THE latest issue of Culture Wars magazine includes an interesting review of the Rev. Wilson MisCamble’s 2011 book The Most Controversial Decision: Truman, The Atomic Bomb, and the Defeat of Japan. Miscamble argues that the use of nuclear weapons against Japan was necessary and right. David A. Wemhoff, who unfortunately relies heavily on Vatican II documents, persuasively rejects this argument and contends the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were both unnecessary to achieve reasonable war objectives and immoral.

This article is not free, but it may be of enough interest to some that they are willing to splurge and spend $4 for the entire magazine.

— Comments —

Anti-Globalist Expatriate writes:

I don’t believe that the United States had any business getting involved in the Second World War, just as we had no business getting involved in the Great War; to me, the evidence is quite clear that Pearl Harbor was the culmination of the most successful influence operation in human history, with Stalin’s various intelligence organs utilizing both witting and unwitting agents of influence to manipulate both the Japanese and American governments into following policies which would inevitably lead them into armed conflict. Stalin’s goal was to dissuade the Japanese from invading the ‘Northern Resource Area’ (the Japanese euphemism for Siberia), and instead encourage them to invade the ‘Southern Resource Area’, i.e., Indonesia and Southeast Asia in general.

We would’ve been far better off to avoid the war entirely, allowing Hitler and Stalin to exhaust their respective regimes slugging it out in Europe, and allowing the Japanese to do whatever they wanted to China and Southeast Asia. It wasn’t any of our business, and we’ve never recovered from the centralization of the economy and the need to build a gigantic, all-encompassing national security state to contain the USSR and its satellites after the war (if we hadn’t been involved, the USSR would not have survived; just as if we hadn’t gotten involved in the Great War, there would not have been a USSR nor a Nazi Germany in the first place).

That being said, once we’d gone down the path to war, I think it was necessary to use nuclear weapons to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki – but not for the reasons generally cited.

It’s my view that the Japanese were edging towards surrender, and would’ve surrendered absent the use of nuclear weapons. The real justification for their use was to deter the USSR from trying to consume
Japan in the postwar era.

This is precisely the accusation that many (these days, mostly on the Left) opposed to the bombings make – that the United States didn’t need to use nuclear weapons against the Japanese for military reasons, but did so as a deterrent to the Soviets. I agree with and embrace this theory, as I believe it to be a) correct and b) perfectly justified, in context.

Many senior military officers such as Nimitz, Eisenhower, MacArthur, Leady, etc. all were opposed to dropping atomic bombs on Japan; from a purely military perspective, and even from a political standpoint with regards to the matter of obtaining Japan’s surrender, they were entirely correct. However, what they didn’t take into account was the necessity of deterring the USSR – while Harry Truman was far from a perfect President, he was correct on that score.

Had FDR lived long enough to make this decision, I believe that he would not have dropped the atomic bombs on Japan, and that it would’ve been a strategic error which would’ve led to a shooting war between the United States and the USSR in Asia, much larger in scope and with far more
serious immediate consequences than the Korean War.

Laura writes:

Wemhoff argues that no desirable military outcome justified the targeting of civilians and the mass devastation caused by the atomic bombs.

Paul C. writes:

Well, I suppose there are pathetic arguments against Hiroshima. I have read them since high school. My Marine Corps Daddy probably would have been killed had we not dropped the bombs as he finished crossing the Pacific. So any reader must take that fact into consideration. Probably, I would not be here today. He luckily avoided being killed, and he received the Purple Heart on Guam, a relatively early battle. I doubt any argument would be persuasive, and I am not about to invest in such nonsense.

Laura writes:

I honor your father for his sacrifices, but it should be noted that he was a combatant and the 100,000 plus who were killed in Japan were mostly non-combatants. I think it is wrong to reject categorically arguments against the attacks, many of which are not pathetic.

Don Vincenzo writes:

I just saw your entry about the a-bomb, and it rang a bell: we’ve just returned from Nagasaki, site of the second explosion that killed 8,000 of the 12,000 Catholic parishioners of the Urakami district.

There is a Museum of that event in what was and is the Christian city of Japan, which includes some reflections of those round eyes who worked in Japanese (slave) labor camps, including one Francis Fitzmaurice, an Aussie who thanked God for the bomb. By the way, the Christian population of Japan is less than 1%, half Catholic, half heretic.

Japan has been a fantastic experience – about which more later – but I would probably starve on the Japanese diet: raw fish is not my cup of tea. We actually had pizza twice…not bad, but not good either.

George Weinbaum writes from Texas:

I do not believe it was necessary to drop the A-bombs on Japan to end the war in 1945.  In 1937 Mauritz Halgreen wrote, “America’s War Tragedy” about American foreign policy.  The next to the last chapter was: “Japan, the Chosen Foe.”  Halgreen claimed we were goading Japan into war.  I agree.  When Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931, Hoover chastised Japan.  Why?  Japan invaded Manchuria to keep Stalin out.

As for the “750,000 casualties in a Japanese invasion,” poppycock.  Japan was looking to surrender as early as February 1945.  Check it out. The Japanese navy was finished. Much of the Japanese army was in China and had no way to cross the Sea of Japan to return to the homeland.  Only FDR’s “unconditional surrender” demand kept Japan fighting.

Why did FDR refuse the Japanese surrender?  To prolong the war to let Stalin take over as much as the Far East as possible. For extra credit: figure out why the German generals tried to assassinate Hitler on 25 July 1945. Double extra credit: study the “Morgenthau Plan” for Germany and figure out why it was floated! Triple extra credit: study the bombing of Dresden in February 1945.

I believe we fought Japan to turn China Communist! That’s right!  Our Pacific War was a success!

Truman apparently was not on board with FDR’s plans for the Far East.  We bombed Hiroshima on 6 August, Nagasaki on 9 August.  Stalin declared war on Japan on 8 August.  Interesting.

Bill R. writes:

I agree wholeheartedly with Paul C. Nor am I about to invest in such nonsense either. I wouldn’t revisit the arguments again even for free. (In any documentary about the war, certainly about the atom bomb attacks themselves, which I do still watch from time to time, one is inevitably exposed to those arguments again anyway.) There is no intellectually respectable argument against the atom bomb attacks on Japan, not in the sense that they are singled out from the rest of the actions of the war. For that reason, I believe people to be justified in finding such arguments offensive, and their motives suspect, and I do. First of all, if such arguments are to have any hope of respectability at all, they have to be logically consistent, and in order to be that they must, of necessity, be arguments not just against the atom bomb attacks, but against all the bombing that occurred during the entire war that caused civilian deaths. For that reason, no respectable argument can ever be framed in terms of the atom bomb attacks alone. The only respectable argument would simply include the atom bomb attacks in a more general argument against the war effort as a whole. Otherwise, why would it be okay to kill 100,000 civilians as long as you used tens of thousands of little bombs, but not if you did it with only one big one? The distinction is solely technological; it has no moral dimension of its own. The conventional fire-bombing of Tokyo alone killed more in one night than did either of the atom bomb attacks. For that matter, the far less justified fire-bombing of Dresden, Germany killed, by some estimates, more non-combatants than both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atom bomb attacks combined. The difference with Germany at the time of Dresden, however, is that we had vast armies on the ground in Europe rapidly closing in on Germany from all sides, with the Soviets already nearly at Berlin. By contrast, as bad as things had become for Japan at the time of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, their homeland had remained untouched and free from ground armies and invasion. Also, unlike the refugee-swelled Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were legitimate military targets because of their great military and industrial significance. Furthermore, given our first-hand knowledge, paid for in a horrendous amount of American blood, of the profound fanatacism with which Japanese territory had been defended on the ground up to then (e.g., Iwo Jima, Okinawa), we had every reason to believe that the invasion of the Japanese home island themselves would cost upwards of a million American casualties, and millions more Japanese who were, even then, in the process of training boys and girls as young as 12 to fight with bamboo spears. It doesn’t take a whole lot of imagination to picture what that slaughter would have looked like in the event of a ground invasion of Japan itself. Indeed, estimates done at the time placed American casualties at up to 4 million, with between 4- and 800,000 dead, with Japanese casualties up to 10 million.

[…]

It would have been unconscionable to send those American men to their deaths in a ground invasion of the Japanese home islands (and my father, then serving in the U.S. Navy in the Pacific, might very well have been one of them) when their government was in possession of a weapon that could (and in the event, did) bring that war to a swift end, but instead opted just keep it on a shelf. The most important duty of any government is to protect its own people. If one wishes to argue that the war should not have been fought at all, that at least has more respectability, or at the very least more logical consistency, in my view, than this tired, we-were-wrong-to-drop-The-Bomb malarkey. It’s the worst kind of armchair generalship, at best, and, at worst, one of the nastiest forms of anti-American propaganda I have ever been exposed to.

Laura writes:

You write:

“There is no intellectually respectable argument against the atom bomb attacks on Japan, not in the sense that they are singled out from the rest of the actions of the war.”

Wemhof discusses the nuclear attacks in the context of the fire-bombings of Dresden and Tokyo too, both of which he argues visited disproportionate harm on the enemy, and he argues that the Japanese were prepared to surrender conditionally, without agreeing to an American occupation and social engineering. The purpose of the nuclear bombings was to achieve an unconditional surrender.

Pan Dora writes:

Anti-Globalist Expatriate writes:

It’s my view that the Japanese were edging towards surrender, and would’ve surrendered absent the use of nuclear weapons. The real justification for their use was to deter the USSR from trying to consume
Japan in the postwar era.

If that were the case, I’d guess the Hiroshima bombing would have been sufficient to push them over that edge, thus making Nagasaki unneccessary. They were given an opportunity to surrender after Hiroshima.

Bill R. writes:

You write, “Wemhof discusses the nuclear attacks in the context of the fire-bombings of Dresden and Tokyo too.” Again, the only respectable argument, in my view, entails the eschewing of all non-combatant deaths, without reference to the method. Otherwise, the whole thing ends up degenerating into an arbitrary numbers game. Are 100 non-combatant deaths okay? What about 101? What about 1000? What about 10,000? And so on. Insofar, therefore, as such deaths are unavoidable in modern, industrial warfare, such an argument, for all practical purposes, simply becomes a general argument for pacifism.

You cannot merely expect to attack soldiers in the field and leave it at that. If one does not attack the enemy’s ability to make war, as opposed to just his warriors in the field, he will continue to make war. And his industry and the people manning that industry — to say nothing of those of his citizens who may presently be non-combatants only shortly to become new combatants — constitute his ability to make war. And you cannot attack that without killing non-combatants.

I believe the bombing of Dresden was a clearcut case of terror bombing, that is, bombing that is done for the express and sole purpose of instilling and spreading terror in a civilian population without advancing any legitimate, strategic goal, and without any rational, corresponding military objective or necessity present.  In my view, therefore, Dresden was morally unjustified and possibly even rises to the level of a war crime.  For the reasons I gave earlier, I do not believe that any of the Japanese cities that were bombed during the war, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki, fell into this category.

You write, “The purpose of the nuclear bombings was to achieve an unconditional surrender.” Right. But also, we tried the conditional surrender route in World War I and all it got us was World War II. The notion of an unoccupied Japan was not tenable. There was every reason to believe that, especially given the martial spirit, fierceness, and pride of the Japanese, an unoccupied and still militarist and totalitarian Japan would lead to further hostilities even more surely than did an unoccupied Germany at the end of World War I.  As an illustration of the incorrigible element in this people which lends weight to this argument, even with occupation and social engineering, the Japanese have still largely failed, quite unlike the Germans, and even after 70 years and mountains of evidence, to acknowledge atrocities they perpetrating during World War II, such as their sadistic and barbaric treatment of prisoners of war, their horrible abuses in China, Korea, and the Philippines, large-scale chemical and biological warfare experiments conducted on defenseless and unsuspecting populations, and murderous brutality surreal in its hideousness, such as the Rape of Nanking, and so on.

To be clear, however, unconditional surrender and occupation are two separate issues. The important issue, and the one that signals, particularly for the enemy’s citizens themselves and their leaders, the defeat of the enemy is occupation. I suppose you could have had a conditional surrender, but only if it included occupation, and the Japanese were not going to give us that without the The Bomb or invasion.

Laura writes:

You write:

Again, the only respectable argument, in my view, entails the eschewing of all non-combatant deaths, without reference to the method. Otherwise, the whole thing ends up degenerating into an arbitrary numbers game. Are 100 non-combatant deaths okay? What about 101? What about 1000? What about 10,000? And so on. Insofar, therefore, as such deaths are unavoidable in modern, industrial warfare, such an argument, for all practical purposes, simply becomes a general argument for pacifism.

But, of course, the only respectable argument is one which upholds the civilized standard of warfare, and that is one which avoids non-combatant deaths when at all possible. I thought the United States military honored that ideal. It is not just a “numbers game” to say that bombings that resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and appalling suffering that lasted for generations should command our attention even more than violations of this civilized standard on a smaller scale. That doesn’t mean the less dramatic violations are unimportant.  To say that some non-combatant deaths are unavoidable is not to say that all non-combatant deaths are unavoidable and to object to disregard for non-combatant deaths in some cases is not to argue that all war is unjustified.

As far as surrender, I don’t understand why occupation was considered absolutely necessary. I would like to know more about that issue.

Michael Yoder writes:

Thank you for your website.

I agree with Mr. Weinbaum as he seems to be the only one that keeps in mind any semblance of the just war doctrine. It is so easy to say who should die and which deaths are justifiable and which lives are more valuable and which lives are not valuable.

Our hideous demand for unconditional surrender resulted in millions more losing their lives on both sides in that bad war. The one condition that the Japanese had for surrender was regarding the Emperor and after the two bombs were dropped (the one in Nagasaki over the Catholic part of Nagasaki) what did we agree to? The retention of the Emperor! The Japanese were starving and they were in no condition to resist an invasion which was not needed. I can also talk of uncles that fought in the Pacific side (one winning the Navy Cross as a TBM pilot in Leyte Gulf) and I am not dishonoring their memory by stating that policies of the American government were little better than the enemies they were fighting.

There was a reason why Pope Pius XII and Benedict XV in World War I did not endorse either side. Thugs fighting amongst themselves was all they were and those leaders sent the poor soldiers, imbued with vicious propaganda, to fight the animals otherwise known as Germans, Japanese, Russians, Brits, French, Italians or Americans.

It is time to stop listening to the “good war” nonsense or any type of propaganda from the victors or the losers and start listening to what the Holy Church has taught for two millenia despite how it might conflict with that propaganda.

Anti-Globalist Expatriate writes:

Pan Dora writes:

If that were the case, I’d guess the Hiroshima bombing would have been sufficient to push them over that edge, thus making Nagasaki  unneccessary.

No, it was necessary that the United States demonstrate that its use of nuclear weapons was a repeatable event, that we had a stockpile (even though the cupboard was pretty bare for a while).

Pan Dora writes:

They were given an opportunity to surrender after Hiroshima.

Logistical issues, etc. I didn’t say the Japanese were going to surrender immediately, but that they were edging towards surrender. I don’t think Downfall would’ve been necessary.

May 26, 2015

Bill R. writes:

You write, “It is not just a ‘numbers game’ to say that bombings that resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and appalling suffering that lasted for generations should command our attention even more than violations of this civilized standard on a smaller scale.”

You have missed my point entirely. I said nothing about the degree to which different death tolls should command our attention. I was talking about the basis one uses for establishing a general moral principle. My point was that for the kind of argument we were talking about to be respectable, it had to have a coherent and consistent moral principle as its underpinning. Is it wrong to kill non-combatants? Yes or no? That’s where you start. If it is, then it is wrong whether it is one non-combantant or a million. That is not the same as saying the million are not worse or that they should not command our attention anymore than the one. The murderer who kills 50 is going to be worse than the murderer who kills one. Of course. But the murderer who kills one is still doing wrong and evil. And there has to be a moral principle that establishes that fact. My reference, therefore, to the “numbers game” was in the context of one trying to establish a guiding moral principle for these war deaths, and the arbitrary aspect I was referring to was in the sense that it is arbitrary to say one murder, or unjustified killing, is okay, or ten, but not ten thousand or a hundred thousand. Again, of course, ten thousand murders are worse than one, but only if you have established with your moral principle that the kinds of deaths we’re talking about are murders in the first place. Now, of course, in terms of significance, a million deaths are worse than a thousand deaths, even worse than a thousand murders. But, morally, a million deaths are not worse than a thousand murders. And unless you show me the moral priniciple that establishes it, your million deaths may not be immoral at all, while one authentic murder is. Your million deaths may simply be the result of one civilization’s act of self-defense against another. And if they have suffered because I had to defend myself against them, whose fault is that? Establishing the moral principle or principles, and agreeing on them, that enables us to make those distinctions (or to show that they don’t exist, and that the million deaths, like the one, was also murder, and therefore evil) requires more than mere numbers. That was my point about the arbitrary numbers game. To put it another way, you don’t inaugerate a moral principle just because you have a big number; or, you can’t turn something unfortunate and unpleasant, even something that may be horrible, into something morally wrong just because you’ve multiplied it into a big number.

Now, as far as the great numbers that were killed in the attacks on Japan, that is something one may consider morally even if one decides they were not immoral, but one should still decide first whether or not they were, and one needs a moral principle based on something more than an arbitrary number in order to do that in an intellectually respectable manner. I do not think they were murders or immoral. I think they were killings done in self-defense. And great though the numbers were, and warranting our attention on account of their greatness, which I think they always had, the deaths caused by the atomic bomb and other attacks on Japan were, in my opinion, necessary to compel the Japanese to accept occupation, without which we would have been unable to ensure the safety of the innocent from this proven murderer. The many Americans and others who fought, bled, and often died, the hundreds of thousands of Japanese who perished in bombing attacks were the price of being able, at last, to put chains upon this murderer, and the occupation of Japan was this murderer’s incarceration. To not have occupied Japan would have been tantamount to precipitating all that suffering, ours and theirs, for the purpose of putting chains on a murderer only so we could cut him loose from them immediately thereafter.

The classical definition of victory in war throughout history has been the ability of one side to impose its will on its enemy (in the words of Clausewitz, “war is… an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will”). I stated some very good reasons, I thought, why it was important for the United States to assert its will over the Japanese in view of the savage and aggressive war they had started and waged against multiple countries, including our own, and the millions of murders — not war deaths but murders — they had committed in the course of that war. The notion that one would leave intact and in control at the end of that war the very same mass murderers who had started it would have been the height of folly, and a moral failing — in fact, a moral insanity — so great as to make us accessories after the fact to mass murder, and made our participation in that war nonsensical and futile, and, finally, the death of our fighting men an unconscionably meaningless waste. There could have been no greater insult, in fact, to their sacrifice than that. And what I am saying is that without occupation, the victorious powers would forfeit their only means of being sure that the same regime that started that war and committed those murders was not still in control after it is over.

 Laura writes:

You write:

You have missed my point entirely. I said nothing about the degree to which different death tolls should command our attention. I was talking about the basis one uses for establishing a general moral principle. My point was that for the kind of argument we were talking about to be respectable, it had to have a coherent and consistent moral principle as its underpinning. Is it wrong to kill non-combatants? Yes or no? That’s where you start.

No, I don’t think I missed your point entirely. I mentioned the basic moral principle. Nations should avoid non-combatant deaths, which certainly means that civilians should never be deliberately targeted. That’s just wrong. No evil on the part of the enemy justifies it.

You write:

The classical definition of victory in war throughout history has been the ability of one side to impose its will on its enemy (in the words of Clausewitz, “war is… an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will”).

Is that the classic definition? That’s appalling.

The aim of warfare should be to achieve a moral good, such as the protection of one’s nation or way of life.

BJK writes:

The late writer Paul Fussell was a combat veteran of WW II who was severely wounded in Germany toward the end of the war in Europe, but considered able-bodied enough to be included among the hundreds of thousands of US servicemen earmarked for the increasingly savage fighting that was still raging in the Pacific.

In 1981 he wrote what is perhaps the definitive essay on the atomic bombing of Japan, emphasizing the reality of the war from the perspective of the men doing the actual fighting, and the certainty of exponentially greater casualties as the campaign moved inexorably to the Japanese home islands.

Although the war by then was clearly lost by the Japanese, any statements claiming Japan’s readiness and willingness to surrender is revisionist falsehood.

Any serious debate on this issue must include Fussell’s work, and I would emphatically recommend it.

James P. writes:

Anti-Globalist Expatriate writes,

“We would’ve been far better off to avoid the war entirely, allowing Hitler and Stalin to exhaust their respective regimes slugging it out in Europe”

There are only two possible end results of this policy:

1. Hitler controls Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals.
2. Stalin controls Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals.

Either one is terrible for us and the world – and much worse than the actual result (Europe divided at the Elbe).

He writes:

…”the Japanese were edging towards surrender, and would’ve surrendered absent the use of nuclear weapons.”

But how long would that have taken? Months? Years?

…”what they didn’t take into account was the necessity of deterring the USSR”

Deterring the USSR from what? Entering the war? We wanted the USSR in the war! We couldn’t have prevented it.

The notion that we dropped the bombs to “scare” the Soviets after the war has been decisively refuted.

Anti-Globalist writes:

“Had FDR lived long enough to make this decision, I believe that he would not have dropped the atomic bombs on Japan”

Yes, he would. And furthermore he would have insisted on a joint US-Soviet invasion of, and occupation of, Japan just as Germany was divided.

George Weinbaum says,

“As for the “750,000 casualties in a Japanese invasion,” poppycock.”

If it were only 500,000 or 250,000 or even 100,000 then it would still justify the atomic bombings. A President who kept a potentially war-ending weapon on the shelf and instead sent American boys to die on a Japanese beach would deserve impeachment at the very least.

Michael Yoder writes,

“Our hideous demand for unconditional surrender resulted in millions more losing their lives on both sides in that bad war.”

In point of fact, the conditional surrender that the Allies permitted in 1918 is what caused the millions of lives lost in the Second World War. What the politicians in World War II were trying to prevent was a conditional surrender that, like the one in 1918, allowed the enemy to get back on his feet and try again in twenty years.

And this even leaves aside the dubious prospects of a compromise peace with the scurvy regimes holding sway in Germany and Japan before 1945.

” The Japanese were starving and they were in no condition to resist an invasion which was not needed.”

And yet they were making energetic and effective preparations to do so.

Yoder’s assertion that all the combatants were morally equivalent is simply nauseating.

Laura writes:

James P. writes:

If it were only 500,000 or 250,000 or even 100,000 then it would still justify the atomic bombings. A President who kept a potentially war-ending weapon on the shelf and instead sent American boys to die on a Japanese beach would deserve impeachment at the very least.

I know that it is often stated that an invasion of Japan was absolutely necessary, and the only way,  but given that Japan was not ready to invade America, I would like to know more about that issue. Even if the invasion was necessary, the indiscriminate mass killing of civilians was not justified. The ends do not justify the means. Wemhof writes:

The Notre Dame historian [Miscamble] is admitting that the nuclear bombings of noncombatants were evil, but because it was the “lesser of two evils,” the decision was “right,” which, without any definition of “right,” suggests that it was morally acceptable. This goes against the moral teachings of the very religion a Catholic priest is supposed to uphold and spread. The Catholic Faith includes a simple principle that is clearly articulated in the 1992 version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC): “The end does not justify the means” (CCC 1753, 1759), and, in a slightly different formulation, “`An evil action cannot be justified by reference to a good intention.’

John G. writes:

James P. writes:

Japanese civilians were going to die in large numbers no matter what we did. Had we not dropped the bomb, the blockade of Japan would have caused multitudes of civilians to die of starvation and disease. Continued air attack, even without atomic weapons, would obviously have killed civilians in large numbers. If we invaded, civilians would die in droves, not least because the Japanese government planned to use them as cannon fodder. Moreover, the longer the war lasted, the more non-Japanese civilians would die in the occupied areas, especially China but also Korea, Vietnam, and Indonesia. Those who, like Wemhof, simply denounce the atomic bombings as an “evil” that is inexcusable despite being a “lesser evil” are not even living in the real world of today, let alone the real world of August 1945. People like him have been aptly described on VFR  as “the sort of Christian who give people the feeling that Christianity is a diseased utopian state of mind that threatens the survival of civilization.”

Laura writes:

I remember the discussion but haven’t read it in a while.

It is gross hyperbole to characterize someone who questions the deployment of such a catastrophic weapon as possessing a “diseased utopian state of mind.” Seriously. You may disagree with Wemhoff’s conclusion that genuine good can’t possibly come from the deliberate targeting of civilians and that we shouldn’t approach warfare with entirely naturalistic assumptions because God does play a role in world events, but to accuse him of diseased thinking smacks of close-mindedness.

There are strong arguments on both sides.

A reader writes:

Japan is an island nation and in the summer of 1945 it was completely surrounded by the U.S. Navy, which had roundly defeated the Imperial Japanese Navy and left Japan without any means of obtaining the oil which was required for it to continue the war. There was no need for a costly invasion of the home islands; in fact, there was no need for most of the island hopping that cost so many American lives. And it is not true that the atomic bombings caused Japan to surrender:

“There is little point in attempting precisely to impute Japan’s unconditional surrender to any one of the numerous causes which jointly and cumulatively were responsible for Japan’s disaster. The time lapse between military impotence and political acceptance of the inevitable might have been shorter had the political structure of Japan permitted a more rapid and decisive determination of national policies. Nevertheless, it seems clear that, even without the atomic bombing attacks, air supremacy over Japan could have exerted sufficient pressure to bring about unconditional surrender and obviate the need for invasion. Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated. “

– The United States Strategic Bombing Survey, July 1, 1946

More importantly, it is also not true that Japan had been unwilling to surrender prior to the atomic bombings, because it is an established and readily verifiable historical fact that the Japanese had offered to surrender on almost exactly the same terms that were subsequently accepted months before the bombs were dropped.

“In an article that finally appeared August 19, 1945, on the front pages of the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Times-Herald, Trohan revealed that on January 20, 1945, two days prior to his departure for the Yalta meeting with Stalin and Churchill, President Roosevelt received a 40-page memorandum from General Douglas MacArthur outlining five separate surrender overtures from high-level Japanese officials. This memo showed that the Japanese were offering surrender terms virtually identical to the ones ultimately accepted by the Americans at the formal surrender ceremony on September 2 — that is, complete surrender of everything but the person of the Emperor. Specifically, the terms of these peace overtures included:

 * Complete surrender of all Japanese forces and arms, at home, on island possessions, and in occupied countries.

 * Occupation of Japan and its possessions by Allied troops under American direction.

 * Japanese relinquishment of all territory seized during the war, as well as Manchuria, Korea and Taiwan.

 * Regulation of Japanese industry to halt production of any weapons and other tools of war.

 * Release of all prisoners of war and internees.

 * Surrender of designated war criminals.”

There is simply no room for debate on this. The historical facts are documented and indisputable. There is no honest, informed defense of the Truman administration’s actions. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were completely unnecessary war crimes worthy of being ranked with the Holocaust and other great historical atrocities.

Bill R. writes:

You write, “Is that the classic definition? That’s appalling.

“The aim of warfare should be to achieve a moral good, such as the protection of one’s nation or way of life.”

My goodness, it’s a common sense definition. If you have no intent to impose your will on your enemy, what are you going to war for? That’s a statement of what war is, by the way, not what it should be. If war could always be what it should be, there would be no wars. The moral part comes in not over the issue of the imposition of one nation’s will over that of another, but over the nature of that will. Japan’s will was to enslave other nations and build a great empire. The will of the United States was to prevent them from doing that (and even that will, it should be noted, was not finally formed until Japan had launched a major and unprovoked sneak attack on our armed forces). I assume we’re all in agreement that the will of the United States in this case represented the moral good (or at least the moral much better). Okay. It is not reasonable, given all that we knew, to expect that Japan would submit to that will, or that we and the rest of the world could be confident that they had, without being militarily conquered and their nation occupied until such time as we had satisfied ourselves that our will had indeed prevailed. And as I said, that was not going to happen without the atom bomb or a ground invasion of mainland Japan. One can play “Monday morning quarterback” endlessly, but one thing is undisputed; very shortly after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan did finally submit to the will of moral good.

You say that such a definition is appalling. It should be appalling. And that it is, is also a moral good in its own right, by the way, for, as someone has said, that’s what makes war a thing to be avoided, something turned to only with the greatest reluctance that’s humanly possible, as only the very last of conceivable resorts. As General Sherman, an American general who targeted civilians, and fellow Americans at that, famously said, “War is hell.” I’m no fan of Sherman. Indeed, I believe the Union effort in the War for Southern Independence was morally wrong. But there is an argument to be made that, at least, given the Union’s goals, his method brought the war to an end sooner, and thereby ended the suffering quicker. Given the Union’s goal, and what they had defined as the moral sine qua non, it made perfect sense for the Union to fight until they could bend the Confederacy’s will to their own. That was the whole point of the war. If they weren’t going to do that, then they had no business engaging in armed conflict with the Confederacy in the first place; to have done so anyway, that would have been appalling. To give you an example of a war that was conducted that way, without a true determination to do what was necessary to bring the will of the enemy into submission to our own, I would turn your attention to Vietnam, where American soldiers were asked to give their lives, and in the event did, to a toll of some 50,000, only to have the cause for which we had asked them to sacrifice utterly fail, that cause being, to prevent our ally, South Vietman, from coming under the enslavement of communist tyranny. And it was not a military failure. It was not a failure in which we had fought our best and simply got beaten. It was a failure of will, a failure of will that caused the lives of 50,000 brave, young men to have been sacrificed in vain. Now that is appalling!

John G. writes, “When one says, however, that ‘There is no intellectually respectable argument against the atom bomb attacks on Japan’ it demonstrates a combination of ignorance and malice.” I will say, sir, that you yourself are malicious for your accusation of malice on my part. Your offense deserves and will receive from me no further response.

Laura has said that “civilians should never be deliberately targeted.” I agree and disagree. As I said about Dresden, when civilians are targeted for the express and sole purpose of instilling and spreading terror in a civilian population without advancing any legitimate, strategic goal, and without any rational, corresponding military objective or necessity present, then I think it is wrong. And as I said about Japan, I do not think any of the bombings of that nation, including the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki fell into that category.

James P. writes in response to Anti-Globalist Expatriate’s statement that Japan was edging toward surrender, “But how long would that have taken? Months? Years?”

Indeed. Everything we know militates against Anti-Globalist Expatriate’s notion that Japan was edging, or, for that matter, was anywhere near surrender. Let me illustrate that point with an obvious and contemporary comparision from that time. All the island battles we had fought with Japan showed one clear pattern; the closer we got to mainland Japan the more fierce the fighting became, and the more resistant Japanese soldiers became to surrender, and this was when they were already virtually fighting to the last man. On Okinawa even some civilians committed suicide rather than submit to an American victory. This people was renowned for their fanatical resistence to surrender. To them, it was the ultimate disgrace, far worse than death itself, and the generation of Japanese that fought in that war had had this Bushido code brutally drilled into them since they were children.

This was not the case with Europeans. German, American, British, French, and Russian soldiers all surrendered when circumstances proved dire enough, particularly the most logical of such circumstances, that being the determination that further resistence would be of no benefit to their cause, was futile, and would only lead to pointless slaughter. To the Japanese of that time, there simply was no such thing as pointless slaughter. To die in battle was the highest honor; the futility of the circumstances played no role in this consideration.

Now, as you hold on to that point, reflect that Germans nevertheless resisted surrender even after two years worth of bombing and even after ground armies had crossed their borders, occupying much of their territory, and utterly destroying their industrial capacity to wage war further. Germany, in fact, did not surrender until the conclusion of the one of the bloodiest battles in history, The Battle of Berlin. In other words, it didn’t happen until the enemy’s capital city itself had been conquered by ground armies. It is ludicrous to suggest that the leadership in Japan was more likely to surrender under the onslaught of mere conventional bombing than was Germany!

You write, “It is gross hyperbole to characterize someone who questions the deployment of such a catastrophic weapon as possessing a ‘diseased utopian state of mind.'” And in a reply to me you wrote, “It is not just a ‘numbers game’ to say that bombings that resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and appalling suffering that lasted for generations should command our attention even more than violations of this civilized standard on a smaller scale.” To go from “questioning the deployment” of the atom bomb and a suggestion that it should “command our attention” (which I don’t think anyone has ever denied, and, indeed, it’s commanded the attention of the West for seven solid decades), is rather some distance, I think, from the position with which you started this thread, which was that you found “persuasive” an argument that the dropping of the atomic bomb was immoral. Unlike the latter, neither of the former two positions represent a moral conclusion, and therefore rate an entirely different kind response than the latter. But a responder may not have initially caught the shift and I think I should bring it to the attention of yourself and your readers.

Laura writes:

I cannot respond to all your points at this time. This is an important topic but I don’t wish to spend the large amount of time that would be required to respond to all your points right now. I am not prepared in the midst of other things to write an essay on the philosophy of warfare. However, I will say that when I mentioned “questioning the deployment,” I was referring to this thread in general. I still find Wemhof’s points persuasive. I am also considering the counter-arguments as they arise. I do not consider there to be absolutely no intellectually respectable arguments on the opposite side.

You write:

Laura has said that “civilians should never be deliberately targeted.” I agree and disagree. As I said about Dresden, when civilians are targeted for the express and sole purpose of instilling and spreading terror in a civilian population without advancing any legitimate, strategic goal, and without any rational, corresponding military objective or necessity present, then I think it is wrong. And as I said about Japan, I do not think any of the bombings of that nation, including the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki fell into that category.

Massacres rarely occur in warfare that are not considered strategically useful. That’s just the point Wemhof is making. The ends, even very good ends, do not justify the means when it comes to civilian slaughter. I realize that you reject that standard.

Bill R. writes:

Your reader writes, “The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were completely unnecessary war crimes worthy of being ranked with the Holocaust and other great historical atrocities.”

…worthy of being ranked with the Holocaust…

That is an astonishingly irresponsible thing to say. Even if one felt we overreached and were wrong, it is outrageous to compare our attempt to stop a regime that had invaded upwards of half a dozen nations without provocation, and had murdered millions of their citizens, with systematic mass murder and genocide — comparing, in other words, our attempt to stop mass murder with mass murder itself. Even if you opposed the method, even if you are outraged by the method, does our side receive no points at all for motive — that, in fact, our motive was no different than the attempt to wipe out an entire race of people for nothing but hate? Of all the comments I have ever read on The Thinking Housewife, this is the first time I’ve encountered one that I could only describe as totally despicable.

There’s one other thing that occurs to me, just on the general topic, that I’d like to add, and this is in reference to people — scholars, historians, and other intellectuals — who spend a lot of time on this issue, that I find it — well, intriguing, I’ll just put it that way for now — that of all the atrocities that could command one’s attention, and are deserving of moral analysis, that occurred throughout history, but particularly in the first half of the 20th century, they find this one supposed “atrocity,” that just happens to have been committed by America and the West, the one somehow most urgently in need of their unequivocal censure.

 Laura writes:

Instead of suggesting that those in this conversation who criticize the attacks are anti-American, a suggestion which I completely reject (I realize you refer to general “scholars, historians and other intellectuals,” but the implication is that anti-Americanism motivates all strong censure of the attacks), you might have responded to the most important point brought up by the previous reader and that is that the bombings were unnecessary by the most common rationale for the attacks because Japan had offered to surrender. If this is true, then it makes the reader’s accusation of war crimes especially plausible. If it is true, then the reason why the bombs were deployed was not simply to win the war, but to revolutionize Japan by doing away with its traditional social order. The only thing Japan had refused to surrender was the Emperor.

Buck writes:

No one knows the full measure of human carnage that would have resulted from the planned invasion of Japan. Speculating now about what seemed evident and agreeable at the time, and choosing now from the range of gruesome estimates given by the world’s best military minds, many at that time actively engaged in the years of bloody battles which provided the data for those estimates; or choosing someone’s current estimates, seems like blindsight.

I don’t know what it means, or how deep it goes, but it certainly appears, that after all that bombing, Japan and Germany are generally reliable U.S. allies, not Russia. The Japanese taught their students that the atomic bombs we’re meant to scare the Russians, who declared war on Japan and were invading Manchuria. It’s said though, that Stalin was unimpressed by the bombs.

Was it the atomic bombs or was it that all the Japanese troops fortified the south of Japan awaiting the allied invasion, while leaving the north unprotected against the Russian invasion, that caused Japan to surrender?

To say that there is simply no room for debate on this and that the historical facts are indisputable is absurd. All history is subject to dispute.

James P. writes:

I encourage everyone to read the following works that destroy the revisionist case against the atomic bombings:

1. Richard Franks Downfall

2. Robert Maddox, Weapons for Victory

3. Robert Newman, Truman and the Hiroshima Cult

“A Reader” wrote,

“Japan is an island nation and in the summer of 1945 it was completely surrounded by the U.S. Navy, which had roundly defeated the Imperial Japanese Navy and left Japan without any means of obtaining the oil which was required for it to continue the war. There was no need for a costly invasion of the home islands; in fact, there was no need for most of the island hopping that cost so many American lives.”

Japan’s position was hopeless in August 1945. However, Japan’s position had been hopeless since June 1944, when the United States conquered the Marianas, and certainly since October 1944, when the liberation of the Philippines cut Japan off from the oil resources in Indonesia. The invasion of Iwo Jima and Okinawa in February and April 1945, and the surrender of Germany in May, only underscored the hopelessness of Japan’s position. The problem is that defeated nations in a hopeless position need not immediately surrender. Germany’s military position was hopeless in September 1944, but she did not surrender until May 1945. Japan had been in a hopeless military position for the year preceding Hiroshima, but intellectual realization of this did not precipitate a political decision to surrender. Japan might well have kept fighting, despite her hopeless position, for a long, indefinite period if the atomic bombs had not been dropped. Indeed, even after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, elements of the Japanese military attempted to capture the Emperor and prevent the broadcast of his surrender message so Japan could fight on.

That there was “no need” for an invasion is the “reader’s” ex post facto opinion. Truman and the American high command did not agree, which is why the United States was making vast preparations for just such an invasion throughout the spring and summer of 1945.

The claim that island hopping was not necessary because Japan was isolated and her navy was destroyed indicates ignorance of cause and effect. Japan was isolated and her navy destroyed because the Americans conducted a successful island hopping campaign.

“A reader” quotes the United States Strategic Bombing Survey of July 1946. That the reader even trots this quote out, as revisionists invariably do, shows that he is ignorant of the devastating critiques of this quote by historians such as Barton Bernstein, Robert Newman, and Gian Gentile.

The thrust of the quote – that Japan would have surrendered without atomic attack, Russia’s declaration of war, or an American invasion – is sheer speculation. The quote’s claim that it was based on a “detailed investigation of all the facts” (achieved in two months in the ruins of postwar Japan!) is nothing less than preposterous. Furthermore, historians have shown that the testimony of Japanese officials whom the USSBS interviewed actually contradicts the conclusion presented in the quote; in fact, Japanese officials overwhelmingly agreed that Japan would not have surrendered without the atomic bombings. Thus, the quote was fundamentally dishonest. The quote is also contradicted in other parts of the USSBS report. For example, the report stated that bombing and blockade had not decisively undermined Japanese morale by August 1945. Therefore, it is impossible to conclude that Japan would “certainly” have surrendered after a few more months of bombing and blockade without the atomic bombings or a Soviet declaration of war.

What was the purpose of inserting that dishonest quote into the USSBS in 1946? Firstly, it was to support the campaign for the postwar independence of the U.S. Air Force, which was achieved in 1947. We have a good deal of subsequent evidence on whether or not conventional air attack can force countries to surrender, and it hardly supports the case that conventional air attack and blockade would definitely have forced Japan to surrender by the end of 1945. Secondly, it was to demystify the atomic bomb – to make it seem like “just another weapon”. Given the central importance of the atomic bomb to the American military after the war, it was essential to make the bomb useable, i.e., not so apocalyptic that we could never use it. Fortunately, the idea that atomic weapons were “usable” never really took hold.

Regardless of what USSBS stated in 1946, the evidence shows that before August 1945 – in the run-up to the decision to drop the atomic bombs – President Truman and his advisers most certainly did NOT think it was true that Japan would surrender without atomic attack, Russia entering the war, or the United States invading. This was exactly why, from January to August 1945, Truman and his advisers made preparations to drop the atomic bomb, to bring Russia into the war, and if necessary to invade Japan with American forces.

“A reader” quotes an article from the Institute for Historical Review. As the IHR is an organization primarily devoted to Holocaust denial, one must be highly skeptical of any claims presented in it. Given that there is no historical evidence for the existence of the peace offer cited (who made it? where is it in the archives?) or even that Roosevelt actually saw it as claimed, we cannot agree with “a reader” that “the historical facts are documented and indisputable.” Japanese peace feelers in early 1945 came from low-level officials, and  were rightly ignored on the grounds that they did not represent an official offer from high-level officials in Japan who could make an actual decision.

What is indisputable is this. In the spring and summer of 1945, the Japanese sought to enlist the Soviets as mediators to end the war. The Japanese Ambassador to the USSR, Naotake Sato, urged the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Shigenori Togo, to end the war “unconditionally” except for the condition that the Emperor be preserved. Togo replied that the cabinet’s reaction to this proposal was that “we are unable to consent to it under any circumstances whatever”. (One must conclude from this that no such offer had previously been made to the United States, as “a reader” asserts.) The Japanese still hoped to obtain better terms through Soviet mediation than mere retention of the Emperor; perhaps withdrawal to her pre-1931 territories, which included Taiwan and Korea. The Americans intercepted and translated the messages between Sato and Togo. Therefore, the U.S. government had absolutely clear evidence in the summer of 1945 that the Japanese government was unwilling to accept surrender on the basis of retention of the Emperor. There was thus a need to administer additional shocks to Japan, such as the  atomic bombs and the Soviet declaration of war. In the summer of 1945, the American military was also intercepting detailed messages concerning the Japanese Army’s intensive preparations for the defense of Japan itself, which hardly supported the view that Japan was ready to quit.

The conclusion of “a reader” that “the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were completely unnecessary war crimes worthy of being ranked with the Holocaust and other great historical atrocities” is a false and stupid calumny. I would expect that sort of statement only from the most crazed anti-American Leftist, but apparently “a reader” (on the extreme right, it seems, due to his enjoyment of IHR products) is willing to join forces with the Howard Zinn crowd on this issue.

Laura writes:

I was completely unfamiliar with the work of the Institute for Historical Review.

Thank you for responding to that claim regarding Japanese surrender by “a reader” and for the recommendations for further reading.

Hurricane Betsy writes:

I very much appreciate your bringing this topic up.

No, it was not necessary to bomb Japan. Apart from the fact that we on this side of the ocean had (and have) no business going into (and ramping up) overseas wars (let’s allow that argument to slide for now), all the American government had to do – in its apparent uncontrollable anxiety to use its newfangled deadly weapon – was unleash one bomb on some little uninhabited island nearby and then tell the Japanese that this is what would happen to them if they didn’t change their ways. Problem solved.

So, please tell your commenters here that “War is Not a Tea Party or a Church Picnic.” If Japan and Germany are “generally reliable U.S. allies” largely or only because they’re scared of being nuked, what in the name of God does that say about us. Your commenter Buck implies that we ought to nuke Russia too and then Russia will be one of our [forever terrified] friends. If more of this attitude on the part of Americans is what I have to look forward to, I may ask Almighty God to take me now.

 Laura writes:

Thank you.

I am certain no one who has defended use of the bombs in this discussion thinks war is a tea party. This issue is often a field day for anti-American sentiment, and I think the idea that it was just a matter of showing off a new weapon fits into that category.

Pan Dora writes:

Hurricane Betsy writes:

all the American government had to do – in its apparent uncontrollable anxiety to use its newfangled deadly weapon – was unleash one bomb on some little uninhabited island nearby and then tell the Japanese that this is what would happen to them if they didn’t change their ways. Problem solved.

If dropping one bomb on Hiroshima didn’t convince them it was time to give up, what makes you think bombing some little uninhabited island nearby would have done the job?

The PBS series American Experience did a two-part show on the life of President Harry Truman. I’d recommend watching Part One if anyone would like to see a bit of the background of the man who had to make that decision …. to use it or not to use it. It might provide a little insight.

Ed writes:

Sorry for being somewhat late to respond but you may be interested in this video.

It’s an interview with the late Robert McNamara former Secretary of Defense for Presidents Kennedy and Johnson who was also a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army Air Corps in World War II (which became the USAF in 1947). His interview addresses the firebombing of Japan, which he took part in planning while working for General Curtis LeMay. He says that he and General LeMay would have been charged with “war crimes” (at 5:45) had the U.S. not been victorious. I’m not attempting to take a Frankfurt School type critique of the U.S.A. and its actions during WWII in submitting this to you, just providing another source of opinion from someone who directly participated.

Bill R. writes:

I would like to thank James P. for his analysis of the “reader’s” charge about Japan’s supposed “offer” to surrender. Laura’s right; it was an important point that needed to be addressed. James P. was familiar with a number of authors and material that refuted the charge that I was not familiar with and I would have needed to do some research before attempting such a reply. But, in my own experience, I have found these claims of Japanese offers to surrender much like claims that Roosevelt knew about Pearl Harbor and let it happen because he wanted an excuse to drag America into the war; when you examine it closely, it immediately starts to fall apart. In the case of Pearl Harbor, it’s like the 9-11 conspiracies; people take some general fact, like we knew an attack by Japan or Al-Qaeda was immenent, or might be, as being the same as knowing specifically when and where the attack was going to occur. I’ve read parts of Downfall and also seen the author provide commentary in a documentary by the same name. It’s an impressive work.

I would also like to thank James P. for mentioning the VFR discussion. I had never read it before. I found Auster’s analysis of the anti-Hiroshima crowd and this silly sort of abstract absolute moralism of some of them (e.g., one can’t knowingly cause the death of even one innocent human being even if it means the end of the world), most compelling. I also think it supports my contention, as I tried to articulate earlier in this thread, which was essentially that once you start down this road of “innocent civilians should not be knowingly killed in war,” such a moral principle must eventually either drive you to a position of total pacifism, or compel a major modification of the principle so that it becomes a different principle entirely, such as, “we should do our best not to kill innocent civilians in war, but there are circumstances, etc., etc.” I also, however, agree with Auster in that discussion when he said that, “it’s a good thing to discuss the morality of Hiroshima.” My last comment did indeed imply what Laura said, or at least a strong suspicion of that, but I want to stress that is was reserved for people who have essentially made a career, or a large part of their career, out of the issue, together with the moral position that has reserved such a severe indictment of America; it was not intended to refer to Laura or to any of her readers at all, period. If I had felt that kind of contempt for any such views, I would not have spent this much time commenting on them and responding to them.  Many people can, with the best and most sincere of intentions, start out with an anti-Hiroshima position, even a strong one, only to move away from it once they have heard other arguments.

Certain commenters, as well as Laura, seem to have brought particular focus to bear on my remark that, “There is no intellectually respectable argument against the atom bomb attacks on Japan.” If that was something of a rhetorical overreach on my part, and I think it may have been, I withdraw it. It’s related to a statement I later made, “Again, the only respectable argument, in my view, entails the eschewing of all non-combatant deaths, without reference to the method.” To use Laurence Auster’s phrase, “radical pacifism,” perhaps I should have said, “Short of radical pacifism, there is no intellectually respectable argument against the atom bomb attacks on Japan.” (I can respect an honest pacifism even though I would vehemently disagree with it.) But I now realize that even that does not follow. I was arguing from the perspective of what the moral principle would have to be to inform a person that Hiroshima was wrong. And the only logically consistent one I could think of was that knowingly killing any civilian in war is immoral, since I could not imagine a credible moral principle (I could imagine an opinion but not a moral principle) that would say, “it’s okay to kill 10 or a 100 or a 1000 civilians in war, but not 10,000 or 100,000.” That would be to turn the concept of a moral principle into an arbitrary numbers game. Somewhere there would have to be a line, a specific number, over which you were morally wrong but under which you were morally okay. That just couldn’t hold up or make sense as a moral principle. However, I now see that one can believe Hiroshima was wrong for an entirely different moral principle than the one that says that it’s wrong to knowingly kill any civilian in war. For example, if someone honestly believed that Japan had offered to surrender to our terms, or better, actually had surrendered, and we went ahead and dropped the bomb anyway, yes, that would have been immoral, and certainly the latter instance would have made it a war crime and an atrocity. And this moral determination would be based on a principle obviously entirely separate from whether or not one morally accepted civilian deaths in war. (There is, by the way, no credible evidence that I know of that even remotely suggests such a thing was the case, nor any scholar or historian that I respect who has ever suggested it, or even hinted that was a possibility.)

Paul C. writes:

Although I am not going to debate the issue, I must agree that the bombing of Dresden was unjustified.  It was strictly a terror bombing that occurred after most major German cities had already been destroyed.  One could not have concluded additional rampant destruction had a chance of changing Germany’s mind.  It is a hotly debated issue also, and I am not confident in my opinion.  It provoked the excellent Kurt Vonnegut book Slaughterhouse Five.  

American generals should have known that terror often does not do anything but provoke the enemy, as the British foolishly provoked Americans in the Revolutionary War.

Buck writes:

Hurricane Betsy writes: “No, it was not necessary to bomb Japan.” Then she says that we had no business being there. She then “implies” that were literally dying just for the chance to test our new bomb, but that she doesn’t want to discuss it right now.

She then writes that I implied “that we ought to nuke Russia too and then Russia will be one of our [forever terrified] friends.”

That’s inane. Russia (the Soviet Union) was our ally. Please explain to me in what way Germany and Japan are “terrified” of the United States.