there was a 4 year period, 45-49, when the USA was the ONLY nuclear Nation. Imagine if it was reversed and it was the Soviets that had the bomb. They would have rampaged all thru World. Should thank their lucky stars things turned out the way they did....besides..this was total war. Civilians were legit targets. More died at Dresden etc...the World was numb to mass death by this time.
There is a lot of truth to that. There is a reason that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the targets for nuclear attack rather than larger and more important cities such as Tokyo. Those larger, more important cities were already largely destroyed by fire bombings. It would have been a waste of the A-bombs to use them on targets that were already largely in ruins.
The A-bombs certainly caused mass casualties, but what do these people think would have happened in Japan had the war dragged on for another year or more and an invasion of the home islands occurred? More fire bombings and massacres of civilians would have been the likely result.
I've been saying the same thing for years. Dresden and Hamburg were pretty much leveled. I can't think of the third German city that was bombed into the ground. There were no innocent civilians on either side in those days of all out warfare. It was destroy the enemy by any means.
And like many have mentioned here, after my Father's Army beat Hitler and Mussolini, were told they were headed to Japan. He once told me he was so grateful we nuked Japan. He and every solder, Army Air Corp, knew they were heading to their deaths in Japan.
It was widely known by our troops in Europe about the fanatical training of every Japanese citizen to defend their Emperor who they considered a god. It would have been a slaughter on both sides. It would have made Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal, Okinawa, Peleiu, Saipan look like skirmishes. Those Jap crazies had to be nuked twice. Good.