by Sean Gabb
According to The Daily Mail, “The bravery of Bomber Command can be summed up by a single, miserable statistic: almost half did not survive the war. No other unit could claim such a deplorable life expectancy. They’d have been safer sitting at home playing Russian roulette with a loaded pistol.”
I’m sick of this endless war porn. Bravery is not in itself praiseworthy. It takes bravery of a sort to go about strangling little girls, and none at all to hang the swine afterwards. We have it on judicial authority that it takes bravery to burgle a house. I think Himmler said something about the bravery of his execution squads in Russia – and it does take more than average firmness of mind to murder people in cold blood. Bravery is not the same as heroism. The men of Bomber Command might have brought less discredit to this country had they stayed at home and played Russian roulette.
I don’t regard showering enemy civilians with high explosive as a particularly heroic act – and one of my great uncles by marriage was in the Dambusters Raid. I think far better of one of my grandfathers. He volunteered for the Navy in 1939, and was at the Dunkirk Evacuation. He went missing for several days, after he’d given up his place in a boat to a wounded soldier. That was heroism. He helped scuttle the French fleet, and killed a French sailor who tried to put a knife in his back. I suppose that was heroism, and it was in the glorious tradition of Trafalgar and the Nile. He sowed the Atlantic with depth charges, and tough luck German submariners. He spent time in the Eastern Mediterranean, though doing what I never did learn. He did convoy duty to Murmansk – which involved heroism, whatever you may think of our Soviet allies. His ship went down at the Casablanca Landings, with him still on it, which was simply unfortunate. But he deserves to be called a hero. If he did his bit in a questionable war, those he killed were all in uniform, and they could and would have killed him had the fortune of battle gone differently. And thanks to some loophole in his terms of service, my grandmother had to take the British State to the very courthouse steps to get her war widow’s pension.
It would do much for our national self-respect if we simply forgot about Bomber Command. Or, if a memorial is needed, we do have those pictures of Hamburg and Cologne and Dresden, etc etc.
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Adolf Hitler, the Nazi party and the German population who supported him knew full well the power politics of the time, and that any attempt to construct a new German Empire would likely- almost certainly- lead to a war, and that that would be a total war. Hitler gambled that Britain wouldn’t have the stomach for it. When it was clear that we had, he had ample opportunity to surrender. He had even more ample opportunity when it became clear that Germany was going to lose.
The German people were happy to cheer their “heroes” when it seemed they were winning; happy to allow the concentration camps, happy to imagine future wealth plundered from a decimated Russia, waving their weenie flags and heiling Seig, whoever he was.
Sorry, I’ve no sympathy at all for them. Not a smidge. Bravo, Bomber Command!
Let’s apply your principles to another case: “The Infidel population and the politicians they elected knew well the likely response from within the House of Islam. Yet, swollen with pride, they unleashed their bombs and their mercenaries upon our lands. They had ample chance to pull back afterwards, and to make compensation. They had seen the hopelessness of their defences against our just revenge. Yet, wilfully believing their lies, the Infidels still voted for their politicians. What right, therefore, have they to bleat when our Brothers filled the London Underground with poison gas?”
I don’t think so in either case. Given a just cause, it is not wrong to kill men in uniform. It is regrettable but perhaps not wrong to kill limited numbers civilians when they stand in the way of a legitimate military target, hitting which will – reasonably considered – shorten the overall sufferings of war. It is wrong to target civilian populations for the purpose of breaking an enemy’s will to continue fighting. It is barbarism.
Bomber Command was guilty of war atrocities. So was the Luftwaffe when it bombed London and Coventry. So was the USAF when it dropped those atom bombs. The reason I single out Bomber Command is that it was filled with our people.
Tend to agree with Ian B on this one.
Also, I believe the numbers of women who voted for Adolf were such that he could not have been elected without them.
OT: IanB–I don’t know if you have come across it before but the US website
“The Honest Courtesan” might be a place that your ideas might well receive a sympathetic hearing. Maggie McNeil is a former sex worker who is cultered and intelligent and has no time for puritans, prodnoses or cops. Just a thought.
That would be cultured rather cultered–although I think “cultered” could yet win a place in the dictionary.
Well indeed Sean, couldn’t agree more. It does stand to reason that if Western governments are guilty of unjustified aggression, the populations who support them in it- overtly, by voting and implicitly, by not removing them- are indeed responsible. So, we have to move the ground to the question of whether the violent response is itself legitimate or not. The question of who is a legitimate target if the answer to that is “yes” is rather abritrary in itself.
Or, we could just get off our ideological high horses and take note of the simple fact that the Jerries were trying to conquer, ultimately, most if not all of the Eurasian continent and if we’d let them do that, it would have made the world intolerable for us. Hitler and his adoring population gambled, and they lost. It’s just tough titties. As I said, I’ve simply no sympathy for them. The Germans were acting as a collective, and paid a collective price. This is as good a warning as any not to be collectivists.
True enough. Bomber Command perhaps did what was arguably necessary to win the war, and the individual bomber crews were brave men (and their personal bravery should be respected in itself), but that doesn’t mean we should be proud of what they did. Sometimes things have to be done in this imperfect world of suffering that we are not proud of. The solution is just to accept that and try our best to avoid such situations, not desperately and hypocritically pretend that we should really be proud of the acts in question.
As I have often noted, the two most devastating (by far) single acts of terrorism were carried out by the US regime, in the atomic terror bombings of Japan.
There is an argument that courage is a virtue that can only be present when engaged in virtuous acts, but that creates the inevitability of subjective decisions of when it can apply.
Personally, I prefer to distinguish between the attribute of bravery (which is to be respected per se) and the purpose for which the bravery is exercised.
Certainly I find complacent politicians and media figures describing people fighting on the other side as cowards nauseating, when I contemplate the reality of what those people are often up against.
Ian, surely murder is not an appropriate punishment for voting for Hitler. You’re accepting the logic of nutjobs who see no distinction between civilians and soldiers because of “democracy”?!
The “atomic terror bombings of Japan” were a choice between ending the war rapidly, with all the casualties on the Japanese side, or ending it slowly, with some great proportion of the casualties on the Allied side. Looked at that way, it was a no-brainer. No rational combatant sacrifices their own to spare the enemy. If I’d been Truman, I’d have made the same decision.
Again, the Japanese had every opportunity to surrender. They had obviously lost the war. It would have been a gross dereliction of duty for an American president to sacrifice American troops on the altar of Japanese intransigence.
How about calling a truce, so Japanese representatives could be shown the effects of an atom bomb on some deserted island? It might have let them surrender and keep face. Just dumping the things out of the blue on densely-populated civilian areas is hardly proportionality.
I don’t see why allowing the Japs to save face would be a war aim.
Unless I’m mistaken, didn’t bomber command tend to bomb working class areas of German cities full of social democrat supporters who didn’t vote for Hitler?
Bear in mind also that they didn’t surrender after the first atom bomb had demonstrated not only how big a bang you get, but what it does to the people underneath the bang.
“The “atomic terror bombings of Japan” were a choice between ending the war rapidly, with all the casualties on the Japanese side, or ending it slowly, with some great proportion of the casualties on the Allied side. Looked at that way, it was a no-brainer.”
That’s an argument to justify the terrorism using “the end justifies the means”, not an ragument that it was not terrorism. Imo, though, it is not a strong one when you consider that the means is the incineration of literally tens of thousands of civilians, including women and children.
And there really is no excuse for not making the first drop on a relatively uninhabited region, nor for waiting only a few days before dropping the second one.
And, of course, if casualties (ours or theirs) were really the concern for those making the decision then the war could have been ended immediately with the acceptance of the emperor being left in place (which was done anyway in the end).
No, the real motives for these acts clearly related to the geostrategic position after the war.
And in any event, none of this changes the fact that killing innocents in order to terrorise their government into doing what you want is clearly terrorism, regardless of the justification or motive.
I don’t know how you define an “innocent”. Munitions workers, making the shells and bombs and bullets?
Look, the Germans, collectively and the Japanese, collectively, knew exactly what they were getting into when they decided to build Empires. Empire building is a risky business. You win, or you lose. Either way, a lot of people die. Neither nation needed to build Empires, had they been rational. But they chose to.
They waged total war. They murdered, terrorised, tortured and incarcerated civilians, broke the Geneva Convention (particularly the odious Japanese) and then they got back what they had given. Innocent?
There is, actually, a strange merit to total war. When the civilians are in the firing line, they learn what war means. Result? None of those combatants have dared a total war ever since. There is a strong argument that Europe is at peace because in World War II, the women realised that from now on, they couldn’t just wave the men off to a distant front line; they were now in the frame too. Everyone learned a useful lesson, one might say.
Ian B – To what extent had the average German or Japanese civilian any influence over the actions of his government? You could, with far more justification, take personal responsibility for the terror bombings the British and American Governments used to fight their wars in the Islamic world. At least, you don’t run any chance of being beaten to death in a police cell for speaking out.
For the record, no criticism of our own side excuses the German or the Japanese ruling classes. But I do think it’s time to give up on the sophistry of a “war for civilisation” that left two atomic rubble heaps and most of the Eurasian landmass under Marxist tyranny. We didn’t even save the Poles in the end.
As I said above Sean, western populations are indeed reasonable targets if the actions of our governments are themselves justified of an aggressive response. You seem to be working on the dubious principle that, e.g. an American voting for a President who bombs some other country isn’t morally responsible for that bombing, and I don’t see how that can be justified.
We now know that a large part of the reason for the unsatisfactory end of the War was down to an ailing American president under the sway of a Communist spy, Alger Hiss who was allowed to effectively give away the Soviet sphere. Most unsatisfactory indeed, but that does not itself de-legitimise the war.
It does however rather support the assertion I’ve made previously here- that our Empire was a disaster due its being run by incompetents. If your empire covers a quarter of the Globe, and you can only win a war against another nation with no empire by becoming junior partners to America (whose entire empire consisted of Hawaii and the Phillippines), you can only conclude that you’re made a total economic pig’s ear of it. Which is why I’ve made that point before that making your qualification for being an administrator the ability to quote Homer in the original Greek, rather than some kind of understanding of market economics, is just asking for disaster. An economic base like that should have crushed the Jerries, without anybody else’s help- if it had been economically developed instead of being seen primarily as a source of “resources” (my “two paradigms” again) and the world’s largest Safari Park.
So, had we been able to win the war ourselves, I imagine a more satisfactory outcome, certainly regarding what became the Soviet Empire, would have been achieved. It wasn’t. But that’s history for you.
“There is, actually, a strange merit to total war. When the civilians are in the firing line, they learn what war means. Result? None of those combatants have dared a total war ever since. There is a strong argument that Europe is at peace because in World War II, the women realised that from now on, they couldn’t just wave the men off to a distant front line; they were now in the frame too. Everyone learned a useful lesson, one might say.”
I see what you are saying, but I tend to put a similar argument in a more specific context. For me, the post-WW2 peace is the result of nuclear weapons, and one reason nuclear weapons (in particular, nukes on ICBMs secure against a counterforce first strike) are so effective in preventing war is that for the first time they really put the decision-makers and their families directly in the firing line, so that they they cannot pretend that they will face no personal threat provided they don’t lose too badly.
Even WW2 slaughter bombing with conventional bombs couldn’t achieve that, because of the effectiveness of shelters for the elite.
“You seem to be working on the dubious principle that, e.g. an American voting for a President who bombs some other country isn’t morally responsible for that bombing, and I don’t see how that can be justified.”
Well, for a start these leaders often change their policies once they are in office.
I have little time for Labour voters in general, but it seems rather contrived to hold a pacifist CND member who voted for Blair’s Labour Party in 2001, responsible for his aggression against Iraq. Even in the more personal context of the US Presidential elections, few who voted for Bush in 2000 could have foreseen his interventionist aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq. I well remember his electoral claim to intend a “humbler foreign policy”.
What about all the people who voted against these characters or who didn’t vote at all? Does not voting absolve one of responsibility for one’s government’s actions? If not, what was a US voter to do in 2008? Obama proved every bit as much the warmonger, interventionist and rights abuser Bush was, allowing for the changed circumstances, but considering his opponent was the border-line insane neocon McCain, the choice was limited. And voting third party in the US is functionally the same as not voting.
The problem (I always start like that don’t I, it’s how I get my thought-protector on) with the German People in 1933 is that they did have a choice, which was in 1933 to either vote for a murdering psychopath who would quite clearly lead them to disaster and megadeaths of Germans, or, er, well, not. I mean, the little Austrian bugger even //sounded// like Alex Salmond in his rhetoric, let alone looking like him if he would only take off his moustache.
The point for most of the war, while no airforce except the Luftwaffe could even begin to hit a 3-mile-barn-door illluminated by flares, or get within two miles of it (and they could do that because we had a characteristic coastline which even a blind bat could find) was that the only way to take war to the nazis was to hit their cities. The PR objective of this was also prime, since no others of the many occupied nations were capable of lifting a finger in their own defence, and Britain’s Bomber Command was the sole avenue of offensive warfare.
The proximal tactical objective was to “demolish war industries”. Of course. We all want to do that. It’s the right thing to do. But if we could not do that, we could at least “dehouse” the workers, which wuld have at least some negative effect on production. we didn’t bank early enough on clever technocRaZis like Albert Speer, but in the end even his intellect was ovewhelmed by sheer bomb-tonnage and accuracy.
Even MORI, that great leftist polling company still alive today I think, found that what British people disliked most about enemy bombing was the loss of their homes and possessions: They cared rather less, it seemed, about dead friends and family members. Read it up.
By early 1945, it was clear that Allied bomber fleets could, and did, tear the guts out of any city they chose to visit. Google: “Pforzheim” (you were not expecting that first, were you), “Dresden” (of course, everybody knows how wicked the West is here, for ever and indellibly – I blame Stalin personally) or “Wurzburg”. Or others.
The road to that tactical objective was long, bloody and hard. Remember also that even Churchill, by February 1945, agreed that Harris’s war was “over”, and that the squadrons could then be stood down. But Stalin, the great leader and socialist, drinking the blood of others as was his job, insisted on Dresden going ahead, even though its effect would be nugatory. FDR, hating Churchill as he did and as was his job too, thought Stalin Farted Green Lights, and forced it to happen, even involving the USAAF the next day, which was quite superfluous as it turned out.
I had the good fortune to be taught a little part of my A-level physics course by Dr Barnes Wallis, in his old age, when he sometimes came into our school to “see about the A-level boys”. It was very interesting to see into the mind, a little bit, of a gentle and humane man, who had worked to design special weapons that would minimise “colateral damage” around what he I think first called “targets of high military value” – the phrase “colateral damage” I think had not been invented then.
As you see, I sort of incline to the Ian B position here. Personally, I really hope to live out my life – which I hope will still be a little long but which may not be after all – who can tell? – without seeing another total war of the kind that we have been discussing.
Oh, and as to nuclear weapons, can I please just advivse you all that the only justifiable and militarily logical use of them is against an enemy who does not possess them? We did exact;y the right thing in August 1945. The War ended in three days flat.
“which was in 1933 to either vote for a murdering psychopath who would quite clearly lead them to disaster and megadeaths of Germans, or, er, well, not”
I think this relies upon an unreasonably huge dollop of hindsight, that is entirely unfair to the German people of that time.
If you haven’t read it, I’d highly recommend the following book, which really does give good insights into the mechanics on the ground of early Nazi Germany.
They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45
Milton Sanford Mayer
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/978689.They_Thought_They_Were_Free
I’m with Ian B here…
Something that is often overlooked in arguments about Bomber Command are the VAST enemy resources that were tied up to defend against it.
Not just the obvious aircraft and pilots, anti-aircraft guns, fuel and ammunition but the millions of tonnes of concrete (and the fuel to produce it) required to build the bunkers and flak towers.
All resources which could have been diverted to other fronts if Bomber Command had not done what it did.
And as for bravery. Anybody that climbs in a Lancaster night after night knowing they they face anti-aircraft guns and night fighters for most of the journey deserves a medal and a monument in my opinion.
The majority of Germans didn’t vote for Hitler even in the (partly rigged) election of 1933.
Harris (and others) estimated that about 70% of the Skoda/Pak 88mm guns (the very finest artillery gun of the entire war, and a Czech design) that had ever been made and had survived, were kept in Germany pointing upwards by his bombers, rather than on the eastern (and later the Western) fronts pointing at Allied armour. There was substantially no defence against this gun that could save British or American tanks for the entire war. Over-running the gun-position was the only reliable remedy.
Furthermore, towards 1944/45, Allied infantry (only infantry can take out guns – cavalry (ie tanks) always take out infantry – and guns can often take out cavalry) were understandably reluctant to force defended positions too bravely, knowing that the war was won, that it might be over in a year or so, and that it would be suicidal not to try to survive to the end, having got so far, by being less forthright than one’s offcers wanted one to be….
We had a “3.7-inch” anti-aircraft gun (approx a 90-mm), but it was not as accurate or as reliable. There are two fossil emplacements each for a pair of these guns, that you can still find on Clapham Common, London SW11, if you know where to look for them. If you are all very good boys and girls, I will tell you where they are.
“Oh, and as to nuclear weapons, can I please just advivse you all that the only justifiable and militarily logical use of them is against an enemy who does not possess them?”
No. Deterrence is a perfectly justifiable and militarily logical use for nuclear weapons, and an effective one as the history of the past half century seems to demonstrate.
As to whether they can ever be justifiably used in warfare, that probably depends upon how tolerant you are of collateral damage (in the sense of many thousands of women and children blow to bits, incinerated
“We did exact;y the right thing in August 1945. The War ended in three days flat.”
The war was already effectively over.
Here’s my collection of quotes that I usually trot out for the numpties who believe the US regime’s official cover story about “Operation Downfall”:
Dwight Eisenhower:
“the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing”
General Douglas MacArthur:
“MacArthur’s views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed.” He continues, “When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor.”
Admiral William Leahy:
“It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons”
Herbert Hoover:
“I told MacArthur of my memorandum of mid-May 1945 to Truman, that peace could be had with Japan by which our major objectives would be accomplished. MacArthur said that was correct and that we would have avoided all of the losses, the Atomic bomb, and the entry of Russia into Manchuria”
Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet, in a public address at the Washington Monument two months after the bombings stated:
“The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace before the atomic age was announced to the world with the destruction of Hiroshima and before the Russian entry into the war. . . .The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in the defeat of Japan.”
“Hap” Arnold, Army Air Forces Commanding General:
“in his memoirs Arnold stated that “it always appeared to us that, atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse.”
That should be: “(in the sense of many thousands or even millions of women and children blown to bits, incinerated, and irradiated).”
Damn the lack of an edit function….
@Randal…oK. ok. I take it that you don’t view my position on this one as positively as i do then.
The US politicos you mention were all trying to cover their arses after the event, in case of a “Dresden Moment”.
The first thing the Japanese genral Staff said on hearing that Hiroshima was an atom bomb, was…”HOW SOON CAN WE GET ONE OF THESE? Get the scientists on it.”
So we had to do it again three days later. In the meantime, while the Japanese govt could have been surrendering (and it was not – we heard “nothing”) the general Staff were hauling atomic scientists out of bed and bullying them to make a Japanese one.
It’s worth noting that Eisenhower’s quote is from 1956, during his re-election campaign…
David:
I think you dramatically underestimate what would have been required for Japan to get a working bomb from where it would have been after Hiroshima. There has been all sorts of speculation about the Japanese atomic bomb programmes, but none to be taken seriously that suggest they were anywhere near it.
As for the prospect of them actually delivering a weapon anywhere that would do much damage – forget it.
And no, the US “politicos” (actually mostly military men) weren’t trying to cover their arses – what they say is the most reasonable interpretation of the circumstances on the ground, at the time. It takes some serious ignorance of warfare to believe the story that an invasion of Japan really would have been necessary, or that Japan wasn’t already defeated before Hiroshima. Those who believe it are either ignorant about warfare, ignorant of the facts on the ground, or determined to blind themselves to those things in order to justify what ought to be unjustifiable.
Instead of indulging fantastic nonsense about the Japanese magicking up an A-bomb in a few weeks, or Japan waging modern warfare without oil, why not just admit that the US regime did what governments routinely do all the time – it murdered a lot of people for cold geostrategic purposes?
“It’s worth noting that Eisenhower’s quote is from 1956, during his re-election campaign…”
Well done – that’s raised questions about Eisenhower’s words (though certainly not refuted them).
Now see if you can do the same with Arnold, Nimitz, Hoover, Leahy and MacArthur.
Randal, I don’t really need to. All these people are entitled to their opinions regarding the curious question of which types of explosives are more morally acceptable for blowing people to bits with. You know, cluster bombs good, landmines bad, and so on.
It is a curious thing though, this insistence that the Japs were “ready to surrender”. The problem is, you only actually know somebody is ready to surrender when they, er, surrender, not when they’re possibly saying they might if they can have this and that. The reality is that the war was still on, and the Japanese had not surrendered, and were at the very least trying to cobble together something that would keep their odious regime intact after a surrender. If they wanted to surrender, they should have surrendered. But they had not. Neither did they even surrender after the first bomb. Only when it seemed that the USA had a whole arsenal of the things did they put up the white flag.
So there is good reason to think, and certainly to have thought at the time, that they were ready to make the Americans fight all the way to Tokyo. The A Bomb was a good way to avoid that, and save American lives. As I said above, any decent military commander worries about minimising his own casualties and the only route he needs to offer his opponents to minimise theirs is to lay down their arms, which the Japanese had not done when the bomb was dropped and brought the war to an end.
“Randal, I don’t really need to. All these people are entitled to their opinions”
That’s fine, Ian. You’ll pardon me if I believe the opinion of the likes of MacArthur, Leahy, Arnold and Nimitz over yours, on the topic of military aspects of US involvement in WW2?
I regard Churchill as a great man. He tried to stop immigration in 1955 and wanted the Conservatives to go into the 1955 general election with the slogan “Keep England White”. After the Dardanelles fiasco he re-joined the army and fought on the front line. However, launching bombing campaigns against civilians will forever tarnish his reputation.
You’re entitled to believe whatever you like, Randal. Problem is, you can find somebody in authority saying pretty much anything you agree with, which is why arguing from authority is usually not admired in debate. After all, you’d sound pretty silly saying, “I believe X because Ian B said so”.
So we ought to look at the facts, and one fact we have is that the Japanese had not surrendered, despite having had the opportunity to, and neither did they surrender after the first A Bomb, which suggests that (a) they still hoped to hold out for a better result and (b) merely demonstrating one A-Bomb may well not have been enough to get a surrender. Bear in mind that the Yanks only had two, so they couldn’t go wasting any.
So, the opinions of military men who did not themselves make the decision cannot be taken as proof of anything. Eisenhower (or anyone else’s) belief that the bomb was unnecessary is not evidence of any kind. It’s just an opinion, and nothing more.
“It’s just an opinion, and nothing more.”
Indeed. But a far better qualified opinion than yours, on this topic.
As for the issue you raise of Japan’s surrender, this is more to do with the precise extent of “unconditional surrender” being sought, and how many tens of thousands of innocent lives you think are worth paying to achieve the difference between what was on offer and what was wanted. As the quote I gave, attributed to MacArthur, put it: “he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor.”
But you’ve already explained above that the lives of Japanese and German women and children were cheap, if not worthless, in such a calculation, for you.
The facts show that Japan was beaten (you can’t wage modern warfare without oil). The history shows that they knew this and, apart from a few die-hards, were desperately trying to find a way out, with the slim hope that the Soviets might help (peace terms had been offered as far back as January, and the Emperor had instructed the Cabinet in June to find a way to end the war).
Only the US insistence on “unconditional surrender” prevented terms being agreed that would have been in effect almost identical to those ultimately agreed. Perhaps you disagree with this suggestion, but the reality is that apologists for the US bombings such as yourself are not entitled to rely on that defence because THE US REGIME DIDN’T EVEN TRY.
Not entirely worthless. If one’s own side has a choice of an equal win by killing 1000 or 1,000,000 of the enemy, you’d take the 1000 option. That’s logical. But preserving enemy lives is a secondary concern compared to preserving lives on one’s own side; as such in military terms, I’d kill a 1000 Jerries or Nips to save one Tommy.
As I said, the qualifications of opinion speakers are irrelevant. What matters is facts; and throwing away all the “mights” and “could haves”, we are left with the fact that Japan, despite being in an obviously losing position, had not yet surrendered. One “could have” that we do know is that they could have saved thousands of lives by surrendering earlier, or countless more by not waging a barbarous war of aggression in the first place. One other fact that we do have is that despite the most clear demonstration of the A Bomb on Hiroshima, they still did not surrender until a second drop had given the impression that the USA had a whole arsenal of them and that Japan would be literally wiped off the face of the Earth if surrender was not forthcoming.
The USA had every right to demand whatever surrender terms they desired, and keep fighting until they got them. That is how war works. It is an excellent deterrent to anybody else thinking of starting a war, and the single characteristic of the Allied victory we should note was the magnanimity of it, in rebuilding the conquered nations and extracting no reprisals. Behaviour that one can be very sure would not have been displayed by Japan or Germany, had their troops been the ones doing the victory marches.
So, as I said, arguments from authority aside, we have the fact that, as David Davis put it above, the A Bombs ended the war in three days. The Japanese had had ample chances to surrender but had not. It was not up to America to try to avoid Japanese casualties. Every Japanese person who died in that war died because of their own government, and their own support for it. They had been promised that they could plunder themselves an empire and no allied bomb would ever land on Japanese soil. They guessed wrong and learned a lesson; which was that wars are very nasty things, and it is better not to start them- at least with countries who can beat you.
You write: “arguments from authority aside” as though you have made a legitimate case for ignoring the quotes I gave you. But the quotes collectively create a historical prima facie case that wholly outclasses your unsupported opinion, and that cannot simply be dismissed as you attempt to do here.
Your argument that the US is entitled to pursue war regardless of “enemy” civilian casualties is immoral or amoral. Of course it is not entitled to do so and to still be considered a civilised nation, which is the point, really.
And the fact that the Japanese had not surrendered at the time the bombs were dropped is irrelevant, because the primary reason they had not surrendered is that no realistic attempt had been made to persuade them to do so.
I posted this earlier, but it seems not to have arrived:
“The majority of Germans didn’t vote for Hitler even in the (partly rigged) election of 1933.”
Indeed. Hitler got about a third of the possible German vote even in a partially unfair election. Why these people voted for him is hard to say, but probably had something to do with a suspicion that the Nazis would be less awful than the Communists, and that the respectable parties had no visible idea of what to do about the economic collapse. At most, that third of adult Germans might have hoped for a revision of the Versailles Settlement. No posters went up saying: “Vote Hitler for Another World War.”
We can suppose that many of those third changed their minds afterwards. Perhaps many of the other two thirds also changed their minds. But no one was ever fairly asked after 1933 what he thought about Hitler’s performance. Anyone who did grumble too loud in public soon learned to keep his mouth shut. The concentration camps were open to all.
We also need to bear in mind that, by 1939, no one under the age of 28 had ever been given a chance to vote for or against Hitler. By 1945, it was no one under the age of 34.
Even assuming the rightness of holding a population responsible for its government’s actions, it’s hard to show that Hitler enjoyed the solid support of anything like the majority of Germans. As for the Japanese, their system was not particularly accountable even before it turned “fascist.”
But I don’t at all agree with any doctrine of collective responsibility. It was probably right to punish individual concentration camp personnel, and other Germans who had taken part in or ordered atrocities. Perhaps not enough account was taken in the trials of duress. But obedience to lawfully given orders was rightly held to be no defence. But holding every German responsible for Hitler is as outrageous as holding every Jew now alive responsible for the Crucifixion. I can’t be bothered to argue this. It just strikes me as obvious. I hardly ever agree with Ian B. On this occasion, however, I do urge him to re-examine his premises.
Randal,
You write: “arguments from authority aside” as though you have made a legitimate case for ignoring the quotes I gave you.
I have. They are not historical evidence of fact. They are merely opinions by historical persons. That isn’t the same thing. They are an attempted argument from authority; but they simply attest to what some people at later dates thought at that later date. It is not beyond importance that many of those quoted were the same men who at the time were planning the invasion and predicting monstrous casualties on both sides.
But the quotes collectively create a historical prima facie case that wholly outclasses your unsupported opinion, and that cannot simply be dismissed as you attempt to do here.
They don’t present any case at all. What does present a case is the actions people actually took at the time. Wikipedia has a pretty good rundown of it; in particular, there was a minority (pretty much one-man) “peace party” in the Japanese administration, but peace was not Japanese government policy. Secondly, the peace terms that that the minority peace party were trying to achieve included no occupation by Allied forces, no forcible disarmament, and no trying of Japanese war criminals, none of which was going to be acceptable to the Americans.
Bear in mind that even after the second bomb the Japanese cabinet were split 50-50 on whether to surrender despite believing that the American had “100 bombs” due to a lie by a tortured American prisoner, and the Emperor had to cast the vote for surrender.
Bear in mind also that the Japanese defence plan was an intended meat-grinder designed to so wear the Americans down through horrific casualties that they would give up; it involved thousands of kamekaze planes, suicide boats, and throwing barely-armed civilians against the American forces. And you blame the Americans for not caring about Japanese casualties?!
So I repeat, there was no surrender, and there is no indication that there would have been a surrender under anything like acceptable terms, if at all. The Japanese would have thrown every last man, woman, child and chicken at the Allies had we not had those two atomic bombs; and a hell of lot more people would have died, and just as horribly too, as died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
It’s so easy isn’t it? For all of us to be sitting in our comfy chairs discussing what could have been done, would have been done, or should have been done, as apposed to what was done. Brave men and women on both sides fought well who didn’t wish to fight but had to. They actually fought a good fight too, albeit a merciless one. Even before it was over many were busy cleaning up the unspeakable horrors the German war machine had left behind. As far as British bomber crews not being worthy of hero status; I’m fairly confident that in a couple of hundred years or so from now, war historians will consider Dr Sean to have argued that one on shifting sand.
At the time that those very young and very often very frightened young men took to the air, there was ‘yet another’ bloody world war raging; German fire-bombs were raining down on the English cities that many of those young airmen had come from; millions of soldiers and civilians were already laid in their graves – or very soon would be; for years Germany had prepared for war and, after starting it, pursued it without mercy. Likewise with the Japanese. No matter how you dress it up Sean, it does sound like your understandable anti-nuclear stance is aimed a little more at the victors simply for being victorious… almost as though they had relished the fighting and felt happy killing women and children. That’s just plain silly and you know it. How can anyone start splitting hairs about heroism in this regard? Have you ever left a darkened runway in a wildly vibrating Lancaster? Even without bombs aboard the experience is damn well scary I can tell you. I’ve no idea what went through the minds of the aircrew as they roared off toward German targets knowing that the chances of coming back were not very high. Especially knowing too, that all it was going to take to bury them would be one small bronze coated shell to hit a fuel tank. I heard it said many times by some of those that did make those flights, that the crews usually didn’t speak at all… not a word all the way to the target and all the way back again. Only the absolute minimum that was needed to fly the aircraft.
Just about every English speaking nation were allies fighting together back then. So please let us all stay that way too – in spite of a few 21st century debatable differences… shall we?
Sean,
War is intrinsically a collective and national action. The well known reality is that populations enable governments and, when a population enthusiastically embarks upon a war, it is naive to say that they are not responsible. There is no doubt that the Germans in general, and the Japanese in general, supported their governments, at least until their wars started to go badly. That is not to say that some individuals did not oppose them, but there was no great opposition. The people fought in the armies, they worked in munitions factories and on all the other war work. They donned SS uniforms and arrested people and murdered dissidents.
If we were to take our own posiition currently, consider this; there are some of here in Britain who are opposed to our political system. You and I know that if we got all of us together, we’d probably fit in one good sized public house. It is reasonable as such to say that while we few oppose it, “the people” in general do not, and if it does something beastly there is a general collective responsibility on a national level. I think it was Randal above who said that the average Labour supporter can’t be responsible for Tony Blair starting a war in Iraq, because it was after the election. But if that voter continues to support Labour, and votes for them again, or for any other War Party… do they still bear no responsibility?
I have been thinking/reconsidering my initial flag-waving response and it now does seem to me that IanB is characterising every german/japanese as deserving punishmenr for supporting Adolf/Tojo and being cheeringly onside for every atrocity. This is clearly not so nor is “collective” responsibility a libertarian doctrine let alone a humanitarian one.
Not opposing does not always imply support, And what is meant by opposing?.Of all us Libertarians, the whole public house full, how many of us have fought in the street against coppers come to arrest us for not paying/obeying some state edict? Not many I’ll bet. Are we really then opposed to the state if we collaborate with it by paying taxes, obeying bullshit regulations. putting on seatbelts?.
It’s useless applying libertarian ideals to non-libertarian situations. Wars are collective enterprises. That’s just all there is to it. Nations go to war, individuals don’t. I doubt there was barely an Englishman, German, Japanese or American alive who didn’t see the war as a national struggle which they were in some way part of; whether or not they approved of it.
I’m mystified really why Libertarians would want to excuse the millions of Germans and Japanese who killed foreigners purely to enable plunder. Why does a German who gleefully Sieg-Heiled the troops on their way get a free moral exclusion? Do you really think Hitler or Tojo did it all by themselves?
Think about this? Imagine an anarchist future. Land is divided between individual land-holders. One parcel is occupied by peaceful anarcho-capitalists. Another has a community on it who decide to appoint their youngest and strongest, armed to the teeth, to invade the peaceful land, steal what they can, kill anyone who resists, and then incorporate it into their own, the booty to be shared by the “warrior” caste with the rest of their community. Would you really only blame the warriors, the young men who happen to be most physically suited to the plunder? Would you not blame the women, and the old men, who gratefully received the plunder and threw a party for the returning pillagers? Think about it.
Also, does anyone else think this Savile/Glitter/UnnamedOtherButNowWeAllKnowWho at the BBC story is getting more implausible by the second?
Also, does anyone else think this Savile/Glitter/UnnamedOtherButNowWeAllKnowWho at the BBC story is getting more implausible by the second?
Yes, though I didn’t see the documentary. I will open a new thread just for you.
IanB:
You haven’t answered my point. This “collective enterprise” stuff is nonsense. You are, in effect, saying that any German/Japanese would did less than try to kill Hitler/Tojo is a full and equal partner in the crimes of those two.Thats nonsense. Trying to refuse military service was a dangerous, probably fatal thing. Of the millions who Seig Heiled in the street how many did so from fear of the consequences of not being seen as ” loyal”. Yes millions had a stupid and ill-informed support for the war, just as millions in the UK supported Bliars wars–but millions didn’t and still don’t. Even in our relatively torture/murder-free state the opposition of the millions who don’t support those wars has had zero effect on stopping them. How much less chance would anti-war Germans/Japs have had of stopping their scummy leaders.
Your analogy is equally true for this nation. Anyone who has not taken extreme (presumably violent) steps against the Nulabour/Blulabour state, MUST, by your definition be an active supporter of the wars those govts (helped) unleash. Again I call nonsense. Sorry.
Second line should be “who did less” not “would did less”
Also, Sean-
. I hardly ever agree with Ian B. On this occasion, however, I do urge him to re-examine his premises.
I don’t think the gulf between our opinions is so wide. It’s just the case that disagreement is more likely to generate debate than agreement, so there’s a kind of selective bias in operation in which disagreements are aired but agreement may be left unspoken. :
Very courageous men can be war-criminals, but it gets easier to commit atrocities at 30,000 feet. Even so, some of Bomber Command died more painful deaths than some of their victims. But anyone who hasn’t already read it should try George Orwell’s “Notes on Nationalism”:
Indifference to Reality. All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage — torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians — which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side. The Liberal News Chronicle published, as an example of shocking barbarity, photographs of Russians hanged by the Germans, and then a year or two later published with warm approval almost exactly similar photographs of Germans hanged by the Russians(5). It is the same with historical events. History is thought of largely in nationalist terms, and such things as the Inquisition, the tortures of the Star Chamber, the exploits of the English buccaneers (Sir Francis Drake, for instance, who was given to sinking Spanish prisoners alive), the Reign of Terror, the heroes of the Mutiny blowing hundreds of Indians from the guns, or Cromwell’s soldiers slashing Irishwomen’s faces with razors, become morally neutral or even meritorious when it is felt that they were done in the ‘right’ cause. If one looks back over the past quarter of a century, one finds that there was hardly a single year when atrocity stories were not being reported from some part of the world; and yet in not one single case were these atrocities — in Spain, Russia, China, Hungary, Mexico, Amritsar, Smyrna — believed in and disapproved of by the English intelligentsia as a whole. Whether such deeds were reprehensible, or even whether they happened, was always decided according to political predilection.
The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them. For quite six years the English admirers of Hitler contrived not to learn of the existence of Dachau and Buchenwald. And those who are loudest in denouncing the German concentration camps are often quite unaware, or only very dimly aware, that there are also concentration camps in Russia. Huge events like the Ukraine famine of 1933, involving the deaths of millions of people, have actually escaped the attention of the majority of English russophiles. Many English people have heard almost nothing about the extermination of German and Polish Jews during the present war. Their own antisemitism has caused this vast crime to bounce off their consciousness. In nationalist thought there are facts which are both true and untrue, known and unknown. A known fact may be so unbearable that it is habitually pushed aside and not allowed to enter into logical processes, or on the other hand it may enter into every calculation and yet never be admitted as a fact, even in one’s own mind.
http://orwell.ru/library/essays/nationalism/english/e_nat
“I have. ”
No, you haven’t. You’ve done the written equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting “La la la ….. I can’t hear you….”.
“They are not historical evidence of fact. They are merely opinions by historical persons.”
It’s called history, Ian.
I’m not submitting a thesis or even an undergraduate essay here, it’s just a blog comment thread, so that’s as good as you are likely to get.
Nor is this a philosophical or mathematical issue. The opinions and recollections of those directly involved are evidence in themselves.
“So I repeat, there was no surrender, and there is no indication that there would have been a surrender under anything like acceptable terms, if at all. The Japanese would have thrown every last man, woman, child and chicken at the Allies had we not had those two atomic bombs; and a hell of lot more people would have died, and just as horribly too, as died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”
This is of course utter rubbish. Not just because it need never have come to that – the Japanese were incapable of sustaining modern warfare and defeat was not in question, it was merely a matter of enacting it. No invasion would have been needed, because once the Soviets had entered the war the last desperate hope for Japan would have gone, and Japan would have been effectively under siege until it surrendered.
More to the point, it is inherently dishonest to claim, as you do, that the Japanese refused to agree surrender terms which they had not been offered, and therefore no surrender could have been obtained. As I have already pointed out, the Japanese had been seeking terms since January, and in June the Emperor had made a point of ordering the government to bring the war to an end.
The Japanese had done their part by putting out feelers. The party at fault was the US with its uncompromising demand for unconditional surrender. It was not morally entitled to refuse to seek agreeable terms at the cost of innocent lives, and having refused even to investigate whether such terms were available it (and its apologists) cannot now rely upon the rather ridiculous notion that no such terms would have been available.
And in reality, of course, the motives for the US regime in adopting that position were far from honourable, and were all about gaining advantageous geostrategic situations in the post-war world.
Full control of the reconstruction of Japan as a US satellite.
A clear demonstration of the devastation the new US weapon could cause (which was why cities previously unbombed – not military priority targets – were chosen as targets).
Two cities destroyed because there were two kinds of bomb the US regime needed to test – U235 on Hiroshima and plutonium on Nagasaki.
Sometimes it genuinely makes me wonder, that so many of those who are rightly cynical about governments today and in general, are so rigidly determined to jump through all sorts of argumentative hoops in order to insist that the US and British governments were noble and well-intentioned in waging WW2, when there are perfectly good explanations for their behaviours that don’t rely on such fairy tales.
How odd to condemn the German people for following their “elected” government into the second world war, when the British people followed, cheered and bummed about their “elected” government as it marched roughshod over “our Empire” subjugating country and people, after country and people, all for the glory of power and wealth. Our “elected” government would of course have the stomach for any war that saw a rival power in the field of empires, after all it is only people that get sacrificed and there is an empire at stake.
Randal, you’re simply wrong, and you’re blinded by this wearyingly familiar determination to declare everything the West has ever done to be wrong and evil and so on. As I have already pointed out, from historical facts rather than regurgitating opinions from individuals long after the fact, there was no Japanese policy for surrender, though a minority in the government hoped for surrender on terms suitable to themselves, which they did not deserve and were not ever going to be acceptable. The Japanese defensive plan was based on a vicious war of attrition, using the last of their troops, kamikazes, suicide boats and pathetically armed civilians who were supposed to throw themselves at the Allies in the hope of inflicting such severe casualties that the USA would lose its stomach for the fight and accept peace terms.
That is not the planning of a nation that cares for reducing casualties, nor for its own people. It is the planning of insane barbarians. It is certainly not something that any Allied command should have been expected to tolerate- casualty figures on the US side were estimated up to over a million- when a quick end, which itself produced far fewer Japanese casualties and precisely zero Allied ones, compared to casualty projections for a conventional invasion, was available.
Frankly, the position you are presenting here is that of hard left campaigners in the post war period who sought (luckily unsuccessfully) to disarm the West and thus enable Communist hegemony to be achieved, under the false flag of “peace”.
So, I’ll just repeat the facts again.The Japanese had not sued for peace. They did not sue for peace after the first bomb. After the second (and unknown to them, last) bomb, the cabinet was still split 50-50 and the Emperor cast the deciding vote, and then there was nearly a coup by Japanese officers to keep the war going. Those are the facts. The Japanese were drunk on their own arrogance and madness and, like HItler in his bunker ordering imaginary offensives to the bitter end, refused and refused to accept that they were beaten and their only valid course was an unconditional surrender. They were quite prepared- in the absence of the nukes- to sacrifice as many of their own as it would take to wrest acceptable terms from the Allies. You are trying to make it sound as if they were begging for peace and nobody listened. That simply is not true.
Oh, and throwing away our conspiracy theories, we all know that the simple reason that the Americans dropped one of each design of bomb was that that was all they had. A couple more would have become available over the next month or two, but were not yet ready. It is lucky indeed that the Japanese did not know that, otherwise in all probability they would have carried on fighting rather than caving in when they did.
I am mystified why any Libertarian would want to defend this barbaric monstrosity of a fascist State. Really I am.
“I am mystified why any Libertarian would want to defend this barbaric monstrosity of a fascist State. Really I am.”
I think when you have to descend to this level of dishonesty in your arguments, it’s a sign that we are reaching a point where diminishing returns is setting in.
Of course, I am not defending the Japanese state I am attacking the US state, which you are defending, for reasons best known to you.
“That is not the planning of a nation that cares for reducing casualties, nor for its own people. It is the planning of insane barbarians.”
It’s the planning of a government facing imminent military defeat with no acceptable alternatives available to it. Surely you can see that? Governments always plan for things, many of which they hope will never occur (such as Operation Downfall itself) – not to do so would be gross irresponsibility of course.
“Frankly, the position you are presenting here is that of hard left campaigners in the post war period who sought (luckily unsuccessfully) to disarm the West and thus enable Communist hegemony to be achieved, under the false flag of “peace”.”
Perhaps. So what? Fwiw, at the time I was a supporter of NATO and a dogged opponent of CND (and I still believe in having a nuclear deterrent force, as my comments above will show). But I’m not so stupid as to assume that just because some people who were wrong about other things believe a thing then it must also be wrong. You?
“throwing away our conspiracy theories”
Assessing the motives of state regimes based upon rational analysis of the circumstances is not “conspiracy theory”, of course, so you can throw that smear in the bin next to the hard left smear.
“So, I’ll just repeat the facts again.”
You merely repeat what have already refuted, so it appears we must just agree to disagree.
For the record, the death rate among the National Socialist execution squads (the Einsatzgruppen) was zero “not a single member of the any of the groups died during an actual killing operation” (Paul Johnson “A History of the Jews” page 495).
So for Sean to compare the Einsatzgruppen to British Bomber Command, of which about half died in combat, is rather odd.
Nor was the Einsatzgruppen National Sociatists known for their “steadyness of mind” (words taken from Sean), on the contrary they were known for random sadistic acts and for being emotional basket cases – so much so that the straight forward method of send out armed people to shoot unarmed Jews (almost needless to say at the slightest hint that the people they might face might be armed the Einsatzgruppen ran like the cowardly scum they were) had to be replaced by a policy of deception – constant lies that people were being taken to “work camps” and so on.
As for Himmler – that shit even demanded trains at key points of the Russian campaign (when German soldiers were freezing to death for want of supplies). To Himmler nothing was more important than murdering Jews (lying to them every step of the way – to the very last) – winning the war was a lesser matter.
On Area Bombing as a tactic – the technology of the time made accurate bombing very difficult. However, I would still have opposed the policy of area bombing – on both moral and miltitary grounds (in moral terms the case against the policy is obvious – but I would argue it was also a waste of military resources, including the lives of Bomber Command people, which could have been used to achieve other, and more important, things).
Bishop Bell was right to protest about Area Bombing – and he was right to try and get the allies interested in the resistance movement to Hilter (even the leaking of the plans for the attack upon Norway and Denmark in April 1940 and Holland, Belgium and France in May 1940 were ignored – ignored because people could not believe they had the Crown Jewels, in intelligence terms. handed to them on a plate). Bishop Bell was also (of course) correct to protest about the mass killing (and so on) of German and other civilians by the Red Army and the NKVD during the war and after the war (for it continued).
However, I rather doubt that even Bishop Bell would have considered the men of Bomber Command war criminals or Area Bombing akin to the Holocaust.
As for the atomic bombings – this, of course, saved millions of Japanese (yes Japanese) lives.
However, although there was virtually no chance it would have worked (a one in a million chance) I would have invited Japanese representatives (under safe conduct) to observe a test – in the hopes they might be able to get the Emperor to personally act against those who wished to continue the war (no matter how many millions of Japanese lost their lives).
Not that the Emperor was a nice man (contrary to what is sometimes suggested – he very much was not a nice man). But he was a realist – and many people in commanding circles in Japan were not realists.
As it was even two atomic bombings did not convince some important people – and only the personal intervention of the Emperor could end the war.
One last story about bombing Germany – one I heard on EWTN (the Catholic television network).
An American Bishop (I forget his name) meets Pope Benedict.
“We have interacted before” says the American Bishop.
Pope Benedict replies “I am sorry – but I do not remember meeting you”.
The American Bishop.
“Perhaps “meeting” is the wrong word – but I did try and bomb the city you were in, and you were in an anti aircraft team trying to shoot me down”.
Terrible deaths on both sides – yet both men laughed.
Such is the nature of men.
Of course, I am not defending the Japanese state I am attacking the US state, which you are defending, for reasons best known to you.
Yes you are. You are trying to pretend that the Japanese wanted peace and the US only dropped their bombs out of some kind of spite. Which is, as I have shown, rubbish.
It’s the planning of a government facing imminent military defeat with no acceptable alternatives available to it. Surely you can see that?
No, it’s the planning of a government trying to find a way to maintain its own power. The only thing “unacceptable” about the alternative of surrendering was that they were not prepared to accept occupation and disarmament by the allies. In other words, they wanted to just stop the war, and stay in power. WIth that not on the table, they planned to kill as many of their own people and Allies as it would take to force the USA to cave in. That was an unrealistic plan anyway, but it was what they were planning, and the cruelty of it is enormous; and that is what you are defending.
They had lost the war. They knew that the Allies would treat the Japanese more kindly than any winner of a major war in history, and orders of magnitude more kindly than they had themselves treated the people they conquered. The only unacceptable thing was the Japanese demands.
It would have been a gross derelection of duty for the Allied command to sacrifice perhaps a million allied soldiers when the atom bombs were avaialble, especially as the atom bombs resulted in far, far lower Japanese casualties than would have occurred under the conventional invasion scenario. Your narrative that the peace-seeking Japanese were rebuffed by nasty war-mongering Americans does not bear scrutiny, and is simply regurgitating agit-prop from the “Peace” movement, as I stated before, who, in the post-war period were primarily interested in nuclear disarmament of the West.
The fact is that millions of men who got to go home to their families, and millions of civilian Japanese who lived to tell the tale did so because the atom bombs ended the war when they did.
As an aside, it’s worth considering the fact that a lifetime later, the US still haven’t used up the huge stock of purple heart medals minted in expectation of the collossal casualties of the invasion-that-never-happened. Think about that.
“Yes you are. You are trying to pretend that the Japanese wanted peace and the US only dropped their bombs out of some kind of spite. Which is, as I have shown, rubbish.”
You are only digging yourself deeper. I have pointed out that the Japanese government wanted peace because they were beaten and wanted to end the war, yes. What else would you expect a government beaten in a war to want? As for US motives, far from “some sort of spite” I have pointed to concrete geopolitical motives. Either you did not read what I wrote or you chose to misrepresent it for the purposes of your argument.
“No, it’s the planning of a government trying to find a way to maintain its own power. ”
Well yes, obviously. When it comes to the supposed national interest, governments generally don’t distinguish between themselves and the nation in the way those of us outside a particular government do.
“With that not on the table, they planned to kill as many of their own people and Allies as it would take to force the USA to cave in. That was an unrealistic plan anyway, but it was what they were planning, and the cruelty of it is enormous”
“We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle”
“and that is what you are defending”
Again. I’m not defending it at all, merely recognising that it is.
The rest of your comment is just you repeating already refuted assertions, so there’s not much point in me repeating the exercise.
You know, the truth won’t change merely because you desperately want it to be other than it is, no matter how often you stamp your foot and insist.
“As an aside, it’s worth considering the fact that a lifetime later, the US still haven’t used up the huge stock of purple heart medals minted in expectation of the collossal casualties of the invasion-that-never-happened. Think about that.”
I’m aware of the preparations for Downfall. I believe I referred above to governments planning for things that hopefully won’t ever happen. That’s what they do, and expense is little object in such situations.
If you read Sean Gabb’s text, he is not comparing Nazi executioners to Bomber Command, but commenting generally on the difference between bravery and heroism. Nor is he complimenting these people when he speaks about their “firmness of mind.” And, by the way, even with the text right under his eyes, Paul Marks fails to get his quote right: We have the misquotation and misspelling “‘steadyness of mind’ (words taken from Sean),”
Bearing this in mind, what reason have we for believing anything this man says about what von Mises et al may have said? That he cannot write English is plain on the face of it. It may now also be doubted how well he can read.
I have pointed out that the Japanese government wanted peace because they were beaten and wanted to end the war, yes. What else would you expect a government beaten in a war to want? As for US motives, far from “some sort of spite” I have pointed to concrete geopolitical motives. Either you did not read what I wrote or you chose to misrepresent it for the purposes of your argument.
You have “pointed out”, yes. You have asserted, yes. But you have not proved that they wanted peace, and there is simply no evidence that they did want peace, accept a minority of the government were putting out feelers for a negotiated peace on terms acceptable to themselves. You really have failed in this argument. Let’s take a specific example; you have repeatedly asserted that the only Japanese precondition, which the Americans were refusing to consider, was retention of the Emperor.
This is simply not true. The minority peace party were- as a matter of historical record- setting as minimal preconditions (a) no Allied occupation (b) no disarmament by the Allies and (c) no war crimes trials of Japanese war criminals. The Emperor was not the major sticking point, and indeed as you have yourself noted he stayed on anyway.
All you have presented in evidence is quoting others’ opinions. When we go to the historical facts, we find that they do not support those opinions. The Japanese administration were not ready to surrender, and the minority of it who wanted to only wanted to under certain specific and clearly unacceptable terms. Without those terms, they were determined to fight on. These are just the facts.
So taking those facts into account, the assertion that the Allies were unreasonably determined to drop the A Bombs falls apart. It’s a funny thing; being a Libertarian one tends to hate one’s government. Fair enough. But it so easily topples into a kind of oikophobia in which one’s own government is continually painted as more evil than anybody else’s, feeding on the rich Marxist-inspired narratives of Imperialism and so on, and then you end up with this absurd sympathy for regimes far more odious.
Anyway, just to reiterate; your facts are simply wrong, are they not?
I did read Sean Gabb’s post and the implication that Bomber Command was like the Nazi SS was from him (he was not quoting someone else, let alone opposing the idea).
Nor is this an isolated incident – both anti British and anti American propaganda (with Japan being called an American “satellite” and so on in this very thread, very Noam Chomsky) are far from rare on this site (and it is not just confined to World War II – it is about just about a lot of things). Actually Sean is not the worst offender (not by a long chalk).
At least we did not have Kevin come in and say World War II was all for the benefit of the “corporations”. Ditto the Cold War and……
I have met a lot of veterans of Bomber Command (and the United States Army Airforce) over the years. But I am not actually that angry with the post.
I am not that angry because I understand that this stuff (throwing the SS in when talking about Area Bombing) is just rhetoric – it is not seriously meant.
Of course if I had been personally involved (or had lost friends) I might be less tolerant. The whole subject is desperatly sad – both for the Germans (the families of people killed in factories and houses and so on) and for the families of the thousands of people of Bomber Command.
It was a terrible waste of human life – on both sides.
My apologies Mr Jenkinson – Sean’s actual words were Himmler’s “execution squads” (the Einsatzgruppen) not the SS in general.
Everyone please note: I have just removed a Nigerianesque spam from this thread. Or I think I have.
Ian B:
So let’s just recap.
You have not effectively contested the charge that the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were terrorist attacks, in the most basic sense that they were attacks designed to kill large numbers of civilians and by doing so influence their government. (Indeed, there can be no realistic dispute of that point, short of adopting the kinds of self-serving artificially restricted definitions designed to allow that kind of attack to be excluded from it – that it isn’t terrorism if a government does it (the US and UK government’s preferred option), or it isn’t terrorism if it happens during a war.) So the US regime stands condemned as the perpetrators of the two most destructive single acts of terrorism in history.
I say condemned, but not by you, because the main thrust of all your argumentation has been to justify those two acts of terrorism by means of an “end justified the means” argument.
The reason those means were justified, in your view, is a kind of utilitarian calculus of numbers of lives lost. You assert that more lives would have been lost if the two cities in question had not been destroyed. (In fact you also seem to use a calculus based upon some lives being worth more than others – namely the lives of American soldiers being worth a lot and the lives of Japanese women and children next to nothing).
Whether this is the appropriate moral basis for judging these acts is one question.
Another is whether, even if this basis is accepted, it is correct to say that more lives would have been lost if the cities had not been destroyed. In reality, it is utterly implausible to argue that the same effect could not have been achieved by dropping the bombs on uninhabited areas of Japan, unless you make some kind of assumption that the Japanese were too stupid to put two and two together and make four. In fact, if there are any racist judgements to be made the evidence is more likely to come down on the side of the Japanese as more intelligent than Europeans, if anything, so I think we can disregard this possibility. But we don’t have to speculate about US motives for dropping the bombs on cities rather than uninhabited areas, because in this case there is an open admission in the records that the choice of targets was made precisely in order that the effects of atomic bombing on previously unbombed cities could be assessed.
And even if this point is disregarded, we still have to look at the policy of pursuing unconditional surrender, and whether this was justified given the cost. It is only at this late stage (after your argument has already been defeated) that we need at all to consider whether the Japanese could have been persuaded to surrender on objectively acceptable terms. And as I have pointed out above, we know the Japanese were seeking surrender terms as far back as January, and we have the Emperor on record on June 22 stating baldly to the Japanese government: “I desire that concrete plans to end the war, unhampered by existing policy, be speedily studied and that efforts made to implement them”.
Ironically, the Japanese then hoped that the Soviets would be the avenue by which they could persuade the US to negotiate. That’s ironic because of course the Soviets had already agreed to attack Japan on August 8th, and the opinion of US and UK intelligence was that this would force the Japs to come to terms (Ismay summarised the conclusions of a July meeting of the US and UK Joint Chiefs as follows: “[W]hen Russia came into the war against Japan, the Japanese would probably wish to get out on almost any terms short of the dethronement of the Emperor.”)
Given this, how can it honestly argued that the US bombing was justified because there was no possibility that Japan would surrender without the slaughter of all those women and children, when it was even the stated opinion of US and UK military intelligence that this was not the case?
“Let’s take a specific example; you have repeatedly asserted that the only Japanese precondition, which the Americans were refusing to consider, was retention of the Emperor.”
This is and was a widely held opinion amongst those qualified to have an opinion – for instance it was the opinion of MacArthur (who knew rather more about it than you do), and as is evident from the quote above, it was the opinion of the US and UK Joint Chiefs.
And although inherently speculative, it’s almost certainly correct. The references you make to other terms are merely wishes or negotiating positions (more accurately, proposed negotiating positions, since the US declined to negotiate), which would inevitably have wilted in the face of the harsh reality of what Japan faced in late 1945.
“But it so easily topples into a kind of oikophobia in which one’s own government is continually painted as more evil than anybody else’s, feeding on the rich Marxist-inspired narratives of Imperialism and so on, and then you end up with this absurd sympathy for regimes far more odious.”
I think, given that my background is at least as much conservative as libertarian – I grew up a strong supporter of NATO, have only ever voted conservative (though I have not voted since Thatcher was deposed), and spent my youth defending “imperialism” against attacks from the left and arguing for nuclear weapons and for confrontation of the Soviet Union – you need to turn that issue of motivation round against yourself. Why are you so determined to insist that all the actions of the US and UK governments in WW2 (in particular) must be defended at all costs and no matter what moral, logical and historical contortions are required?
Is it merely that you assume that any criticism of them represents some kind of dangerous lefty-pacifist agenda which has to be resisted at any price?
Randal, this is getting tiresome. The Japanese requirements for a *possible* surrender are a matter of record, they are all over the internets, even Wikipedia; your assertion that it was “just the Emperor” is just plain wrong, there’s no use me typing it again when you can read it all in depth on the first few sites that come up in Google.
You are trying to apply an impossible and unjustified standard of “can you prove they definitely wouldn’t have surrendered at some time?” which is of course impossible. No military commanders could have been expected to apply such a standard- besides all else it’s like a Turing Machine halting problem. How do you know when you’ve waited long enough?
So, I repeat. Again. The Americans did not have a surrender, neither is there any good evidence that there was going to be one. The Americans were looking at another massive, unimaginably vicious campaign against an insane, fanatical enemy. Or trying the new atom bombs.
Here’s an interesting factoid; total deaths in the atom bomb blasts: about 150,000. (Probably less than in the Tokyo conventional bombing firestorm btw). Now think of the Doolittle raid. A few American planes dropped a few bombs causing negligible casualties on Tokyo, just to prove they weren’t entirely invulnerable after Pearl Harbour. Some of the pilots who bailed out were assisted by Chinese peasants. The Japanese response was to murder somewhere around two hundred and fifty thousand Chinese civilians.
250,000.
And you’re bleating about nasty American “terrorism”? That’s Japanese “morality” for you. How much consideration do animals like that deserve, exactly?
Interesting that you resort to a tu quoque argument, and persist in referring to irrelevant theoretical Japanese fantasies about what might be available to them, and avoid confronting the main arguments I actually raised.
First, that the same could undoubtedly have been achieved by dropping the bombs on uninhabited areas of Japan, but this was not done because the US regime wanted to measure the effects of their new weapons on (previously unbombed) cities.
Second, that it’s not just my opinion that the Japanese would have surrendered anyway once the Soviets attacked, but THE OPINION OF US AND UK MILITARY INTELLIGENCE AT THE TIME.
Your argument amounts to claiming that killing most of the inhabitants of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was justified merely in order to avoid waiting a week or so until the Soviets attacked to find out whether or not the Joint Chiefs were correct that it would bring the Japs to effectively unconditional surrender.
Looked at in that harsh, but very fair, light, your position is pretty contemptible.
Are you going to admit that you were factually wrong, Randal?
Anyway, moving on-
First, that the same could undoubtedly have been achieved by dropping the bombs on uninhabited areas of Japan,
There’s no “undoubtedly” about it. They nearly didn’t surrender after the second bomb, and that was after seeing what their full effects. A flash in the distance would have been even less effective psychologically. Ooh look, some burned trees! We do not know what would have happened. There is no “undoubtedly” about it.
but this was not done because the US regime wanted to measure the effects of their new weapons on (previously unbombed) cities.
Because the Americans are evil, you know. I’m sure they did want to see the results. Was that their only reason? Because that’s a strong assertion yu’re making; it is that the Americans (a) had no reason to bomb the cities (b) themselves believed they had no reason to bomb the cities and (c) deliberately and knowingly bombed them anyway to try out the new weapon. Is that fact, or speculation as to motive, Randal?
Second, that it’s not just my opinion that the Japanese would have surrendered anyway once the Soviets attacked, but THE OPINION OF US AND UK MILITARY INTELLIGENCE AT THE TIME.
Er, no. The reports you are referring to are not “the opinion at the time” but are post-war. Furthermore, as I keep saying, opinions don’t actually matter. A five-star general can be wrong in his opinion, just as much as some guy on the internets.
So, once again, I will remind you of the actual FACTS. Which is that the Japanese had not surrendered, were not offering to surrender, and STILL did not surrender after the first bomb. I have looked for some evidence that the “Joint Chiefs” were expecting a surrender in a week or two, and for the life of me, I cannot find any. All the historical sources tell that they were expecting a long, bloody, painful invasion campaign.
I think you might be suffering from tunnel vision caused by only knowing a few quotes from a CND leaflet, but that is just speculation of course.
Just to add; we can reasonably discount the “demonstration” theory anyway; since we know that the Japs didn’t surrender after Hiroshima, which was a demonstration if anything was.
“There’s no “undoubtedly” about it. They nearly didn’t surrender after the second bomb, and that was after seeing what their full effects. A flash in the distance would have been even less effective psychologically. Ooh look, some burned trees! We do not know what would have happened. There is no “undoubtedly” about it.”
You seem to be getting desperate now and resorting to absurdities.
“Er, no. The reports you are referring to are not “the opinion at the time” but are post-war.”
What are you talking about? The quote I gave was from July 1945!
“I have looked for some evidence that the “Joint Chiefs” were expecting a surrender in a week or two, and for the life of me, I cannot find any. ”
Then you need to look harder. My quote was from Ismay’s summary of a meeting of the US and UK Joint Chiefs in early July 1945.
“Because the Americans are evil, you know.”
The fact that the selection of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as targets was driven by the desire to hit unbombed cities in order to assess the effects is not, I believe, controversial.
http://www.dannen.com/decision/targets.html
“Dr. Stearns described the work he had done on target selection. He has surveyed possible targets possessing the following qualification: (1) they be important targets in a large urban area of more than three miles in diameter, (2) they be capable of being damaged effectively by a blast, and (3) they are unlikely to be attacked by next August. Dr. Stearns had a list of five targets which the Air Force would be willing to reserve for our use unless unforeseen circumstances arise.”
Obviously the strength of the supposed terrorist shock effect on the Japanese government was also an issue, but that hardly helps your case.
“I think you might be suffering from tunnel vision caused by only knowing a few quotes from a CND leaflet, but that is just speculation of course.”
Is personal abuse really the best you can do here?
“Just to add; we can reasonably discount the “demonstration” theory anyway; since we know that the Japs didn’t surrender after Hiroshima, which was a demonstration if anything was.”
The claim is that they only surrendered after having it proved to them that the US had more than one bomb available – which would have been established with a second attack on an uninhabited area (or the second attack could have been on a city, if necessary, sparing one city full of civilians, at least).
Again, your claim that it would not have worked equally well relies upon the rather implausible suggestion that the Japanese were too stupid to understand the consequences of an atomic attack on a city after having had it demonstrated to them in this way. Which is frankly pretty silly.
Ah, now I get you Randal. You’re conflating (deliberately?) two different things. Firstly the, as you say uncontroversial, claim that a significant criterion for target selection was that the city be unbombed to enable estimation of the bomb’s effect. Secondly, your claim that the purpose of dropping the bomb was (purely or mostly) in order to test it and assess its effect. Those are two very different claims.
Consider this; suppose in World War 1 the British army has a new machine gun. They want to know how effective it is, and so they say, “on this next assault on the German Lines, we will only use the new machine gun and none of the old ones. Then we can see how effective it is”. If somebody then said, “the only purpose of that assault was to test the machine gun on Germans”, that would be a mischaracterisation. THey were going to machine gun germans anyway; they just did it in such a way as to test the gun.
Likewise, having decided to drop the bomb, making one criterion a target that would best show the effects of a single bomb (i.e. by being unbombed previously) is not the same as dropping the bomb for the purpose of testing it. See what I’m getting at?
The claim is that they only surrendered after having it proved to them that the US had more than one bomb available – which would have been established with a second attack on an uninhabited area (or the second attack could have been on a city, if necessary, sparing one city full of civilians, at least).
Why the hell do you think the Allies were supposed to cut all this slack? I am fucking mystified, I really am. There is no way of knowing how the Japs would have reacted to a test, or to the next one. They may have read it as a sign that the Americans were so reluctant to use the bomb, they wouldn’t really use it, for all we know. The mystifying thing is that you seem to think the Allies were under an obligation to cut as much slack as possible to an enemy of unbelievable evil. It’s notable that you bizarrely claim that the nukes were “the worst act of terrorism of the war”, even after I pointed out that the Japs murdered more than double that number of people purely as a reprisal for one minor bombing raid.
Why, in war full of unspeakable atrocities does this one bombing get to be specially scrutinised? Where is your criticism of the Japanese for not throwing in the towel months and months before and saving all those lives- theirs and Allied- on Iwo Jima, Okinawa, etc? Why, right at the end when they’re maybe thinking of possibly trying to negotiate an armistice perhaps because now the Russians are in it too, do you treat this as a kind of starting point to consider culpabilities? It’s as if you think it was reasonable for them to carry on inflicting all that carnage while they still thought they had a chance to butcher the American forces to a standstill.
And you call me “contemptible”. Heh.
Again, your claim that it would not have worked equally well relies upon the rather implausible suggestion that the Japanese were too stupid to understand the consequences of an atomic attack on a city after having had it demonstrated to them in this way. Which is frankly pretty silly.
The Japanese were beyond silly at that time; driven by a ferocious insanity. One simply cannot treat them as rational agents. It is a major error people make in predicting the likely behaviour of others on the basis of them acting reasonably and rationally. People often do not. The Japanese leadership and people at that period in time were not anywhere near ratonal agents.
Again; the Japanese did not want to surrender, they were looking for every possible means to avoid it, right up to massacring as many of their own people as it took. A nation that is putting its people in suicide planes and boats by the hundred and thousand is not in its right mind. Luckily, the Americans were in theirs.
My HTML-fu failed 🙁
Also, not directly on-topic, but of interest regarding the Japanese mind of that time; there’s a fascinating argument that most of that Japanese mind and the “tradition” in which it was imbedded and justified was a 19th century fabrication-
THE INVENTION OF A NEW RELIGION by Basil Hall Chamberlain
I’m no Japanologist, but I’ve long found that particular pamphlet absolutely intriguing.
“See what I’m getting at?”
Yes, but you are wrong because you are conflating two different aspects of my argument. I have suggested elsewhere that one of the purposes of dropping the bombs was to test them, but the point to which you are responding now was different and more limited, namely that they dropped it on cities rather than on uninhabited regions because they wanted to see the effects, and it was this point that I addressed the targeting evidence.
“They may have read it as a sign that the Americans were so reluctant to use the bomb, they wouldn’t really use it, for all we know.”
I hardly think, given what had already been done to Tokyo, that there was anyone in the Japanese command structure under any illusions about US ruthlessness.
“It’s notable that you bizarrely claim that the nukes were “the worst act of terrorism of the war””
No, I didn’t, and that’s not the first time you have misrepresented my arguments. My claim was carefully worded – that the two atomic bombings were (and remain) the two most destructive single acts of terrorism in human history. That many other very bad things were done by both sides is not in dispute.
“Why, in war full of unspeakable atrocities does this one bombing get to be specially scrutinised? Where is your criticism of the Japanese ”
Why should I be concerned with this implied tu quoque defence? As I pointed out above, I’m not defending the Japanese conduct of the war. I’m criticising the US conduct of the war.
“Again; the Japanese did not want to surrender, they were looking for every possible means to avoid it”
Obviously, but there were no possible means to avoid it.
Here is what the Combined Chiefs of Staff had to say in their “Estimate of the Enemy Situation” in July 1945 (my emphasis added):
“The Japanese ruling groups are aware of the desperate military situation and are increasingly desirous of a compromise peace, but still find unconditional surrender unacceptable. The basic policy of the present government is to fight as long and as desperately as possible in the hope of avoiding complete defeat and of acquiring a better bargaining position in a negotiated peace. Japanese leaders are now playing for time in the hope that Allied war weariness, Allied disunity, or some “miracle,” will present an opportunity to arrange a compromise peace.
We believe that a considerable portion of the Japanese population now
consider absolute military defeat to be probable. The increasing effects of sea blockade and cumulative devastation wrought by strategic bombing, which has already rendered millions homeless and has destroyed from 25 to 50 percent of the built-up area of Japan’s most important cities, should make this realization increasingly general. An entry of the Soviet Union into the war would finally convince the Japanese of the inevitability of complete defeat. Although
individual Japanese willingly sacrifice themselves in the service of the nation, we doubt that the nation as a whole is predisposed toward national suicide. Rather, the Japanese as a nation have a strong concept of national survival, regardless of the fate of individuals. They would probably prefer national survival, even through surrender, to virtual extinction.
The Japanese believe, however, that unconditional surrender would be
the equivalent of national extinction. There are as yet no indications that the Japanese are ready to accept such terms. The ideas of foreign occupation of the Japanese homeland, foreign custody of the person of the Emperor, and the loss of prestige entailed by the acceptance of “unconditional surrender” are most revolting to the Japanese. To avoid these conditions, if possible, and, in any event, to insure survival of the institution of the Emperor, the Japanese might well be willing to withdraw from all the territory they have seized on the Asiatic continent and in the southern Pacific, and even to agree to the
independence of Korea and to the practical disarmament of their military forces.
A conditional surrender by the Japanese Government along the lines stated above might be offered by them at any time from now until the time of the complete destruction of all Japanese power of resistance.
Since the Japanese Army is the principal repository of the Japanese
military tradition it follows that the army leaders must, with a sufficient
degree of unanimity, acknowledge defeat before Japan can be induced to surrender. This might be brought about either by the defeat of the main Japanese armies in the Inner Zone or through a desire on the part of the army leaders to salvage something from the wreck with a view to maintaining military tradition. For a surrender to be acceptable to the Japanese Army, it would be necessary for the military leaders to believe that it would not entail discrediting warrior tradition and that it would permit the ultimate resurgence of a military Japan.”
In other words, the Japs were beaten and knew it. They were desperate and would become more desperate, and there were likely terms of surrender – particularly after Soviet entry – that would be acceptable to them including the surrender of all overseas territories and the disarmament of their military.
However this was not enough for the US regime, which wanted unconditional surrender including the occupation of Japan in order that it could be remoulded to suit US ideology and serve US foreign policy goals, and in order to achieve this they were prepared to kill any number of people.
Even if, however, you accept the idea that this insistence on unconditional surrender was legitimate grounds for mass killing (presumably using your evident end justifies the means, utilitarian ethical calculus), you still can’t get past the arguments that bombing uninhabited areas, or waiting until the effects of imminent Soviet entry had been accounted for, were moral requirements in that situation when the alternative was slaughtering tens of thousands of women and children and other civilians.
“My HTML-fu failed”
That’s where the absence of an edit function does become tiresome….
All this is getting very boring. What if we had not got a “Bomber Command” and had not bombed German factories or cities at all? (whether we were able to hit them relibaly and accurately at that time or not – which was debatable anyway until we got proper technology.)
What would have happened then? To the war, that actually would then have turned out? Say in 1941? Or 1942? Or 1943? Anybody care to speculate?
As “Randal” should know (and, most likely, does know) the atomic bombings of the two Japanese cities saved millions of Japanese (yes Japanese) lives. However, to debate with an antiAmerican fanatic (as so many British people – of both left and right are) is a waste of time.
David.
My position (which I think Sean Gabb agress with) is that the policy of Area Bombing in Germany was both morally wrong (like the conventional fire bombing of Japanese cities, which actually killed more people than the atomic bombing did, it did not have the “shock” value that would lead to either surrender or the collapse of the regime) and militarily misguided.
The vast resouces (in material – and the lives of Bomber Command) could have been better used – militarily better used.
As for the war itself.
So many missed opportunities.
As I tried to point out – the German resistance (which Bishop Bell, and others, desperatly tried to get the British government interested in) even leaked the plans of the attack upon Denmark and Norway in 1940 – and the plans for the attack on Holland, Belgium and France later in 1940.
The British government just ignored the information that people risked their lives to get to it.
They did not believe that the German resistance (which included people at the highest levels of military intelligence) was real – or, if real, was important.
It is tragic – utterly tragic.
As for a better specfic use for bombers….
How about bombing the railways (some bombing was done – but not enough) and death camps (no specific bombing at all)?
Even being killed by bombs would have been better than what actually happened – and the point was to put the death machine (the factories of death – fed with fresh victims each day) out of action.
Himmler’s Execution Squads (known for their cowardly conduct ) would have unable to murder more than a small proportion of the people who were murdered in the factories of death.
Winston Churchill actually suggested this – but was slapped down by both the British and American governments (including by President Roosevelt – see Paul Johnson’s “A History of the Jews”). President Roosevelt deluded assumptions of Jewish power in pre Nazi Germany (claiming that half the academics in pre Nazi Germany were Jewish – and on and on) seem to have given him an utterly twisted view of the situation (almost as mad as his, totally nonironic, view that Stalin was a “Christian Gentleman”).
I wonder how many Jewish votes in New York “F.D.R.” would have got – had they only known what he was really like.
An interesting example of the limits on Churchill’s power.
Although (before anyone points it out) Winston Churchill also (and quite wrongly) supported the policy of Area Bombing – at least by the 1940s he did.
From what I recall, the Japanese mindset at the time was, and probably still is, to never surrender personal or national pride (they’d much sooner die by committing suicide… apparently). From what I also recall, a troop of Japanese soldiers left behind by events on some remote Pacific island, still considered themselves actively at war well into the 1950s… and who were very much prepared to fight on when they were found (and I’m certainly not going to start googling for the bloody fine detail, but it does demonstrate well the Japanese attitude to war). No great desire to surrender there then Randal. It seems to me that you also prefer a similar policy of no surrender under any terms when your back’s to the wall.
This very clearly defined debate started by Dr Gabb describing the reasons why he believed that the general public have no right to think of British WW2 bomber crews being heroic; that’s his opinion, he set it out well and is welcome to it. You’ve gone on from there however to suggest that the Americans dropped Atomic bombs on Japanese civilians partly so they could assess which type might be the most effective at killing them. Even though the Japs started the killing war with America, which no doubt would have helped persuade many American’s they needed henceforth to be totally brutal, I do not believe such a monstrous canary notion for one second. Sooner or later someone was going to get their hands on atomic weapons – I’m pleased those hands belonged to an American.
Is it possible you need to read less and get out more?
“As “Randal” should know (and, most likely, does know) the atomic bombings of the two Japanese cities saved millions of Japanese (yes Japanese) lives.”
As “Paul Marks” ought to be able to realise, if he is intellectually alert enough, the question of whether any lives at all were saved by the atomic bombings is one of the points specifically at issue. If and when that point is resolved, then the question might arise of what the significance of he conclusion ought to be.
“However, to debate with an antiAmerican fanatic (as so many British people – of both left and right are) is a waste of time.”
I suppose the proper response to this pathetic kind of empty, passive aggressive insult is just to write “fuck you” and move on. But I’m not familiar with the expectations of this site regarding use of swear words (however apt in cases like this).
So instead I’ll treat it as though it’s an honest comment and respond (with an appropriate “sigh” to be assumed) straight, if with some irritation.
No, I’m not an anti-American “fanatic”, in any but the most trivial sense of the word. As I noted above, I grew up a strong supporter of NATO and the US, very much on the right of politics. As time has gone on, over the last couple of decades in particular, the world’s circumstances have changed and accordingly my opinion of the US’s role in the world has changed. So that my views on particular issues tend to be anti-American, because the truth is often now anti-American.
The difference between me and a fanatic is that if and when circumstances change again, my views on the US will change again.
Similar considerations apply to Israel, not entirely un-coincidentally, given the deep entanglement of the two countries in international affairs (my principal interest).
Now with regard to historical events such as the ones under consideration in WW2, in some cases my change of position has allowed a different perspective, or a different weighing of various sources of information. But on the particular issue of the city bombing policies (including the atomic bombings), the issues and concerns have always been there, merely given different weight at different times.
As I also noted above, the issue of “fanaticism” (intended, I think, to imply dogged imperviousness to reason) cuts both ways here. In the case of “Paul Marks”, his comments imply a “fanatic” determination not to accept that the actions of the US government can be considered in the way those of other governments can and should be considered. Perhaps this only applies to WW2. I don’t have enough experience of his views to say.
Perhaps that is something “Paul Marks” ought to contemplate. Perhaps while explaining the ethical basis for, and implications of, his evident belief that government’s actions are to be judged by a utilitarian calculation of the anticipated costs in lives of the various alternatives. Whereas I have every confidence that I do actually know and understand at least as much and probably much more in most cases than anyone likely to be posting to this board about military history, and foreign and military affairs in general, moral philosophy is an area in which I’m prepared to believe that people like Ian B and “Paul Marks” might be able to enlighten me, so I’m all ears.
john warren:
“No great desire to surrender there then Randal. It seems to me that you also prefer a similar policy of no surrender under any terms when your back’s to the wall.”
In some cases, I do, although that’s as much emotional as rational
But rulers of nations tend to have to take a more pragmatic view, when faced with the kind of utter defeat staring Japan in the face in July 1945, as indeed the Japanese Emperor did. Though not always, as the case of Hitler shows, when acceptable alternatives are not on offer. Much of the discussion above has been about whether the Japanese would have followed Hitler’s example or not, in the absence of the atomic bombings.
Personally, I think this rather misses the point, as I have repeatedly pointed out.
“This very clearly defined debate started by Dr Gabb”
Are there rules here about sticking to the definitions implicit in the initial post? Even if there are, I don’t see that moving from conventional slaughter bombing of cities to atomic slaughter bombing, in the same war, is really any great leap.
“the Americans dropped Atomic bombs on Japanese civilians partly so they could assess which type might be the most effective at killing them. Even though the Japs started the killing war with America, which no doubt would have helped persuade many American’s they needed henceforth to be totally brutal, I do not believe such a monstrous canary notion for one second.”
Why are you so determined to believe that the US government (presumably unlike other governments) would never make strategic decisions on such a basis?
The targeting criteria themselves are quite clear – one of the priorities was to have a previously unbombed urban area as a target so that the effects could be assessed. I quoted them verbatim above, if you are in any doubt.
As to whether this played any part in the strategic decision to use the bombs rather than negotiate peace, that’s one of the points at issue in much of the discussion above. As usual when considering motivations, it’s basically a matter of speculation, because the records of what was said only take you so far – state secrecy is used, and people usually lie (even, often, to themselves) about such issues, and in the end the best guide is the geo-strategic logic involved, combined with the cultural, ideological and personal attitudes of the decision makers.
“Is it possible you need to read less and get out more?”
Gratuitous insults seem to be a feature of discussion on this board. Still, I suppose I’m no angel in that area myself (although I like to think my insults are not usually gratuitous, but rather responsive – but then again most people probably think that, so I might be deceiving myself).
I’ve read this thread over and over and I must say, IanB – I have never in my life disagreed with someone more vehemently than I do you. You seem to be suffering from moral blindness or perhaps moral insanity. What sanctimonious hot-air, right? How odd that the “high horse” position is to object to the incineration of innocent people. How sophisticated your cost-benefit analysis is. Bravo, Bomber Command! So long LA.
Well, David Davis thinks this is getting boring, and perhaps it is. I am pretty much done with it as I’ve have refuted all of Randal’s purported facts to, I believe, a degree which would satisfy any neutral reader; I’m not going to try to change Randal’s mind because that would be impossible. Those historical points being- that the Japanese wanted to surrender, that the only negotiating sticking point was the status of the Emperor, that the A Bomb was dropped simply to test it on real people, and that dropping it was the “worst” act of terrorism by a State, evar; just to clarify on that latter one, even if you do accept it as “terrorism” (a subjective judgement), it is still outdone by the counter-example I gave of the massacre of 250,000 Chinese peasants as reprisals for a handful of them assisting a handful of US airmen to escape.
Anyway, Randal may enjoy the thread currently at the top of the LA Blog, in which L Neil Smith asserts that the Japanese were forced into invading Manchuria in 1931… by a US Oil Embargo imposed in, er, 1941 by FDR, who assumed office in, er, 1933.
But like I said, that’s about it for this discussion. All of Randal’s primary assertions have proven wrong. So, I think this is probably my last comment, since there’s nothing left to be said.
David Davis:
“All this is getting very boring.”
Well nobody’s forced to read it, I don’t think. (Though I gather from your post here the other day that you are the “nominal “blogmaster”” here, so perhaps you are an exception).
“What if we had not got a “Bomber Command””
Then the history of the war would have been different.
Perhaps the nazis would have beaten the communists.
As to whether that would have been better or worse for the world, who can really say? It depends upon the circumstances of the victory and upon subsequent events.
Seems likely “we” (the Brits) would have had to come to some kind of armed accommodation with the nazis as we did with the communists. It also seems unlikely German nazism would have lasted as long as Russian communism did, but who really knows?
Perhaps the nazis would still not have beaten the communists, but the two would have destroyed each other in some kind of horrible drawn out murderous draw.
Doesn’t seem to me that the answer to your counterfactual is clear enough to be useful, entertaining though such discussions often are.
“The Germans” = German soldiers, German command, German civilians including German women, German children, disabled and retarded German people, Germans who did not vote for or support the National Socialists, Germans who knew next to nothing about politics and the aims of the government etc etc What a wonderful phrase that is, “the Germans”. Or even better, “the Jerrys”. It was “the German people” (all of them) who cheered their boys on and therefore had to be burned alive. Same with the Japs. We must accept what governments tell us is “necessary”. Remember, “the Japanese had every opportunity to surrender”. That wonderful collectivism again. The phrase “the Japanese” refers to no agent, it names no object and it describes nothing in nature. At best it is a useful metaphor, at worst it is the crude reification of a purely political concept. If you vote for a politician you are responsible for everything he does? Putting an X beside the National Socialist party’s name in a booth is equivalent to shooting someone in the head. What about those who didn’t vote for the Nazis, are they guilty too? Should every German mind have been investigated to see how much they approved or disapproved? If we find the wrong thoughts, we blow their brains out, yes? That’s proportionality, right? WE are all responsible because WE are really the government.
“They waged total war. They murdered, terrorised, tortured and incarcerated civilians, broke the Geneva Convention (particularly the odious Japanese) and then they got back what they had given. Innocent?”
They! They (all German people, German soldiers, German command, German civilians including German women, German children, disabled and retarded German people, Germans who did not vote for or support the National Socialists, Germans who knew next to nothing about politics and the aims of the government etc etc) did it, therefore “they” ought to have been burned alive. THEY, the “odious Japanese” (all Japanese people, including the wicked little children) did it.
Then there’s this marvellous humanitarian zinger from Mr Davis: “We did exactly the right thing in August 1945. The war ended in three days flat.”
We? Oops, I’m getting on my high-horse again! I quite like it up here, actually. What utter bollocks you all talk.
” Every Japanese person who died in that war died because of their own government, and their own support for it.”
What in God’s name does this sentence mean? Does it mean that the innocent Japanese people who died were in fact not innocent because their government were murdering bastards? Does it mean that “support” (internal, mental support? voting? waving a flag? saying “i like the emperor” at a tea party?) means you are no longer innocent but guilty, just like your government? It makes no sense. You are talking rubbish. Why are you on a Libertarian forum doling out this belligerent gibberish?
“But like I said, that’s about it for this discussion. All of Randal’s primary assertions have proven wrong. So, I think this is probably my last comment, since there’s nothing left to be said.”
The dishonesty of your position is most easily illustrated by taking the example of the fourth of my alleged “historical points”, as you listed them.
You wrote:
“[Randal’s points were]…….that dropping [the A bomb] was the “worst” act of terrorism by a State, evar; just to clarify on that latter one, even if you do accept it as “terrorism” (a subjective judgement), it is still outdone by the counter-example I gave of the massacre of 250,000 Chinese peasants as reprisals for a handful of them assisting a handful of US airmen to escape.”
In my first post to the thread I wrote:
“the two most devastating (by far) single acts of terrorism were carried out by the US regime, in the atomic terror bombings of Japan”
In a later post I wrote:
“So the US regime stands condemned as the perpetrators of the two most destructive single acts of terrorism in history.”
Unless I’ve missed any, those are the only assertions I made on this point.
I was very careful to use the phrase “single acts of terrorism” to distinguish the dropping of these bombs from extended campaigns of terrorism (such as the one you claimed to have given as a counter-example), which could obviously easily exceed these acts in destructiveness.
Now your initial assertion that you had refuted a point I made could be interpreted charitably as simply a superficial misreading by you of my original comments, except that I specifically pointed out the error to you in a previous post, which makes the alternative to active dishonesty on your part being not one but a series of substantial misreadings.
Which is it?
Randal “I have a similar view of Israel” (or words to that effect). I did not mention Israel in this thread and neither did anyone else.
However, I am not surprised that you hate Israel – and that you can resist letting the cat out of the bag.
You do not really care about the millons of Japanese civilians who would have died had the atomic bombs not been dropped – you are just using the atomic bombings as an excuse for to express your hatred of the United States (which is totally unrelated to anything Americans do or do not do).
However, you most likely do care about the deaths of millions of Jewish civilians in Israel (the goal of both the Sunni and Shia Islamists) – in that you long for it.
“fuck you”.
Well I certainly do not wish to “fuck you” Randal (I am not way inclined myself), However, I do profoundly wish that you go before the judgment of God as soon as possible – if your planned actions match your disclosed sentiments (i.e. that you are no longer in this world before you can aid in the destruction of the United States and/or Israel).
I am supposed to wish, at this point, that you repent before you go before this judgement – so I do so.
British Bomber Command.
The heroic self sacrifice of the members of Bomber Command is not contested (I think not even by Sean), nor is it claimed that they hated German civilians.
In both these things they were almost the exact opposite of Himmler’s Exectution Squads – as these Exectution Squads were known both for their cowardly conduct, and for their intense (and sadistic) hatred of those civilians (specifically Jewish civilans) whom they abused and killed.
However, this does not alter the fact (and it is a fact) that very large numbers of German civilians were killed (and it was known, in advance, that they would be killed) by the policy of Area Bombing.
So the question is obvious – was some gain made by this policy which outweighs, in either miltiary or moral terms, these civilian deaths?
My position (which puts me in agreement with Sean Gabb – as uncomfortable as that is for both of us) is that the answer to this question is “no”.
In relation to Japan……
The proper point of comparision is not with the atomic bombings (which were a shock which transformed the political position in Japan), but with the conventional bombing of Japanese cities (such as the Tokyo fire raids) – which killed far more civilians than the atomic bombings.
Did the conventional bombing of Japanese cities (in the sense of the policy of mass “Area” destruction) lead to surrender?
No.
Could it reasonablly have been assumed that it would?
No – the German example already showed that conventional bombing of cities did not lead to either surrender to the fall of a totalitarian regime.
Therefore the conventional, Area, bombing of Japanese cities by the United States Army Airforce (under political orders) can not be justified.
Carl… I’m not too interested in quoting he did that, she said this, but do you truly believe that people writing on this site are so mindlessly callous that they wouldn’t raise an objection to the remote incineration of thousands of other human beings – no matter who they are? You know well enough, that wars are ordered by politicians and that senior soldiers are then ordered to plan and carry a military offensive through to a conclusion, win or lose. All in the name of ‘the people’ of course. Those unfortunates who are obliged to involve themselves at the killing end, have little idea what so much killing is all about. They shut their hearts and minds to it and follow orders. Kill who we order you to kill, or be killed yourself. If they object to killing often enough, they will be killed themselves by their own comrades. This is something that happens in human conflict and will always be so when a nation is attacked (or sometimes simply threatened) by an armed enemy. We few writing here, do of course have the benefit of hindsight; which sometimes helps but mostly hinders our understanding of the actual fighting taking place in real time.
Nevertheless, let’s try to go back in time and allow me please to put you in charge Carl. So tell us what your next move would be:
As CinC, you know something about the mentality of the forces that your own people are up against and what they’re capable of – but not everything. You’re told that they’re on the run and might sue for peace at anytime – but you don’t know that for sure and the leader of one of your enemies allies might still be holed up someplace and still remains something of a threat. Also, your main protagonist is effectively fighting your troops elsewhere. Hundreds of your own troops are being killed by them on a daily basis. Maybe members of your family are in danger at home. Your generals are telling you that, as it is, the killing could go on for years yet. It’s for certain that many, many thousands on both sides are set to die soon. Maybe even millions, due to the introduction of several improved killing machines being deployed by both sides; coupled with a rising level of anger and a natural need for revenge which daily infects those who are witness to the horror of total war.
You are now offered a new weapon Carl, so utterly destructive that it can bring a speedy resolution to the fighting. Perhaps the war could soon be over. Time is of the essence however and the device has not been fully tested nor is it’s delivery system. Also, the enemy might be on the verge of creating a similar device and their record in the war thus far indicates that they’ll not hesitate for a moment in deploying it.
We don’t yet know all the political and military stuff we’ve been reading for fifty years. So what, precisely, are you going to do now you’re in charge of your own hot war? What are you going to do with the world’s first atomic bomb? Test one or two and then live in hope that your people’s enemies haven’t built the third!
Randal, you’re right with this: I shouldn’t have said you should ‘get out more’. I don’t even know you yet alone understand fully where you’re coming from with this attack on the UK and US. My excuse for using the term is that it was early in the morning when I decided to write… and I mellow somewhat during the day.
It is astonishing how Noam Chomskyist some “libertarians” are (I am not just thinking of Randal here – indeed I know little of Randal, he has simply remined me of people I know more about) – the hatred of the United States (even to the level of thinking the atomic bombs were dropped for some trivial purpose) and the hated of Israel.
In the hated of Israel (in his case very much basic antisemitism) Noam Chomsky follows the example of Karl Marx – another man who ignored his own origins, and ranted on about businessmen being “inwardly circumcised Jews” and so on, taking the standard anti semitic writings of Martin Luther and others and applying them, sometimes word for word, to “capitalists”.
It should also be remembered that although Chomsky has spent his life defending Marxist regimes (including Pol Pot) against the forces of what is left of civil society – civilisation (led by the United States) he is not formally a Marxist (a Red Flag person). Formally speaking Chomsky is an “anarchist”, of the anti private property, in the means of production, distribution and exchange, sort. The de facto alliance between the Black Flack commual “anarchists” (i.e. the savages – for they are savages who dream of creating chaos, not civil freedom, and “eating the rich”, even if the Black Flag types are tenured academics) and the Red Flag Marxists (i.e. the totalitarians) long predates the present international “Occupy” movement.
However, these are other links – at least in the case of Chomsky.
As Paul Bogdanor relates in his essay “Chomsky’s War Against Israel” and Werner Cohn relates in his essay “Chomsky and Holocaust Denial” (both essays to be found in Peter Collier and David Horowitz’s “The Anti Chomsky Reader”), Noam Chomshy has accepted alliance with certain groups of people.
The Islamists (Green Flag types) and (yes) the National Socialists(the old Black Flag types). What unites all these (seemingly wildy different) groups?
Why does one find Marxists, Commual “Anarchists”, Islamists, and (yes) old style Nazis (blaming all the problems of the world on “the Jews” – as the late Andrew Breibart revealed by recording the convesations of “Occupy” people and reasearching their background) – all marching together happily in such movements as “Occupy”? Surely some of these groups are of the “left” and others are of the “right” – and still others (such as the Islamists and the Greens – the two sorts of “Green Flag” people) off in directions all their own?
What unites all these seemingly diverse groups is hated the West. Specifically hatred of the United States (as the principle power of the West – now that Britain has declined to second or third rate status) and hated of Israel – as a besieged outpost of civilisation in the savege and pityless Middle East (indeed the only nation in the Middle East where such things as the rights of Arab Muslim women are protected).
Of course should Israel fall – not only would millions of Jews be murdered (indeed the ones who would be murdered would be the luckly ones – being taken alive by the Islamists is a fate I would not wish on anyone), but also moderate (or, rather, nominal) Muslims (especially, but not solely, women) would be murdered in heaps – those not murdered being subjected to lives of horror and humilation.
As shown above the modern “Occupy” movement (and so on – including tragically a few so called “libertarians”, and some people such as Chomsky who are always trying to “kill the Jew in themselves” as well as Jews in general) are the true heirs to the hatred of American “capitalists” and “the Jews” of the National Socialist leader Adolf Hitler and his friend and ally the Grand Mufti (whose traditions are carried on by such Sunni Muslim Brotherhood organisations as Hamas and such Shia entities as the genocidal Iranian regime – among both such works as “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and Hitler’s “My Struggle” are treasured).
I must formally state that I do not (repeat not) include Sean Gabb in the above – his case is rather different.
I repeat my position that (even if it had only been a one in a million chance) that Japanese observers should have been invited, under safe conduct, to an atomic test – in the hopes that they could have personally reached the Emperor and got him to act (as he eventually did – but only after the atomic bombings).
Some people involved in the atomic weapons development project favored this plan – although (interestling enough) the lead scienist (the supposed humanitarian Robert O.) was not one of the scientists who favoured this approach.
There is also a , seeming, contradiction in my position to be considered.
I stand by the United States and have always done so – yet (at the same time) I have often spoken and writtten of the terrible decay and degeneration in the great Republic, with all the Founding principles either undermined or threatened.
I do not believe there is any real contradition here.
One can fully agree that Roman civilisation was in terrible decline – yet still be horrified by the collapse and the barbarian invasions.
Although, I must admit, that after the comming to power of Diocletian I lose any real love for Rome – military dictatorship is one thing, but from Diocletian onwards the idea of civil society (as being fundementally different to the state) is dying or dead.
Lastly…
I fully accept that I am not a civilised man – the liberal arts are alien to me.
I am a barbarian – but a federate (an ally of civilisation – even though I am not civilised myself). Indeed we federates are, in some ways, closer to the origins of civilisation that civilised people are (so we see things as they are – being closer to the edge).
Although I am sickly and decayed – I try and to my duty as best I can. My next visit to the east is soon – November in fact.
Better than watching what is left of the Res-Publica decay.
I prefer being on the border than to be in city itself.
Even if it turns out to be like the Rhine in the winter of 405 A.D.
I will be around to find out – but I wonder if there will be an “Ireland” for the West.
Ireland was not part of the Roman Empire – but it preserved much of the learning of civilisation better than any other land in the West (including the city of Rome itself) and added things of its own – such as the teaching of Saint Patrick and others against slavery (the comming of the Vikings to Ireland meant the burning of books and the return of slavery – but Ireland had passed on learning by that time).
perhaps somewhere will preserve what can be preserved in the comming Dark Age – and add new things of value, of its own.
I should have typed I will NOT be around to find out.
Oh well – I did say I was not a civilised man. A keyboard is as alien to me as a pen was to a Fresian federate.
Paul Marks:
“However, I do profoundly wish that you go before the judgment of God as soon as possible – if your planned actions match your disclosed sentiments (i.e. that you are no longer in this world before you can aid in the destruction of the United States and/or Israel).”
You certainly are a nasty piece of work, Mr Marks, so it’s hardly a surprise to find that you are the type to conflate opposition to Israel with anti-semitism, and to sling that nasty charge around freely.
I won’t bother addressing the various errors and propaganda points you raised in relation to Israel, because discussions of that issue are always heated and it would certainly drag this thread way off topic. I admit with hindsight it was a mistake on my part to throw in Israel as an aside, because it was always going to give an angle for your kind of obsessive to pounce.
“I repeat my position that (even if it had only been a one in a million chance) that Japanese observers should have been invited, under safe conduct, to an atomic test – in the hopes that they could have personally reached the Emperor and got him to act (as he eventually did – but only after the atomic bombings).”
It would have been a lot easier to drop the bomb in a less inhabited area in Japan. The Japanese were quite competent to work out for themselves what the consequences would be in a city.
Effectively by admitting this you have admitted that my basic position is correct – that the destruction of the two cities should not have been carried out when it was and rather a demonstration should have been made. Bearing in mind the necessary implication is that tens of thousands of innocent civilians might not have needed to have been killed, the next conclusion must be that it was a morally outrageous act. It appears it is only your dogmatic refusal to accept the consequences (because they involve criticism of the US regime that you find impossible to stomach) that prevents you from making the inescapable logical step from your admission to the conclusion.
I don’t think anything else you have written needs any response from me – you have not raised any relevant points of substance that have not already been addressed repeatedly.
I will just observe again how your comments highlight the bizarre obsession your ilk seems to have with treating the US regime as special, and not subject to the kind of analysis other governments should face.
John Warren:
Randal, you’re right with this: I shouldn’t have said you should ‘get out more’. I don’t even know you yet alone understand fully where you’re coming from with this attack on the UK and US. My excuse for using the term is that it was early in the morning when I decided to write… and I mellow somewhat during the day.”
Not a problem, John. As I indicated in my reply, I’m no angel myself and my skin is pretty thick after a couple of decades of this kind of online discussion.
I will respond to your question to Carl about what he would do if he had been in charge.
Here is the situation. You are the US President at the beginning of August 1945. You know that the war against Japan is won and it is just a matter of the proper application of overwhelming force (as was observed in another context). You know that two atomic bombs are ready to go, with a third to be available a week later and around three per month thereafter.
You know that your intelligence (having thoroughly penetrated Japanese communications) indicate no signs of a Japanese bomb being imminent, and in any event you know that the Japs would have no way to deliver such a weapon anyway, to any location where it could do really substantial damage. You know that the Soviets are to attack Japan on 15th August, and you have on your desk the report of the Combined Chiefs of Staff, with its “Estimate of the Enemy Situation” stating: “An entry of the Soviet Union into the war would finally convince the Japanese of the inevitability of complete defeat”.
The question is, do you authorise the prompt destruction of two entire cities full of women and children, or do you:
1 order your forces to hold off until after the Soviet entry, to see what changes that would bring to the Japanese negotiating position, or
2 Order the first two bombs to be dropped in quick succession on uninhabited regions of Japan, to see what effect that would have upon the Japanese negotiating position when they were informed that the third would be dropped on Kyoto and the fourth on Tokyo?
Do you really believe that Truman’s choice was acceptable, civilised or indeed anything but a straightforward war crime? And can you honestly, hand on heart, say that if such an act were carried out in similar circumstances by a government that was not Britain’s or the US’s, you would have the same opinion?
Randal – I would regard as a “nasty piece of work” someone who wishes to exterminate or enslave the Jewish, Christian and moderate (or nominal) Muslim population of Israel.
I did not raise the subject of Israel – you did.
And you expressed hostility.
A hostility to a nation attacked from all sides by forces (Islamists forces – but in direct alliance with the international left, as can be seen on any university campus or in any demostration) bent on genocide.
To express hostilty to such a nation under siege is to express support for those seeking to commit genocide – from Hitler’s friend and ally the Grand Mufti, to the present day (for such works as the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and Hitler’s own “My Struggle” are still treasured by the enemies of Israel).
I have given you an opportunity to exlain that you did not mean what you have previously written (or to explain that I have misunderstood you) – remember I typed “if”.
However, you have not done so – all you have done is to engage in personal abuse directed against me (as you did previously with your “fuck off” comment).
You have convicted yourself.
As for your hostility to the United States – this is to be expected.
And again I accused you of nothing (nothing at all) that you had not already accused yourself of – by your own comments.
Had you not raised these subjects (which were not relevant to the posts under discussion under discussion) I would have no idea of your opinions.
After all although this comment thread has the disgusting title of “Another Sob Story about Bomber Command” (a title so vile that a friend of mine could not even bring himself to comment upon the post) and contained a comparision between Bomber Command and Himmler’s Execution Squads (men known for their cowardly conduct – and for their sadism) it did not (repeat not) contain any attack on the United States.
Sean Gabb did not make an attack on the United States in this post – you did Randal.
Nor was there any attack by Sean Gabb (in this post) on Israel.
You did that as well Randal.
As I have already said – I did not bring up these subjects,. you didid, And your convicted yourself – you showed what you actually are (to use your own words “a nasty piece of work”).
As for the likely death of the United States.
It is indeed likely that the great Republic will fall (sadly I do not deny that) – but this should be a matter of grief (great grief).
The United States, in spite of all its faults, has been generally a great force for good in the world (as Britain was generally a great force for good, in spite of all its faults, when Britain was powerful)
I doubt that you will miss Israel – although it is possible that you will repent of your attitude (hopefully you will).
But you will certainly miss the United States – if it does indeed fall.
You will find the world without what you (no doubt) consider “American Imperialism” is a much worse place than with it – even for yourself personally.
As for whether anything can be saved from the wreak of the United States (should the Republic fall) – that remains to be seen.
Age can bring wisdom, but it would appear that in your case it has brought dishonesty and an obsessive and grossly disproportionate hair-trigger response to any criticism, however measured or oblique, of Israel or of the US government (or at any rate the latter’s actions in WW2).
I don’t think you’ve raised anything of substance which requires a response, but I will highlight the additional instances you have provided in this latest posts of your regrettable habit of misrepresenting what has been written by others.
“(as you did previously with your “fuck off” comment).”
I did not, of course, write “fuck off”. I did respond to a gratuitous insult that you aimed at me out of the blue by suggesting that the appropriate response on my part might be “fuck you”, but that I would not make that response on this occasion.
“this comment thread ………. contained a comparision between Bomber Command and Himmler’s Execution Squads”
Sean wrote: “I think Himmler said something about the bravery of his execution squads in Russia”.
How you are able to confuse that in your evidently rather disorganised mind with “comparing Bomber Command with Himmler’s Execution Squads”, I genuinely fail to see.
Either you are too stupid to grasp the difference, or you are too dishonest to care, or you are just profoundly careless in your argumentation.
Anyway, you need to go away and think about all these examples I have given (see also the WMD American-style thread) of you misrepresenting what others have written, and what it says about your mode of discussion generally. Hopefully you will come back with a resolve to be more intellectually disciplined, rigorous and sincere in future.
“To express hostilty to such a nation under siege is to express support for those seeking to commit genocide”
On reflection, I will add my strong objection to this particularly outrageous piece of binary illogic.
I reserve the right to adopt a “plague on both your houses” approach to any dispute between foreigners. Only if the collapse of one side is imminent and inevitable could failure to support that side be said to represent de facto support of the other, and even then the question remains of whence any duty falls upon me to act otherwise.
The latter, of course, is very far from being the present situation of Israel, or indeed its likely situation in the foreseeable future.
Randal accuse me of dishonestly when you are the one have been dishonest is what I would expect of you.
As for the post – the very title (“Another Sob Story About Bomber Command”) is disgusting – let alone the effort to link Bomber Command to Himmler’s Execution Squads (people known for their cowardly conduct – and for their sadism).
It is the normal practice of a leftist to try and link things in people’s minds – but to do so in such a way as to be able to deny that any such thing is being done. Sean observed that often in his youth – and it is depressing that he seeks to use the same tactic himself.
Link-Bomber-Command-to-Himmler-Execution-Squads-who-me-I-would-never-do-that.
Personally I prefer to link things openly – or not link them at all.
Also when I use abusive language I use it openly.
For example, you told me to “Fuck Off” – and now you pretending you did not. Because of some play on words (or whatever).
The campaign against Israel is part of a general one against the West.
The Islamists do not operate on their own – they operate in alliance (as can be seen in the universities and in the street protests and so on – around the world).
The alliance is with the Red Flag types (the Marxists) and the Black Flag “anarchist” types – the “Occupy” Chomskyites.
Although there is also allaince with the old Black Flag types – the National Socialists (Nazis). As can be seen by Noam Chomsky personal activities (see “The Anti Chomsky Reader”) and by words of ordinary “Occupy” people themselves (where they blame “The Jews” for just about every world economic problem – many thanks to the late Andrew Breitbart for bringing the true feelings of so many “Occupy” people to light).
The hatred of Nazis for Israel is predictable – and indeed their alliance with the Islamists is old (going back to Hitler and the Grand Mufti) such works as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion ((a forgery by elements of the Russian Secret Police – and so crude a forgery that even the Emperor Nicky refused to believe it) and Hitler’s “My Struggle” are treasured in the Middle East – and have long been so (indeed they were treasured long before modern Israel even existed).
However, why the obsessive hated of Israel among the Marxists and among the commual (Black Flag) “anarchists”?
This did not use to be the case. And they would seem to have no special ideological reason to wish to exterminate Jews (after all some Marxists and communal “anarchists” are Jewish themselves – although, like Karl Marx and Noam Chomsky, they tend to be good at forgetting this).
The reason is simple – the war on Israel is just part of the overall on the West.
“A plague on both their houses”.
Your position of neutrality between your own civilisation (the West) and its enemies.
A position of neutrality that is totally untenable.
And is false anyway – as you uttered not one word of attack against the Islamists.
For years I begged and pleaded (sometimes in great anger – sometimes in anquish) with Sean Gabb to come down on one side or the other – to be openly for or against the Kevin Carson types (the enemies of the West).
Eventually I got used to the reality – that he was not really interested in these matters and was motivated by a sense of mischief (naughtyness). If ever had directly answered my questions he would have come down on the side of Kevin Carson – not because Sean Gabb is really an enemy of the West (he is not), but simply to be irritating.
Randal you appear to be a similar type. You make little drive by sneers at the United States or Israel – not because you actually wish to destroy the West (and your own life), but because you are just a certain type of British person (the type that likes sneering – and does bother their heads with little matters like the defence of the West from total destruction).
I think I was wrong (and so must admit that I was wrong) to fear that you would actively participate in the destruction of Israel or the United States – or the rest of the West.
More likely you would just smile and say “nothing to do with me”.
Till you found that the savage mobs did not leave you and yours alone.
As for your claim that Israel is not in danger of imminent destruction – that is such an absurdity on your part, that it deserves no reply.
The United States – America has been, to a great extent, corrupted. Its most deadly enemies are (and have long been) within its own borders – those who control the “mainstream” media, the education system (both at university and at school level) and, now, the Executive branch of the Federal government (including the President himself – who is a life long enemy of the “capitalist” West).
However, the United States is not only the Western nation under threat – all of the West is under threat (and by the same sort of people).
I have no idea whether our civilisation will survive – perhaps it will (in some new form), perhaps it will not.
I will not live to see what happens – but I will do what little I can do.
And (a hard one for me) I will try to control my anger at a certain sort of unserious Englishman who regards everything as a naughty game.
do NOT bother their heads about “little”things such as the total destruction of the West.
And all my other typing mistakes – I find it irritating to have to try and force my paws to type every word in my mind (the words should just appear – but, of course, they do not).
But the typing is pointless anyway – because I am trying to communicate with people who do not actually care.
And when they finally do care – it will be too late.
I think, Mr Marks, you are descending into self-parody and I’m starting to feel sorry for you, which is not good for maintaining the hostility your dishonesty in discussion and general nastiness (of which I have highlighted repeated examples above) deserves.
The sad thing is that I suspect there are many things we agree on, but the issues that divide us (dislike of the US’s and Israel’s recent and current behaviour on my part and a kind of jingoistic crusader spirit on your part) resonate too strongly with each other’s emotional sensitive spots for us to ever interact reasonably.
“self parody”, “I am starting to feel sorry for you”.
One thing is certainly true – I am correct to despise people such as Randal.
Totally unserious – willfully blind.
Randal when I thought you were part of the enemy I actually had some respect for you – for I do respect them (although I, of course, would welcome their deaths).
However, I no longer believe you are part of the enemy.
Devastated.
If an act is described as necessary, it means that things could not have been otherwise. By the very definition of the word “necessary”, the atomic bombings were not necessary. They were not an act of self-defense. What else could have been done? Well, how long have you got? This side of “necessity” the list is infinite.
Kudos to Will Wolverhampton for posting that Orwell passage, it says it all really. Conservative nationalism really isn’t compatible with libertarianism, it seems. This thread illustrates it very well. Criticism of the decisions of politicians and generals nearly 70 years ago are hysterically jumped on as “anti-U.S” or “anti-U.K”. Ridiculous. And as Randal has pointed out repeatedly, tu quoque arguments abound.
“Conservative nationalism really isn’t compatible with libertarianism, it seems.”
In the end, they might conflict, but in practice it is easy for the two to get along in practice. I regard myself as both conservative and nationalist by disposition, but I fully support many libertarian positions – the smallest and least intrusive government possible, no prohibition laws, private gun ownership as a right, the right to discriminate, freedom of speech (provided it is genuinely free), etc.
And I assume that both Marks and Ian B also would support many libertarian positions. I think their position on this particular matter is emotionally based rather than rational, as illustrated by the profoundly unlibertarian and in many cases illogical or dishonest arguments they have had to resort to in order to defend it.
In Marks’ case in particular, though, some of his comments suggest he seems to adhere to a militarily aggressive neoconservative style of nationalism that involves using war to impose his ideology on other countries (under the cover of “getting them before they get us”, as far as I can see). Such people are common amongst the US Republicans and Israeli Likudnik nationalists and their sympathisers.
It does seem to me that such people are inherently less libertarian because of their necessary support (in practice) for the security state and the military. After all, war is said to be the health of the state.
I don’t think they are really “conservative nationalists”, though perhaps I should redefine my own position as patriotic conservative (my nationalism mainly manifests in seeking to pursue an undogmatic small state libertarianism in my own country, whilst leaving the rest of the world to make its own choices and relying upon armed neutrality to prevent them interfering), and call the likes of Marks neoconservative nationalists, to label the distinction.
Bravery is a title bestowed on people by others, so the acts have to be not self-serving and have some form of self-sacrifice or risk to them while helping others in a manner that it is more than conceivable others would not. Hence I have a slight issue with Sean’s portrayal of bravery, but not with his observation of the mis-portrayal of cowardice on the enemy.
So, Germans would not necessarily consider Bomber Command brave. If they had no choice [e.g. shot for cowardice] about flying such dangerous missions they were not brave, or if they did not reasonably believe that the missions had the effect of saving Allied lives then it was also not brave, or if they did not think the missions were going to be dangerous (although this is exceedingly unlikely) – all regardless of the mortality rate.
As much fun as Randal and Ian B’s little fight has been it does seem that one of the central problems is that they are arguing, at least in part, about two different sets of facts:
Ian B talks about the Japanese Commanders’ actual views of surrender whereas Randal appears to be talking about the Allies’ views of the Japanese position on surrender. Both can be telling the truth and lead both to take different positions on the atomic bombing. Having said that, I think there might still be a difference of opinion based on the apparent culpability of the civilian population and the ‘morality’ of punishment as vengeance and relative values of lives.
I do find Ian B’s comments to be worrisome. The idea that one loses one’s individuality and rights when the unelected-by-the-majority leaders of the land mass you happen to occupy engage in acts against your will and without your support and somehow you are then also culpable for what those leaders choose to do, seems to me, as an individualist, to be an extreme case of blaming the victim.
As to the ‘evils’ of America at war, I don’t think we even have to go back as far as Japanese interment, or radioactive and chemical testing on the civilian population, or the Vietnam draft to see what they are willing to do to their own people – the current Democratic, Constitutional scholar who promised Hope and Change will suffice. Which is not to say we ignore what anyone else does, but the US claims to be the Shining City on a Hill (as well as #1) so it can bloody well expect to be held to a higher standard than fucking Nazis.
“So, Germans would not necessarily consider Bomber Command brave.”
They certainly didn’t. As well as widespread (and understandable) general hatred of Allied bomber crews, it was commonplace in German society to refer to them as cowards who killed babies from afar. Similar expressions are reported today for US aircrew and drone operators by Afghan and Pakistani fighters and their societies.
In both cases it’s understandable, but it’s clearly just the same irrational, emotional response that causes our own leaders and media to refer to IRA, Al Qaeda or Taliban fighters as “cowards”. Just another piece of muck to sling at a hated enemy, and a normal human refusal to give any credit at all to them. Part of the demonisation process.
As well as a relic of warrior ethics (more so in the Afghan and Pakistani case).
In the case of US aircrew and drone operators today, they do face essentially no substantial risks, and so can be regarded as neither brave nor cowards imo. WW2 bomber crews faced very substantial risks and must be regarded as having been brave, even if one disapproves of what they were doing.
“Ian B talks about the Japanese Commanders’ actual views of surrender whereas Randal appears to be talking about the Allies’ views of the Japanese position on surrender.”
Ian B talks about some of the Japanese commanders’ stated positions on surrender and seeks to argue this means Japan would never have surrendered. (For instance, he conveniently ignores the direct quote I gave from the Emperor (June 22nd 1945) directing the Japanese government that: “concrete plans to end the war, unhampered by existing policy, be speedily studied and that efforts made to implement them”.)
In my defence, I think I talked about both, at various times. In considering the decision taken at the time by the US regime, it is for some purposes necessary to consider the information available to them at the time.
Randal: “WW2 bomber crews faced very substantial risks and must be regarded as having been brave”
You appear to have missed a substantial part of my point about bravery – the risk is completely irrelevant if any of the following are true:
– The risk was thought to be smaller beforehand (unlikely)
– They had no choice
– What they were doing did not, in a reasonable person’s opinion, have any positive impact on the war effort or save Allied lives (at best they’d be stupid, at worst evil)
I personally have doubts about the strategic importance of many of the missions and am pretty sure that a direct refusal to fly any mission would lead to a Court Martial and possible execution. Doing something at the point of a gun is not brave. Doing something dangerous for no benefit to others is also not brave. Doing something dangerous which is injurious to others for no obvious benefit is pretty bad – unless done at the point of a gun.
“You appear to have missed a substantial part of my point about bravery – the risk is completely irrelevant if any of the following are true:
– The risk was thought to be smaller beforehand (unlikely)
– They had no choice
– What they were doing did not, in a reasonable person’s opinion, have any positive impact on the war effort or save Allied lives (at best they’d be stupid, at worst evil)”
I didn’t miss it, but I don’t agree entirely with it.
For me, bravery is merely the attribute of overcoming fear when needing to do so. So while I agree with your first two caveats (which don’t apply in the case of Allied bomber crews), I don’t completely agree with the third – in the sense that what is important imo is not what a reasonable observer would say about the worthwhileness of the activity, but what the person involved believes about it. And I don’t doubt that most if not all bomber crews believed what they were doing was necessary.
So it follows that in my opinion people can be both brave and stupid, or both brave and engaged in evil acts. You use the term slightly differently.
“I personally have doubts about the strategic importance of many of the missions and am pretty sure that a direct refusal to fly any mission would lead to a Court Martial and possible execution. Doing something at the point of a gun is not brave. ”
I think while there might have been particular missions and particular crewmembers to which this might have applied on particular occasions, it didn’t apply in general. In most cases I think the crews just accepted the high command’s decisions regarding the usefulness of missions.
“For me, bravery is merely the attribute of overcoming fear when needing to do so.”
I did think about that, but decided that bravery is reflected in other people’s eyes and since all they have to go on is their own knowledge this is not an acceptable generalisation for the use of the word in this (or indeed any non-theoretical) situation. ymmv.
“ymmv”
Indeed. Really, we are just discussing what is the best of a number of possible definitions of “bravery” to use, I suppose.
I like mine because it reminds us that even our enemies and criminals in general are human beings with virtues as well as vices, and both admirable and damnable motives,
Most people I think prefer not to be reminded of this and prefer a definition which allows them to describe anyone they don’t like as a coward.
Almost needless to say…. I am not a neocon (although there are worse things in the universe).
I am not interested in imposing democracy by force – as Randal knows perfectly well.
But as Randal has already (repeatedly) lied about World War II why not lie about me as well? Indeed why not lie about everything?
At least Randal is consistent.
And it is not lying for some sort of “higher” purpose. It is just lying for amusement – for fun.
As for the need to combat “armed doctrines” (to use Edmund Burke’s term) that seek to destroy us (whether this “armed doctrine” be Jacobinism. National Socialism, Marxism, or Islamisism) I certainly plead “guilty” to holding that view.
I do not believe in sitting around waiting to be exterminated.
My kin in Holland made that mistake.
“I do not believe in sitting around waiting to be exterminated.
My kin in Holland made that mistake.”
Would you be willing to use the weight of the state to force your neighbour to join you in that fight if they do not believe extermination is coming?
Do you think you have the right to forcibly make others risk their lives to protect freedoms you have? If so, where do you get this right from? And are you not almost as much a tyrant as those you seek to stop?
keddaw
The debate between minimal statism (minarchism) and anarchocapitalism is an an interesting one.
And I am open to being convinced.
For example, come up with a private enterprise plan to terminate the Iranian regime – and I will look at it. And, I hope, look at it with an open mind.
However, for the present (till I am convinced otherwise), I remain a minimal state (defence is more important than opulence) minarchist libertarian – not an anarchcapitalist.
And you imploying that my position is “almost” socialism is not good – it is not tyranny.
I am not a social justice person – I oppose tyranny.
However, I do not believe that the forces of social justice (of Jacbinism, Fascism, National Socialism, Marxism and Islamism – because social justice is a the core of all totalitarian ideologies) can be defeated with a feather duster and kind words.
Nor, I repeat, do I believe in allowing an enemy to always strike first. In modern warfare that is often suicide.
It would not only mean my own death (not something to be upset about), but also the deaths of people I actually care about.
Still you asked a specific question – do I believe in conscription?
No, I do not.