
Tsu 69.3
Kuwana 75
Toyohashi 61.9
Numazu 42.3
Choshi 44.2
Kofu 78.6
Utsunomiya 43.7
Mito 68.9
Sendai 21.9
Tsuruga 65.1
Nagaoka 64.9
Hitachi 72
Kumagaya 55.1
Hamamatsu 60.3
Maebashi 64.2
