Consider what “the cold war” might have been like if we hadn’t of had nuclear weapons. It probably would have been less cold. Come to think of it, cold wars are the best kind of wars. We could use more of them.
Yes nukes have done terrible things, could have done far worse, and still might. However since their invention conventional weapons have still killed far, far more people. We’ve seen plenty of chances for countries to use nukes where they’ve not, so I think its safe to say the existence of nukes isn’t on average more dangerous than the existence of other weapons. The danger in them seems to come from the existential risk which is not present when using conventional weapons.
That’s not obvious to me. Consider empirical data: the casualties from conventional bombing raids. And more empirical data: the US did not drop a nuke on Tokyo. Neither did it drop a nuke on Kyoto or Osaka. The use of atomic bombs was not designed for maximum destruction/casualties.
The actual use of the atom bomb against Japan was against an already defeated enemy. The US had nothing to fear from Japan at that point, and so they didn’t need to strike with maximum power.
On the other hand, imagine a scenario where use of the Bomb isn’t guaranteed to end the war at one stroke, and you have to worry about an enemy plausibly building their own Bomb before being defeated. What would Stalin, or Hitler, or Churchill, do with an atom bomb in 1942? The same thing they tried to do with ordinary bombs, scaled up: build up an arsenal of at least a few dozen (time permitting), then try to drop one simultaneously on every major enemy city within a few days of one another.
WW2 casualties were bad enough, but they never approached the range of “kill 50% of the population in each of the 50 biggest enemy cities, in a week’s bombing campaign, conditional only on getting a single bomber with a single bomb to the target”.
Given that neither Hitler nor Churchill choose to use the chemical weapons that they had on the enemy I don’t see the argument for why they would have used atom bombs the same way as conventional bombs.
I don’t know the details of why they didn’t use chemical weapons, and what they might have accomplished if they had. But I’m not sure what your argument is here. Do you think that they thought they could achieve major military objectives with chemical weapons, but refrained because of the Geneva Protocols, or because of fear of retaliation in kind?
Many bombing campaigns were indeed waged with an explicit goal of maximum civilian casualties, in order to terrorize the enemy into submission, or to cause the collapse of order among enemy civilians. This includes the German Blitz of London and the V-1 and V-2 campaigns, most of the British Bomber Command war effort, US bombing attacks against German cities such as Hamburg and Dresden, Japanese bombing of Nanjing and Canton, and US fire-bombing of Japanese cities including Tokyo. That’s not taking the Eastern Front in account, which saw the majority of the fighting.
Wikipedia has a lot of details (excepting the Eastern Front) given and linked here.
If any of the combatants had had the atom bomb, possibly including the US when they were not yet confident of being close to victory, they would surely have used them. After all, dead is dead, and it’s better to build and field only one plane and (expensive) bomb per city, not a fleet of thousands. Given the power of even a single bomb, they would surely have gone on to bomb other cities, stopping only when the enemy surrendered.
Many bombing campaigns were indeed waged with an explicit goal of maximum civilian casualties, in order to terrorize the enemy into submission, or to cause the collapse of order among enemy civilians.
If Germany would have wanting to maximize causalities they would have bombed London with chemical weapons. They decided against doing so.
They wanted to destroy military industry and reduce civilian moral. They didn’t want to kill as many civilian’s as possible but demoralize them.
Estarlio seems to be correct: they didn’t use chemical weapons because they feared retaliation in kind. Quoting Wikipedia:
During the war, Germany stockpiled tabun, sarin, and soman but refrained from their use on the battlefield. In total, Germany produced about 78,000 tons of chemical weapons.[2] By 1945 the nation produced about 12,000 tons of tabun and 1,000 pounds (450 kg) of sarin.[2] Delivery systems for the nerve agents included 105 mm and 150 mm artillery shells, a 250 kg bomb and a 150 mm rocket.[2] Even when the Soviets neared Berlin, Adolf Hitler was persuaded not to use tabun as the final trump card. The use of tabun was opposed by Hitler’s Minister of Armaments, Albert Speer, who, in 1943, brought IG Farben’s nerve agent expert Otto Ambros to report to Hitler. He informed Hitler that the Allies had stopped publication of research into organophosphates (a type of organic compound that emcompasses nerve agents) at the beginning of the war, that the essential nature of nerve gases had been published as early as the turn of the century, and that he believed that Allies could not have failed to produce agents like tabun. This was not in fact the case (Allied research into organophosphates had been kept secret to protect DDT), but Hitler accepted Ambros’s deduction, and Germany’s tabun arsenal remained unused.
However, one doesn’t fear retaliation in kind if one can win with a first strike. Chemical weapons used as bombs would not be that much more effective than firebombing. Atom bombs are far more effective and also easier to deliver and possibly cheaper per city destroyed. Since Hitler (as well as the other sides) accepted the premise that sufficient bombing of enemy civilian populations would cause the enemy to seek terms, if they had had atom bombs and thought their enemies didn’t yet have them, they would likely have used them.
Indeed, I’m pretty sure that if not for nuclear weapons, some right-thinking Russian would have declared war over the phrase “hadn’t of had”. And very rightly so. The slaughter inflicted by mere armies of millions, with a few tens of thousands of tanks, would have been a small price to pay to rid the world of abominations like that one.
Consider what “the cold war” might have been like if we hadn’t of had nuclear weapons. It probably would have been less cold. Come to think of it, cold wars are the best kind of wars. We could use more of them.
Yes nukes have done terrible things, could have done far worse, and still might. However since their invention conventional weapons have still killed far, far more people. We’ve seen plenty of chances for countries to use nukes where they’ve not, so I think its safe to say the existence of nukes isn’t on average more dangerous than the existence of other weapons. The danger in them seems to come from the existential risk which is not present when using conventional weapons.
Consider what the last big “hot war” would have been like if the atom bomb had been developed even a couple of years earlier, or by another side.
The war would have been over faster, with possibly lower total number of casualties?
The war might have been over faster, but I think with a much higher number of casualties.
That’s not obvious to me. Consider empirical data: the casualties from conventional bombing raids. And more empirical data: the US did not drop a nuke on Tokyo. Neither did it drop a nuke on Kyoto or Osaka. The use of atomic bombs was not designed for maximum destruction/casualties.
The actual use of the atom bomb against Japan was against an already defeated enemy. The US had nothing to fear from Japan at that point, and so they didn’t need to strike with maximum power.
On the other hand, imagine a scenario where use of the Bomb isn’t guaranteed to end the war at one stroke, and you have to worry about an enemy plausibly building their own Bomb before being defeated. What would Stalin, or Hitler, or Churchill, do with an atom bomb in 1942? The same thing they tried to do with ordinary bombs, scaled up: build up an arsenal of at least a few dozen (time permitting), then try to drop one simultaneously on every major enemy city within a few days of one another.
WW2 casualties were bad enough, but they never approached the range of “kill 50% of the population in each of the 50 biggest enemy cities, in a week’s bombing campaign, conditional only on getting a single bomber with a single bomb to the target”.
Given that neither Hitler nor Churchill choose to use the chemical weapons that they had on the enemy I don’t see the argument for why they would have used atom bombs the same way as conventional bombs.
I don’t know the details of why they didn’t use chemical weapons, and what they might have accomplished if they had. But I’m not sure what your argument is here. Do you think that they thought they could achieve major military objectives with chemical weapons, but refrained because of the Geneva Protocols, or because of fear of retaliation in kind?
The point is that the war in Europe wasn’t waged with a goal of creating a maximum numbers of casualties.
Many bombing campaigns were indeed waged with an explicit goal of maximum civilian casualties, in order to terrorize the enemy into submission, or to cause the collapse of order among enemy civilians. This includes the German Blitz of London and the V-1 and V-2 campaigns, most of the British Bomber Command war effort, US bombing attacks against German cities such as Hamburg and Dresden, Japanese bombing of Nanjing and Canton, and US fire-bombing of Japanese cities including Tokyo. That’s not taking the Eastern Front in account, which saw the majority of the fighting.
Wikipedia has a lot of details (excepting the Eastern Front) given and linked here.
If any of the combatants had had the atom bomb, possibly including the US when they were not yet confident of being close to victory, they would surely have used them. After all, dead is dead, and it’s better to build and field only one plane and (expensive) bomb per city, not a fleet of thousands. Given the power of even a single bomb, they would surely have gone on to bomb other cities, stopping only when the enemy surrendered.
If Germany would have wanting to maximize causalities they would have bombed London with chemical weapons. They decided against doing so.
They wanted to destroy military industry and reduce civilian moral. They didn’t want to kill as many civilian’s as possible but demoralize them.
Estarlio seems to be correct: they didn’t use chemical weapons because they feared retaliation in kind. Quoting Wikipedia:
However, one doesn’t fear retaliation in kind if one can win with a first strike. Chemical weapons used as bombs would not be that much more effective than firebombing. Atom bombs are far more effective and also easier to deliver and possibly cheaper per city destroyed. Since Hitler (as well as the other sides) accepted the premise that sufficient bombing of enemy civilian populations would cause the enemy to seek terms, if they had had atom bombs and thought their enemies didn’t yet have them, they would likely have used them.
IIRC they decided not to use chemical weapons because they were under the impression that the Allies had developed comparable capabilities.
Ah, so no chemical weapons because MAD, but atomic weapons (by the first to get them) would be different.
Indeed, I’m pretty sure that if not for nuclear weapons, some right-thinking Russian would have declared war over the phrase “hadn’t of had”. And very rightly so. The slaughter inflicted by mere armies of millions, with a few tens of thousands of tanks, would have been a small price to pay to rid the world of abominations like that one.