The need for 'unconditional surrender' was necessary. Given the personality cult around the Emperor, Japanese forces wouldn't have surrendered unless unconditional surrender was accepted by the Japanese. The Emperor had to be neutered as a political force otherwise conflict would have happened again shortly after peace declared.

One also needs to factor into thinking the intensity of the War in the Pacific. Iwo Jima is frequently used as an example of this but there were worse conflicts. The battle for Micronesia was horrific. The usage of kamikaze pilots and ships presented stark evidence that life was cheap and the Japanese had little care for casualties, be they American or Japanese.

Japanese atrocities were also horrific. It doesn't surprise me that the Chinese and Koreans hate the Japanese. They manner I which they butchered civilians was sickening.

"That was fun and to round off the day, I am off to steal a charity collection box and then desecrate a place of worship.” - Smokey, The Selhurst Arms, 26/02/02

I have a question for both of you, legal and Stirling.

Hitler's admiration for the British, and particularly the Empire, is well documented through Mein Kampf and other sources - he placed immense emphasis on the importance of some kind of alliance with Britain. Had he achieved such an alliance, would he have kept to it?

Whilst it's true that his track record on treaty observance was pretty piss poor, notably with the Soviet Union, he stuck with Mussolini to the end. Would he have viewed his alliance with Britain as a matter of temporary expediency or would he genuinely have stuck to it? He wanted Europe as his own fiefdom but he seemed to believe that Britain and her Empire was a vital cog in supporting his own particular version of the new world order .

Would eventual conflict have always been inevitable? Or would Britain and Germany genuinely have walked hand in hand off into the sunset together?

I've read some interesting arguments on both sides as to how it might have panned out - what do you lads think?

I don't think the Japanese would have surrendered & would have carried out their plan to kill all POW.

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The US had essentially beaten Japan back to the mainland, its navy was almost incapable of operation and total air superiority could have been achieved within a few days. The US had other options, but it did have a super weapon, that had cost a massive fortune to produce, that no one else in the world possessed.

I don't really think the decision was taken for the good of POWs, Japans future, negating the necessity of an invasion, but because it would effectively demonstrate the capability of the US militarily, probably force an unconditional surrender (that was only a matter of time - Japan would probably have accepted a conditional surrender).

If Japan was truly committed to a everyman to the death, for the glory of the Emperor, scorched earth policy, then Nagasaki and Hiroshima would have made no difference to that. The US were also quite keen on covering up the full effects of radiation poisioning after the war, and the consequences to those affected by the bombs.

I think its hard to escape the conclusion that it remains one of the single most horrific acts of war targeted at a mostly civilian population.

I don't think you can really ever get away from the fact that it really was a war crime by any stretch of the imagination; it worked out for the best, probably, all told, but its hard to really justify any situation in which a country deliberately targets and kills at least 80,000 in a single indiscriminate attack.

Edited by jamiemartin721 (07 Aug 2015 9.29am)

"One Nation Under God, has turned into One Nation Under the Influence of One Drug"
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It is worth remembering Stirling that Churchill did not demur from the decision to use the bomb (though being more of a wheeler dealer type of politician he had doubts about the unconditional surrender strategy).

We had assisted the US to develop the bomb and in Triumph and Tragedy,Churchill later wrote of feeling at Potsdam after the decision had been made in principle to use it, that he had a vision, "fair and bright indeed it seemed"... "of the end of the whole war in one or two violent shocks."

So,not sure you can simply pin any historical moral culpability (if that's what you are going) on Truman and leave Churchill completely out of the equation.

I suspect it was, but civilian annihilation was flavour of the month in Europe. I suspect they did not have dozens of those bombs to give the luxury of starting somewhere safe and then grading up. And the Japanese were proving somewhat entrenched in the concept of fight to the last man. U.S. servicemen were winning but the body count was huge. Nevertheless, we know they had at least 2. And the first could have not been a city. With the second coming maybe a couple of weeks later. Not in the same week.