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WTF? none of these?
The nukes stopped Japan but that was not the deciding factor for the whole of WWII. Also, as effective as it was for the war, it was one of the most immoral and horrific thing to have happen in modern wars.
one of the most immoral and horrific thing to have happen in modern wars
On the context of the pacific war front, I’m not sure if it even makes the top 10.
Hell, I’m not sure it’s one of the 2 worst things the US did on that single war on that single front.
Even top 1000 in modern history of war is not a good spot…
The nukes stopped Japan but that was not the deciding factor for the whole of WWII.
I mean, the question is “How did the war end?”, not “What was the deciding factor for all of WW2.”
It also depends on the theatre, the others all focus on Germany so “the allied forces took Berlin” or “Hitler shot himself” would potentially be more fitting, especially given Japan didn’t de jure end the war until 1956
But the War continued after Berlin fell and Hitler shot himself.
Yeah but as I said, legally the war continued for over 10 years after the nukes were dropped on Japan, it’s just the event that led to the end of the war in that theatre.
The war didn’t even end after the second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9th 1945. Japan didn’t even formally cease hostilities until August 15th (and sporadic combat went on even after that) and they didn’t formally surrender until September 2nd. The answer given in the cartoon is literally incorrect.
The more general “the nukes stopped Japan” is also arguably not accurate. Japan was beaten long before that point, and the Soviet declaration of war and invasion of Manchuria on August 8th (three months to the day after Germany’s surrender as Stalin had promised) had as much of a proximate effect on ending the war as did the atomic bombings - which Japan’s rulers didn’t have good information about anyway, and which didn’t stand out as being all that much more destructive than the conventional bombing attacks that the US had been carrying out for half a year at that point.
Walter enters the chat 😁
That’s how I feel is the end.
it was one of the most immoral and horrific thing to have happen in modern wars.
You’ve clearly never studied WW2 or prior history.
Less people died in both Nagasaki and Hiroshima combined from the atomic bombs and their fallout than a single conventional bombing raid on Japan. And those were happening weekly. And the most realistic projections for what a conventional invasion to capitulate Japan would have looked like estimate as much as half of the Japanese population would have been killed in direct fighting and the humanitarian disaster that would follow the aftermath of their infrastructure being pummeled.
You can preach about how bad nuclear weapons are all you want, but to suggest their use is the most immoral thing ever done is either done from a place of complete ignorance or complete intellectual dishonesty. The two cities bombed were meticulously chosen to demonstrate the power of the weapons, afflict Japanese war effort while keeping the potential body count and collateral as low as possible while still enough to be taken seriously by the Japanese government. Japan already knew they lost the war, they were only hoping to make it bloody as possible for the Americans to try and meek out some kind of favorable terms, when the terms on the table were already more favorable than they could possibly hope for.
Hell, some debate that it might not have even been necessary to stop Japan.
This is an argument that has been had for decades, and it’s not going to be settled here. I think this Sean video is one of the best things on the topic I’ve ever read/seen if you have two and a half hours.
I come down on the side that the atomic bomb was unnecessary. Japan was already looking at potential surrender (maybe not the kind of unconstitutional surrender where you let a 22 year old military aide/translator write the constitution over a couple of days…). The decision to drop the bomb was far more motivated by a desire to present a threat to the USSR and to dominate the world stage than it was to end the war.
The goal of the book is not being precise, its giving the kid learning the rhetoric that the bomb was necessary and other means are ridiculous.
Indoctrination works well. You’ve already gotten a specimen as an example replying.
Woosh
Top-right is the correct one. Hitler realized the whole thing was a mistake and stopped the war by putting a bullet through his head.
I hope this is not real. But in America these days… ugh.
Nah, not real thankfully.
Check the words at the top, the print around them is a slightly different colour and on the left there are gaps in the reflection on the paper where the edit happened (right under that green character).
There is also an editing error under the text on the second panel in the border.
those changes look like a camera translator, this could still be real- somewhere
No, it’s real. Text looks like that when you do live translations through a camera translator. Or it used to, I think modern ones get rid of those hard edges.
Oh dang, I forgot about those.
Then it’s especially funny that the general reaction was “ugh, America’s education system”
for sure. it’s probably an editor’s preprint copy! 😂😂
Why are 3 out of 4 options about Germany, which did not end the war to begin with? But the only option that is about Japan is also not correct…?
Japan’s surrender was in direct response to the atomic bombings, it’s correct in broad strokes.
You’re probably familiar with the argument that Japan’s surrender was in direct response to the Soviet invasion of Manchuria (and the southern Sakhalin Island)…
Familiar with, not supportive of. Internal discussions of the Japanese government make it quite clear which was the more pressing concern, and the mainstream view in academia remains overwhelmingly that the threat of further nuclear destruction was the pivotal point for Japan’s surrender.
Interesting. Is there a definitive reference for this, that you have handy? I just did some literature searches but most cites were over 20 years old.
This one I have saved in my favorites, but more generally you can find Sadao Asada’s views broadly reflected in academic literature, with Hasegawa’s position being regarded as revisionist, in the literal rather than pejorative sense of attempting to revise the established mainstream interpretation.
Very interesting, thanks. It’s kind of funny how as I grow older, I become more interested in conflict termination.
It depends on who you ask in Japan. The civilians didn’t care about Manchuria since the US was in the process of destroying every city in Japan. They knew the war was lost and wanted it to be over.
The army knew that they couldn’t fight the Soviets in Manchuria, occupy China, and repel American invasion of the home Islands. Amd even them, you still had higher ups in the military trying to overthrow rhe government to keep the war going.
Okay, so the nukes made Japan surrender, but did the surrender of Japan stop the war? I would argue that the war ended when Germany was defeated, not Japan. Or is it a shortcut that historians agree on to say that Japan’s surrender was the reason for Germany’s defeat?
Germany surrendered several months before Japan did. Japan was the last major power to surrender.
What’s wrong about Japan? It may be a simplified version, but the war ended very soon after the bombs were dropped.
It were 2 nukes, the threat of much more, the Russian invasion and the decisive defeat in the pacific, including the total loss of their Navy.
Not just one nuke on Hiroshima.
Yeah, it would have been more accurate to say Nagasaki.
“Simplified” doesn’t mean “correct”.
Not the fucking gems on the sash 💀
POV: your government replaced PBS with state-sponsored PragerU mandatory learning
Took me a second to remember what PBS means to Americans, and in that second I was wondering why they’re replacing cheap medicine with conservative propaganda.
Yeah, we would never replace cheap medicine with conservative propaganda. There would have to be cheap medicine first in order to replace it.
Can you imagine the timeline where the second one happened? It’s three weeks into Operation Barbarosa, the concentration camps are already up and running. And one day, Hitler’s just like, “sorry, my bad. Won’t happen again.” And then he tries to wind all that down?
Hmm, could what he did until then be somehow be forgiven if he does an absolute 180?
Is there redemption for someone who conquered and destroyed Western Europe, the Balkans, Scandinavia and Poland and already is responsible for a couple of hundred thousand or even million deaths?
Could the harm be had done be outdone by doing good?
It’s an interesting thought experiment
Yeah, it’s one thing to imagine Hitler having a change of heart back when he was a painter, before he really did anything. But let’s says he’s already done some absolutely unforgivable things, already killed a million people. Then the ghosts from A Christmas Carol show up and somehow convince him to change his ways. There’s now a good Hitler, somehow trying to end this vast evil empire that he himself created. The Wermacht is already deep into the Soviet Union. You think Hitler’s just going to call up Stalin and be like, “hey, can we just call this whole thing off, call it good here?” And how does good Hitler balance using his power to undo his past actions vs accepting moral responsibility? He could resign immediately, but then he’s putting other evil men in charge of the war machine.
Or phrased another way, you get Freaky Fridayed into Hitler’s body on July 15, 1941. What would you do in that situation? It’s even worse in that case, as you aren’t even morally responsible for Hitler’s crimes.
Top right panel:
Guy in green: Adolf, we spoke about this. No killing.
Adolf: B-But the Polis-
Guy in green: Your army is nearly gone and you’re losing territory. Is this what you wanted? Ugh, you’re embarrassing yourself and your country.
Adolf: :( click bang
Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst.
–Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers
You know that’s satire, right? Right…?
The book is not satire. The movie loosely based on it is.
Remember in the movie when Professor Rasczak was teaching the class about service and the right to vote? The class room is a significant portion of the book and isn’t satirical at all. Heinlein was dead serious about his views.
Walk softly and carry a big stick.
Heinlein absolutely loved the military. I highly doubt the book is satire. I just read it. Dude seems to think everything really would be chill. All the over the top sauce came from the movie but the movie left out the dope jump trooper suits.
Apparently it’s a Korean textbook but all 3 replies so far have been insults to the US lol
Um… which Korea?
Like Samsung Korea (abbreviated to S. Korea) or the Not-Samsung Korea (Abbreviated to N. Korea)?
Korea is a USA colony (most of NATO countries are - it’s just semantics), evening from the constant USA military on their “sovereign” ground (including USA nuclear weapons) to school textbooks & TV news is as USA gov wishes.
I can’t get over the top-right panel. Absolutely losing my shit.
I think it’s technically the best answer.
And that, children, is why the international landscape isn’t much different to the 1700 one, just bigger entities.
I believed the right answer is top left, because farming is peaceful life.
/sThe bottom left answer is also very USA propagandish tho.
(And even at that, the USA was killing more Japanese ppl with regular & incendiary bombs per day than with nuclear bombs. The threat of the new weapon tech (unleashed on civilians for terror purposes, just like incendiary bombs), was to show the world the supremacy, not the already collapsed Japanese Empire with a few weeks left in it anyway.)The Japanese Empire was not ‘already collapsed’, and the atomic bombings were not to ‘show the world the supremacy’. Hell, the Japanese government was seriously considering continuing the fight after the first atomic bombing, and after the second bombing, still maintained a demand for conditions to their surrender and had to fight off an internal coup that wanted to continue fighting anyway.
US command at this time considered the three options to be the atomic bombings as a Hail-Mary, or else to resort to either blockade or invasion. In the case of blockade, millions of Japanese civilian deaths were projected - in the case of invasion (which was regarded as the more likely option), over a million American casualties were projected. The Purple Hearts that were produced in anticipation of the (never-performed) invasion lasted the US the rest of the 20th century.
The Japanese Empire was not ‘already collapsed’
I suppose this is literally true since they still held Manchuria and other parts of China and random Pacific islands here and there that the US had bypassed, but that was really only because the bulk of their troops were trapped in these places with no capacity to bring them back to Japan. They were effectively out of oil and ships at that point. You might say that the Japanese nation was not already collapsed, but they were very obviously finished, with the only question being how long the mopping-up was going to take.
