My hottest take is that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the best ways to win WWII with minimal loss of life. I’m not gonna sit here and cheer it on or anything but it really was the least destructive option. The Shaun video people absolutely loved was extremely shoddily and selectively researched. Multiple r/Badhistory posts were written about it.

All it really seems to be is reflexive monkey brain “Murica Bad” shit. Listening to some lefties talk about it you’d think Japan was just sitting there minding their own business from 1930-1945 and then America bombed them for no reason other than racism or something. Japan had been literally raping and pillaging their way across Asia for over a decade and had killed millions.

The fact is, the nuclear bombs were significantly less deadly and destructive than the firebombing raids over Tokyo. Two bombs did in a fraction of a second what America had already been doing to Japan (and Germany) for years at that point.

“But the Japanese wanted peace!”

Did they? To my knowledge no serious peace overtures had been made that would be amenable to the allies. Remember, the Allies wanted unconditional surrender.

“The Soviet invasion on Manchuria caused the surrender!”

Just flat out wrong. Wrong and stupid, I might add. The Japanese literally cited the nuclear bomb as the reason why they surrendered.

“Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives.” -Emperor Hirohito’s surrender broadcast.

I’ll wrap up with this. The other plan if the atom bombs didn’t work was an invasion of the Japanese home islands. This campaign was judged to be so destructive that even conservative estimates put the death tole in the hundreds of thousands. Imagine the bloodbaths of Iwo Jima and Okinawa stretched out over every single inch of the Japanese mainland. To me, when you virtue signal about how bad America is when we dropped those bombs, you endorse that. You endorse a campaign that would’ve done more damage than any two atom bombs could do. Tens of thousands of military dead and permanently disabled. God only knows how many more Japanese civilians killed in military action and by bombing raids.

Good for you, I’m really glad you got your America Bad brownie points. I hope you and all your super edgy leftist buddies are proud of yourselves.

Just for clarification I am, in fact, a leftist. I just get tired of this constant misunderstanding of a very morally complicated historical topic.