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mpetersen6
Ed Nash's Military Matters
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Comments by "mpetersen6" (@mpetersen6) on "" video.
Lend Lease. This is what happens when you don't return borrowed tools and are behind on your lease payments. Towards the end of WWII there were several "friendly fire" incidents in what is today Croatia involving USAAF aircraft and Soviet forces.
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@danweyant707 It's easy for us today to second guess Truman. There were three options to convince Japan to surrender 1) The bombs 2) Blockade by submarines. In other words starving them into surrender 3) Operation Downfall. In the case of options 2 and 3 B-29raids on Japan would have continued. Meaning both Hiroshima and Nagasaki* would be hit. Possibly more than once. If the fighting on Iwo Jima and Okinawa were anything like what the Fighting on Kyushu and Honsho would be when Olympic and Coronet went ashore the causalities would have been horrendous. If the blockade had been used the amount of Japanese deaths would have likely exceeded the total death toll from the bomb by at least twice. In my opinion probably 10 times. Truman was faced with three bad choices. He choose the one that most likely had the lowest total deaths. Plus if the US had chosen to invade the bombs would li,ely have been used tactically. In the planning for Operations Olympic (Kyushu) and Coronet (Honshu) the assault divisions were considered to be combat ineffective due to casualties after three days. *Both cities were legitimate military targets given the arsenals and war related industries they contained.
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@gunner678 Modern historical revisionism IMO. Option 2 would likely of worked but at a higher death toll in the end. And yes Japan was a spent force by then. At least in terms of any offensive capability. Yet at the same time they still had something like 1 million plus men under arms in China, Indochina, and the Indonesian Archipelago. Plus how many at home. Letting the war drag on would have resulted in far more deaths than those caused by the bombs. Besides without the use of the bombs there would have been a far higher likelihood of their being used in any of the other conflicts that occurred post WWII. And if the bomb had never been developed I think it likely we would have seen a general World War sometime around 1960. If you have ever asked any vets that would have been tasked with Operation Olympic and Coronet they would all tell you Truman made the right call. Plus Truman knew that if the US (and its allies) did invade Japan without the bomb being used. And then suffered 100K casualties. Never mind the Japanese casualties. The political shitstorm that would have resulted. Today Truman would have be vilified for NOT using the bomb.
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@babboon5764 Now that's something I've never heard about.
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@danweyant707 My father was in Italy and North Africa for over two years so he had enough points that he was safe. One thing people should remember is that even after Hiroshima B-29 raids continued right up until the cessation of hostilities. And there was some ground combat that occurred after the cessation. Units of the 32nd Division were in combat with Japanese units up u till the 16th of August. To my knowledge they were the last US forces to be involved in combat in the Pacific. The same division was also the first Army division deployed from the US to the Pacific commited to combat operations. More days in combat than any other US division.
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