commodore96 said:
PhreakyDee said:
Also; The first to invent and finish the proper nuclear bomb was in fact the Nazis. But after testing it, they found it to be a too powerful and too devastating a weapon and decided not to use it. And then Hiroshima and Nagasaki was blown to bits and pieces by the Americans with a weapon the Nazis found too evil to use..... )
Nuclear bombs were seen as the humane alternative to firebombing Japanese cities to force them to surrender. If given the choice I would rather be obliterated than burned to death any day of the week, and also dropping those bombs probably saved countless US, USSR, and Japanese lives.
Yeah? Your entire city flattened, all but one building (bridges twisted into pretzels and so on)? Your skin hanging off your body like rags. People burned black. No remaining infrastructure to provide support. A bankrupt nation already in poverty now completely bewildered about how to deal with all this. And then you and your family suffer cancers, mutations and health issues for generations. And your government is forbidden to research these effects, and you and thousands others suffer and die without proper care or diagnosis, unless lucky enough to be taken away to the USA for research.
There was nothing humane about those bombs. Rationalising it as 'the only way to end the war', as many historians do, is as offensive and dehumanising as rationalising 9/11 as America reaping what America had sowed. If you ever make it to Hiroshima, go to the bomb museum and you will see. Japan's total war effort had already broken the country. It's leadership was fragmented and on the verge of major change. Other avenues were being investigated to end the war. Those bombs was the only way to end the war with the outcome
America wanted.
The concept that Japan was a culture in which revolt was impossible is almost mythical. Less than 90 years earlier, Japan had successfully revolted against iron fisted Shoganate rule and its rigid and regimented feudal caste system. Within a few decades, the nation had accomplished perhaps the most unprecedented cultural and social revolutions this world has yet seen. It's entirely possible that many more Japanese would have suffered if their war effort had gone on much longer, but they were already greatly suffering. A ship like the Yamato was sent out without enough fuel to return. The war would have ended. The bombs ended it sooner, but no amount of rationalisation can make them in any way 'humane', or not a war-crime.
But yeah, as for nuclear weapons, the USA can take that claim to fame, if it wants. It has the most of them anyway.
