Hacker News Reader

Comment by Laukhi64 | Hacker News Reader

I don't really disagree with anything else you say, but...

>When has a war with USA ever saved lives?

I don't know. I think there was a war of note which might have been around the 1940s?

It's fine to say that the costs of an interventionist foreign policy don't outweigh the benefits; I don't necessarily disagree with that. But it's absolutely inaccurate to say that the benefits don't exist. USA at the very least contributed a great deal to the European Theatre, and Imperial Japan was dethroned almost entirely due to their effort.

It turns out that all three of Italy, Germany, and Japan were successfully occupied and now have stable and democratic governments, as well.

View on HN

I don't know. I think there was a war of note which might have been around the 1940s?

Nitpicking your nitpick:

Contrary to the American tendency to act like we singlehandedly won WW2, we were a latecomer to the war and not a central power prior to that war. There were many countries involved in it.

It's possible that the US played a critical role in Japan's surrender. It's also possible they would have surrendered anyway, we just have no means to go back in time, run the scenario twice and see how it would go without the US.

In the United States, generations were taught that Japan would never have surrendered so quickly without use of the atomic bomb and that victory would have required a bloody invasion of the Japanese mainland, costing hundreds of thousands of lives.

Japanese students were generally taught a very different narrative: that Japan already had been defeated and dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki three days apart was a geopolitical calculation to keep the Soviet Union at bay.

https://www.stripes.com/news/special-reports/world-war-ii-th...

I think you're discounting the roll of America's massive industrial output, which shipped more than 17 million tons of goods to the Soviet Union throughout the war, including more than 400,000 trucks/jeeps, 7,000 tanks, 11,000 airplanes, and 1.75 million tons of food, just to name a bit.

Relative to national size, the Soviet Union received more tanks and planes from the British than the Americans, but the American trucks in particular were incredibly important for the Soviets. During that same period the Soviet Union only produced a fraction of that many trucks and Soviet trucks were frankly inferior trucks. Beyond the obvious logistic advantages of trucks in a war largely characterized by mobility, receiving American trucks allowed the Soviet Union to dedicate more of it's (relatively limited) industrial capacity to the production of tanks and airplanes.

Incidentally, here is something else American students aren't taught (I wonder if Japanese students are?): The leadership of the Japanese military considered the emperor to be a figurehead and after the 2nd atomic bombing when the Emperor was preparing to surrender, the staff office of the Ministry of War as well as several members of the Imperial Guard seized control of the Imperial Palace, with the goal of preventing surrender. They failed of course, but only due to the bravery and good luck of a few people in the Palace. The point here being, there were high ranking elements of the Japanese military that wanted to continue fighting even after the second bomb, and even with the Soviets preparing an invasion. Nationalism is a hell of a drug...

The only thing I'm discounting is the American tendency to talk like we are the center of the universe and always have been. I'm saying "WW2 wasn't a war with the US. There were multiple countries on both sides of that war."

That's it. That's all I'm saying. It doesn't actually translate to "America didn't count and made no difference whatsoever in the war effort."

Americans do call it a World War, don't they? I think you're being a bit too cynical.

Perhaps pedantic. But the comment I was replying to specifically framed WW2 as "a war with the US" and I've had foreign friends, such as in Canada, who have commented on America's tendency to talk like we singlehandedly won that war.

I don't think "war with the US" was meant to imply "A war in which America was on it's own and did everything"; that's a cynical read of it. A less cynical read would be that "war with the US" means "war in which the US was a participant."

Germany did declare war with the US, hence there was in fact a war with the US. Of course, Germany was also at war with lots of other people. All Americans are taught that in schools. It's called a World War for a reason and people do understand that, even when they're going out of their way to mention it. If Americans don't mention Canadian participation much it's simply because they don't talk about Canada much in the first place. It's not because they're unaware that Canada participated in the war. Canada is a commonwealth country, of course they participated in the war. Everybody here knows that.

I don't understand your use of the word cynical here. It sounds like you might mean "bad faith or uncharitable reading."

Ironically, that framing of my remarks strikes me as uncharitable. I did start by asserting from the get go that I was picking nits.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

I know this very well. The US was late in a sense to the European theater, but the most substantial contribution of the US was lend-lease in any case. It's of course inaccurate to say that the US was the primary contributor to the European Theatre (that was probably the USSR), but the American contribution shouldn't be understated, either.

Japan was absolutely not going to surrender following the atomic bombs, unless you consider a conditional surrender in which they would keep all their colonial assets something even close to tolerable. The idea that the Soviet invasion of Manchuria was at all a threat to the Japanese is laughable; the Kwantung Army was a hollow shell with most of it moved back to the home isles, which was why the USSR had such an easy time there, and the Soviets had essentially no capability to accomplish an amphibious invasion.

It's true that Japan had already been 'defeated', but the dysfunction of its military and government meant that the sensible option was impossible to accomplish because those who tried would immediately be susceptible to coups from ultra-nationalist factions. Which in fact nearly happened even after the bombs were dropped and the surrender decision was made.

>...Japan would never have surrendered so quickly without use of the atomic bomb...

This is absolutely true, and the statement made by the Emperor directly refers to the bombs. The only alternative story is the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, but not only was that not a plausible threat to the home isles, but during Prime Minister's meeting with the Emperor in which the PM recommended unconditional surrender, he mentioned the bombs and (I don't think, IIRC) the Soviet invasion.

>...victory would have required a bloody invasion of the Japanese mainland, costing hundreds of thousands of lives.

I don't know of anyone who disputes that Operation Downfall would have been a bloody affair that would have killed this amount, if not more.

Edit: I just realized that somebody else already posted a bunch of what I wrote.

OK sure that might be an exception, not least because the Nazis were, like... Nazis. [EDIT: The "might" is intentional. If USA had stayed home, the war might have ended in 1943. Isn't it possible that fewer people would have died in a much shorter war?] If you don't like Nazis, however, I don't think you can support Wilson's lying our way into WWI. That certainly cost lives, and by forcing Germany into an untenable position it created the Nazis, the Holocaust, the horrific casualties suffered by the Soviets, etc. None of those things were actually prevented by our entering WWII, either.

It's true that a Nazi victory was practically impossible. But I have no idea how you can say that the US prolonged the war. Supplying the enemies of the Reich and fighting against them is not the sort of thing that causes wars to extend longer, and certainly it drew resources away from Barbarossa.

>by forcing Germany into an untenable position

No more untenable than what Germany had forced upon France following the Franco-Prussian wars, or what they forced upon Russia in Brest-Litvosk. It seems that neither of those countries engaged upon a ruthless war of extermination, though.

I also don't think that having your country split up is less harsh than reparations basically similar to what your country forced on others. Wilson's mistake was insisting on Peace with Victory, which resulted only in delaying victory by a few decades.

>I don't think you can support Wilson's lying our way into WWI.

Wilson undoubtedly bungled the aftermath to WWI, but I don't think that any of the events preceding it were faked? The Zimmerman Telegram was confirmed as being real by the man himself, correct? Unless you're talking about him breaking his promise of peace, in which case, I agree.

...practically impossible.

Germany had taken the entire continent. The British only held on as long as they did because we were happy to lose so many cargo ships to U-boats. Without our massive support they would have followed the French example, and that would have been the right decision. The war would have been over much sooner. In that case FDR probably wouldn't have baited Japan into their calamitous mistake either.

Would that have been a bad result? Probably! The Holocaust alone disqualified the German polity from any authority whatsoever, and they got up to all sorts of other evil shit besides. The point is that this hypothetical Big European War would have lasted less time than WWII and therefore it's possible that fewer people would have died.

Unless you're talking about...

I meant the election promises, but I suppose the Republicans at the time also wanted war because money. These things aren't decided by the plebes...

1. The Brits were never going to surrender. The Germans had no capacity to invade the UK's Home Islands. They completely lacked the necessary amphibious shipping to carry an invasion force, nor could they deal with the Royal Navy.

2. The German endgame was always conquest in the East, so even if the Brits DID throw in the towel the conflict wouldn't have ended. On the Eastern Front, the Germans were overstretching their offensive capabilities and logistics barely 6 months into the war (hence why they failed to take Moscow). Pivoting additional forces freed up from containing the British Empire wouldn't have helped Germany's logistical problems, so they wouldn't have forced a surrender on the Soviets like they wanted in any circumstance.

I highly recommend reading Wages of Destruction. For a more accessible study of WW2, check out "Military History Visualized", an Austrian military historian on Youtube who uses a LOT of primary sources.

[1]https://www.amazon.com/Wages-Destruction-Making-Breaking-Eco... [2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnPo7V03nbY&list=PLv0uEimc-u...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com