Was it a war crime when US nuked Hiroshima & Nagasaki?

I know of no reason to assume that Arthur Harris, or any of the members of the Army Air Force mentioned above, for that matter, ever believed that any war can be won from the air alone. Harris developed his ideas about the use of tactical and strategic bombing in Iraq in the 1920s, and came to the conclusion that its best use was as a terror weapon. I know of no reason to assume that he did not understand a basic truth which all competent military men have known for thousands of years--you don't win without infantry to occupy the territory of your enemy.

Goering was a genuine "war hero" who became enamored of playing the big man (he was credited with 22 kills in the Great War). Hermann "Call me Mayer" Goering made his boasts in the context of playing the flamboyant second fiddle to the madman Hitler. We can't know, of course, but i suspect that within his private mind, he knew better. When being interrogated after the war, he was asked when he knew the war was lost. He said the first time he saw a Mustang over Berlin. I doubt that he had any illusions. The German airborne troops were members of Goering's Luftwaffe. The clown even had an "airborne" armored division, for Christ's sake. Very small units were used effectively in the spring, 1940 campaign, and then their first (and last) big operation was the air drop on Crete in 1941. It was an unqualified disaster. The Germans suffered nearly 7,000 casualties and had more than 300 aircraft damaged or destroyed. The Fallschirmjager (the German term for airborne troops) failed to take any of their first day objectives. The invasion succeeded largely because the Allies were already in the process of evacuating the island. Despite wild claims of the scale of German casualties, the evidence is that Allied military intelligence correctly put the figure at between 6,000 and 7,000. Hitler was so appalled by the scale of the casualties, however, that he forbade any further large scale air drops.

American planners were paying attention, though. The German FS units landed without any heavy weapons, and the high casualties they suffered can in large measure be attributed to that failure of planning. American airborne divisions were "re-configured" to include one glider regiment in each division to bring in vehicles and artillery. In addition, Gavin made sure that each PIR (Parachute Infantry Regiment) dropped in with their own heavy weapons. This alteration in previous doctrine was justified in the event when the 505th PIR landed in Sicily with their heavy weapons, and were able to prevent an attack on the beaches by the Hermann Goering Panzer Division. Both Gavin and Ridgeway carefully studied the failures of the FS air drop on Crete, and revised their doctrines accordingly. The FS units for the rest of the war fought as ground troops, and they were dangerous as hell. A brigade of FS units were among the first to respond to the Allied invasion of Normandy, and they fought like very demons as the 23rd and the 1st divisions fought inland toward St. Lo.

Goering had been the protege of Manfred von Richtoffen in the Great War, and took command of his "Flying Circus" after Richtoffen's successor was killed. Although a loud-mouthed proponent of the "stab in the back myth" in 1918, Goering was a part of the excellent German Imperial Air Force which, in 1918, was stronger than it had ever been, and had better aircraft than any other air force in the world. Maintaining air superiority over their own army and its rear areas, they frequently ventured in large formations into the air over their enemies, with relative impunity, to attack their supply communications. Nevertheless, only a blind fool (and for all his histrionic posturing, Goering was no fool) could have failed to see that the German army was coming apart at the seams with the hammer blows of the Allied autumn offensive in 1918.

I seriously doubt that in his "heart of hearts" Goering was ever such a fool as to believe that any war can be won from the air alone.

Notice I said "it seems".

I've been reading "The Hardest Victory"(RAF Bomber Command In The II World War) and on page 143 it discusses Air Marshall Sir Charles Portal's memo to England's Chiefs of Staff recommending a build-up to 8,000 bombers(combined US and British) to win the war without dedicating land forces.
Churchill of course, demurred.

And on page 197 it quotes Harris saying;"There is little doubt that aerial bombing (of Italy) was the principal contributing factor to the downfall of Mussolini's regime"

It seems a bit silly now but both Portal and Harris were giddy with the prospect of defeating the Axis with their powerful air force.

More than just a bit silly. My suspicion is that Harris was advocating for the lion's share of resources for Bomber command. His comments after Iraq and before 1939 show that he considered aerial bombardment a weapon of terror, and not the means to wage war "antiseptically." It is also useful to keep in mind that English generals were always attempting to claim that American troops could best be employed by simply handing them over to the command of English generals.

That is incorrect. The reason for the bombs was the hope that it would make Japan surrender -- something Japan had steadfastly refused to do up to that point. It had nothing to do with political boasting.

No actual need? Historians have suggested *in hindsight* that Japan was about to surrender anyway, but at the time Japan was not making surrender offers.

Even if it's true that there was no need, it's Japan's fault for refusing to surrender until after the second bomb. Hardly our doing.

Yea, I agree with you. Japan attacked the US; they shouldn't start a war if they can't take the "heat." Japan was brutal against the people of Asia and SE Asia - before and during WWII. Our bombs were no more brutal than the way they treated their enemies. Admiral Yamamoto knew that Japan would lose the war early on; he was educated at Harvard.

Very,very good.There was a clique of Japanese military officers who plotted to depose the Emperor and take over Japan so they could continue the war.
The Emperor wanted to end the bloodshed.Harry Truman received info that an invasion of the home islands of Japan would result in millions of American deaths.He chose to bomb several hundred thousand of the enemy instead.
This was the same Japan that attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941 without warning and
slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Chinese in the 1930s at Nanking.

You exaggerate. No estimate for the invasion of the home islands estimated millions of Americans killed. The most modest, detailed estimates placed American casualties at about a half million, of which somewhat more than 100,000 would be killed. The most extravagent estimates placed American casualties at about one and three quarters million, of which 800,000 (at most) would be killed--that was the study done for Stimson.

You've jumped into a lot of threads here, and dropped off comments about the content. We all do that, but you should check the date stamps. The individual to whose post you are responding has been dead for several years now. This thread was started more than nine years ago. There have already been pages of discussion on the subject of the justification of the atomic attacks in 1945. At least skim through an old, long thread like this to get a sense of it, is my advice. Which, of course, you are free to ignore.

But your "millions of American deaths" is bullshit, pure and simple.

To me, it was war crime of requirement to man.
Or, in light of some unknown factors outside of mans vision, a warning and a solution of part worth about an issue largely temporally vast and complex in comprehension.

technically it became one in retrospect, but no one alive at the time who served would have gone against it (although several of the scientists who worked on it did)

As many a WW II army veterans told me in the VA hospital setting..."we regret we had ONLY TWO atomic bombs to drop on Japan!!" Who can forget the Japanese mindset of WW II....which was take as few prisoners as possible. Remember the Bataan death march and the experimental/barbaric pseudo-medical experiments done on captured U.S. pilots in Manchuria! No....dropping the A bombs were true "religious experiences," ones which saved a million American lives.

Here's a crime not very many talk about.

I saw that today. The war against Iraq really really messed up our society and our economy. And it cost way too many American and Iraqi lives.
Bush Cheney and the rest of the gang sold us a bill of goods.

The last report on the cost of the war in Iraq is now over $1-trillion. The GOP's emphasis to cut government spending now is misplaced in every way.

it's only a war crime if you lose

Our actual turn in the wrong direction started with FDR whose New Deal began the big government that has existed (and grown) to this day. Concerning the economy being fine... the New Deal was a failure. The economy turned around when we went on a war footing.

Our actual turn in the wrong direction started with FDR whose New Deal began the big government that has existed (and grown) to this day. Concerning the economy being fine... the New Deal was a failure. The economy turned around when we went on a war footing.

Unfortunately, most Americans believed that our government would not lie about such an important issue. They sold the WMD fear that I didn't believe was worth attacking Iraq. Many countries have WMD's; they will use it at their own demise. I told Senator Feinstein not to approve the war, but she did.

Our government doesn't make many good choices, and they DO NOT LISTEN TO THEIR CONSTITUENTS.

Wrong.
In order to have a turn around you have to stop the descent.
This graph clearly shows the turn around long before 1940

As far as your distaste for "Big Government"...well, that's another matter entirely.

It appears that this year is going to be one involving lots of media attention on the A-bombings.

I don't know if anyone else saw last night's two-hour PBS special on the history of nuclear weapons, but they really botched the surrender of Japan.


The show's problems started when they said that Truman "decided to let the bombs be dropped". That much is certainly true, but it was said in a context that implied that Truman might possibly have decided to not let the bombs be dropped.

In reality the idea of "Truman deciding to hold back on using the A-bombs" is about as ridiculous as the idea of "Truman ordering our soldiers to fight the war without using bullets".


The show's problems get much worse when they claim that Truman reacted to Nagasaki by ordering a halt to further A-bombs, followed by Japan offering to surrender so long as we guarantee Hirohito's position, followed by Truman accepting that surrender.

Taking the surrender issue first, Japan's surrender offer wanted us to guarantee Hirohito's unlimited dictatorial power as Japan's living deity. Truman most certainly did not accept their request. Our reply to Japan's request was that Hirohito was going to be made subordinate to MacArthur. After several more days, Japan agreed to surrender according to those terms.

Truman's halt to the A-bombing was not a response to the bombing of Nagasaki as the show claimed. Rather it came as a response to Japan's first surrender offer. Instead of a horrified reaction to the repeated bombing of Japan, the temporary halt to A-bombing was merely an attempt to give Japan a bit of breathing room now that they were finally talking to us about surrender.


A bit later in the show, they mention that post-war Liberals started yammering about how maybe we shouldn't have dropped the bombs, and they mention the response that someone gave to that, claiming that had the bombs not been dropped the result would have been a horribly bloody invasion. The show then goes on to claim that this was a false choice, that we had other options.

While it is factually true that post-war Liberals did (and do) spout such nonsense, the idea of fighting the war without dropping the bombs is about as moronic as fighting the war without using bullets. Further, had Japan kept refusing to surrender and the war continued to drag on, the US most certainly would have invaded Japan, and the invasion most certainly would have been horrifically bloody. The idiotic Liberal nonsense about not invading Japan can be discarded right along with their idiotic nonsense about not using the bombs.


Despite my criticisms here, the show was on the whole pretty good.

The inaccurate parts were only two or three minutes out of a two-hour program.

"Secretary Of State John Kerry Makes Historic Visit To Hiroshima"

http://www.npr.org/2016/04/11/473850529/secretary-of-state-john-kerry-makes-historic-visit-to-hiroshima