Merged Roosevelt's Rotten Record:Communism, Treachery, Betrayal

[Dancing David]

What a way to spin wholesale murder...

"Best science"

Ah so the Germans tanks were what?

 

[Dancing David]

Do you honestly believe there's little to no difference between attacking a civilian target with high-explosives and atomic weapons?

Do you think the Roma and the French who were killed in German camps would have preferred to be alive or dead?

 

[Dancing David]

Nice straw man.



Of course. What would be the difference? Japanese women and children, Russian women and children, American women and children, British women and children. What's the difference? Why make war against civilians? Why obliterate non-combatant targets?

Why do you guys make all these stupid arguments? But, but, but, but...

I don't know, ask the man who invented Der Totale Krieg and the ones who extolled its value.

 

[kookbreaker]

I would have negotiated an end to the war and stopped the bloodshed.

Oh, what magic powers you must have!

If they refused to budge, a blockade of all war-making materials and resources would have ensued.

You mean, like was already in place? Oh, and what was your plans for the Japanese troops in China and other Asian nations?

No invasion. No more bombing of cities. No more bombing of civilian housing. No more punishing the people for a criminal government they had no control over.

Oh, how wonderful. While you are dreaming about your magical powers why not just dispatch the mighty Unicorn army to fart glitter that destroys all their weaponry!

Most of all, I wouldn't have used a quarter-million people, mostly women and children, as guinea pigs in atomic bomb attacks.

Its soo easy to say that while you are warm in your house and comfy computer chair with decades of relative peace insulating you from the realities of that war. Your spoiled brat mindset about the conflict doesn't change what needed to be done.

 

[Border Reiver]

Ah so the Germans tanks were what?

Wasteful of resources, difficult to manufacture, challenging to keep working for the more "sexy" models everyone thinks of when they say Panzers (Panthers, Tigers, King Tigers, Maus), and never produced in sufficient quantities to deal with operational losses.

Or did you mean an attempt to use engineering to make a better weapon of war?

In any event, the western democracies were definitely not saints in their prosecution of WWII, but that is irrelevant. At the end of their terms those heads of state did something that would be unthinkable if they were the monsters that SHC and Mondail are claiming they are - they relinquished power and stepped down when the people said, "Thanks for all you've done, but your services are no longer required." - everyone of them. MacKenzie-King, Churchill, DeGaulle, Truman (Roosevelt dying in office didn't have the opportunity to step down), Australia had 3 PMs during WWII so that really was a concern there, New Zealand had two PMs, etc. And look, those objectionable policies all got changed or undone. The system worked.

 

[MarkCorrigan]

As someone who considers himself generally anti-war, the thing that pisses me off more than anything else are people who are so anti-war they think that it is never excusable, and that somehow magical diplomacy powers can get through to the most vicous, stubborn or deluded opponents. The nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would be utterly, utterly inexcusable but for the fact that the only realistic alternatives were so much worse.

An invasion would have meant far, FAR more lives lost. Continued "conventional" bombing and blockades equally so, either from mass starvation or being killed by the stupidly inaccurate bombing raids, and capitulation? Yeah, I'm sure Manchuria and Allied POW's would have been a-ok.

 

[MarkCorrigan]

Having visited Bovington Tank Museum, I have to say a King Tiger may have been wasteful, but my god it must have been intimidating.

 

[Hans]

By the way SHC I was born in Japan. I fully support the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - it was the only way, and did give the Tenno his reason to interfere. Had that not occurred tens of millions of the people of Nippon and a million or more American men would have died.

I laugh at your naiveté

 

[Corsair 115]

My views on the indiscriminate bombing of civilians are that it was wrong and non-productive.

While I understand the sentiment, on a practical level, when one is talking about only half the bombs landing within one-third of a mile of the aiming point when dropped under good conditions, it's pretty clear strategic bombing was always largely indiscriminate. Such was the technology of the time.

That is not to say, however, that the application of strategic airpower over Europe and Japan was always utilized in the best manner possible. It wasn't. Plenty of mistakes were made. If the air forces could have gone into the campaign with the knowledge it only got after the conflict, the air war could have been prosecuted far more efficiently, with fewer casualties, and to much greater economic effect. But hindsight, as they say, is always 20-20.

Strategic bombing was very much a blunt tool. But it was the only tool which existed for striking directly at the heart of enemy's war production.

 

[dafydd]

But apparently he would have whipped out his extraordinary powers only after countless deaths as a result of conventional warfare. "What? You want to use the bomb? No, that's not acceptable. Give me a phone. I'll end this."

''Hey dudes, ha ha ha. Whatcha say we just drop the whole thing? What? Ah, Pearl Harbour,Schmearl Harbour Let's just chill out guys.''

 

[Garrison]

At the end of the day all this argument about the A-bombs and Roosevelt 'letting' Pearl Harbor happen ignores the basic point that the Japanese government chose to start a war they knew they had no strategic/miltary means of winning. Essentially they pinned everything on somehow destroying the US will to fight. By doing so they took on the responsibility for everything that came after that.

 

[catsmate]

No, why do that when we could just drop cruel, poisonous atomic bombs on them instead?

This has been dealt with many times previously. The use of the atomic bombs was far and away the best option and saved millions of lives (Allied, Japanese and others) that would have been lost during an invasion.
Of course if Japan had surrendered, or had avoided its imperialistic expansion altogether, they atomic bombs wouldn't have been needed...........

 

[catsmate]

This is both speculative and a false dichotomy. There were more choices than nukes vs full invasion.

Yes and, unlike you, many of us are fully aware of them and their consequences.

False, baseless assumption. If it's certain Hitler would have used the atomic bomb
had he had access to it, why didn't he order the deployment of Germany's chemical weapons onto WW2 battlefields?

Several reasons, basically the lack of confluence of the three factors of ability, advantage and response; early in the war chemical agents were unnecessary, midway the threat of retaliation dissuaded him and later the Germans lacked the ability to use them usefully.

 

[Garrison]

Yes and, unlike you, many of us are fully aware of them and their consequences.



Several reasons, basically the lack of confluence of the three factors of ability, advantage and response; early in the war chemical agents were unnecessary, midway the threat of retaliation dissuaded him and later the Germans lacked the ability to use them usefully.

The Germans did assume the British had equivalents to Tabun and the other nerve agents. Of course what the British actually had was worse; Anthrax.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Effects of radiation and Fallout weren't understood as they are today.
Plans for the use of nuclear weapons included allied troops occupying the bomb targets soon after they were hit.

 

[DGM]

Effects of radiation and Fallout weren't understood as they are today.
Plans for the use of nuclear weapons included allied troops occupying the bomb targets soon after they were hit.

[ct mode] Or were they? Prove "they" weren't sending these troops in to cover-up the "plan". [/ct]

 

[dudalb]

And you can you tell us the estimated number of dead for each scenario?

We could have continued the blockade of Japan via air and naval forces, and starved them into surrender, but that would killed a lot more Japanese Civilians then the two bombs did.

And even after Nagasaki, the die hards in the Japanese Military still did not want to surrender. When they learned that the Emperor had decided on surrender, they attempted a coup to keep Japan in the war..and the coup came close to suceeding.

Not that facts matter to SHC........

 

[SpringHallConvert]

Effects of radiation and Fallout weren't understood as they are today.

But radioactivity was known to be dangerous to humans, especially at higher dosages/levels of exposure.

Plans for the use of nuclear weapons included allied troops occupying the bomb targets soon after they were hit.

This wasn't a reflection of our government misunderstanding the risks of exposure to radiation, it was a reflection of our government simply not caring about the risks.

 

[Garrison]

But radioactivity was known to be dangerous to humans, especially at higher dosages/levels of exposure.



This wasn't a reflection of our government misunderstanding the risks of exposure to radiation, it was a reflection of our government simply not caring about the risks.

And you still haven't addressed the risks of the military alternatives, nor explained what concessions you would have offered the Japanese to achieve the negotiated settlement you claim could have been achieved.

 

[SpitfireIX]

But radioactivity was known to be dangerous to humans, especially at higher dosages/levels of exposure.

They knew the blast itself would generate a large amount of radiation, but they didn't understand the effects or duration of fallout. They didn't know because there had never been any nuclear detonations before mid-1945.

This wasn't a reflection of our government misunderstanding the risks of exposure to radiation, it was a reflection of our government simply not caring about the risks.

No. Again, they couldn't have known about the effects of radioactive fallout because there had never been an atomic blast previously.