Very true. As we all know, the Japanese Empire - a direct democracy with unanimous support from not only the Japanese residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki but also the Korean POWs - had it coming. Plus, if the Soviets invaded then they would have nuked Japan FOUR times. Trust me.
His own argument counters his point.
Yes, he is absolutely correct that the soviet invasion occured hours before the second nuke, which is exactly what caused the supreme council to meet to discuss surrender.
The Supreme Council was already meeting to discuss surrender when the second nuke dropped. Unless they had fortunetellers on the Council, there is no way the second bomb could have triggered the surrender.
Surrendering to the Americans let them guarantee a continued imperial line. It also gave them the convenient excuse of being able to blame something totally outside their control for the loss. Americans got to test their weapons and preempt the soviets in the region.
A logical consequence of idealism, unfortunately.
“the effects of the atom bombs were more psychological than physical”
stares in charred bodies
That’s odd how that shadow is burnt into the ground🤔I assume the0.02 seconds of Mental scarring was worse than the incineration they received a millisecond later
I’m sure slowly dying of radiation poisoning is quite demoralizing.
!!!Warning: PDF LINK!!!
This is what idealism does to a motherfucker. Focus on the political games of great men to such an extent that it saps them entirely of the most basic foundations of human empathy.
People died and suffered for no fucking reason other than to stoke the egos of imperialists, including a hugely disproportionate number of Korean and Chinese slaves (source: linked pdf). What a heroic move! What fucking saviours of humanity! Absolutely not fucking psychopaths.
After four decades, the only scientist to leave the Manhattan Project finally admitted this in 1985:
During one such conversation Groves said that, of course, the real purpose in making the bomb was to subdue the Soviets. (Whatever his exact words, his real meaning was clear.) […] Until then I had thought that our work was to prevent [an Axis] victory, and now I was told that the weapon [that] we were preparing was intended for use against the people who were making extreme sacrifices for that very aim. […] When it became evident, toward the end of 1944, that the [Axis] had abandoned their bomb project, […] I asked for permission to leave and return to Britain.
It is good to see somebody acknowledging some of the Empire of Japan’s violence against civilians, but two wrongs don’t make a right. Most of the victims of the bombings were civilians who had no direct involvement in their government’s atrocities, and we’ve seen from the Axis’s reprisals how counterproductive it was to use the local civilians as whipping boys, so punishing them for ‘their’ military’s atrocities is not only grossly unfair but wasteful.
Can someone please ELI5 what is being pointed out?
