Wednesday, 9 January 2013

Would America have dropped the atomic bomb on Germany if Japan had surrendered first?


Would America have dropped the atomic bomb on Germany if Japan had surrendered first?

I think that the answer is definitely a ‘no’. Putting the factor of racism aside for a moment, let us consider the situation logically. Firstly, Germany is a European country (in the middle of Europe) that is also bordering a bunch of other countries including France (an ally) and Switzerland (a neutral country). Bombing Germany with such a powerful new weapon (with no previous large scale testing to know the real effects) was really out of the question, because what if they missed and the radiation travelled further than expected? On the other hand, Japan was an island not bordering any other country.

Now, let’s consider the racism. The difference between Germany and Japan in the eyes of the Americans is that the ‘evil ones’ were always the ‘Nazis’ or ‘Hitler’, not necessarily the German people. But with the Japanese, there was this mindset that ‘all the Japs were heartless, murdering, inhuman monsters who deserve to be wiped off this planet’. Not the mention that the idea of ‘superior races’ and ‘enemy aliens’ had much support in the US and North America in the beginning and the Japanese-Americans were always treated much worse than their German and Italian allies. 

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