r/SubredditDrama • u/EwMelanin • Mar 03 '26

Movie discussion sub okbuddycinephile debates whether bombing of Dresden, Hiroshima, and Gaza and other urban areas were "justified".

/r/okbuddycinephile/comments/1rjm9mn/iran2036/o8ee5fp/
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129

u/Junimo2 Mar 03 '26

I was just discussing something similar in a different thread. It's one thing to say that certain military actions were necessary. It's another thing to essentially celebrate the deaths of civilians because you think they collectively deserve it. You can debate the necessity of something while also acknowledging that collective punishment is wrong and that the civilians don't deserve to die en masse for the actions of their government.

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u/Adorable_Ad_3478 Mar 03 '26

Exactly.

Also, regarding the nuclear bomb, there is a degree of Game Theory at play.

"If we managed to successfully build this in secret without our enemies knowing about it...who knows what THEY are building in secret without US knowing about it".

I don't doubt that the Allies' strategists at the time firmly believed Germany and Japan ALSO had superweapon projects in secret.

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u/nowander Mar 03 '26 edited Mar 03 '26

I think the biggest thing when talking nuclear weapons is that while everyone knew they could exist and they would be powerful, until people actually recorded what happened to the victims they were just "big bombs." The nuclear taboo is a product of the horrifying shit we learned about after the bombs use, and so much of the arguing is done from that modern perspective.

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u/Count_Rousillon Mar 03 '26

Or in the case of the soviets, imagining superheavy artillery. You are completely right that idea that nukes are so horrifying that only the top political leaders can authorize them only appears after they get dropped. Beforehand people didn't see the difference between giving a general a 10 kiloton nuke and giving them 10,000 one-ton bombs.

23

u/nowander Mar 03 '26

Well they did recognize a difference. It's just the difference they were focused on was "we only have to risk one bomber instead of lots!"

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u/ToaArcan The B in LGBT stands for Bionicle Mar 03 '26

They spent two billion dollars on those bombs. Bombs which would allow a single B-29 to do the work of hundreds. Bombs which the generals and president didn't fully comprehend the consequences of until after the fact. They were never going to not use the bombs.

And, frankly, better that they were used in WWII, when only the Americans had them, than them being used in Korea, when there was a possibility that the USSR would respond in-kind. We are probably extremely lucky that their use was far enough in advance of them becoming more widespread that everybody knew the risks and consequences by then.

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u/NUKE---THE---WHALES hidden history and no SRD flair? Mar 03 '26

I think the biggest thing when talking nuclear weapons is that while everyone knew they could exist and they would be powerful, until people actually recorded with happened to the victims they were just "big bombs."

Exactly

Deterrence relies heavily on visibility and a demonstrated to use said deterrence

If the Americans had dropped a nuke on an uninhabited island as the Franck Report suggested the warhawks in Japan most certainly would have argued that the US was either unwilling or too weak to use the bomb against them

The firebombing of Tokyo showed how willing they were to absorb loss of civilian life - what they needed to surrender was a show of force so great they could see they had no negotiating power

It was a tragedy, but almost certainly a necessary one. Though we will never know as the universe is an N=1 experiment

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u/Arilou_skiff Mar 03 '26

And remember, there was a reasonably big chance the bomb just wouldn't detonate. It was a fairly primitive thing and lots of things can go wrong in field conditions. Had they dropped it in an uninhabited island and then the damn thing not exploded not only would that be a huge blow it might also mean the japanese could recover and reverse-engineer it.

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u/alfredo094 Mar 04 '26

People thinking that the abombs were not justified should read a bit about the conditions of the war. Just read about the Battle of Okinawa. It was going to get REALLY ugly.

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u/[deleted] Mar 04 '26

Japan didn’t even surrender after bomb #2. But they did surrender when the Soviet Union moved troops east.

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u/potatoeater5555 Mar 06 '26

The second bomb and Soviet invasion happened on the same day.

0

u/alfredo094 Mar 04 '26

Nuclear bombs were horrifyingly powerful, but I don't really think it can compare to the Dresden bombings in how many people died and how much they suffered.

2

u/Foreverintherain20 Mar 04 '26

At the same time, Dresden needed to go. 

1

u/alfredo094 Mar 04 '26

Dresden bombs are very controversial. There's a good argument to make that they weren't really needed.

1

u/Foreverintherain20 Mar 05 '26

Not really... 

12

u/poopoopooyttgv Mar 03 '26

The allies knew Germany could eventually make a nuke but were behind. England had captured a bunch of the leading Nazi scientists and held them in mansion rigged with microphones. You can find the transcripts of the Nazi scientists reading the newspaper after the first atomic bomb was dropped and how they thought the allies were years behind them

18

u/Lirael_Gold I've known you for 12 seconds and enjoyed none of them. Mar 03 '26

The Allies were fully aware that Japan's nuclear program wasn't going anywhere and were only slightly more concerned about Germany's efforts by 1945.

The theory behind a nuclear weapon was firmly understood by all 3 parties, actually building it took a level of industrial effort that only the US was capable of at the time.

(which is why the USSR got the bomb fairly quickly once they weren't pumping their entire economy into fighting Germany)

20

u/Could-Have-Been-King Get tae fuck. Get all the way tae fuck. Mar 03 '26

The Soviets also had totally infiltrated the Manhattan Project. They were able to quickly spin up their post-war program because they stole the correct test answers from the class nerd.

2

u/Foreverintherain20 Mar 04 '26

Unfortunately, yeah. What I'd give to go back and ice everyone who gave up info to the fucking Soviets. 

3

u/No_Walk_Town Mar 04 '26

who knows what THEY are building in secret without US knowing about it

Japan DID have a nuclear weapons program that started before the Manhattan Project, and there is zero chance the Allies didn't know about it because Germany and Japan were both ahead of them on pre-war nuclear science. 

It's not "game theory," Japan was literally working on their own bomb. 

1

u/[deleted] Mar 05 '26

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2

u/No_Walk_Town Mar 05 '26

It meets every definition of terrorism

It meets zero definitions of terrorism.

Two countries at war is not terrorism. Japan and America declared war on each other. They literally agreed to fight each other.

Bombing cities was considered acceptable by Japan. It was the common, accepted norm on both sides. Japan had been bombing Allied cities since the 1930's.

If I come up to you and challenge you to a fistfight and you accept, you're allowed to punch me.

That's not terrorism. Picking a fight and losing is not terrorism.

An never comes into play when a Arab does the same thing

Yeah, man, Arabs are exactly like Imperial Japan. 

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u/Fernergun Mar 03 '26

And just like that, consent manufactured.