The Russian cult of WWII

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  • Paradise_LostParadise_Lost Posts: 6,454
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    PPhilster wrote: »
    The smartest thing that the allies should have done is allied itself with the surrendering German army, as they suggested, and conquered the Soviet Union when it had the chance. I'm sure Patton would have agreed.

    Somebody has a Napoleonic complex.
  • PPhilsterPPhilster Posts: 1,742
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    jesaya wrote: »
    They tested the bomb in July 1945 - two and a half months after the fall of Berlin. They didn't deliver the bombs on Japan until August. At the time when Patton wanted to continue to attack the Russians they didn't even know the bombs would work.

    Have you not been reading what I have been posting? I said to attack the Soviet Union after the end of the war!
  • KJ44KJ44 Posts: 38,093
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    PPhilster wrote: »
    It is a fact that America had nukes for quite some time before the Soviets did!

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_(nuclear_test)
    Trinity was the code name of the first detonation of a nuclear device. This test was conducted by the United States Army on July 16, 1945,

    WHY would WE IN EUROPE give a FLYING F**K about "freedom" when your fantasy USA (not the real, sensible one) is apparently prepared to nuke us, dust us with fallout and so on?

    That's my final word. Nuclear war fantasies are sick.
  • jesayajesaya Posts: 35,597
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    PPhilster wrote: »
    Once again, I am simply saying what could have been done and what should have been done.

    Your claim to know the people you say you knew is a bit out there but in no way is more valuable than the opinions expressed by the common soldier on what could have been and should have been done, especially in hindsight.

    I think people who observed the actual decision makers or were part of the process know more about the state of the army and political climate than the common soldier. The decision not to proceed into the USSR was taken for good practical reasons and they were right to do so, People knew what Stalin was, they also knew that they couldn't have beaten him without the kind of cost they were trying to avoid by using the bombs on Japan.

    Hindsight is a wonderful thing when it isn't you who would be one of the millions who would die on both sides if they had made such a stupid decision.
  • PPhilsterPPhilster Posts: 1,742
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    Somebody has a Napoleonic complex.

    I don't remember Napoleon having the most powerful armed forces in the world, the most capable and productive manufacturing force in the world, and I'm pretty sure Napoleon didn't have nukes. :D
  • jesayajesaya Posts: 35,597
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    PPhilster wrote: »
    Have you not been reading what I have been posting? I said to attack the Soviet Union after the end of the war!

    Oh I see... you just wanted to nuke a whole country then. How would that 'save millions' in the USSR exactly, which is one of the reasons you gave earlier?
  • phylo_roadkingphylo_roadking Posts: 21,339
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    ...and it only took two to get the Japanese to surrender.

    The Japanese were already negotiating on the QT for surrender...but "conditionally", on the condition they could retain the Emperor; the Americans refused, in line with the Casablanca Declaration on Unconditional Surrender...then AFTER they did surrender they allowed the Japanese to retain the Emperor anyway!
    Obviously fallout wasn't a consideration back then

    Actually - it wasn't! Both the Atomic Bombs used didn't actually generate much fallout as they were airbursts...and "fallout" - pulverised ground material lofted through the fireball and thus irradiated by the direct radiation...had come as a suprise to the Los Alamos scientsits after the Trinity test; they expected the directly-propagated radiation...but not fallout! They had equiped and shielded two Sherman tanks to enter Ground Zero to take samples shortly after the blast, and were quite suprised at the results!!!
    Huh? Who says you needed a B-29 to deliver a nuke?

    Actually - with the size and weight of a "period" plutonium device - yes it did! :eek: An Avro Lincoln could - the RAF used a squadron of them and a squadron of B-29 "Washingtons" after the war as strategic nuclear bombers for a few years...but both the weight and inconvenient size and shape of a "Fat Man" device meant that few other aircraft could carry it with any range.
    The two atom bombs were two different hand built prototypes, not production models and if IIRC just had the bits to make an immediate third. They were not available until after VE day anyway.

    To be fair - ALL nucelar devices are "hand built", though the components can be "manufactured" ;) But several sets of Hiroshima-type "Uranium Gun" parts had been constructed and set aside by the start of 1945; it's physics was relatively simple (!!!) and with the right amounts of enriched uranoium brought together in the right way...they WOULD go bang! They didn't need tested like the plutonium bomb....

    Up to a dozen Little Boy cases, and three sets of mechanical innards were sent to Tinian in july and August 1945; at least five cases were used to practice-drop weighed and ex-plosive filled "simulators" both on test missions AND live drops during conventional raids on the Home Islands! The set of cases selected to assemble the final Hiroshima Bomb was set "no. eleven"...so there were at least five other pairs around....

    There was also a Uranium "target" segment on Tinian; but the Americans were short of refined, enriched uranium to make another "bullet" segment. In a "Uranium Gun", the "bullet" slides down a tube until it impacts on the "target"...and suprisingly, the "bullet" is the bigger segment! Oak Ridge in Tennessee was producing enriched uranium at a much slower rate than expected...but the Americans DID come into a small amount of extra enriched uranium for the Hiroshima Bomb...courtesy of the Germans!!!

    However - a Hiroshioma-type Bomb could easily have been available by the end of September 1945...and I've read various accounts of up to 15 plutonium bombs possibly being available by December 1945 at a push...
  • Paradise_LostParadise_Lost Posts: 6,454
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    PPhilster wrote: »
    I don't remember Napoleon having the most powerful armed forces in the world, the most capable and productive manufacturing force in the world, and I'm pretty sure Napoleon didn't have nukes. :D

    OK Walter Mitty. Have at it then.
  • phylo_roadkingphylo_roadking Posts: 21,339
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    Oh I see... you just wanted to nuke a whole country then.

    Wouldn't have been required, by no means...

    Where exactly was the vast majority of the Red Army in May-June-July-August 1945??? ;) It certainly wasn't demobbed and back on the farm...! ;)
  • PPhilsterPPhilster Posts: 1,742
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    jesaya wrote: »
    I think people who observed the actual decision makers or were part of the process know more about the state of the army and political climate than the common soldier. The decision not to proceed into the USSR was taken for good practical reasons and they were right to do so, People knew what Stalin was, they also knew that they couldn't have beaten him without the kind of cost they were trying to avoid by using the bombs on Japan.

    Hindsight is a wonderful thing when it isn't you who would be one of the millions who would die on both sides if they had made such a stupid decision.

    Millions of innocents also died during the fight against the Nazis. The Soviets were no better than the Nazis.

    How would "millions" on "both sides" have died if America attacked the Soviet Union with nukes? Did millions of American soldiers die when America attacked Japan with nukes?

    Once again, it took only two nukes to force a Japanese surrender and the Japanese soldier was far more dedicated and fanatical.

    The Soviet Union could have easily been toppled. It should have and could easily have been done.
  • PPhilsterPPhilster Posts: 1,742
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    jesaya wrote: »
    Oh I see... you just wanted to nuke a whole country then. How would that 'save millions' in the USSR exactly, which is one of the reasons you gave earlier?

    Really now. Was all of Japan nuked?

    It would have obviously saved millions from having to live under a tyrannical communist government, as I said.
  • PPhilsterPPhilster Posts: 1,742
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    The Japanese were already negotiating on the QT for surrender...but "conditionally", on the condition they could retain the Emperor; the Americans refused, in line with the Casablanca Declaration on Unconditional Surrender...then AFTER they did surrender they allowed the Japanese to retain the Emperor anyway!



    Actually - it wasn't! Both the Atomic Bombs used didn't actually generate much fallout as they were airbursts...and "fallout" - pulverised ground material lofted through the fireball and thus irradiated by the direct radiation...had come as a suprise to the Los Alamos scientsits after the Trinity test; they expected the directly-propagated radiation...but not fallout! They had equiped and shielded two Sherman tanks to enter Ground Zero to take samples shortly after the blast, and were quite suprised at the results!!!



    Actually - with the size and weight of a "period" plutonium device - yes it did! :eek: An Avro Lincoln could - the RAF used a squadron of them and a squadron of B-29 "Washingtons" after the war as strategic nuclear bombers for a few years...but both the weight and inconvenient size and shape of a "Fat Man" device meant that few other aircraft could carry it with any range.



    To be fair - ALL nucelar devices are "hand built", though the components can be "manufactured" ;) But several sets of Hiroshima-type "Uranium Gun" parts had been constructed and set aside by the start of 1945; it's physics was relatively simple (!!!) and with the right amounts of enriched uranoium brought together in the right way...they WOULD go bang! They didn't need tested like the plutonium bomb....

    Up to a dozen Little Boy cases, and three sets of mechanical innards were sent to Tinian in july and August 1945; at least five cases were used to practice-drop weighed and ex-plosive filled "simulators" both on test missions AND live drops during conventional raids on the Home Islands! The set of cases selected to assemble the final Hiroshima Bomb was set "no. eleven"...so there were at least five other pairs around....

    There was also a Uranium "target" segment on Tinian; but the Americans were short of refined, enriched uranium to make another "bullet" segment. In a "Uranium Gun", the "bullet" slides down a tube until it impacts on the "target"...and suprisingly, the "bullet" is the bigger segment! Oak Ridge in Tennessee was producing enriched uranium at a much slower rate than expected...but the Americans DID come into a small amount of extra enriched uranium for the Hiroshima Bomb...courtesy of the Germans!!!

    However - a Hiroshioma-type Bomb could easily have been available by the end of September 1945...and I've read various accounts of up to 15 plutonium bombs possibly being available by December 1945 at a push...

    You are massively digressing away from the fact that America had nukes for quite some time before the Soviet Union did and could have easily toppled the Soviet Union had it chose to use them.
  • PPhilsterPPhilster Posts: 1,742
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    OK Walter Mitty. Have at it then.

    You could have just said I was correct. ;)
  • jesayajesaya Posts: 35,597
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    PPhilster wrote: »
    Millions of innocents also died during the fight against the Nazis. The Soviets were no better than the Nazis.

    How would "millions" on "both sides" have died if America attacked the Soviet Union with nukes? Did millions of American soldiers die when America attacked Japan with nukes?

    Once again, it took only two nukes to force a Japanese surrender and the Japanese soldier was far more dedicated and fanatical.

    The Soviet Union could have easily been toppled. It should have and could easily have been done.

    I didn't say 'on both sides' in that post... I said 'in the USSR' - the people you would kill with your nukes.

    And if the Soviets were no better than the Nazis because they killed millions,.. how would joining them in the mass-butchery help, exactly?

    And even if it 'toppled' after only a couple of bombings, how would you plan to control it? There would still be millions of people, many pretty p*ssed off with you in a country that is vast. Would you just pop another nuke over there every now and again, or send ten million troops to keep the peace?
  • PPhilsterPPhilster Posts: 1,742
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    KJ44 wrote: »
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_(nuclear_test)
    Trinity was the code name of the first detonation of a nuclear device. This test was conducted by the United States Army on July 16, 1945,

    WHY would WE IN EUROPE give a FLYING F**K about "freedom" when your fantasy USA (not the real, sensible one) is apparently prepared to nuke us, dust us with fallout and so on?

    That's my final word. Nuclear war fantasies are sick.

    Who said anything about dropping nukes on "EUROPE?"
  • jesayajesaya Posts: 35,597
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    Wouldn't have been required, by no means...

    Where exactly was the vast majority of the Red Army in May-June-July-August 1945??? ;) It certainly wasn't demobbed and back on the farm...! ;)

    True, but then there would still be the teeny-weeny problem of controlling the rest of the population.
  • PPhilsterPPhilster Posts: 1,742
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    jesaya wrote: »
    I didn't say 'on both sides' in that post... I said 'in the USSR' - the people you would kill with your nukes.

    Wrong, you said "Hindsight is a wonderful thing when it isn't you who would be one of the millions who would die on both sides if they had made such a stupid decision."
    jesaya wrote: »
    And if the Soviets were no better than the Nazis because they killed millions,.. how would joining them in the mass-butchery help, exactly?

    For the same reason it helped you to live free from Nazi rule.
    jesaya wrote: »
    And even if it 'toppled' after only a couple of bombings, how would you plan to control it? There would still be millions of people, many pretty p*ssed off with you in a country that is vast. Would you just pop another nuke over there every now and again, or send ten million troops to keep the peace?

    The rule of Japan, obviously a more militaristic and fanatical country at the time, was no problem, and neither was Germany. It also helped greatly that America critically helped to rebuild those two countries into the economic powerhouses they are today.
  • phylo_roadkingphylo_roadking Posts: 21,339
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    The Japanese were already negotiating on the QT for surrender...but "conditionally", on the condition they could retain the Emperor; the Americans refused, in line with the Casablanca Declaration on Unconditional Surrender...then AFTER they did surrender they allowed the Japanese to retain the Emperor anyway!



    Actually - it wasn't! Both the Atomic Bombs used didn't actually generate much fallout as they were airbursts...and "fallout" - pulverised ground material lofted through the fireball and thus irradiated by the direct radiation...had come as a suprise to the Los Alamos scientsits after the Trinity test; they expected the directly-propagated radiation...but not fallout! They had equiped and shielded two Sherman tanks to enter Ground Zero to take samples shortly after the blast, and were quite suprised at the results!!!



    Actually - with the size and weight of a "period" plutonium device - yes it did! An Avro Lincoln could - the RAF used a squadron of them and a squadron of B-29 "Washingtons" after the war as strategic nuclear bombers for a few years...but both the weight and inconvenient size and shape of a "Fat Man" device meant that few other aircraft could carry it with any range.



    To be fair - ALL nucelar devices are "hand built", though the components can be "manufactured" But several sets of Hiroshima-type "Uranium Gun" parts had been constructed and set aside by the start of 1945; it's physics was relatively simple (!!!) and with the right amounts of enriched uranoium brought together in the right way...they WOULD go bang! They didn't need tested like the plutonium bomb....

    Up to a dozen Little Boy cases, and three sets of mechanical innards were sent to Tinian in july and August 1945; at least five cases were used to practice-drop weighed and ex-plosive filled "simulators" both on test missions AND live drops during conventional raids on the Home Islands! The set of cases selected to assemble the final Hiroshima Bomb was set "no. eleven"...so there were at least five other pairs around....

    There was also a Uranium "target" segment on Tinian; but the Americans were short of refined, enriched uranium to make another "bullet" segment. In a "Uranium Gun", the "bullet" slides down a tube until it impacts on the "target"...and suprisingly, the "bullet" is the bigger segment! Oak Ridge in Tennessee was producing enriched uranium at a much slower rate than expected...but the Americans DID come into a small amount of extra enriched uranium for the Hiroshima Bomb...courtesy of the Germans!!!

    However - a Hiroshioma-type Bomb could easily have been available by the end of September 1945...and I've read various accounts of up to 15 plutonium bombs possibly being available by December 1945 at a push...

    You are massively digressing away from the fact that America had nukes for quite some time before the Soviet Union did and could have easily toppled the Soviet Union had it chose to use them.

    I actually wasn't passing comment on that at all, I was answering various other points.

    AS however I noted later - there was a very narrow window when the Red Army would have been clustered enough to allow a tactical use of nuclear weapons as the technology stood in 1945 to defeat the Soviets militarily....

    One of the lasting problems the USAAF and from 1946 SAC had was...the ability to deliver nuclear weapons; for five years after the war, they effectively ONLY had the 509th Composite as nuclear-capable - one out of thirteen bombardment groups in the USAAF/early SAC...and STILL flying its WWII-period B-29s!
  • phylo_roadkingphylo_roadking Posts: 21,339
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    Where exactly was the vast majority of the Red Army in May-June-July-August 1945??? It certainly wasn't demobbed and back on the farm...!
    True, but then there would still be the teeny-weeny problem of controlling the rest of the population.

    Who wants to control it??? Surely all the West would have wanted was the removal of Communism....;) Think the rest of the population would have tolerated their presence once their military strength was removed from the equation?
  • PPhilsterPPhilster Posts: 1,742
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    I actually wasn't passing comment on that at all, I was answering various other points.

    AS however I noted later - there was a very narrow window when the Red Army would have been clustered enough to allow a tactical use of nuclear weapons as the technology stood in 1945 to defeat the Soviets militarily....

    One of the lasting problems the USAAF and from 1946 SAC had was...the ability to deliver nuclear weapons; for five years after the war, they effectively ONLY had the 509th Composite as nuclear-capable - one out of thirteen bombardment groups in the USAAF/early SAC...and STILL flying its WWII-period B-29s!

    That's fine but the discussion was focused on just one point for some time already.
  • jesayajesaya Posts: 35,597
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    PPhilster wrote: »
    Wrong, you said "Hindsight is a wonderful thing when it isn't you who would be one of the millions who would die on both sides if they had made such a stupid decision."



    For the same reason it helped you to live free from Nazi rule.



    The rule of Japan, obviously a more militaristic and fanatical country at the time, was no problem, and neither was Germany. It also helped greatly that America critically helped to rebuild those two countries into the economic powerhouses they are today.

    True to the first point, I thought you were answering my next post.

    You do know how much bigger the Soviet Union is, don't you? The Japanese did what they were told after the surrender... I don't think you would find policing the USSR, filled with the relatives of the people you just killed, to be quite so obliging. All you would get is a festering drawn out conflict that would drag on for decades - like Vietnam or Afghanistan, only on an unimaginable scale.
  • jesayajesaya Posts: 35,597
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    Who wants to control it??? Surely all the West would have wanted was the removal of Communism....;) Think the rest of the population would have tolerated their presence once their military strength was removed from the equation?

    Of course, people who's sons, fathers and brothers you had just crisped would give you a big hug and warm up the samovars ;)
  • BungitinBungitin Posts: 5,356
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    I actually wasn't passing comment on that at all, I was answering various other points.

    AS however I noted later - there was a very narrow window when the Red Army would have been clustered enough to allow a tactical use of nuclear weapons as the technology stood in 1945 to defeat the Soviets militarily....

    One of the lasting problems the USAAF and from 1946 SAC had was...the ability to deliver nuclear weapons; for five years after the war, they effectively ONLY had the 509th Composite as nuclear-capable - one out of thirteen bombardment groups in the USAAF/early SAC...and STILL flying its WWII-period B-29s!

    After teething problems the USSR was fielding its own build of the B29 called the Tu4 in 1946/7, had better engines as well.

    As for bombing soviet targets the Russians had an Air Defense system as good as the Germans. The Japanese bombing were unopposed. We had supplied Radar equipment under lend lease.
  • phylo_roadkingphylo_roadking Posts: 21,339
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    And even if it 'toppled' after only a couple of bombings, how would you plan to control it? There would still be millions of people, many pretty p*ssed off with you in a country that is vast. Would you just pop another nuke over there every now and again, or send ten million troops to keep the peace?

    The rule of Japan, obviously a more militaristic and fanatical country at the time, was no problem,

    Don't minimise the problem; the Americans ONLY managed it by allowing the Emperor to remain, and command the obedience of the population as a whole to obey the surrender. In other words - the Amricans made use of the Japanese tendency to obey authority!
    and neither was Germany.

    Germany was divided into four occupation zones; in one, comprising 2/5s of the nation, the Red Army was busy subduing the population, thoroughly convincing them they were conquered. In the rest - the French rule of their Occupation Zone wasn't too benevolent, the Americans took no shit - at the first sign of trouble in their military commands they reintroduced martial law and shoot-on-sight orders for "resistors"...and the british were busy dynamiting and/or dismantling German industry in THEIR sector!

    Coupled with a severe famine in Germany in 1945 and 1946...
  • phylo_roadkingphylo_roadking Posts: 21,339
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    That's fine but the discussion was focused on just one point for some time already

    Your discussion was...
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