Do you think nuking Japan was a necessary evil?

[Deleted]

Britain helped the US build the atom bomb. If it wasn't for Britain, the US wouldn't have had the bomb until the war was over.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britis...hattan_Project

Do you think Britain approved of nuking Japan?

And thanks for the help.

yes I know what part we played in developing the bomb, ie doing all teh fucking hard work and the US sauntered in at the end, took the credit and screwed everyone else over......as usual.

I dont know what we thought at the time, but this part of Britain over here thinks it was awful.

[Independent voter]

yes I know what part we played in developing the bomb, ie doing all teh fucking hard work and the US sauntered in at the end, took the credit and screwed everyone else over......as usual.

I dont know what we thought at the time, but this part of Britain over here thinks it was awful.

Britain signed the Potsdam Declaration along with the Soviets.

"We call upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces, and to provide proper and adequate assurances of their good faith in such action. The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction."[

The "prompt and utter destruction" part is a reference to the atom bomb. All four parties involved had an atom bomb program so everyone knew what "utter destruction" meant.

Why demonstrate the bomb to the Soviets when they already knew we had it?

[cubby]

I have a feeling that those who are saying it was evil and unnecessary just think that because of the word "Nuclear" before the word bomb.

Yeah, typically people who respond to these posts with "evil!" and "we could have won it without nukes" don't really have any solid info about WWII.

[Deleted]

Britain signed the Potsdam Declaration along with the Soviets.

"We call upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces, and to provide proper and adequate assurances of their good faith in such action. The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction."[

The "prompt and utter destruction" part is a reference to the atom bomb. All four parties involved had an atom bomb program so everyone knew what "utter destruction" meant.

Why demonstrate the bomb to the Soviets when they already knew we had it?

at the time no one knew if any of the others had successfully weaponised a working nuke.

[Forogil]

at the time no one knew if any of the others had successfully weaponised a working nuke.

Factually false. In Potsdam the Soviets were told about the fact - to explain "utter destruction", and they also knew due to their spies (and hadn't built them themselves).

Since the US were unaware of the spies (and the extent of the Soviet atomic program) they could just have a posted a film of the Trinity test - or invited the soviets to one of their later tests - or even to Trinity-test in July. According to Truman there wouldn't have been any rush since the Soviets would never get the bomb.

The idea that it was part of a cold-war effort - and not primarily to win the war in Japan is clearly false: due to the lack of evidence in favor and circumstantial evidence against: part of Korea (above the 38th) was given to communists without any effort before the Nagasaki bombing, and operation paper-clip that recruited German scientist was officially stopped from recruiting most of them; both facts indicate that the US was stumbling along in a pre-cold-war era.

I don't understand why so many believe easily disproven conspiracy theories to explain the bombing - instead of the simple fact that people wanted to win the war that they were currently engaged.

Additionally I don't understand why people don't go for more believable additional explanations (these might in fact have played a minor part - but the main part was simply to force the unconditional surrender): inertia (the bomb effort was on-going and people didn't stop and re-evaluate the idea), and "interservice rivalry" (i.e. Gen. Groves wanted to show that they had actually been useful (even if too late for Europe) - compared to the other branches - and some others were opposed to them for the same reason).