Not of what you say is wrong but again, I feel this is hindsight. No one told Truman this bomb might kill another third of it’s direct victims via radiation and poison the ground for a number of years. I also question that anyone had ever done a long term study of radiation effects on health.
why are you saying the bomb didn’t end the war? I don’t know that anyone has asserted that. I thought the discussion was using it on Germany? The bomb was only one factor of the war ending but it was good evidence that when we warned our enemies, they should pay attention but they never did. You would have thought Tokyo would have taught them something but it didn’t.
Thanks for your replies and involvement. My first topic on this forum ushered in a great discussion upon the issue wether the classical theory of the 2 atombombattacks moved the Japanese Empire to surrender or, in my humble opinion, they were forced into surrender because of the Soviet involvement and that blitzkrieg-like (actually Bewegungskrieg) conquest of Manchuria, threatening the occupation of Sachalin and even beating the USA to the finishline.
You may think a lot about the Japanese but they weren’t that stupid to keep up the Bushido stubborn view of keeping up appearances until death when they underwent the full brunt of the Soviet force. Knowing what Stalin had in mind as a dictator, it was a no-brainer to surrender to the USA.
Also, please take into account that the Americans were willing to retain the Emperor Hiro Hito as symbolic head of state, what was essential to the Japanese to prevent loss of face, honourable surrender as a Japanese soldier mostly means Seppooko…ritual suicide
The best available source is still Richard Rhodes’ 1987 book “The Making of the Atomic Bomb”. The short answer is that the original plan was to use the bomb against Germany, but they surrendered before it was available. No target list had been established until the plutonium bomb was proved at the Trinity test.
Tokyo was never on the target list. Using an atomic bomb on Tokyo would have killed Hirohito, and the American planners knew that any surrender would require Hirohito’s approval. Target lists always had more than one city, depending on weather conditions. Remember that Nagasaki was an alternative when there was too much cloud cover over the primary target. The target list for the third bomb included Kyoto.
I agree that they did not know everrything about the long term + the weapon was brand new. I read some US Air Force documents which state that 1 nuke equals 239 B-29s. (you have to have a basis for calculations I guess.
In a what-if scenario it is not unlikely that the Allies would have used nukes against Germany and or its Allies had they become available. This would have been horrible but effective. E.g. Had they dropped a nuke on Kiel, the submarines would have been cooked and the radiation poisoning would prevent it from being used as a submarine base. This might have led to either defiant Nazi’s or complete panic in Germany or both. Hitler probably would not take the hint that it was hopeless.
Also the Allies were prepared to use nukes as a tactical weapon. More horrors. On the other hand the last 2 years of the war were exceedingly bloody.
So, while I don’t like what-ifs because they can go anywhere, the assumption that the Allies would use nukes is not too far fetched.
I’m no expert on this but I did learn that actually Kokura was the destination of the atomic bomb but due to bad weather they went to Nagasaki. Like many things in the war your destiny is based on weather.
Very much so. You had a highly trained elite air crew flying from a state of the art platform but from 30,000 feet, you can’t see what you can’t see. When you only had 1 shot, close wasn’t good enough lol.
Like Dan said very true. With planes weather is still a decider weather we like it or not. In WW2 weather alternates were common so the bad weather in Kokura was good weather for their inhabitants.
Yes. Remember that the Germans were thought to be working on their own bomb (which turned out to be true, but almost pathetically behind the US/GB project). Everybody within the project - because of that - thought the bomb would be used first on Germany. It was only because the Germans were overwhelmed ‘early’ that they lost the a-bomb sweepstakes. (That decision flies in the face of the racist narrative, but there you are.)
As to where it would be dropped in Germany, it would probably be dropped on Berlin in hopes of killing Hitler outright, and completely disrupting the German transport network – taking it from pathetic to non-existent.
The thing to remember is that when Manhattan Project goals were set, the Germans were still at least keeping the Allies at bay. In retrospect, it’s easy to second-guess, but at the time people looked at things differently.
Once Germany surrendered, suddenly (some, like Szilard) developed a conscience and started trying to not drop the bomb on anybody. Truman, who had actual responsibiity, could not afford to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of casualties to Szilard’s ego.
As to bombing Tokyo, it was generally agreed that after the first two bombings - on relatively intact cities for the coldly rational reason of looking at the damage to find out how good the bomb was. But Tokyo was always the third target.
The thing about dropping an atomic bomb on Germany: there are massive ground armies closing in from west and east. After the failure of the Battle of the Bulge the Germans had zero chance of even forcing a draw. Use of an atomic bomb against Germany requires more than simply the absence of a surrender by Aug 1945; the war needs to still be hanging in the balance or deadlocked. Which is really unlikely unless there is a point of divergence much earlier. In an alternate history where there is no Eastern Front (Soviets lose or somehow the Nazis hold off attacking them) then atomic bombing Germany becomes a real possibility.
Contrast that to the Pacific where atomic bombs are seen as an opportunity to avert an invasion of the home islands. Based on Okinawa, the Allies had every reason to expect a bloodbath on Kyushu and Honshu. And even after the capture of Tokyo the Japanese might still hold out, especially if the Emperor told them to do so.
I would argue that if events have changed such that Germany has not surrendered by August 1945 enough has changed militarily for the “deadlocked” condition to be met…
It’s difficult to look at history in a vacuum. A more plausible reason for the first atomic bomb being dropped first on Germany, probably Berlin, was if D-Day had failed and there wasn’t the closing of the ring around Germany by 1945.
There is no end to the number of what if games you can play. Safe to say if the war with Germany was still going in August, odds are they would have been targeted. Ending the war with Germany always took priority over Japan.
Were there concrete plans? Not that I know of but after Trinity, the bomb could have shipped to Europe even easier. Were there bases in Europe to handle B29’s? I’m sure they could have set something up. Only worry was not getting the bomber shot down….that would have given them pause.
These subs were made to carry small aircraft, armed with biological and chemical weapons. They had the range to circumnavigate the globe twice, and their targets were initially LA and SF. It is VERY interesting that those just happen to accidentally be where we dropped atomic bombs. Isnt it?
What I have alluded to above comes from official US Navy history. There are a lot of reasons we dropped those bombs where we did. NOTE Reasons are not justifications per se.Is it justifiable to use nuclear weapons to counter force a location that has/is involved in/ is proximate to biotoxic and chemical weapons?
I say maybe. We can only speculate that the war would’ve ended just as fast, not resulted in millions more dead in China, and SE Asia let alone Japan, etc. Or even a few bombs full of Bubonic plague, anthrax or nerve agents used on US soil. without the bombs.
You’re thinking of this with a present day mindset that lumps NBC weapons together. In 1945, the atomic bomb wasn’t seen as something like mustard gas. It was just a really, really big bomb.
If the US was worried about the I-400 subs making special attacks on the Pacific Coast they could have just as easily bombed those cities with conventional attacks.
There’s also no reason everyone involved to have lied by omission about the I-400s being the motivation for the targets.
The present day mindset could as easily say that the USA of Truman in 1945 would’ve seen any reason to not drop that one big bomb instead of firebombing a whole city to get at the industrial base supporting Japans remaining war fighting capacity.
The “lie of omission” you speak of … the US took steps to classify and keep critical information about them from the USSR after the war. Going so far as to sink them and all other captured Japanese submarines rather than let the USSR examine them. Japanese submarine I-400 - Wikipedia Such lies of omission are known as secrets.
Remember the post war environment almost instantly became the cold war. The USSR and USA would race to capture German and Japanese scientist and research. There are your motives. To keep information from the USSR. The fruits of this race would lead to first the USA then the USSR having SSBN’s.
I heard a funny story. Shorty after the Cuban missile crisis. Kruscheve witnessed the first launch from a Soviet SSBN. He did a little happy dance and said “now the Americans can kiss my @$$!” While slapping his own butt. Saw that in a documentary. At least that’s how I remember it.
I also found a nice 1:30 minute long documentary, part of the Color of War series from a while back talking about these weapons. I don’t know why Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the choices. It just seems oddly conincidental that the prefectures that housed the infrastructure to build, base, and support these things got attacked in such a manner. That we had broken all their naval codes but somehow had no idea of these incredible machines … ok that seems to be the standard story. Accidental nuclear counterforce???
If we were having this conversation in 1950 then you could plausibly argue the I-400 or some other secret reason might have been while Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed. But we’re having it in 2023. The explanation of why Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen has not changed in 78 years. If the I-400s had been the reason for the attack, especially as some kind of extreme weapon retaliation, then there would be evidence of it. If there was concern about the Soviets finding out the information would have still been written down, just in a Classified or Top Secret document, that would by now have been declassified. “It just makes logical sense to me” proves nothing.
Nagasaki wasn’t even the original target for the second attack. Kokura was the intended target, but weather meant it wasn’t possible to aim the bomb so the attack was on Nagasaki instead.
The movie Oppenheimer touches on this. The Allies thought the Germans had a 12-18 month head start on developing a fission weapon. However, at one point in the film (not sure if this actually happened in real life) Oppenheimer says to Leslie Grove that the Allies biggest advantage is antisemitism, since Hitler associates Quantum Physics with Jews since it was originally conceived by Albert Einstein. As a result, he posits that Hitler won’t give Heisenberg & his other physicists the resources they need to make a weapon. Also, the Germans were trying to use heavy water, which is a fusion bomb. Both the attacks in Norway and the fact you need a fission bomb to cause a fusion device to work made the German approach a practical impossibility in 1944. In any event, had they had the bomb before Germany surrendered, there was a very good chance the Allies would have used it, since the goal had always been to use the atomic bomb on Germany, not Japan.
Regarding the question of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as targets, the Americans had compiled a list of a dozen possible targets in Japan. They then set a criteria of a large urban area more then 3 miles in diameter that had been largely undamaged by bombing to that point. This narrowed it down to Hiroshima, Kyoto, Kokura & Yokohama. US Secretary of War Henry Stimson immediately struck Kyoto from the list because of its cultural significance to the Japanese as well as a personal attachment to the city (he had honeymooned there with his wife - such are the things that guide the thought processes of powerful men). He then added Nagasaki in its place. Hiroshima was chosen to be hit by the first bomb, to be followed by Kokura. However this city was spared due to heavy cloud cover on the day of the second bombing, so the alternate city Nagasaki was bombed instead.
