Hacker News Reader

Were the Japanese forced into submission by a great football match?

More than they were by homework sets. Academic research certainly played a role in winning the second world war. I'd say that quality leadership played an even bigger role. Cadets and Midshipmen at our service academies have always been required to participate in athletics because team sports develop leadership, teamwork, and tactical and strategic thinking (in the '30s through the '60s, the service academies were powerhouses in college football). Academy graduates were a minority of overall officers in the war, but were a majority of the most senior officers. Prior to the war, the cadre of war college students and faculty who developed the tactics and strategies which won the war were also predominantly academy graduates.

As far as 26 July '45, the Japanese refused to surrender. The guys that forced Japan in to submission were Little Boy and Fat Man and they had an academic background. The only leadership required from the 'sport trained' generals was choosing which city had the most juicy civilians.

The "only" leadership required to use Little Boy and Fat Man was fighting our way across the world's biggest ocean to get into range to use them. To accomplish the same task, academics would have needed another couple of decades (and a boat-load of stolen German scientists) to invent the ICBM.

Nukes certainly ended the war earlier, and I believe they saved tens if not hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides, but they didn't create victory. Victory was already a foregone conclusion by the time we used them--they just accelerated it and lowered the cost dramatically.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com