Hi Dark,
Originally posted by DarkStormCrow
Question for Daedalus3,
Not sure if Daedalus got to these but i would like to share my opinion....
Do you think that only America would have used the bomb?
Not at all, it's the nature of imperial nations to use whatever means necessary to keep the colonies in line and other imperialist ( like the SU) at
bay. What may have surprised some is that it was used on a nation which had absolutely no defense against it and were desperately seeking a way out of
a fight for the home islands with as much 'honor' intact as could be managed. To rather use nuclear weapons on defeated foes rather than to save
the lives of innocents by making humane concessions to the barbarians in charge makes you , in my opinion, just as barbarous. To invoke a notion as
ridiculous as 'unconditional surrender' on fascistic police states is to consign their entire populations to the mercy of the whim of the dictator
in charge who has so far proven that he would kill anyone who resists him.
We could discuss the strategic considerations that drove the USA to use the bombs but i already outlined those so it's better to go back and check.
Do you think the Soviets would have hesitated to use it, or the Germans or the Japanese had they obtained it first?
But their the 'bad' guys, right? Isn't that what the bad guys do? If the 'good' guys use such weapons what in the end sets 'us' apart from
'them'? What remains but the rhetoric of who started it and for what reason? Why not leave the barbarity to the Japanese leadership and simply
blockade the country into submission?
58 percent of the deaths in WW II were Allied civilians, while Axis civilians accounted for 4 percent of the casualties.
Allied? You mean colonials such as the Chinese, and various other people's of the South pacific? Do you perhaps mean the Russian's of which Stalin
before, during and after the war killed as many as Hitler while having much the same imperial ambitions? Please do not insult our intelligence by
presuming that French/British/Americans/Chinese/Australians/Canadians etc where fighting in ACTUAL common cause.
American male population of all ages in 1940 was 66 million by 1945 America had 16 million men in the services which was virtually every man
of fighting age, America was at the end of its manpower and most allied countries were in the same shape.
Rubbish. The American 'army' of 16 million barely produced 100 division sized units and in terms of men who's lives were in comparative danger (
tail end/support compared to fighting units) it was one of the most ineptly organized forces in modern human history. You can go look up the numbers
and you will soon realise that if Germany or the USSR tried to fight this way even the French would laughed them out of France and the Fins would
still be killing Russians.
I think the Cold war and Arms race were on no matter which nation Soviets or Americans got the bomb.
Yes off course.... After Roosevelt gave away Eastern Europe and the comparatively inept allied forces most of Germany ( by crawling trough France)
Stalin made sufficient gains and buffer zones to do slightly more than just keep the broken SU together.
I actually believe that if the Soviets had of gotten the bomb first they would have used it on Germany and Finland then used it on whatever
Allied forces were on the European continent.
Stalin liked his secrets and he would not have used the first few to save a few hundred thousand ( or perhaps even a million) Soviet lives. Likely he
would have built up as large as arsenal as he could in secret and then, in conjunction with other strategic forces, use it to blackmail the west into
concessions of one sort of another. Using nuclear weapons in the way the USA did is more akin to what your average gangster would do to intimidate
actual and perceive enemies/colonials far and wide. As for using it on allied forces Stalin had a good idea of where he stood and he realised that
the allies were sill growing stronger daily and that to fight them in the condition the SU were then would have been suicide ( even without nukes) in
the medium or long term. The SU simply lacked the means to defend western Europe ( provided they could even kick the allies out of it in the short
term) as continental fortress and thus Stalin were quite happy to watch the allies go home and use the reprieve to slowly rebuild his armed forces and
the devastated Western/European Russia, Eastern Germany and, the imperial 'prize', Eastern Europe.
Stalin like Hitler had no boundaries. I could very easily see the Soviets becoming allies with the Japanese and then using the bomb against
Allied forces in Asia.
Well perhaps you could but Stalin was as close to a realist as paranoia allows one to be and he was not in my reading deluded enough to believe that
he could make war on the allies as united and heavily armed as they were in in 1945. Furthermore Stalin had already pledged that he would make war on
Japan as soon as Germany were defeated and made good on his word as soon as the required divisions could be moved east. Considering the size of the
remaining Japanese forces in China three months is not much preparation time and what the allies perhaps feared more than anything was that if they
attempted a long term blockade it would result in a Soviet invasion and occupation of the main Japanese islands. It is not commonly understood that
the SU had the capability to do this in 1945 but if one takes a look one might realise that the Japanese did not surrender because the US nuked them
but because whatever the US did they expected worse treatment from the SU and had lost their only 'million-man' means of defense on the continent in
the comparative blink of an eye; the Japanese had their 'France' and given the choice of who to surrender to and beg protection of there was no
choice at all.
en.wikipedia.org...
emis-kurils-russian_names.png
So in closing the nukes were not required and since the US essentially accepted the terms Japan ( the US actually lowered it's demands after the
nukes) would have agreed to three odd months before concessions then would have saved hundreds of thousands of Japanese and Chinese ( and a few
hundred American) lives lost in the interim period instead of killing so many more.
Hope that clears up some issues and is understood in the way i intend it to be!
Stellar
] it is still cumbersome and degrades
performance after about 4 to 6 hours in Europe and about 2 hours in the Middle and Far East. 
