worst president ever

Originally posted by SonyFan
That depression the world was in was heightened in Germany by the fact that Versaii treaty crippled the country and they had no aid in rebuilding their nation. Why do you think the US spends millions of dollars to bomb the shit outta some country.. and then spends billions to rebuild it? It\'s to keep situations like this from happening again.. it was a mistake of the old-world which we corrected when we saw it\'s impact. I, however, seriously doubt Hitler could have still risen to power without a broken a despirated nation to gull into his facist leadership. Nazism promised to rebuild the country bigger and better than it had ever been, and rebuilt their spirits by giving them somone to blame for Germany\'s defeat.. the Jews. It started out as a promise of simple deportation and relocation.. and grew from that into the concentration camps we know existed by the end of the war.



The communist revolution started well before WWII actually, if my memory serves. Wasn\'t Tzar Nicolas and his family killed sometime in the late 1920\'s? Anyhow.. yes we would still have ended up in some sort of a conflict with the communists. The digree of which is just wild speculation. However, the cold war between the US and the USSR did in fact start with a single country.. post WWII Germany. They wanted to add it to their iron curtain.. we wanted to rebuild them into a democratic nation. The line was drawn, and a wall was built.. and Berlin became a keystone. Either side attempting to take the other would trigger an all out war. The biggest fear of the Cold War was of course, nuclear holocaust. Who built the first Atomic bomb? The US did to strike against Japan in WWII. Why did we build it? Because we knew damned well the Germans were already well underway with their own nuclear weapons program. Germany\'s technology was what made it so valuable to both sides of the one time Allies. Granted, nuclear weapons would have been built regardless.. but I doubt they would have come so soon without two major World Wars to spurn their development.

All in all, I\'d say how things turned out was pretty good. The US built the first bomb.. and while it was a tragedy for Japan.. it put the fear of armageddon into the hearts of the world. Without those haunting scenes from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I think the superpowers would have been less apt to think things through before launching nuclear weapons against each other. I think things could have turned out very differently if it wasn\'t for lessons learned and fear instilled from those first two bombs. Granted, while we did live in fear for 50 years.. it\'s a helluva lot preferable to living in ashes I think.

I guess I just figure that if facism could rise in Italy, a nation on the winning side (eventually) in WWI, and Spain, a neutral, it could have happened in Germany too, war or not.

Anyway, the Communist Revolution pulled Russia out of WWI, but it had been building since well before the war.  I think that with the nations there the way they were, a cold war was inevitable, as was the development of nuclear weapons.  However, I think that the bombings of Japan, on some level, were about Russia, and not Japan.  We knew what was going to happen post war.  We already feared them, and we already saw a power struggle coming.  The bombs were launched to send a message to Russia just as much as they were to end the war with Japan.  Why else launch 2?  I\'d think one would have been enough.

I think it is still unlikely though, without WW2, that there is a nuclear holocaust.  We knew full well what the bombs would do.  The amount of nuclear testing we did of those bombs is amazing (and in some cases, disturbing).  We knew about the deadly impact, we knew about the radiation, we knew what would have happened.  

Sure he situation in WWII escalated the whole thing though, with Russia taking over half of Europe to Germany at the end of the war, and that entire half, strangely enough, becoming communist.  I still think that the Cold War would have happened on some level anyway though.

We already feared them, and we already saw a power struggle coming. The bombs were launched to send a message to Russia just as much as they were to end the war with Japan. Why else launch 2? I\'d think one would have been enough. - SW

We dropped two, because it took the descimation of two cities to get the Japaneese to surrender. Every man, woman, and child in that country were told that the Americans would come and kill their families, rape their women, and eat their children. They were order by devine right (Hirohita was thought to be a decendant of the gods) to fight until death. We had to drop the bomb, first of all, to try to intimidate Japan into surrendering because we knew a ground invasion would have increadibly tough and bloody. Everyone complains about how it was a tragedy and cost so many lives.. but the combined deaths by the two atomic bombs we dropped were nothing comaired to the lives lost in our firebombing raids of Japan\'s major cities. This is why the Japaneese didn\' surrender at first.. because it wasn\'t anything they hadn\'t already seen before. However, it was a bluff.. we let them think we had a whole arsenal of these bombs when in fact we only had two. Considering the scale at which we were dropping conventional bombs.. Japan simply couldn\'t withstand the force of continued bombing runs using nuclear weaponry.

Two bombs and two targets were picked as much as for testing as they were for military purposes. The Manhattan project staff out at Los Alamos was devided into two camps.. and each worked on a different way of detonating the bomb. Their projects turned out to be, Fat man and Little boy. There were three bombs prepared at the outset I\'m thinking. One that was detonated in the desert.. and the two that were shipped to Japan. The actual battle field application of the bombs gave us a much greater understanding of the potentials and pitfalls of the weapons themselves, and their designs.

That\'s why there were two bombs dropped.

As far as the Cold War, yes it probably would have happened in some fashion regardless. But think of it this way.. had WWI and WWII not started, and we kept our noses out of everyone\'s buisness.. just how far do you think a hostile USSR gov\'t would have spread? Would they have stopped at Europe or Africa? I don\'t think so. So right then again.. we have the wolf at our door eventually, and our allies gone or in severe danger. Keeping our nose out of world affairs would only have ended up backing us in a corner. We KNEW they were a threat.. and that\'s why German was such a big deal. If the Russians had gotten ahold of German Atomic secrets and the research into V2 rockets and jet engines.. it would have been disasterous for the Allies. That\'s how it started, and grew to represent a line in the sand.. a barrier to communist expansion in Europe which we had to defend at any cost.

Shocky hit up alot of stuff I was going to say, but I do have a thought about minding our own business.

Look at the nuetral countries. While I dont know much about the small few, I dont seem to remember great violence and threats upon them by hostile countries.

I think that, given more time to realize what had happened, Japan would have surrendered after the first bomb.  I also think it would have made more sense to bomb millitary bases rather than cities of civilians with those bombs.  There was also a lot more testing after the war, that is what I referring to.  There obviously wasn\'t that much before it was first used, because we wanted it to be a secret, and we wanted it ready as soon as possible.

Also, just because I think we were wrong to interfere in other nations the way we have doesn\'t mean I don\'t think Russia was wrong too.  Sure, some of what we did was necessary.  I would have gone to WW2 believing in my cause had I been alive then.  Fighting the facists who had attacked other nations for no real reason.  I don\'t agree with the idea of Korea or Vietnam though.

I agree with shocky.  WWII was a must join and we saw that while some of the other small things that we joined, we had no business bumping in to.

Originally posted by SonyFan

Hmm.. yep.. that policy work real good dosen\'t it. Gee.. I guess we jus never should have fought the communists. So what if they\'re taking over countries at alarming rates and sneaking medium range Nuclear missles into small, impovershied, communist nations right in our back yard. It\'s none of our buisness, after all.

IIRC the US had nukes in Turkey that were in striking distance of the Soviet Union.

The Russians saw this as a threat and shipped nukes to Cuba.. (and they did not remove them before the US agreed to take away their nukes from Turkey.. Most people don’t know about that)

Same thing really.. Got to see it both ways. (oh noo.. Russian = teh ultimate evil empire!)

Originally posted by fastson


IIRC the US had nukes in Turkey that were in striking distance of the Soviet Union.

The Russians saw this as a threat and shipped nukes to Cuba.. (and they did not remove them before the US agreed to take away their nukes from Turkey.. Most people don’t know about that)

Same thing really.. Got to see it both ways. (oh noo.. Russian = teh ultimate evil empire!)

Wasn\'t that the "cuban missile crisis"? Or am I just relating two similar things together here?

I think that, given more time to realize what had happened, Japan would have surrendered after the first bomb. - SW

And why is that? Because of the radiation? Because of the scale of the destruction? Frankly, like I said, this wasn\'t anything Japan hadn\'t see before. True, they hadn\'t seen radiation poisioning, but they saw thousands upon thousands of their citizens with 3rd digree burns from the fires. At the time, most japaneese buildings were still made out of wood and paper.. not brick and mortar like most other countries cities. When we started dropping bombs, those whole citys would go up like tissue paper extending the damage far -FAR- from where the bombs had originally impacted at. Look at WWII footage of post war Japan.. Tokyo looked every bit as decimated as both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was like the great Chicago fire all over the nation of Japan.. our pilots even complained of the stench of burning flesh they could smell rising from these citys on their high altitude bombing runs. I really don\'t think that Japan would have surrendered with just one bomb... because the devistation it caused wasn\'t all that major compaired to our other bombing runs. However, like I said, if they feared that we had an entire arsenal of these bombs compairable to our conventional weapons.. then we could kill every last living creature in that nation. That\'s something they wanted to avoid since Hirohito never wanted to "Fight till the last man stands".. they simply wanted to make it so bloody a stalemate that the Americans would back off without having to disgrace Japan into an actual surrender.

As far as military targets go.. many of their military installations were INSIDE major cities. It\'s kind of hard to descriminatnly bomb specific targets inside a major city with nuclear weaponry. Besides.. most of their military targets had already been wiped out by our firebombing raids. By the end of the war, they didn\'t even have flack cannons to shoot at our B-57\'s, which allowed us pretty much free reign over Japan\'s skies. An invasion of Japan wouldn\'t have met with much resistance from their convential army.. it would have been a gurrella war with the citizens.

I don\'t agree with the idea of Korea or Vietnam though. - SW

I don\'t quite agree with Vietnam either, since we had plenty of bases in that region anyhow. I agree, that was someone else\'s war.. the French. What happened there is, we sent in troops to aid French leigeons in Vietnam and as our troops began succumbing to poor leadership and a fanatical enemie.. we began sending more and more troops in for protection and retaliation. The whole war jus snowballed from there.

Korea, I agree with tho. Our bases in the philipines were directly at risk of Communist advancements.. and the lesson of WWII was.. keep those islands safe at all costs. It\'s how we defeated the Japaneese, by island hopping and securing safe naval passage. So we went in and beat the Korans up to the 38th parallel... pulling off some of the most specatular military tactics under Joe McArthur that our nation has ever seen. Now he wanted to push the communists all the way back to Moscow.. but as the Chineese army reinforced the North Koreans, Eisenhower withdrew McCarthy as commander of our pacific forces because he feared where war with China would lead us. Chineese involvment in the Korean war was kept under wraps for quite a few years because our rules of engagement state that if any of their soldiers attack us... we have to retaliate.

(The same thing happed in Vietnam when we found Russian Air combat pilots making bombing runs of our troops.. we didn\'t say anything because it would have set the rules of engagement into motion and triggered a Nuclear War. Same thing with the Cuban Missle Crisis.. we had a jet fighter shot down while taking reconnosance photos for a Cuban invasion plan. We ignored it because it would have blown all the diplomacy the Kennedys were working hard to keep flowing and forced us into a war.)

Bozco - My point is that if we hadn\'t been such isolationists and had tried to stop the events leading up to WWII, that war might have been over before the Germans ever crossed Poland into France.. or better yet.. might have stopped WWII all-together.

Look at the nuetral countries. While I dont know much about the small few, I dont seem to remember great violence and threats upon them by hostile countries. - Luckee

Almost nobody was neutral in WWII Luckee. The countries who remained neutral had "bought" their peace at the price of trade of valuable minerals and supplies for Germany\'s war effort. Some countries such as Switzerland even went a step further and allowed Germany to use their country as a hotbed training ground for Axis spies.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/105037.stm

And exactly how long after America and Brittan were conquered do you think it would have taken for Germany to turn on those countries as well? After all.. Germany was trading bloodmoney stolen from Holocaust victims to Russia in exchange for food and clothing materials for their troops prior to 1941. Didn\'t stop Hitler from attacking Russian troops and taking over Russian settlements, (ultimately his downfall) which brought Russia into the war.

Originally posted by SonyFan
And exactly how long after America and Brittan were conquered do you think it would have taken for Germany to turn on those countries as well? After all.. Germany was trading bloodmoney stolen from Holocaust victims to Russia in exchange for food and clothing materials for their troops prior to 1941. Didn\'t stop Hitler from attacking Russian troops and taking over Russian settlements, (ultimately his downfall) which brought Russia into the war.

Germany would have never conquered America, had we not entered the war.  They wouldn\'t have tried either.  With how far over seas we were, their navy couldn\'t have handled it.  Besides, France, England, etc. would have risen up before long anyway.  The German soldiers would have been spread too thin.  Besides, Russia would have taken care of Germany anyway .

I just think we didn\'t give them enough time after Hiroshima for them to fully realize what had happened.  Had we waited a little longer, I\'d bet they\'d surrender.  Especially if we made it clear that we could do the same thing again.  And by the way, why not just target a major city with military in it?  Hell, what did Hiroshima do to deserve that attack?  They not only had no military there, but also very little industry.  Why that target?

And if they were still a threat to us, they would still have major military targets.  If they didn\'t, then they wouldn\'t be much of a threat, and the bombing was totally unneeded.

Originally posted by SonyFan


And why is that? Because of the radiation? Because of the scale of the destruction? Frankly, like I said, this wasn\'t anything Japan hadn\'t see before. True, they hadn\'t seen radiation poisioning, but they saw thousands upon thousands of their citizens with 3rd digree burns from the fires. At the time, most japaneese buildings were still made out of wood and paper.. not brick and mortar like most other countries cities. When we started dropping bombs, those whole citys would go up like tissue paper extending the damage far -FAR- from where the bombs had originally impacted at. Look at WWII footage of post war Japan.. Tokyo looked every bit as decimated as both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was like the great Chicago fire all over the nation of Japan.. our pilots even complained of the stench of burning flesh they could smell rising from these citys on their high altitude bombing runs. I really don\'t think that Japan would have surrendered with just one bomb... because the devistation it caused wasn\'t all that major compaired to our other bombing runs. However, like I said, if they feared that we had an entire arsenal of these bombs compairable to our conventional weapons.. then we could kill every last living creature in that nation. That\'s something they wanted to avoid since Hirohito never wanted to "Fight till the last man stands".. they simply wanted to make it so bloody a stalemate that the Americans would back off without having to disgrace Japan into an actual surrender.

Yup..Im really surprised it didn\'t take a 3rd bomb to make them surrender. They prided themselves in dying with honor, which meant they HAD to fight with a pencil if need be.

Almost nobody was neutral in WWII Luckee. The countries who remained neutral had "bought" their peace at the price of trade of valuable minerals and supplies for Germany\'s war effort. Some countries such as Switzerland even went a step further and allowed Germany to use their country as a hotbed training ground for Axis spies.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/105037.stm

And exactly how long after America and Brittan were conquered do you think it would have taken for Germany to turn on those countries as well? After all.. Germany was trading bloodmoney stolen from Holocaust victims to Russia in exchange for food and clothing materials for their troops prior to 1941. Didn\'t stop Hitler from attacking Russian troops and taking over Russian settlements, (ultimately his downfall) which brought Russia into the war. [/B]

Cool reading..I certainly didnt know alot of which you and that linked provided me. I always knew about those countries not "fighting" but I didnt know how they got around not being directly involved.

Originally posted by shockwaves


Germany would have never conquered America, had we not entered the war.  They wouldn\'t have tried either.  With how far over seas we were, their navy couldn\'t have handled it.  Besides, France, England, etc. would have risen up before long anyway.  The German soldiers would have been spread too thin.  Besides, Russia would have taken care of Germany anyway .

 

When you conquer land..alot of ppl will fall into place. So if say germany would have captured and controlled all of europe..it is likely there forces would nearly double..as well as resources, weapons..etc. I dont think they would have stopped once they figured out the roll they were on.

IIRC the US had nukes in Turkey that were in striking distance of the Soviet Union.

The Russians saw this as a threat and shipped nukes to Cuba.. (and they did not remove them before the US agreed to take away their nukes from Turkey.. Most people don’t know about that)

Same thing really.. Got to see it both ways. (oh noo.. Russian = teh ultimate evil empire!) - Fastson

First off, our Titan missles were strictly for the defense of Turkey in case they were invaded. They were short range and posed no thread to Moscow or 90% of Russia. The missles that the Russians were sneaking into Cuba were inter-mediate range missles capable of striking as far north as Seattle Washington.

Secondly, if the Russians opposed our missle emplacements they should have gone through diplomatic channels to get them removed.. like the Kennedys did to get rid of the missles in Cuba. Sneaking first strike capable missles into Cuba was a very ~VERY~ bad idea which almost triggered a nuclear war. The Russians knew we were putting missles into Turkey when we did it. When they put their missles into Cuba, they did it secretly an lied to the Leauge of American States directly by saying that they had shipped no offensive weapons into Cuba.

Third, our Titan missles were obsolete.. and we did not trade them off. They were scheduled for withdrawl anyhow.. we merely assured the Russians that we would step up their removal to under 6 months. A trade would have only invited more provocations from the Russians to trade off other strategic sites by setting a precidence.. all the while making us look weak.. until they demanded something we couldn\'t give them and it would have been the whole situation all over again.

The big thing that got the missles out of Cuba, was our promise to never invade Cuba or aid others in that venture. Which is why, today, Castro is still in power and Cuba is still Communist.

Sonyfan..since we keep getting into different topics in here WHat are your views on communism?

All in all...my take on communism is that it makes for a good read and interesting idea, but not an effective government

Germany would have never conquered America, had we not entered the war. They wouldn\'t have tried either. With how far over seas we were, their navy couldn\'t have handled it. - SW

Of course they wouldn\'t have attacked us directly. They would have gone after smaller countries by insurection, invasion, and bribery untill they had enough forces over in the Northern Hemisphere to attempt an attack on America... whom they would supply with tanks, funding, food, weapons, commanders, and light to moderate German platoons. Jus like how America.. *gasp* invaded Germany who were half a world away. It would have taken longer than an invasion of say.. Africa.. but they would have done it eventually. The Zimmerman letter we intercepted is proof enough of that. Or don\'t you remember the Zimmerman letter? The letter where the Germans promised Mexico full aid and the land America took durring the Mexican/American war in exchange for declaring war on the US? I guess not.

As far as Hiroshima and Nagasaki.. remember that America was preparing to fight a gurrella war with Japaneese citizens.. not specifically their military. We picked Nagasaki for it\'s high population.. to show that we can kill entire cities of people before they have a chance to run from the fires or fight back. Hiroshima was chosen also because of it\'s high population and the fact that surrounded by mountains.. and the Army wanted to see what the comression of the blast would do to an area partially enclosed.

The reason why we bombed them into submission is because that was the only way we could get them to surrender. We weren\'t planning to invade Japan because strategy called for it.. we bombed them to hell and back to serve as an example.. and to fulfil the promise made to the American citizens by FDR that we would accept no less than Japans unconditional surrender for the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Sonyfan..since we keep getting into different topics in here  WHat are your views on communism?

All in all...my take on communism is that it makes for a good read and interesting idea, but not an effective government - Luckee

My take on communism.. mm\'s a great guy.. tho he gets a little trite when n00bs don\'t read the faq or people make fun of his skinny bleached white legs.

As a government.. in the big picutre.. it\'s a great idea. However when you get down to the nitty gritty of it, it\'s not as grand as it seems. Do you really like the thought of being assaigned a job and be forced to do it for the rest of your life? Granted work sucks, and most people hate their jobs.. but you\'re not required by LAW to be there. You can change jobs and careers whenever you want provided you\'re willing to work for your advancement. The gov\'t promises to take care of such things like health-care, police, retirement, ect.. but in the end departments get underfunded and ignored. It\'s also far to easy for dictators to rise in a communist gov\'t. With Democracy, the people (for the most part) choose who we want representing us.. and there are delicate checks & balances set up to keep any one person or branch of gov\'t from gaining too much power. It\'s slow, it\'s clunky, and it\'s innefficent.. but it\'s also the best solution to give people a voice and to keep ideas/mythos fresh.

Power tends to corrupt (Democracy), Aboslute power corrupts absolutely (Communism).