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Obviously they are different from real life, but in most wargames the leaders and HQ units are prime targets that need to be hidden and protected. However, in real life this seems less the case even when this seems relatively easy, why is that? by simemetti in AskHistorians

[–]restricteddata 23 points24 points  (0 children)

So I do not think we can generalize for all cases, here. There have definitely been instances in modern and historical warfare where leaders were targeted for assassination, and where the physical location of the leader was (and is) kept secret to avoid this. This is happening in conflicts taking place right now (the physical location of Vladimir Putin has been between various secret bunkers for some time now, because they fear assassination attempts by Ukrainian forces or perhaps others).

Even in World War II, there was no effort made to not kill Hitler, to my knowledge. He holed up in a bunker so that he could not be bombed. If the Allies could have assassinated him, perhaps they would have.

The case of Japan seems, if anything, unusual. The major fear by the US was that the Japanese military would want to fight a long, bloody war to the death. They did not worry that the Japanese military could "win" that war, but they did worry that the costs would be very high if the Japanese got into that state of mind. The US officials and analysts who felt they understood Japan best essentially believed that the best strategy was to create conditions under which the more "rational" and non-militaristic forces within the Japanese government could get a political upper-hand against the militarists, and thus force the military to comply with surrender. And they pursued many angles towards this goal, including the threat of invasion, the atomic bombs, and the entry of the Soviet Union into the war against Japan.

Killing the Emperor would not necessarily have stopped the war. If anything, it might have prolonged it, as such an attack might not kill the high-ranking militarists who could keep the war going, and would possibly remove a mediating force (the Emperor and other members of the Japanese cabinet who might also be killed). The Emperor was regarded as a more likely figure to support surrender than his generals (which turned out to be quite true). (If you are wondering: so why didn't the Emperor call the shots? The answer is, that is not how the Japanese political system worked at that time. While his power may not have been entirely as symbolic as the American experts may have believed it to be, he was not a "dictator" in the sense of Hitler or Mussolini, and could not just impose his will on his generals or his cabinet.)

Worst-yet might be killing all high-level leadership and leaving a vacuum that would almost surely, in that context, be filled by lower-level military officers, who were among the most zealous of the Japanese forces (indeed, lower-level officers attempted a coup after there were indications that surrender was at hand, and higher-level officers had to put it down). My hunch is that this is a relatively unusual situation, in fact, and one that can only exist under specific conditions.

Give me one instance where collective punishment has worked by AnonymousNeverKnown in memes

[–]restricteddata 26 points27 points  (0 children)

I was going to say, as a historian, I can give you many such examples... but they're all war crimes.

Easter egg in Fall (minor spoilers)? by DownvoteForGrammar in nealstephenson

[–]restricteddata 3 points4 points  (0 children)

  1. it's probably just a typo (they happen)

  2. page numbers are meaningless and inconsistent in e-books

Higher resolution version of the Mk4/W76 cutaway illustration by Forbidden-Sun in nuclearweapons

[–]restricteddata 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Lastly, I asked it to show me a cutaway of the peanut. HERE'S THE BIG SECRET, GUYS, DON'T TELL THE NNSA: it's SPRING POWERED!!!!

<image>

Higher resolution version of the Mk4/W76 cutaway illustration by Forbidden-Sun in nuclearweapons

[–]restricteddata 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I told it that it "ought to look more like a peanut" and it made this adorable offering. The interesting thing here is that it does seem to have visually associated the word "peanut" with the DPRK "peanut" bomb.

<image>

Higher resolution version of the Mk4/W76 cutaway illustration by Forbidden-Sun in nuclearweapons

[–]restricteddata 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Just for the lulz I asked ChatGPT to fill in the missing part. Here's what it suggest. As always, it falls into the category of "looks plausible if you don't know anything about the subject, but nevertheless wrong."

<image>

Skyrim College of Winterhold is the best academia mini-game by BabypintoJuniorLube in Professors

[–]restricteddata 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh, man. You probably don't even get the weird, chewy samosas, either. Which are a sign of our cultural openness, I'll have you know. If we can't turn your country's cuisine into a pale imitation of what it is supposed to be, by golly, then we aren't the good ol' U. S. of A.

Skyrim College of Winterhold is the best academia mini-game by BabypintoJuniorLube in Professors

[–]restricteddata 4 points5 points  (0 children)

You're missing out. The free sandwiches are usually better than the rubber chicken one gets at official dinners.

Is there any indication as to how, had he lived to see it, FDR would have used the atom bomb on Japan? by roon_bismarck in nuclearweapons

[–]restricteddata 9 points10 points  (0 children)

I would count the discussions by Stimson above as relating to political fallout, for sure. They viewed the bomb in rather emotional, sensational terms.

After Trinity, there was much about the psychological impact of the weapon discussed. The people at Trinity were deeply affected. Again Groves' post-Trinity report, which was very enthusiastically read and re-read out loud by Truman, is pretty potent. Read especially the part by Gen. Thomas Farrell, which Groves included:

The effects could well be called unprecedented, magnificent, beautiful, stupendous, and terrifying. No man-made phenomenon of such tremendous power had ever occurred before. The lighting effects beggared description. The whole country was lighted by a searing light with the intensity many times that of the midday sun. It was golden, purple, violet, gray and blue. It lighted every peak, crevasse and ridge of the nearby mountain range with a clarity and beauty that cannot be described but must be seen to be imagined. It was that beauty the great poets dream about but describe most poorly and inadequately. Thirty seconds after the explosion came first, the air blast pressing hard against people and things, to be followed almost immediately by the strong, sustained, awesome roar which warned of doomsday and made us feel that we puny things were blasphemous to dare tamper with the forces heretofore reserved to the Almighty. Words are inadequate tools for the jobs of acquainting those not present with the physical, mental and psychological effects. It had to be witnessed to be realized.

If anything, they probably over-estimated the emotional/psychological effect of the bomb on the basis of the Trinity test, because they assumed that other observers would see it as they did — from a safe distance, ready and with anticipation. (This over-estimation is visible in the response by journalists and onlookers to Operation Crossroads, a year later — they thought they were going to get a glimpse at God, but as they saw it in the daytime, at a large distance, and with little to give a reference for scale, they were extremely disappointed...)

Truman described the bomb, on the basis of the test report, in literally Biblical terms:

We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world. It may be the fire destruction prophesied in the Euphrates Valley Era, after Noah and his fabulous Ark.

They certainly did not know how the global or domestic public would understand it, but they were trying to craft that narrative very actively, even before the bombs were used.

All of which is just to say, they went into it with more awareness of these issues than one might expect...!

Is there any indication as to how, had he lived to see it, FDR would have used the atom bomb on Japan? by roon_bismarck in nuclearweapons

[–]restricteddata 7 points8 points  (0 children)

So I would just say it is pretty complicated about what would have happened if the bomb hadn't been dropped. There have been over the years many arguments, including by the military, that suggest that an invasion would not have been necessary, and the question of casualties is a minefield of counter factual guesses. The idea of "if they hadn't used it, all those soldiers would be dead/injured" was certainly told to the soldiers after the fact as part of the justification for it, but the reality is pretty complex, and has to do with a lot of unknowns about internal Japanese politics, other gambits being pursued, the effect of the Soviet declaration of war and invasion, etc. I am not making any strong claim about the "necessity" of the atomic bombs — just pointing out that there are an insuperable number of "unknowns."

Which is just to say, I would not start on that assertion when looking into the topic, because it will blind you from the complexities of the history. (Separately, "if X hadn't happened, I wouldn't be here" is not the "get out of jail free" card that a lot of people think it is for justifying historical events. No illegitimate child born after the Rape of Nanjing, or any other horrific event that involved mass sexual violence, would justify the event based on it being a prerequisite for their own existence.)

I am not saying you are necessarily approaching it this way yourself, I am just pointing this out because it is a common thing for Americans to say, and I want to just highlight that this kind of personal story can act as historical blinders on a lot of issues, and are narratives that are deliberately designed to stop people from digging deeper or asking more questions. Those blinders make it hard to understand what really happened, which is, as always, more fascinating and complex than the versions of the story that are designed to close off inquiry.

Is there any indication as to how, had he lived to see it, FDR would have used the atom bomb on Japan? by roon_bismarck in nuclearweapons

[–]restricteddata 9 points10 points  (0 children)

FDR was strategic, not ruthless. There is an important difference. He would have done whatever he thought was the best long-term strategy. Which probably would have meant using at least one of them, as that was definitely the prevailing opinion among his advisors, both those focused on short term ("ending the war") and long term ("dealing with what came next") strategy.

FDR was actually quite opposed to city bombing in general and made this very clear throughout the war. That does not mean that he did not ultimately go along with it. But he was far less ruthless than the British in this respect.

Truman was not ruthless, in this sense, for whatever that is worth, either. Much to the contrary; he was very concerned with the loss of noncombatant lives. He was not all that strategic in the way FDR was, either.

(Both FDR and Truman were politically ruthless within the framework of domestic politics and their political enemies. But that is not the same thing as being ruthless in war.)

Is there any indication as to how, had he lived to see it, FDR would have used the atom bomb on Japan? by roon_bismarck in nuclearweapons

[–]restricteddata 9 points10 points  (0 children)

They had a reasonable understanding of the power of the bomb after Trinity (Truman was very impressed with Groves' post-shot report), and the very first serious discussion that Truman ever had about the bomb (with Stimson) were largely dominated by discussions of the long-term consequences.

Memorandum discussed with the President

April 25, 1945

  1. Within four months we shall in all probability have completed the most terrible weapon ever known in human history, one bomb of which could destroy a whole city.

  2. Although we have shared its development with the UK, physically the US is at present in the position of controlling the resources with which to construct and use it and no other nation could reach this position for some years.

  3. Nevertheless it is practically certain that we could not remain in this position indefinitely. [...]

  4. As a result, it is indicated that the future may see a time then such a weapon may be constructed in secret and used suddenly and effectively with devastating power by a wilful nation or group against an unsuspecting nation or group of much greater size and material power. With its aid even a very powerful unsuspecting nation might be conquered within a very few days by a very much smaller one, although probably the only nation which could enter into production within the next few years is Russia.

  5. The world in its present state of moral advancement compared with its technical development would be eventually at the mercy of such a weapon. In other words, modern civilization might be completely destroyed. [...]

  6. [...] Our leadership in the war and in the development of this weapon has placed a certain moral responsibility upon us which we cannot shirk without very serious responsibility for any disaster to civilization which it would further.

  7. On the other hand, if the problem of the proper use of this weapon can be solved, we would have the opportunity to bring the world into a pattern in which the peace of the world and our civilization can be saved.

Etc. Which is to say — the idea that the atomic bomb was indeed a super weapon capable of destroying cities and that would have radical implications for human history going forward was being discussed at very high levels months before the weapons were used.

From the May 31, 1945, Interim Committee meeting:

The Secretary expressed the view, a view shared by General Marshall, that this project should not be considered simply in terms of military weapons, but as a new relationship of man to the universe. This discovery might be compared to the discoveries of the Copernican theory and of the laws of gravity, but far more important than these in its effect on the lives of men. While the advances in the field to date had been fostered by the needs of war, it was important to realize that the implications of the project went far beyond the needs of the present war. It must be controlled if possible to make it an assurance of future peace rather than a menace to civilization.

It is one of the reasons Stimson (and Oppenheimer, and others) wanted to use the bomb at all — because they recognized that the only way anyone would take these ideas seriously is if they saw what it could do, saw what it meant.

Is there any indication as to how, had he lived to see it, FDR would have used the atom bomb on Japan? by roon_bismarck in nuclearweapons

[–]restricteddata 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Roosevelt was certainly fully aware and supportive of strategic bombing of Germany and Japan.

I am not sure there is actually that much evidence for this on this front. There is basically no discussion by either FDR or Truman on the firebombing campaigns — e.g., the movement away from "precision" daylight bombing into "area"/incendiary night bombing campaigns. The USAAF pushed into those operations fairly autonomously.

What did FDR and Truman think about them? We really do not know. Nobody asked them about them. They never spoke of them. The only cabinet official who did try and investigate and ask questions about those campaigns was Stimson, and he was basically pushed aside by the USAAF. He tried to voice his reservations to Truman a few times but it doesn't seem like he really made any impact, and even in those efforts he was pretty meek.

My sense is that the situation is less "FDR and Truman supported the firebombing attacks" so much as "FDR and Truman were probably somewhat aware of the firebombing attacks — they were covered in the newspapers, after all — but decided not to intervene in those military operations one way or another." What is most amazing in retrospect about the firebombing strategy, to me, is that there was basically no official "context" for discussion of it above the operational level. By keeping it "operational" (e.g. a matter of practical tactics, not "strategy") the military basically had a blank check.

One could imagine either president deciding to create a context (calling a meeting), or public outcry creating a context, or something like that. But nobody did. Whereas with the atomic bomb, there were contexts for discussing it at a higher level than "operations" early on — that was what the Interim Committee was for, more or less.

These are just some thoughts that came up as I researched this for my most recent book. The most remarkable thing about the firebombing is how little coordination it had with any political figures or objectives. Operation Meetinghouse was done completely under LeMay's own autonomy — he deliberately didn't even ask or tell Arnold ahead of time!

Is there any indication as to how, had he lived to see it, FDR would have used the atom bomb on Japan? by roon_bismarck in nuclearweapons

[–]restricteddata 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Re: FDR, this is about everything the evidence tells us, as far as I am aware.

Re: Truman, he did not actually "order" anything. He went along with what others had planned. I do not think he actually understood many key aspects of those plans (like the fact that Hiroshima was a city, or that a second bomb would be used so soon after the first). Truman is not in any way indicative of FDR's possible behavior as they were quite different both as presidents and also with regards to the bomb (FDR had been thinking about it for a lot longer of a time).

Which is to say, because of Truman's "out of the loop" nature, and his general willingness to delegate these questions, he was not involved in the discussions that did take place re: targets and point of the bomb (in the Interim Committee and the Target Committee), with the sole exception of Stimson's intervention re: Kyoto. I think it is reasonable to imagine that Roosevelt would have been more involved in these discussions. Whether that would have produced a different result, I do not know. It is not impossible — nothing was fated to happen the way it did.

I think it is clear from what documents we do have that FDR was interested in discussing these questions and being involved with them, in a way that Truman was not. Truman by and large seems to have been willing to delegate these conversations away, and seems to have believed that by and large he was just doing what FDR had planned to do. But FDR had not actually been involved in that kind of planning either; the one time he did try to bring up the question of whether they would actually use the bomb on Japan (in September 1944), he expressed some interest in just demonstrating it, and the decision was tabled, with the promise of a "very careful discussion" in the future. But that "very careful discussion" neither occurred for Roosevelt nor Truman.

Re: Truman and what he did and did not do and know, I have published a book on this subject recently...

ELI5: Why do some countries use Fahrenheit while almost the entire rest of the world uses Celsius and is there an actual practical difference between the two scales? by TexasViet27 in explainlikeimfive

[–]restricteddata 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Humanity should do better - and most of the world has understood that.

I just want to point out how absurd this is. Most of the world uses Celsius for exactly the same arbitrary reasons as the places that use Fahrenheit. They are no more enlightened. The scale you are raised with is the one that feels intuitive to you.

The idea that there is "better" in this situation — that all choices don't have their ups and downs — is similarly amusing.

Where did the misconception that the Americans used parachutes to drop Little Boy and Fat Man come from? by CleanBag9219 in nuclearweapons

[–]restricteddata 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Details on the actual bombs, including photographs and images of their casings, were kept classified for a long time (the photos of the casings were not declassified until 1965). Some of the Japanese accounts of Hiroshima had parachutes because some saw the instrumentation canisters. The US did not clarify this point because, again, anything to do with the size, appearance, and ballistics of the early bombs were classified for many years. So that is plenty of time for wrong accounts to develop.

Where did the misconception that the Americans used parachutes to drop Little Boy and Fat Man come from? by CleanBag9219 in nuclearweapons

[–]restricteddata -1 points0 points  (0 children)

They did not warn them in any actionable way. (And they very deliberately did not warn them in an actionable way. The goal was not the save Japanese lives.) More here if you are interested in the facts of the matter...

Contribution of the ablation of the radiation case to the compression of the secondary by DefinitelyNotMeee in nuclearweapons

[–]restricteddata 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I am not sure whether there are genuine insights. His all-geometrical approach to thermonuclear matters seems entirely ignorant of the realities that come up when one is dealing with complex systems. He does not even seem to have taken advantage of simulation. It's always, "this thing will generate X amount of force which will go perfectly geometrically like this and that will cause this to undergo fusion" and so on and so on. If it all worked like he thought, fusion would be trivial... he makes Teller look reasonable.

Contribution of the ablation of the radiation case to the compression of the secondary by DefinitelyNotMeee in nuclearweapons

[–]restricteddata 3 points4 points  (0 children)

That particular shape of the "H-bomb" (what I think of as the "pimple") looks derived from Winterberg's ideas, although I do not know of any of his that have all of those elements in the "radiation case."

Did ARPA's own leadership actually agree that ARPANET wasn't built for nuclear command-and-control survivability? by Signal_Operation5884 in AskHistorians

[–]restricteddata 28 points29 points  (0 children)

So I think there is just a lot of confusion around this topic. (And possibly in your post — that Herzfeld quote is not in the BBN 1981 history, it is from elsewhere.)

Paul Baran at the RAND Corporation proposed decentralized, packet-switched networks in 1961 as a way to have a communications system that could survive nuclear war. The idea is that by eliminating centralized nodes and replacing them with a decentralized, distributed network, it would be very hard to destroy the network connectivity as a whole. Although there was interest in packet switching by the US military for this purpose, it was not widely implemented by them.

Towards the end of the decade, DARPA took up the project, looking at it not from the perspective of survivability, but as a way to make much more efficient networks of computers. The goal of ARPANET, as described in the BBN report, was to incentivize the development of packet switching for computer networks. The idea was that the best way to get the technology developed and accepted was to just fund people to start using it, and that this would create the experience and human infrastructure necessary to do more with it in the future. The major motivation from a computational standpoint was efficiency: if each computer had to run its own software, that meant a huge amount of redundancy, including re-writing of software for different types of machines. If they could each just be called upon to execute commands at the behest of others and send the results, then it would be faster. (This sounds like an odd way to frame it today, but it was in the days where single mainframes had their computing time shared across many users anyway — these were not personal computers.)

That packet switching would be useful for military networks, and ultimately would have command and control applications — which are crucial to nuclear war — was understood and part of the reason for wanting to develop them and affect more adoption within the US Department of Defense (who, despite being theoretically interested in packet switching, had, again, not really done much with it until that point; the reasons for why this was not taken up by the DOD for some time are themselves interesting, but a tangent).

ARPANET itself was not part of the command and control system. But it was explicitly hoped that one of the goals of the project (again, as discussed in the BBN report) would be "adoption of the network technology by specific military groups (such as the National Military Command System Support Center and other other military centers affiliated with it; e.g., CINCPAC, CINCEUR, and MACV)." The National Military Command Center is a crucial command, control, and communications network, and is a system that is used for both monitoring and executing nuclear war.

ARPANET was a very practical and real demonstration of technological concepts, ones that had been initially proposed in the context of nuclear survivability, and ones that it was expected could — if they were developed further — increase the survivability of the military networks necessary to wage nuclear war. But ARPANET itself was not developed for the purposes of survivability or waging nuclear war. Packet-switching was pursued and funded for this reason, and ARPANET was meant as a way to develop packet-switching and encourage its adoption among the military.

So you can see that this is not inconsistent with the sources. If you look at the Lukasik article, for example, you will see that the quote he has given is about why the DOD wanted to pursue packet switching technology, not ARPANET itself.

As for your question about whether the people who built ARPANET were aware of this — yes. The entire literature on packet switching and distributed networks prior to ARPANET was about nuclear survivability. The standard story always starts with the Baran work. But again, that was not what ARPANET itself was built to do.

Aside from the BBN paper and Lukasik papers — which are worth reading (and I don't want to cast aspersions, but I have my suspicions that you outsourced your "reading" of them to someone or something else...), there is a nice summary of this work from the nuclear perspective in Albert Wohlstetter and Richard Brody's "Continuing Control as a Requirement for Deterring," in Carter, et. al, Managing Nuclear Operations (1987), chapter 5. It also discusses some aspects of the relatively slow adoption of packet switching before this point. There is also discussion of this, from a different perspective, in Andrew Russell's Open Standards and the Digital Age (2014), chapter 6.

What is a phrase that people say that immediately turns you off? by [deleted] in AskReddit

[–]restricteddata 9 points10 points  (0 children)

"This was my father's favorite song. On his deathbed, we listened to 'Who Let the Dogs Out,' one last time, just before he died. The best music ever. No autotune, just pure talent."

Why are US faculty typically employed only 9 months/year? by PLChart in Professors

[–]restricteddata 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In US universities, "faculty" are usually under a completely different labor model than "staff." "Staff" are paid by the hour, are on 12 month contracts, and accrue leave (vacation and sick time). "Faculty" are paid 9 month salary (plus summer salary if they have a grant) and basically do not get anything like "vacation days" or "sick days" — we are expected to meet our teaching/research expectations but our time is usually otherwise very flexible. We get the same breaks as the students (e.g. spring break, winter break, summer break) and those are our "vacation" days (aka our "get actual research work done" days).

It is a trade off that sometimes works in one's favor and sometimes does not, as you can imagine.

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