Why did Germany go to war ?

You don't need atom bombs to kill a lot of people. The fire bombing of Tokyo in March 1945 killed at least 80,000 and I found estimates that went as high as 200,000.

I'm sure fewer civilians died from the atomic bombs than would have died had the US invaded Japan. Besides, why would our military risk the lives of hundreds of thousands of US soldiers to achieve a result that could be achieved with 2 bombs?

WOw ok heres the facts. Untill the invasion of the Soviet Union the terms for the final solution were directed towards the establishment of a Jewish reservation in the far eastern Poland and when that failed measures were taken to try to establish this reservation on the German occupied French colony of Madagascar. This is seen by the heavy involvment of Adolf Eichmann, HE WAS A TRANSPORTATION SPECIALIST untill the end of deportations in late 1941 in which exteriminaton became the new policy. BUT THIS didnt happen untill 1941 and early 1942! If the point was to exterminate the Jews all along why would so many resources be devoted to deportation and the transportation of thousands of Jews to eastern Poland? Heres the terrible flaw with your attack on me: I am Jewish and a history major :) IF you read Eichmann in Jeresualm by Hannah Arendt or Alan Bulocks Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, two fundemental books on the Nazis you can see that Hitlers rhetoric was usualy not serious and fiery and that nothing would have been possible if it were not for the cooperation of many non fanatics . Jews as a burden to German society yes? The answer to this was Jews werec deported from German society. But was his origianly goal extermination? Most Historians would say not necissarily, that extermination became implemented as the war progressed into the Soviet Union. And Mein Kampf is nothing more than propaganda. Much of it was embelleshed by Hitler and is wantonly excessive. Now once the extermination policies were implemented (of course they had Hitlers approval) the situation changes. But until 1941 things are not so black and white.

I haven't read Eichmann in Jerusalem by Arendt, I have read A Study in Tyranny, matter of fact I have it right next to my computer. Bullock's book was good but if you read his sources such as The Final Solution by Gerald Reitlinger, or, A History of National Socialism, by Konrad Heiden, you really go into some depth on the subject.

First two sentences in Reitlinger's "The Final Solution":

"The Final Solution of the Jewish Problem' was a code-name for Hitler's plans to exterminate the Jews of Europe. It was used by German Officials after the summer of 1941 in order to avoid the necessity of admitting to each other that such plans existed.

the bombs killed 300,000. it was the worst acts of war ever in history. if the u.s. couldn't win w/o genocide then it admits genocide and is guilty. you can't have it both ways. cowardice in war and refusing to fight a land battle is no excuse for nuking 300,000 women and children. especially since we now know that truman lied to congress, the u.s. could have nuked germany, but didn't do it because of white racism. in the end 300,000 u.s. atomic vets died from a-bomb blasts in nevada and the south pacific in the 1950's, and after japan surrendered, the u.s. lost all of asia as indonesia, china, korea, etc. defeated the u.s. miltary. i guess poetic justice prevails. after all the u.s. had no business colonizing asia, phillipines, china, vietnam, and the portugense, spanish, english, spanish, germans git their asses kicked bad in the end. i wonder why bush didn't learn, now he's getting his ass kicked to mecca in iraq, palestine, and afghanistan. it's a shame what the u.s. is doing again.

and just an interesting note: If you read "The Hitler of History" by John Lukacs, he rips apart Bullock's Tyranny ( along with many other Hitler biographies). He believes Joacim Fest's Biography is the best.

I personally thought Bullock's book was superb.

One more quick point on the failure of Versailes: Alot can be traced back to the Franco-Prussian War, just a continuation of a long standing conflict.

no end to the ridiculousness is there. i'm glad football has replaced war back home in europe. at least for the time being. cross your fingers and have a beer.

As I recall, the atomic bomb that was tested in New Mexico was detonated in May of 1945. Germany had surrendered by then so nuking the German would have been a bit more difficult to explain than nuking Japan was.

Civilians killed during a war are generally counted as "collateral damage" and while it may be a semantic point, it's usually seen as different from genocide which is deliberate exptermination of a group. Turkey and Armenians, US and its Indians, Britain and Irish are all reasonable examples of genocide.

The bombings of civilian populations during WW II were not.

Non combatants get killed during wars. That's one of the better reasons for not having them. But how the killings happen are generally of little difference. The fire bombings of Dresden killed more people than the Hiroshima bomb did. The fire bombings of Jaoanese cities killed more people than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs did. But an invasion of the Japanese homeland would probably have made all of that look like a rugby game.

“Britain and Irish are all reasonable examples of genocide.”

Your very choice of words demonstrate that as far as Irish and English history is concerned - you clearly know nothing about either’s history and you haven’t a clue about what an example of genocide should entail. I might add that three of my great uncles fought for the Republicans before Independence, one tragically killed during the disastrous and unnecessary civil war that followed.

As for as the US and the Indians being another example, I don’t know enough about American history to judge that, but my feeling is that is was ‘ethnic cleansing' by default rather than an officially and nationally approved policy. I also feel that the hatred between the tribes was such that they willingly assisted in their own demise. Throughout history, with the constant movement of tribes, races, peoples - when a more technically advanced group have occupied an area - the less able occupants have either adapted to the new conditions or eventually disappeared from the scene altogether. That’s all rather different to shovelling a particular race into gas chambers.

Agreed. The British in Ireland were an example of tragic negligence; a blind faith in the market to counteract a famine with an environmental, rather than market, cause.

Likewise, US policy toward the Native Americans, while grossly unjust and at time brutal, was not a systematic program of extermination. They were trying to herd Native Americans onto reservations of generally inferior land, then were negligent in ensuring that that land could provide sustenance. Once again, negligent, yes, genocide, no.

Runningart2004 wrote: The US knew it was going to kill a lot of innocent people during the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Sounds like genocide to me.

No matter how strongly you feel about whether the use of the A-bombs were right, wrong, necessary, tragic, expedient, the best of the bad options available, the worst option... it wasn't genocide.

That's simply not what the word "genocide" means.

genocide: the systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group.

We're never all going to share the same judgments of this action or history in general, but at least let's not abuse the language. If the U.S. has ever engaged in anything approaching genocide, it was against Native Americans (some of whom were, ironically, employed by our country to great advantage in WWII).

By degrees we may have thought and acted with greater racism toward Asian populations than Europeans, yes. But genocide - systematic extermination of an entire people? Absolutely not, not even close.

The struggle upon the West now is not with the PAST but with ISLAMOFASCISM...TODAY.

You guys want to talk about a struggle? There's one ongoing. Wake up.

This is not a drill.

Yes, different examples than shuffling people off to gas chambers. But there were certainly examples in US history of attempts to eliminate Indians. I know the British-Irish thing probably falls into a debatable area so I'll let it be. I also had relatives involved in it.

My point is that all of these things have been held up as examples of genocide, correctly or not, and the circumstances are very different than the killing of non-combatants in a war even if the results are the same.

also recall the jim crow laws of the 30's, lynchings, the japanese and chinese exclusion acts, u.s. government concentration camps for japanese, trumans lies about the bomb not being ready for germany, and the history of use of napalm and nuclear weapons on asians in korea, vietnam, japan, china, but not on whites in europe. the u.s. public is dead set against the use of nukes and napalm on iranian or german whites, but would use them on asians, africans. such is the nature of the u.s. form of white racism.

Yeah you're right, Americans love Iranians but can't stand Japanese or Thais. If you've been trolling under a variety of handles for a while now, you need to dial in a more plausible stance. If you've been earnest, seek psychiatric help. Now.

You’re right, such incoherent ramblings are not worthy a response.

I have though, noticed some confusion on this thread regarding the use of the two atomic bombs on Japan.

As late as June 8, 1945 the Emperor signed a blueprint for the basic policy of continuing he struggle which, boiled down to an uncompromising, fanatical resistance to the bitter end.

It advocated turning Japan into a giant fortress and every Japanese citizen into a soldier. The entire might of the nation would strike the enemy at it’s heart; 70 million men, women and children armed with gasoline bombs, rifles, bows and arrows and bamboo spears to fight the greatest fight of all. Japan had not lost a fight since the sixteenth century - to achieve victory, every honourable Japanese should be willing to die for the Emperor.

There’s no doubt that the two atomic bombs did in the long run cause far less loss of life than that entailed by a physical invasion of Japan by American forces.

But reading the Japanese reaction to those two bombs, one finds total confusion as to the implication of this new form of warfare - and the what the response should be - the government still dominated by the military who still wished to fight on.

The greater impetus for seeking peace and one which finally brought the Emperor to his senses was the sudden and unexpected declaration of war from the Soviet Union on August the 8th. The Soviet army immediately routed the previously unbeaten Manchurian army and were advancing swiftly, threatening to occupy Japanese territory. The Japanese had already witnessed the utter devastation the Soviets had visited on their Nazi allies and now knew for certain their fate was sealed.

the euro is strong wrote:

also recall the jim crow laws of the 30's, lynchings, the japanese and chinese exclusion acts, u.s. government concentration camps for japanese, trumans lies about the bomb not being ready for germany, and the history of use of napalm and nuclear weapons on asians in korea, vietnam, japan, china, but not on whites in europe. the u.s. public is dead set against the use of nukes and napalm on iranian or german whites, but would use them on asians, africans. such is the nature of the u.s. form of white racism.

You've got an ax to grind. No one is saying that there was trenedous love for non-whites in the US in the years around WWII. But where do you get the idea that the atom bomb was ready for use against the Germans. There may have been one that had been built, but it wasn't tested until after Germany had surrendered.

But, even if the bomb was ready in say, March of 1945, there were good reasons not to use it. Germany had been invaded and the end was obviously very near. And people had already given thought to the post war world and recognized that the Soviet Union was going to be the next big problem. Germany, once rid of the Nazis, was seem by some as a potential ally. Both Patton and Churchill favored the idea of re-arming the Wehrmacht and attacking the Soviet Union. So even if a the atom bomb were ready to use against Germany, there were sound military and political reasons to avoid doing so.

None of those reasons applied in the case oof Japan. And you still are not dealing with the bloodbath that would have resulted from an invasion of Japan.

WWII was a war of ideologies, as all meaningful wars are. It was democracy or fascism, and the issue was forced by the fascists in both Germany and Japan. What did the U.S. do when they won the war? We gave them their countries back, and helped them to rebuild. Germany and Japan would not have been so kind. The U.S. ideology of democracy is preferred by all most all and is superior to German and Japanese fascism. That is why we fought, and that is why a win at all costs attitude was acceptable, even if their were massive civilian casualties. Consider the alternative. In hindsight, mistakes were made, but history condemns everyone, but not every ideology, and certainly not the ideology of democracy, upon which the U.S. was founded.

100 !!