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submitted 3 days ago by cm0002@lemdro.id to c/history@mander.xyz
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[-] gramie@lemmy.ca 5 points 3 days ago

Those certainly were appalling and destructive events. But why give them some special status over other bombing raids like the March 9 fire bombing of Tokyo, which also killed over 100,000 people in one night? Dropping 1 bomb vs. dropping 1,600 tons of conventional bombs in 3 hours?

[-] Theoriginalthon@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

Exactly you have to look at it objectively. It's like the trolley problem bomb 2 cities killing ~240k people almost instantly or continue fire bombing and launching a land invasion for another year or 2 potentially killing millions.

Would I want to make that decision, fuck no.

[-] MasterBlaster@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 3 days ago

200k people were vaporized by atomic bombs in an utterly indiscriminate manner. This is inclusive of babies, little infants literally melted in a second. The radiation persisted decades after the blast.

We give it a special status despite conventional warfare still being capable of greater numbers, because of how exceedingly cruel and indiscriminate it is.

Historians described it as an 'ethical shock' and I agree with the term. If the yanks did not elect to exclusively melt civilians with their demonstration history might look at it differently.

this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2026
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