OberFuhrer, the Hobourg Special Hero!!!

[Blitz]

Even though the winners write history, Hiroshima was and is a warcrime.

K for the record I'm not american.

This is a classic example of rewriting history from the 21st centuty holier-than-thou hippie perspective. Couple of facts:

1) Japan started it.
2) Japan was prepared to defend the mainland to the Last man.

Given the choice of losing another god-knows-how-many americans (yeah france was gonna help, sure) in an invasion of Honshu, how can you blame them for doing what they did? It ended the war. A war the Japanese started. I'd be willing to listen to arguments that the second bomb wasn't really warranted... but give me a break. Nobody is gonna tell you war is pretty, but in the end, the responsibility for both atom bombs lies with the Japanese leaders who decided to commit their own war crime - Pearl Harbor.

[vigabrand]

Even after the second bomb was dropped, the Japanese military was still going to die to the Last man. It took intervention by the Emperor, kind of behind their backs to end the war. I recall hearing that some military hardliners tried a coup but it failed and the Emperor announced surrender, thus trumping the military. Less than a quarter of a million japanese died in those attacks, a lot less than would have died had we had to storm the beaches, and I'm not including american lives. Efforts were taken to minimize the enemy casualties, we could have dropped the bombs on Tokyo itself. It still almost didn't work. I don't recall any other countries condemning this at the time. Only decades later do the historical revisionists apply their wacked philosophies to the record. I think the decendents (and some actual living soldiers) of the soldiers who would have had to attack Japan would be offended by this nonsense. Just my two cents.

Vig

[Endoperez]

1) Japan started it.

What the fact that 'Japan started it' has to do with Hiroshima being or not being a war crime? Even if Hitler would have been mugged by a jew that would not make what he did any less evil or wrong, or minor a crime against humanity.

2) Japan was prepared to defend the mainland to the Last man.

I don't believe US and Japan would have lost more soldiers together than what died in bombs, but I don't know how powerful the bombs were *supposed* to be by the leaders of US. Maybe they thought that the less people would die in the bombs that would if a full war started.

Given the choice of losing another god-knows-how-many americans (yeah france was gonna help, sure) in an invasion of Honshu, how can you blame them for doing what they did? It ended the war. A war the Japanese started. I'd be willing to listen to arguments that the second bomb wasn't really warranted... but give me a break. Nobody is gonna tell you war is pretty, but in the end, the responsibility for both atom bombs lies with the Japanese leaders who decided to commit their own war crime - Pearl Harbor.

Pearl Harbor for a surprise attack... I can see that being 'unfair', violating (unwritten?) rules of war, but I don't remember anything that would make it a 'war crime' in the same sense as the nuclear bombs. It was, after all, military equipment they destroyed, to which USA responded by bombing cities. There is difference between soldiers and civilians.

[vigabrand]

Um, Germany violated the rules of war by bombing civilians first. After that, all bets were off concerning the bombing of civilians. By allying themselves with Germany, Japan opened themselves up to the same thing. After the Battle of Britain, bombing civilian targets was acceptable, if distasteful (in the case of Dresden). There were no rules regarding super bombs, hell, we didn't even know how bad it was going to be. I don't know where this idea of warcrimes is coming from. The fact is, our elected leader decided to drop the bombs in a calculated effort to minimize casualites, and the rest of the allies didn't object, even after the fact if they didn't know it was going to happen. It worked and the horrible war was over. End of story.

Vig

[Sly Frog]

I just swallowed really hard and resisted my natural tendency to want to post and kick someone's ***.

Instead I ask for a lock down on this thread. It has reached a point of stupidity (I won't say which side I think has really reached it), and no longer has the slightest thing to do with Dominions.

Originally posted by PrinzMegaherz:
Hm, before I posted this, I checked some links for information about this topic. Although the were german weppages, I doubt that any of them had any nazi background.

there were 600.000 civilians inside the city, around 300.000 bombs were dropped, und you really want to tell me there were only 30.000 casualties?

And even 3 months before germany's surrender it was clear who would win the war.

Mark, I see that you live in london, and I dont want you to understand my posting as an personal affront against english people. But this was a war, and there are soldiers on every side who enjoy doing evil. Just think about the americans in Iraque. Even though most surely have good intentions, there are black sheeps, like those in the prison. [/QB]

I didn't take offense at your statements that Hiroshima or Dresden were war-crimes. I strongly disagree, but you'll find plenty of people in this country who'll say the same thing so it's not a viewpoint that's new to me. What I did take strong offense at was your backing up your argument with outrageously exaggerated or invented "facts".

It's all very well to say that the war was obviously over in Feb 1945 (though there would still be hundreds of thousands of casualties on the battlefield between then and May). But what you wrote the first time was that Britain (actually it was Britain and the US) bombed Dresden after Germany had surrendered. It's hard to take your argument seriously when you back it up with a statement like that.

As for the casualty figure in Dresden; it's difficult for anybody to know. Thus the wide range of estimates. During the course of the entire war, the millions of German bombs dropped on Britain killed "only" 60,000 (or slightly over). A simplistic calculation based on that evidence would imply that an estimate of 30,000 for Dresden would be very high! But the estimates from historians who have researched the episodes have ranged as low as 30,000 based on far more information than either of us have to hand.

BTW my reference to Nazi Propoganda was to that of the time (1945), when the German government announced that over 200,000 had died; their "calculations" were based on falsification of the known records, by - for example - simply adding a zero to the number of bodies recorded as buried. The only historians who have taken that number seriously are apologists like David Irving.

[Blitz]

What the fact that 'Japan started it' has to do with Hiroshima being or not being a war crime? Even if Hitler would have been mugged by a jew that would not make what he did any less evil or wrong, or minor a crime against humanity.

This is asinine. A better modern-day comparison would be "What do you think would happen if Israel decided to bomb a German military base tomorrow?". The end result of this unlikely scenario would be war, don't you think? And whose war crime would it be? Yes... the ones who started the fight.

I don't believe US and Japan would have lost more soldiers together than what died in bombs, but I don't know how powerful the bombs were *supposed* to be by the leaders of US. Maybe they thought that the less people would die in the bombs that would if a full war started.

Right. I guess somehow WW2 dosen't qualify as "a full war" to some people. I imagine you are speaking of the invasion of the Japanese mainland when you suggest fewer casualties on both sides. Even if this were true, the atom bombs didn't result in any American casualties, and that was the idea. After you have been locked in a mortal struggle with another culture for 4 years, the modern stigma against civilian casualties on the other side tends to lose it's power. "Yes we know two of your sons died in France, but we need your Last one to invade Japan to save them the pain of civilian casualties".

Please. War sucks, but don't condemn the actions of those drawn into a conflict as war crimes. Whatever idealistic propagande you've been reading dosen't apply in the real world.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Sly Frog:
Instead I ask for a lock down on this thread. It has reached a point of stupidity (I won't say which side I think has really reached it), and no longer has the slightest thing to do with Dominions.

Well, according to the custom of the Internet, technically, this discussion should have ended when Nazis were mentioned.