Americans Launch Attack

[NUKE]

And British intelligence stopped the availability of Exorcets around the world to stop them falling into Argentine hands, they also went under cover to pretend to sell Exorcets to Argentina to stop them looking elsewhere.  France rightly stopped shipments as they are in NATO.  Similarly, you could argue how the conflict could have been different if the RN hadn't disbanded their large conventional aircraft carriers?

I think one of the key moments often overlooked was the sinking of the Belgrano by the nuclear sub HMS Conquerer, this proved that the British meant business to protect the task force.  The Vulcan Black Buck missions also showed the Argie scum that RAF bombers were able to strike at that distance from bases in England, and hit mainland Argentina if necessary.

I was a junior in high school at the time and followed it very closely. At the very beginning,  before the Brits mobilized, my math teacher told me that the Brits meant business.

I remember how outraged I was that the French sent a team of technicians to Argentina from the beginning and through the war in order to help them get the Exocets operational. I still can't believe they did that. Cost some good Brits their lives.

You guys proved that you still had a backbone. Your military went around the globe and fought a pretty good Argentine airforce from the sea with very few planes. Really, it is pretty amazing to me.

[Vulcan]

America did the world a great favour nuking Japan.

Japan did not surrender, the world was sick of the war they started. Japan also committed attrocious war cimes against both military and civilian prisoners. Japan also used biological weapons against civilian populations in China, they were trying to use such weapons against the US and if they had nuclear capability would have certainly used that as well (they were trying to use dirty bombs towards the end).

Anyone who thinks the nuking and firebombing was unnecessary is some sort of left wing pacifist lesbian man hating tree hugger. It saved allied lives in not requiring the invasion of mainland japan, and at that time allied lives were all that mattered to us. If japan didn't want to suffer civilian casualties they shouldn't have started a war they couldn't finish.

[SaburoS]

Here we go again...
This gets regurgitated more than the "If WWII had been an RTS" or a "Voss" thread.
War is supposed to be brutal. It is unfair. It is what makes it a thing to avoid until all other options are tried first.
Any other of the major 'players' of that war would have used the Atomic Bomb had they had it first and the ability to deliver it. It is used to wipe out the enemy's population. It is to send the strongest possible signal for the enemy to end its war against the friendlies as the most pro-war enemy fanatic could not hope of victory. Heck the survival of their country's population comes into question.
Japan would have used it on the US and possibly England. Germany would have used it on the USSR, England, and the US. England would have used it on Germany. The USSR would have used it on Germany and possibly on Japan.
The same goes for firebombing. Firebombing is the "poor man's" atomic bomb attack. Had England had an atomic bomb they would have dropped it on Dresden instead of the firebombing. Germany on London (if they had  a heavy bomber).
Now having said that, do I feel sorry for the innocent civilians that have to pay the ultimate price for their leader's bad judgment for entering that war? Sure do. Wars are rarely 'clean'.
War is dirty, vicious, deadly, unfair, and brutal. That's the way it has been, is, and always will be.

[straffo]

I was a junior in high school at the time and followed it very closely. At the very beginning,  before the Brits mobilized, my math teacher told me that the Brits meant business.

I remember how outraged I was that the French sent a team of technicians to Argentina from the beginning and through the war in order to help them get the Exocets operational. I still can't believe they did that. Cost some good Brits their lives.

You guys proved that you still had a backbone. Your military went around the globe and fought a pretty good Argentine airforce from the sea with very few planes. Really, it is pretty amazing to me.

you should better remember those technicians where in Argentina before start of the war and how they where forbidden to leave Argentina.

[NUKE]

you should better remember those technicians where in Argentina before start of the war and how they where forbidden to leave Argentina.

Hey Straffo! <S>

I did not know that. That makes more sense to me.

[themaj]

I'd like to see a source to that.  Probably Japanese if there was one...  

IMO, the japs did not get anywhere near what they deserved for starting that war.  If I had been President, we would have turned their home islands into a glowing crater.

I by all means am no history prof, but this is from wilkpedia:


"By the end of 1944 and the beginning of 1945, the Japan campaign was underway as Allied forces closed in on the home islands. By the end of January 1945, some Japanese officials close to the Emperor were seeking surrender terms which would protect his position. These proposals, sent through both British and American channels were assembled by General Douglas MacArthur into a 40-page dossier and given to President Roosevelt on the 2nd of February, two days before the Yalta conference. The dossier was reportedly dismissed by Roosevelt out of hand - the proposals contained all had the condition that Emperor's position would be assured, albeit possibly as a puppet ruler. At this time, however, the allied policy was to accept only an unconditional offer of surrender, although the eventual August settlement did keep the position of emperor in place[5]."

Personal opinion:
If my enemy wants to talk peace & atone for the crimes against me, I would listen. The firebombing drove the point home, the atomic drop was not neccessary. Reminder this my personal opinion, someone who is 100% detached.

[Vulcan]

I by all means am no history prof, but this is from wilkpedia:


"By the end of 1944 and the beginning of 1945, the Japan campaign was underway as Allied forces closed in on the home islands. By the end of January 1945, some Japanese officials close to the Emperor were seeking surrender terms which would protect his position. These proposals, sent through both British and American channels were assembled by General Douglas MacArthur into a 40-page dossier and given to President Roosevelt on the 2nd of February, two days before the Yalta conference. The dossier was reportedly dismissed by Roosevelt out of hand - the proposals contained all had the condition that Emperor's position would be assured, albeit possibly as a puppet ruler. At this time, however, the allied policy was to accept only an unconditional offer of surrender, although the eventual August settlement did keep the position of emperor in place[5]."

Personal opinion:
If my enemy wants to talk peace & atone for the crimes against me, I would listen. The firebombing drove the point home, the atomic drop was not neccessary. Reminder this my personal opinion, someone who is 100% detached.

Yeah wikipedia is a devine source (not).

it's well known that the civilian government was pushing for surrender but the japanese military were still hanging out, even after the first bomb on hiroshima the military did not want to surrender. They wanted to go down in a blaze of glory, devil be damned if they took the civies with them.

[Gh0stFT]

Personal opinion:
the atomic drop was not neccessary.

drop´s, not drop.

and what SkyRock said:
"Two wrongs do not make a right." 

[NUKE]

and what SkyRock said:
"Two wrongs do not make a right." 

Yeah, but two nukes makes the war over. Good call!

If Germany had nukes, they would not have stopped using them until they conquered the world. We used them to end the war THEN we went on to rebuild Europe and Japan and let them run themselves.





 

[ROX]

"Operation Olympic"/"Operation Coronet" was already on paper and the plans to invade Japan had been laid out.  The best estimates, based on prevoius battles in the Pacific, pointed at over 1,000,000 US losses alone.  This does NOT include an estimated 3,000,000 to 4,000,000 Japanese military & civillian losses.

The option to use nuclear weapons technology to bring the quickest end to the Pacific war as possible, in the end, saved millions of lives on both sides, and Truman knew it.

I wouldn't want to have been in Truman's shoes.  The navigator of the Enola Gay lives 18 miles from me...I wouldn't want to have been in his shoes either.

For those who cannot grasp the meaning of "Total War", it means a country or entity using all or most all of the weapons/manpower/technology that it has available to it at that point in history.  

The American Union forces in the Civil War introducing multiple shot repeating rifles to it's troops at the beginning of the Atlanta Campaign is an example.  American forces using nuclear weapon at the end of WWII is another.

The United States has had nerve agents, poison gas, and other chemical weapons, but up to this point in time have refused to use them.  This is an example of an exception to "Total War"

Those implying that the US used nukes AFTER Japan surrendered () are either trolling, or just plain ignorant of history.  

If anything, I hope threads like this sends people scurrying to their local libraries and Books-A-Millions to learn more about history

I have no idea what school districts are teaching in other countries, but American school districts are woefully lacking in teaching American/World history from about 1900 to present.  I hope that changes.



ROX

[Lumpy]

I must agree that Japanese women have truly mutated in very strange ways.

What have we done to their gene pool???


(Image removed from quote.)

Who is she? She's gorgeous.

[Gh0stFT]

NUKE

IF?

How do you know all this things what didnt happen?
we are speaking about real History, things done, not IF's.

[NUKE]

NUKE

IF?

How do you know all this things what didnt happen?
we are speaking about real History, things done, not IF's.

Well, lets see..

Germany did not hold out on anything, They killed millions of people. I guess that if they had an A-Bomb, they would have been nice and never used it....even though they used every other weapon they could come up with in any attempt to win a war THEY started.

[Bodhi]

We all hope you will never even dream of becoming a president.

Don't worry, I don't want to nuke Finland.  Maybe Iran and North Korea, but thats about it.   

[Shuckins]

The drops WERE necessary.  The Japanese Army's leadership had no intentions of allowing the civilian government to surrender.  Members of that government that made attempts to meet with the emperor to try to persuade him to surrender were summarily assassinated by the Army.

I suppose we could have done the "honorable" thing and gone ahead with Operation Downfall, the invasion of Japan.  Secretary of War Stimson's staff, working off of information provided by military experts who had studied American casualty rates in the Philippines and on Okinawa, estimated that American forces would suffer between 400,000 and 800,000 casualties, and five to ten million Japanese.

 Much of Japan's military-industrial base consisted of cottage industries.  There were few nerve centers to strike.  Japanese civilian centers were constructed largely of wooden structures, with internal walls consisting largely of paper.  Bombing attacks during any period of high-winds would have produced the same results as attacks deliberately designed to burn out these civilian population centers.

With an intransigent and brutal Army leadership bent on fighting to the last Japanese, with 65 divisions being equipped and trained to resist the landing, with tens of thousands of aircraft being hoarded for massed Kamikazi attacks designed to overwhelm U.S. fleet defenses, and horrendous casualties foreseen as a means of forcing the Allies to end the fighting on terms more favorable to the Japanese,  the U.S. had little choice but to use any means at its disposal to force an end to the struggle.

Considering that the Japanese had treated her subject peoples with unwarrented brutality, had killed millions of Chinese civilians in order to terrorize them into submission, had tortured and executed Allied prisoners out-of-hand, had used other prisoners in hideous scientific experiments, and had forced hundreds of thousands of Chinese women to become prostitutes to service the Japanese fighting man, to say nothing of the hundreds of thousands of civilians killed by Japanese bombing of civilian centers and in reprisals for partisan attacks......considering all of that....and much more.....rational students of history can only conclude that the Japanese military was fully as brutish as that of the Nazis.

Thus, your sympathies for the Japanese are misplaced, and your condemnation of the actions of your own country is unseemly and ill-informed.  I have little respect for a nation that refuses to come to grips with the evils of its own past, and instead continues to portray itself as a civilized nation that was the victim of undeserved violence.