Laukhi64

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.

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.

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.

Apparently a literal coup involving a thousand people to prolong the war, even after the bombs had dropped, is the same as "being ready to surrender".

And apparently the Soviets, who had essentially no capability to launch a amphibious invasion, were a serious threat to the Japanese home islands. You know, compared to the country which had just launched the most ambitious amphibious operation in history.

The Japanese government at the time was prone to ultra-nationalist factions and extreme instability, and the problem with the idea that they would surrender just because the Soviets had closed off one of their options was that, although any individual leader might well know that their situation was untenable, anyone who acknowledged this would be prone to a coup by nationalist junior officers. The incentive structures of Japanese military leaders was such that it would be extremely difficult to justify ending the war. Otherwise, they would have de-escalated with China in the first place, or at the very least following the US embargo.

I'm being far less fair than I should be, but so is the article itself - the story it presents is plausible revisionism and is taken seriously by historians, but it is revisionism nonetheless; there is a reason historical consensus is historical consensus, and saying that "there is a real resistance to looking at the facts" ignores this. The story that the Soviets caused the surrender is perfectly plausible, but so is the story that the bombs did. My own feeling is that the article is written in bad faith.

As an aside, the idea that nuclear weapons were widely considered horrifying at the time is very much an anachronism. Nobody really understood the consequences at the time; to give you an idea, Operation Downfall planned to use nuclear weapons as an opener and then march US troops into the blast zone after 48 hours.

I don't see anything that I'd explicitly disagree with, but I also can't help but have a feeling that something is lost in translation. I'm not sure that Descartes and African philosophers are talking about exactly the same thing when they say something like "person".