Jump to content

Atomic Weapons


Snake-Pit

Recommended Posts

As of late I've been fascinated with Hiroshima, and the effects of a Nuclear Blast; Watching videos of survivors accounts and their works of art depicting what they saw that day and their point of view as well as eyewitness testimony and; It pretty much all paints the same picture; literal Hell on earth, tornados of Fire in the sky, everything on fire, people screaming help and for water, ghost like disfigured victims who's skin had melted off but the finger nails prevented their arm skin from dropping off; Like this;

eefd470a6d4ca411958d47fff73a9a67.jpg

...

 

That's the lucky ones. The horrors of the Flash..

 

Nuclear Blast Shadows from Hiroshima..

shadow12667.jpg

shadow-human-3WEB.jpg

..

 

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, that was 70 years ago, today's 'nukes' are more powerful, more deadly.

 

More on Hiroshima.

 

 

 

 

Edited by Snake-Pit
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were war crimes, along with Dresden. The argument that the Japanese soldiers would have fought tooth and nail throughout the Pacific islands, costing hundreds of thousands more lives on both sides is besides the point; all those involved would have been soldiers who, sad as it might be, knew what they were doing when they first picked up a gun, whereas civilians are just that.

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 hours ago, PappyTron said:

I think that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were war crimes, along with Dresden. The argument that the Japanese soldiers would have fought tooth and nail throughout the Pacific islands, costing hundreds of thousands more lives on both sides is besides the point; all those involved would have been soldiers who, sad as it might be, knew what they were doing when they first picked up a gun, whereas civilians are just that.

 

I think you are half-right.   War crimes for the most part are something only  those who lose wars do.  Winners get to wear medals and  judge. And judges are above the law. Exceptions include wars where other side is so much weaker that winner either has to or can afford to " play nice" and worry about acting just, fair. 

 

Having said that, I think you are right;  On battlefield, axis crimes were no larger than  Hiroshima,  Nagasaki or Dresden. 

 

However, in modern writing every mention of Dresden kinda makes me gringe a bit. Dresden makes the largest, most cruel example of Alliance terror bombing.. In that sense it coming up everywhere is justified. However, it is now always dressed in this costume of  " that forgotten crime!" Implication there being that it was some special case of exceptional  Alliance  cruelty. In truth, it was mostly business as usual for and from alliance bomber campaign. Just that vast amount of refugees and wealth of bombers involved ensured bigger scale. Besides scale, it was a major bombing run among other for Allies. British and American bomber campaign's goal wasn't strikes against military targets. Their aim was destruction of German cities and work force.   Alliance bombing campaign against German cities was every bit as savage a war crime as German bombing campaigns against London, Britain as whole  or Russia. 

 

Sir Arthur Harris, decorated WW II era war hero and leader of Alliance Bomber command, said it best himself. He and Churchill would sometimes argue about how to present what they were doing in Germany to Western media. Churchill wanted, and did, mask it all as surgical strikes against military targets.  If city they destroyed had a railway station, then Churchill ensured it was a " Strike against important logistics center of Nazi Army."  Harris would have wanted to be more honest for sake of morale-through-vengeance. This is what he said: " 

the aim of the Combined Bomber Offensive...should be unambiguously stated [as] the destruction of German cities, the killing of German workers, and the disruption of civilised life throughout Germany."

This is from a man who was in command of the entire Alliance air offensive in Europe. 

I challenge you to find an approach that'd be more of a war crime. Note that above quote isn't some debate of what Alliance bomber command - should- do. That much was already clear. Discussion only involves  whether the act should be presented as what it is or not. Alliance Bomber command would " strike against military targets" mostly on paper. Umbrella in this was so vast that entire German Blitz against London could just as easily have been dressed as " Strikes against urban military targets" or whatever.

 

After war, Harris was promoted a Marshal and rewarded with around half a dozen different medals in US and UK.  These included distinguished Serice Medal, Knight grand Cross.

 

 

 

 

Edited by LTD
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Tsar Bomba is the largest ever bomb detonated in history;.. 30th of October 1961, 

Not an A-Bomb (Nuclear), but an H-Bomb (Thermonuclear)!..

And... (As I said, but let me reiterate); The most powerful of all H-Bombs/any bombs ever detonated..

 

Real footage^..

Think between 1, 000 and 3, 000 x the atomic bomb that took out Hiroshima starting the rapid end of WWII...

But then IDK know, I wasn't alive or privileged to know, land invasion of Japan led by US Troops of the allies...  Was thought a bloody concept.

Plus... Also, once it was built, since President Truman was new to the job, and it was the first, and he probably didn't want to be blamed for not using it and saving lives of families who would otherwise write him about lost loved ones in the army or navy (back then air force was army) if they ever died in a land invasion of Japan... Some would argue that BOMB or 'bloody/life costly' land invasion weren't the only two options, but since the atomic project was more Roosevelt's tool, Truman probably just let the boffins get on with the then $2 Billion nuclear arms race to beat Germany to the Bomb. - Stopping the bomb was said, to be harder to stop once it was built, with 'Little Boy' Little did the US know 'at the time', but the Soviet Union during the development of the atomic bomb had spies working on the Manhattan Project on the Kremlin's payroll so the Soviets already knew how to build one very quickly because, they already had the upper hand of 'what not to do' since America developed theirs through trial and error, the Soviet spies (2 of them) (Big top secret project, btw) (So having 1 is a big step, but 2, doing various different jobs); already knew what not to do in their own Nuclear Arms Program before Stalin saw photos of the destruction of Hiroshima and was shown proof at what was up until that point, just physics; There is some division on whether or not President Truman ever actually authorised the atomic bomb... He knew about them, and thought it would end the war... It didn't. There were parts of the Japanese government then that didn't even belief Hiroshima got bombed at first. So another was delivered, which got dropped over Nagasaki which, due to weather conditions that day, was that bombs 2nd target that day and cloud saved the lives of others in the city that was that bomb's primary target that day, but doomed others in their place; America to bomb city after city as fast as America could produce atom bombs which was about 4 a month back then; And President Truman then stepped in and thought that he better make it so the President of the United States authorises it; because he thought bomb after bomb after bomb was a bit much even though that was his promise.

Japan surrendered after bomb number 2; Nagasaki.

America knew Germany were working on the bomb this was a race, they foresaw the Soviets wanting the bomb.. (Not that they more or less already knew how to build one already)...

Here's what I found out what America DIDN'T know at the time;

Japan was ALSO working on a Nuclear Arms Program.

 

Edited by Snake-Pit
Link to comment
Share on other sites

http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p-4_weber.html

 

Quote

In an article that finally appeared August 19, 1945, on the front pages of the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Times-Herald, Trohan revealed that on January 20, 1945, two days prior to his departure for the Yalta meeting with Stalin and Churchill, President Roosevelt received a 40-page memorandum from General Douglas MacArthur outlining five separate surrender overtures from high-level Japanese officials. (The complete text of Trohan's article is in the Winter 1985-86 Journal, pp. 508-512.)

This memo showed that the Japanese were offering surrender terms virtually identical to the ones ultimately accepted by the Americans at the formal surrender ceremony on September 2 -- that is, complete surrender of everything but the person of the Emperor.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, PappyTron said:

I think that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were war crimes, along with Dresden. The argument that the Japanese soldiers would have fought tooth and nail throughout the Pacific islands, costing hundreds of thousands more lives on both sides is besides the point; all those involved would have been soldiers who, sad as it might be, knew what they were doing when they first picked up a gun, whereas civilians are just that.

How was Dresden a war crime, look what they done to London!  They started it, all we did was win.  We were ending the war against aggressors.  It's all well and good in peace time looking back and going 'oh wow, that was brutal and unnecessary and perhaps it was but so was the war overall, the war which they started, I mean it's gotta be done innit? 

As is generally the case with these things you tend to present me with an angle that makes me think twice but I can't imagine how you're gonna do that here.

Edited by Len B'stard
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Len B'stard said:

How was Dresden a war crime, look what they done to London!  They started it, all we did was win.  We were ending the war against aggressors.  It's all well and good in peace time looking back and going 'oh wow, that was brutal and unnecessary and perhaps it was but so was the war overall, the war which they started, I mean it's gotta be done innit? 

As is generally the case with these things you tend to present me with an angle that makes me think twice but I can't imagine how you're gonna do that here.

 

How was something like Dresden a war crime? By more or less every definition of war crime you can find  for starters, heh. That's how.  

" Look, I realize it is ugly and brutal but we did what we must to win the war." can be used to justify almost everything you consider a war crime.  Exception being small, isolated acts of individual cruelty by single soldier or small groups of soldiers. everything of bigger scale is some general  or some president or some air marshal or some  dictator trying to win the war. 

 

Edited by LTD
Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 minutes ago, LTD said:

 

How was something like Dresden a war crime? By more or less every definition of war crime you can find  for starters, heh. That's how.  

" Look, I realize it is ugly and brutal but we did what we must to win the war." can be used to justify almost everything you consider a war crime.  Exception being small, isolated acts of individual cruelty by single soldier or small groups of soldiers. everything of bigger scale is some general  or some president or some air marshal or some  dictator trying to win the war. 

 

Alright then, explain how the holocaust can be used to justify ending the war...or the invasion of Poland :lol:  I see what you're saying and I get the point that it was brutal and everything and I know i risk sounding like a fuckin' American politician here but Allied Forces were the good guys here, alright it wasn't a battle exactly but nor was the Blitz of London, it's fighting fire with fire and breaking the enemy.

your average every day situation, it's easy for us to moralise here, so many years after the fact but you've got to bear in mind what Allied Forces were up against in WW2.  I feel like a cunt saying half of this but at the same time you can't fanny about in times of war, it's not like they were opening concentration camps and sticking Germans in em, it had a point and a purpose.

Edited by Len B'stard
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Total war. You reduce the civilian's capacity to sustain the military effort. Sherman understood this.

I have to say though that there is an argument against Dresden - the fact that Churchill left out Bomber Command in his victory speech is telling.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 minutes ago, DieselDaisy said:

Total war. You reduce the civilian's capacity to sustain the military effort. Sherman understood this.

I have to say though that there is an argument against Dresden - the fact that Churchill left out Bomber Command in his victory speech is telling.

Which side of the argument do you fall on ultimately?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 minutes ago, Len B'stard said:

Alright then, explain how the holocaust can be used to justify ending the war...or the invasion of Poland :lol:  I see what you're saying and I get the point that it was brutal and everything and I know i risk sounding like a fuckin' American politician here but Allied Forces were the good guys here, alright it wasn't a battle exactly but nor was the Blitz of London, it's fighting fire with fire and breaking the enemy.

your average every day situation, it's easy for us to moralise here, so many years after the fact but you've got to bear in mind what Allied Forces were up against in WW2.  I feel like a cunt saying half of this but at the same time you can't fanny about in times of war, it's not like they were opening concentration camps and sticking Germans in em, it had a point and a purpose.

 

I'd not consider genocides like holocaust as part of the same picture.  Coined definition of " crime against humanity" and it's seperation from  war crimes feels pretty necessary and important. I'd feel it somehow inflates the crime, cruelty of a genocide if you submit it under rules and laws of war.

 

I can't see why anyone would want to defend Germany's invasion of Poland. Offensive wars are almost always difficult to truly justify and defend in any objective sense. Germany's  attack on Poland certainly wasn't an exception.  When looking at it from 2016, it absolutely is  a criminal, ruthless act. But why do you think Germany invaded in first place? Because they are evil and greedy and like killing people? No, from their point of view, it was part of their own struggle for survival. For Nazi who felt he was surrounded buy enemies, it was about ensuring Germany could never again be surrounded or suffocated like during World War I. For Germany ( certainly among Nazis) it absolutely appeared as " doing what they must to win." 

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 minutes ago, Len B'stard said:

Which side of the argument do you fall on ultimately?

I give Dresden a reprieve. You have to remember the casualties Bomber Command suffered, and the precarious nature of bombing missions over Germany. Bombing missions were put together under the eventuality that 40% of the Lancashires would not return - it was almost a suicide mission. With Dresden there is an element of everything going appallingly right that raid(s), the weather, the lack of BF 110s. We had looked at this war as being an escalation of total war and Dresden was the natural outcome. 

I have reservations though. I love old architecture - the older ways - and the destruction of so much history appalls me.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki? It is often forgotten that the most heavily bombed city of the Second World War was Tokyo, through incendiary bombs, i.e. non nuclear.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, LTD said:

 

I'd not consider genocides like holocaust as part of the same picture.  Coined definition of " crime against humanity" and it's seperation from  war crimes feels pretty necessary and important. I'd feel it somehow inflates the crime, cruelty of a genocide if you submit it under rules and laws of war.

 

I can't see why anyone would want to defend Germany's invasion of Poland. Offensive wars are almost always difficult to truly justify and defend in any objective sense. Germany's  attack on Poland certainly wasn't an exception.  When looking at it from 2016, it absolutely is  a criminal, ruthless act. But why do you think Germany invaded in first place? Because they are evil and greedy and like killing people? No, from their point of view, it was part of their own struggle for survival. For Nazi who felt he was surrounded buy enemies, it was about ensuring Germany could never again be surrounded or suffocated like during World War I. For Germany ( certainly among Nazis) it absolutely appeared as " doing what they must to win." 

 

Well then you get what you give, dont you?  There is no nicey nice way to respond to that.  And the invasion of Poland wasnt just to do with a struggle for survival, it was the first step in a bid for world domination.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The thing is, and I believe this pertains to most British opinions, is I rather like Germany. I believe it destroys every single country musically except perhaps Italy or Austria. No country can compete with the contributions Germany has made to music: Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner. All your Guns N' Roses and Rolling Stones can basically fuck off compared to those chaps. Germany was the forerunner of the late-enlightenment/romantic period - Hegel, Schiller, Goethe. Anglo-German relations were traditionally very strong - the House of Hanover, the alliance with Frederick the Great during the Seven Years' War. What happened during the twentieth century was such an aberration.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 minutes ago, DieselDaisy said:

The thing is, and I believe this pertains to most British opinions, is I rather like Germany. I believe it destroys every single country musically except perhaps Italy or Austria. No country can compete with the contributions Germany has made to music: Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner. All your Guns N' Roses and Rolling Stones can basically fuck off compared to those chaps. Germany was the forerunner of the late-enlightenment/romantic period - Hegel, Schiller, Goethe. Anglo-German relations were traditionally very strong - the House of Hanover, the alliance with Frederick the Great during the Seven Years' War. What happened during the twentieth century was such an aberration.

There is much in what you say but it's sort of like being forcibly done up the khyber by someone and, whilst bent over, going 'my, hasn't he got a nice pair of shoes on'.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Len B'stard said:

Well then you get what you give, dont you?  There is no nicey nice way to respond to that.  And the invasion of Poland wasnt just to do with a struggle for survival, it was the first step in a bid for world domination.

 

From Nazi PoV, it really was all about survival.  it's just that their indea of " survival" meant German  hegemony across  Eastern  Europe.  

World domination of any kind was never in Hitler's cards. He saw post WWII world as one where there should be four super powers, Nazi Germany ruling over mainland Europe,  Great Britain as major colonial power, USA in West and Japan in East. 

 

Edited by LTD
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, DieselDaisy said:

The thing is, and I believe this pertains to most British opinions, is I rather like Germany. I believe it destroys every single country musically except perhaps Italy or Austria. No country can compete with the contributions Germany has made to music: Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner. All your Guns N' Roses and Rolling Stones can basically fuck off compared to those chaps. Germany was the forerunner of the late-enlightenment/romantic period - Hegel, Schiller, Goethe. Anglo-German relations were traditionally very strong - the House of Hanover, the alliance with Frederick the Great during the Seven Years' War. What happened during the twentieth century was such an aberration.

....And right here is one of the reasons why you can't make a Abomb thread or something without it turning into off topic discussion about nazis. ;p All that happened remains vivid in our collective memory;

People don't go " eh what??" when somebody lists some of the most well known German achievements.  We know of them. Much in German culture is  Western culture and much in Western culture is German.  We even  speak and type a  Germanic language right about now and all that. So from Western pov, Hitler, Nazis isn't something fucked up thing that happened  somewhere far away where people die all the time anyway, it was right in the backyard of you and me. People Sieg Hailing merrily and offing millions of people in concentration camps weren't some exotic, far eastern unknown " other" but it was people with cultural DNA and roots very similar to yours  and mine. So it is always easy to ask if it could have been you and me just as easily, had we born some 80-100 years earlier. 

 

Edited by LTD
Link to comment
Share on other sites

49 minutes ago, LTD said:

....And right here is one of the reasons why you can't make a Abomb thread or something without it turning into off topic discussion about nazis. ;p All that happened remains vivid in our collective memory;

People don't go " eh what??" when somebody lists some of the most well known German achievements.  We know of them. Much in German culture is  Western culture and much in Western culture is German.  We even  speak and type a  Germanic language right about now and all that. So from Western pov, Hitler, Nazis isn't something fucked up thing that happened  somewhere far away where people die all the time anyway, it was right in the backyard of you and me. People Sieg Hailing merrily and offing millions of people in concentration camps weren't some exotic, far eastern unknown " other" but it was people with cultural DNA and roots very similar to yours  and mine. So it is always easy to ask if it could have been you and me just as easily, had we born some 80-100 years earlier. 

 

Well it certainly couldn't've been me :lol:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...