History is Written by the Victor

   The Allied strategic bombing campaign against the Germans and Japanese were among the most brutal acts of carnage in human history. Never before or since have any one group of nations been willing and capable to totally destroy the people and infrastructure of another society so thoroughly, and with so little dissent. At least during the more overtly violent times of the past has destruction been limited to how far an army can march, and dependant almost totally on where said army would travel. In the 20th century bombers could reach nearly any target,  h the dropping of not one, but two atomic bombs on mostly civilian targets was the logical conclusion of such a war fought with such disregard for innocent life. War between large powers became total and complete campaigns of destruction.
      Yet how has history judged the Allied bombing campaign? Can we look back with 20/20 hindsight and judge whether or not the campaign was justified? Whether it was an act of mass murder? Were they crimes against humanity committed against those who were seen as less human than those who dropped the bombs? Do we judge this act less harshly than other acts of epic murder during this period such as the Holocaust? Or are we justified in praising this campaign as a way to end the war quickly and do we really believe that this terrible act actually saved lives? How we answer depends greatly on the way we judge, as historians and as human beings, the way our nations conducted warfare in the past.
It may sound like a stretch to compare the Holocaust with the Allied bombing campaigns of Europe and Japan, but there are similarities nonetheless. In both cases, powerless civilians were the targets of hostile arms. Technology was such that both countries could use innovation to improve the efficiency and quantity of killing. Laws were either created (anti-Jewish laws), or conveniently ignored (murder) in order to eliminate a large section of the population. The military necessity of either murdering large sections of the Jewish (and many more) population or the bombing of a city comprised of no military targets are questionable at best. On the broadest level, these two acts share some similarities.
One other major question that could determine the similarity between the two actions is whether or not the US would have deployed a nuclear weapon on a European city. Some have argued that a deep racial hatred enabled the US to drop the bomb on Japan. If this is true, then a very striking similarity between the two events exist: The elimination of large numbers of innocent civilians based off racial hatred.
       Could the US actually be guilty of a crime against humanity? Even if the bombing was not racially motivated (there is little evidence it was a major component in the “non-decision” to drop the weapon) could the sheer number of civilians killed qualify the bombing of Hiroshima as a war crime? What about the second bombing? The incendiary bombing of Tokyo and other cities which burned the entire city to the ground, causing massive casualties? The carpet bombing of cities in Europe and Japan which killed countless civilians even when the bombs landed on target (which they rarely did)? Does it matter that the bombing was or was not racially motivated? Perhaps, but in either case it could be considered an atrocity of massive proportions which could be compared and contrasted with any other massacre in history.
The use of an atomic weapon on the Japanese was not debated. The weapon was being developed to be used; it was just a bigger bomb doing the same thing that had been done but with less “friendly” casualties. The scientists involved in the construction of the bomb knew it was going to be used, but it was not until afterwards that concerns were voiced about the morality of using said weapon. There is evidence showing that even at the highest levels of the American government, there was little if any debate over the use of the weapon. It was a military affair, and the bomb just packed a bigger punch.
       Was the bombing of Hiroshima necessary to end the war with minimal total casualties? This is the question that can determine whether or not we should consider the bombing (separate from the otherwise liberal use of carpet bombing of civilian targets elsewhere) as an atrocity on par with those committed by the Axis such as the Holocaust or the Nanjing Massacre.
      The Nazis certainly argued that the destruction of the Jews was necessary to prevent the subversion of the new German nation. The memory of World War One and the myth of betrayal by the Jews was fresh in the minds of many Germans.
The fact that the Soviet leadership, and therefore Communism, was comprised of many ethnic Jews (although avowed atheists) only helped create a feeling of tacit approval about the mistreatment of the Jews among large portions of the German population. Once at war with the Soviets, it was justifiable to connect the Jews with the enemy. The Nazis drew upon distrust around the myth of betrayal and the propaganda campaigns to slowly mold the German citizen into a person who could accept, at least tacitly, the disenfranchisement of the Jews. It was a short step from there to move the Jews out of German and Polish cities and send them away, ostensibly to labor camps, to keep the German people safe from the enemy’s proxies. By killing the Jews, they were saving Germans from the enemy, from an impure breed of human that had betrayed them once, and would betray them again. Although most people were probably not aware of the killing of the Jews, they must deduced that something terrible was happening to them. Thus the German case was one in which the citizen was at least somewhat aware that there were terrible human rights violations occurring in their country, at least.
        The Americans would argue that the bombing of Hiroshima was necessary in order to save future lives. The Japanese were a vicious people, who proved time and time again that they would fight to the last man to protect their homeland against an invasion. Okinawa, Saipan, kamikazes, all these experienced convinced the American leadership that anything must be done to end the war before an invasion of the main Japanese islands. This feeling was palpable, and many had seen how difficult it was to assault Okinawa and it would not be much of a stretch to assume the invasion of Kyushu, let alone Honshu would be even bloodier. So only a massive show of force would end the war with the least American casualties.
        Even if we accept that the Hiroshima bombing was appropriate, how can we justify the bombing of Nagasaki? The second bomb was dropped only a few days after the first, did the Japanese high command even have time to fully grasp the seriousness of the first bomb? Was it enough time for the military leadership to either choose to end the war, or could the following confusion and fear instilled into the leadership have produced a coup of some kind? It is possible that the government would have chosen to end the war after the first bombing, and perhaps even before the first, but the American military leadership was not convinced. Although communication has been uncovered that the Japanese may have been willing to surrender prior to Hiroshima, the government was either unconvinced that the offer was sincere, or had an ulterior motive.
        To understand the American decision to use the weapon again we must look into the fact that the US needed to emphasize, perhaps to more than just the Japanese leadership, that it had more than one of these gruesome weapons, and was more than willing to use them. By showing a willingness to deploy not one, but two weapons against the Japanese, the US was able to negotiate an unconditional surrender within days of the bombing. Although the American government saved many of their own soldiers’ lives, they had to kill hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians to do it. Clearly the number of Japanese dead was not in the calculation. However the effects could not be argued. Not only did the Japanese surrender almost immediately, but the Soviets, who some in the American establishment were slowly but surely beginning to see as future rivals, would be given a show of American technological superiority they could not ignore.
         What effect this may have had in giving the Americans a diplomatic edge could be argued ad infinitum. The Americans gained very little in negotiations with the Soviets post-war, and tensions rose to such that Churchill, only a year after the war in 1946, spoke grimly of an “iron curtain” descending across the continent of Europe dividing it into American and Soviet spheres of influence. Berlin was surrounded, Korea was divided, and the Cold War was slowly gaining heat. Eventually the Soviets developed their own nuclear weapons and began attempting to catch up to the Americans in technology and innovation. Did the dropping of the bombs really make a difference? Did the American government think the dropping two bombs would scare the Soviets into a weakened diplomatic position? If they did, there is no evidence it worked, and even if it was part of the plan, how could we justify morally the killing of thousands of civilians to obtain a stronger diplomatic position in future politics?
          No, the Holocaust and the Allied bombing (nuclear and otherwise) of the Axis are not the same, but they both have lessons to teach us about ourselves and the way we view war and humanity. It was easier to justify Hiroshima based off our assumptions that the war could not have ended without a massive invasion and a bloody fight, resulting in countless American and Japanese casualties. Both have many similarities in the broadest senses. Yes there was perhaps a racist element to the ruthless bombing of the Japanese cities, but there was no attempt by the Americans to wipe out the entirety of the Japanese people. The action was committed in a time of war against an enemy country, not an internal group that was not at arms and otherwise helpless, although both resulted in massive loss of life for non-combatants.
The powerful destroyed the powerless. Both were atrocities in the plainest sense. There was no immediate military need, although there was plenty of rationalizing, of either the Holocaust, or the Allied bombing campaigns. Large numbers of noncombatants, civilians, were killed for what were, in the end, political reasons. If we remove the tint of ideology and patriotic upbringing from our minds and hearts we can clearly see that both events deserve to be treated as atrocities, if only for the sheer scale of the killing of innocent people. These killings were intentional. There is no way we can argue that the Allies did not know that thousands of people would die on every bombing raid, let alone the obvious totality of the destruction that would follow the dropping of the atomic bomb. Collateral damage is a polite euphemism for “justified” murder.
        Yet as historians, do we even have the right to judge? This can be debated endlessly among academics and others, but what is not arguable is the morality of the mass killing of large numbers of civilians. These events teach us that there will always be justifications for terrible acts of mass violence in warfare. Whether a country is democratic or dictatorial, people can be driven to do equally terrible things to each other. Perhaps as historians we should not judge the decisions made by those in the past, but as human beings we should not allow our patriotic biases cloud our innate humanity towards each other. If we do not teach that acts of mass violence such as the bombing of cities in World War Two or the Holocaust are bad things, and allow patriotism to get in the way of reason and compassion, then we are doomed to walk into the same pitfall as did the poor citizens of Germany in the 1930s. We will slowly be drawn back into a time where extreme violence can be committed with little dissent and we will consent, tacitly or explicitly, to the destruction of other human beings. That, as human beings, and as historians, we should not allow.