Daily Show calls Truman a war criminal

[CFH]

I've heard many respectable historians make a similar assertion. Not that he was a war criminal, but that the dropping of the atomic bombs was unnecessary and that it had more to do with demonstrating American might to the Russians than it did with ending the war with Japan.

[OumaFan]

Sure it had something to do with intimidating the Russians but an invasion of Japan would have been brutal and there would have been huge amounts of casualties on both sides, just look at Okinawa. Kamikaze pilots attacking the fleet, huge amounts of civilian and troop deaths. The controversy at the time was not this, it was the did FDR know about Pearl Harbor thing, people just wanted it to be over and understandably so.

The funny thing about this (there's nothing haha funny about it obviously) is that the firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo were absolutely brutal, especially Tokyo but for some reason conventional weapons get less attention.

[CFH]

Sure it had something to do with intimidating the Russians but an invasion of Japan would have been brutal and there would have been huge amounts of casualties on both sides. The controversy at the time was not this, it was the did FDR know about Pearl Harbor thing.

The funny thing about this (there's nothing haha funny about it obviously) is that the firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo were absolutely brutal, especially Tokyo but for some reason conventional weapons get less attention.

From what I've heard and read, the crux of the argument is that the U.S. wouldn't have had to invade Japan as the government was ready to fall/surrender through other means. I'm trying to find a couple of articles on it at the moment, but I'm busy so *if* I find some it might not be for a while

[OumaFan]

I actually read a few books about this for a seminar, there's a revisionist argument that the Japanese could have been induced to surrender before but that's gone out of style a bit, newer books that have done research in Japanese archives don't agree with that, the Japanese thought they could actually successfully repel an invasion and the Americans weren't extraordinarily confident, that and the Japanese didn't agree to peace terms that would have let them keep the Emperor.

Granted I haven't read everything, its not my field.

But the newer revisionist argument (that I've read) refutes that Japan would have surrendered but argues that Truman would have wanted to use the nukes anyway, and do it quickly before the Soviets entered the war so they could get what they were promised to enter the war, the Sakhalin Islands, the Kurile Islands, I don't know if that's the right spelling, keep them out of Mongolia, etc.

[OumaFan]

for fucks sake, I just wrote the worst essay about the interwar period in Europe.

Fuck.

I had to put in like a two page conclusion just to try to get the professor to understand what I was talking about.

I don't even know why I'm talking about history, I'm sick of history.

Fuck it, I'm turning it in anyway.

Alcohol, fuck yeah.

[Youngblood]

I loved the truman show. I even cried a little.

Jon Stewart is a Bastard.

[CFH]

for fucks sake, I just wrote the worst essay about the interwar period in Europe.

Fuck.

I had to put in like a two page conclusion just to try to get the professor to understand what I was talking about.

I don't even know why I'm talking about history, I'm sick of history.

Fuck it, I'm turning it in anyway.

Alcohol, fuck yeah.

Are you specializing in European history?

[Andre]

Why two bombs?
Why not one with the threat of "the next one is on the way" if you dont surrender."

There's a crime against one whole city of innocent people right there.

Pay backs a bitch, Sink our ships in Hawaii /we flatten your assess once and for all.

To be fair though : Nagasaki got unlucky,
they wernt an original target the real target was cloud covered and the delivery men took it into their own hands to drop on a town they could see on the way out.

[OumaFan]

for fucks sake, I just wrote the worst essay about the interwar period in Europe.

Fuck.

I had to put in like a two page conclusion just to try to get the professor to understand what I was talking about.

I don't even know why I'm talking about history, I'm sick of history.

Fuck it, I'm turning it in anyway.

Alcohol, fuck yeah.

Are you specializing in European history?

Not really, more American diplomatic history but obviously that gets into European stuff a lot.

To me this is a complicated issue, its easy to make it a simple black and white good or evil thing but there is context, how many American soldiers, Japanese soldiers and Japanese civilians would have died in an invasion? My guess would be a shit ton.

I don't have the exact numbers but unless I'm wrong something like 100, 000 Japanese soldiers died there. Firebombing of Tokyo around the same but civilians.

Fuck, the numbers vary on Soviet civilians but its absolutely staggering. Growing up as a kid in America its easy to not know that the war was mainly on the Eastern front.

[El Kabong]

I've heard many respectable historians make a similar assertion. Not that he was a war criminal, but that the dropping of the atomic bombs was unnecessary and that it had more to do with demonstrating American might to the Russians than it did with ending the war with Japan.

They didn't even surrender until we dropped the second one!!!! So I guess if we tried to invade them they would have just rolled over and gave up


This is typical revisionist history, the Allies gave Japan an ultimatum July 26, 1945 in the form of the Potsdam Declaration...Japan refused, then on August 6th and 9th we dropped the bombs and even then it took them some time to officially surrender.

Here's the deal, I am not ashamed to be an American for any reason especially just because we expedited the end of World War II by using nuclear weapons, and that's what this boils down to, it's ridiculous. Does Japan feel sorry that they attacked Pearl Harbor Does Al Queda feel bad about the 9/11 attack? NOOOOOO and so we shouldn't feel sorry for giving it back as good as we got.

Truman used the bombs in a very responsible manner, he saved more lives than he took

[El Kabong]

I know Stewart and Colbert are on Comedy Central BUT they flip flop between being amusing and being serious whenever it suits their cause and their audience members, the same with Bill Maher's audience are just zombies.