Twilight of the Bomb 332
merbs writes: On the 70th anniversary of the first nuclear bomb, Motherboard's Brian Merchant toured its crater with one of the last living Manhattan Project scientists. Here's the inside story of the road to the bomb, with the 90-year-old Murray Peshkin—the youngest man to work on the Project that built the bomb, and the first to set foot in its crater. From the story: "There are still nine nuclear nations that, between them, have stockpiled 16,300 weapons. And this network of decades-old nuclear armaments, some of which are still aimed at various strategic choke points around the globe, leaves civilizational scale death-becoming a technical possibility. Before all that, though, the atom bomb was one of the most successful science experiments of all time. It was the product of billions of dollars in government spending, hundreds of the world’s top scientists working in concert, in secret, in a city built from scratch in the desert, and a bygone patriotism united by common, Manichean cause: stop Hitler, defeat the Japanese."
It is what it is (Score:5, Interesting)
The United States had a million Purple Hearts manufactured to award to the soldiers expected to be killed or wounded in action in the invasion of Japan. They're still using that stock today, after Korea, after Vietnam after Grenada, after Panama, after Afghanistan, after Iraq.
Even at the highest estimated death toll, less than a quarter of the number of people died due to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as would have been killed or wounded on just the American side of a full invasion of Japan.
Murray Peshkin does not have to take pride in his work, but he should not feel that he is party to a war crime either.
Re:It is what it is (Score:5, Insightful)
Murray Peshkin does not have to take pride in his work, but he should not feel that he is party to a war crime either
Lets not be deluded. Killing 80 000 civilians in one go (and many many more because in the aftermath of the bomb ) is a war crime. Curtis LeMay was man enough to recognise that strategic bombing, that is the indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets to break the will of the enemy was a war crime. And he would have ended as a criminal had he not been on the victorious side. History and law is written by the victors always. And many times this skews the moral analysis of the events.
Re:It is what it is (Score:4, Insightful)
Lets not be deluded. Killing 80 000 civilians in one go (and many many more because in the aftermath of the bomb ) is a war crime.
It is only a crime if you lose...
No, that isn't sarcasm... it is the truth... what is a "crime" is determined by the winner...
There are really no rules in war, either you win, in which case anything you did is ok, or you lose, in which case it doesn't matter how nice you were about it...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
That isn't so much sarcasm as it is simply wrong. What constitutes a war crime is determined by treaty and the customary laws of war. Threat of retaliation is a recognized means of encouraging compliance with the law of war by the enemy. The US has prosecuted its own service members for war crimes as well as war criminals from among the enemy.
Re:It is what it is (Score:4, Insightful)
Threat of retaliation is a recognized means of encouraging compliance with the law of war by the enemy.
The enemy can't retaliate if they lose, now can they?
I'm quite sure some people in Japan consider the fire bombing of Tokyo a war crime, but they haven't been able to do anything about it, now have they?
I don't say that casually... we won, they lost... we executed many of their officers for various war crimes... yes, we did a few of ours as well, but no one major... a few token gestures to get people to say what you said...
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It took two nuclear weapons to convince Japan to surrender. This idea that it was some sort of victim is revisionism pure and simple.
Re:It is what it is (Score:5, Insightful)
There was a belief though that the US only had the resources for a single bomb. The US expected an instant surrender, but it took time for the realization of what happened to sink in as much of the damage was similar to that of fire bombing and direct damage from the blast was not as large as damage from the ensuing fires. Ie, it looked like a repeat of the Tokyo attacks in some ways, which definitely cemented the view of the US as evil aggressors for targeting civilians directly.
Flip things around. If the Germans had gotten the bomb first and dropped one over the top of New York City would the US have surrendered?
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Flip things around. If the Germans had gotten the bomb first and dropped one over the top of New York City would the US have surrendered?
Probably not after the first one...
But after Boston was turned to slag, then yes, probably so...
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Flip things around. If the Germans had gotten the bomb first and dropped one over the top of New York City would the US have surrendered?
Probably not after the first one...
But after Boston was turned to slag, then yes, probably so...
Even then, I think it would be greatly dependant on the USA's ability to defend themselves. The Japanese were had no navy to speak of, were having trouble feeding their own people who were starving, and everybody saw immediate invasion by troops. A USA, at the height of it's industrial and military might, hit by a single nuke on NYC and even a second on Boston, would probably fight as such attacks, even if with an atomic bomb, probably would have been a hail mary attempt about as effective as the Battle of
Re:It is what it is (Score:5, Insightful)
It took two nuclear weapons to convince Japan to surrender.
No, it didn't. Japan was close to surrender anyway. The government felt that the situation was hopeless and a negotiated surrender would be the best option. The military was still holding out, but even they knew that there was little chance of reaching a stalemate by that point. Moves were afoot to negotiate with the US over terms, and of course the US knew that because some members of the Japanese government were talking to them to see what kind of deal might be possible.
Of course we can never know for sure if Japan would have surrendered without the bombs, but that in itself is a false dichotomy. A demonstration of the bomb, with Japanese military officials invited to see it, was considered by the US. It's hard to justify why that was not even tried first, before moving directly to the bombing of civilians.
The reason was simply that the US wanted to know the effects of atomic weapons on cities full of civilians, because it assumed that in the future other countries would also develop the bomb and might attack them with it. That's why they did two in quick succession, to test two different bomb designs. Again, if you disagree you have to justify the use of a second bomb only three days later, before the Japanese had time to really understand what had happened and make the political moves necessary to surrender.
Re:It is what it is (Score:5, Interesting)
As always the situation is never as simple as people like and hindsight is 20/20. The US was waging an incredibly bloody war against the Japanese and wanted it over. Fast, and while Japan was close to surrender, the military was still holding out, and that, after all is the important bit.They also had a new superweapon they wanted to test (though the practical effects were really no worse than the massed bomber raids). It was also clear that while the bomber raids were incredibly damaging, they didn't seem to induce surrender.
But, it's not just that.
They needed Japan to surrender RIGHT NOW, because their other allies, the Communists, were busy overrunning everything in their path, and the US government really did not want Japan to become a Communist sattelite state, so they needed immediate, unconditional surrender, so that it was done and dusted by the time the communist armies could arrive.
It was never as simple as just wanting tosee how good it was on civillian populations.
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A demonstration of the bomb, with Japanese military officials invited to see it, was considered by the US. It's hard to justify why that was not even tried first, before moving directly to the bombing of civilians.
Of course it is hard, because you weren't there, living through it at the time...
You're playing Monday morning quarterback, which is why the whole thing looks crazy to you 70 years later...
But if you bothered to learn your history you'd understand why it was used...
Re:It is what it is (Score:5, Interesting)
We're not talking about playing Monday Morning Quarterback. There's a ton of revisionist history that happened after the war trying to pretend that everyone was in agreement about using nuclear weapons on cities and that it would have prevented millions of deaths from a ground war in the home islands with Japan. But that's just not the reality. The US's military leaders themselves were split over the use of the bomb. Some were adamantly opposed to using it on cities - among them, they were split further into groups who wanted to use it only on enemy troops, and groups that wanted to only use it as a pre-arranged "this is what you've coming if you don't surrender" demonstration to back up the Potsdam declaration. Likewise, official military casualty estimates were all over the board - yes, they ranged upwards of a million or more, but also down to the tens of thousands. There were many who were convinced that Japan was just getting ready to surrender. Even among those who wanted to bomb Japanese cities there was sometimes expressed a fear that Japan was about to surrender, insomuch as they wanted to be able to get a final show of force in to put the US in a better negotiation position vs. the Soviets after the war.
After the war, the US launched the Strategic Bombing Survey to determine how effective the various tactics used in both theatres were at achieving their objectives - everything from attacks against oil infrastructure to the atomic bombs. It made use of vast numbers of interviews and the huge troves of documents captured after the war to be able to get a comprehensive view. The report indicated that the atomic bombs had no impact on the voting of Japan's war council - the division of votes between the hawks and doves remained exactly the same before and after the attacks. All that did change was that it pushed up the urgency in the emperor's schedule. Japan's war council had already agreed to surrender on June 26th, albeit with terms (although half of the council was already willing to accept unconditional surrender). The emperor prepared a mission involving his son to go out with instructions from the council to negotiate a conditional surrender, but was secretly instructed to accept unconditional surrender if it was the only option available. The mission was pushed back due to the Potsdam conference, which ultimately issued the Potsdam declaration on July 26. The emperor twice broke his customary silence with the War Council during this period, once before and once after the bombings, speaking in favor of accepting the Potsdam terms; it was becoming increasingly hard for the War Council to say no. It's important to remember what Japan had already lived through - the main reason for example that an atomic bomb wasn't used on Tokyo was because Tokyo was already a steaming mass of rubble (the bombing report actually refers to the possibility of a bomb being dropped "on the remains of Tokyo"). The bombing survey concluded, "It is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."
It's understandable that Americans would want to whitewash this history away, to feel that they had "no choice" but to willingly kill hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children by design. And the only way to argue that would be to argue that they saved far more people that they killed, and that everyone was in agreement that this brutality would be necessary. But this is unfortunately not reality. US leadership was highly, and often bitterly divided on the issue, and the US's own postwar study concluded that it was not necessary.
A curious sidenote raises a big question mark in the history books on how much Truman actually knew what he was signing onto. He repeatedly made statements to the effect of, and wrote in his diary, that while he felt the US should
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This all blows matters completely out of proportion. Today we're scared numb by nukes. Back then all this wringing of hands and pondering did not occur, because an atomic bomb to the governments of WWII was nothing but a bigger bomb.
And "hide the slaughter" of fewer people than the first bombing run on Tokyo killed? What on earth for? They were at war, and strategic bombing of civilians was considered a viable strategy. The US had already killed over 300 thousand Japanese civilians in the summer bombings.
Re:It is what it is (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem being that if the full extent of Japan's crimes in Asia before and during the war were known, people would be Sking why ten bombs weren't dropped.
So awful was Japan's reign over parts of East Asia that seventy years later, a Japanese political leader visiting Yasukuni Shrine can still cause anger and dismay in China and the Koreas.
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Welcome to Total War, which was largely invented by General Sherman in his March to the Sea, so everyone had lots of time to consider the costs of such a war. Japan spent the 1930s occupying large tracts of China, Korea and Southeast Asia. It enslaved populations, committed horrific atrocities, and then, made common cause with the Axis Powers, and then bombed Pearl Harbor, dragging the still neutral United States into the war and signing its death warrant.
Did Japanese civilians deserve the bombing campaigns
Re:It is what it is (Score:5, Informative)
The Japanese were NOT close to surrender. You know who was close to surrender? The same Emperor who allowed his troops to run wild, again and again, without restraining them. The surrender depended on HIM making a stand, after he had failed and failed again to do so. Even after the Japanese military itself had murdered leader after leader who took any kind of conciliatory position. It's bizarre how these people just show up with one thought: AMERIKKKA BAD and will not be dissuaded from this conclusion. Suddenly everyone's an expert historian. Funny these historians never seem to run across any contrary facts.
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Of course we can never know for sure if Japan would have surrendered without the bombs, but that in itself is a false dichotomy. A demonstration of the bomb, with Japanese military officials invited to see it, was considered by the US. It's hard to justify why that was not even tried first, before moving directly to the bombing of civilians.
If you only have one bomb, and you don't know if it's going to work the way you think it will, you don't put it in front of some leaders who are nigh-insane from a vastly different culture, and rely on logic and psychology to do your work for you.
The idea of a demonstration was a stupid one then, and is a stupid idea now.
To win a war, you have to remove the ability and will of the enemy to fight. The will of THIS enemy was creating kamikaze pilots, training civilians to fight to the death and sword wie
Re:It is what it is (Score:5, Interesting)
Only one bomb had been tested, and just because one implosion bomb carefully hand-built by top people exploded well (the estimates of the yield before Trinity varied wildly) didn't mean the next would.
Hiroshima contained the headquarters for the Army charged with the defense of the southern Home Island. It was a legitimate military target. (Under international law, it was the Japanese responsibility to remove military targets from civilian areas, not US responsibility to not bomb anywhere there were civilians.)
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Non-Military, are you sure?
Hiroshima:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
(During the Pacific War, Kure acted as Japan's largest single naval base and arsenal. Most of the city's industry and workforce supported the naval installations and associated support functions. In the later stages of the conflict Kure came under sustained aerial bombardment culminating in the Bombing of Kure in June and July 1945)
Nagasaki:
"During World War II, at the time of the nuclear attack on August 9, 1945, Nagasaki was an importan
Re:It is what it is (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course we can never know for sure if Japan would have surrendered without the bombs, but that in itself is a false dichotomy. A demonstration of the bomb, with Japanese military officials invited to see it, was considered by the US. It's hard to justify why that was not even tried first, before moving directly to the bombing of civilians.
Yes we can. The attempted coup by members of the military after it became known that the Emperor was contemplating surrender after the bombs were dropped shows that there were those perfectly willing to continue fighting even though there was no hope of defeat. The fact that you had Japanese soldiers walking out of jungles 10, 20, 40 years after the war; the countless islands where, out of 15000-20000 defenders you had survivors numbering less than 100; when Japanese soldiers would clutch primed grenades to head or chest sitting next to a loaded rifle or placing the muzzle of their rifle into their mouths at the first sight of a US Marine rather than risk a dishonorable surrender gives argument to the fact that plenty of Japanese would have willingly continued to fight, with many more following them along the path to death and destruction.
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The military was still holding out, but even they knew that there was little chance of reaching a stalemate by that point.
Demonstrably untrue. While you are correct that the civilian members of the Japanese government had realized that the game was up, the military (which was dominated by nationalist hard-liners and junior officers besotted with banzai spirit) continued to actually welcome the idea of a US invasion. They believed the exact same thing they had believed before which made the battles for Iwo Jima and Okinawa so bloody: their best option was to make any US gains so expensive in blood and treasure that a negotiated
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It took two nuclear weapons to convince Japan to surrender.
False. Japan had already offered to surrender before the bombs were dropped, using the Soviet Union as an intermediary [wikipedia.org], on basically the same terms that were eventually adopted.
What if WW2 had turned out differently, and Germany developed the bomb first? By your logic, the Nazis would have been perfectly justified to begin obliterating American cities, and killing millions of American civilians, since nothing else would have convinced America to surrender. So they would have had no choice, and been moral
Re:It is what it is (Score:4, Insightful)
By your logic, the Nazis would have been perfectly justified to begin obliterating American cities
What? How would they have been justified? They were the aggressors, just like Japan. We were justified in taking actions to STOP the aggression of those two countries. Careful, your moral relativism is showing. How do you not walk in front of traffic with your moral compass twirling around like that?
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Aggressors. Oh god. That was funny.
You're right. Germany's rolling over Poland, or Japan's rape-fest through Asia - that was just friendly foreign relations banter. You're so wise!
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You may recall that it was the civilized world that would have needed to retaliate against Imperial Japan.
The question isn't what some random people in Japan consider to be a war crime, the question is what is the law, and was it violated? If it was violated, were there mitigating circumstances?
How many Rapes of Nanking did the Allies commit? How many Unit 731s did the Allies have that were experimenting on prisoners? Where were the extermination camps of the Allied powers? The Allies had fewer people d
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The Allies had fewer people deserving punishment because they weren't engaging in the sort of wholesale barbarism that were part of the Aixs nation's practices.
Perhaps, but we still sentenced people to prison for doing the exact same thing that we did.
Karl DÃnitz was sent to prison for sinking allied ships without warning, yet even at his trial, Admiral Chester Nimitz, wartime commander-in-chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, stated the U.S. Navy had waged unrestricted submarine warfare in the Pacific from the day the U.S. entered the war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
So we sent someone to prison for 10 years for doing the exact same thing that we were doing.
W
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The question isn't what some random people in Japan consider to be a war crime, the question is what is the law, and was it violated? If it was violated, were there mitigating circumstances?
At this level, what is "the law" doesn't seem to amount to a whole lot...
Look at modern times... Between the NSA spying on our allies (Germany for example) and spying on our own citizens, it doesn't appear that modern governments care too much about this either...
How about Bashar al-Assad of Syria? The evidence is amazingly clear that he used chemical weapons against civilians, crossing what Obama called "a clear redline". Yet what has anyone really done about it?
Nothing... or nothing that has had any r
Re:It is what it is (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It is what it is (Score:5, Insightful)
the firebombing of Dresden and other European cities and the nukes on Japan were truly barbaric acts, purposefully designed to kill large numbers of civilians, each of these events slaughtered hundreds of thousands of civilians in a very short time.
Perhaps, but you weren't fighting in 1941... you didn't see and experience Germany on the rise, sweeping over most of Europe, seemingly unstoppable...
The West at that time was quite frightened of Germany and was willing to do whatever it took to stop them, including firebombing cities.
Even in 1944 when it appeared we were winning, there were small signs that Germany might have an edge and make a comeback... The V1 and V2, the ME-262, the ME-163, and other weapons that were way beyond anything we had.
It is so easy, in 2015, to judge what was done 70 year ago, but since you didn't live through it, you really have no idea what it was like... My Grandfather fought for Canada in WWII and he has shared many stories with me, and I've talked to other vets over the years who also served... their viewpoint is worth far more than your Monday Morning Quarterback take on it...
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The Soviet Union routinely engaged in rape, burning and pillaging during WWII. They also had Unit 731 equivalents. And they were with the Allies. Thus, the answer is: plenty of them.
The Allied engaged in exactly the same sort of wholesale barbarism as the Axis did, and on about the same scale. The difference is, the Allied won. That is why they are today called "the civilized world" even though there was no appreciable difference in conduct at the time.
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> The enemy can't retaliate if they lose, now can they?
In many cases, they can. This what kept poison gas from being used in WW2 - both sides had it (or could easily make it), but chose not to as it would break the "gentlemans agreement" which is the law of war, and encourage the other side to do the same.
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Chemical weapons were used by Japan... Germany didn't use them for a simple reason... Hitler had been subject to a Mustard Gas attack in WWI and had been temporary blinded. So he knew the effects first hand and how much trouble they were.
He also knew how easy it was for your own chemical weapons to drift with the wind right back onto you.
With the speed of blitzkrieg, there really wasn't a need for them, Panzars could do the job more effectively.
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In a sense, the long view would say that their rise is a testimate to our way of life, that we converted them to the Western worldview and in return that shows that we're right and the communist and fascist ways are wrong.
Sort of ... W. Edwards Deming wrote a couple books on this subject -- Japanese companies adopted the principles that he (an American) brought to them, and went from being synonymous with poor quality to the opposite. In the meantime, American companies pretty much ignored what he had to say.
So they were definitely converted, but you could say there were two opposing 'Western' worldviews on this. Which is the 'real' one, I can't say.
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You've heard about The Hague Invasion Act?
The US has prosecuted its own service members
In general, you have to commit some pretty barbaric atrocities above and beyond the normal scope of the term "war crime" to receive more than a slap on the wrist from your own country. The US is no exception.
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In general, you have to commit some pretty barbaric atrocities above and beyond the normal scope of the term "war crime" to receive more than a slap on the wrist from your own country. The US is no exception.
Yep, this is true of just about every nation...
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Yes, but the very young will not understand.
Because we won the war, our children now have the luxury to question it.
It is testament to how successful we were, so just sit back and smile at the children's comments and raise a silent toast to those who didn't make it.
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Killing civilians in a conflict is abominable whether it be the carpet (or atomic) bombing of cities (Nagasaki, London, Dresden, etc) or herding people into concentration camps and gassing them.
Sure, the winners get a "pass" on their war crime atrocities as they write the history books but it does not make it right or something worth boasting about.
Re: It is what it is (Score:4, Insightful)
You can even be oblivious to what I think, but you cannot do anything about it...
You're quite right, there are plenty of people who believe in rainbows and unicorns in this world... I can't do anything about that either...
People say two bombs were necessary to stop the war... Really? How could Japan possibly surrender with just one bomb if they had no time to think and blam! ...there comes the second one.
That reply indicates that you actually don't know what you're talking about. You of course will dismiss me and claim that you do, but that doesn't make it so.
If you think this is just "dreaming", maybe you forgot your obligation to pass this onto the next generations. That sucks...
Yes, it sucks that you're judging actions taken 70 years ago with your limited viewpoint in 2015, when you weren't there and don't know what happened.
It is a shame that so many people like you exist in the world, humanity has little future when people like you learn nothing from history except what didn't happen other than what you imagine.
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Killing 80 000 civilians in one go (and many many more because in the aftermath of the bomb ) is a war crime.
To follow up on this point... lets say, for the sake of discussion, that we all agree that it is a crime...
Ok, fair enough... all that means is that you don't do it... unless you really, really have to...
The ends do not justify the means, the vast majority of the time... but sometimes, in rare cases, they do... when anything becomes acceptable, when you must win...
In WWII, that was one of those times... we had to win that war, at any cost... which is why we carpet bombed cites. The nukes were just a
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> Feynman, who worked on the Bomb, suffered psychological problems
He was a genius, I don't consider he had "psychological problems". He just understood the reality that some fools don't want to see even now. And even more, if you took American folks from 1900, they too would have problems.
My consolation is that we didn't really knew what we were doing...
Re:It is what it is (Score:4, Insightful)
Feynman, who worked on the Bomb, suffered psychological problems after the bomb was dropped
I don't doubt it, I would too...
If I was responsible for that, I think it would haunt me for the rest of my days...
Sometimes you have to do things that are terrible, that will break you as a person... and you have to do them anyway...
---
Ok, it is fiction, but it is a good example of the issue and it is what Star Trek was famous for before it went off the rails...
"In the Pale Moonlight"
With mounting losses in the Federation-Dominion war, and the specter of defeat, Captain Sisko enlists Garak's help to "persuade" the Romulans to join the Federation/Klingon alliance to win the war. Sisko unwittingly learns that to save the Federation, he may have to sell his soul and the values Starfleet stands for.
A few choice quotes:
"My father used to say that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. I laid the first stone right there. I'd committed myself. I'd pay any price, go to any lengths, because my cause was righteous. My... intentions were good. In the beginning, that seemed like enough."
"That was my first moment of real doubt, when I started to wonder if the whole thing was a mistake. So I went back to my office. And there was a new casualty list waiting for me. People are dying out there every day! Entire worlds are struggling for their freedom! And here I am still worrying about the finer points of morality! No, I had to keep my eye on the ball! Winning the war, stopping the bloodshed, those were the priorities! So I pushed on. And every time another doubt appeared before me, I just found another way to shove it aside."
"At oh-eight-hundred hours, station time... the Romulan Empire formally declared war against the Dominion. They've already struck fifteen bases along the Cardassian border. So, this is a huge victory for the good guys! This may even be the turning point of the entire war! There's even a "Welcome to the Fight" party tonight in the wardroom!... So... I lied. I cheated. I bribed men to cover up the crimes of other men. I am an accessory to murder. But most damning of all... I think I can live with it... And if I had to do it all over again... I would. Garak was right about one thing â" a guilty conscience is a small price to pay for the safety of the Alpha Quadrant. So I will learn to live with it...Because I can live with it...I can live with it. Computer â" erase that entire personal log."
---
What Ben Sisco did was "illegal, against the law, and wrong". But in all likelihood, there wouldn't have been a Federation left to debate it had he not.
That is a moral argument to be sure, which was the point of the show, to ask the question of the viewer, "are there times when the ends justify the means, when any price is acceptable to obtain the outcome desired?" Is the freedom and safety of a trillion people worth that?
You might say no, and that is fine, it is your right to believe and feel that way... but I think you'll always find someone who feels that the answer is yes, and because of that, we must and will always have nuclear weapons in this world.
And to be honest, I find that a little sad, because I would love nothing more than to move on from war and the pointless killing of our fellow humans... it is such a waste...
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The 80K number would be dwarfed by the civilian deaths as the result of a full scale invasion of Japan.
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The comparison with a full scale invasion of Japan is a false dichotomy.
Why, because you'd like to pretend that the countless examples of Japan's willingness to put its own people through the meat grinder of conventional war, including shrugging off the fiery destruction of Tokyo, wasn't real? Are you so anxious to lazily do your whole time-traveling armchair conflict resolution that your urge to re-imagine the actual history of the conflict and Japan's demonstrated behavior is strong enough to make you look past how ridiculous you sound? Apparently.
Re:It is what it is (Score:4, Informative)
Killing 80 000 civilians in one go (and many many more because in the aftermath of the bomb ) is a war crime
Not necessarily. Consider the situation that existed during WWII. The entire populations and economies of the belligerent nations were fully mobilized in service of the war effort. This full mobilization and total commitment gave rise to the term "Total War". In such cases every person, whether wearing the uniform and fighting, or working to produce war materials or otherwise assisting the war effort is arguably a legitimate target. During WWII this would have included virtually the entire adult population of every nation fighting. Strategic bombing was not a precisely targeted instrument, but as long as the focus of the bombing raids wasn't the preschool outside of town it was arguably legitimate.
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Add in the fire bombing of Tokyo and Dresden. As far as the bomb went, I think most of the casualties were caused by the fires than by the blast, because a lot of fires were ignited and then a huge wind came up because of the bomb to spread it further. Radiation sickness followed later.
A lot of the myth about the bomb too came from the fires. The scars that many survivors had were from burns, their children don't have inherited genetic flaws from the bomb (though it is an ongoing prejudice in a country t
Stunning Drop-Off in War Deaths Since (Score:5, Interesting)
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War is fun [youtube.com] (especially for those not actually fighting)
False dichotomy of the guilty conscience (Score:4, Insightful)
Give me a fucking break. There more than two options on the table. For example, they considered an option to invite Axis observers to watch as little boy was harmlessly detonated in the desert, but they turned it down because they were eager to see what kind of damage the thing would do in the real world. I'm not out to vilify the USA here--the rules of war were different back then and no one hands were clean (certainly not the Japanese.) The atomic bombs weren't the worse thing that happened in the war, and on the whole I think we behaved better than the Axis powers. And our ultimate aims were obviously much more noble.
But this brainlessly patriotic excuse is just so fucking pathetic. I could grant all of the premises, including the false dichotomy. So, for the sake of argument, I concede Hiroshima. And now... what of Nagasaki? Three fucking days later? Because their initial response to Hiroshima was almost an unconditional surrender but there was some question marks about the dispensation of their emperor, that justified another nuke?
It was wrong. Get over it. Jefferson was a great president even if he fucked up on slavery. And WWII was a good war even if we were clearly, at times, more ruthless than we had to be. But 70+ years later, this intellectual dishonesty is pointless and downright embarrassing--no different than the stubborn Japanese refusals to fully acknowledge their atrocities in China.
Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience (Score:4, Informative)
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And were the Japanese actively subjugating and butchering Chinese at that point in time, or were they more focused on fighting the Russians and/or retreating back to Japan? (This is a genuine question; it's not an area of WWII history I'm familiar with.)
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But the false dichotomy is still there (Score:5, Interesting)
Think about it for five seconds and see if you can come up with an alternative that doesn't vaporize 40,000 civilians. Here's one: let's say we drop the second bomb on top of Mount Fuji. Just to bluff and say "hey look, we've got so many of these damn things we can waste 'em, just to give you a show." I do believe that would have made our point pretty clear. Nuking another major civilian population 3 days later is simply not necessary by any stretch of the imagination, even if we concede all kinds of stuff up front.
(I hope I don't have to reiterate disclaimers into every post: yes, I understand it was a different time with different rules and a far different enemy than anything we've faced recently. The point isn't to beat ourselves up about it; the point is simply to have the moral and mental clarity to call a spade a spade.)
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We finished the fight with Germany and could focus everything on Japan. We could have blockaded them, which would have caused a lot of deaths as well but possibly not as many.
There were a couple of things going on. First, the US wanted unconditional surrender, not just surrender. We wanted revenge for daring to attack first. Second, the US wanted to get the war out of the way in order to deal with problem of the USSR.
Nagasaki had fewer casualties, mostly because of hills surrounding the epicenter that s
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The allies wanted unconditional surrender because the history in the 20th century of conditional surrenders with aggressive nations (see WWI and Germany) had proven to be such catastrophic failures. There was no way on earth the same mistake was going to be made again.
It had nothing to do with wanting revenge, it was making sure that they understood they had been utterly defeated and that to ever risk it again would be stupid beyond belief.
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Thanks for saying that. This is worth a read: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/worl... [bbc.co.uk]
It's interesting to note that the classic justification for the bombs - that it saved American lives - only came long after they had been dropped.
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It was wrong. Get over it.
You're welcome to your opinion... That doesn't make you right...
So, for the sake of argument, I concede Hiroshima. And now... what of Nagasaki? Three fucking days later?
You seem to be under the impression that everyone knew in 1945 what a nuclear bomb was.
We bombed a city, then bombed another one... a nuke from a single plane or a hundred thousand bombs from a thousand bombers, what's the difference?
And WWII was a good war even if we were clearly, at times, more ruthless than we had to be.
And that attitude is why we lost in Vietnam... we weren't ruthless ENOUGH...
War is not a vocation for the weak at heart, which you appear to be... You hit the enemy with everything, 100% of the available force,
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And that attitude is why we lost in Vietnam... we weren't ruthless ENOUGH...
Yes, in the sense that you could have nuked the whole country into oblivion, I suppose you're right. The point is, you were supposed to be saving the country, and in the end enough of them chose communism that you would have had to kill most of the population to "win".
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There were more options that rarely get mention. There were options of agreeing on a less favorable peace agreement with Japan. In the end the reasoning remains that the US conquered Japan because it could. And that it feels justified because atomic bombs made it cheaper. What would the US have done had they had less power advantage? It has been shown since that the atomic bombs didn't even have the time to have a large influence on Japanese decision making and that it was the russian invasion that made the
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The decision was taken by the leaders in WWII than unlike in WWI the enemy (aka Nazi's and Japan) had to be utterly defeated. There was going to be no repeat of what I call the "Pershing Effect" that is unless they are utterly defeated they don't believe they really lost and you end up doing it all over again.
History had proved with Germany that a ceasefire and negotiated peace had been the biggest mistake of the 20th Century costing tens of millions of lives. They where not going to make that mistake again
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Everyone is forgetting the Japanese were ready to surrender just not unconditionally. That was the sticking point. They had a few demands like leaving the emporer in place, which we did anyway.
Also we should't forget it was Lincoln that ended the centuries long tradition of only targeting military.
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WWII was a good war even if we were clearly, at times, more ruthless than we had to be.
Who told you that? WWII happened due to an economic climate deliberately created in the aftermath of WWI, and the USA deliberately entered the war late in spite of having been informed about the holocaust because it was economically prudent; we just waited for everyone else to get stomped, and we became the industrial giants. There was nothing "good" about WWII, or our involvement therein, the timing of which was chosen to maximize profit. The plan would have worked even better sans Pearl Harbor, which make
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The US wanted an unconditional surrender, true.. However the Japanese military was also divided about whether or not there were more bombs available, or whether things were hopeless, and of course there are always the die-hard generals on any side.
We could have demonstrated and then sued for peace negotiations. It would be like saying that war is expensive and we have more important things to do, so let's just stop fighting the Taliban and pull out of Iraq; theoretically possible but politically very diff
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Incorrect. They did 'quit'. Immediately.
You need to go back to school and learn some history, that isn't what happened at all.
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Vaporizing 40,000+ civilians is not a morally acceptable way to pressure someone re: terms of surrender. If you believe that nuking a highly populated area three days
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Vaporizing 40,000+ civilians is not a morally acceptable way to pressure someone re: terms of surrender.
"Morals" is just another word for "opinion"...
In fact, nuking another city is actually an excellent way to pressure someone to surrender on your terms...
If you believe that nuking a highly populated area three days later was the only choice we had... you are not thinking very hard.
And if you think anyone on the American side gave much of a damm about the Japs in Aug 1945, then YOU aren't thinking very hard...
Go read up on Iwo Jima:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Of the 21,000 Japanese soldiers on Iwo Jima at the beginning of the battle, only 216 were taken prisoner, some of whom were captured because they had been knocked unconsciou
wikipedia seems incomplete on this point (Score:2)
I don't have the sources in front of me, but there were multiple Japanese attempts at surrender negotiations before the second bomb was dropped. As I recall, the later ones dropped all of the other conditions--they only wanted their emperor preserved.
But I don't have the primary sources handy so--for the sake of argument--let me just concede that as well. Let's say Japan wanted territorial integrity and a bunch of ot
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Of course it wasn't the only way. There were lots of ways available. Like killing a lot more people than the atomic bombs did by firebombing Tokyo some more.
In WWII, and for quite a few years afterwards, nuclear weapons were nothing but bigger bombs. It's only in hindsight that they show up as the monstrous weapons they are. The decision to bomb Nagasaki was no different than the decision to send bombers over the Ruhr area on the night of July 22 1943.
All this is completely forgotten today. We (and by we I
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Japan's surrender was by no means a foregone conclusion at the time.
Are you suggesting that unless the conclusion is guaranteed it justifies ignoring all the other options that would have killed far fewer people?
As for your example of the last soldier fighting on until 1974, that was very much a unique situation. If it were otherwise then why didn't more of the Japanese military carry on even after surrendering? It was a communication problem, it doesn't justify the use of atomic weapons.
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The Allies did not know how big or small a role the Emperor had played with regard to Japan's aggression. That one condition was not one that would have ever been granted.
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Let me say that again, the second bomb came just seventy-two hours later. In the age before satellites or the internet.
74 hours actually.
Do you think the Japanese government had any idea what the casualty count was?
Yes. They knew that within a few hours.
At that point in time, do you think that the majority of officers in their military and advisers to the emperor even fully appreciated what an atomic bomb was?
Yes. Japan had its own nuclear program. They knew very well what an atomic bomb was.
And they didn't care. It was not Hiroshima nor Nagasaki that made them surrender. In the summer of 1945 over 300000 Japanese were killed. The atomic bombings were just added on the pile. They were just bigger bombs.
For some background on this, since you take your arguments from wikipedia (as if they get anything about politics right), look here:
http://foreignpolicy.com [foreignpolicy.com]
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The large numbers soldiers that froze to death in Korea not long after due to a failure to supply equipment demonstrate that the reality is far, far less than the omnipotence suggested.
The death toll may well have been enormous, especially if it ended up with US vs USSR squabbles on Japanese soil as was expected by some, but ultimately we can only really guess today based on far more information that was available at the time. They just did no
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The United States is very good at estimating military casualties. It's necessary when war is waged on a huge scale, and good numbers are needed if the war effort is to be as efficient as possible.
Yeah, right up until it's time to admit how many people we killed when we invade someplace, like the middle east. Then suddenly we have no idea what the casualty numbers are.
Murray Peshkin does not have to take pride in his work, but he should not feel that he is party to a war crime either.
Bullshit. Responsibility is everywhere. Too bad our society doesn't expect people to actually take it.
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The end does not justify the means.
In war it does... You would have prefered a much higher body? more suffering? more destruction? If you were in a troop transport on the way to execute Operation Olympic you might have thought otherwise. If you were in the way of Japanese conquest where over 100000 noncombatants were killed per month (reference Gideon Rose) you might have thought otherwise. If you were a Japanese peace advocate who was under the constant threat of assassination you would have thought otherwise. The Japanese peace advocates
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There is an illusion today among younger people... (Score:5, Insightful)
There is an illusion today among younger people that somehow our world isn't full of evil people, that another Hitler or Stalin won't emerge, that world peace is at hand and that only small regional conflicts far away will happen in the future.
WWI was supposed to be "the war to end all wars", and it was horribly out done by WWII just 20 years later. We've had, more or less, 70 years of world peace since then, depending on how you look at it (there were a whole lot of regional wars during that time).
I don't like nuclear weapons, I hate them, they are horrible things that I wish had no use. But if wishes were fishes we'd all eat for free, and wishing for them to all go away misses the point. If just one evil power has them, then we all need them, or rather, a few reasonable and responsible powers need them.
Oh sure, the total number might go down, we might get down to 1,000 each for Russia and the US, maybe 300 for UK and France, etc. But we just aren't going to zero. The genie is out of the bottle and you can't invent it.
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As horrible as the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were they have also served as severe deterrents against nuclear usage in war since.
Unfortunately they won't deter true terrorists that are willing to die for their cause. I can imagine that a container can get loaded with a nuke and then delivered to the port of Los Angeles, New York or Amsterdam where it will go off.
Re:There is an illusion today among younger people (Score:4, Interesting)
There is an illusion today among younger people that somehow our world isn't full of evil people,
Basically... yes.
This is one of the things I don't like about the anti-nuclear parties in the UK, like the greens. They say they'll scrap the deterrent and then go on a campaign worldwide telling people how they don't need nuclear weapons. Well, I'm sure Putin will see the error of his ways when being educated by the greens, and won't at all be rubbing his hands with glee about the weakening defensive capabilities of NATO.
The genie is out of the bottle and you can't invent it.
(uninvent?)... but again yes.
Not only that, but unlike in fantasy books where we might like to read about the long lost skills of the ancients, that isn't happening. Technology is advancing at a fearsome pace, and there are plenty of "dual use" technologies escpecially when it comes to things like medical isotopes.
Laser isotope separation is a thing, and a very useful one, but also promises to be able to separate fissile isotopes with vastly greater efficiency than gas centrifuges. The basic tech is based on precision lasers (another immensely useful tech) and high speed electronics, and those are only going to get better and better.
My ancient broken eeepc also has more computing power than the Americans could ever have dreamed of while they were creating the bomb originally and simulating things. Not to mention that algorithms originally developed to simulate such things have been and continue to be developed to a vastly more advanced state because they're useful for all sorts of things, for example machine learning, which has mathematical properties very similar to many physical systems.
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You plan to launch these Nuclear Weapons at whom exactly? Terrorists don't have a home and I assure you, on a long enough time-line, Terrorists will get their hands on something Nuclear and detonate it.
That Country will be looking for someone to blame.
As for World Wars, we should be looking at China. I'd place every Penny I own that China would be the instigator for that War.
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There is an illusion today among younger people that somehow our world isn't full of evil people
In an age where you can watch people being beheaded or tortured to death by ISIL on your phone, I find this hard to believe.
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Endless war is the new normal, and you didn't even notice.
No, it's the OLD (and continuing) normal. Squabbles over borders, religion, resources and even personality cults have been ongoing, pretty much without interruption, throughout all of human history. The huge eruptions of the "world" wars were the aberrations. Things like (for a current example) the ongoing slaughter over Islamic culture clash (whether with IEDs in the Middle East or machetes in some contested village in Africa) have always been the norm. Things like Putin rolling forces into Ukraine while
Manichean? (Score:2)
Manicheans believe(d) in ethical dualism, but not all "good-vs-evil" ventures are Manichean, or even Zoroasterian.
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I like fresh ground Zoroasterian coffee, fresh as the morning due.
A most successful betrayal (Score:5, Informative)
Japan was defeated, seeking a way to surrender into 1945 and the US had a 2 versions of a new weapon to test on undamaged, populated cities.
The "experiment" part was to find two cities that still remained intact in Japan.
The US "patriotism" was a cover to stop a re emerging France and the helpful UK from placing conditions or laws on US mil and civilian nuclear expansion after 1945.
The US did not want to have to share any control with the UK or be forced to pay some France patent for early nuclear work.
The UK wanted to offer a lot of tech to the US but for that early deal wanted equal say in nuclear use, policy and profits after the war.
The only secret was how the UK was cut of out late design work and had to race to secure its own methods, experts and designs before the US removed UK top staffs clearances.
Thankfully the UK had Frederick Lindemann, 1st Viscount Cherwell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] who was able to secure the UK manufacture, design and raw materials away from the US just in time.
The UK had its MAUD Committee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] later used the Tube Alloys codename https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] and with Canadian help was able to break free of US nuclear restrictions.
Churchill's Bomb: A Hidden History of Science, War and Politics (Friday 20 September 2013)
http://www.theguardian.com/boo... [theguardian.com]
The main lesson the UK, Canada, Australia and France learned was that the US would take their early nuclear work and ideas but it was a one way deal.
We need more Manhattan projects (Score:4, Insightful)
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The nuclear bomb cost about $25billion (inflation adjusted) dollars.
You can treble that as a percentage of GDP. And it was a big risk at a time of war, which did not pay off.
In hindsight, most of the money could have better been spent on conventional armaments. By the time it was ready, Germany had surrendered and Japan was defeated. Hiroshima could have been levelled by conventional weapons, like most other Japanese cities were. But by that time, Manhattan was a sunk cost.
Even if it only shortened the war by a few weeks, that means many thousands of POW and civilian lives
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or food
Thatalready happened:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
and as a result the productivity of farming increased massively.
MacArthur, Nimitz, Eisenhower, etc All Opposed (Score:5, Informative)
The list of military leaders [colorado.edu] who thought the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was unnecessary if not outright barbaric is quite long.
Some choice quotes from that link which itself is a summary of a much more thorough analysis.
"[T]he use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender..."
-- Admiral William D. Leahy, the President's Chief of Staff
"The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in the defeat of Japan..."
-- Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet
"I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives..."
--- President Dwight D. Eisenhower (then General Eisenhower)
"The war might have ended weeks earlier, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor."
-- General Douglas MacArthur
5/10 with rice (Score:2)
I like how the submitter tries to sound intellectual by using terms like "Manichean" despite writing garbled phrases like "leaves civilizational scale death-becoming a technical possibility."
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Japan was trying to surrender. It just wasn't willing to surrender unconditionally, which is what the US government demanded.
But, in general, I agree. Nuclear weapons have probably been the best thing ever invented for bringing relative peace to the world. Of course, one day, they'll be used again and millions will die, but, until then, they've probably been more beneficial than harmful.
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Every time they get used, there's even a chance of them bringing absolute peace to the world, for a few million years at least.
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Every time they get used, there's even a chance of them bringing absolute peace to the world, for a few million years at least.
Cute, and lots of young people have been brought up to think that, but it isn't true.
All the nukes of the world wouldn't wipe us out, the idea that we can destroy the world several times over is just propaganda.
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You can't hide nuclear tests all that well. Where and when should this test have taken place?
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You can't hide nuclear tests all that well. Where and when should this test have taken place?
In 2015, you're right...
In 1945, you're wrong...
However, the OP is mistaken, Germany was on their way to developing a nuke, but frankly were 2-3 years away. Japan wasn't even close and frankly wasn't even sure what it was when it hit them.
Seismographs. (Score:2)
They did have seismographs in 1945.
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Ukraine - inherited ~2500 nukes from the fall apart of USSR.
You might add that they never actually had command control over these nukes, i.e. at the time when they gave them up, they were just nuclear waste to Ukraine. And they were destroyed.
Treaty was violated in 2014 by russian invasion, [...]
Which invasion? If Russia were indeed to invade the Ukraine then it would take them probably no more than three days to finish the operation.
Ukraine is now being partitioned and the treaty patrons USA, UK, France, China do nothing.
Oh, the USA has done quite something [wsws.org], as we learnt from a leaked phone call [youtube.com].