Nuclear weapons

[Gmac]

Oliver stones untold history of the United States on Netflix does an episode or 2 on this , his take is that Truman wanted to show the power of the bomb to Stalin and use it as a bargaining chip .

[Eamonnca1]

There was a good article in one of the Sunday papers last weekend about nuclear weapons and it said that only 0.7% of the uranium payload fissioned (if that's a word) and it still managed to take out about 80000 people. Nagasaki was a plutonium based bomb. The fact that they dropped 2 different types in fairly sharp succession could be a sign of experimentation.

Ever read Dead Cities and Other Tales by Mike Davis? It goes into detail about the testing range the US military constructed to accurately mimic the materials and construction of Japanese houses in order to perfect the technique of igniting a firestorm in a residential area with incendiary bombs, which is why the firebombing of Tokyo was so deadly.

[Milltown Row2]

As Radio has said I was always under the impression that the nukes were a deterrent towards stopping a 3rd world war.

They've done that for over 75 years, considering the developments in nukes and the ease in which they could be used I'm surprised, given the opportunities in the past, that they have never been used since Japan.

The atrocities at the death camps,  the numerous genocides that took place in Africa Eastern Europe, Cambodia. The raping of Nanjing to name but a few.

I think the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima was more of a message than an ending of the war, Russia did push it after the war and moved in on those Eastern European countries without actually being stopped.

Who knows what would have happened if the US and the Russians didn't have them

[GetOverTheBar]

There is another aspect to it that was probably of consideration.

It was feared - rightly or wrongly, but the American psyche regarding communism is well known for being... eccentricity - that the Soviets might get ambitions of taking over the rest of Europe. Therefore, the thought train being that dropping the two bombs would put all that to bed.


Who knows, perhaps ending WW2 with the two bombs stopped WW3 from starting a few years later.

It almost certainly helped 'calm' things until the death of Stalin, who was ailing ever since the end of WW2 depending on who you want to believe and had a flattened Western Russia to rebuild grabbing of as much of Europe has he could to extend the borders of Western Russia.

The Cuban Missile wasn't a million years after that either, as the story goes, one Soviet didn't do what he was supposed to and probably saved the world as we know it. You surely have to think the Atomic Bombs were still fresh in peoples minds in those years. Must have been an insane time to live.

As for dropping of the bombs, some great points raised. It was a war, so the dropping of the bomb itself was just in my opinion. The Japanese refused to surrender despite surely knowing since Midway it was all over, certainly as far as their expansion was concerned.

The dropping of the second bomb as before stated was definitely a message, just 3 days later....not really enough time for a country to really get it's ducks in a row in 1945 to surrender, which obviously would have been unheard of to the Japanese anyway. You have to think the Soviet landgrab in Europe was most certainly a factor in the dropping of the 2nd bomb, I've always thought the long held story that the Japanese would never have surrendered wasn't given enough time to play out.

[Jeepers Creepers]

To think that killing 140k people as a warning to another country who at that point weren't involved.

[macdanger2]

There is another aspect to it that was probably of consideration.

It was feared - rightly or wrongly, but the American psyche regarding communism is well known for being... eccentricity - that the Soviets might get ambitions of taking over the rest of Europe. Therefore, the thought train being that dropping the two bombs would put all that to bed.


Who knows, perhaps ending WW2 with the two bombs stopped WW3 from starting a few years later.

Why two bombs though? Surely one was deterrent enough. As Tony says though, it may have been to test out the two different types of bombs

[GetOverTheBar]

To think that killing 140k people as a warning to another country who at that point weren't involved.

Censored Media, what did people back then actually really know? Would be worth a google to see the headlines and stories of the days after the bomb from different countries to see exactly what was said from all sides.

Many of the war time stereotypes and thinks that were promoted back then still stick, like people get Surprised on twitter when the German clubs get involved in banter and the likes....we have always been led to believe they were robotic....this type of thing.

[lurganblue]

Listened to a Dan Snow podcast episode on this today. Worth a listen
https://open.spotify.com/episode/4NwbflanmtGhDaK7psCCUu?si=jbFiC3muSQyf1idvpq-5og

[Baile Brigín 2]

To think that killing 140k people as a warning to another country who at that point weren't involved.

Censored Media, what did people back then actually really know? Would be worth a google to see the headlines and stories of the days after the bomb from different countries to see exactly what was said from all sides.

Many of the war time stereotypes and thinks that were promoted back then still stick, like people get Surprised on twitter when the German clubs get involved in banter and the likes....we have always been led to believe they were robotic....this type of thing.

Whatever about the general public, the intelligence services would have been well aware

[GetOverTheBar]

To think that killing 140k people as a warning to another country who at that point weren't involved.

Censored Media, what did people back then actually really know? Would be worth a google to see the headlines and stories of the days after the bomb from different countries to see exactly what was said from all sides.

Many of the war time stereotypes and thinks that were promoted back then still stick, like people get Surprised on twitter when the German clubs get involved in banter and the likes....we have always been led to believe they were robotic....this type of thing.

Whatever about the general public, the intelligence services would have been well aware

Not necessarily, by all accounts it took Japan over a day to figure out exactly what had happened and only realised after a USA communication it was their worst fears.

They lost absolutely every bit of communication, can't imagine the mess it must have been in 1945. They were down to word of mouth in the end.

[armaghniac]

There is another aspect to it that was probably of consideration.

It was feared - rightly or wrongly, but the American psyche regarding communism is well known for being... eccentricity - that the Soviets might get ambitions of taking over the rest of Europe. Therefore, the thought train being that dropping the two bombs would put all that to bed.


Who knows, perhaps ending WW2 with the two bombs stopped WW3 from starting a few years later.

Why two bombs though? Surely one was deterrent enough. As Tony says though, it may have been to test out the two different types of bombs

The Japanese were unwilling to surrender after the first one.

[Eamonnca1]

They were trying to surrender all summer long.

[Milltown Row2]

They were trying to surrender all summer long.

So many different debates on this and conflicting views on it that your post can't be taken as red.