why did the U.S. drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima and not Nazi Germany?

Question

why did the U.S. drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima and not Nazi Germany?

Answer 1

Germany had already surrendered. Furthermore, we had already breached much of Germany and it's conquered territories. The whole purpose of dropping the bomb on Japan was it would have been to costly in terms of US lives to try to invade and breach Japan.

Answer 2

By the time the bomb was ready Germany had lost.



Dont they teach anything in schools these days?

Answer 3

Because they were arming millions of their citizens and believe it or not, the a bomb actually saved a ton of US lives.

Answer 4

The Nazis were already defeated at that point.

Answer 5

Germany had already surrendered before the bomb was ready for use, the Japanese refused to cease resistance even though they could not win the war. Truman then decided that, in order to end the war and not place millions more American service men into combat, Atomic weapons should be used. One was dropped then the Japanese were asked to surrender, they refused so the second, and last developed, bomb was used. Japan then agreed to unconditional surrender, thank God.

Answer 6

Please tell me you did not graduate high school yet. Germany was already crushed, Japan refused to give up, too many American lives would have been lost to invade Japan. Long story short, Japan started a fight and got their butt kicked, and hard.

Answer 7

1. The bomb wasn't ready by the time Germany surrendered.



2. The bomb was only used as a last resort based on the fighting style of the Japanese. It was a culture thing: the German culture was accepting of soldiers surrendering during war if they were outnumbered. The Japanese culture was based on never surrendering - you always fought to the death. And since we knew they would fight even more ferociously when defending their homeland than they already had on other islands, we knew we would have lost a lot more people (on both sides) than we ended up killing with the bombs.

Answer 8

the war was already over in Germany. It was dropped on Japan as a last resort to save American lives from a potentially deadly invasion of the main land.

Answer 9

Because the alternative to this "demonstration of power" against Japan would have been taking back each and every fortified island in the Pacific. This would have lead to huge casualities otherwise.

Also the Japanese people and their government were less willing to surrender.



At the same time Germany was already defeated.

Answer 10

the atomic bomb wasnt ready yet, and it wasnt germany who attacked us first, is was japan. thats why we dropped the atomic bomb of japan, then we started fighting germany.



Hope this helps a bit

Answer 11

We defeated Nazi Germany in May 1945. We didn't have a working atomic bomb until July 1945, which was the soonest we could produce one after working more than three years non-stop around the clock on the most expensive single weapons development program in WW2.



We didn't drop A-bombs on Japan as retaliation for the Pearl Harbor attack; that's anti-nuke and anti-American propaganda to make the USA appear petty and aggressive, and the use of the weapons appear unnecessary. If you bother to actually research the events leading up to the decision to drop the bombs, you'll find



1. The USA had fought across the entire Pacific Ocean for the preceding 3 1/2 years, taking little islands away from Japanese defenders who LITERALLY fought to the death, didn't surrender, deliberately aimed to cause as many American casualties as possible, and were so fanatical that they were using suicide weapons of terror (google "kamikaze" and "japanese special attack" for some interesting reading).



2. Fanatical Japanese resistance caused extremely heavy American casualties (google "tarawa battle," "iwo jima battle" and "okinawa battle" for just three examples). After 3 1/2 years of that the American people were becoming war-weary.



3. The Japanese said they would never surrender and would fight to the death, and there was every indication that they meant it. They weren't gonna surrender, and they weren't gonna stop fighting.



4. The only way to force Japan to quit fighting would be to invade the Japanese Home Islands. Based on the previous island battles aganst the Japanese 1942-1945, in April 1945 the US Joint Chiefs of Staff estimated that the invasion of Japan would result in approximately 1,700,000 American casualties. That's 1.7 MILLION Americans dead, wounded or missing. Estimates of Japanese casualties were between 5 MILLION and 10 MILLION.



5. The A-bombs were viewed as a way to convince the Japanese to surrender without a ground invasion that would certainly have killed MILLIONS of Americans and Japanese. So we dropped two A-bombs in August 1945, Japan finally realized that to continue fighting would result in its complete destruction, Japan surrendered, and MILLIONS of Americans AND Japanese who would have died in an invasion of Japan, did not die.



Using those two A-bombs ended a world war and SAVED MILLIONS of American and Japanese lives.



(Interesting fact: in 1945, as part of the preparations to invade Japan, the US government bought approximately 500,000 Purple Heart medals, which are awarded to military members who are wounded or killed in combat. Since the A-bombs made the invasion unnecessary, all the Purple Heart medals that have been awarded in every US military operation since 1945 have come from this supply.)



Don't they teach history in school any more???



zaza -- sweetie bubula, the BBC is also notoriously, virulently pro-liberal/leftist, anti-conservative, VERY anti-American and anti-George Bush. I wouldn't take the BBC's word that day is light and night is dark without confirming it with a reliable independent source.

Answer 12

People, do please read all of the question, which addresses some of the points you've answered as if they were not asked.



-"I know that Japan was allies with Germany, but if Germany was the real threat why did they drop an atomic bomb on Japan and not Germany?"

--In a sense, Germany was not the real threat at all. In Europe, the Allies were doing quite well against the Germans without weapons such as the atomic bomb. In the Pacific, however, the United States was facing Japan for the most part alone. By the end of the war, Germany had pretty much folded. American and West European troops were rolling in from the west and south, the Soviet Red Army was headed straight for Berlin from the east, and neither was being slowed much at all by German resistance. Japan, however, had a much better defensive position--it's a lot harder to take an island than it is to take a city or province. Add to that the fact that the Germans were capable of recognising when they'd lost, while the Japanese never gave in. Their culture has long history of honorable combat, part of which was a refusal to ever surrender--to give up was dishonorable, and more than that, could shame your entire family. That carries a lot of weight. To defeat Japan by ground invasions and conventional weapons would have meant soaking every inch of Japan's ground with blood, millions of lives lost on both sides, and ultimately we would not have been able to hold Japan anyway--they don't take kindly to invaders, and even less so to occupation forces.



-"pearl harbor was in 1941, so why wait 4 years to retaliate against Japan, why not do it right away? Was the atomic bomb not ready yet?"

--That's one reason why. We also didn't have the airplanes to drop it at the beginning of the war--the Doolittle raid shortly after Pearl Harbor required some very serious gambling because there were no bomber aircraft capable of reaching from the US to Japan. In that raid, they took Army Air Corps bombers, ditched most of the weight including any and all defensive weapons the planes had, and were barely able to take off from a Navy aircraft carrier. Even then, there was no way for the planes to make it back to the US; the aircrews, even without being shot down, had just enough fuel to make it to China where they'd stand a decent chance of finding a way back to the US.

--The other reason was that even then, before we understood just how bad the aftermath of an atomic bomb is, it was still understood that such weapons are an absolute last resort. Even if we'd had the bomb from the very beginning of the war, and even if we'd had a way of getting it to Japan, dropping an atomic bomb was not something to be done lightly. To make that decision required a new President (the decision to drop the bomb was made by Harry Truman, not Franklin Roosevelt who'd been in command through most of the war), and the realisation, finally, that there really was no other way. We'd taken most of the islands in the Pacific back by the time, and our experiences in those fights had finally convinced Truman of just what it would mean to try sending troops into Japan's mainland.

Answer 13

Why did the U.S. drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima and not Nazi Germany?



The Atomic Bomb wasn't ready yet and the war with Germany was over in May of 1945. The bomb was dropped on Japan on Aug 6,1945. Besides the couldn't drop an atomic bomb on Germany without effecting other European countries. Nuclear fallout would have spread all over countries bordered with Germany.

Answer 14

By the time the Atom Bomb was ready, The Eurpoean Axis powers had fallen. All that remained was the Axis empire in the Pacific, Japan.

The Americans had hoped to arrest the Japanese War Officers, but it became clear that these officers were going to commit suicide to avoid Justice.

America dropped the bombs to force Japan into surrnder & bring these Officers to justice.

Answer 15

Wow, a bunch of American nationalists here (the word NAZI comes from "nationalist", friends). Read this: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/10/the-real-reason-america-used-nuclear-weapons-against-japan-to-contain-russian-ambitions.html



And don't just take my or the article's word for it, look up each historian, politician, leader, etc and see if they really said what the article says they said.



Short: The reason was political and not necessary. Japanese diplomats were already in the US, ready to surrender when it happened. It would make no sense for the US to drop those bombs - unless to impress the Soviet Unions, whose relations with America had were already tedious and fragile.

Answer 16

Germany had already Surrendered, Japan would not give in, so two bombs were dropped to end a war that would have endured. Too bad They didn't take out Communist China and North Korea.

Answer 17

Sir, you must read your history books. But I'm glad that at least you didn't try to insinuate that we only dropped the bomb on Japan because they were not white. (Am I showing my paranoia when I"see" politics in even sincere questions?:-) I'm fairly sure the bomb was only available for use in 1945 and by then we had troops in the European theater. But to show you Germany did not escape terrible destruction you might want to read up on the bombing of Dresden and Hamburg.

Two cities that were fired bombed with horrible rates of death.

Good luck in your research.

Answer 18

More Japanese were killed in defending Okinawa than were killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Almost as many Americans were killed in the assault on Okinawa as Japanese killed in the Nagasaki atomic bombing. Had the military been successful in censoring the emperors surrender speech the military leaders may have gotten their way and fought to the last living warrior.

Answer 19

Germany had already surrendered, Japan would not surrender.



It was a horrible thing to do, and hopefully will NEVER happen again.



The US and Russia have been working seriously for many years to significantly reduce those terrible weapons.

Answer 20

Germany was already weakened and losing...Japan was the major threat.

Bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki was tragic beyond words, but ended up saving more lives than were lost.

Isn't it sad that humanity never learns a lesson?!

Answer 21

It is really unbelievable that this question should even be asks by anyone with more than a first grade education. Have the liberal invaded ALL level of our educational system. What the hell are history instructors teaching.

Answer 22

Maybe because Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the only two Christian cities in Japan, also they wanted most of the German Elite such as the SS, and they got them to America and Britain by operation code named 'Paperclip'.

Answer 23

Zaza - how did he "let" Japan attack us? Should we have preemptively begged them NOT to? The only other option would have been to be the aggressor, and that would have put us in the same spot.





Blind patriotism doesn't stop a bomb from falling.

Answer 24

BC those stupid japs killed thousands of military men and civilians they deserved it



so did Nazis but the bomb wasn't ready



so did the taliban and they STILL need an atomic bomb

Answer 25

We were developing the bomb for the Nazis, but defeated them before it was finished, but just in time for the Japs.

Answer 26

For the same reason people of Japanese background in the USA were put in concentration camps and their properties were confiscated, but the people of German descent were not touched.

Answer 27

The Japanese attacked us...



And its hard to save the victims in concentration camps if you nuke them...

Answer 28

FDR wanted a reason to enter WW2. He allowed the Japanese to attack us. The war fixed the economic mess he made and saved his ***. Why would he end it?



http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/pearl/www.geocities.com/Pentagon/6315/pearl.html



** Josh, watch the documentary.



I don't care what the website has on it. This was a BBC Documentary and they are much more honest than American TV.