What if the United States Committed a War Crime?

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Topic:	Religions > Atheism
User:	""
Date:	15 Aug 2005 05:35:49 PM
Object:	What if the United States Committed a War Crime?

Is the US military capable of committing a war crime? No matter what
comes up, like My Lai, Abu Ghraib, Guatonomo Bay, the firebombing of
Dresden and Tokyo, the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, people will argue that it's not a war crime and the senior
leadership of the American regime is never held accountable like the
Allies held the Nazis and Imperial Japanese. Are things like this not
a war crime only because the United States did it? Does the US have a
double standard when it comes to what is/what isn't a warcrime? Let's
take the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They were both a war
crime and a crime against humanity when one looks at the language of
what the Nazis were tried for. Mainly because civilians were the prime
target since both cities were militarily irrelevant. It could also be
called a crime against peace since the plan to drop the atomic bombs
prolonged the war when Japan would have surrendered if the United
States would promise to leave the Emperor in power. What if the United
States government followed the principles they set in Nuremberg and
formerly apologized for the war crimes it committed in Hiroshima and
Nagasaki? Every other participant in WWII has had to officially admit
wrongdoing. Why not the US? What if the US paid reparations for
destroying Vietnam, which was also a war crime? Would people like Bush
be able to use such noble rhetoric to start wars for "humanitarian"
reasons?
http://www.lewrockwell.com/raico/raico22.html
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
by Ralph Raico
This excerpt from Ralph Raico's "Harry S. Truman: Advancing the
Revolution in John V. Denson, ed., Reassessing the Presidency: The Rise
of the Executive State and the Decline of Freedom (Auburn, Alabama:
Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2001), is reprinted with permission. (The
notes are numbered as they are because this is an excerpt. Read the
whole article.)
The most spectacular episode of Truman's presidency will never be
forgotten, but will be forever linked to his name: the atomic bombings
of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and of Nagasaki three days later.
Probably around two hundred thousand persons were killed in the attacks
and through radiation poisoning; the vast majority were civilians,
including several thousand Korean workers. Twelve U.S. Navy fliers
incarcerated in a Hiroshima jail were also among the dead.87
Great controversy has always surrounded the bombings. One thing Truman
insisted on from the start: The decision to use the bombs, and the
responsibility it entailed, was his. Over the years, he gave different,
and contradictory, grounds for his decision. Sometimes he implied that
he had acted simply out of revenge. To a clergyman who criticized him,
Truman responded, testily:
Nobody is more disturbed over the use of Atomic bombs than I am but I
was greatly disturbed over the unwarranted attack by the Japanese on
Pearl Harbor and their murder of our prisoners of war. The only
language they seem to understand is the one we have been using to
bombard them.88
Such reasoning will not impress anyone who fails to see how the
brutality of the Japanese military could justify deadly retaliation
against innocent men, women, and children. Truman doubtless was aware
of this, so from time to time he advanced other pretexts. On August 9,
1945, he stated: "The world will note that the first atomic bomb was
dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in
this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of
civilians."89
This, however, is absurd. Pearl Harbor was a military base. Hiroshima
was a city, inhabited by some three hundred thousand people, which
contained military elements. In any case, since the harbor was mined
and the U.S. Navy and Air Force were in control of the waters around
Japan, whatever troops were stationed in Hiroshima had been effectively
neutralized.
On other occasions, Truman claimed that Hiroshima was bombed because it
was an industrial center. But, as noted in the U.S. Strategic Bombing
Survey, "all major factories in Hiroshima were on the periphery of the
city - and escaped serious damage."90 The target was the center of
the city. That Truman realized the kind of victims the bombs consumed
is evident from his comment to his cabinet on August 10, explaining his
reluctance to drop a third bomb: "The thought of wiping out another
100,000 people was too horrible," he said; he didn't like the idea of
killing "all those kids."91 Wiping out another one hundred thousand
people . . . all those kids.
Moreover, the notion that Hiroshima was a major military or industrial
center is implausible on the face of it. The city had remained
untouched through years of devastating air attacks on the Japanese home
islands, and never figured in Bomber Command's list of the 33 primary
targets.92
Thus, the rationale for the atomic bombings has come to rest on a
single colossal fabrication, which has gained surprising currency: that
they were necessary in order to save a half-million or more American
lives. These, supposedly, are the lives that would have been lost in
the planned invasion of Kyushu in December, then in the all-out
invasion of Honshu the next year, if that was needed. But the
worst-case scenario for a full-scale invasion of the Japanese home
islands was forty-six thousand American lives lost.93 The ridiculously
inflated figure of a half-million for the potential death toll -
nearly twice the total of U.S. dead in all theaters in the Second World
War - is now routinely repeated in high-school and college textbooks
and bandied about by ignorant commentators. Unsurprisingly, the prize
for sheer fatuousness on this score goes to President George H.W. Bush,
who claimed in 1991 that dropping the bomb "spared millions of American
lives."94
Still, Truman's multiple deceptions and self-deceptions are
understandable, considering the horror he unleashed. It is equally
understandable that the U.S. occupation authorities censored reports
from the shattered cities and did not permit films and photographs of
the thousands of corpses and the frightfully mutilated survivors to
reach the public.95 Otherwise, Americans - and the rest of the world
- might have drawn disturbing comparisons to scenes then coming to
light from the Nazi concentration camps.
The bombings were condemned as barbaric and unnecessary by high
American military officers, including Eisenhower and MacArthur.96 The
view of Admiral William D. Leahy, Truman's own chief of staff, was
typical:
the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no
material assistance in our war against Japan. . . . My own feeling was
that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard
common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make
wars in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and
children.97
The political elite implicated in the atomic bombings feared a backlash
that would aid and abet the rebirth of horrid prewar "isolationism."
Apologias were rushed into print, lest public disgust at the sickening
war crime result in erosion of enthusiasm for the globalist project.98
No need to worry. A sea-change had taken place in the attitudes of the
American people. Then and ever after, all surveys have shown that the
great majority supported Truman, believing that the bombs were required
to end the war and save hundreds of thousands of American lives, or
more likely, not really caring one way or the other.
Those who may still be troubled by such a grisly exercise in
cost-benefit analysis - innocent Japanese lives balanced against the
lives of Allied servicemen - might reflect on the judgment of the
Catholic philosopher G.E.M. Anscombe, who insisted on the supremacy of
moral rules.99 When, in June 1956, Truman was awarded an honorary
degree by her university, Oxford, Anscombe protested.100 Truman was a
war criminal, she contended, for what is the difference between the
U=2ES. government massacring civilians from the air, as at Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, and the Nazis wiping out the inhabitants of some Czech or
Polish village?
Anscombe's point is worth following up. Suppose that, when we invaded
Germany in early 1945, our leaders had believed that executing all the
inhabitants of Aachen, or Trier, or some other Rhineland city would
finally break the will of the Germans and lead them to surrender. In
this way, the war might have ended quickly, saving the lives of many
Allied soldiers. Would that then have justified shooting tens of
thousands of German civilians, including women and children? Yet how is
that different from the atomic bombings?
By early summer 1945, the Japanese fully realized that they were
beaten. Why did they nonetheless fight on? As Anscombe wrote: "It was
the insistence on unconditional surrender that was the root of all
evil."101
That mad formula was coined by Roosevelt at the Casablanca conference,
and, with Churchill's enthusiastic concurrence, it became the Allied
shibboleth. After prolonging the war in Europe, it did its work in the
Pacific. At the Potsdam conference, in July 1945, Truman issued a
proclamation to the Japanese, threatening them with the "utter
devastation" of their homeland unless they surrendered unconditionally.
Among the Allied terms, to which "there are no alternatives," was that
there be "eliminated for all time the authority and influence of those
who have deceived and misled the people of Japan into embarking on
world conquest [sic]." "Stern justice," the proclamation warned, "would
be meted out to all war criminals."102
To the Japanese, this meant that the emperor - regarded by them to be
divine, the direct descendent of the goddess of the sun - would
certainly be dethroned and probably put on trial as a war criminal and
hanged, perhaps in front of his palace.103 It was not, in fact, the
U=2ES. intention to dethrone or punish the emperor. But this implicit
modification of unconditional surrender was never communicated to the
Japanese. In the end, after Nagasaki, Washington acceded to the
Japanese desire to keep the dynasty and even to retain Hirohito as
emperor.
For months before, Truman had been pressed to clarify the U.S. position
by many high officials within the administration, and outside of it, as
well. In May 1945, at the president's request, Herbert Hoover
prepared a memorandum stressing the urgent need to end the war as soon
as possible. The Japanese should be informed that we would in no way
interfere with the emperor or their chosen form of government. He even
raised the possibility that, as part of the terms, Japan might be
allowed to hold on to Formosa (Taiwan) and Korea. After meeting with
Truman, Hoover dined with Taft and other Republican leaders, and
outlined his proposals.104
Establishment writers on World War II often like to deal in lurid
speculations. For instance: if the United States had not entered the
war, then Hitler would have "conquered the world" (a sad undervaluation
of the Red Army, it would appear; moreover, wasn't it Japan that was
trying to "conquer the world"?) and killed untold millions. Now,
applying conjectural history in this case: assume that the Pacific war
had ended in the way wars customarily do - through negotiation of the
terms of surrender. And assume the worst - that the Japanese had
adamantly insisted on preserving part of their empire, say, Korea and
Formosa, even Manchuria. In that event, it is quite possible that Japan
would have been in a position to prevent the Communists from coming to
power in China. And that could have meant that the thirty or forty
million deaths now attributed to the Maoist regime would not have
occurred.
But even remaining within the limits of feasible diplomacy in 1945, it
is clear that Truman in no way exhausted the possibilities of ending
the war without recourse to the atomic bomb. The Japanese were not
informed that they would be the victims of by far the most lethal
weapon ever invented (one with "more than two thousand times the blast
power of the British 'Grand Slam,' which is the largest bomb ever
yet used in the history of warfare," as Truman boasted in his
announcement of the Hiroshima attack). Nor were they told that the
Soviet Union was set to declare war on Japan, an event that shocked
some in Tokyo more than the bombings.105 Pleas by some of the
scientists involved in the project to demonstrate the power of the bomb
in some uninhabited or evacuated area were rebuffed. All that mattered
was to formally preserve the unconditional surrender formula and save
the servicemen's lives that might have been lost in the effort to
enforce it. Yet, as Major General J.F.C. Fuller, one of the century's
great military historians, wrote in connection with the atomic
bombings:
Though to save life is laudable, it in no way justifies the employment
of means which run counter to every precept of humanity and the customs
of war. Should it do so, then, on the pretext of shortening a war and
of saving lives, every imaginable atrocity can be justified.106
Isn't this obviously true? And isn't this the reason that rational
and humane men, over generations, developed rules of warfare in the
first place?
While the mass media parroted the government line in praising the
atomic incinerations, prominent conservatives denounced them as
unspeakable war crimes. Felix Morley, constitutional scholar and one of
the founders of Human Events, drew attention to the horror of
Hiroshima, including the "thousands of children trapped in the
thirty-three schools that were destroyed." He called on his compatriots
to atone for what had been done in their name, and proposed that groups
of Americans be sent to Hiroshima, as Germans were sent to witness what
had been done in the Nazi camps. The Paulist priest, Father James
Gillis, editor of The Catholic World and another stalwart of the Old
Right, castigated the bombings as "the most powerful blow ever
delivered against Christian civilization and the moral law." David
Lawrence, conservative owner of U.S. News and World Report, continued
to denounce them for years.107 The distinguished conservative
philosopher Richard Weaver was revolted by
the spectacle of young boys fresh out of Kansas and Texas turning
nonmilitary Dresden into a holocaust . . . pulverizing ancient shrines
like Monte Cassino and Nuremberg, and bringing atomic annihilation to
Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Weaver considered such atrocities as deeply "inimical to the
foundations on which civilization is built."108
Today, self-styled conservatives slander as "anti-American" anyone who
is in the least troubled by Truman's massacre of so many tens of
thousands of Japanese innocents from the air. This shows as well as
anything the difference between today's "conservatives" and those who
once deserved the name.
Leo Szilard was the world-renowned physicist who drafted the original
letter to Roosevelt that Einstein signed, instigating the Manhattan
Project. In 1960, shortly before his death, Szilard stated another
obvious truth:
If the Germans had dropped atomic bombs on cities instead of us, we
would have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war
crime, and we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this
crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them.109
The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a war crime worse than
any that Japanese generals were executed for in Tokyo and Manila. If
Harry Truman was not a war criminal, then no one ever was.
Notes
On the atomic bombings, see Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the
Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth (New York: Knopf,
1995); and idem, "Was Harry Truman a Revisionist on Hiroshima?" Society
for Historians of American Foreign Relations Newsletter 29, no. 2 (June
1998); also Martin J. Sherwin, A World Destroyed: The Atomic Bomb and
the Grand Alliance (New York: Vintage, 1977); and Dennis D. Wainstock,
The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1996).
Alperovitz, Decision, p. 563. Truman added: "When you deal with a beast
you have to treat him as a beast. It is most regrettable but
nevertheless true." For similar statements by Truman, see ibid., p.
564. Alperovitz's monumental work is the end-product of four decades
of study of the atomic bombings and is indispensable for comprehending
the often complex argumentation on the issue.
Ibid., p. 521.
Ibid., p. 523.
Barton J. Bernstein, "Understanding the Atomic Bomb and the Japanese
Surrender: Missed Opportunities, Little-Known Near Disasters, and
Modern Memory," Diplomatic History 19, no. 2 (Spring 1995): 257.
General Carl Spaatz, commander of U.S. strategic bombing operations in
the Pacific, was so shaken by the destruction at Hiroshima that he
telephoned his superiors in Washington, proposing that the next bomb be
dropped on a less populated area, so that it "would not be as
devastating to the city and the people." His suggestion was rejected.
Ronald Schaffer, Wings of Judgment: American Bombing in World War II
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 147-48.
This is true also of Nagasaki.
See Barton J. Bernstein, "A Post-War Myth: 500,000 U.S. Lives Saved,"
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 42, no. 6 (June-July 1986):
38-40; and idem, "Wrong Numbers," The Independent Monthly (July
1995): 41-44.
J=2E Samuel Walker, "History, Collective Memory, and the Decision to Use
the Bomb," Diplomatic History 19, no. 2 (Spring 1995): 320, 323-25.
Walker details the frantic evasions of Truman's biographer, David
McCullough, when confronted with the unambiguous record.
Paul Boyer, "Exotic Resonances: Hiroshima in American Memory,"
Diplomatic History 19, no. 2 (Spring 1995): 299. On the fate of the
bombings' victims and the public's restricted knowledge of them,
see John W. Dower, "The Bombed: Hiroshimas and Nagasakis in Japanese
Memory," in ibid., pp. 275-95.
Alperovitz, Decision, pp. 320-65. On MacArthur and Eisenhower, see
ibid., pp. 352 and 355-56.
William D. Leahy, I Was There (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1950), p. 441.
Leahy compared the use of the atomic bomb to the treatment of civilians
by Genghis Khan, and termed it "not worthy of Christian man." Ibid., p.
442. Curiously, Truman himself supplied the foreword to Leahy's book.
In a private letter written just before he left the White House, Truman
referred to the use of the atomic bomb as "murder," stating that the
bomb "is far worse than gas and biological warfare because it affects
the civilian population and murders them wholesale." Barton J.
Bernstein, "Origins of the U.S. Biological Warfare Program," Preventing
a Biological Arms Race, Susan Wright, ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
1990), p. 9.
Barton J. Bernstein, "Seizing the Contested Terrain of Early Nuclear
History: Stimson, Conant, and Their Allies Explain the Decision to Use
the Bomb," Diplomatic History 17, no. 1 (Winter 1993): 35-72.
One writer in no way troubled by the sacrifice of innocent Japanese to
save Allied servicemen - indeed, just to save him - is Paul
Fussell; see his Thank God for the Atom Bomb and Other Essays (New
York: Summit, 1988). The reason for Fussell's little Te Deum is, as
he states, that he was among those scheduled to take part in the
invasion of Japan, and might very well have been killed. It is a
mystery why Fussell takes out his easily understandable terror, rather
unchivalrously, on Japanese women and children instead of on the men in
Washington who conscripted him to fight in the Pacific in the first
place.
G=2EE.M. Anscombe, "Mr. Truman's Degree," in idem, Collected
Philosophical Papers, vol. 3, Ethics, Religion and Politics
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981), pp. 62-71.
Anscombe, "Mr. Truman's Degree," p. 62.
Hans Adolf Jacobsen and Arthur S. Smith, Jr., eds., World War II:
Policy and Strategy. Selected Documents with Commentary (Santa Barbara,
Calif.: ABC-Clio, 1979), pp. 345-46.
For some Japanese leaders, another reason for keeping the emperor was
as a bulwark against a possible postwar communist takeover. See also
Sherwin, A World Destroyed, p. 236: "the [Potsdam] proclamation offered
the military die-hards in the Japanese government more ammunition to
continue the war than it offered their opponents to end it."
Alperovitz, Decision, pp. 44-45.
Cf. Bernstein, "Understanding the Atomic Bomb," p. 254: "it does seem
very likely, though certainly not definite, that a synergistic
combination of guaranteeing the emperor, awaiting Soviet entry, and
continuing the siege strategy would have ended the war in time to avoid
the November invasion." Bernstein, an excellent and scrupulously
objective scholar, nonetheless disagrees with Alperovitz and the
revisionist school on several key points.
J=2EF.C. Fuller, The Second World War, 1939-45: A Strategical and
Tactical History (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1948), p. 392. Fuller,
who was similarly scathing on the terror-bombing of the German cities,
characterized the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as "a type of war
that would have disgraced Tamerlane." Cf. Barton J. Bernstein, who
concludes, in "Understanding the Atomic Bomb," p. 235:
In 1945, American leaders were not seeking to avoid the use of the
A-bomb. Its use did not create ethical or political problems for them.
Thus, they easily rejected or never considered most of the so-called
alternatives to the bomb.
Felix Morley, "The Return to Nothingness," Human Events (August 29,
1945) reprinted in Hiroshima's Shadow, Kai Bird and Lawrence
Lifschultz, eds. (Stony Creek, Conn.: Pamphleteer's Press, 1998), pp.
272-74; James Martin Gillis, "Nothing But Nihilism," The Catholic
World, September 1945, reprinted in ibid., pp. 278-80; Alperovitz,
Decision, pp. 438-40.
Richard M. Weaver, "A Dialectic on Total War," in idem, Visions of
Order: The Cultural Crisis of Our Time (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
University Press, 1964), pp. 98-99.
Wainstock, Decision, p. 122.
August 6, 2004
Ralph Raico [send him mail] is a senior scholar of the Mises Institute.
Copyright =A9 2001 by the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
.

User: "Matt Giwer"
Title: Re: What if the United States Committed a War Crime?	21 Aug 2005 08:10:09 PM

Despite all the talk, every country commits war crimes in time of war. The signatory countries are
required to incorporate the treaty definitions of war crimes into their own military law and to
punish those crimes themselves. That is the way the treaties read.
--
As an American I suggest exhuming Churchill's body and desecrating it.
-- The Iron Webmaster, 3479
nizkor http://www.giwersworld.org/nizkook/nizkook.phtml
flying saucers http://www.giwersworld.org/flyingsa.html a2
.

User: "Scott Hann"
Title: Re: What if the United States Committed a War Crime?	16 Aug 2005 11:21:26 PM

Uhm, Abu Garib *was* a war crime. THe perpetrators are being punished.
THat is what makes the US different from, say, Serbia ten years ago.
Guantanamo is NOT a war crime, even the International Red Cross, the
agency that is treaty-required to monitor these things, says so.
Do you know what a "war crime" is, legally? Do you realise there are laws
and that violating them, even in wartime, is what constitutes a "war crime"?
Do you know what the laws of war are?
The senior leadership of Japan and Germany were held responsible because
they did NOT hold their own people responsible, indeed, these governments
engaged in war crimes as a matter of policy.
So you have a (better) historical perspective, instead of mere (anti US)
propoganda, this to Grok this:
In WW II, Germany and Japan engaged in activity that was illegal
according to treaties they signed (Hague and Geneva conventions). This was a
matter of government policy. THAT is why their leaders, as well as those
directly responsible, were held accountable.
You assert that the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were war crimes.
Feel free to tell me what treaty or law was violated. The use of Atomic
weapons was a BRAND NEW THING and no nation knew we had them, except
Britian, until they were used. There were NO international laws or treaties
preventing their use, nor are there today. You *really* need to do some
research on Hague and Geneva, both as apply to WW II and to today.
Since I doubt you will (you can ask and I'll point you are the relevant
places on the net that have these treaties), here it is - a city that is
defended and has facilities of military value, such as factories, railyards,
and military installations, is a VALID target of bombardment, 70 years ago
and today. There is a degree of responsibility to minimise civilian
casualties, if possible, and we did, where possible.
I wonder, where are your tears for the people of Rotterdam, Warsaw, and
Shanghai? These cities were bombed (Rotterdam & Warsaw) despite being
declared "open" - a legal term and you seem obsessed with legalities - it
means undefended and open for the conquere to sieze - and Shanghai saw the
butchery of over half a million people. Shanghai came first, in 1936, with
Rotterdam and Warsaw happening in 1940 and 1939, respectively. If you look
hard, you will see that these events took place PRIOR to the entry into the
war of the US.
The Japanese were presented with the declaration of Potsdam signed by
the US, UK, Soviet Union, France, and all other Allied nations. The Japanese
were told to surrender with no conditions and to trust that we would not be
as vicious as they were. If you knew the facts, the men making the
decisions, until the EMperor himself stepped in, knew that regardless of the
emperor remaining in power, they would be held accountable for things like
the Rape orf Nanking. THey were going to be tried for war crimes. They knew
we said "no conditions" and therefore any peace off that included conditions
was BOGUS and dishonest. And you fell for it, 60 years later. The Japanese
were training schoolgirls and women to fight off US Marines with bamboo
spears. They were willing to throw away CIVILIANS before submitting to
defeat.
By the way, they still have an Emperor.
The "language the nazis were tried for"? Have you *read* the indictments?
If so, you'd have noticed that some indictments were dropped due to
testimony by ALLIED officers. Doenitz, the Submarine force commander for
several years, was initially indicted for violating the laws of war
regarding submarine tactics. This charge was dropped when American and
British Naval Officers testified that this was done by all parties and
should not be charged agaisnt Doenitz.
There were indictments that resulted in NOT GUILTY verdicts against some
of the NAZIs.
Tell us, what were they found guilty of? I'll tell you below my sig, if
you really want to know.
Oh, and you're quoting Fuller on anything other than Combined Arms
Tactics? Do you know why Fuller wasn't allowed to serve in uniform during WW
II despite having been a well liked and influential officer during and after
WW I? He was a NAZI sympathiser.
As for this:
"In 1945, American leaders were not seeking to avoid the use of the
A-bomb. Its use did not create ethical or political problems for them. Thus,
they easily rejected or never considered most of the so-called alternatives
to the bomb."
Let's examine those alternatives.
A) Invasion - Operation Olympic. Millions of dead japanese instead of
less than 150,000 from both bombs.
B) Blockade until peace terms agreed to. The starvation of millions of
Japanese while the leaders continued to eat good.
C) Declare victory and leave Tojo and the war cabinet in power, seething
for "revenge" for being humiliated.
Yeah, these are great alterantives. As for the book you cite, even the
anti-nuke activist organisation, AMBIO, the Swedish Academy of Sciences,
cannot put more than 200,000 total abomb casualties, both immediate and
later, and they *wanted to*.
The US punishes *actual* war criminals, when it can. It tries to *very
hard*. The problem is, the US has not committed, as a matter of state
policy, the crimes the Japanese and Germans did in WW II. The things you
cite are not and *were not* illegal. The Abombs, until the day they were
used, were unknown. How could they be illegal? Even if they were, you have
demonstrated you have ZERO understanding of the laws of war.
Velovich
From
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/nuremberg/NurembergIndictments.html
(A reliable source)
Martin Bormann
Count I: Indicted Not Guilty
Count II:
Count III: Indicted Guilty
Count IV: Indicted Guilty
Sentenced to: Death by hanging
Bormann was in charge of the Aid Fund of the SA and became the head of the
party Chancellery in 1941. He later became Secretary to the Fuehrer. He
was known to have a strong influence on Hitler's decisions, although the
evidence does not show he attended the important meetings where Hitler
announced plans for war.
He is directly linked to orders for enslaving and annihilating people in the
occupied territories. He was particularly active in the persecution of
Jewish people. He issued orders with respect to the slave labor programs as
well as for prisoners of war.
There was little evidence for defense counsel to use in light of the
numerous documents signed by Bormann. His council did argue that Bormann
was dead (no actual proof of this but he had not appeared) and therefore the
tribunal should not waste its time arguing his fate. Article 12 of the
Nuremberg Charter, however, allows proceedings in the absence of the
defendant. Article 29 allows mitigation facts to be heard if Bormann is
later found.
Karl Doenitz
Count I: Indicted Not Guilty
Count II: Indicted Guilty
Count III: Indicted Guilty
Count IV:
Sentenced to: Ten years imprisonment
Doenitz became Commander-in-Chief of the German Navy in 1943 but the
evidence does not show he knew of Hitler's plans
to initiate war. He did have the U-boat arm of the Navy prepared for war,
however, and was solely in charge of this area of
the military. While in control of the U-boats, Doenitz allowed them to sink
all merchant ships, regardless of the ships were
enemy or neutral. In 1944 he ordered 12,000 concentration camp prisoners to
be employed in the shipyards for additional
labor. He is ultimately unsure if this order was carried out as Doenitz was
not in charge of the shipyards, but it does offer
evidence of his knowledge of the concentration camps' existence.
Hans Frank
Count I: Indicted Not Guilty
Count II:
Count III: Indicted Guilty
Count IV: Indicted Guilty
Sentenced to: Death by hanging
Frank held positions such as President of the Academy of German Law until he
was dismissed from the position as a result of a dispute with Himmler. He
did not play a significant role in the plans for war. He was instrumental
in the attacks against Poland, however, and for that he was found guilty.
He is quoted as saying "Poland shall be treated like a colony; the Poles
will become the slaves of the Greater German World Empire." This attack was
especially violent. He was also a key player in the initial plan to use
slave laborers. He oversaw the first ghettos created for Jewish German
people.
Frank's testimony included feelings of guilt for what he did. "A thousand
years will pass and the guilt of Germany will not be
erased." He also explained that the police, rather than Frank himself
carried out these atrocities. He tried to give the
responsibility for his actions to others high in command, but Frank was a
willing participant in too many crimes against humanity
to put the blame on other people.
Wilhelm Frick
Count I: Indicted Not Guilty
Count II: Indicted Guilty
Count III: Indicted Guilty
Count IV: Indicted Guilty
Sentenced to: Death by hanging
Frick held numerous positions, including Minister of the Interior, that gave
him knowledge of the plans for war. He signed laws and issued orders
against many countries and their citizens. He also signed many laws
ordering the elimination of Jewish people. He also had knowledge of the
torture committed against people in nursing homes, hospitals, and asylums.
Although others complained to Frick about the murder of these innocent
people, Frick turned his head and allowed it to continue.
Hans Fritzsche
Count I: Indicted Not Guilty
Count II:
Count III: Indicted Not Guilty
Count IV: Indicted Not Guilty
Fritzche was active as a radio commentator and later became the head of the
Wireless News Service for the Reich Government. He was in charge of the
Media when anti-semitic messages were printed. The tribunal found, however,
that he
did not hold any positions that gave him control over the decisions to wage
war or the crimes against humanity, and he was therefor acquitted of all
charges.
Walther Funk
Count I: Indicted Not Guilty
Count II: Indicted Guilty
Count III: Indicted Guilty
Count IV: Indicted Guilty
Sentenced to: Imprisonment for life
Funk was one of Hitler's economic advisers, but did not serve in this role
until after the important conferences that established the plans for war.
He did assist in the attack on the U.S.S.R. He participated in plans to ban
Jewish people from German
society. His role as economic advisor gave him power to order the
belongings of Jewish people into the possession of the SS.
He also participated in the plan to take the gold reserves of the Czech
banks. His main mitigating evidence that ultimately saved his life was that
Funk never took a lead role in the activities in which he participated.
Hermann Wilhelm Goering
Count I: Indicted Convicted
Count II: Indicted Convicted
Count III: Indicted Convicted
Count IV: Indicted Convicted
Sentenced to: Death by hanging. Goering committed suicide in his cell by
swallowing poison before his hanging.
Known as the second in command to Hitler until their relationship
deteriorated in 1943, commanding the SA during most of the war and
developing the Gestapo. He also served as Chief of the Air Force. Goering
was arrested in 1945. He freely told the Tribunal the positions he held,
the conferences he attended, and the fact that he treated humans as slave
labor, demonstrating
his violation of both the crimes against peace, the war crimes, and crimes
against humanity.
In court Goering said, "I must take 100 percent responsibility. I even
overruled objections by the Fuehrer and brought everything to its final
development." Although Himmler was the one in charge of the extermination
of the Jewish people, Goering signed several anti-Jewish decrees and he
often directed Himmler's actions.
Rudolf Hess
Count I: Indicted Guilty
Count II: Indicted Guilty
Count III: Indicted Not Guilty
Count IV: Indicted Not Guilty
Sentenced to: Imprisonment for life. Hess committed suicide in prison in
1987 at age 92.
Hess was imprisoned with Hitler in 1924, during which time he became Hitler's
Deputy and confidant. He was the top ranking official in the Nazi Party.
His every action was in support of Hitler's ultimate plan until he escaped
to England after the war.
Although there was evidence linking Hess to the proposed laws against Jewish
people and Polish people, the Tribunal did not find enough evidence to find
him guilty of these crimes.
Hess' psychological health was questioned before the trial. One medical
exam was completed before the trial and he was found competent to stand
trial despite repeated motions to have him examined again. Although he may
have acted in an unusual manner during the trial, he seemed to realize the
nature of the charges and had council appointed by the tribunal specifically
to help defend himself.
Alfred Jodl
Count I: Indicted Guilty
Count II: Indicted Guilty
Count III: Indicted Guilty
Count IV: Indicted Guilty
Sentenced to: Death by hanging
Jodl held high-ranking positions in the Reich starting in 1935, including
Chief of Army Operations. Jodl was instrumental in planning the attack on
Czechoslovakia as well as Norway, Greece and Yugoslavia. He wrote "The
genius of the Fuehrer and
his determination not to shun even a World War have again won the victory
without the use of force. The hope remains that the incredulous, the weak,
and the doubtful people have been converted and will remain that way".
Jodl and his staff signed numerous documents detailing plans to annihilate
people, including the plan to kill Soviet commissars. But the evidence does
not show he was involved in the slave labor program.
His defense was that he was an obedient soldier, signing orders only as a
command from Hitler. This was not a defense allowed under Article Eight of
the Charter, however, and no other mitigation evidence could be offered.
Ernst Kaltenbrunner
Count I: Indicted Not Guilty
Count II:
Count III: Indicted Guilty
Count IV: Indicted Guilty
Sentenced to: Death by hanging
By 1935 Kaltenbrunner was the leader of the Austrian branch of the SS and
parts of the Gestapo. He was part of the plans to end the rein of the
Austrian government, but he did not appear to be a part of the general plans
for war. Rather, Kaltenbrunner was involved with the crimes against
humanity. He issued orders against Jewish people, prisoners of war, and
slave laborers.
He took a leading role in the "final solution". People under Kaltenbrunner's
command killed over four million Jewish people in concentration camps.
Kaltenbrunner's defense was that he was under orders involving foreign
intelligence and never assumed control of the activities of the SS police.
He claims he did not know of the overall plan. This defense only convinced
the tribunal that Kaltenbrunner
was not part of the plans to wage war.
Wilhelm Keitel
Count I: Indicted Guilty
Count II: Indicted Guilty
Count III: Indicted Guilty
Count IV: Indicted Guilty
Sentenced to: Death by hanging
Keitel was the Chief of Staff of the High Command of the Armed Forces while
Hitler was in power. He attended all of the conferences that discussed the
plans for war. Many of these meetings were with Hitler, Jodl, and Raeder.
Although he testified he was opposed to the invasion of the U.S.S.R., he
ultimately helped plan the invasion. Evidence also showed Keitel was aware
of the plans to rid Poland of Jewish people. He also issued orders to kill
Communists.
There was no mitigation evidence to be heard, and his defense that he was
just following orders as a soldier is not valid under the Charter.
Erich Raeder
Count I: Indicted Guilty
Count II: Indicted Guilty
Count III: Indicted Guilty
Count IV:
Sentenced to: Imprisonment for life
Raeder was the Chief of Naval Command as early as 1928, later replaced by
Doenitz at Raeder's request. He admitted during the trial that under his
command the Navy violated the Versailles Treaty. Raeder was against the
idea of invading the U.S.S.R. but followed the decision to invade fully.
Raeder is charged with the sinking of a British passenger ship headed to
America in 1939.
Raeder shares the charges related to unrestricted submarine warfare with
Doenitz for sinking merchant ships, whether enemy or neutral.
Alfred Rosenberg
Count I: Indicted Guilty
Count II: Indicted Guilty
Count III: Indicted Guilty
Count IV: Indicted Guilty
Sentenced to: Death by hanging
Rosenberg was in charge of the Nazi party while Hitler was in jail. He
later took part in plans to attack Norway. He is also held responsible for
many of the actions in the occupied Eastern Territories. Rosenberg planned
the confiscation of art treasures in France. He is also credited with the
invasion of almost 70,000 homes in France in 1941. He knew of and
participated in crimes against slave laborers and mass killings of Jewish
people. Although he occasionally acknowledged the brutality being used, he
continued in his post until the end of the war.
Fritz Sauckel
Count I: Indicted Not Guilty
Count II: Indicted Not Guilty
Count III: Indicted Guilty
Count IV: Indicted Guilty
Sentenced to: Death by hanging
Sauckel was instrumental in the use of slave labor. The evidence
overwhelmingly showed Sauckel established labor service in Germany, to which
more than 5.000.000 people were subjected. He is quoted as saying "out of
five million foreign workers
who arrived in Germany not even 200,000 came voluntarily".
Hjalmar Schacht
Count I: Indicted Not Guilty
Count II: Indicted Not Guilty
Count III:
Count IV:
Schacht served as Commissioner of Currency, President of the Reichbank, and
Minister of Economics during the war. By 1936, however, Goering had taken
the position Schacht once held as an influential person in the rearmament
effort. Although he continued to participate in economic decisions, he was
not involved in any of the war plans. For this reason he was acquitted of
all crimes.
Arthur Seyss-Inquart
Count I: Indicted Not Guilty
Count II: Indicted Guilty
Count III: Indicted Guilty
Count IV: Indicted Guilty
Sentenced to: Death by hanging
Seyss-Inquart was active in the Austrian Nazi party, taking the position of
Minister of Security and Interior in 1938. He created a program to take
Jewish people's property in Austria and later created economic
discrimination policies in the Netherlands. He was also in control during
the periods that Jewish people were victims of pogroms, sent to
concentration camps, or forced to emigrate.
He also took part in plans in Poland and the Netherlands, including
supporting the occupation policies. In the Netherlands, Seyss-Inquart sent
forced laborers to Germany.
As did many of the defendants, Seyss-Inquart used as a defense the idea that
he only followed orders from above.
Albert Speer
Count I: Indicted Not Guilty
Count II: Indicted Not Guilty
Count III: Indicted Guilty
Count IV: Indicted Guilty
Sentenced to: Twenty years imprisonment
Speer was Hitler's personal architect and a personal friend. He also held
important positions in the Nazi party. The evidence did not show him as a
participant in the plans for war. He was, however, extremely active in the
slave labor program. His defense was that he used these laborers only
because the demand for labor was so great. He was known to ensure the
laborers had food and sufficient work conditions so their work was
effective. He also condoned the use of concentration camps for "slackers".
Julius Streicher
Count I: Indicted Not Guilty
Count II:
Count III:
Count IV: Indicted Guilty
Sentenced to: Death by hanging
After joining the Nazi party in 1921, Streicher held appointed and elected
positions that made him notorious for his crimes against humanity. Evidence
did not show that Streicher participated in the plans for war, however. He
was a spokesman for the annihilation of the Jewish people. He is quoted as
saying "a punitive expedition must come against the Jews in Russia. A
punitive expedition which will provide the same fate for them that every
murder and criminal must expect: Death sentence and execution. The Jews in
Russia must be killed. They must be exterminated root and branch." He also
published "If the danger of the reproduction of that curse of God in the
Jewish blood is finally to come to an end, then there is only one way the
extermination of that people whose father is the devil." No defense could
justify these remarks!
Konstantin von Neurath
Count I: Indicted Guilty
Count II: Indicted Guilty
Count III: Indicted Guilty
Count IV: Indicted Guilty
Sentenced to: Fifteen years imprisonment. He was released after serving
just eight years for health reasons.
Von Neurath was Minister of Foreign Affairs. He advised Hitler on many
strategic military moves. Von Neurath was allowed to resign in 1938, but
continued to be active in the party as a Reich Minister. He was responsible
for proclamations and memorandum repressing citizens of Czechoslovokia.
His defense was that the enforcement of his proclamations were carried out
by the police and not Von Neurath himself. His mitigation evidence that he
did request the release of Czech prisoners in 1939 and 1941. He was
reprimanded personally by Hitler for not being harsh enough.
Franz von Papen
Count I: Indicted Not Guilty
Count II: Indicted Not Guilty
Count III:
Count IV:
Von Papen was once the Chancellor of Germany. Although Von Popen held
positions in the Reich, there is not enough evidence that he was part of the
plans to wage war. He was therefor acquitted.
Joachim von Ribbentrop
Count I: Indicted Guilty
Count II: Indicted Guilty
Count III: Indicted Guilty
Count IV: Indicted Guilty
Sentenced to: Death by hanging
Von Ribbentrop became Foreign Policy Adviser to Hitler in 1933. He later
served as Ambassador to England. He was active in the plans to attack
Poland. He was aware of plans for the pogroms as well as plans to kill
prisoners of war. Von Ribbentrop participated in Hitler's "final solution".
Von Ribbentrop's defense was that he was only carrying out orders from the
man he followed so faithfully, Hitler. Not only is this not a valid
defense, but the tribunal found convincing evidence that showed Von
Ribbentrop's independent belief in what he was doing.
Baldur von Schirach
Count I: Indicted Not Guilty
Count II:
Count III:
Count IV: Indicted Guilty
Sentenced to: Twenty years imprisonment
Von Schirach was the Youth Leader for the Nazi party in 1931 and later the
Leader of Youth in the German Reich. While in this position, he took over
all youth groups who competed with the Hitler Youth programs. These youth
programs were intense and prepared the youth to be replacements for the SS,
stressing the importance of giving your life for Hitler. By 1944 the Youth
were being used as auxiliaries in the German military. The evidence does
not show he was part of the plans to wage war.
Von Schirach was aware of the plans against Jewish people. His office
received reports of the deportation, many of which were signed by people on
Von Shirach's staff.
Scott H
<conners_3@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1124145349.955449.257380@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
Is the US military capable of committing a war crime? No matter what
comes up, like My Lai, Abu Ghraib, Guatonomo Bay, the firebombing of
Dresden and Tokyo, the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, people will argue that it's not a war crime and the senior
leadership of the American regime is never held accountable like the
Allies held the Nazis and Imperial Japanese. Are things like this not
a war crime only because the United States did it? Does the US have a
double standard when it comes to what is/what isn't a warcrime? Let's
take the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They were both a war
crime and a crime against humanity when one looks at the language of
what the Nazis were tried for. Mainly because civilians were the prime
target since both cities were militarily irrelevant. It could also be
called a crime against peace since the plan to drop the atomic bombs
prolonged the war when Japan would have surrendered if the United
States would promise to leave the Emperor in power. What if the United
States government followed the principles they set in Nuremberg and
formerly apologized for the war crimes it committed in Hiroshima and
Nagasaki? Every other participant in WWII has had to officially admit
wrongdoing. Why not the US? What if the US paid reparations for
destroying Vietnam, which was also a war crime? Would people like Bush
be able to use such noble rhetoric to start wars for "humanitarian"
reasons?
http://www.lewrockwell.com/raico/raico22.html
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
by Ralph Raico
This excerpt from Ralph Raico's "Harry S. Truman: Advancing the
Revolution in John V. Denson, ed., Reassessing the Presidency: The Rise
of the Executive State and the Decline of Freedom (Auburn, Alabama:
Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2001), is reprinted with permission. (The
notes are numbered as they are because this is an excerpt. Read the
whole article.)
The most spectacular episode of Truman's presidency will never be
forgotten, but will be forever linked to his name: the atomic bombings
of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and of Nagasaki three days later.
Probably around two hundred thousand persons were killed in the attacks
and through radiation poisoning; the vast majority were civilians,
including several thousand Korean workers. Twelve U.S. Navy fliers
incarcerated in a Hiroshima jail were also among the dead.87
Great controversy has always surrounded the bombings. One thing Truman
insisted on from the start: The decision to use the bombs, and the
responsibility it entailed, was his. Over the years, he gave different,
and contradictory, grounds for his decision. Sometimes he implied that
he had acted simply out of revenge. To a clergyman who criticized him,
Truman responded, testily:
Nobody is more disturbed over the use of Atomic bombs than I am but I
was greatly disturbed over the unwarranted attack by the Japanese on
Pearl Harbor and their murder of our prisoners of war. The only
language they seem to understand is the one we have been using to
bombard them.88
Such reasoning will not impress anyone who fails to see how the
brutality of the Japanese military could justify deadly retaliation
against innocent men, women, and children. Truman doubtless was aware
of this, so from time to time he advanced other pretexts. On August 9,
1945, he stated: "The world will note that the first atomic bomb was
dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in
this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of
civilians."89
This, however, is absurd. Pearl Harbor was a military base. Hiroshima
was a city, inhabited by some three hundred thousand people, which
contained military elements. In any case, since the harbor was mined
and the U.S. Navy and Air Force were in control of the waters around
Japan, whatever troops were stationed in Hiroshima had been effectively
neutralized.
On other occasions, Truman claimed that Hiroshima was bombed because it
was an industrial center. But, as noted in the U.S. Strategic Bombing
Survey, "all major factories in Hiroshima were on the periphery of the
city - and escaped serious damage."90 The target was the center of
the city. That Truman realized the kind of victims the bombs consumed
is evident from his comment to his cabinet on August 10, explaining his
reluctance to drop a third bomb: "The thought of wiping out another
100,000 people was too horrible," he said; he didn't like the idea of
killing "all those kids."91 Wiping out another one hundred thousand
people . . . all those kids.
Moreover, the notion that Hiroshima was a major military or industrial
center is implausible on the face of it. The city had remained
untouched through years of devastating air attacks on the Japanese home
islands, and never figured in Bomber Command's list of the 33 primary
targets.92
Thus, the rationale for the atomic bombings has come to rest on a
single colossal fabrication, which has gained surprising currency: that
they were necessary in order to save a half-million or more American
lives. These, supposedly, are the lives that would have been lost in
the planned invasion of Kyushu in December, then in the all-out
invasion of Honshu the next year, if that was needed. But the
worst-case scenario for a full-scale invasion of the Japanese home
islands was forty-six thousand American lives lost.93 The ridiculously
inflated figure of a half-million for the potential death toll -
nearly twice the total of U.S. dead in all theaters in the Second World
War - is now routinely repeated in high-school and college textbooks
and bandied about by ignorant commentators. Unsurprisingly, the prize
for sheer fatuousness on this score goes to President George H.W. Bush,
who claimed in 1991 that dropping the bomb "spared millions of American
lives."94
Still, Truman's multiple deceptions and self-deceptions are
understandable, considering the horror he unleashed. It is equally
understandable that the U.S. occupation authorities censored reports
from the shattered cities and did not permit films and photographs of
the thousands of corpses and the frightfully mutilated survivors to
reach the public.95 Otherwise, Americans - and the rest of the world
- might have drawn disturbing comparisons to scenes then coming to
light from the Nazi concentration camps.
The bombings were condemned as barbaric and unnecessary by high
American military officers, including Eisenhower and MacArthur.96 The
view of Admiral William D. Leahy, Truman's own chief of staff, was
typical:
the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no
material assistance in our war against Japan. . . . My own feeling was
that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard
common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make
wars in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and
children.97
The political elite implicated in the atomic bombings feared a backlash
that would aid and abet the rebirth of horrid prewar "isolationism."
Apologias were rushed into print, lest public disgust at the sickening
war crime result in erosion of enthusiasm for the globalist project.98
No need to worry. A sea-change had taken place in the attitudes of the
American people. Then and ever after, all surveys have shown that the
great majority supported Truman, believing that the bombs were required
to end the war and save hundreds of thousands of American lives, or
more likely, not really caring one way or the other.
Those who may still be troubled by such a grisly exercise in
cost-benefit analysis - innocent Japanese lives balanced against the
lives of Allied servicemen - might reflect on the judgment of the
Catholic philosopher G.E.M. Anscombe, who insisted on the supremacy of
moral rules.99 When, in June 1956, Truman was awarded an honorary
degree by her university, Oxford, Anscombe protested.100 Truman was a
war criminal, she contended, for what is the difference between the
U.S. government massacring civilians from the air, as at Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, and the Nazis wiping out the inhabitants of some Czech or
Polish village?
Anscombe's point is worth following up. Suppose that, when we invaded
Germany in early 1945, our leaders had believed that executing all the
inhabitants of Aachen, or Trier, or some other Rhineland city would
finally break the will of the Germans and lead them to surrender. In
this way, the war might have ended quickly, saving the lives of many
Allied soldiers. Would that then have justified shooting tens of
thousands of German civilians, including women and children? Yet how is
that different from the atomic bombings?
By early summer 1945, the Japanese fully realized that they were
beaten. Why did they nonetheless fight on? As Anscombe wrote: "It was
the insistence on unconditional surrender that was the root of all
evil."101
That mad formula was coined by Roosevelt at the Casablanca conference,
and, with Churchill's enthusiastic concurrence, it became the Allied
shibboleth. After prolonging the war in Europe, it did its work in the
Pacific. At the Potsdam conference, in July 1945, Truman issued a
proclamation to the Japanese, threatening them with the "utter
devastation" of their homeland unless they surrendered unconditionally.
Among the Allied terms, to which "there are no alternatives," was that
there be "eliminated for all time the authority and influence of those
who have deceived and misled the people of Japan into embarking on
world conquest [sic]." "Stern justice," the proclamation warned, "would
be meted out to all war criminals."102
To the Japanese, this meant that the emperor - regarded by them to be
divine, the direct descendent of the goddess of the sun - would
certainly be dethroned and probably put on trial as a war criminal and
hanged, perhaps in front of his palace.103 It was not, in fact, the
U.S. intention to dethrone or punish the emperor. But this implicit
modification of unconditional surrender was never communicated to the
Japanese. In the end, after Nagasaki, Washington acceded to the
Japanese desire to keep the dynasty and even to retain Hirohito as
emperor.
For months before, Truman had been pressed to clarify the U.S. position
by many high officials within the administration, and outside of it, as
well. In May 1945, at the president's request, Herbert Hoover
prepared a memorandum stressing the urgent need to end the war as soon
as possible. The Japanese should be informed that we would in no way
interfere with the emperor or their chosen form of government. He even
raised the possibility that, as part of the terms, Japan might be
allowed to hold on to Formosa (Taiwan) and Korea. After meeting with
Truman, Hoover dined with Taft and other Republican leaders, and
outlined his proposals.104
Establishment writers on World War II often like to deal in lurid
speculations. For instance: if the United States had not entered the
war, then Hitler would have "conquered the world" (a sad undervaluation
of the Red Army, it would appear; moreover, wasn't it Japan that was
trying to "conquer the world"?) and killed untold millions. Now,
applying conjectural history in this case: assume that the Pacific war
had ended in the way wars customarily do - through negotiation of the
terms of surrender. And assume the worst - that the Japanese had
adamantly insisted on preserving part of their empire, say, Korea and
Formosa, even Manchuria. In that event, it is quite possible that Japan
would have been in a position to prevent the Communists from coming to
power in China. And that could have meant that the thirty or forty
million deaths now attributed to the Maoist regime would not have
occurred.
But even remaining within the limits of feasible diplomacy in 1945, it
is clear that Truman in no way exhausted the possibilities of ending
the war without recourse to the atomic bomb. The Japanese were not
informed that they would be the victims of by far the most lethal
weapon ever invented (one with "more than two thousand times the blast
power of the British 'Grand Slam,' which is the largest bomb ever
yet used in the history of warfare," as Truman boasted in his
announcement of the Hiroshima attack). Nor were they told that the
Soviet Union was set to declare war on Japan, an event that shocked
some in Tokyo more than the bombings.105 Pleas by some of the
scientists involved in the project to demonstrate the power of the bomb
in some uninhabited or evacuated area were rebuffed. All that mattered
was to formally preserve the unconditional surrender formula and save
the servicemen's lives that might have been lost in the effort to
enforce it. Yet, as Major General J.F.C. Fuller, one of the century's
great military historians, wrote in connection with the atomic
bombings:
Though to save life is laudable, it in no way justifies the employment
of means which run counter to every precept of humanity and the customs
of war. Should it do so, then, on the pretext of shortening a war and
of saving lives, every imaginable atrocity can be justified.106
Isn't this obviously true? And isn't this the reason that rational
and humane men, over generations, developed rules of warfare in the
first place?
While the mass media parroted the government line in praising the
atomic incinerations, prominent conservatives denounced them as
unspeakable war crimes. Felix Morley, constitutional scholar and one of
the founders of Human Events, drew attention to the horror of
Hiroshima, including the "thousands of children trapped in the
thirty-three schools that were destroyed." He called on his compatriots
to atone for what had been done in their name, and proposed that groups
of Americans be sent to Hiroshima, as Germans were sent to witness what
had been done in the Nazi camps. The Paulist priest, Father James
Gillis, editor of The Catholic World and another stalwart of the Old
Right, castigated the bombings as "the most powerful blow ever
delivered against Christian civilization and the moral law." David
Lawrence, conservative owner of U.S. News and World Report, continued
to denounce them for years.107 The distinguished conservative
philosopher Richard Weaver was revolted by
the spectacle of young boys fresh out of Kansas and Texas turning
nonmilitary Dresden into a holocaust . . . pulverizing ancient shrines
like Monte Cassino and Nuremberg, and bringing atomic annihilation to
Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Weaver considered such atrocities as deeply "inimical to the
foundations on which civilization is built."108
Today, self-styled conservatives slander as "anti-American" anyone who
is in the least troubled by Truman's massacre of so many tens of
thousands of Japanese innocents from the air. This shows as well as
anything the difference between today's "conservatives" and those who
once deserved the name.
Leo Szilard was the world-renowned physicist who drafted the original
letter to Roosevelt that Einstein signed, instigating the Manhattan
Project. In 1960, shortly before his death, Szilard stated another
obvious truth:
If the Germans had dropped atomic bombs on cities instead of us, we
would have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war
crime, and we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this
crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them.109
The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a war crime worse than
any that Japanese generals were executed for in Tokyo and Manila. If
Harry Truman was not a war criminal, then no one ever was.
Notes
On the atomic bombings, see Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the
Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth (New York: Knopf,
1995); and idem, "Was Harry Truman a Revisionist on Hiroshima?" Society
for Historians of American Foreign Relations Newsletter 29, no. 2 (June
1998); also Martin J. Sherwin, A World Destroyed: The Atomic Bomb and
the Grand Alliance (New York: Vintage, 1977); and Dennis D. Wainstock,
The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1996).
Alperovitz, Decision, p. 563. Truman added: "When you deal with a beast
you have to treat him as a beast. It is most regrettable but
nevertheless true." For similar statements by Truman, see ibid., p.
564. Alperovitz's monumental work is the end-product of four decades
of study of the atomic bombings and is indispensable for comprehending
the often complex argumentation on the issue.
Ibid., p. 521.
Ibid., p. 523.
Barton J. Bernstein, "Understanding the Atomic Bomb and the Japanese
Surrender: Missed Opportunities, Little-Known Near Disasters, and
Modern Memory," Diplomatic History 19, no. 2 (Spring 1995): 257.
General Carl Spaatz, commander of U.S. strategic bombing operations in
the Pacific, was so shaken by the destruction at Hiroshima that he
telephoned his superiors in Washington, proposing that the next bomb be
dropped on a less populated area, so that it "would not be as
devastating to the city and the people." His suggestion was rejected.
Ronald Schaffer, Wings of Judgment: American Bombing in World War II
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 147-48.
This is true also of Nagasaki.
See Barton J. Bernstein, "A Post-War Myth: 500,000 U.S. Lives Saved,"
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 42, no. 6 (June-July 1986):
38-40; and idem, "Wrong Numbers," The Independent Monthly (July
1995): 41-44.
J. Samuel Walker, "History, Collective Memory, and the Decision to Use
the Bomb," Diplomatic History 19, no. 2 (Spring 1995): 320, 323-25.
Walker details the frantic evasions of Truman's biographer, David
McCullough, when confronted with the unambiguous record.
Paul Boyer, "Exotic Resonances: Hiroshima in American Memory,"
Diplomatic History 19, no. 2 (Spring 1995): 299. On the fate of the
bombings' victims and the public's restricted knowledge of them,
see John W. Dower, "The Bombed: Hiroshimas and Nagasakis in Japanese
Memory," in ibid., pp. 275-95.
Alperovitz, Decision, pp. 320-65. On MacArthur and Eisenhower, see
ibid., pp. 352 and 355-56.
William D. Leahy, I Was There (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1950), p. 441.
Leahy compared the use of the atomic bomb to the treatment of civilians
by Genghis Khan, and termed it "not worthy of Christian man." Ibid., p.
442. Curiously, Truman himself supplied the foreword to Leahy's book.
In a private letter written just before he left the White House, Truman
referred to the use of the atomic bomb as "murder," stating that the
bomb "is far worse than gas and biological warfare because it affects
the civilian population and murders them wholesale." Barton J.
Bernstein, "Origins of the U.S. Biological Warfare Program," Preventing
a Biological Arms Race, Susan Wright, ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
1990), p. 9.
Barton J. Bernstein, "Seizing the Contested Terrain of Early Nuclear
History: Stimson, Conant, and Their Allies Explain the Decision to Use
the Bomb," Diplomatic History 17, no. 1 (Winter 1993): 35-72.
One writer in no way troubled by the sacrifice of innocent Japanese to
save Allied servicemen - indeed, just to save him - is Paul
Fussell; see his Thank God for the Atom Bomb and Other Essays (New
York: Summit, 1988). The reason for Fussell's little Te Deum is, as
he states, that he was among those scheduled to take part in the
invasion of Japan, and might very well have been killed. It is a
mystery why Fussell takes out his easily understandable terror, rather
unchivalrously, on Japanese women and children instead of on the men in
Washington who conscripted him to fight in the Pacific in the first
place.
G.E.M. Anscombe, "Mr. Truman's Degree," in idem, Collected
Philosophical Papers, vol. 3, Ethics, Religion and Politics
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981), pp. 62-71.
Anscombe, "Mr. Truman's Degree," p. 62.
Hans Adolf Jacobsen and Arthur S. Smith, Jr., eds., World War II:
Policy and Strategy. Selected Documents with Commentary (Santa Barbara,
Calif.: ABC-Clio, 1979), pp. 345-46.
For some Japanese leaders, another reason for keeping the emperor was
as a bulwark against a possible postwar communist takeover. See also
Sherwin, A World Destroyed, p. 236: "the [Potsdam] proclamation offered
the military die-hards in the Japanese government more ammunition to
continue the war than it offered their opponents to end it."
Alperovitz, Decision, pp. 44-45.
Cf. Bernstein, "Understanding the Atomic Bomb," p. 254: "it does seem
very likely, though certainly not definite, that a synergistic
combination of guaranteeing the emperor, awaiting Soviet entry, and
continuing the siege strategy would have ended the war in time to avoid
the November invasion." Bernstein, an excellent and scrupulously
objective scholar, nonetheless disagrees with Alperovitz and the
revisionist school on several key points.
J.F.C. Fuller, The Second World War, 1939-45: A Strategical and
Tactical History (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1948), p. 392. Fuller,
who was similarly scathing on the terror-bombing of the German cities,
characterized the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as "a type of war
that would have disgraced Tamerlane." Cf. Barton J. Bernstein, who
concludes, in "Understanding the Atomic Bomb," p. 235:
In 1945, American leaders were not seeking to avoid the use of the
A-bomb. Its use did not create ethical or political problems for them.
Thus, they easily rejected or never considered most of the so-called
alternatives to the bomb.
Felix Morley, "The Return to Nothingness," Human Events (August 29,
1945) reprinted in Hiroshima's Shadow, Kai Bird and Lawrence
Lifschultz, eds. (Stony Creek, Conn.: Pamphleteer's Press, 1998), pp.
272-74; James Martin Gillis, "Nothing But Nihilism," The Catholic
World, September 1945, reprinted in ibid., pp. 278-80; Alperovitz,
Decision, pp. 438-40.
Richard M. Weaver, "A Dialectic on Total War," in idem, Visions of
Order: The Cultural Crisis of Our Time (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
University Press, 1964), pp. 98-99.
Wainstock, Decision, p. 122.
August 6, 2004
Ralph Raico [send him mail] is a senior scholar of the Mises Institute.
Copyright � 2001 by the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
.

User: "Scott Hann"
Title: Re: What if the United States Committed a War Crime?	16 Aug 2005 11:21:35 PM