The Farm Hall transcripts are well known. There's much more of this, including where they discuss how the Americans might have done it.[1] Hahn says to Heisenberg: "If the Americans have the uranium bomb you're all second-raters. Poor old Heisenberg".
Heisenberg had made a big miscalculation. He thought it would take 2 tons of enriched uranium to make a bomb. In fact, it's about 52Kg for a dumb bomb, and and maybe 5Kg with a good design. Oops.
And he matched that by action, delivering the results of his radio-chemistry masterpiece (e.g. getting results from just a few thousand atoms!) first to his exiled colleague Lise Meitner, which follows a very straight line to the scientific success of the Manhattan project through her nephew, who did his Christmas vacation with her when she got them, and then in England with Peierls figured out the fast fission path to a practical device, and then on to America.
>GERLACH: If Germany had had a weapon which would have won the war, then Germany would have been in the right and the others in the wrong, and whether conditions in Germany are better now than they would have been after a HITLER victory –
>HEISENBERG: I don't think so. On the other hand, the days of small countries are over. Suppose HITLER had succeeded in producing his EUROPE and there had been no uranium in EUROPE.
I was talking about Heisenberg being sharp. You can see through his comments he can talk with detachment about issues and offer perspective as would a complete outsider. He talks casually, almost as a commentator in a documentary.
>HEISENBERG: There is a great difference between discoveries and inventions. With discoveries one can always be skeptical and many surprises can take place. In the case of inventions, surprises can really only occur for people who have not had anything to do with it. It's a bit odd after we have been working on it for five years.
It seems like they're talking about the issues at hand, and he's just sitting there thinking about all of this in an abstract way, like it doesn't matter.
Heisenberg is remembered for his theorem on quantum observation being necessarily incomplete. It's not terribly surprising to find he had a perspective-seeking approach in other matters.
I was referring to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, which states that there is an upper limit to the combined precision of a particle's position and momentum. Bohr's take on this was that the limit is due to these concepts being a poor approximation of actual quantum mechanics, which would fit the scientific eminence co-existing with devout religious beliefs in Heisenberg.
I am no physicist, nor am I well versed in Heisenberg's life, but the quotes in the link suggest to me that he has spent a large amount of time pondering ethics, unseen causality, and attributed intent. That is what I meant by seeking perspective.
>I was referring to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle
Now I see.. I only took a few physics courses and mostly associate his name when using the inequality, i.e what I think of when I read "uncertainty principle" (also, doing time-frequency signal processing/analysis). I was thrown off by the expression "quantum observation" because I thought you were talking about the observer effect, something that didn't really make me think of him.
Maybe we can chalk it up to cultural differences, but we've never called it like that here (it was always "Heisenberg's uncertainty principle").
>the quotes in the link suggest to me that he has spent a large amount of time pondering ethics, unseen causality, and attributed intent. That is what I meant by seeking perspective.
Indeed. I also think this is the case for the others, too. What's impressive was his almost forensic approach. His remarks read more like an autopsy than someone being in the situation he was in.
> I was thrown off by the expression "quantum observation" because I thought you were talking about the observer effect
I admit that the observer effect was the first thing that sprang to mind when I was thinking of how the uncertainty principle was stated. That's probably why I worded it so poorly.
> His remarks read more like an autopsy than someone being in the situation he was in.
Seeing as how all this took place soon after the war, I imagine he may have considered it something of a post-mortem.
That shows at any rate that the Americans are capable of real cooperation on a tremendous scale. That would have been impossible in Germany. Each one said that the other was unimportant.
Indeed, this I believe is the key insight into the stunning success of the Manhattan project. The scientists worked pretty hard as soon as uranium fission and it's details were discovered, Frisch and Peierls critically got all the fast fission concepts right in 1940, see (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisch%E2%80%93Peierls_memoran... And Frisch's story is particularly interesting, see Rhodes' book, doing Christmas vacation with his aunt, who just happened to be the first physicist her back in Germany colleague sent his results to right then.... Vs., for example, again from Rhodes' book, a clerical mixup ruining the saving throw for the German effort, the Nazi political types got invitations for the wrong seminar, one on very technical stuff instead of the pitch for atomic stuff (which, if they'd done everything right, they could have pulled off, I think).
But it took a long time to light a fire under the American authorities, and it wasn't until the absolutely critical replacement of his name is a footnote in history with Groves that things really got rolling, on the industrial scale needed, and the scientists and engineers sufficiently focused on the design and execution of the bombs themselves (which for various reasons didn't end up being the afterthought some expected). And he of course picked Oppenheimer to lead that effort, which was opposed by most, albeit he was one of the few uncommitted physicists capable at that level.
These two men organized more than 100,000 people for the industrial production of the required fissionables (90% of the work per Wikipedia), and Grove's drive got those ready in time to forestall Operation Downfall. Heck, they went from the first real test to putting metal on target in 21 and 24 days....
And the design and fabrication of "the bomb" turned out to be massively harder than they expected due to weapons grade plutonium not being suitable for a gun assembly bomb (which is also grossly wasteful of fissionable, if the Little Boy is any guide, as I recall it had 3x critical mass, and a fair amount if it wasn't as pure U-235 as they'd have wanted). Making the implosion concept work was hard, and they got it right the first time....
And had much wider effects on the world at large, that we could indeed do such things led to the Apollo program, and of course to too much conceit that "If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we [do something very different and a lot more intractable, probably without even a clearly defined goal]?"
"The Atom Soldier" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CthmRe-IU_Y
This episode of the United States Army's "The Big Picture" details the tests conducted at Frenchman's Flat, Nevada, in January of 1955. The Army, based at Camp Desert Rock, utilized thousands of ground troops in an effort to establish the proper coordination between the foot soldier and the atomic blast.
Some of them seemed relieved the war was going to be over. It was also interesting they weren't that interested in winning.
HEISENBERG: One can't say that. One could equally well say "That's the quickest way of
ending the war.”
HAHN: That's what consoles me
WEIZSÄCKER: I believe the reason we didn't do it was because all the physicists didn't want
to do it, on principle. If we had all wanted Germany to win the war we would have
succeeded.
Might they have known or suspected that they were being recorded? Their words may have been chosen to make them sound good were they to be brought before a tribunal.
Another point made repeatedly in the transcript is the worry that if they'd gotten anywhere close to a nuclear weapon, British assassins would have killed them.
> WEIZSÄCKER: One can say it might have been a much greater tragedy for the world if Germany had had the uranium bomb. Just imagine, if we had destroyed LONDON with uranium bombs it would not have ended the war, and when the war did end, it is still doubtful whether it would have been a good thing
I believe this should be "...and if it did end the war, it is still doubtful..."?
No, I think its exactly right. The war would have ended eventually, somehow, and its doubtful that the change to how it would have wrought by the German use of the A-bomb would have a good one.
Very cool Article! For all the political discord going on in this day and age, reading this transcript really does make me feel proud to be an American.
I actually agree. It seems there was no other time in recent history when we were truly in the right about so many things. I believe there are some passages in this document that touch on this:
"HAHN: I must honestly say that I would have sabotaged the war if I had been in a position to do so."
"...They then went on to discuss the feelings of the British and American scientists who had perfected the bomb and HEISENBERG said he felt it was a different matter in their case as they considered HITLER a criminal..."
"WEIZSÄCKER: Our strength is now the fact that we are 'un–Nazi'."
Many of the physicists mentioned here expressed doubts about the Nazi regime. Perhaps it could be said that they didn't achieve the bomb because, in many ways, they didn't want their leaders to possess it. So there was a kernel of doubt preventing them from doing so. On the other hand, the Americans did not have that problem since they "considered Hitler a criminal" and viewed it as imperative that they win the war at any cost. Maybe this made the moral question of whether or not to achieve the bomb less of an obstacle for them. That gave a psychological benefit which facilitated the work they were doing.
Yes that is an excellent point! Moral superiority and the imparitive to act are highly motivating factors. What's interesting is that when faced with the opposite senario, humans tend to default to inaction rather than be a whistleblower. Moral superiority is only motivating if the majority is on your side.
Perhaps the single most curious things in Rhode's book is what put them off the path of graphite moderated natural uranium reactors, the work of a single unreliable scientist who, as it happened, was not using pure enough graphite (too many neutron poisons, it was quite a challenge for us to get graphite pure enough). That pretty much dead ended their efforts on the science front, heavy water natural uranium reactors are quite possible (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor although I remember reading somewhere the Canadians had access to extra rich in U-235 uranium), but definitely not trivial, especially when we were zapping their supplies of heavy water from Norway.
America today is not the America of WWII. We are not saving the world from Hitler today, we are blowing up weddings and causing Europe to be flooded by refugees running from the chaos left in the power vacuum we created. The reaction to this caused Brexit, and nationalism across Europe is again on the rise thanks in large part to our foreign policy.
If you read the transcript, you can see that the Germans really were in awe of what was accomplished by the Americans with the time and resources available. It makes me proud to know that my nation can get pass the BS when push comes to shove and do the impossible when the impossible needs doing. As an engineer I have a profound understanding and respect for people who dare to do what others said couldn't be done. It's one of the things that motivates me to learn. For me, I think it's really cool to hear others say "Wow I didn't think you could do that!"
Except that: "Research and production took place at more than 30 sites across the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada.", and relied heavily on German-Jewish scientists who had fled the Nazi regime, as well as British research.
But it was America's unique industrial prowess that made it work, especially in time to effect the end of the war.
No less a figure than Neals Bohr believed it impossible on those grounds, said in 1939 "It can never be done unless you turn the United States into one huge factory", and when "Nicholas Baker" visited America, remarked that was indeed just what we'd done or were doing.
> HEISENBERG replied that had they produced and dropped such a bomb they would certainly have been executed as War Criminals having made the "most devilish thing imaginable"
Heh. There's a little piece of truth to how war crimes are prosecuted.
Take a look at Unit 731 vs. the Nazi human experimentation program during WWII. In exchange for the data gathered through 731's history, the U.S. turned a blind eye. The Nazis however were tried by U.S. military courts for conducting such experiments. Hypocrisy at its finest.
Unit 731: "Instead of being tried for war crimes, the researchers involved in Unit 731 were secretly given immunity by the U.S. in exchange for the data they gathered through human experimentation."
Nazis: "After the war, these crimes were tried at what became known as the Doctors' Trial, and revulsion at the abuses perpetrated led to the development of the Nuremberg Code of medical ethics."
That too. The Japanese did a much better job of destroying evidence of such crimes, while the Germans mostly meticulously documented them, and they were too busy running like hell from the Soviets to destroy them all, once they saw what was in store for them.
And also the Germans surrendered 8 May, while the Japanese surrendered 14 August. Over the course of that quarter it had become more and more apparent that WWII wasn't going to end soon (it didn't, in fact, end until 15 March 1991), and that the Soviets were going to be the next enemy, and that we'd need to preserve Germany and Japan in some form (rather than adhering to the earlier Morgenthau Plan, which would have rurified all of Germany, in the process killing millions and making it much easier for the Soviets to roll through Europe).
If there were any fairness, we'd have hanged the Japanese emperor, and quite a few more of his subjects responsible for crimes against humanity. But the political-military situation didn't allow it.
It was, and in many ways still is, remarkable that Japan and the US have managed to get along so well when you consider those desperate starting points. In the end, I think it's fair to say that the choices made in regards to holding some individuals accountable for their crimes at the expense of the broader reconstruction effort was the right one. Not easy to make at the time though, I would imagine.
That's the difference between utter destruction of the enemy vs an unconditional surrender with conditions.
The US was put in a shitty position by the opportunistic Soviet intervention. So we ended up with a curbed emperor, an American who fancied himself an emperor, and whitewash.
Remember that the Republic of China was still a thing, and the political implications of taking a relative soft approach to Japanese atrocities in China would have pretty severe blowback.
The Soviet invasion was not "opportunistic" at all, if you mean by that eating a meal someone else has prepared. The USSR had a far bigger role in defeating Nazism than the Allies sans Soviets.
I think Spooky23 meant the entry of the Soviet Union into the pacific war on August 9 1945. Stalin had promised (At Potsdam or Tehran I don't remember) to enter the war but had hung back -- don't blame him; the war in Europe was massive enough, with the Soviets already doing the majority of the Allied fighting.
Just as the western Allies figured why not let the Soviets take the hit, Stalin had nothing to lose by letting UK+ANZUS wear themselves out in the Pacific.
But once it was clear how the wind was blowing, why not jump in?
> But once it was clear how the wind was blowing, why not jump in?
Or: Once the war in the West was over, which required all available Russian resources, Stalin immediately redeployed to the Far East. Within just a few weeks of ending the war in Europe Russians managed to go on the offensive in the East. That is an impressive feat, given the vast distances.
Indeed an impressive feat, but in physical terms utterly irrelevant to actually ending the war, since their ability to more than morally effect the home islands of Japan was all but nil.
The moral effect of running through the Imperial Japanese Army in Manchuria "like crap through a goose" might have been decisive in allowing the surrender to proceed, in suppressing the IJA leadership. Heck, their predictions about how they'd stop or even bleed us in Kyushuu, where they had a massive superiority in numbers and stopping was very much in the cards, looked very different in the light of the 2nd bombing, which showed the first wasn't a one off, and how they were being owned by the Red Army (not that that should have been a surprise after 1939).
> but in physical terms utterly irrelevant to actually ending the war
This thread had a specific topic. That is what I replied to. There was the claim/suspicion the Russians waited until the victor was known, and I pointed out that there is a perfectly valid explanation without the cynicism. Not because the latter isn't too often appropriate when looking at international (or business, or human) affairs, but because sometimes the attempt to see history in a certain view goes a little too far.
It was also mentioned, by the way, and now in response to what you said, that Russia acted according to agreements they had with the USA. So seeing some of the arguments here, no matter what they would have done, somebody would always paint their actions negatively. I'm only talking about this entry into the war in the Far East.
To go further down the rabbit hole, there were only two ways the US would have lost the war against Imperial Japan, and the second was Soviet subversion after the war in Europe was finished and we were not only not needed by them, but actively unwanted as a fully mobilized Great Power. Then again, as I mentioned above, we were rapidly transferring divisions wholesale for redeployment in the Pacific for Operation Downfall. What I'd really like to know is when the Bring the Boys Back Home propaganda campaign began, before or after VJ Day; my Google Fu isn't good enough right now.
The other way, of course, would be the Japanese scheme to make us tire of cost in blood, and their Air Force and Navy had a truly unpleasant surprise in store for the US Navy with vastly more kamikazes ready than we thought, which would have been much more effective than in Okinawa due to the vastly shorter distances and navigational skills required. That was, BTW, the bloodiest US Navy battle in history.
So underestimated that half our carrier air assets were assigned to the north of the relevant area, and the planned CAPs were way to thin to have stopped all that many of them. Although we could have at least somewhat corrected those in a few days after the magnitude of the kamikaze threat materialized, but there's no guarantee of success on our part, and if the Japanese had managed, as they planned, to take out troop transports....
On the other hand, we were really angry by then, and fighting to win. Is there any indication that they thought the outcome in the Pacific was in doubt? (Serious question, I don't know.)
I don't think that means what you think it means. Unless you are comparing the defeat of Germany (as in Debellatiohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debellatio) and that of Imperial Japan which was a conditional surrender - maybe a typo on your part though, in which case, sorry.
> The US was put in a shitty position by the opportunistic Soviet intervention.
US was not put in shitty position by soviets. US wanted soviets open war on east, and the soviets agreed that they will, within 3 months, once war with Germany is over. Looking at the timelines it appears to me soviets only kept their word they gave to americans at the Yalta conference
We did more damage to Tokyo than either Hiroshima or Nagasaki using the firebombing technique we developed over Germany. Japan killed more people in Nanking than either bomb. Both sides fought massive battles on land and sea. My father was in the Second Marines. The War Dept. issued everyone wills to fill out and put uppermost in their footlockers. Their commanders told them bluntly they wouldn't be coming back from this one. This after Tarawa, Saipan, Tinian, Okinawa. Of course, we all know now that invasion never happened. But if it had, Japanese losses were projected at the time to be maybe a million. Even Japan knows things could have been better, but almost certainly would have been worse.
They don't, in fact as time goes on they're more and more convinced that it was an act of aggression without provocation.
I kid you not. There has always been some denial on that end about the role of starting that war, and even more denial about their behavior in China and elsewhere.
They probably "give a pass", because to do more on the international stage would draw attention to their many, many, inexcusable war crimes. Dropping plague fleas on China for instance, or the general activities of Unit 731, which would be bound to come up again and again... and they weren't trying to end a war.
That said, I think even in the US there's a lot of debate over the fact that Nagasaki probably didn't need to happen, but hindsight is 20/20.
I don't understand why the US doesn't give Japan a pass for Pearl Harbor. At least that was an unambiguous military target.
I found a Quora thread[0] with several answers from apparent Japanese natives that appears to address this.
Some Japanese don't give the US a pass, and Japan's pacificm and anti-nuclear stance can be seen in light of that (see the answer by "Hide Izumi",) as Japan's express policy of not wanting to repeat the evil done to them by the Americans.
Others accept the common rationale that the bombs would have saved more lives in the end than an invasion, and that the Japanese government at the time had betrayed its own people, committed atrocities and had to be stopped.
Others, still, don't really care because it was 70 years ago.
It probably helps a great deal that the US invested money and effort into rebuilding Japan after the war. We didn't want them to turn out like Germany after WW1 and wind up fighting them again in a few years.
As opposed to what, a pass for killing hundreds of thousands more of their citizens in an invasion? The death toll from Okinawa alone outstrips that of both bombs, doesn't it?
The destruction brought by the two nukes actually pales in comparison to the firebombing. Some have argued that, given the energies required to build the bombs, far more death would have occurred had those resources been put towards greater firebombing. In that context it is difficult to give special legal treatment to the nukes.
For true horror, continue the conventional bombing, and put an iron blockade around the Home Islands for another year and cut off all shipping. Millions would have starved.
US submarines were already very nearly doing to Japan what Germany's U-boats attempted to do to Britain by the late stages of the war.
Agreed. It is in victory where honor matters most. In naval circles there is a principal that a ship be sunk, not punished. (Shots not below the waterline meant to kill the crew rather than sink the ship and allow the crew to abandon.) Some say Bismark was punished. Walling off Japan and bombing it conventionally would have been punishment. Once the enemy is down, the victor has a duty to construct an endgame.
But imho the bombs are still overplayed as war-enders. I think the prospect of invasion and occupation by Russian forces had at least as much of an impact on the decision.
They don't all. There's a more contemporary movement (I believe) that is rejecting the idea that their country "had it coming" or are apologetic about Japan's role during the war.
They got to keep their emperor. For all I know, higher powers in Japan at that time would have preferred that to an alternate universe with no nukes and the emperor getting executed.
Of course, those killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki might feel differently, but when do we ever ask for people's feelings?
Probably something to do with the resources and lives already sacrified to an ultimately futile war effort by the Japanese government of the time, and the huge American effort put into rebuilding the country into a democratic and prosperous place afterwards.
I don't know, survivors of the nuclear blast were in such pain that they begged the nurses to kill them. Also the nuking of the cities was really unnecessary- it could have been demonstrated without the loss of life.
I imagine there were many burn victims from the incendiary bombs on Tokyo and other cities that were in such pain that they begged their nurses to kill them too. What's your point?
Because they started it and would have killed and estimated million of our own (millions of their own!!!) invading the home islands. Why does this happen every damn time it comes up on HN. We didn't just say "hey, fuck those nips". It was the best option for everyone involved.
>We didn't just say "hey, fuck those nips". It was the best option for everyone involved.
It was the most politically expedient option. The US had the atomic bomb, but couldn't use it on Germany. Not using it on Japan would have been unthinkable, and impossible to justify to US soldiers and their families, in the face of the potential lives lost invading Japan.
However, I'm certain the US would have used the atomic bombs regardless of what atrocities Japan committed, or whether Japan started the war, or how Okinawa turned out. In the case of the US invading Japan, they would have used nukes to soften Japan up for the invasion, and still invaded.
I can't accept the moral justifications made for using the atomic bombs because I'm not convinced there was any scenario in which the US would have had them and not used them.
Wasn't the reason to drop the bombs was to check Soviet expansion. Notably in destroyed Europe where the red army had amassed a huge force and the 1.5million manchurian offensive which was about to invade Japan on land , which it did August 9th 1945 right before the Japanese surrender
While the Manchurian offensive was big and very successful, the Red Army was massively more effective than they were in 1938-9 when they'd previously stomped the Imperial Japanese Army, they simply didn't have the resources to seriously invade the home islands.
At "best" they would have been able to take a port in northern Hokkaido, which would have been terribly obnoxious after the war, but not by itself strategically significant after they'd taken so many of the islands to the north. Details about this, and the massive resources that would have been required by us to take just Sapporo, can be found in the highly recommended Hell to Pay: Operation Downfall and the Invasion of Japan, 1945-1947 (https://www.amazon.com/Hell-Pay-Operation-Downfall-1945-1947...) I recommend elsewhere in this subthread.
To imagine this was a major factor in the decision, when e.g. Truman's ship to the Potsdam Conference crossed the path of 4 US divisions being shuttled from the ETO to the Pacific is ludicrous. E.g. we're still issuing Purple Hearts from the initial lot MacArthur ordered, which was estimated to be 1/4 of what would be needed for Operation Downfall. This was also not long after the survivors of the Bataan Death March had been rescued, we were very much in a mood of revenge, see Grove's autobiography for a direct citation of this in reference to the bombing of Hiroshima.
It's not as clear cut as you make it out to be in my opinion. Please think twice and look at the aftermath and devastation that resulted from using nuclear bombs on a civilian population.
Both sides were at fault, but to say that the U.S. was objectively right is an oversimplification.
The atomic bomb was horrific in its effect, but it was no different that the industrial scale bombardment implemented throughout the war.
Even a cursory study of this subject going back to the manipulations in China in the 1930s makes it pretty clear that the US/Allied cause was righteous.
The firebombing of Tokyo itself did much worse. The projected losses were so insanely higher for ALL sides it's just stupid to act as though the bombings were not the best options available. I consume every bit of WWII history I can get my hands on, but your suggestion is nothing but revisionist. Please stop spreading this insane notion.
I don't claim to be well-versed on WWII history, but that's my opinion until I hear a convincing argument as to why using a nuclear bomb was necessary. Just saying it was the "best option" isn't too convincing imo. There were many prominent scientists who advised against using it, so it wasn't a unanimous decision as you make it out to be.
> The firebombing of Tokyo itself did much worse.
Are you considering the aftereffects of radiation on top of the civilian death toll?
I think the U.S. is quite fortunate that they bombed Japan and not another country. Only the Japanese could so quickly recover from the horrors of a large-scale nuclear bombing in such a short period of time. It makes people who blame the U.S. look bad because "oh but they're doing fine now, so it wasn't that big of a deal".
Wikipedia says the atomic bombings of Hiroshima & Nagasaki killed 129,000–246,000+ (in a single week). The bombings of Tokyo killed 75,000–200,000 (over 3 years). The debate over whether more lives would have been lost if the bombs had not been dropped is entirely hypothetical and moreover has been the subject of debate amongst historians since the end of WWII, notwithstanding the confident pronouncements of authoritative-sounding posters on hackernews who don't appear to be able to accurately compare the relative death tolls of the two tragedies.
> the confident pronouncements of authoritative-sounding posters on hackernews who don't appear to be able to accurately compare the relative death tolls of the two tragedies.
Right? One thread a JS expert, the next thread an authority on WWII. Welcome to HN :P
Again, what we did to Tokyo was far worse and that somehow never comes up. In this case, nukes were actually not the worst thing we did. I never claimed a unanimous decision, but even with hindsight there is no convincing argument you could possibly make for an alternative invasion of Japan. It would simply have been to horrible for all parties.
> Only the Japanese could so quickly recover from the horrors of a large-scale nuclear bombing
Ever heard of the Wirtschaftswunder? US support post-war was crucial for a lot of countries' recovery.
Yes, the casualty figures for the bombs include radiation.
From what I can tell, it is difficult to make an argument against the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki based on the civilian toll. The pacification of Japan without the bomb would seemingly have led to far more civilian deaths.
How many US civilians were killed by Japanese troops total vs. how many innocent women, kids, elderly, artists were firebombed and nuked by the US in Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki?
This comic book version of history present in the US is disgusting.
The US could have nuked a 100% military installation.
The US could have detonated the nukes in Tokyo harbor to scare the shit out of the population.
No.
The US decided to nuke TWO, not one, TWO cities full of civilian human beings.
How many people were prematurely dying every month in the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere after we took back the Philippines? The latest, best estimate I've seen, in the excellent book Hell to Pay: Operation Downfall and the Invasion of Japan, 1945-1947 (https://www.amazon.com/Hell-Pay-Operation-Downfall-1945-1947...) was 400,000, up from the 250,000 I'd picked up somewhere I can't remember.
It had many interesting revelations, including the single thing which had a higher priority than the Manhattan Project: the building of a super-Mullberry for Operation Coronet, the invasion of the Kanto Plain on main island of Honshu, where Tokyo and much else was located.
And if you study the endgame on the Japanese side, it's really not likely nukes in Tokyo harbor to scare the shit out of the population would have worked, for one thing, they had no say in the running of the country. There also wasn't generally clean separations between military installations and civilian areas, especially since Japan is so crowded.
No, one of the clear factors was their leadership realizing we'd advanced to the point where a single plane could destroy a city, instead of requiring near Maximum Efforts with hundreds of them.
And of course, the bottom line is that these bombings worked. All else is speculation.
>And of course, the bottom line is that these bombings worked. All else is speculation.
The imminent USSR invasion from the north played a significant part in the calculus of Japan's surrender. Too often the use of nuclear weapons alone gets credit, but there was a more complex political/diplomatic context surrounding _why_ they worked in the case.
The imminent USSR invasion from the north played a significant part in the calculus of Japan's surrender.
Well, it added to things falling apart at an accelerating rate in just about every way. I'm of the opinion that the USSR's actions didn't hurt in the least, but we have absolutely no way of knowing if they were critical, and if so, how much. Probably the biggest thing was making the Army look even more incompetent, when they needed to be squelched ... well, that had been needed for decades....
Because the real action was in far off Manchuria, which we were ever more effectively cutting off from the home islands. And it wasn't like the USSR had the ability to project serious power into the latter without our help (and even then there main effort was of course focused on Eastern Europe), there was no serious "imminent USSR invasion from the north" in the offing.
At best, they could have taken a port on northern Hokkaido, which would have been utterly obnoxious after the surrender, but wouldn't change in the least the calculus of the Japanese plans to resist on the southern home islands where we were the critical threat. And where they had a real chance of "winning" as they perceived it (see Hell To Pay for lots more details) ... although that might not have turned out well given our chemical weapons capabilities, which those who didn't know about the Manhattan Project were ramping up.
In fact, after the Navy busted those railway ferries than ran from it to Honshu (some had steam turbines and could do 17 knots!), causing a severe immediate transportation problem due to the lost coal supply, I seriously doubt Hokkaido's contributions to the war effort going forward could even be significant, especially since we were hardly finished in cutting the link between the two islands.
I do believe that the we have some idea of went on in the meetings involved leading up to the surrender, and that Manchuria was invoked as much or even more than the nuclear bombings.
If both of those claims were the case (we really don't know that much about the meetings), the question of interpretation is still open, i.e. was this used to beat down the Army's resistance to surrender, since even more so than in 1938-9, the Red Army was going through them "like crap through a goose", to use the famous Patton quote.
Everything I've read indicates that it was the second bomb, which indeed happened on the same day as the declaration of war, that really got the attention of the rulers of Japan, and got them serious about surrendering.
the US is the only country on earth that ever dropped nuclear weapons on civilians. US generals
decided to kill civilians, in retaliation, to achieve pure terror.
the US lost 3.5k civilians on 9/11 and started 2 wars for it.
but all this mil-porn floats around, civilian armchair heroes debate death and destruction with zero empathy
or connection to reality.
Everybody in the chain of command, from generals up to the civilian leadership which authorized and funded the massive effort that was the Manhattan Project, "decided to kill civilians, in retaliation, to achieve pure terror."
Except, of course, Hiroshima was an entirely legitimate military target as well, it was among other things the Second General Army headquarters, e.g. over 3,000 of them were on a parade ground 900 yards from ground zero doing physical training. And it was adjacent to the naval center of Kure.
In Nagasaki, 90% of the population worked for 4 big arms or precursor companies (per Wikipedia), and in general the designated target cities were important industrial centers, or at least still were because by then we'd fire bombed all of the rest of them, excepting the 4 targets/alternates, Kyoto for the obvious reasons (it's the Emperor's city), and Tokyo was also left off the target list, for not only did we need people of authority still alive to surrender, there wasn't any left of it worth bombing. You do know that the early March firebombing of it everything went "right" and we destroyed 16 square miles and killed on the order of 100,000 people? A worst outcome than either of the atomic bombings.
You're saying, quite explicitly, since you don't deny my above facts, that it would have been better to let 400,000 completely innocent civilians per month in the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere to continue to be killed, and to kill millions, probably tens of millions of Japanese in Operations Starvation and the like, and in Downfall, the invasion of the home islands, which would have also killed western allied troops by the 100,000s of thousands.
You'd truly prefer to have made East Asia that much more of an abattoir, further embittering all concerned, well, the survivors, that is?
the US lost 3.5k civilians on 9/11 and started 2 wars for it.
Not exactly, we were still in a de facto if not de jure state of war with Iraq, remember the no-fly zone et. al. left over from Saddam's invasion of Kuwait? His attempt to assassinate G. H. W. Bush? The decision to finish him off was sound, the attempted nation building afterwards was the true insanity.
Invade Afghanistan and take down the regime that provided aid, comfort and shelter to al Qaeda and Osama ben Laden? You bet, you f-ck with us, past the point we get seriously angry, and we will destroy you, and if needed, through two very different administrations, hunt you down to the ends of the earth and kill you.
civilian armchair heroes debate death and destruction with zero empathy or connection to reality
I'd suggest that you speak for yourself, instead of imputing the worst possible motives on your debating opponents.
just utterly inhuman
Any serious student of history, especially the 20th Century would deny that, it's peace that's "utterly inhuman", war and violence of other types is the natural human condition.
We don't have to like it, but it's silly to deny it.
And it worked, now didn't it? History is written by the victors.
Anyways, all sides in WWII that were able to bombed the crap out of civilian centers when they were given the chance to do so. That's what total war means.
If any other nation had had nukes, you can bet your ass they would've used them--because in such a war you have no choice other than full mobilization of your warmaking abilities or surrender.
But they worked, were sufficiently weaponized, and we were already assembling the 3rd, although we were starting to hold back at that point, to give them time to decide to surrender, and giving us time to debate the proposition of using 5 or more in Operation Olympic, the invasion of southern Kyushuu scheduled in slightly less than 3 months.
(November 1st, although as it turns out a typhoon that hit Okinawa would have required delaying it, which in turn would have totally screwed the timetable of Operation Coronet, the invasion of the Honshuu Kantou plain where Tokyo etc. were, due to weather.)
Careful. Start talking about the US defeating Germany and the Russians will have something to say. There is good reason why in the US it is called WWII and in Russia "The Great Patriotic War". The walk from Moscow to Berlin was much longer than from France.
It's not so much the Americans defeating the Germans that makes me proud, but rather the immense technical achievement that was done in such little time out of necessity. It is a perfect example of the American ingenuitive ideal. It's shouldn't be taken as a slight to other nations but rather as admiration for the accomplishments of those who came before me
But don't forget that Manhattan was a three-country effort. Don't forget where the uranium came from, or the number of scientists brought in from all over the allied nations.
On the other hand, we were handed on a silver platter a huge supply of hand sorted pitchblende from the Belgium Congo, with an average uranium content of 60-65% (!!!), without that we wouldn't have finished in time to finish the war.
All due to one foresighted Belgium who had learned would be a very bad idea to let the Nazis get their hands on it, and arranged shipment of a lot of it to America. Where it sat in a warehouse until Grove's men showed up and were actually serious about buying the stuff, after e.g. the State Department and everyone else he'd contacted had blown him off, this is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Sengier but the greater story can be found in Rhodes' and Groves' books.
It counted because we had enough raw uranium to, indeed, separate one bomb's worth of U-235 in time, but more importantly to fuel the natural uranium reactors in which we bred plutonium, which got into high gear faster than the former.
By comparison, in the link I included is the statement that "To illustrate the uniqueness of Sengier’s stockpile, after the war the MED and the AEC considered ore containing three-tenths of 1 percent as a good find.", which comports with my memory.
Don't forget that the same technological effort laid the basis for Silicon Valley. Billions of electronics R&D during WWII with "you have to succeed, no matter the cost". Based on a huge increase of government debt too, by the way. The bombs were not the only expensive item, for example the Norden bombsight cost almost as much as the Manhattan project, and that's just one of thousands of WWII research projects.
Heisenberg had made a big miscalculation. He thought it would take 2 tons of enriched uranium to make a bomb. In fact, it's about 52Kg for a dumb bomb, and and maybe 5Kg with a good design. Oops.
[1] https://books.google.com/books?id=_qVgeP_UGqsC&pg=PA64&lpg=P...