I just finished The Fog of War, which had been recommended to my by Curzon of Coming Anarchy. A brilliant documentary of Robert Strange McNamara which puts Vietnam in the context of his early career. Highly recommended. The parallels in mannerism to …

Don’t lose sight of the practical realities of the military capabilities of the time, and also what the enemy was still capable of doing.

I don’t think LeMay decided on this tactic simply as a more effective way of deliberately killing more Japanese. Even with the improved capability of the B29 as compared to previous heavy bomber models, the attempt at high level bombing of Japan was producing limited results due to:

1) extreme long range of the missions (meaning fuel load vs bomb load had to be carefully weighed). For the fire bombing LeMay had the bombers go to night missions so they could leave their defensive guns (50 cal) and the associated ammo behind.

2) Bad weather and jet stream over Japan meant significant loss of accuracy from high level. (Also a big factor over N. Vietnam 20 years later, why do civilians always seem to implicitly assume that bad weather is not a major factor?) This was another reason for going to low level (it was never done by the American heavy bombers over Germany due to the much better odds this would have afforded the extremely potent and numerous heavy German AA guns, aided by German radar abilities also superior to those of Japan).

3) After earlier being rather ineffectual, Japanese fighter opposition was getting significantly better at shooting down B29′s, to include kamikaze ramming tactics. One can imagine the effect on US aircrew morale; during the war, Allied combat personnel in the Pacific theater were very much aware of the probable difference in their treatment if captured by the Japanese (as compared to being captured by the Germans).

4) dispersed nature of Japanese war production (small shops dispersed throughout the population centers).

Even after Okinawa was secured, there was still plenty of fighting going on elsewhere and throughout June and July 1945 we were still losing HUNDREDS OF MEN EACH WEEK (to include British and Australians). Significant fighting was still going on in the interior of Luzon where organized Japanese forces held out until the final surrender. And the Chinese (remember them anyone?) were suffering even worse as the Japanese retained their ground forces superiority over the corrupt Nationalist generals to the very end.

The Indianapolis was sunk on 16 July 45 with the loss of over a thousand men; that Japanese sub captain was still very effective (of course, maybe McNamara now thinks they got what they deserved…)

I wish I could wave my magic wand and send McNamara back in time, to explain to the aircrews, the sailors, and the ground troops (and their families) why they had to go on dying week after week while the arrogant Japanese high command took their time trying to decide whether they were beaten or not. For crying out loud, he was THERE and should remember this stuff better than me.

You can’t separate yourself from the times in which moral decisions have to be made. It’s only the capabilities of modern technology that give us, in this current time, the “luxury” of being able to agonize over such choices.

I’m sure bombing Japan into the Stone Age ended the war sooner, but I’m also fairly certain that Japanese commanders were thinking along the same lines when they engaged in some of their nastiness. The moral of the story is that if you engage in atrocities, you’d better win. And there is something very unsettling about that moral.

Curzon over at Coming Anarchy has another great post on the question of war crimes, citing former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara’s role in the fire bombing of Tokyo. Thought provoking as always, with an outstanding discussion in the com…

Yes.

From Patterns of Conflict:

“The Germans, who were far ahead of any rival in the science of lighter-than-air construction, refused to accept the general belief that the future lay entirely with the heavier-than-air. Their Zeppelins “¦ were employed chiefly in night attacks on England. On one occasion a single airship did a million pounds worth of damage in a raid, but on the whole their success was mainly moral and measured in terms of absenteeism in factories and sensational drops in production of warlike material.”Â?

With regard to aggressive action being used as a demoralizer, I believe degree is the key word.

If you slap me in the face and knock a tooth out, I’d be all over your kicking and punching until I overcame my rage.

If you struck me breaking both of my legs I’d think twice before trying to strike back. First because of reduced ability, and second because I’d correlate what hapenned (you breaking my legs) and what could happen if I got up again (you dealing even more serious damage).

Demoralization is proportional to the degree of violence one uses, and the level of its success.

That forces one to consider his enemy’s capabilities and whether or not he can survive aggressive action by him or survive it long enough to enact adequate aggressive action on his part.

So to answer at least one of your (rhetorica,l I presume) questions:

Did the bombing of Dresden weaken the resolve of the Germans?

No because they really believed they could win. Those that didn’t DID have their resolve weakened.

The real question is-who’s resolve are we talking about? The governments? The military hierarchy’s? The general population’s? The Armed Forces at large?

Resolve is largely dependant on what one is about to lose. So, when Hitler would absolutely lose everything had he surrendered or negotiated any truce, the German Volk could even make the case that they would win or be better off, by such actions.

Did the bombing of London weaken the resolve of the British?

Did the bombing of Tokyo weaken the resolve of the Japanese?

Did the bombing of the World Trade Center weaken the resolve of the Americans?

Given what happened in iwo jima, saipan, okinawa and those other islands, i.e., almost all civilians became fighters some point into the island-hopping exercise, it was not just the tanks and rifles that were taken out of the battle, it was also (potential) fighters in this equation.

it makes the hind-sight analysis even more complicated, and bombing tokyo could not be compared with bombing dresden?

—
again, i also said this in great respect to the bravery of japanese citizens.

Dan, I highly disapprove of that kind of geopolitics. We live in a civilized world were weaker states can voluntarily ask and receive help in various forms of partnership. An aggressor is an aggressor, and I can give the criteria: the threat of force (coercion) or the use of force.
Some aggressions are not punishable or preventable. That is regretable but it doesn’t detract the generic principle.

The fact that the Japanese collapsed in front of the Russian was because the battle was on China’s oil. Many Chinese welcome the Russians.
Had it been on Honshu, it would have been very difficult. Tojo knew that.

Of course, it didn’t work ;)

Which goes to show that the lesson-plan of the legal formalism is not as important as its implementation (it doesn’t matter what you call it when it’s MacArthur running the show).

Hitler had victory or death mentality, which even survived his death. The Nazis did not surrender until Germany was in ruins and had literally been flooded with allied soldiers.

The bombing of Tokyo and later Hiroshima and Nagasaki need to be seen in the context of their times. There was no public objection to LeMay destroying the industrial and residential center of the Japanese empire. The American public had heard too many stories of Japanese attrocities toward subjugated people and prisoners of war. People don’t show up for work to produce war materiel when there was no work to show up for. Most people felt the Japanese got what was coming to them. That does not mean the whole thing was not a horrible human tragedy.

Re: “war crimes”Â?, I fail to see the merit of this notion. As far as I’m concerned, there is only aggression against a non-aggressor, which ought to be punished and deterred, and aggression against an aggressor which should be undertaken as soon as possible, with as much vigor as possible and regarded as a virtue of all free men.

Perhaps, if “aggressor” is applied broadly enough. Core states must have the ability to attack states that cannot defend themselves against terrorism or export diseases even if the Gap state targeted is not an “aggressor” in the traditional sense.

Solomon is correct — we prosecuted war criminals, but had the Nazis, Italians, or Japanese won, LeMay et al would have been shot without trial. We were the good guys in WWII and we are the good guys today.

I don’t think McNamara is haunted by the fact that they killed — he is worried that they killed far and beyond what was necessary, or what was proportional.

Sun Bin sums up the four causes of surrender perfectly. I disagree with GI Korea that Japan’s surrender was a direct result of the impending Soviet invasion (and also with BillyBob and Sun Bin). It was a result of a combination of factors, with no one cause responsible.

Gabriel’s chilling statement that civilians are “capital” to enemy regimes is scary, but may be true. The residential and commercial areas of Tokyo were devastated by the bombing. The Parliament and the Imperial Palace weren’t even singed. LeMay deliberately targeted the civilians

LeMay, Sherman, and Patton… while these men were fighting on the right side, may have used not just excessive force, but vastly excessive force that resulted in the death of thousands of more civilians than was necessary. LeMay didn’t bomb Japan — he brougt his bombers down to such a low altitude they could firebomb Japan.

The death toll from the firebombing was markedly larger. 200,000 died in the atomic bombings; 900,000 were killed in the firebombings of 67 cities, with more than 1.3 million injured.

Mark: McNamara said they were behaving like war criminals, not that they were war criminals.

In the end, I’m not really sure what I think. I believe what I wrote — and believe that everyone writing here is basically correct. It’s a complex issue.

If an armastice was signed instead of total victory then Japan would of followed in the same pattern as Germany after World War I. After World War I Germany was not completely defeated and years later Hitler was able to use nationalism to rally his people to avenge the perceived injustices of World War I against Germany because the people in Germany after World War I never felt defeated.

After World War II the Japanese felt completely and utterly defeated which led to the change in Japanese society away from militarism and more towards economic success which as history has proven has been a much more effective way in building national power and security for Japan than just military conquest.

McNamara was a unique political figure: he was actually deeply troubled by the consequences of his decisions. But he allowed his self-flagelation to extend to whatever role he played in WW2 and thus interpreted WW2 through the lense of Vietnam and his sense of guilt.

The Germans and Japanese were brutal enemies and we had to become brutal to defeat them. But then we extended to them a generosity that is unprecedented in human history. That combination is a unique characteristic of the United States.

yes, that too:)…… from US perspective.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Travers_Harris

While I am not Billy Bob, I would also optimize for American lives as well as optimize for a minimal amount of area being surrendered to Stalinist tyranny.

let’s first agree on what we could agree, that the objective is the minimum suffering/toll on civilian for an unconditional surrender of the ‘war criminals’ in Japan.

1. what is the decisive reason for the surrender?
a. island hopping
b. russian entering
c. city bombing
d. 2 nukes

i said it was the 2 nukes. you said it was the fire-bombing of tokyo and other cities. different opinions, no definite proof.
(you further claimed the nukes were showcase for the russian. that is the first time i heard of such theory)
My evidence is based on time correlation. although (b) is also highly correlated to the surrender, tokyo defnitely is not. otherwise, japan would have surrendered before august, or persist for many more months.

2. casualty count (i don’t have the exact numbers, so you are welcome to challenge the data here).
a) hiroshima+nagasaki death toll less than 150k together
2) tokyo+other cities raid must be larger than 200k?

I can’t even grasp what is meant by “proportionality” in the clip. Proportional of what compared to what? Win the war. Defeat an evil enemy. That’s proportional.

We firebombed Tokyo because that’s what it took to win the war, not because we were trying to be cruel for no reason, as though the war took place in a vacuum. The city equivalencies shown in the film are really something…nothing good, though.

What would the history of the last 60 years have looked like had we fought a different war? What if we had fought merely to an armistace? How many more people in Asia would have suffered? How many more Americans? What would Japan be like as a world player today? Fortunately, we will never know.

Making equivalencies like those shown, worrying that we fight a war by the most scrupulously strict standards of abstract ethics…these are concerns that could only come from a strategist in a suit. No one in the trenches was thinking that way.

I admit I don’t know that much of McNamara’s history. I certainly don’t know what makes him tick, so someone else can feel free to tell me if this is unfair or not, but it strikes me listening to this that he seems to feel he didn’t get enough Americans killed fighting a diplomatic war in Vietnam, he wishes he could turn the clock back and do the same thing to WW2. No thanks.

War is bad for children and other living things. Starting a war and then getting ready to fight to the bitter end is bad for your people and your cities. A little more sorrow for the victims of the Japanese and a little less for the perpetrators thank you very much.

Remember that after all those bombings, they were ready to fight on. This was a country that went from a feudal nothing to a world power in record time. We weren’t about to go away, let them rebuild and have to do it all over again, nor should we have. It would have been irresponsible of us to do so both with respect to our own future and the world’s.

As to war crimes in general: I agree there should be standards, and that the winner sets them. Of course! Imagine what the standards would have been had the Imperial Japanese or Nazis won! So the first thing you have to do is win.

Under ordinary Marquis of Queensbury rules, it’s not sporting to kick your opponent in the nuts. It would and should make you feel bad winning a fight that way. But if the guy you’re fighting is coming at you with a kife and the intent to kill and you’re in a circumstance where your first mistake will be your last…get out the steel toes and CRUSH THOSE BOYS. Win and survive to feel badly about it later.

I know this doesn’t quite answer the question concerning the efficacy and consequences of the war crimes issue generally, I have to think about that more and I’m not sure I have an answer. The premise is so loaded it’s tough getting by it.