The entire purpose is strategic though. That’s what I’m saying. Psychologically the impact of one bomb wiping out of city is much bigger. That impact has enormous strategic value. We’ve seen this in evidence the only time it was used.
They’re even called strategic weapons. That is their sole purpose.
Yes, and my point is using them did not significantly alter the strategic situation in Japan so - at the time, when they were super hard to build and we only had a couple - they were bad at even their intended purpose. It was surely horrifying to be anywhere near Hiroshima when the bomb went off, but to the guys running the show hundreds of miles away in Tokyo it was just one more tick mark beside 99 others of cities that had been razed since the war started.
We’ve seen this in evidence the only time it was used.
Except we haven’t. Hiroshima was bombed on August 6, the folks running the war on the Japanese side knew it was an atomic bomb early on the 7th, and they still didn’t even meet until (I believe) the 9th at which point Nagasaki had also been hit, and they were still ambivalent about surrender until they got news that Russia had entered the war against them in Manchuria. They had held off on surrendering because they were pressing the Soviets to negotiate on their behalf to get better terms and once they realized Russia had no interest in that shit only then did they surrender.
Nuclear weapons pose an immense psychological threat today because they are far more capable of devastation and they have been built up via mutually-assured destruction - it’s not the threat of a single bomb that’s terrifying, it’s the threat of getting hit by like 200 of them all at once because that shit will just end your civilization. But destroying the 100th Japanese city with a fancy single bomb instead of lots of regular old bombs really didn’t make much of a difference to the strategic picture at all. I mean if you have 3 of your limbs blown off with a shotgun and someone comes along to take #4 does it really matter that they’re carrying a rocket launcher? Sure the act is more psychologically intimidating, but at the end of the day, regardless of the method, the result is the same: you ain’t got no legs Lt Dan!
The Strategic use of the bombs in Japan wasn’t about Japan. I mean that helped and frankly your argument’s rather unconvincing that it wasn’t effective. But that still wasn’t the goal. The goal of using the bombs on Japan was to scare the Russians. That’s why they used them.
It’s not my argument, read the article (emphasis added):
Many historians say the bombings did not lead to the Japanese surrender, and the Soviet declaration of war on Japan two days later was a bigger shock.
But yeah I know Truman green-lit the use of the bombs as a means to intimidate the USSR, but there’s an awful lot of backsplanation that went on after the bombings to justify their use as vital to saving American lives by pushing Japan to surrender, when the US government knew from intercepted diplomatic communiques and such that Japan had been feeling out options for surrender prior to that.
Also it didn’t really work on the Russians either, since they had their own nuclear program that had its first test in 1949.
The entire purpose is strategic though. That’s what I’m saying. Psychologically the impact of one bomb wiping out of city is much bigger. That impact has enormous strategic value. We’ve seen this in evidence the only time it was used.
They’re even called strategic weapons. That is their sole purpose.
Yes, and my point is using them did not significantly alter the strategic situation in Japan so - at the time, when they were super hard to build and we only had a couple - they were bad at even their intended purpose. It was surely horrifying to be anywhere near Hiroshima when the bomb went off, but to the guys running the show hundreds of miles away in Tokyo it was just one more tick mark beside 99 others of cities that had been razed since the war started.
Except we haven’t. Hiroshima was bombed on August 6, the folks running the war on the Japanese side knew it was an atomic bomb early on the 7th, and they still didn’t even meet until (I believe) the 9th at which point Nagasaki had also been hit, and they were still ambivalent about surrender until they got news that Russia had entered the war against them in Manchuria. They had held off on surrendering because they were pressing the Soviets to negotiate on their behalf to get better terms and once they realized Russia had no interest in that shit only then did they surrender.
Nuclear weapons pose an immense psychological threat today because they are far more capable of devastation and they have been built up via mutually-assured destruction - it’s not the threat of a single bomb that’s terrifying, it’s the threat of getting hit by like 200 of them all at once because that shit will just end your civilization. But destroying the 100th Japanese city with a fancy single bomb instead of lots of regular old bombs really didn’t make much of a difference to the strategic picture at all. I mean if you have 3 of your limbs blown off with a shotgun and someone comes along to take #4 does it really matter that they’re carrying a rocket launcher? Sure the act is more psychologically intimidating, but at the end of the day, regardless of the method, the result is the same: you ain’t got no legs Lt Dan!
The Strategic use of the bombs in Japan wasn’t about Japan. I mean that helped and frankly your argument’s rather unconvincing that it wasn’t effective. But that still wasn’t the goal. The goal of using the bombs on Japan was to scare the Russians. That’s why they used them.
It’s not my argument, read the article (emphasis added):
But yeah I know Truman green-lit the use of the bombs as a means to intimidate the USSR, but there’s an awful lot of backsplanation that went on after the bombings to justify their use as vital to saving American lives by pushing Japan to surrender, when the US government knew from intercepted diplomatic communiques and such that Japan had been feeling out options for surrender prior to that.
Also it didn’t really work on the Russians either, since they had their own nuclear program that had its first test in 1949.