Bombing Quotes

On March 9-10, 1945, over three hundred B-29 Superfortresses, loaded with 2,000 tons of incendiary bombs flew over Tokyo bombing the city in waves for 6 hours. Over 250,000 buildings were destroyed and more people killed than would be in either Hiroshima or Nagasaki which were destroyed by atomic bombs. The fact that the Japanese would not surrender even after such complete destruction of their capital and largest industrial city, was used by American leaders in assessing whether to use the atomic bomb afterwards. There were many who believed that the atomic bomb would not be enough for motivate a Japanese surrender as Japanese culture prohibited surrender. Indeed, even after the 1st atomoc bomb, the Japanese did not surrender, and after the 2nd, the war council was split 3-3 and the Emperor historically broke the tie. Even the atomic bomb might not have worked. Later generations found this resistance to surrender hard to understand but Japanese culture was amazingly strong then.

Otis and his paper were virulently anti-labor. See {617172} .

Some scholars look back at the allied bombing of German Cities in WWII with criticism that it was morally improper to bomb populated cities, and that the use of the adjective “exterminating” indicated that Churchill was more interested in killing Germans than strategic victory. This revisionist history has two failings. First, the Germans had already bombed Coventry, London and other civilian targets in England as well as cities in Holland, Poland and other countries killing many civilians. As a result, under the rules of war, Germany was no longer entitled to protection for their cities. Further, Hamburg and other targets were manufacturing sites of war material and as such lost the protection anyway. Even Dresden, which had very little war manufacturing was the main location for R&R of German Officers and by their military presence in the city converted it into a legitimate target. FDR agreed with Churchill, that the bombing was a good strategy to cause Hitler to fall as they thought the public would rebel. They were wrong however and his grip on the population through the Gestapo and the military was so strong that, it took a land invasion and occupation to put an end to Hitler. However, the devastating bombing all but crippled the German weapons development and deployment. For example. The Germans had developed the Jet Airplane Engine and actually put a few in the fight at the end if the war. Without the bombing, they would have had many more and countered the allied air supremacy. However, it is also true that Churchill and many Englishmen and some Americans believed that the English were morally entitled to retaliation for the innocent civilians killed with the German bombing of civilian targets.

At Potsdam the Allies had called for the unconditional surrender of the Japanese and reiterated what had been allied policy that the surrender must be unconditional. Even after the Hiroshima bombing, the Japanese military cabinet voted not to surrender. After the second atomic bomb, the Emperor decided to surrender, but even then there was an attempted military coup to prevent that. Fortunately, the coup failed. We did not have any more atomic bombs immediately ready and it would have taken months to construct more.

Chaing Kai Chek seemed to have the Red Army on the run with far more guns, planes & men. However while Chaing thought he was chasing the Communists, the Red Army traveled through 11 major Chinese provinces, helping the peasants to harvest their crops, build their homes, care for their sick & get indoctrinated in Communist political philosophy. In comparison, the Chaing forces abused the peasants, corruptly stole from them & brought no improvement in their living standard, sense of hope or fairness. Massive retreat became massive victory as so much of China had a Chance to compare the communists with the Kuomintang & unfortunately chose communism as Chaing and the Kuomingtang was such a poor example of capitalism-corrupt, ineffectual and heartless. At the same time, Mao and the other communist leaders were brilliant in their use of the retreating army to improve the lot of the peasants and left their biggest supporters as they were driven to the next province and repeated the process.

English foreign and military policy had been so effective that English citizens had been completely sheltered from all the British military hostilities throughout the world. Keyserlingk and other German military planners, observing the effect that home public opinion had on war policies and practices, placed a high priority on bringing war to the British civilians and sinking merchant ships was the one way they had technologically open to them. Latter, in WWII, the same objective was achieved by the bombing of the Blitz—bombing of London and other cities with planes and rockets.

This quotation has been used by many criticizing the policy of massive bombing of Japanese Cities towards the end of the war. At first it appears that there was a racist disregard for Japanese Civilian lives. However there was legal logic. The Japanese had already bombed cities throughout Asia and did not adhere to the rules of war. The Japanese government “invited” all Japanese to join the military to defend the homeland to the death in the coming invasion. All adult civilians were mobilized. There were no adult civilians left in Japan. Perhaps more important was the industrial organization of Japan which exists in large part to this day. There were tens of thousands of small & tiny factories distributed throughout all the Japanese cities. These were distributed in civilian areas & in many cases were actually in homes to take advantage of available labor and not have to transport people. There was no way to bomb the munitions factories without bombing civilian neighborhoods.

The East End was a lower class neighborhood that had suffered enormous damage during the blitz.

An assassin had tried to kill the archduke and failed. In response to the complaints the mayor changed the archduke’s route the following day when he was successfully assassinated provoking World War I.

The Prime Minister was viewing films of the effects on cities of Allied bombing of Germany.