• Addfwyn@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    Like the guy just sneaking in at the bottom there with “Actually, we needed to nuke more people”.

    I feel I should keep my anti-nuke rant on a clipboard at this point, but there’s no real evidence that the nuclear bombings did anything to inspire a Japanese surrender, they just killed people in largely civilian centers (as any valid military targets the US bombers could reach had already been bombed hundreds of times over).

    The first bomb landed well in advance of the supreme council meeting to discuss surrender, while they may have brought it up during discussions it was not the impetus for those meetings. Even factoring in communications were more limited than they are today, you don’t wait around days to have a meeting on something that supposedly single-handedly caused your surrender.

    Likewise, the second bomb landed AFTER they started the deliberations, so couldn’t have been an impetus towards surrender.

    What did happen immediately before Japan met to surrender was the USSR declaring war and moving into Manchuria. It’s just a better narrative for both the US and Japan to attribute it to American technology rather than the Soviets. Americans get to look like they ended the war decisvely and “saved lives” by avoiding an invasion, and more importantly for them get to avoid giving the soviets any credit. Japan get to deflect blame by attributing it to technology they couldn’t have hoped to compete with, as well as negotiate a continued imperial line.

    • albigu@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      You can always link that shaun 2 hour video on it, that’ll save you some time from arguing with wilfully ignorant people. It’s an alright video for his stuff and liberals only believe it if it is on “breadtube”.

    • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      as any valid military targets the US bombers could reach had already been bombed hundreds of times over

      Most civilian targets too. US actualy had problem in choosing targets for the bombs to make enough impact from the sheer devastation of nuclear bomb because most suitably large cities in Japan already were firebombed throughly.