White People are... Better?

[Zerstiren]

I've been on a history bent lately and have noticed something odd that I've never thought about in detail. It seems white countries (countries either predominantly run by or founded by Caucasians or Europeans) have it a great deal better than black nations (those occupied mainly by African descendants) and a fair deal better than Asian countries. Not saying the individual people are better or worse, smarter or dumber, just that overall the nations seem vastly different. We're all aware of the "privileged white" status. But have you ever really thought about it?

If we look through history, time and time again white people (usually some form of Anglo Saxon) show up on the scene, rape and pillage the vastly worse off native population of black people, then install their own technology and culture. The English did it, the Germans did it, the French did it, the Spanish did it, etc., etc. People with a massive technological advantage, all whom happen to be white, demolish and replace nations. Why? How?

It's widely believed the first of our species developed in Africa, before later moving through what is now Asia and eventually up to Europe. While the oldest human being we've ever found was discovered in Australia (50,000 ish years-old, btw) Africa is thought to be the pool from which the majority of humans developed. They spent a long, long time there, then moved North and into China, establishing the longest running empire yet. White people as we've come to know, didn't arrive on the scene until both the two other major ethnic "types" if you will, had already been growing, learning, evolving and advancing for quite some time. But somehow, white man managed to acquire a massive technological lead, obtaining things like mechanical engineering, health care and medicine, advanced sanitation and water systems, weapons of war--you get the idea.

So, somehow European humans managed to outpace and out-tech their older relatives, take over much of the world during centuries of exploration and conquest and end up today as easily the best off nations. How? Look at the top countries by way of health care, economy, human rights, education and levels of conflict. The top half of the list is comfortably white--Norway, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, etc. They've all had their ups and their downs, going through wars and depressions like anywhere else, but still the happiest, healthiest and most advanced peoples are white. Asia isn't far behind, held back mostly by extreme levels of poverty that offset their smaller, better off minorities. Some Arab countries are filthy rich, with some of the world's richest making bank from oil, but, again and to a worse degree, poverty, war, education and general health in the lower end overshadows the richer portion.

I never realized it was this much of a difference. How did it turn out this way? Am I imagining things?

Gunpowder was invented in China, the component which revolutionized warfare from its inception. I understand what you're saying: but no one can make a surface-observation of history and make an absolute claim--history is effing complicated.

 

[Mavinchious Maximus]

Okay, about the nukes dropped on Japan, watch this video. It explains it much better than I ever could.
Yes it's nearly an hour long, but it's well worth watching.

I think we went a tad off topic >___>

Or maybe I proved white people are worse than others, despite having better tech, lol.

Would any other Peoples of different races do the same if they were in the white peoples shoes?

Probably, its called evolution.

 

[Clearing the Eye]

Okay, about the nukes dropped on Japan, watch this video. It explains it much better than I ever could.
Yes it's nearly an hour long, but it's well worth watching.

I think we went a tad off topic >___>

Or maybe I proved white people are worse than others, despite having better tech, lol.

Would any other Peoples of different races do the same if they were in the white peoples shoes?

Probably, its called evolution.

That's not evolution. Evolution is change through mutation and has nothing to do with people killing each other and taking land.

Survival of the fittest isn't the same as evolution. Pet peeve of mine.

 

[Mauler]

Erm wait what about China theire cultural and technological, and economical advances surpassed the europeans all the time, they were pillaged and raped by french and british forces ,but they rebuilt, theire efforts were hampered buy Mao zedong and his cultural revolution and communism as a whole, but they still rebuilt and now are one of leading technological, economical countries in the Terra...

 

[TotalerKrieger]

Did they KNOW how effective the blockade was working? They had experience with blockades on the European Front and found they alone did not work that well, they had memories of Britain under blockade and how they resisted to the extreme.

They knew that Japanese Navy had no fighting force capable of engaging their naval blockade, they knew the Japanese airfore now consisted of Kamikaze planes strictly held in reserve for an amphibious invasion in the southern mainland. They knew Japan did not have enough fuel to keep either of these rag-tag fighting forces operational. They estimated that Japan only possessed enough ammunition to properly equip two thirds of their home defense forces (it was actually much less). The US naval blockade prevented any shipment of fuel, weapons or ammo to Japanese forces and the the US bombing campaigns crushed the means to manufacture these commodities in any significant quatity. That sounds like a highly effective blockade.

What specific blockades on the European Front? The Blockade of Germany was a vast series of operations which evolved over the entire course war. The blockades of Japan and Germany are so vastly different in scale, trimeframe and geography that there is little point in comparing the two.

At no point was Great Britian ever subjected to a blockade by sea. The Royal Navy and Royal Airforce was operational throughout the entire war. Shipping lanes to the UK, while contantly challenged by Axis naval forces were never completely cut off.

Did they know how crushed and demoralised the Japanese military was? They were still fighting tooth and nail where they were fighting. Allied Troops were being quickly ferried from Europe to the Pacific, clearly large parts of the military deemed that the war was far from over. The instrument of surrender to Admiral Mountbatten in September who was in charge of just South East Asia Command took over 100'000 Japanese troops who needed great endorsement from their central command to surrender without a fight. The Japanese air-force was entering its most deadly stage of widespread use of Kamikaze bombing tactics. They were of limited use for how with no aircraft carriers such planes had a short range but any landing operation on Japan would have had huge casualties as it would be a short hop from Japanese mainland to the troop transport ships.

An army cannot fight for long if it doesn't eat, no matter how zealous. Nor can they engage an enemy for long if their ammunition supplies are at a breaking point. The fact that Japan was mobilizing the elderly, women and children armed only with farming intruments shows how desperate the situation in the mainland actually was. Even Germany's Volkstrum was issued firearms...

The Kamikaze planes were held in reserve to engage an invasion force. Japan would have most likely capitulated before any invasion force had even assembled.

And realise, while the Japanese were starving, Allied POWs were starving at an even faster rate. Realise HUGE NUMBERS of allies were captured in Japan's swift advance across the Pacific and had been in horrific conditions for years now, the Allies knew if they tried to starve the Japanese out then there wouldn't be any Prisoners left at all. Waiting was NOT on the agenda. Not least of which how do you tell a multi-trillion dollar war-machine built on the largest Debt-to-GDP ratio America has ever had to "just wait"? They needed this war over and SOLIDLY over soon and get these soldiers off government pay and back in the economy.

Japan had captured roughly 27,000 Americans throughout all campaigns in WW2. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki resulted in the deaths of 135,000 Japanese citizens within the first few days alone. I do not have the figure which states the total number of Allied POWs held by the Japanese in the summer of 1945, but in my opinion 135,000 civilian deaths is unacceptable collateral damage to secure the safety of what is presumably a much smaller number of men who are only potentially at risk of being murdered or starved by their Japanese guards.

US forces in the Pacific remained mobilized long after Japan formally surrendered, years afterwards deploying throughout China and Korea. I really doubt the cost of several more weeks or months was a significant factor for US military strategists.

Also they did not want Japan to completely implode, if the food and vital resources completely ran out and it descended into famine conditions then the country would be impossible to accept a surrender from. What they needed was the Japanese government to stay there and agree to surrender and keep in line the radicals who refused. But if everything collapsed then it would be like Mogadishu or something.

I would think potential famine would be a huge motivating factor for a government already seeking peace. It would also be a huge motivating factor to silence or eliminate any remaining hardliners. Even if the US allowed food and medical supplies to pass through the blockade (I believe they did to some extent) so as to prevent a humanitarian crisis, it would only be a matter of time before enough factions wish to return to modern civilization.

And the Japanese Government were extremely bullish in their interaction with the allies, they gave no outside indication of surrender even if there was a lot of talk inside. Germany had not been much of an ally on the other side of the world. After all, Japan had not helped Germany at all in dealing with the Soviet Union and Germany had not helped Japan. The only way Germany had helped Japan was by fighting US forces and drawing British forces out of the Malay Archipelago.

Yes there were intercepted talks of a peace treaty in early 1945, but the allies did not want a "peace treaty" which would nothing but an armistice, with no disarmament and no occupation of Japanese home islands and the allies could not accept anything less than complete unconditional surrender as that would leave a waiting game that the allies with supply lines literally stretched AROUND EACH SIDE OF THE GLOBE! British forces right around under the Indian Ocean and USA right over the Pacific, the Allies would lose and Japan could strike back again. No, Japan needed to be completely detoothed and SOON so that the Allies could wind down as you know what, they were on the brink of economic collapse. This war was eating vast amounts of money and they were playing a dangerous game with vast debts, very soon they wouldn't be able to pay people back home any more. Makes the 2008 economic collapse look like a doozy, similar thing happened the Germany in 1918-19.^

The Americans would have been able to secure unconditional surrender over Japan had they just waited them out, the difference being that the Soviets would have been at the table as well, probably using an occupation zone in mainland Japan or the entire Korean pennisula as a bargaining chip, just as in Germany.

True that the USSR were charging through Manchuria but the bombing of Hiroshia and Nagasaki and Japanese surrender shortly after did nothing to affect the outcome. China STILL came under a communist sphere of influence from the Soviet forces and became a communist state in 1949. The USSR had no capability to invade the Home islands of Japan in 1945 or even 1946. They had none of the shipping in the region needed to cross the Sea of Japan like the western allies did. Remember, the Soviet invasion of Manchuria was not some big surprise that forced the hand of the Western Allies, President Truman agreed for Stalin to do this at the Potsdam conference where they agreed for the USSR to stop at the 38-th Parallel of Korea, which they did without the need of US or British troops there to stop them. Remember, don't look at World War Alliance through the goggles of Cold War Paranoia. In 1945 "Uncle Joe" Stalin was America's best friend, like Saddam Hessian in the 1980's who Rush Limbaugh defended vociferously from allegations of gassing Kurds though 5 years later would be champing at the bit for invasion, 10 years after that for regime change. McCarthy Communist Witch hunts did not begin till the 1950's.

Soviet Union was in no position - with or without those atomic bombing - to put Japanese mainland under its sphere of influence. No, the Cold War did not begin in 1945, the Allies worked together openly, America let the USSR take China and North Korea under its sphere of influence and USSR didn't over-step its bounds by trying to take South Korea. The areas of Europe and Asia were not decided by which armies advanced the most and wherever they meet that is the extent of their influence, no, they were decided in conferences drawing on maps. Yes there was mistrust but there was also great cooperation, the USSR and US/UK moved their troops back variously to occupy the pre-arranged zones of occupation, but not before they'd raided an

The Allies had stepped well beyond the Potsdam agreement in Germany, it is not a stretch to assume that the Soviets would have done the same in East-Asia if given the chance. The Potsdam agreement was not followed to the letter by both East or West.

The Soviets had devised operational plans to secure the northern half of Hokkaido. They did in fact have sea faring capabilites in the Pacific, indeed far less than the US. However, they would not have needed to land an entire invasion force in Hokkaido. Even a foothold on the mainland would have most likely secured Stalin an occupation zone in Japan. Almost all of Japan`s defense forces were positioned in Southern Japan, waiting for the US invasion. The Soviets would not have had to deal with the Japanese Navy or Airforce in any significant strength. Additionally, only several ground divsions were positioned in the north at the time, little resistance for seasoned Soviet veterans.

It is true that the Chinese Communists won the civil war, but the US sent a large number of men and supplies in an attempt to prevent such an outcome during and after the war. If there had been no Western intervention available, perhaps Taiwan would not exist today. If the US was unable to intervene in South Korea, the entire pennisula would have been under Soviet influence without a doubt. As far as I know, the 38th parallel was not specifically agreed upon at Potsdam. The US rather quickly deployed troops to South Korea after learning just how quickly the Soviets were taking territory. If the Soviets had managed to secure an occupation zone in Japan, the liklihood of an indepedent socialist state forming, similar to East Germany or North Korea, would have been much higher. Nuking Japan secured a more-or-less unilateral and immediate victory, allowing the US to prevent these outcomes.

 

[Crazycat690]

Well, Europeans civilizations basically raped, pillaged, and ruined many civilizations that were advancing at a decent pace. Then they colonized all the places that had the best resources, usually over the ruins of those civilizations they wrecked. It was how the world worked back then, really. It could have just as easily been any other geographically based ethnicity that did so. Nobody's really to blame for it, it was just how the world worked back then.

But how did the white population, much, much younger than the others, manage to gain better technology, health and government that quick? We sort of went from zero to one hundred in five minutes, while everyone else struggled to get up to sixty. Then, with our technology that must have seemed godly to the poor natives, we took over everything.

You don't really know your history do you? China was very so called "civilized" 5000 years ago, and while Europe has Ancient Greece and Rome, those empires fell while China endured and us Europeans jumped into the dark ages. Then medieval times, while we may have outdone Africa from a technical standpoint, we weren't that amazing.

Then lets see, then we have the Renaissance, which was made possible when the Arabic people brought it back since our European ancestors had thought it was crap before it. And back then the Arabic people were alot more tolerant to religion than our christian ancestors, imagine that. Oh and not to mention we got alot of stuff from China to advance ourselves as well. So yeah, if it wasn't for Arabs and the Chinese we'd still probably be burning witches and shit.

Of course, thanks to the non-Europeans, we finally started getting our act together, surely the best thing would be to follow the example of the advanced Chinese and Arabs and simply find new people to trade with and make peac.... No? Oh right, being greedy imperialists we instead decide to wage wars and enslave other people, how very civilized of us, all thanks to our non-European friends mind you. And sure, we did advance quickly after all, today Europe is probably one of the best places to live which happen to contain mostly white people, although you still gotta understand that we didn't do it all by ourselves. Besides, who do you think are laughing now when an old unfinished Maya calender has lots of white people thinking the world will end 2012?

 

[Tomeran]

Probably been mentioned a dozen times already but: Guns, Germs and Steel.

Wiki it, and even better, read the book. I've studied history extensivly on a university-level and I can tell that Jared Diamond offers some pretty solid answers to the question why Europe(and later north america) ended up being such a dominant continent.

There's also a series of the book you can watch on youtube if you're not a book-person.

 

[quysspe]

Oh, here we go again.

Attacking a city with one single powerful device is not somehow worse than causing the same damage with waves of bombers using very many much less powerful bombs.

Cities had been bombed indiscriminately all through the war, it doesn't only suddenly kill civilians when the word "nuclear" crops up.

Radiation is indiscriminate and bombs do horrendous damage. The majority of deaths from both nuclear drops were instant, with people vanishing in the blink of an eye from the heat--they evaporated, even leaving behind burned in shadows that you can still see to this day--the rest of the deaths come from being crushed, inhaling smoke, burning alive, radiation and blast waves turning people's organs into liquid. The U.S. didn't just "drop a bomb" and "nuclear" isn't a pop word used for impact. The damage done with those two bombs is unfathomable. The sheer heat from such radiation created a scene I heard one man describe as apocalyptic, with thousands of people running to the lakes around the city to cool their melting skin.

To even attempt to disregard or play down the horror America caused is sickening. People didn't just die, they went through unimaginable hell--human beings are still suffering from radiation.

Yes, the immediate effects of the explosion were hellish. But it was a numbers game. The only other option for beating the Japanese was to invade the mainland conventionally. Doing so would have caused vastly more civilian casualties (even if they died more "humanely") as well as blowing up so much Japanese infrastructure they might not have recovered from the third-world status that would entail.

I hope you never have to be in the position of deciding how to minimize the amount of blood on your hands. I'm sure glad I never will.

 

[orangeban]

Oh man, I've seen this before. The success of Caucasian civilisations is not a sign that white people are better. Why? Well, let's look at why.

1) Take a broader look at History

You know what one of the longest lasting and most stable civilisation was? Ancient Egypt. It lasted for thousands of years, and was wrapped up before Western civilisation began.

But does lasting a long time and being damn stable for most of it constitute a "successful" civilisation? Not necesarrily.

Let's look at a radically different people, Native American tribes, a group I'm very ignorant about FYI, so apologies if I say something offensive or wrong.

Sure, they didn't create vast cities, they didn't discover electricity, but their way of life was based around co-existance with nature. No, they didn't make the same technological leaps that Western civilisation did, but that's because they weren't that kind of people, they were nomads, not farmers.

And speaking of technological leaps, what of the Muslim world? They made leaps in areas of engineering and mathematics.

What about progressiveness? Well, the Persian empire was one of the first in History to institute free religion.

Or how about the Aztecs? They created enormous cities, Tenochitlan was a wonder, a true masterpiece in city design. Did you know that most of Tenochitlan's buildings were earthquake proof? Something modern Mexico City, and most cities really, can't claim.

And then there are the others I don't even have time to discuss. India, China, the Mongols, etc. etc.

So what we see is that white civilisation, by which I really mean Western civilisation, is successful during this current brief window of our history, but this window does not represent all windows, and in reality all different kinds of people have risen and fallen from power.

2) Why the "West it best"

Honestly? Because history. Sure, things like good location and terrain (Britain would not have been nearly as powerful were it not an island nation), natural resources, etc. etc. all play into it, but the reason the West is so powerful is incredibly complicated. Because if you want to know, you'll need to look at all of history basically.

Do you know chaos theory? Butterfly, flap, tornado? Well, it's not a bullshit justification for fate, it's real, and really common sense. Mold growing on potato seeds can lead to a bestseller being written (not joking, read Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer), and petty family blood feuds can lead, in part, to the toppling of a nation.

History is chaotic, in that every event affects every other event, no matter how small or big, and these connections are complicated and often invisible. History as a subject is about unearthing those connections, so that we can understand how our current situation came to be.

Sorry, that's enough rambling, what I'm saying is, the West rose to dominance because of millions of petty little things, and if you wanted to know all those little things, you'd have to study history and see every single event preceding it. To claim there is a single overarcing reason like "White people are better!" is a meaningless simplification which ignores so many things. Like, what if Venice had refused to help the Crusaders? What if Jesus had never been crucified? What if Mexico managed to reclaim Texas? What if Peter the Great tripped, hit his head, and totally forgot his plans to build St Petersburg? All these things, great and small, can have huge ramifications on later civilisation.

 

[orangeban]

Yes, the immediate effects of the explosion were hellish. But it was a numbers game. The only other option for beating the Japanese was to invade the mainland conventionally.

Was it? Explain this to me because I truly don't understand. Hadn't Japan ran out of oil? Hadn't all it's ships been basically destroyed? Wasn't public opinion turning against the war? Why couldn't the USA have just sieged them into surrender, or even just pulled back to the states and guarded it's borders?

 

[trophykiller]

The truth is, Western culture's development did stagnate for a very long time, and nearly all of the "classics" from Greece and Rome were seen as heresy by the church and burned. It was only the scholars in the middle east who kept those works alive(hence why "algebra" is derived from Arabic), but during the nine crusades, many of these works found by western societies and permeated quite nicely. This set off a slow but sure series of events that led to the Renaissance in Europe. Renaissance leads to industrial revolution, which leads to imperialism.

It was frankly the acts of a series of great scientists and engineers(like James Watt and Isaac Newton) that propelled them to the top. That, and the sick imaginations of people with access to gunpowder. I'm not going to lie, they put a gun on and in everything you could imagine. Look up "combination weapon" on Google if any doubts persist. This lead to the very efficient tool of mass murder known as the bayonet.

Anyway, if it weren't for political turmoil in the area, an Asian power would probably have done the exact same thing at a different point in time. Which would be very interesting, because you would have people feeling unique for watching some animated series from England involving knights, rangers, and the "ancient wisdom" of chivalry, rather than anime from Japan involving samurai, ninjas, and the "ancient wisdom" that is the honor code they lived by.

Captcha: Fair and square. Huh, interesting.

 

[Naeo]

Pure goddamn luck.

That's it. Europe is a massive peninsulception going on. Peninsulas jutting off the major peninsula that is the whole continent. And rivers that make travel between many places relatively easy. It was a trade and travel hub for the majority of western history, so of course anything in the way of technology that showed up in anywhere remotely connected would probably find its way there, and turn into one big melting pot of innovation/invention.

But then, the basic assumption of this topic completely ignores a few super important things. One, the whole "white people own everything" is relatively recent, and only really a thing because white people happened to get the upper hand first (via sheer luck), or they just chose to exploit the every loving hell out of it first (again, luck). Said exploitation allowed for things like massive colonization, which fed into the wealth of the empires, allowing for greater metropolitanization (yay making up words), greater innovation, and better overall resources and connectivity which only heightened the disparity as time passed. Europeans exploited things on the grand scale first (because, I think, they may have been the first to do so with either enough skill or enough tries to get it right), building themselves up and screwing everyone else over in a self-perpetuating and (for a time) self-accelerating cycle. Before the 1500s, the Mongolian empire kind of owned everything between western China and eastern Europe, and from northern India to parts of Russia. They were rather not white. The Islamic Caliphates before them covered enormous amounts of territory and were home to some of the greatest philosophical, mathematical, scientific, literature and artistic advances in the last two thousand years. Before that it was the Roman Empire, the Greeks, the Etruscans, the Assyrians/Babylonians, and Sumerians. And that's just in that part of the world. In Africa and the Americas and China and Japan and India and the rest of the world you had similar things going on: one group gains dominance, fucks everyone else over big time and builds themselves golden palaces.

So basically, it's all luck. White Europeans just happened to have the luck of the draw geographically. They just happened to choose the time to go colonize the whole damn planet which would, due to the state of technology, allow them to maintain a stronger and larger foothold than ever before. They also just so happen to not have been the first, and there are plenty of examples of non-white people doing the same thing on a scale just as massive given things like "how many people were on the planet at the time" and "we don't have boats that can do shit" and whatnot.

EDIT: I think I might have just not actually answered the question asked, but rather gone off on a tangent about why white people have, for the past few hundred years, been a dominant wrld power by and large. To briefly address the "white people outpacing non-white people" point, that is, uh, factually wrong. China, as has been said before, was far more advanced than contemporary Europe in many ways throughout much of history. China has some of the oldest and most extensive ancient records, and is one of the oldest locations of continual habitation in all of human history. The Arab world during the middle ages made Europe look like a bunch of slobbering morons, making advances in mathematics (basically inventing things like Algebra), science (especially astronomy), literature and art (the art styles are still all over that part of the world) that left almost all of Europe in the dust. Etc etc.

 

[Mouse One]

Largest land empire in the world was the Mongols. These days, you'd probably call Mongolia a third world nation (with people who seriously know horses). Bottom line "white" people may be on top today, but that's today. Empires and peoples rise and fall, and I suspect that throughout history, those at the top have wondered what makes them so special when in fact it's basically luck and circumstance.

Pretty sure someone's already cited Diamond's Guns Germs and Steel, but it's a good read. A video version of it is up on YouTube, and well worth watching.

 

[Jaeke]

Lol, I saw the title and just thought of this:


I freakin love Louie, he's the new George Carlin, and he's probably better.

 

[TheAmokz]

Well, Europeans civilizations basically raped, pillaged, and ruined many civilizations that were advancing at a decent pace. Then they colonized all the places that had the best resources, usually over the ruins of those civilizations they wrecked. It was how the world worked back then, really. It could have just as easily been any other geographically based ethnicity that did so. Nobody's really to blame for it, it was just how the world worked back then.

But how did the white population, much, much younger than the others, manage to gain better technology, health and government that quick? We sort of went from zero to one hundred in five minutes, while everyone else struggled to get up to sixty. Then, with our technology that must have seemed godly to the poor natives, we took over everything.

Answer to your question is simple: Black Death. For example, many lords were left with almost none peasants to work in their lands and thus had to actually pay some to come work for him, this led to the creation of middle class. Many of these social and economical changes that Black Death caused eventually led to the Renaissance.

 

[Treblaine]

They knew that Japanese Navy had no fighting force capable of engaging their naval blockade, they knew the Japanese airfore now consisted of Kamikaze planes strictly held in reserve for an amphibious invasion in the southern mainland. They knew Japan did not have enough fuel to keep either of these rag-tag fighting forces operational. They estimated that Japan only possessed enough ammunition to properly equip two thirds of their home defense forces (it was actually much less). The US naval blockade prevented any shipment of fuel, weapons or ammo to Japanese forces and the the US bombing campaigns crushed the means to manufacture these commodities in any significant quatity. That sounds like a highly effective blockade.

What specific blockades on the European Front? The Blockade of Germany was a vast series of operations which evolved over the entire course war. The blockades of Japan and Germany are so vastly different in scale, trimeframe and geography that there is little point in comparing the two.

At no point was Great Britian ever subjected to a blockade by sea. The Royal Navy and Royal Airforce was operational throughout the entire war. Shipping lanes to the UK, while contantly challenged by Axis naval forces were never completely cut off.

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An army cannot fight for long if it doesn't eat, no matter how zealous. Nor can they engage an enemy for long if their ammunition supplies are at a breaking point. The fact that Japan was mobilizing the elderly, women and children armed only with farming intruments shows how desperate the situation in the mainland actually was. Even Germany's Volkstrum was issued firearms...

The Kamikaze planes were held in reserve to engage an invasion force. Japan would have most likely capitulated before any invasion force had even assembled.

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Japan had captured roughly 27,000 Americans throughout all campaigns in WW2. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki resulted in the deaths of 135,000 Japanese citizens within the first few days alone. I do not have the figure which states the total number of Allied POWs held by the Japanese in the summer of 1945, but in my opinion 135,000 civilian deaths is unacceptable collateral damage to secure the safety of what is presumably a much smaller number of men who are only potentially at risk of being murdered or starved by their Japanese guards.

US forces in the Pacific remained mobilized long after Japan formally surrendered, years afterwards deploying throughout China and Korea. I really doubt the cost of several more weeks or months was a significant factor for US military strategists.


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I would think potential famine would be a huge motivating factor for a government already seeking peace. It would also be a huge motivating factor to silence or eliminate any remaining hardliners. Even if the US allowed food and medical supplies to pass through the blockade (I believe they did to some extent) so as to prevent a humanitarian crisis, it would only be a matter of time before enough factions wish to return to modern civilization.

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The Americans would have been able to secure unconditional surrender over Japan had they just waited them out, the difference being that the Soviets would have been at the table as well, probably using an occupation zone in mainland Japan or the entire Korean pennisula as a bargaining chip, just as in Germany.

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The Allies had stepped well beyond the Potsdam agreement in Germany, it is not a stretch to assume that the Soviets would have done the same in East-Asia if given the chance. The Potsdam agreement was not followed to the letter by both East or West.

The Soviets had devised operational plans to secure the northern half of Hokkaido. They did in fact have sea faring capabilites in the Pacific, indeed far less than the US. However, they would not have needed to land an entire invasion force in Hokkaido. Even a foothold on the mainland would have most likely secured Stalin an occupation zone in Japan. Almost all of Japan`s defense forces were positioned in Southern Japan, waiting for the US invasion. The Soviets would not have had to deal with the Japanese Navy or Airforce in any significant strength. Additionally, only several ground divsions were positioned in the north at the time, little resistance for seasoned Soviet veterans.

It is true that the Chinese Communists won the civil war, but the US sent a large number of men and supplies in an attempt to prevent such an outcome during and after the war. If there had been no Western intervention available, perhaps Taiwan would not exist today. If the US was unable to intervene in South Korea, the entire pennisula would have been under Soviet influence without a doubt. As far as I know, the 38th parallel was not specifically agreed upon at Potsdam. The US rather quickly deployed troops to South Korea after learning just how quickly the Soviets were taking territory. If the Soviets had managed to secure an occupation zone in Japan, the liklihood of an indepedent socialist state forming, similar to East Germany or North Korea, would have been much higher. Nuking Japan secured a more-or-less unilateral and immediate victory, allowing the US to prevent these outcomes.

If they thought that the Japanese were a defeated force in mid 1945, then why were the Allies rushing troops from Europe to Japan shortly after V-E Day?

Look, the Allies did not know how well the Japanese Armed Forces were faring up, it was entirely Retroactive the declarations that they would have surrendered with merely continued blockade after they were occupying the country. The intelligence the Allies collected on Japan was from 20'000 feet with cameras, not on the ground. It was the combination of Air-dropped sea-mines and the U-Boat campaign. But this was no "humane" act, unrestricted warfare on all shipping including civilians, explosive mine that persist decades after the war, starving an entire nation would lead to hundreds of thousands of people dying. The study of the effect of radiation on the population of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has been greatly disrupted by how malnutrition was affecting the population in such extremes.

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Japan had its own agriculture. For hundreds of years the country was extremely isolationist with virtually no overseas trade. Japan had the internal capacity to feed its army and its army would be fed but at the expense of the population, as happened in Germany the guys with the guns and the authority of their uniforms took the food they "needed" and tough luck to those who didn't. Don't doubt that many would resort to cannibalism when you force an entire nation to extremes, the problem was not that Japan had a shortage of food, it had great internal food production, the problem was too many people, the Army just gets fed first.

Yes, so many Kamikaze planes were held in reserve, this is why the Allies did not want to have to deal with. What makes you think they would hold these Kamikaze planes in reserve with intent to use them only to capitulate when their appointed time comes to attack the invading army?

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I did say ALL allied POWs which included British and other Allied nations' forces.

Approximately 80'600 Allied prisoners were released by Japan when it surrendered but the Allies excepted far more to be released as.

And these people were not dying in sudden explosions, they suffered long tortuous demise in horrific cruelty. They weren't soldiers any more, they weren't armed men fighting, they were prisoners, utterly helpless.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/bataan/peopleevents/e_atrocities.html

And it was not just Allied prisoners who were suffering but also the people of the occupied territories where atrocities were ongoing and severe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes


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You WOULD think impending famine would be a huge motivating factor for the Japanese to surrender, but in August 1945 the Japanese gave no explicit intention to surrender, the military were in control weren't going to give up even if The Emperor wanted peace the army did not want to give a bit of ground.

Any food and medical supplies let through the blockade would go the the army first and likely the army ONLY.

Japan wasn't going to return to modern civilisation, it had essentially emerged straight from medieval feudalism to modern society. It had modern technology like repeating rifles, planes and steel ships and high explosives but they were still in a Medieval mindset. The case with Nazi Germany and other fascist states was that it wanted to return to the brutal age of the Teutonic Knights, Japan hadn't really ever left that by 1930's, it still clung to a warrior ideology and unlike Europe and America that had in 18th and 19th century developed ideas such as humanitarian surrender and restraint on prisoners, Japan had given only token gestures signing the Geneva conventions to be included when it suited them but drop it as soon as it didn't suit them.


"The Americans would have been able to secure unconditional surrender over Japan had they just waited them out"

I think we have established that waiting was not an option. Wait and see attitudes don't work and no, it is utterly false that the Soviets would have had extra influence had the Allies waited, THE WESTERN ALLIES INVITED THE SOVIETS IN!! The Potsdam treaty invited the Soviets to take care of Japan on mainland Asia and the Soviets didn't want ANY MORE than Japan and Korea down to the 38th Parallel, not till 1950. China became a Communist ally of the Soviets. No way, even waiting till 1946 would any part of Japan have come under Soviet Sphere of influence especially when they had pretty much all of China.

No. Read the facts. It was all agreed in advance that the USSR would get China and Korea down to 38th Parallel and nothing was going to change that.



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Yes, the western allies extended well beyond the agreed demarcation of the the division of Germany, and when the deadline came they dutifully withdrew without any Mexican standoffs. Russia also over extended and moved back without a fuss to their demarcation line. The Agreements were followed to the letter in terms of "spheres of influence".

A Soviet invasion of Hokkaido was highly speculative. You think the Western Allies who had such extensive naval forces in the region and had been planning for years and Invasion of Japan who were so cautious, you think the Soviets could just roll up and secure a beachhead in a few months? D-Day which was a MUCH SIMPLER operation than X-Day (invasion of Japan) took years of preparation and planning. The soviets had few ships, little experience in Naval warfare especially against planes and ESPECIALLY against Kamikaze bombers. Who says they could even make it to Hokkido? Who says they could supply them? They were to be without their principal advantages they had in the fighting they had just endured of massed tank and artillery and close air-support. They didn't have any aircraft carriers, they had short range fighters that would have struggled to make the 400km round trip and fight effectively.

Look, Soviets had bigger fish to fry than the pipe dream of Hokkido, they were occupied with pretty much all of the vast country of China, in a de-facto-war with Chiang Kai-shek in support of communism. The Soviets took Sakhalin and that didn't get them any control of Japan. They were able to take Sakhalin as they already had a foothold on north Sakhalin, but an amphibious invasion these experts fighters would be amateurs. They had no way of getting the vast number of tanks across that they needed.

The Republic Of China exist because there was water between the island of Taiwan and mainland China. Soviets didn't want it in the WWII talks on which countries should be "managed" and they couldn't take it later when they did want it.

"If the US was unable to intervene in South Korea, the entire pennisula would have been under Soviet influence without a doubt."

Spurious. There was no need to rush American troops to the 38th Parallel, the Soviets stayed on their side. Yes the Americans rushed to South Korea as it was their responsibility to manage Korea south of 38th Parallel.

Look, you seem utterly intent with this crazy idea that America only used Atomic bombs out of fear of communism.

No, They used The Bomb out of fear of Japanese Imperialism, not fear of their soviet ally. This is what was pressing on their minds:

 

[oktalist]

If we look through history, time and time again white people (usually some form of Anglo Saxon) show up on the scene, rape and pillage the vastly worse off native population of black people, then install their own technology and culture. The English did it, the Germans did it, the French did it, the Spanish did it, etc., etc.

The Egyptians did it, the Aztecs did it, the Mongols did it, the Muslims did it, the Japanese did it. Now it's our turn. We're not special. Each successive great civilisation has built upon and surpassed the achievements of its predecessors, reached a certain level of advancement, stagnated, crashed and burned.

But somehow, white man managed to acquire a massive technological lead, obtaining things like mechanical engineering, health care and medicine, advanced sanitation and water systems, weapons of war--you get the idea. How did it turn out this way?

A random chance of history, geography, geology, climate, social change, politics, economics and dozens of other factors.

But how did the white population, much, much younger than the others, manage to gain better technology, health and government that quick?

The white races are no younger than the dark races. Modern Europeans are descended from the same prehistoric Africans who modern Africans are descended from. They just changed colour because they went to a different climate.

 

[Clearing the Eye]

Each successive great civilisation has built upon and surpassed the achievements of its predecessors, reached a certain level of advancement, stagnated, crashed and burned.

Except China. Somehow China remains largely intact after all these centuries. It's been divided, war torn and conquered a few times, but by and large, China has remained for thousands of years. Oldest empire on Earth, I believe.

Given their technological superiority--being second or third in the world, perhaps--their massive population, and virtually every other nation on Earth relying on them for large portions of their income, directly or otherwise, I'd say it's not long before we're all speaking Mandarin, lol. They just need to sort out their government... The whole military dictatorship thing is holding them back; censoring information and closing their doors to the world. While their healthcare leaves a lot to be desired and a staggering number of Chinese citizens live in poverty, they are slowly improving. They even have a (very small) middle class now.

 

[Robert Ewing]

Hmm, I disagree with that, OP. I think Asians are the master race. And here is why

I believe that homo sapiens evolved fully in and around the horn of Africa, and migrated. I think it's pretty safe to say that all humans were black at this point, which is great! Now, keep in mind there wasn't just one species of humanoid at this point, there was around 13+ give or take the ones we probably haven't discovered yet.

Cross breeding DID take place, we know that for certain, we just don't know to what extent. Neanderthal DNA is in every white persons DNA, BUT it's hardly ever found in black peoples DNA. Now do the maths, coupled with the fact that the dark skin of the black homo sapiens lightening up due to the gloomy climate of Europe and the fact that we cross bred with Neanderthals - A white, hairy, bigger brained humanoid, what do you think the product would be? (Note: Neanderthals aren't the brutish cavemen cartoons made them out to be, they were intelligent and social, it's just bad luck they got assigned the 'cave man' characteristic in pop culture)

I don't know about you, but I'd say, a white homo sapien, or a darker skinned Neanderthal right? Now say all you like about equality and shit, but white people are very different to black people (THATS NOT TO SAY WE SHOULD BE TREATED DIFFERENT, RACISM TROLL) What i'm trying to say is that the people who stayed in Africa are pure humans, and white people are hybrids of sorts. (Baring in mind that they could have cross bred with any number of other species of humanoids that were still knocking around.)

There really is no point in denying it. The skull structure of a white person is different, the eyes are different, the skeleton is different. And I'm not talking about African Americans either guys, the REAL deal. This isn't really about skin colour here, it's about function. Black people have wider nostrils to increase the flow of air to their brains due to the warmer climates, a lot of west Africans have a red or yellowish layer on their eyes, a common trait in some primates.

Now Asian people come in to it! Denisovan hominid were a very intelligent and social humanoid, and have often been found within the same groups as Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens. Cross breeding with them would only boost intelligence and social skills. Which we did, as a study of south east Asians discovered BOTH neanderthal DNA and Denisovan DNA.

Of course this is extremely general and VERY trimmed down. You could write a thesis on this shit for god sake, but the idea is still there. I think Asian people got the best deal out of our brief encounter with other humanoids before what ever it was that made them extinct. I'm not going to cover EVERY single divergence from the gene pool, because there were probably millions...

If you think about it, Asia has been dominating the world stage for ages, Europeans and North Africans have had their moment of domination, yet Africans have never really left Africa.

Also no racism intended, everyone should be treated the same and given the same opportunities, but I feel the need to remind everyone on this forum.

 

[Athinira]

But how did the white population, much, much younger than the others, manage to gain better technology, health and government that quick? We sort of went from zero to one hundred in five minutes, while everyone else struggled to get up to sixty. Then, with our technology that must have seemed godly to the poor natives, we took over everything.

We were quicker to abolish religious acts compared to the rest. Even if you go back to the middle ages where christianity was still huge and the church had a lot of power, it still didn't hold us back nearly as much as some other religions. And hell, over a 1000 years before that, the old greeks had embraced philosophy over religion to a certain degree.

We were also more determined to wage war (aka. conquer) territory. War, as terrible as it is, produces the need for technological advancement. Even much of todays technology is the offspin of military research through time.

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And now, I'll go play some Civilization 2 (screw the newer games, Civ2 was the best!).