(August 8, 2015 at 6:18 pm)Gawdzilla Wrote:(August 8, 2015 at 6:12 pm)Wyrd of Gawd Wrote: As I said before, we would have gladly killed every single person in Japan if they hadn't surrendered. The nukes saved lives all around.
That certainly seems to be the preferred option for the "anything but the bomb" folks. I keep asking them for a plan that caused fewer casualties, and never get one that actually does so.
The Japanese were wanting to surrender earlier, but the U.S. was demanding "unconditional surrender," which the Japanese would not accept. We could have ended the war earlier by giving a conditional surrender, which is what we got anyway with what we dishonestly called an "unconditional" surrender. So it would have been easy to avoid the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan, as we could have had an end to the war earlier than we got.
"A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence."
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.
