Is President Truman a war criminal?

[Her]

Simple: through dropping an atomic bomb on both Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the final arc of World War II, do you consider President Truman a war criminal?

You may expand on this question and answer as you wish.

 

[Somewhere_]

I used to think it was necessary, but after studying atomic bombs and stuff, I have changed my opinion. I could see the argument for dropping 1 atomic bomb, but not 2. Japan may not have surrendered after the first, but the population would have forced a surrender after a bit. The effects of these nukes have lasted many decades, and still will. People are still suffering as a result of the bombs.

In case you didnt know, the initial blast was the more "humane" way of killing them because next would be a huge heat wave that instantly dehydrates you. If you drink water, that instantly kills you for some medical reason I dont know. That explains why there were many dead bodies in the river nearby. And a electromagnetic pulse was released, making a speedy escape or rescue vehicles useless, preventing any kind of rescue. Not to mention the radiation that malformed babies (and still does) and killed people over time. If the winds were strong enough that day, I wouldn't be surprised if the radiation spread to other parts of the island. This could have been a much bigger disaster...

So is President Truman a war criminal? Maybe. Dont forget the president has a board of advisees for war full of generals and stuff. He could have very well have been convinced by this board to drop the bombs. But he did make the final decision.

Are the men who dropped the bombs war criminals? They were simply following orders although they could have harmlessly dropped the bombs in the ocean or something (nuclear materials are stored underwater and the bomb would not have exploded on impact because it is very durable and you need the codes- example: incident in N.C.). However, they ended the war with Japan and weakened the Germans as a result.

I think it would be ignorant to say these men (the bomb droppers and Truman) saved lives by dropping the bombs because of the shear amount of deaths of innocent people as a result. Maybe 1 bomb (still not on board with that idea) could have been better or just bombing the cities without the nuclear bombs. That way, less people die, they die without nearly as much agony, and the Japanese population lose moral. After the bombings, the U.S. could have at least bluffed the nukes because they proved they could already easily get past Japanese defenses.

Edit: 100th post!

 

[Lizardo]

[FONT=&quot]The same question could be applied to any of the other Allied leaders and high-ranking officials – FDR, Stalin, Churchill, etc. That is, if the Allies had been in the same position Germany and Japan were in 1945 they'd have most likely been tried and convicted as war criminals. What makes a war criminal has as much to do with geopolitics as international law. And with the U.S. emerging from WWII as a military and economic superpower and the only major playing in the war to escape from it undamaged, no one was in a position to seriously try Truman.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]As far as the atomic bombs go, there was no specific international law against the use of nuclear weapons in 1945 and the firebombing of major Japanese cities like Tokyo – along with the U.S.N.'s unrestricted submarine warfare against Japanese shipping – caused more casualties. By 1945, the U.S. had been at war for four years and Roosevelt had already called for the Axis' unconditional surrender two years prior. With the Japanese still seeking a conditional end to the fighting, Truman's options were: invade, continue the blockade and bombing of Japan, use the atomic bombs. There was no political advantage in extending the war and possibly giving Stalin even more of a foothold in postwar Asia than he historically had when the bombs at least offered the possibility of ending it sooner. At the end of the day, the Allies needed to win the war.
[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]A lot of people died, but that's the reality of World War II. Every major nation involved in that conflict stepped outside the boundaries of international law. The U.S. Navy and German Kreigsmarine practiced unrestricted submarine warfare, the Italians used poison gas in Ethiopia, the British, Americans, Germans, and Japanese bombed civilian cities, Soviets and Germans committed mass murder in Eastern Europe, Churchill's policies lead to millions of people starving in India. In that context, I don't see Truman as a war criminal – at least, no more so than Franklin Roosevelt or Winston Churchill.[/FONT]

 

[Kanzler]

No? The alternative to the bombs were a massive land invasion or a protracted war, none of which would turn out favourably for the Japanese. This is before shock and awe, networked warfare, and unmatched battlefield awareness, which means that any engagement would be much more bloody and messy with what we are familiar with today.

The bombs caused 250 thousand deaths (liberal estimate) with probably the same number of survivors and otherwise affected victims. The casualty predictions for the invasion of Japan were hundreds of thousands of American dead, with multiples more on the part of Japanese, not including civilian casualties. And by this point in the war, the Japanese civilian population was being mobilized and armed, men and women alike. Even without an invasion, the Japanese people would have been burned and starved.

Also, the Japanese were still occupying parts of China, Indochina (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia), Malaysia, Korea, as well as what is now Indonesia. Japanese occupied territories are usually left out of any discussion of the Pacific War in WWII because people aren't aware of the occupations or even familiar with the countries. Without the bombs, these undisputedly brutal occupations would have continued.

Innocent civilians would have died either way, and I don't see how collateral damage on part of the invasion is any less purposeful than those casualties of the atomic bombs. But with the bombs you're looking at killed and injured way below seven digits, and without the bombs you're looking at millions. Compared to the alternatives of an invasion or the continued blockade, the bombs saved lives.

 

[twocows]

No. I don't believe this is a point many people are trying to make, either. The Japanese certainly haven't moved to have him declared as such, to be sure.

I used to think it was necessary, but after studying atomic bombs and stuff, I have changed my opinion. I could see the argument for dropping 1 atomic bomb, but not 2.

The second bomb was dropped as a bluff to suggest we had them in number. If we had dropped one, it was believed they may have thought it was just a prototype.

Japan may not have surrendered after the first, but the population would have forced a surrender after a bit.

The Japanese in WW2 were fiercely nationalistic (and many still are to some extent) and were prepared to sacrifice to the last in a land battle. There is no evidence that what you are saying would have come to pass and I would say there is evidence to the contrary.

 

[Sir Codin]

In addition to agreeing with Kanzler and twocows above, I also need to point out something a tad obvious: Truman is dead.

The only effect of officially declaring him a war criminal now would be just simply declaring him as such in any history textbooks made in the future.

It's kind of hard to truly punish a dead person.

 

[Livewire]

Japan had been seeking surrender terms as late as July 1945 and had also been in talks with the Soviets to maintain their neutrality pact, or at the very least, negotiate a better end to the war than the "unconditional surrender" terms given to Japan by virtue of FDR & the Potsdam Declaration. Yes, the Japanese high command had refused to surrender initially. The refusal to surrender had more to do with the retaining of the Emperor post-war than it had to do with resisting a US invasion. The USSR had a deal with the allies to open up a front against Imperial Japan after German defeat, as well as only after FDR "OK'd" the USSR's territorial claims in the far east. By this time Japanese industry and infrastructure for waging war had been almost totally destroyed; a surrender was inevitable and was coming due to that and the air and naval blockade had almost completely prevented Imperial Japan from importing oil and resources.

Truman dropped the bombs to "end the war" in the pacific but it had the added benefit of being a very convenient show of force against the Soviets as well, as a way to quote "intimidate" the USSR and perhaps turn them away from expanding into eastern Europe also to create a post war buffer state, i.e, the "iron curtain", that materialized anyways. The bomb was not militarily necessary as Imperial Japan was dying and was close to defeat, and the invasion of Japan by the U.S. was just as unlikely because the USSR was already entering the Pacific Theater and was invading regardless of the atomic bomb attacks because of the allied agreements at Yalta & Tehran. Why send thousands more American boys to invade Japan when the Soviets could crush them for us and were already going to do so? So if anything, Truman is a buffoon who facilitated the onset of the Cold War and needlessly provoked the Soviet Union with a weapon they already knew about due to Soviet intelligence ops infiltrating the manhattan project via Klaus Fuchs. A war criminal? That's a relative term depending on what side your on. But the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki vaporized tens of thousands of civilians, inflicted radiation poisoning and cancer on thousands more, and annihilated two cities that had very little or no strategic or military value as targets.

tl;dr Imperial Japan's ability to wage war was gone and the empire was on its death bed; the blockade & USSR entry into the Pacific theater meant that defeat was a forgone conclusion, despite the contrary public image the Japanese people & government were trying to convey. The bombs did their job and crushed Japan, but also set the tone for the coming Cold War.

 

[Lizardo]

The U.S.S.R.'s entry into the Pacific War was decisive, yes, because mainly it removed any hope for the Japanese to get the negotiated peace they were after and crushed the remnants of the Kwantung Army. But there is no way the U.S. was going to stand back and let the Soviet Union invade Japan alone - assuming they could even have managed it without the assistance of the American navy. As had already been seen in Eastern Europe, Poland in particular, once the Red Army occupied foreign soil they stayed there until that nation fell under the U.S.S.R.'s sphere-of-influence. It would have politically idiotic for Truman to let that happen.

And the Cold War had already begun by that point. The Western Allies and U.S.S.R. were already dividing the nations their armies stood on into their separate spheres-of-influence. Stalin had talked a good game before about allowing democratic elections in Eastern Europe when he needed American and British material aid, but when it became clear Germany was defeated, he went back on that. That's why the Cold War began. The atomic bombs escalated things - because Stalin knew, before they were dropped, that the Americans had them - but not because Truman had them dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

No, in strict military terms, the bombs weren't a necessity to end the war. Truman had the options of invading (which would have been costly, as had almost every Pacific War amphibious invasion been), accepting the negotiated peace (politically damaging given FDR's insistence on "unconditional surrender"), letting the Soviets handle the brunt of the invasion and lose Japan to the U.S.S.R.'s sphere (also incredibly stupid), or simply continuing the blockade in the hopes Japan eventually capitulated and dragging the war on unnecessarily. But out of those, they were the best option.

 

[Crizzle]

Yes, he's a war crimnal. He didn't have to decimate innocents but he made the decision to do so for sake of convenience. That said, no one ever truly considers the victors to be war criminals, only the losers(ie. Nazis).

 

[Esper]

Going just by the actions he took, yes, he is. Destroying entire cities (whether by atomic bombs, firebombing, or whatever) is really too unjustifiable. I know that since we are mostly from countries that fought on the side of the victors we're taught that the Allies' winning was what kept the world from ending (paraphrasing) but if they hadn't, if there had been something more of a neutral ending, or even if Japan and the rest had come out better off, with their respective fascist governments in tact, would that have been worse for the world? We can't know. It's not like America coming out on top and being a major superpower for decades was exactly good for the world as a whole. Good for (some) Americans, sure, but if Germany and Japan had won WWII then there would certainly have been some very well-off Germans and Japanese out there.

tl;dr Yes, war crime. Thinking that the Allies had to win at any cost is bad thinking and can't excuse the bombings.

 

[Lapis]

Looking back on his actions from the present day, I can completely understand why Henry Truman would be considered a War Criminal. He destroyed thousands of lives and obliterated two cities in such a short amount of time. He also as stated by Stormbringer that this action would eventually lead to the Cold War, which would last until 1991.

But also, since at the time, there wasn't any kind of laws to be able to hold him and his advisors from doing so, sure they could have looked at other options to find some way to end the war in the pacific theater, but overall, there really wasn't anything holding them back from doing so, they were desperate, the Japanese weren't willing to surrender while everyone else was pretty much done with the war, from their point of view, it simply had to be done. Is it ethical? Nope. Lots of people died, landscapes got destroyed, it's a nuclear mess. So if he were still alive today? He or at least the staff behind the bombs could be tried for being war criminals, since he isn't? There really isn't much point.

Basically tl;dr is Truman a war criminal? It sways with me. But me being a bystander looking into the events, I would conclude that I think he would be considered one.

 

[Kanzler]

But let us remember those words of von Clausewitz: "War is a mere continuation of politics with other means" ("Der Krieg ist eine bloße Fortsetzung der Politik mit anderen Mitteln"). War cannot be justified without its political objectives, otherwise it'd just be killing people for the sake of killing people.

I second Lizardo's observation that the bombs prevented the Japanese from surrendering to the Soviets. Also I find it mindboggling that there seems to be some equivocation of Allied to Axis in this thread. A victorious Nazi Germany would be one to continue its policies of slave labour, its continued subjugation of Russians and the final (literally) extermination of the Jews in Europe. A victorious Japan would mean the continued subjugation of China and South East Asia. It's not like America coming out on top and being a major superpower for decades was exactly good for the world as a whole but the alternative seems a whole lot worse.

Military decisions are never simple because they involve managing political realities which are always complex. And decisions are never made in a vacuum, you have to compare them to alternatives. Oftentimes war and politics are about choosing the bad over the worse situation.

Also, @Stormbringer: Hiroshima was an Army depot (meaning supplies, whether lethal or non-lethal), as well as a port of embarkation (meaning cargo is shipped to and from this port, ie not your port in Bumsville which docks maybe a personal yacht), as well as the site of a major military headquarters. Nagasaki was another major port and was the site of an urban industrial area that built almost every type of supply for the war effort. They were actually considering bombing Kyoto instead of Nagasaki, but changed their minds at the last minute (I think probably because Kyoto is just too culturally significant to Japan and nuking it would be wiping millenia worth of wealth of Japanese culture). Calling them "two cities that had very little or no strategic or military value as targets" is just simply untrue.

And despite the Japanese Empire being on its knees in term of conventional fighting ability, that didn't stop its high command from planning Operation Ketsugo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall#Operation_Ketsug.C5.8D) which would be their plan for resisting the American invasion. They believed that they could force an armistice by making an American invasion unbearably bloody and costly. In other words, they felt like the could get away without having to surrender to the allies, and counter to your assessment that a surrender was inevitable.

Also also also, please anyone reading this thread please do not leave it with the idea that the bombs somehow "led" to the Cold War, because that is a very misleading characterization of things. If you want to talk about the underlying forces at play, then you would have to consider as the most significance force a global order dominated by two, otherwise unmatched, ideologically opposed superpowers. If you want to talk about more proximate events, the Iron Curtain definitely has to be more significant than the bombs. And if you want to talk about the Cold War in Asia, then you should consider the division of Korea, as well as the de-colonization/liberation of Vietnam from the French to be much more significant.

tl;dr real life politics is 99% about bad vs. worse. also consider global geopolitical context instead of just thinking about how horrific the bombs were, because yes they were horrific, but yes there were horrific-er alternatives.