Posted on 05/27/2016 2:40:37 PM PDT by GraceG
All these threads about Hiroshima got me to do some thinking.
What would have happened had by some miracle we didn't drop the nukes on Japan and they had surrendered after a the equivalent amount of firebombing but right before an invasion.
Some libs would think this would have been the "best Case Scenario" but I think it would have been a disaster! This is why:
After the two nukes hit Japan many news reels in the months and years after it showed off to the whole world the absolute horrors of what Nuclear Weapons could do. We saw images of Kimonos being burned into the flesh of Japanese women, Children who were blinded by the flash of the blast, and wide panning panoramic of entire sections of the cities that were flattened and burned to a crisp. The whole world had a few years of peace to catch their breath and see all the naked horror of what atomic weaponry could do. As a result the atomic weaponry became a "weapon of last resort", a weapon to only use when all other options had been thoroughly exhausted.
Now let's move back to to the "Best Case Scenario" of Japan Surrendering without needing to use the Atom Bomb....
The atomic weapon program, the "Manhattan project" would have still remained very secret to the US citizenry and everyone else in the world who wasn't a military official, the Soviets would have continued their program and would soon have the bomb around the same time they normally would have acquired it.
Based only on limited testing the impact of the bomb on civilian targets would have been only theoretical and there wouldn't be as much of a taboo on using it.
Enter the Korean War....
The atomic bomb would have been used in the opening stages of the Korean War, and probably on Military target, not the horror of a civilian target (remember at this point the US military was developing the atomic bomb to be deployed via artillery ).
Instead of two hard choices at the end of the war it would have turned into multiple "easy choices" in the opening days of the Korean war, the nuclear exchange would have been far far worse by the time Korea ended... Maybe the Korean War would have ended sooner, but if it dragged on there would no doubt have been many more nuclear exchanges....
A dangerous precedent would have been set...
We should thank Truman and the citizens who were sacrificed to end the brutal Japanese aggression in Hiroshima and Nagasaki for showing the world the Destruction of atomic weapons...
A terror that directly lead to the policy of MAD " Mutually Assured Destruction" that kept the soviet war machine in check for over 50 years!
The fact that surprises me, is that forty years prior to the end of WWII, Japan and Russia had discussed splitting Korea between them at the 38th parallel. The Soviets happily agreed to the later split with American leaders and were surprised the Americans allowed it, giving them what they wanted decades before. Over forty years prior, Japan had just recently defeated Russia in a war, and the western powers intervened and let Russia retain some concessions, otherwise China and parts of Russia would be Japanese. That defeat of Russia was a reason why the Soviets wanted to invade Japan at the end of WWII but the Potsdam Agreement with our president forbid them from entering Japan until the day the atomic bomb was dropped; the Soviets had moved much of their equipment up to the 38th parallel where the Americans blocked them. This was long before the Korean War.
LOL! Superman's got nothing on GraceG. ;)
At the start of WW11, It would be impossible to convey to today's Americans the strong dislike between the northerners and southerners, the Catholics and Protestants, blacks and whites, and between ethnic groups.
About the only thing these groups had in common was a dislike for Jews.
WW11 changed that a lot, and interaction with other groups ironed out a lot of these animosities.
Intermarriage mongrelized this country, and made us realize one thing we all had in common was being an American.
That is under attack now from our American hating president, Obama. -tom
There comes a time to rise up & remove evil leadership.
We in the U.S. have been fortunate we can do so at the
ballot box if we aren’t too flim-flammed by lying
politicians to do so.
Don’t need to nuke Detriot. Empherical evidence proves all that is needed to destroy a city or a nation is the constant election of marxists democrats.
Yes it would, because we don't teach our children anything of value anymore. I started grade school in 1943 and the school was located near an airfield where we were training British pilots. Those old Stearman biplanes flew right over the school. We all were aware of what was going on even at that tender age.
When those old planes flew over we had an opportunity to sneak a word to our friends, otherwise we were silent.
My dad was a hardened combat veteran (88th/351st Army) of
N. Africa, Italy, & Germany. He would have been sent to
Japan if the war had dragged on. I was not born until the
year after the war ended & I might not have been born.
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