this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2025
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WTF? none of these?
The nukes stopped Japan but that was not the deciding factor for the whole of WWII. Also, as effective as it was for the war, it was one of the most immoral and horrific thing to have happen in modern wars.
The fire bombs at the time were arguably worse than the nuke.
This is an argument that has been had for decades, and it’s not going to be settled here. I think this Sean video is one of the best things on the topic I’ve ever read/seen if you have two and a half hours.
I come down on the side that the atomic bomb was unnecessary. Japan was already looking at potential surrender (maybe not the kind of unconstitutional surrender where you let a 22 year old military aide/translator write the constitution over a couple of days…). The decision to drop the bomb was far more motivated by a desire to present a threat to the USSR and to dominate the world stage than it was to end the war.
You've clearly never studied WW2 or prior history.
Less people died in both Nagasaki and Hiroshima combined from the atomic bombs and their fallout than a single conventional bombing raid on Japan. And those were happening weekly. And the most realistic projections for what a conventional invasion to capitulate Japan would have looked like estimate as much as half of the Japanese population would have been killed in direct fighting and the humanitarian disaster that would follow the aftermath of their infrastructure being pummeled.
You can preach about how bad nuclear weapons are all you want, but to suggest their use is the most immoral thing ever done is either done from a place of complete ignorance or complete intellectual dishonesty. The two cities bombed were meticulously chosen to demonstrate the power of the weapons, afflict Japanese war effort while keeping the potential body count and collateral as low as possible while still enough to be taken seriously by the Japanese government. Japan already knew they lost the war, they were only hoping to make it bloody as possible for the Americans to try and meek out some kind of favorable terms, when the terms on the table were already more favorable than they could possibly hope for.
The goal of the book is not being precise, its giving the kid learning the rhetoric that the bomb was necessary and other means are ridiculous.
Indoctrination works well. You've already gotten a specimen as an example replying.
On the context of the pacific war front, I'm not sure if it even makes the top 10.
Hell, I'm not sure it's one of the 2 worst things the US did on that single war on that single front.
Even top 1000 in modern history of war is not a good spot...
I mean, the question is "How did the war end?", not "What was the deciding factor for all of WW2."
Walter enters the chat 😁
That's how I feel is the end.
The war didn't even end after the second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9th 1945. Japan didn't even formally cease hostilities until August 15th (and sporadic combat went on even after that) and they didn't formally surrender until September 2nd. The answer given in the cartoon is literally incorrect.
The more general "the nukes stopped Japan" is also arguably not accurate. Japan was beaten long before that point, and the Soviet declaration of war and invasion of Manchuria on August 8th (three months to the day after Germany's surrender as Stalin had promised) had as much of a proximate effect on ending the war as did the atomic bombings - which Japan's rulers didn't have good information about anyway, and which didn't stand out as being all that much more destructive than the conventional bombing attacks that the US had been carrying out for half a year at that point.
It also depends on the theatre, the others all focus on Germany so "the allied forces took Berlin" or "Hitler shot himself" would potentially be more fitting, especially given Japan didn't de jure end the war until 1956
But the War continued after Berlin fell and Hitler shot himself.
Yeah but as I said, legally the war continued for over 10 years after the nukes were dropped on Japan, it's just the event that led to the end of the war in that theatre.
Hell, some debate that it might not have even been necessary to stop Japan.
Woosh