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Post a Comment On: Steve Sailer: iSteve

"Marginal Decisionmaking"

13 Comments -

1 – 13 of 13
Anonymous BD said...

I think you've misstated Dyson's current view of the matter. He now no longer believes the atomic bomb DID end the war (not "didn't").

I'm no expert on this subject, but just based on the information he cites it's hard to see how he reaches this conclusion. In "1" he states (or it least it can be inferred) that Hiroshima prompted a meeting of the Supreme Council. In "4" we learn that this meeting actually resulted in the decision to surrender. In the interim, we see there was a conversation involving one member of the Council in which the subject of Hiroshima was mentioned only in passing. But that hardly proves the bomb wasn't a decisive factor in the ENTIRE Council's subsequent decision to surrender, is it? Obviously, there is support for other factors being in play (see "3"); but that simply doesn't justify ruling out the two bombings as factors in the decision.

1/4/08, 10:17 AM

Blogger Eugene said...

Dyson's reasoning confuses cause and effect. Stalin moved up the invasion of Manchuria because he was concerned that the use of atomic weapons would cause Japan to surrender before the Soviets could launch one of the biggest smash & grab operations in history, which included seizing native Japanese territory, installing Kim Il Sung in North Korea, and sending several hundred thousand Japanese soldiers and civilians to their deaths in the gulags.

Why didn't Stalin invade earlier in the summer when two hundred thousand Japanese and Americans were slaughtering each other in Okinawa? Because Japan and the Soviet Union had a non-aggression pact, and Stalin was content to sit by and let both sides exhaust themselves. Until the very last days of the war, the Japanese government believed that the Soviet Union could be used as a "good faith" intermediary while they wrangled over surrender terms.

The invasion of Manchuria shattered that myth. But the invasion only came because of the atomic bomb, and had the surrender been delayed even further, millions of Japanese would have starved over the winter of 1945/1946. Hirohito's surrender rescript specifically mentioned the bomb: "The enemy now possesses a new and terrible weapon with the power to destroy many innocent lives and do incalculable damage." Hirohito did not mention the Soviet invasion.

The atomic bomb also gave the Emperor something greater than himself to surrender to. However, it also allowed Hirohito--and Japan--to thereafter deflect responsibility for the war by heralding her new designation as "victim" of the bomb.

1/4/08, 10:56 AM

Anonymous dodo said...

Nice post! Bravo! Banzai!

Lots of big, important decisions are made for silly reasons that we wouldn't want anyone to know about because of their irrationality.

Perhaps the MutantBlaster 970 has a sexier woman on the package than the GyroXdisk or something. Or, more likely, the package looks more macho.

Anyway, in the scheme of things, these kinds of decisions can work out as good or better than carefully decided ones at the end of the day.

The dart throwers outpick the high powered stock analysts.

History may be the same.

1/4/08, 12:13 PM

Anonymous simon newman said...

Dyson's claim not to believe that the A-bombs ended the war appears entirely spurious, he appears to be claiming to believe this simply because he believes that doing so will further the cause of nuclear disarmament, which he cherishes.

1/4/08, 12:19 PM

Anonymous airtommy said...

Hirohito surrendered long before we dropped atomic bombs. America just decided to accept his conditional surrender after Nagasaki.

1/4/08, 1:09 PM

Blogger Colby Cosh said...

Whoa, Wheeler is still alive? He was Richard Feynman's thesis advisor, and Feynman's been dead for close to 20 years.

1/4/08, 2:10 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

More and more I feel like Steve Sailer is the closest thing we have to a George Orwell in our world.

1/4/08, 7:38 PM

Blogger Gc said...

Well, either way: the american nuclear weapons were very important in the cold war. After all the soviets had more conventional weapons. I wonder how the american`s and the brits would have survived against the Russian`s in Europe in World war III if there were no nuclear weapons. Let us remember that The Russians caused the deaths of 85 percent of the German soldiers killed in Wold war II.

1/4/08, 8:41 PM

Anonymous tommy said...

I can't say I've ever had the experience of that sort of marginal decisionmaking - at least not when it comes to sales.

I'm sure it didn't actually happen that way (just that it would have happened that way if I was the Emperor of Japan).

Steve Sailer: The Man Who Would Be Emperor.

1/5/08, 5:33 AM

Anonymous David said...

I planned to comment on this post then decided not to. You can see how well that worked out.

1/5/08, 6:24 AM

Anonymous steve wood said...

Dyson's claim not to believe that the A-bombs ended the war appears entirely spurious, he appears to be claiming to believe this simply because he believes that doing so will further the cause of nuclear disarmament, which he cherishes.

... which itself is a spurious belief. The question of whether nuclear bombs ended WWII is utterly irrelevant to 21st century disarmament. I don't understand how Dyson could make any such connection, unless he's gone gaga. Does he imagine that the Russians and Americans - much less Indians, Pakis, Israelis et al. - will say, "Oh, gee, I guess those bombs don't work because they didn't make Japan surrender. Let's get rid of them"? It's absurd.

1/5/08, 2:53 PM

Anonymous Neil Craig said...

The important thing is not that Japan surrendered but whether the Bomb was the defining matter. If it was the world changed that day. If it wasn't it didn't & much of the cold war was based on an illusion.

I had generally held to the theory that the Bomb did not shorten the war. Indeed that Truman deliberately used it not for that purpose but to frighten Stalin. At the Potsdam conference Stalin had told Truman that The Japanese wanted to make peace pretty much on unconditional terms except that they wanted to keep their Emperor. Stalin wasn't keen - after all, having promised to attack Japan 3 months after the end of the European war he expected to be able to conquer Manchuria & Korea. Truman's reluctance is more difficult to explain, particularly since he later did allow Hirohito to stay. However if we take it that he was intending to cow the the Russians it is clearer. It should also be remembered that, having spent several billions (1940s billions so multiply by 100s) Congress & public would have crucified them had it never been used,

The Soviet invasion of Manchuria is not well known in the west (I doubt if 1 person in 100 could tell you it happened). Though it only lasted a week it was a massive undertaking involving 40 divisions yet I found it quite difficult to find a serious online history of it. The Soviets, with an army forged in the war with Hitler & tanks designed for that war, engaged in a 1 week land campaign against a Japanese army which, while large, was equipped to take on Chinese guerrillas & whose best tanks were equal to what everybody else had in 1940 ie harmless. In that week they advanced, in places, up to 600km. Just as Soviets did most of the fighting in WW2 & the Anglo/Americans got all the valuable territory (ie western Europe) the Soviets could, for similar geographical reasons, have expected to take the valuable stuff in the east (China, all of Korea & at least half of Japan.

If Stalin also appreciated the role of the Soviet army in causing the surrender it probably explains the Soviet failure to drop to their knees when America used the Bomb.

Eugene is wrong to say that the Soviet invasion happened only because of the Bomb. Russia had promised to go to war with Japan 3 months after the end of the war in Europe & they did so. You just don't redeploy 40 divisiona across 6 thousand miles faster than that. There is a better argument for saying that the Bomb was dropped as early as possible because of the threat of Soviet assistance.

1/6/08, 5:41 AM

Anonymous simon newman said...

gc:
"I wonder how the american`s and the brits would have survived against the Russian`s in Europe in World war III if there were no nuclear weapons."

I think the RN, RAF and US Navy & air force might have been able to hold them at the English Channel, with a bit of luck. Continental Europe would have fallen under Soviet control.

1/6/08, 11:28 AM

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