"DSK" wrote in message

The German nuclear research projects underway in the late 1930s was hurt
by the flight of some of their best scientists, most notably of course
Einstein, and most of the scientists remaining (while probably capable of
building a bomb, or at least radiation enhanced weapons) despised the
Nazis and would never have built such weapons for Hitler.

Is this History 101 According to Doug? The Germans were on the verge of
completing a crude nuclear device when the war ground to a halt in Europe.
They had huge stocks of heavy water, they had fissionable material, somewhat
enriched, and they had the equipment to do the job. That it didn't happen
had more to do with timing than with any particular antipathy toward Hitler
and the Nazis. The Nazis had rather well-known means of *encouraging*
others to do their bidding. Those scientists may have claimed to have
stalled the process, but had the European war continued for another year,
most of them would have been killed, had they not created a nuclear weapon.

Jingoistic malarkey

How then do you explain 40 years of *cold* war? You seem to have all the
answers. Wrong ones, but answers, nonetheless. It's highly doubtful that
either the USA or the USSR would have been restrained by mutual assured
destruction had the devastating effects of atomic weapons not been
witnessed.

Possibly. But would you agree that had the Japanese developed the bomb
first (and they were closer than a lot of people think), tied one to one
of their strategic balloon bombers, and nuked the U.S. mainland, that we
"deserved it"?

Hmmm. Let's see: The Japanese had joined forces ideologically with Germany
and the Axis powers to achieve world domination under a dictator or group of
dictators. The Japanese sneak attacked us, knowing we wouldn't stand by
forever while they occupied more and more of the south Pacific and
ultimately parts of Asia. We, OTOH, retaliated, and fought against the sort
of despotic tyranny that an Axis victory would have wrought. No, I don't
think we would have deserved to be nuked. I'm glad we weren't.


There was no communication between the U.S. and Japanese gov'ts. There
were some attempts made by indirect channels to open negotiations, most
notably right after Pearl Harbor and early 1945. IIRC most of these
attempts went through Dutch colonial offices. The U.S. gov't rejected
these attempts to open negotiations, partly because there was no point in
negotiating peace when you're on the verge of victory (kind of like a
sports team down XXX to 0 in the last minute, offering a tie) and partly
because of commitments to the other Allies.

There was another aspect--the Japanese would not consider any form of
unconditional surrender. The Allies all felt that only after an
unconditional surrender, following which the Japanese would dismantle their
entire war-making machine, including disbanding the army, navy, etc. and
destroying all small arms and other ordnance, would a lasting peace be
possible. There was a substantiated fear that Japan might once again become
a formidable opponent. The Japanese rejected the Potsdam Proclaim less than
a month before the first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. IF they truly had
been desirous of a surrender, they would at least have suggested talks. The
PP was met with silence from Japan.


I don't think the entire proclamation was broadcast, but that's a quibble.
More to the point, how good a translation do you think it was? Possibly a
bit like those garbled instruction manuals, hmm?

One of Hirohito's own secretaries reported, after the war, that the Potsdam
Proclaim was understood clearly by the Japanese government at the time it
was broadcast. They discussed it for days, but the military leaders were
intractable. They wanted to fight to the bitter end.

... The Japanese rejected it, complaining that no provision had been
made to insure the protection of Emperor Hirohito, whom they believed to
be a god.


Hmmph. You really swallow the whole package, don't you Max?

No more than you swallow what you choose to believe. Which, incidentally,
is generally liberal revisionist history. Neither you nor I were alive
then, so we must depend upon others for the information. Who is correct?
We may never know.

The Japanese revered the Emperor, in the same way that many in the U.S.
revere President Bush. However nobody seriously thought he was a god.

My statement was probably not quite correct. They believed Hirohito to be
"like a god." They believed he had to be protected at ANY cost.

Bear in mind also that the military junta in charge of Japan used
reverence for the Emperor as a political tool, and juiced it all they
could.

In short, lots of error and wishful thinking on both sides. No decision,
next inning please.

Jesus, Doug, no war is perfect in its planning and execution. Errors are
made on both sides constantly. And the variables are infinite. The side
that makes the fewer errors generally wins. I personally believe the US and
the Allied forces were on the right side, and Japan was on the wrong side.
But I don't care to get into a philosophical argument over this point. My
contention stands: Japan deserved what it got. Most recently the prime
minister of Japan apologized for his country's aggression toward the US at
Pearl Harbor. I accept his apology, but make no apology for dropping two
nukes on his homeland.

Max