OT/MISC Oliver Stone to 'truth' history; Hitler and Stalin patriots, Truman genocid murderer?

[Troke]

http://www.thrfeed.com/2010/01/olive...y-america.html

Oliver Stone's 'Secret History' to put Hitler 'in context'
TCA -- Director Oliver Stone's upcoming Showtime documentary miniseries "Secret History of America" promises to put mass murderers such as Stalin and Hitler "in context."

"Stalin, Hitler, Mao, McCarthy -- these people have been vilified pretty thoroughly by history," Stone told reporters at the Television Critics Association's semi-annual press tour in Pasadena.

"Stalin has a complete other story," Stone said. "Not to paint him as a hero, but to tell a more factual representation. He fought the German war machine more than any single person. We can't judge people as only 'bad' or 'good.' Hitler is an easy scapegoat throughout history and its been used cheaply. He's the product of a series of actions. It's cause and effect ... People in America don't know the connection between WWI and WWII ... I've been able to walk in Stalin's shoes and Hitler's shoes to understand their point of view.

We're going to educate our minds and liberalize them and broaden them. We want to move beyond opinions ... Go into the funding of the Nazi party. How many American corporations were involved, from GM through IBM. Hitler is just a man who could have easily been assassinated."

The controversial director's 10-part documentary series for Showtime promises to focus on events that "at the time went under-reported, but crucially shaped America's unique and complex history of the last 60 years." Subjects in "History" include President Harry Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan and the origins of the Cold War with the Soviet Union.

"You cannot approach history unless you have empathy for the person you may hate," Stone said during the show's trailer, which promised to put historical villains "in context." "I don't want to put out conventional History Channel product where it's easy to like it."

"He's not saying we're going to come out with a more positive view of Hitler," emphasized professor Peter Kuznick, the lead writer on the project. "But we're going to describe him as a historical phenomenon and not just somebody who appeared out of nowhere."

Stone said that conservative pundits will dislike the show.
"Obviously, Rush Limbaugh is not going to like this history and, as usual, we're going to get those kind of ignorant attacks," said Stone, who also also compared the experience of sympathizing with war criminals to making his "W" movie about George W. Bush. "I'm trying to understand somebody I thoroughly despised."

Stone also warned that the same military industrial complex forces that he's explored in movies such as "JFK" and in "Secret History," are now corrupting Barack Obama.

"You can understand why Obama is following in Bush's footsteps in Afghanistan," Stone said."Obama is very much trapped, we believe, in that system. And so that's what we're going to try and show you -- the way it works."

The project will also show lesser-known positive aspects of American history and unsung heroes. Stone eventually hopes to send "Secret History" to schools as a teaching curriculum.

"It would be a very different counterweight to what they're learning," Stone said. "Nobody is going to force it down anybody's throat."

A critic also asked Stone "the Sarah Palin question" of what he likes to read.
"My father was a voracious New York Times reader," he said. "We consider that in The Middle. Sarah Palin would disagree."

Doesn't this idot know that the NYT his Daddy read is not the NYT of today? Unbelievable.

[Richard]

OS is not an historian.......

[Ender]

Your post title is completely misleading.

Nowhere does Stone say that Stalin & Hitler were patriots or that Truman was a genocide murderer.

Stone makes some good points about the history that we have learned and what really happened.

[smokin]

" Truth " does anyone know what that would be anymore.

We must fight global warming while we are freezing to death.

The economy is rebounding.

Glenn Beck always tells us the truth.

Sheryl Crow thinks we can use but one sheet of toilet paper.

Flouride is good for you.

You really should get the flu shot.

It is safe.

Blah Blah Blah.............................................. ......................

[Woolly]

Oliver Stone apparently doesn't grasp the concept of 'Evil', and that human beings can succumb to the temptations of the dark side (Hate, paranoia, lust for power, and the lust for blood). Stalin killed as many Kulaks (Russian and Ukrainian farmers) through mass starvation as Hitler killed of Jews, Poles, Russians and other Eastern Europeans (12 million if memory serves).

Mr. Stone received a classical education (For example, the Greek and Latin languages), and as such he should have learned to think clearly. Apparently, he failed his final exams.

Woolly

[Troke]

"...Your post title is completely misleading.

Nowhere does Stone say that Stalin & Hitler were patriots or that Truman was a genocide murderer.

Stone makes some good points about the history that we have learned and what really happened..."
__________________
You will note the title was shown as a question.

But I guarantee Truman a genocidal, in Russia's face creator of the Cold War in conjunction with US Big Industry looking for fat profits etc.

There were books and publications floating around in the late '60's making that argument.

They were not written by men who were slated for the first wave on the beaches of Japan having been told that casualties would probably be 100%. (I personally knew more than one of them.)

[Garryowen]

"My father was a voracious New York Times reader," he said. "We consider that in The Middle

Kinda gives a hint of his perspective.

[FREEBIRD]

Was there a historical context for the rise of both Hitler and Stalin?

Of course. Hitler didn't invent anti-Semitism, nor did he invent the economic crisis which followed WWI; he was an opportunist of the highest order who used them and other historical constructs to rise to power. Stalin likewise didn't come out of nowhere but built on the groundwork of the Russian Revolution to put himself in power.

There's nothing wrong with seeing historical figures in context (on the contrary, it's necessary), but IMHO Stone is the last person I'd seek out to provide such context, as he has his own set of axes to grind. If anyone wants to re-invent a story in which Hitler and Stalin are "good guys", peddle it in hell.

[Troke]

Context:

Stalin: Communist Russia was first resisted by (they sent troops, including the US) and then dissed by the Great Powers for half a generation after 1917. This made Lenin/Stalin so paranoid that they murdered 40 million of their people. If they had been welcomed into the sphere of the Great Powers as a legitimate gov., they would have never done that. ( The lead Leftist Sh*thead mag (NATION) was still making that argument a few years ago.)

Hitler; Germany was shambles going down fast. Adolph saved it. If he had died in 1938, he would have gone down a major German cultural hero. So something happened after that Stone will put in 'context'. I don't have a clue.

Truman: Everybody "knows' that there was no need for the Bomb. The Japanese were desperately trying to surrender but Harry T. wanted to drop the Bomb to;

1. Punish the Japanese by incinerating a guh-zillion of them

2. Impress the Russians.

Conventional Wisdom amongst the Sh*thead Left (and others) since WWII.

I would be astounded of Stone did not push that theme to the 'truth' out to the American People.

[Ender]

Originally Posted by Troke

Context:

Stalin: Communist Russia was first resisted by (they sent troops, including the US) and then dissed by the Great Powers for half a generation after 1917. This made Lenin/Stalin so paranoid that they murdered 40 million of their people. If they had been welcomed into the sphere of the Great Powers as a legitimate gov., they would have never done that. ( The lead Leftist Sh*thead mag (NATION) was still making that argument a few years ago.)

Hitler; Germany was shambles going down fast. Adolph saved it. If he had died in 1938, he would have gone down a major German cultural hero. So something happened after that Stone will put in 'context'. I don't have a clue.

Truman: Everybody "knows' that there was no need for the Bomb. The Japanese were desperately trying to surrender but Harry T. wanted to drop the Bomb to;

1. Punish the Japanese by incinerating a guh-zillion of them

2. Impress the Russians.

Conventional Wisdom amongst the Sh*thead Left (and others) since WWII.

I would be astounded of Stone did not push that theme to the 'truth' out to the American People.

I have no love for Stalin, Hitler OR Oliver Stone, however, someday, somewhere, people are going to have to accept the fact that the Japanese had essentially surrendered before the US nuked them. They just wanted to keep their Emperor.

We nuked them to show Russia that we were the Almighty- and then let the Japanese keep their Emperor.

[johnnymac]

This would be much more admirable if OS undertook..

- How Obama rose to power, his supporters, his background including education, friends, how he paid for school, etc.

- The real story behind global warming and why some parties want it soooo bad.

- Who is ACORN or the SEIU and what was behind their rise to power?

There are three stories which are very similar to the rise of the Nazi party or the Communists in czarist Russia yet are contemporary in nature.

Hitler and Stalin are easy, though. They are dead and can't leave a horse's head in your bed.

[BL225128]

Originally Posted by Ender

I have no love for Stalin, Hitler OR Oliver Stone, however, someday, somewhere, people are going to have to accept the fact that the Japanese had essentially surrendered before the US nuked them. They just wanted to keep their Emperor.

We nuked them to show Russia that we were the Almighty- and then let the Japanese keep their Emperor.

"Had essentially surrendered" is not the same as having surrendered. Furthermore, the Japanese were far from militarily defeated as they still had vast holdings in China and Manchuria where there will still significant forces which could be used to counter-attack us.

As far as showing Stalin the power of the bomb, the scrofullus Georgian tyrant knew about it even before Truman was informed of the project's existance; courtesy of the communist sympathizing scientists and spies (Oppenheimer, et. al.) who didn't want their side (hint: their loyalties weren't with the red, white and blue; only the red) to be without the bomb. That side were all for using the bomb against the Germans in order to help the Soviets, but when Germany surrendered (unconditionally, I might add) the bomb was not yet ready, and all the prog scientists who were working on the project were now reticent against using the bomb on the Japanese, since their side (hint: not the US or Great Britain) was becoming difficult as they were betraying their agreements made with us at Yalta, Tehran, etc., and that the use of the bomb agaisnt Japan would be useful training by the personnel of the American bomber fleets to use against those wonderful comrades in Moscow.

[Troke]

"...have no love for Stalin, Hitler OR Oliver Stone, however, someday, somewhere, people are going to have to accept the fact that the Japanese had essentially surrendered before the US nuked them. They just wanted to keep their Emperor.

We nuked them to show Russia that we were the Almighty- and then let the Japanese keep their Emperor..."

Ah yes, to be young....

1. The closer we got to Japan, the more savage the Japanese resisted. Remember KamiKazi? Remember all those civilians jumping off cliffs in Okinawa rather than surrender? And all those school girls practicing with spears? That was real and we knew all about it.

2. The Japanese did not have a reputation for surrendering, far from it, fight to the death.

3. The Japanese Army had argued that they had never had a real chance against the Americans Now they would. And they still were running things with a strength of 1.3 million in mainland Japan IIRC.

4. Our word was Unconditional Surrender and we made the Germans do it. (Thank you FDR.) No way were the Japanese going to submit the Emperor to that, no way

Got the picture now?

So the bombs are dropped.

The Army still wanted to fight but the Emperor wrote a 'haiku' that indicated that maybe there had to be another way.

Meanwhile we are sure the Japanese would come to their senses after having obliterated two cities. So we waited for some word.

And it came, let us keep the Emperor and you can have the country.

Sounded good against a million American casualties so we went for it.

You probably would not be surprised at the amount of literature that has come about claiming that we should have gone for Unconditional Surrender and hung the Emperor as a war criminal.

As the Man said, this position is usually held by people who were not in a position to get their *ss shot of on the Japanese beaches. In 1945 they were too young.

As for the Army, mass suicide. In just one regiment, every officer killed himself, leaving one lieutenant to stay in command And he it is said, felt dishonored for life which I understand did not last long.

Anybody who thinks Harry T's main goal was to out-macho the Russians is a Dreaming Sheep.

[Ender]

Originally Posted by Troke

"...have no love for Stalin, Hitler OR Oliver Stone, however, someday, somewhere, people are going to have to accept the fact that the Japanese had essentially surrendered before the US nuked them. They just wanted to keep their Emperor.

We nuked them to show Russia that we were the Almighty- and then let the Japanese keep their Emperor..."

Ah yes, to be young....

1. The closer we got to Japan, the more savage the Japanese resisted. Remember KamiKazi? Remember all those civilians jumping off cliffs in Okinawa rather than surrender? And all those school girls practicing with spears? That was real and we knew all about it.

2. The Japanese did not have a reputation for surrendering, far from it, fight to the death.

3. The Japanese Army had argued that they had never had a real chance against the Americans Now they would. And they still were running things with a strength of 1.3 million in mainland Japan IIRC.

4. Our word was Unconditional Surrender and we made the Germans do it. (Thank you FDR.) No way were the Japanese going to submit the Emperor to that, no way

Got the picture now?

So the bombs are dropped.

The Army still wanted to fight but the Emperor wrote a 'haiku' that indicated that maybe there had to be another way.

Meanwhile we are sure the Japanese would come to their senses after having obliterated two cities. So we waited for some word.

And it came, let us keep the Emperor and you can have the country.

Sounded good against a million American casualties so we went for it.

You probably would not be surprised at the amount of literature that has come about claiming that we should have gone for Unconditional Surrender and hung the Emperor as a war criminal.

As the Man said, this position is usually held by people who were not in a position to get their *ss shot of on the Japanese beaches. In 1945 they were too young.

As for the Army, mass suicide. In just one regiment, every officer killed himself, leaving one lieutenant to stay in command And he it is said, felt dishonored for life which I understand did not last long.

Anybody who thinks Harry T's main goal was to out-macho the Russians is a Dreaming Sheep.

Dreaming Sheep? That's funny coming from you.

Now if any other country had dropped an A Bomb on 200,000 citizens, we would have called them war criminals and hung them.

There are plenty of high-ranking military personnel that were against this and knew it was unnecessary.

This and the bombing of Dresden were war-crimes but instead of learning from them, many want to glamorize them- make them necessary parts of "The Good War".

[Troke]

"...There are plenty of high-ranking military personnel that were against this and knew it was unnecessary. .."

Really? Any of them going to lead the charge on the beach?

I thought not.

BTW, it is chronicled that a significant number of Japanese starved to death before we could get food to them. Care to wager how many more would have starved if the war had gone on just six weeks longer, let along six months?

Everything is a tradeoff.

As for Dresden, only one question need be asked.

What did it take to convince the Germanic Peoples that war is not the first resort, it is the last resort. I think they were convinced. And I would wager that looking at total devastation everywhere around them had something to do with it.

[Spirit Of Truth]

In a not-so-long-ago day and age, Oliver Stone types were shot for treason. Now they are upheld as intellectual heroes and live in huge mansions. We are truly through the Looking Glass now.

[buff]

There are plenty of high-ranking military personnel that were against this and knew it was unnecessary.

you are smarter than this...

[Ender]

Originally Posted by buff

you are smarter than this...

Hiroshima and Nagasaki

by Ralph Raico

This excerpt from Ralph Raico's "Harry S. Truman: Advancing the Revolution" in John V. Denson, ed., Reassessing the Presidency: The Rise of the Executive State and the Decline of Freedom (Auburn, Alabama: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2001), is reprinted with permission. (The notes are numbered as they are because this is an excerpt.)

The most spectacular episode of Truman’s presidency will never be forgotten, but will be forever linked to his name: the atomic bombings of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and of Nagasaki three days later. Probably around two hundred thousand persons were killed in the attacks and through radiation poisoning; the vast majority were civilians, including several thousand Korean workers. Twelve U.S. Navy fliers incarcerated in a Hiroshima jail were also among the dead.87

Great controversy has always surrounded the bombings. One thing Truman insisted on from the start: The decision to use the bombs, and the responsibility it entailed, was his. Over the years, he gave different, and contradictory, grounds for his decision. Sometimes he implied that he had acted simply out of revenge. To a clergyman who criticized him, Truman responded, testily:

Nobody is more disturbed over the use of Atomic bombs than I am but I was greatly disturbed over the unwarranted attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor and their murder of our prisoners of war. The only language they seem to understand is the one we have been using to bombard them.

Such reasoning will not impress anyone who fails to see how the brutality of the Japanese military could justify deadly retaliation against innocent men, women, and children. Truman doubtless was aware of this, so from time to time he advanced other pretexts. On August 9, 1945, he stated: "The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians."

This, however, is absurd. Pearl Harbor was a military base. Hiroshima was a city, inhabited by some three hundred thousand people, which contained military elements. In any case, since the harbor was mined and the U.S. Navy and Air Force were in control of the waters around Japan, whatever troops were stationed in Hiroshima had been effectively neutralized.

On other occasions, Truman claimed that Hiroshima was bombed because it was an industrial center. But, as noted in the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, "all major factories in Hiroshima were on the periphery of the city – and escaped serious damage."90 The target was the center of the city. That Truman realized the kind of victims the bombs consumed is evident from his comment to his cabinet on August 10, explaining his reluctance to drop a third bomb: "The thought of wiping out another 100,000 people was too horrible," he said; he didn’t like the idea of killing "all those kids." Wiping out another one hundred thousand people . . . all those kids.

Moreover, the notion that Hiroshima was a major military or industrial center is implausible on the face of it. The city had remained untouched through years of devastating air attacks on the Japanese home islands, and never figured in Bomber Command’s list of the 33 primary targets.92

Thus, the rationale for the atomic bombings has come to rest on a single colossal fabrication, which has gained surprising currency: that they were necessary in order to save a half-million or more American lives. These, supposedly, are the lives that would have been lost in the planned invasion of Kyushu in December, then in the all-out invasion of Honshu the next year, if that was needed. But the worst-case scenario for a full-scale invasion of the Japanese home islands was forty-six thousand American lives lost.93 The ridiculously inflated figure of a half-million for the potential death toll – nearly twice the total of U.S. dead in all theaters in the Second World War – is now routinely repeated in high-school and college textbooks and bandied about by ignorant commentators. Unsurprisingly, the prize for sheer fatuousness on this score goes to President George H.W. Bush, who claimed in 1991 that dropping the bomb "spared millions of American lives."94

Still, Truman’s multiple deceptions and self-deceptions are understandable, considering the horror he unleashed. It is equally understandable that the U.S. occupation authorities censored reports from the shattered cities and did not permit films and photographs of the thousands of corpses and the frightfully mutilated survivors to reach the public. Otherwise, Americans – and the rest of the world – might have drawn disturbing comparisons to scenes then coming to light from the Nazi concentration camps.

The bombings were condemned as barbaric and unnecessary by high American military officers, including Eisenhower and MacArthur. The view of Admiral William D. Leahy, Truman’s own chief of staff, was typical:

the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. . . . My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make wars in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.

The political elite implicated in the atomic bombings feared a backlash that would aid and abet the rebirth of horrid prewar "isolationism." Apologias were rushed into print, lest public disgust at the sickening war crime result in erosion of enthusiasm for the globalist project.98 No need to worry. A sea-change had taken place in the attitudes of the American people. Then and ever after, all surveys have shown that the great majority supported Truman, believing that the bombs were required to end the war and save hundreds of thousands of American lives, or more likely, not really caring one way or the other.

Those who may still be troubled by such a grisly exercise in cost-benefit analysis – innocent Japanese lives balanced against the lives of Allied servicemen – might reflect on the judgment of the Catholic philosopher G.E.M. Anscombe, who insisted on the supremacy of moral rules. When, in June 1956, Truman was awarded an honorary degree by her university, Oxford, Anscombe protested. Truman was a war criminal, she contended, for what is the difference between the U.S. government massacring civilians from the air, as at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Nazis wiping out the inhabitants of some Czech or Polish village?

Anscombe’s point is worth following up. Suppose that, when we invaded Germany in early 1945, our leaders had believed that executing all the inhabitants of Aachen, or Trier, or some other Rhineland city would finally break the will of the Germans and lead them to surrender. In this way, the war might have ended quickly, saving the lives of many Allied soldiers. Would that then have justified shooting tens of thousands of German civilians, including women and children? Yet how is that different from the atomic bombings?

By early summer 1945, the Japanese fully realized that they were beaten. Why did they nonetheless fight on? As Anscombe wrote: "It was the insistence on unconditional surrender that was the root of all evil."

That mad formula was coined by Roosevelt at the Casablanca conference, and, with Churchill’s enthusiastic concurrence, it became the Allied shibboleth. After prolonging the war in Europe, it did its work in the Pacific. At the Potsdam conference, in July 1945, Truman issued a proclamation to the Japanese, threatening them with the "utter devastation" of their homeland unless they surrendered unconditionally. Among the Allied terms, to which "there are no alternatives," was that there be "eliminated for all time the authority and influence of those who have deceived and misled the people of Japan into embarking on world conquest [sic]." "Stern justice," the proclamation warned, "would be meted out to all war criminals."

To the Japanese, this meant that the emperor – regarded by them to be divine, the direct descendant of the goddess of the sun – would certainly be dethroned and probably put on trial as a war criminal and hanged, perhaps in front of his palace.103 It was not, in fact, the U.S. intention to dethrone or punish the emperor. But this implicit modification of unconditional surrender was never communicated to the Japanese. In the end, after Nagasaki, Washington acceded to the Japanese desire to keep the dynasty and even to retain Hirohito as emperor.

For months before, Truman had been pressed to clarify the U.S. position by many high officials within the administration, and outside of it, as well. In May 1945, at the president’s request, Herbert Hoover prepared a memorandum stressing the urgent need to end the war as soon as possible. The Japanese should be informed that we would in no way interfere with the emperor or their chosen form of government. He even raised the possibility that, as part of the terms, Japan might be allowed to hold on to Formosa (Taiwan) and Korea. After meeting with Truman, Hoover dined with Taft and other Republican leaders, and outlined his proposals.

Establishment writers on World War II often like to deal in lurid speculations. For instance: if the United States had not entered the war, then Hitler would have "conquered the world" (a sad undervaluation of the Red Army, it would appear; moreover, wasn’t it Japan that was trying to "conquer the world"?) and killed untold millions. Now, applying conjectural history in this case: assume that the Pacific war had ended in the way wars customarily do – through negotiation of the terms of surrender. And assume the worst – that the Japanese had adamantly insisted on preserving part of their empire, say, Korea and Formosa, even Manchuria. In that event, it is quite possible that Japan would have been in a position to prevent the Communists from coming to power in China. And that could have meant that the thirty or forty million deaths now attributed to the Maoist regime would not have occurred.

But even remaining within the limits of feasible diplomacy in 1945, it is clear that Truman in no way exhausted the possibilities of ending the war without recourse to the atomic bomb. The Japanese were not informed that they would be the victims of by far the most lethal weapon ever invented (one with "more than two thousand times the blast power of the British ‘Grand Slam,’ which is the largest bomb ever yet used in the history of warfare," as Truman boasted in his announcement of the Hiroshima attack). Nor were they told that the Soviet Union was set to declare war on Japan, an event that shocked some in Tokyo more than the bombings.105 Pleas by some of the scientists involved in the project to demonstrate the power of the bomb in some uninhabited or evacuated area were rebuffed. All that mattered was to formally preserve the unconditional surrender formula and save the servicemen’s lives that might have been lost in the effort to enforce it. Yet, as Major General J.F.C. Fuller, one of the century’s great military historians, wrote in connection with the atomic bombings:

Though to save life is laudable, it in no way justifies the employment of means which run counter to every precept of humanity and the customs of war. Should it do so, then, on the pretext of shortening a war and of saving lives, every imaginable atrocity can be justified.

Isn’t this obviously true? And isn’t this the reason that rational and humane men, over generations, developed rules of warfare in the first place?

While the mass media parroted the government line in praising the atomic incinerations, prominent conservatives denounced them as unspeakable war crimes. Felix Morley, constitutional scholar and one of the founders of Human Events, drew attention to the horror of Hiroshima, including the "thousands of children trapped in the thirty-three schools that were destroyed." He called on his compatriots to atone for what had been done in their name, and proposed that groups of Americans be sent to Hiroshima, as Germans were sent to witness what had been done in the Nazi camps. The Paulist priest, Father James Gillis, editor of The Catholic World and another stalwart of the Old Right, castigated the bombings as "the most powerful blow ever delivered against Christian civilization and the moral law." David Lawrence, conservative owner of U.S. News and World Report, continued to denounce them for years. The distinguished conservative philosopher Richard Weaver was revolted by

the spectacle of young boys fresh out of Kansas and Texas turning nonmilitary Dresden into a holocaust . . . pulverizing ancient shrines like Monte Cassino and Nuremberg, and bringing atomic annihilation to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Weaver considered such atrocities as deeply "inimical to the foundations on which civilization is built."

Today, self-styled conservatives slander as "anti-American" anyone who is in the least troubled by Truman’s massacre of so many tens of thousands of Japanese innocents from the air. This shows as well as anything the difference between today’s "conservatives" and those who once deserved the name.

Leo Szilard was the world-renowned physicist who drafted the original letter to Roosevelt that Einstein signed, instigating the Manhattan Project. In 1960, shortly before his death, Szilard stated another obvious truth:

If the Germans had dropped atomic bombs on cities instead of us, we would have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them.

The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a war crime worse than any that Japanese generals were executed for in Tokyo and Manila. If Harry Truman was not a war criminal, then no one ever was.

Notes

87.

On the atomic bombings, see Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth (New York: Knopf, 1995); and idem, "Was Harry Truman a Revisionist on Hiroshima?" Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Newsletter 29, no. 2 (June 1998); also Martin J. Sherwin, A World Destroyed: The Atomic Bomb and the Grand Alliance (New York: Vintage, 1977); and Dennis D. Wainstock, The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1996).
88.

Alperovitz, Decision, p. 563. Truman added: "When you deal with a beast you have to treat him as a beast. It is most regrettable but nevertheless true." For similar statements by Truman, see ibid., p. 564. Alperovitz’s monumental work is the end-product of four decades of study of the atomic bombings and is indispensable for comprehending the often complex argumentation on the issue.
89.

Ibid., p. 521.
90.

Ibid., p. 523.
91.

Barton J. Bernstein, "Understanding the Atomic Bomb and the Japanese Surrender: Missed Opportunities, Little-Known Near Disasters, and Modern Memory," Diplomatic History 19, no. 2 (Spring 1995): 257. General Carl Spaatz, commander of U.S. strategic bombing operations in the Pacific, was so shaken by the destruction at Hiroshima that he telephoned his superiors in Washington, proposing that the next bomb be dropped on a less populated area, so that it "would not be as devastating to the city and the people." His suggestion was rejected. Ronald Schaffer, Wings of Judgment: American Bombing in World War II (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 147–48.
92.

This is true also of Nagasaki.
93.

See Barton J. Bernstein, "A Post-War Myth: 500,000 U.S. Lives Saved," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 42, no. 6 (June–July 1986): 38–40; and idem, "Wrong Numbers," The Independent Monthly (July 1995): 41–44.
94.

J. Samuel Walker, "History, Collective Memory, and the Decision to Use the Bomb," Diplomatic History 19, no. 2 (Spring 1995): 320, 323–25. Walker details the frantic evasions of Truman’s biographer, David McCullough, when confronted with the unambiguous record.
95.

Paul Boyer, "Exotic Resonances: Hiroshima in American Memory," Diplomatic History 19, no. 2 (Spring 1995): 299. On the fate of the bombings’ victims and the public’s restricted knowledge of them, see John W. Dower, "The Bombed: Hiroshimas and Nagasakis in Japanese Memory," in ibid., pp. 275–95.
96.

Alperovitz, Decision, pp. 320–65. On MacArthur and Eisenhower, see ibid., pp. 352 and 355–56.
97.

William D. Leahy, I Was There (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1950), p. 441. Leahy compared the use of the atomic bomb to the treatment of civilians by Genghis Khan, and termed it "not worthy of Christian man." Ibid., p. 442. Curiously, Truman himself supplied the foreword to Leahy’s book. In a private letter written just before he left the White House, Truman referred to the use of the atomic bomb as "murder," stating that the bomb "is far worse than gas and biological warfare because it affects the civilian population and murders them wholesale." Barton J. Bernstein, "Origins of the U.S. Biological Warfare Program," Preventing a Biological Arms Race, Susan Wright, ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990), p. 9.
98.

Barton J. Bernstein, "Seizing the Contested Terrain of Early Nuclear History: Stimson, Conant, and Their Allies Explain the Decision to Use the Bomb," Diplomatic History 17, no. 1 (Winter 1993): 35–72.
99.

One writer in no way troubled by the sacrifice of innocent Japanese to save Allied servicemen – indeed, just to save him – is Paul Fussell; see his Thank God for the Atom Bomb and Other Essays (New York: Summit, 1988). The reason for Fussell’s little Te Deum is, as he states, that he was among those scheduled to take part in the invasion of Japan, and might very well have been killed. It is a mystery why Fussell takes out his easily understandable terror, rather unchivalrously, on Japanese women and children instead of on the men in Washington who conscripted him to fight in the Pacific in the first place.
100.

G.E.M. Anscombe, "Mr. Truman’s Degree," in idem, Collected Philosophical Papers, vol. 3, Ethics, Religion and Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981), pp. 62–71.
101.

Anscombe, "Mr. Truman’s Degree," p. 62.
102.

Hans Adolf Jacobsen and Arthur S. Smith, Jr., eds., World War II: Policy and Strategy. Selected Documents with Commentary (Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-Clio, 1979), pp. 345–46.
103.

For some Japanese leaders, another reason for keeping the emperor was as a bulwark against a possible postwar communist takeover. See also Sherwin, A World Destroyed, p. 236: "the [Potsdam] proclamation offered the military die-hards in the Japanese government more ammunition to continue the war than it offered their opponents to end it."
104.

Alperovitz, Decision, pp. 44–45.
105.

Cf. Bernstein, "Understanding the Atomic Bomb," p. 254: "it does seem very likely, though certainly not definite, that a synergistic combination of guaranteeing the emperor, awaiting Soviet entry, and continuing the siege strategy would have ended the war in time to avoid the November invasion." Bernstein, an excellent and scrupulously objective scholar, nonetheless disagrees with Alperovitz and the revisionist school on several key points.
106.

J.F.C. Fuller, The Second World War, 1939–45: A Strategical and Tactical History (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1948), p. 392. Fuller, who was similarly scathing on the terror-bombing of the German cities, characterized the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as "a type of war that would have disgraced Tamerlane." Cf. Barton J. Bernstein, who concludes, in "Understanding the Atomic Bomb," p. 235:

In 1945, American leaders were not seeking to avoid the use of the A-bomb. Its use did not create ethical or political problems for them. Thus, they easily rejected or never considered most of the so-called alternatives to the bomb.

107.

Felix Morley, "The Return to Nothingness," Human Events (August 29, 1945) reprinted in Hiroshima’s Shadow, Kai Bird and Lawrence Lifschultz, eds. (Stony Creek, Conn.: Pamphleteer’s Press, 1998), pp. 272–74; James Martin Gillis, "Nothing But Nihilism," The Catholic World, September 1945, reprinted in ibid., pp. 278–80; Alperovitz, Decision, pp. 438–40.
108.

Richard M. Weaver, "A Dialectic on Total War," in idem, Visions of Order: The Cultural Crisis of Our Time (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1964), pp. 98–99.
109.

Wainstock, Decision, p. 122.

August 6, 2004

Ralph Raico [send him mail] is a senior scholar of the Mises Institute.

Copyright © 2001 by the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
All rights reserved.

[Ender]

DUPE

[truthseeker]

When is Oliver Stone going to make a movie about a pot smoking, cocaine snorting alcoholic movie director? One who hates his country loves any lift-wing dictator such as his hero's Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez. One who cant to seem to stay married very long.

[Sebastian]

Originally Posted by Ender

Dreaming Sheep? That's funny coming from you.

Now if any other country had dropped an A Bomb on 200,000 citizens, we would have called them war criminals and hung them.

There are plenty of high-ranking military personnel that were against this and knew it was unnecessary.

This and the bombing of Dresden were war-crimes but instead of learning from them, many want to glamorize them- make them necessary parts of "The Good War".

My father had orders for the invasion of Japan and he was an infantry sargent who had already had a lung shot out from under him in Europe.

In all probability I would have never been had we invaded Japan.

But both he and I have come to understand that the bombing was nothing but a war crime against a nation already defeated.

One of the very few things on which we agree.

They were starving for pities sake.

[Troke]

"...It is a mystery why Fussell takes out his easily understandable terror, rather unchivalrously, on Japanese women and children instead of on the men in Washington who conscripted him to fight in the Pacific in the first place.
..."

Fussell the only one on this page in a position to get his *ss shot off?

I thought so.

The suggestion that he and his brother infantry mutiny and refuse to invade?

Unbelievable.

"...They were starving for pities sake..."

And how many dead Japanese each the day the war was lengthened?

Mere bagatelle

All we got here is a continuation of the program to show that all of our cultural forbearers were vicious, unprincipled, and unworthy of our respect, that in a just society they would have met the hangman.

[buff]

Legolas...you are still smarter than this..

an invasion of the japanese mainland would have cost at least as many american lives as the bomb did...(see guadalcanal, tarawa, okinawa, etc...I have many places in my town named after these battles)..we learned that lesson over and over again hopping islands in the pacific...

I guess it depends on which side you're on...as for me?...I'm on our side..

[Wardogs]

There is one thing I never see mentioned in all the revisionist author's handwringing accounts of the events that led up to the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan and the events that immediately followed. That is the role that the Office of War Information (OWI) played in both the attempt to limit casualties and inform the Japanese public directly about the true state of affairs concerning surrender negotiations and the conflicts between the civilian and military governments of Japan.

It wasn't until 1954 that much of the activities of the OWI were declassified and not until 2007 that full disclosure was made thanks to FOIA requests. My dad was a fighter pilot in the Pacific Theater and actually flew on several of the OWI missions including the dropping of the "LeMay bombing leaflets" that were distributed prior to the use of the Atomic bombs.

Didn't know about that? not surprising, few do. In her accounting of the history of the OWI, titled after the actual CIA document release, "The Information War in the Pacific", Josette H. Williams puts it this way:

"...In August 1945, the world went into a state of shock at the sheer devastating power of nuclear weapons. Over fifty years later, that shock still eclipses the fascinating story of how the Japanese nation actually came to surrender. Many Americans believe that the surrender immediately followed the use of the atomic bomb. Worse, young Japanese seem to consider the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to be isolated incidents without cause. Ignorance of the history of August 1945 may turn out to be one of the lamentable legacies of World War II..."

The Office of War Information

"...The contributions of the Office of War Information at the end of the war in the Pacific have been cited briefly in many publications, but the full story has never been told. OWI was responsible for using information warfare to promote distrust of Japanese military leaders, lower Japanese military and civilian morale, and encourage surrender. Information was disseminated by radio and leaflet both to the Japanese mainland and to enemy forces hidden on Allied-occupied Pacific islands.

OWI was manned by civilians and supported by military liaison personnel. The Director, Elmer Davis, reported to Secretary of State James Byrnes. Policy decisions were subject to the approval of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, coordinated by Secretary of War Henry Stimson. Edward Barrett managed the Overseas Branch; Bradford Smith was chief of Central Pacific Operations in Honolulu; and Richard Hubert, the author’s father, headed the forward area on Saipan.

The communication network was complex. OWI monitored Radio Tokyo broadcasts through its offices in San Francisco, where they were summarized and relayed to Washington. Response and new copy were composed and coded in Washington, then relayed through Honolulu to OWI’s printing presses and radio station on Saipan. Printed text was paraphrased to avoid breaking the code.

Saipan, one of the Mariana Islands, had been controlled by Japan since 1918. It was captured by the 2nd and 4th US Marine Divisions and 27th US Army Division on 7 July 1944 in one of the costliest battles of World War II. In 29 days of fighting, more than 3,000 US soldiers and almost 30,000 Japanese lost their lives. It was a decisive battle—Saipan’s location, 1,200 miles southeast of Tokyo, put Japan and China within range of Allied bombers, provided a staging area for invasion of the Japanese homeland, and allowed direct transmission of radio broadcasts to the Japanese people.

After securing the island, US forces remained on Saipan, guarding Japanese prisoners of war, constructing a huge airbase, staging bombing runs, and supporting the civilian OWI psychological warfare effort. From Saipan, OWI bombarded Japan with radio messages through its 50,000-watt standard-wave station on Saipan, Radio KSAI. The station also picked up 100,000-watt shortwave transmissions from the OWI station in Honolulu and relayed them to Japan. Japanese language broadcasts consisted of news on the status of the war, bombing warnings, and messages from Japanese prisoners of war on Saipan urging surrender. KSAI radio transmissions served many purposes: to Japan’s civilian government, they were a vital source of news, received at a time when the fanaticism of the Japanese militarists denied civilian leaders access to information about the status of the war; to hidden Japanese soldiers on occupied Pacific islands, they tempted surrender by promising fair treatment as prisoners of war; and to Allied flight crews, the around-the-clock OWI radio transmissions beamed home the B-29s, saving planes and lives...."

I actually have one of the LeMay fliers that my dad saved, as well as other leaflets that were dropped on the Pacific Islands. It looks like this:



It's described like this:

Front side of OWI notice #2106, dubbed the “LeMay bombing leaflet,” which was delivered to Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and 33 other Japanese cities on 1 August 1945. The Japanese text on the reverse side of the leaflet carried the following warning:

“Read this carefully as it may save your life or the life of a relative or friend. In the next few days, some or all of the cities named on the reverse side will be destroyed by American bombs. These cities contain military installations and workshops or factories which produce military goods. We are determined to destroy all of the tools of the military clique which they are using to prolong this useless war. But, unfortunately, bombs have no eyes. So, in accordance with America's humanitarian policies, the American Air Force, which does not wish to injure innocent people, now gives you warning to evacuate the cities named and save your lives. America is not fighting the Japanese people but is fighting the military clique which has enslaved the Japanese people. The peace which America will bring will free the people from the oppression of the military clique and mean the emergence of a new and better Japan. You can restore peace by demanding new and good leaders who will end the war. We cannot promise that only these cities will be among those attacked but some or all of them will be, so heed this warning and evacuate these cities immediately.”
(See Richard S. R. Hubert, “The OWI Saipan Operation,” Official Report to US Information Service, Washington, DC 1946.)

From the following declassified documents at the CIA library:

The Information War in the Pacific, 1945
UNCLASSIFIED
https://www.cia.gov/library/center-f...i3a07p.htm#top

Advertising the Destruction of Hiroshima

"...At 2:45 a.m. on 6 August, the Allies’ B-29 “Enola Gay” left the island of Tinian near Saipan. Its primary target was Hiroshima, where the 2nd Japanese Army stood poised to defend against an expected Allied invasion of their homeland. At 8:15 a.m., the “Enola Gay” destroyed Hiroshima with a single atomic bomb.

Back on Saipan, the OWI presses were turning out leaflets that revealed the special nature of Hiroshima’s destruction and predicted similar fates for more Japanese cities in the absence of immediate acceptance of the terms of the Potsdam agreement. By 9 August, more than 5 million leaflets about the atom bomb had been released over major Japanese cities. The OWI radio station beamed a similar message to Japan every 15 minutes..."

So, between August 1 and August 9, more than 5 million leaflets were dropped warning residents to leave and why. Pilots risked their lives flying over 30 plus cities, not to drop munitions but to warn the populace.

This technique, along with radio broadcasts, was utilized many times after the attacks to inform the people of Japan about the real state of surrender negotiations. More from the documents:

Indecision in Tokyo

"...Japanese officials dispatched scientists and military personnel to Hiroshima to assess damages from the atomic bomb, but they remained paralyzed by disagreement over whether to surrender. The Supreme Council for the Direction of the War, composed of four military and two civilian members, was deadlocked, unable to present the Cabinet and the Emperor with its customary unanimous decision. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Umezo Yoshijir, Navy Chief of Staff Adm. Toyoda Soemu, and War Minister Gen. Anami Korechika maintained that any surrender agreement had to guarantee the Emperor’s continued power as sovereign ruler, prevent occupation of major cities such as Tokyo, and place responsibility for disarmament and dealing with war criminals in Japan’s own hands. The trio opposing them (Premier Suzuki Kantar, Foreign Minister Tg Shigenori, and Navy Minister Adm. Yonai Mitsumasa) viewed the Potsdam agreement as an ultimatum. In their view, the only negotiable ambiguity was the official position of the Emperor—the Potsdam agreement had applied the term “unconditional surrender” exclusively to the enemy’s armed forces.

The Supreme War Direction Council met from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. on 9 August. The Japanese Cabinet—which included four members of the Supreme Council—was convened from 2:30 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. that night. Neither meeting proved decisive. The heated argumentation throughout these meetings must surely have reflected the grim realities around them. Not only Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but all of Japan’s major cities had been destroyed, with the exception of the historic temple area of Kyoto. Japan’s Air Defense General Headquarters reported that out of 206 cities, 44 had been almost completely wiped out, while 37 others, including Tokyo, had lost over 30 percent of their built-up areas.12 Almost 2 million military personnel and civilians had been killed. Another 8 million were wounded or homeless. The destruction was so complete, historian Edwin Reischauer reminds us, that Japan, experiencing total military and industrial defeat for the first time in its history, took over 10 years to regain its pre-war productive capacity.13

The spreading awareness of the destructive power released at Hiroshima and Nagasaki increased the urgent atmosphere at these meetings in Tokyo. Nonetheless, it took an unprecedented action by the Emperor, and the extraordinary effort of OWI to publicize his action, to break the Japanese military-civilian deadlock.

Half an hour after the 9 August Cabinet meeting ended, Premier Suzuki Kantaro and Foreign Minister Tg Shigenori called members of the Cabinet and the Supreme Council, and Baron Kiichiro Hiranuma, President of Japan’s Privy Council, into an Imperial Conference. For several hours in a hot, airless bomb shelter, the Emperor listened to the opposing arguments. His political role usually consisted of passively endorsing Cabinet decisions. But at 2:00 a.m. on the morning of 10 August, in a deeply moving speech, Japan’s Emperor Hirohito called upon the power of his moral and spiritual leadership and directed that Japan should accept the terms of the Potsdam agreement.

There are indications that the Emperor had long wished for an end to the war for practical and emotional reasons. Ascending to the throne in 1926 at the age of 25, Hirohito was an intelligent man, a distinguished marine biologist, and a rather quiet, shy individual. He remained in Tokyo throughout the war, witnessing personally the destruction that he knew to be indicative of what was happening to the rest of his country. According to various historians, he found the arguments of the militarists to be self-seeking and born of false pride.14 No doubt pressure from the civilian members of his Cabinet and other government officials strengthened his resolve to end the devastation.

So it was that on 10 August, at 3:00 a.m., the Cabinet and the Supreme Council complied and voted in reluctant unanimity to accept the Potsdam offer, but with the stipulation that the Emperor remain the sovereign ruler of the country. By 7:00 a.m., the Foreign Minister had dispatched an announcement of the decision to the United States and China through Japan's Minister Shunichi Kase in Switzerland, and to Great Britain and the USSR through Minister Suemasa Okamoto in Sweden. Japanese officials tensely awaited the Allies’ response..."

Getting the Word Out

"...OWI now played its most dramatic role. Technically, Japan had not yet surrendered. The war was not yet over. President Truman had ordered the continuation of Allied bombing runs over Japanese military installations. The people of Japan knew nothing of their government’s plan to surrender. Radio Tokyo still exhorted all Japanese to prepare defenses against an enemy invasion.

In a race to save the lives of soldiers still fighting, the Allies’ acceptance of Japan’s modification of the Potsdam surrender terms was radioed to OWI in Honolulu and Saipan at the same time that it was forwarded to Switzerland. The US War Department sent an urgent dispatch ordering OWI to inform the Japanese people directly, by leaflet and radio, that their government had offered to surrender and that the Allies had accepted the offer. The order, which originated from the White House, threw OWI personnel into high gear. The text for the message was prepared in Washington and dictated by telephone to Honolulu, where it was transcribed, translated into Japanese, lettered, and transmitted to Saipan by “radiophoto” within two hours.

The 17 members of the OWI staff on Saipan were challenged to a previously unmatched degree. By mid-night on 11 August, less than 48 hours after Japan’s message was received in Washington, three-quarters of a million leaflets giving notification of the surrender offer had been printed on OWI’s three Webendorfer highspeed presses running continually. By the next afternoon, production of OWI leaflet #2117 totaled well over 5 million copies.

OWI did not have to work alone in this important effort. Saipan’s naval base designated two 15-member Navy crews to pack the leaflets into bomb casings for delivery. All bombing of Japan ceased while the Air Force loaded the leaflets onto the B-29s of its 73rd Wing. Even Japanese prisoners of war on Saipan volunteered. Realizing that the Japanese military regime was on a suicidal course, some prisoners helped run the presses for the leaflets in order to give accurate information to the Japanese people. Eventually, they even offered to write copy, under OWI supervision, for Allied newsprint distributions to Japan..."

On 12 August, aircraft runs departed Saipan at 1:30, 4:30, 7:30 and 11:30 p.m., delivering to the people of Japan the news of their government’s surrender offer. The 4” x 5” leaflets rained down by the millions, telling the Japanese people:

These American planes are not dropping bombs on you today. American planes are dropping these leaflets instead because the Japanese Government has offered to surrender, and every Japanese has a right to know the terms of that offer and the reply made to it by the United States Government on behalf of itself, the British, the Chinese, and the Russians. Your government now has a chance to end the war immediately. You will see how the war can be ended by reading the two following official statements.

"...Two paragraphs then gave the Japanese surrender offer verbatim and the Byrnes response indicating the Allies’ willingness to accept that offer. OWI repeated the same message continuously over station KSAI.

The significance of this information barrage cannot be overstated. For the first time the Japanese people became aware that their government was trying to surrender. And it was the first that Japanese officials knew of the Allies’ acceptance of their surrender offer, because the OWI notification preceded, by about 72 hours, the receipt of the official diplomatic reply sent through Switzerland..."

The Emperor’s Next Steps

"...Copies of the leaflet that fell on the palace grounds were immediately taken to the Emperor by Marquis Kichi Kido, Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal. The Emperor realized that Japanese civilians now knew of the surrender attempt and, more significantly, so did ordinary Japanese soldiers, sailors, and airmen.

Fearing a military coup to ensure continuation of the war, the Emperor decided to take additional action to bring the conflict to an end. On 13 August, when the Cabinet was called into immediate session, members Anami Korechika, Umezo Yoshijir, and Toyoda Soemu unexpectedly dissented anew, saying that an item in the original Potsdam proposal stipulating that postwar Japan would ultimately be governed by the will of the people was against Japanese tradition and therefore compliance was impossible. This reversal precipitated another Imperial Conference at which the Emperor stopped all argument by forcefully declaring that Japan would accept the Potsdam conditions as modified in the 11 August message from US Secretary of State Byrnes on behalf of the Allied nations.

In an action without precedent, the Emperor decided to issue an Imperial Rescript announcing the capitulation, to be delivered both to the Allies through diplomatic channels and to his subjects in his own voice via radio broadcast. The enormity of this decision must be understood in context: the Emperor was considered a deity—no one was allowed to look upon him from above, few citizens had seen him at all, and the Japanese people had never before heard his voice. Hirohito well understood the powerful effect his broadcast would have.

On 14 August, the Emperor made two recordings of the Rescript for broadcast the next day. Aware that such a powerful communication would doom efforts to continue the war, the military sent soldiers from a Tokyo garrison to attack the Imperial Palace at night, imprison the Emperor, and seize the recordings. They failed to turn up the recordings, however, which had been secured at the radio station. Later that night, War Minister Anami Korechika, having failed to promote his views and control his soldiers, committed suicide, the first of many such actions in the days that followed..."

You can read the history of the OWI in the CIA archives and The Information War in the Pacific here:
https://www.cia.gov/library/center-f...i3a07p.htm#top

They include the actual documents dropped, some made to look like Japanese currency like these:



Other discussions on these documents are here:

America's warning to the people of Hiroshima, August 1, 1945
http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/008604.html

It gives a completely different view of how the last days of WWII were actually carried out...

wardogs

[American Rage]

Originally Posted by Troke

http://www.thrfeed.com/2010/01/olive...y-america.html

"Stalin has a complete other story," Stone said. "Not to paint him as a hero, but to tell a more factual representation. He fought the German war machine more than any single person. We can't judge people as only 'bad' or 'good.' [/b]

HOW MISLEADING!!! HE DOESN'T MENTION UNCLE JOE SLEEPIN' WITH HITLER IN A BED CALLED POLAND!!! ONLY WHEN ADOLF ROLLED STALIN OVER, SO TO SPEAK, DID OL' JOE BEGAN TO PROTEST!!!!


Rage

[Troke]

Good post WarDogs

Assassination was a standard political technique in Japan just 10-12 yrs previous to the dates under consideration. And the "assassin party" was not on the side of surrender.

Tends to make politicians cautious.

[Sebastian]

Originally Posted by buff

Legolas...you are still smarter than this..

an invasion of the japanese mainland would have cost at least as many american lives as the bomb did...(see guadalcanal, tarawa, okinawa, etc...I have many places in my town named after these battles)..we learned that lesson over and over again hopping islands in the pacific...

I guess it depends on which side you're on...as for me?...I'm on our side..

We did not have to invade the blocade was complete - heck we were even sinking fishing boats in 1945.

Japan was not self suficient in anything - part of the reason they justified sending their armies abroad.