Position:Home>History> Hiroshima or Auschwitz...help please?

1!. Hiroshima was, strictly speaking, not a military target!. The US had not firebombed it (as we had Tokyo, Kobe and other industrial cities) because it had a limited military and industrial presence!. And, to be brutally honest, the idea of something not being military had ceased to be a distinction in the war!. The US firebombing campaign earlier in the war against Japan killed more civilians than did the two atomic bombs!. The firebombing of Dresden was on a city full or refugees with little military significance!. The Germans and Japanese had certainly punished cities (through bombing or other tactics) that were not military in nature (German bombing of Rotterdam, Japanese rape of Nanking)!. That doesn't justify anything, it only indicates that the idea of "military" vs!. "civilian" as a target stopped being a distinction in the war!.

2!. Was the bomb necessary to end the war!? Effectively, yes!. The alternative was a land invasion!. Was Japan ready to surrender!? Anyone who argues they were is wrong!. Prior to dropping the atomic bomb, the US asked for Japan's surrender and they refused!. This was according to the agreement reached by the Allies at Potsdam (which included the Russians who some claim the Japanese wanted to surrender to)!. Then early August we asked for their surrender, they refused and we bombed Hiroshima!. We asked for them to surrender, they refused, the Russians invaded Manchuria and Sakhalin Island!. Still no surrender!. We bombed Nagasaki!. Still no surrender (we only had one more atomic bomb assembled and available for use)!. The emperor then personally intervened and told his cabinet it was time to end the war!. Militarists then attempted a coup to continue the war!.

Here is why use of the bomb was preferable to invasion:
--estimated 1 million US deaths for the land invasion (250k deaths just for the southern island of Kyushu)!.
--at Okinawa 1/4th of the civilian population committed suicide rather than be captured by the US because of lies told them by Japanese authorities!. A similar result would have happened with an invasion of Japan proper!.
--the Japanese had begun killing all POWs as a result of an edict from the War Ministry!. Prisons were set afire and all POWs burned alive!. Mass beheadings or bayoneting of prisoners!. To prolong the war was to risk the death of all remaining POWs (only 56 Chinese POWs were alive at the end of the war)!.

3!. Would lives have been saved by bombing Auschwitz!? Probably not!. Germany had a very efficient killing system!. I suspect that refugees would have been diverted to other camps or killed outright!. The value for the Germans of Auschwitz-Birkenau was that it was a labor camp: they produced stuff (and killed off their laborers)!. Other camps like Treblinka were purely death camps--they produced nothing!. So if the factory at Auschwitz-Birkenau had been destroyed, subsequent refugees would likely have been sent straight to death camps or a new factory (with accompanying concentration camp) would have been developed!. Only at the very end of the war (when Germany had limited resources and was breaking down) would it have had an impact!. What would have had far more impact would have been to ignore the death camps but target the railways and transport system!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

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Yes, Hiroshima had a military base!. Although it had a lot of civilians too!.

Japan was not on the verge of surrender!. Although it's possible that we could have gotten them to surrender by demonstrating the power of nuclear weapons on non-populated areas!. Although nuking Hiroshima had another benefit: it proved that we were willing to nuke populated cities if we needed to!. That provided a deterrent for future attacks!.

And I'm not sure why you would ask about Auschwitz!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

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Hiroshima had no military value!.
The bomb was only dropped to prevent the Russians getting involved in the war against Japan and peace talks had already started in secret!.
No lives would have been saved by bombing Auschwitz!. The gas chambers and crematoria could be easily replacedWww@QuestionHome@Com

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