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Seeing as how Roosevelt always intended to get into the war...this makes sense.

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So you had your history wrong but you're still right.

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I said the Manhattan Project started in 1942. That's correct. It's the Manhattan Project that produced the bomb. What they were researching beforehand really isn't relevant.

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Really? Roosevelt approving development of the bomb in oct 1941 isn't relevant?

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The whole point of this line of discussion is whether or not the bomb was made as a deterrent or made to be used.

The bomb was created in order to be used.

I don't think he has.


He and RA keep talking about secrecy. The problem is that scientists the world around knew what they were all working on.

The idea wasn't secret.

http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/ManhattanProject/OppyFarewell.shtml

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The whole point of this line of discussion is whether or not the bomb was made as a deterrent or made to be used.

The bomb was created in order to be used.

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At that time, the concept of a weapon as a deterrent was new. What? You got a new weapon? Ok that just means war will be nastier. But no, this was something different. Nukes are a game changer that no one realized until after Hiroshima AND Nagasaki. But after that the army was still planning on how to use nukes in battle:


But the true realization that nukes were a deterrent didn't happen I think until after the H-bomb.


p.s. use in war aside and strictly speaking of testing... these things really are beautiful aren't they?

"And there was finally, and I think rightly, the feeling that there was probably no place in the world where the development of atomic weapons would have a better chance of leading to a reasonable solution, and a smaller chance of leading to disaster, than within the United States. I believe all these things that people said are true, and I think I said them all myself at one time or another.

But when you come right down to it the reason that we did this job is because it was an organic necessity. If you are a scientist you cannot stop such a thing. If you are a scientist you believe that it is good to find out how the world works; that it is good to find out what the realities are; that it is good to turn over to mankind at large the greatest possible power to control the world and to deal with it according to its lights and its values."

The scientists behind this knew this was out there to be discovered. And they knew others were going to discover it.

They approached it from the perspective that they should know it and harness it. And they believed the best nation to have the knowledge first was the United States.

The concept of mutually assured destruction with the soviets may have not been fully formed until later. But the point of the project from the science perspective was to KNOW. They believed that was important because that was the way to control.

http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-japan-bomb-20150805-story.html#page=1

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The whole point of this line of discussion is whether or not the bomb was made as a deterrent or made to be used.

The bomb was created in order to be used.

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If you go back to the original article, I think RA pulled out the most important part already:

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Am I suggesting that the creation of the atomic bomb was wrong? I'm not suggesting, I'm saying it outright it was a sin! A grave sin. To create a device whose only purpose is to kill multitudes of people in a single instantand then to create ten thousand more!is unspeakably immoral. If one of the earliest revelations of God's will is, "thou shalt not kill," then the invention of bombs capable of killing a million at a time is to sin against what we've known ever since Moses came down from Mount Sinai.

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I think that his claim is that the creation of the bomb was immoral, regardless of intent or situation. I wonder how far Mr. Zahnd would take this; A gun exists to kill human beings. Are guns immoral?

A gun can be used for defense. Having a nuke as a deterrent can be used for defense. Actually using a nuke is immoral because it kills innocents in the process. I disagree that building a nuke is inherently immoral, but using one is.

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If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

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For the Rush reference.

I think silly to take something as big as the Manhattan Project, the events occurring globally at the time, the life and death decisions of nations the resulting change of the global landscape for decades (... centuries?), the change of the definition of war itself and boil it down to "did the scientists working on the bomb sin?" I'm not a history buff by any means but I think the history of WWII was fascinating. Pearl Harbor, the advance in aircraft, radar, D-Day, the fricken Manhattan Project, submarine warfare, tank warfare, genocide, Midway, Okinawa, cryptography, rockets, the global strategies, the sacrifices people made. Holy ****. I hope people get more out of history than did so & so sin.

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I think silly to take something as big as the Manhattan Project, the events occurring globally at the time, the life and death decisions of nations the resulting change of the global landscape for decades (... centuries?), the change of the definition of war itself and boil it down to "did the scientists working on the bomb sin?" I'm not a history buff by any means but I think the history of WWII was fascinating. Pearl Harbor, the advance in aircraft, radar, D-Day, the fricken Manhattan Project, submarine warfare, tank warfare, genocide, cryptography, rockets, the global strategies, the sacrifices people made. Holy ****. I hope people get more out of history than did so & so sin.

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It's not about the sin...it's about the 100s of thousands of civilians that were killed by the bomb. Not to mention the mass fire bombing of civilians prior.

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It's not about the sin...it's about the 100s of thousands of civilians that were killed by the bomb. Not to mention the mass fire bombing of civilians prior.

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How many civilians were killed in WWII?

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It's not about the sin...it's about the 100s of thousands of civilians that were killed by the bomb. Not to mention the mass fire bombing of civilians prior.

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How many civilians were killed in WWII?

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50 to 55 million

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It's not about the sin...it's about the 100s of thousands of civilians that were killed by the bomb. Not to mention the mass fire bombing of civilians prior.

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How many civilians were killed in WWII?

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50 to 55 million

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Why start the discussion with civilian killer #589?

Because its the most effective civilian killer.

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Because its the most effective civilian killer.

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Effective? Not really. $26 billion in today's dollars to kill about 200,000 people. That's about $13,000 per person. Shoving someone off a balcony is way cheaper. If you're looking for volume, 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis. I think they probably spent several orders of magnitude less per person.

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Because its the most effective civilian killer.

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Effective? Not really. $26 billion in today's dollars to kill about 200,000 people. That's about $13,000 per person. Shoving someone off a balcony is way cheaper. If you're looking for volume, 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis. I think they probably spent several orders of magnitude less per person.

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Please don't act retarded. There isnt a "Balcony Non-Proliferation Treaty" for a reason.

Genocide is frowned upon though

What if America bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki and killed 6 million Jews during WWII? Which sin would be the topic of this thread?

All of it is evil.

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/opinion/Exploding-the-American-myth-of-Hiroshima-30265990.html

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http://www.nationmultimedia.com/opinion/Exploding-the-American-myth-of-Hiroshima-30265990.html

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Why choose Nation Multimedia as your source of truth?

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Because its the most effective civilian killer.

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Hmm. "
"It was treated as just the latest in the firebombings of Japanese cities." Hasegawa, a professor at University of California at Santa Barbara, who speaks Russian and Japanese and who witnessed the firebombing of Tokyo as a child, lays out the timeline in his 2005 book, "Racing the Enemy".

The Japanese Supreme War Council did not convene in response to the Hiroshima bombing, but swung into immediate action on August 9 to consider surrender terms after "shock and crisis upon learning that Russia had declared war and invaded," Wilson explains."

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http://www.nationmultimedia.com/opinion/Exploding-the-American-myth-of-Hiroshima-30265990.html

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Why choose Nation Multimedia as your source of truth?

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It's a good article and the point of view in there isn't isolated.

The Japanese were more threatened by the soviets than they were another bomb.

1 bomb vs thousands of bombs....c'mon guys, stop being so dense.

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1 bomb vs thousands of bombs....c'mon guys, stop being so dense.

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Sounds like your issue is with Japan, not us.

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1 bomb vs thousands of bombs....c'mon guys, stop being so dense.

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It's pointless to continue. The cult of America brainwashes.

This thread? Or in general?

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It was unnecessary to invade Japan. As I pointed out earlier, a blockade would have been just as effective and cost significantly fewerror American and Japanese lives.

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Ok, let's take the blockade scenario. Here are the conditions in Japan at that time:

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In Tokyo, the largest metropolis, 65% of all residences were destroyed. In Osaka and Nagoya, the country's second and third largest cities, the figures were 57 and 89%. Five millions of Tokyo's seven million population had left the ruined city.

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Food shortages had begun to appear in some parts of the country even before Pearl Harbor. A majority of the Japanese already were malnourished at the time of surrender. In 1944, officials in Osaka prefecture estimated that 46% of all economic crimes in their jurisdiction involved food. Hunger was compounded by a disastrous harvest (1945 was the worst since 1910, a shortfall of almost 40% from normal yield)

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So now we add a blockade to that. How does that progress? How long and how many Japanese civilians die of disease and starvation before the Emperor gives up and surrenders?

The Japanese were worried about the soviets.

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It was unnecessary to invade Japan. As I pointed out earlier, a blockade would have been just as effective and cost significantly fewerror American and Japanese lives.

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Ok, let's take the blockade scenario. Here are the conditions in Japan at that time:

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In Tokyo, the largest metropolis, 65% of all residences were destroyed. In Osaka and Nagoya, the country's second and third largest cities, the figures were 57 and 89%. Five millions of Tokyo's seven million population had left the ruined city.

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Food shortages had begun to appear in some parts of the country even before Pearl Harbor. A majority of the Japanese already were malnourished at the time of surrender. In 1944, officials in Osaka prefecture estimated that 46% of all economic crimes in their jurisdiction involved food. Hunger was compounded by a disastrous harvest (1945 was the worst since 1910, a shortfall of almost 40% from normal yield)

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So now we add a blockade to that. How does that progress? How long and how many Japanese civilians die of disease and starvation before the Emperor gives up and surrenders?

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They had already been looking to surrender for 6 months prior.

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It was unnecessary to invade Japan. As I pointed out earlier, a blockade would have been just as effective and cost significantly fewerror American and Japanese lives.

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Ok, let's take the blockade scenario. Here are the conditions in Japan at that time:

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In Tokyo, the largest metropolis, 65% of all residences were destroyed. In Osaka and Nagoya, the country's second and third largest cities, the figures were 57 and 89%. Five millions of Tokyo's seven million population had left the ruined city.

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Food shortages had begun to appear in some parts of the country even before Pearl Harbor. A majority of the Japanese already were malnourished at the time of surrender. In 1944, officials in Osaka prefecture estimated that 46% of all economic crimes in their jurisdiction involved food. Hunger was compounded by a disastrous harvest (1945 was the worst since 1910, a shortfall of almost 40% from normal yield)

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So now we add a blockade to that. How does that progress? How long and how many Japanese civilians die of disease and starvation before the Emperor gives up and surrenders?

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They had already been looking to surrender for 6 months prior.

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I think it's a little more complicated than that.

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They had already been looking to surrender for 6 months prior.

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Source?

Sorry