DBWI: was the nuking of Berlin Ethical?

I was reading a recent history book The Rise and fall of the Third Reich by former president Donald Rumsfeld which supported the nuclear destruction of Berlin. He said that it was necessary to end the Second World War as an invasion of france would lead to untold casualties.

Do you agree with him?
 
Well, admittedly yes it did end the Second World War in Europe, but the War in the Pacific of course dragged on and I don't want to go into the details of how many people died in that war. But I still wonder whether a different minor city could've been bombed, it would've shown the Germans how powerful the Allies weapons were and they may've still sued for peace. And of course, unluckily for the Soviets, the wind was traveling East and so much of the radiation was carried East, meaning that thousands died from the fallout.
 
occ: You avoided D-Day and the whole western front?! Christ that's a lot of lives! Stalin would be pissed.:)

The invasion wouldn't have been nearly as bad as they claim! The Nazis were bled white by the Russians and the bombing.

Hell, if what the French say is correct the Nazi reigme could barely hold on to the territories as it was.

They only did it so as to scare the Russians so they could insist on their version of postwar Germany.

And if the Germans were Western European, instead of being "the hun" the US would never have bombed them!:mad:
 
but werent the russians too weak to continue? I thought they were pushed beyond Moscow and the Volga. It would have taken too long for them to have defeated Germany on their own and also we wouldnt know the success chances of a coastal invasion due to the Maus tank being in mass production.

I would agree with Rumsfeld. The Nuke had to be used. If only to save the countless lives in the western front and prevent the Holocaust from being complete.
 
Given the evils of the Nazi regime, an emphatic "Yes." I'm just glad the first target wasn't a non-white non-Christian culture like Japan, or otherwise we'd probably have people accuse the dropping of the Bomb as being racist.
 
all in all, i have to say that Rise and Fall of the Third Reich will probably be up there with Ian Kershaw's excellent Hitler series and Montefiore's Stalin: the Court of the Red Tsar.

I can't wait for Turtledove's biography of Mao. :cool:
 
Sure, nuking Berlin was a good idea and kept it out of communist clutches, but let's face it, not nuking Japan was a really bad idea. Russia demanded to have a sphere of influence in Hokkaido and Tohoku as reparations for all the fallout. Considering how much of the rice crop they provided, real, capitalist Japan was hit even harder than it had to be. I hear they're finally getting some proper industrialization though, and Japan could become pretty powerful.

OOC: I'm assuming that in light of a Soviet Hokkaido/Tohoku, the Japanese were allowed to keep their army so as to be able to fight back, just in case.
 
Well, i have to say, since it is from a former US president who oversaw the collapse of Communism in the Tokyo wall during 1975, i can conclude that it is reliable.

But let us talk of the consequences of the berlin bombing.

Was all of non-Soviet europe worth the price of sacrificing South East Asia, with the Korean missile crisis?

Was it not a shame that Hitler did not answer for the millions he killed?

Was the Mars Expedition in 1980 worth the price of radiation fallout in Britain?

Would you say that had we not dropped the bomb, then the world would be worse?
 
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