Nuclear device - great weapon or a vision of hell?

TBH I think alot of posters are taking a modern day view of the use of nuclear weapons,when they comment on how they were used in the last days of WW2. The war was devestating to so many countries...not least Great Britian. The country was virtually bankrupt..it was exausted from 6 years of war. Churchill was very wise to the threat of the Soviet Union and forsaw very well the "decending of an iron curtin" across eastern Europe.

The United States couldnt allow Communist sphere of influence stretch to its back yard...so needed a show of strenght to end the war quickly,as the Soviet Union had only just declared war on Japan and was quickening its forces deployment east.

How would murdering 50,000 unarmed German officers have saved more lives in the 20th century? All it would have achieved was to sate the appetite of the greatest mass murderer since Genghis khan. If there ever was a devil in human form it was Stalin. And I stand by what I said, the Japs got what they deserved. They should have realised that they had no hope of beating the allies.

I always considered that Stalin was in fact the murderer of many times this number of German POWs. Take the Stalingrad POWs. Of the 91,000 captured only 5000 ever saw Germany again...and when you look and the rates of death in a Ranks perspective youll see that officers of the Wehrmacht suffered a great deal more than NCOs,and SS officers could be almost certain of death. Example in the Officers camp of Frolovo out of 5000 inmates...less than 1000 survived.

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Bombing civilians and civilian infrastructure is what the US is good at. As demonstrated in Korea, South East Asia, Libya, Iraq, Afganistan, Yoguoslavia, Somalia etc. etc.

Ah yes, the United States are well known for wading into downtown Baghdad and carpet bombing it. :rolleyes:

Intentional mass destruction of civilians are a thing of the past. Politics wont allow it nowaday. Most american bombings concentrate on C&C structures using precision weapons. Sure the occasional bridge and 'baby milk factories' (I'm sure you know the story behind that one) get targeted too, but thats par for the course.

It's not as if they fly B-52's over baghdad and drop 100's of MK-82's out the bay doors.

Clytus and Cap't Midnight (Apart from the post I pointed out!), you seem to have an excellent understanding of things.

If anyone would like to see an excellent docudrama on Nuclear war, then I'd recommend the film Threads, made in 1984 by the BBC. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2023790698427111488

It's a pretty harrowing look at life leading up to, during, and after a Nuclear exchange, told from the perspective of ordinary people.

As for the debate, while nuclear weapons are a terrible thing, I think that the likely hood of the Soviet Union and America turning the cold war hot, would have been far greater had it not been for Mutually Assured Destruction.