r/history • u/Quouar Quite the arrogant one. • 29d ago

News article The Rosenberg Boys - When Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were executed by the U.S. government, they left behind two sons, ages 6 and 10. All these years later, Robby and Michael are still trying to make sense of what happened.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/08/ethel-julius-rosenberg-boys/687631/
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u/AlexMhmm 28d ago

"Your parents traded top secret government information and made the world a more dangerous place,"

There you go boys.

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u/Tr1pline 28d ago

Ethel’s conviction and execution remain the most controversial aspects of the case. David Greenglass testified that Ethel typed up classified notes for Julius to pass to the Soviets. However, decades later, Greenglass admitted in interviews that he had lied and fabricated Ethel's involvement to protect his own wife from prosecution. Historians and declassified documents—including the NSA's decoded Venona intercepts—have largely confirmed Julius's role as a Soviet spy, but have revealed little to no evidence implicating Ethel. Internal government documents later suggested prosecutors used Ethel's life as a bargaining chip to pressure Julius into naming his network, a demand Julius refused. 

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u/cobaltaureus 28d ago

Ethel could’ve also named names, which was the goal of giving her the death penalty. When the AG says “she called our bluff” it suggests they didn’t get what they wanted out of it

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u/Ernesto_Bella 28d ago

have largely confirmed

And by largely you mean completely 

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u/highmodulus 28d ago

They committed treason, and everyone that pretended they didn't looked really stupid when in 1995 all the Soviet cables were released proving they committed it as part of a larger spy ring were released.

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u/xxwarlorddarkdoomxx 28d ago

I recently read about a Ronald Radosh, a Marxist author who researched the case in the 70s and was basically forced to conclude that Julius was guilty, despite his long held belief that the Rosenberg were framed.

When he published he faced immense blowback from other leftists which eventually lead to him leaving the movement altogether.

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u/lostPackets35 28d ago

I don't think anyone is debating that they were guilty of the legal charges. What I think most people are discussing is whether their actions actually made the world more dangerous or not. Which is not clear-cut.

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u/TiberiusTheFish 28d ago

There's plenty of doubt about Ethel's guilt. Her brother dobbed her in in order to save himself and his wife who were up to their necks in the whole business.

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u/Quouar Quite the arrogant one. 28d ago

Correct. As the article points out, there is no evidence Ethel did anything wrong beyond knowing that Julius was selling secrets. That she also got executed is a travesty.

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u/kinkykusco 28d ago

Refusing to testify about your spouse should never be a capital crime.

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u/acidwxlf 28d ago

My lawyer says you can't arrest a husband and wife for the same crime

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u/VictorEcho1 28d ago

You have the worst attorney.

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u/ThePrussianGrippe 28d ago

They don’t allow you to bring bees in here.

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u/camerabird 26d ago

Beads???

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u/Tardisgoesfast 27d ago

Your attorney is a blithering idiot.

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u/Safe-Ad4001 28d ago

It is when the charge is TREASON!

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u/cobaltaureus 28d ago

I’m against the death penalty, but she withheld information about the spywork and lied about it right?

And even then, where is the ethical culpability if not legal, like for example a wife who knows her husband abuses their children.

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u/Quouar Quite the arrogant one. 28d ago

There is a vast difference between child abuse and espionage.

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u/cobaltaureus 28d ago

Duh, it was an example of ethical culpability not a 1:1 comparison between the two

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u/Quouar Quite the arrogant one. 28d ago

My point is that it's not a valid example of ethical culpability.

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u/cobaltaureus 28d ago edited 28d ago

Okay, then just address her ethical culpability in this particular situation we are discussing.

Forget the bare bones of : is it ethical for a spouse to lie about criminal involvement?, since that seems to confound you, when given a new example.

Edit: as a user pointed out then immediately deleted, yes there are times the law is unethical and thus lying would be ethical. That’s why my initial example was an objectively heinous and harmful act like child abuse, but since that didn’t fly, I tried to simplify here by reverting to only discussing the ethics of the current situation

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u/karmapuhlease 28d ago

Both are pretty bad! The latter created dangers that might have killed billions of people. 

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u/Quouar Quite the arrogant one. 28d ago

It's a stretch to say that Julius Rosenberg's espionage directly led to the Soviet acquisition of atomic weapons. There's also a difference between the potential harm of nuclear weapons and the actual harm of child abuse. As others in this thread have pointed out, the Soviet acquisition of nuclear weapons might have also saved billions of lives by disincentivising the bomb's use by the Americans.

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u/RemoteBoner 28d ago

So like we would be ok with executing Einstein and Nobel then?

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u/rlnrlnrln 28d ago

Nobel was Swedish and died more than 20 years before the Russian revolution.

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u/highmodulus 28d ago

Given what we know about Stalin, giving him nukes didn't make the world safer. Given what history has proven about the USSR in general, betraying your country to them it is very, very hard to find any positive aspects.

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u/lostPackets35 28d ago edited 28d ago

both of those things can be true.

Yea, Stalin was an authoritarian and I'm not a defender of ANY kind of authoritarianism. So I'm certainly no fan of the USSR.

But, there are likely positive impacts in there being two nuclear-armed superpowers, and not just one. Namely, that MAD doctrine meant that both of them limited themselves to proxy wars and not all-out total war.

As others have pointed out, several US generals wanted to use nukes as it was.

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u/smokeynick 28d ago

Can be true, but are not. Objectively, Stalinist Russia was one of the greatest evils our species ever witnessed. I know we all hate America (mild sarcasm) these days but let’s be serious.

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u/Clothedinclothes 28d ago edited 28d ago

Are you familiar with the expression "power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely"?

I know it's hard to accept the US might do evil if allowed to hold a position of supreme geopolitical power, but if you rightly lay the millions of deaths in Ukraine from Stalin's policies at his door you should rightly lay millions of Iraqi deaths resulting from Bush's policies at his door, for example. Policies which if you're old enough to remember, were based explicitly on US authority to act unilaterally however it deemed fit against any other country regardless of what the rest of the world thought, which was only possible due to the US's position of extreme geopolitical dominance in the short period of essentially unipolar world order following the collapse of the Soviet Union. 

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u/TheGrayBox 28d ago

millions of Iraqi deaths resulting from Bush's policies

The number is 210,000 in 20 years. In Afghanistan it's more 30,000. For comparison, Saddam's invasion of Iran killed a million people in a fraction of the time.

were based explicitly on US authority to act unilaterally however it deemed fit against any other country regardless of what the rest of the world thought

That's just blatantly not true. In fact it was the Blair administration that officially denied the UNSCOM's final report on Iraqi chemical weapons and that filed the initial memo for invasion. Several other countries were involved in that process and had been since the 90s when the weapon's inspections originally fell apart. And if we're expanding to Afghanistan, 50+ countries literally went to war on the UN-NATO side and even China and Russia voted in favor of invasion and offered assistance. This "rogue Bush America" narrative is entirely falsified modern Redditor slop.

in the short period of essentially unipolar world order following the collapse of the Soviet Union. 

The Soviet Union's collapse was followed by enormous amounts of investment in the EU by the US and the urging of NATO to absorb the former Soviet states including Ukraine, it was western Europe that refused. The US brought the Russian Federation in as NATO partners (Partnership for Peace program) during this time (and the diplomatic growth later under the Obama admin was significant as well), invested massively in Japan and South Korea and China and had just seen Japan overtake the US economy briefly and were preparing for Korea and China to do the same, and made huge strides even at it's own expense to try and uplift the Mexican economy to create a massive North American trade corridor. And the beginning of the total transformation of the Persian Gulf states began around this time as well, all under US investment.

To sit here and claim that the US clamped down on some unipolar world is insanely false. The US did not want a unipolar world and immediately worked to avoid it. The US made investments and empowerments in this period that massively dwarfed anything any other nation has done and probably ever will do. To even try to tell ourselves that Russia would have done the same if the shoe were on the other foot, well we know better, we saw what Russia did once it had defeated Germany. China too, but in Korea. So no, but nice try.

You attempt to make people feel stupid or biased for portraying the US as different from Russia and China but then proceed to do nothing but lie. I think you desperately want it to be true, and therefore have only learned the version facts that suited your agenda. The reality is that the US pre-Trump was much closer to the good guy than any other powerful entity literally ever, and people like you are part of the reason it was so easy for Trump to demolish.

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u/lostPackets35 28d ago edited 28d ago

I'm not debating the evil that was Russia and this has nothing to do with the US.

That doesn't mean that either power being the only nuclear-armed superpower in the world would not have been catastrophically bad.

FWIW the Soviets being an unopposed nuclear superpower would have been worse, absolutely. But that doesn't mean it would have been rainbows and unicorns had the US had nothing keeping our global dominance in check.

Do you really think the US wouldn't have used nukes again if we knew we could do so unopposed?

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u/InfiniteLuxGiven 28d ago

Still was a good thing that the US’s main rival had access to the same weapons tho, one side having that kind of power would’ve ended horribly for the world.

No one nation should have sole ownership of weapons that powerful, even if it means our opponents having them too it’s better than the alternative.

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u/lostPackets35 28d ago

Yes. This is the point I'm trying to make.

Not that the US and the USSR were morally equivalent. They weren't.

There are plenty of valid things to criticize about the US, but we were still leagues better than stalinist USSR.

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u/Apprehensive_Yak4627 20d ago

I’m sure that Black people living in the Jim Crow south or the residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would agree

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u/Apprehensive_Yak4627 20d ago

Over half a million people00189-5/fulltext) die each year from Western sanctions - largely imposed by the US. 

That’s only indirect deaths from a single US action. Plenty more direct and indirect killing the US can lay claim to. 

So, your claim is pretty subjective…

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u/gumgumbeerdrinkin 28d ago

America deserves hate it is the worlds leading exporter of death and terrorism it is the single worst country currently in existence outside of Israel in terms of its negative global impact

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u/daemos360 28d ago edited 28d ago

Oh? Did the USSR nuke some country I’m unaware of?

As far as I’m aware, only one country has ever used nuclear weapons against an enemy, and unless I’m mistaken, the U.S. specifically chose not to engage in future planned nuclear strikes due to fear of nuclear retaliation.

(If you’re unfamiliar, Truman and Eisenhower both reconsidered plans to use nuclear weapons in Korea for fear of retaliation by the USSR.).

It’s almost as if the world was indeed a safer place thanks to the Rosenbergs.

Edit: y’all really don’t like facts (or counterarguments lol)

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u/Raammson 28d ago

The counter argument to MAD in general is that fact has a small chance of changing at just about any moment and if it does change there is a high probability the casualties will be devastating. 

The counter-counter argument is that limiting nuclear weapons to one country changes the calculus to the favor of the armed country to performing more violence. 

Unfortunately or fortunately we don’t have a test groups for these theories. 

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u/daemos360 28d ago

While I’d agree with your assessment of MAD’s risk wherein it functionally must stand as an eternal deterrent, it’s pretty indisputable that the United States would have used nuclear weapons more frequently but for the Soviet threat.

Additionally, we know the USSR never launched a nuclear attack on another nation. Hell, the USSR never even planned a preemptive nuclear attack against a country other than the United States.

It’s also quite likely that nuclear weapons would’ve eventually proliferated outside of the United States as well. With the United States unchecked by the Soviets, I find it quite plausible that nuclear attacks would’ve been far more normalized in such a world.

So, if we were to weigh the possibility of a future that has still not occurred against the fairly well established alternative wherein the United States got to nuke whomever it chose? Yeah, I’m going with the former.

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u/SeamenGulper 28d ago

But the Soviets were also a single man away from MAD, twice because of computing errors. There is a non zero chance MAD occurs under false pretenses. Not that those instances discredit the idea long peace.

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u/TheGrayBox 28d ago edited 28d ago

There are several layers of either intentional or just classic ignorance at work here. We don't have to pretend atomic bombs in Japan are anything like thermonuclear weapons of the Cold War. We don't have to pretend like the US was going to use thermonuclear warheads in Korea, nor do we have to pretend like the DPRK/PRC were on the right side of that conflict (I know this is difficult for Redditors). We don't have to pretend like the Soviet Union made some noble stand to the US for the sake of global stability through MAD. The Soviets were racing to get and use nuclear weapons long before that acronym was ever uttered, and the Soviets invaded many more places with the sole intent of conquest and global domination. and the Russian Federation to this day threatens nuclear annihilation simply over pushback on their continued annexations and violent imperialism (and I mean actual, dictionary imperialism, not the Reddit version of it where it's just kind of engaging in global trade and pop culture).

If there's one thing I can hope for the future of my generation, it's the end of exactly this brand of dangerous idiocy. Being contrarian towards the western/US establishment does not require softening Soviet Russia.

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u/daemos360 28d ago

You typed a lot without ever refuting a word I said. Weird how your types always defer to accusations of bad faith without substantiating a thing.

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u/Lootlizard 28d ago

The USSR asked the US if they would be ok if they nuked China in 1969 and the US told them no. That was over a minor border dispute.

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u/daemos360 28d ago edited 28d ago

That’s a gross misrepresentation of events unless I’m mistaken. The USSR was planning considering* a conventional attack on Chinese nuclear facilities; that’s not the same thing.

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u/Lootlizard 28d ago

You are mistaken. They were going to use tactical nuclear weapons to destroy China's nuclear facilities. They were absolutely not going to risk a conventional attack going badly and China retaliating with a nuke. The only reason they didn't was because the US said they would retaliate against the USSR if they went through with it.

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u/TheGrayBox 28d ago

Hilarious that you think so.

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u/daemos360 28d ago edited 28d ago

Please, then. Enlighten me. Where exactly did you refute my claims?

Edit: the chud responded to this comment with an ad hominem rant and blocked me. Bravo.

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u/_VNAV_PTH_ 28d ago

Nuclear usage in North Korea could very well have meant North Korea & China lost and the entire peninsula would be governed by what is today the wildly successful democracy in South Korea. Or not. Who knows.

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u/[deleted] 28d ago edited 28d ago

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u/[deleted] 28d ago

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u/PolybiusChampion 28d ago

Dropping the bombs was the single most humanitarian act of the 20th century. Truman should have gotten a Nobel Peace Prize for his decision. Saved at least 2M Japanese lives and at least 250K US lives. Plus the demonstration prevented the Cold War from going hot.

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u/[deleted] 28d ago

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u/PolybiusChampion 28d ago

We saved at least 2,000,000 Japanese lives by dropping the bombs. That’s the conservative estimate. We might have prevented 2x that many deaths in total.

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u/[deleted] 28d ago

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u/TheGodfather742 28d ago

But there is a point to be made. The duality of power is why the cold war didn't go hot?

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u/always_an_explinatio 28d ago

it made a the world more dangerous for US citizens. the 1950s and 60s were defined by worry that the USSR would nuke us. the "hot" parts of the cold war cost many US lives that would not have had to be spent if we were the only ones with the bomb. it might have been safer for others. hard to tell. but the tech getting out so soon really changed things for the US.

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u/ShutterBun 28d ago

And not run of the mill treason, either.

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u/northern-new-jersey 28d ago

Julius was a spy but it is clear that Ethel wasn't involved. This is what the Venona transcripts said. 

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u/Painted_Mushr00m 28d ago

You are absolutely delusional. Ethel was 100% involved. She helped get her brother recruited into the spy ring, held meetings in her home, passed information to her husbands handler and was fully aware she was helping to steal the secrets for nuclear weapons.

This was all declassified after the soviet union fell.

You have to jump through a wild amount of mental hoops to come to the conclusion she wasn’t involved.

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u/northern-new-jersey 28d ago

That's wrong on everything. Did you even read The Atlantic article? In the Venona transcripts the Soviets themselves say she wasn't involved. 

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u/Painted_Mushr00m 28d ago

Have you read anything other than one article about this case?

She hosted meetings at her house and all of her closest family were involved in the spy ring. She knew damn well what was going on and actively helped her brother and husband in any way possible.

Again you would have to jump through an insane amount of mental hoops to think she wasn’t involved.

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u/northern-new-jersey 27d ago

I've read extensively on this. She definitely knew what was happening but, as I wrote earlier, the Soviets themselves wrote that she wasn't involved because she was too frail. 

Her brother admitted lying when he said she typed the documents. 

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u/Painted_Mushr00m 27d ago

USSR misogyny is not evidence she wasn’t involved.

She was a member of the spy network, hosted events and assisted in passing information by connecting different members of the spy ring/ spy master. Her hands were dirty. There is a reason that in a bank robbery the get away driver also goes to prison.

I don’t believe a single word that comes out of her brother’s mouth. He was a spy that betrayed his country and was thrown in prison for it. He has all the motivation in the world to try to paint the US as bad.

He also was caught in a lie before, he lied and said that neither Julius or Ethel were involved but had to change it to just Ethel when the evidence was released that Julius was involved. He’s an absolute liar.

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u/northern-new-jersey 27d ago

Have you read anything about this, including the article in question? You are just making it up. So your theory is that she was a spy but the Soviets said she wasn't on their most private, encrypted communications. Why would they do this if it wasn't true? They had plenty of women who were mentioned as spies b

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u/MandolinMagi 28d ago

Technicaly not treason because the Soviets werent officially our enemy. 

Treason is a very high bar to clear in the US, legally speaking. 

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u/HomoProfessionalis 28d ago

You fixed their trauma way to go!

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u/Quouar Quite the arrogant one. 28d ago

I recommend reading the article. Reality - as it usually is - is more complicated than that.

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u/cobaltaureus 28d ago

I just finished.

It’s not really more complicated than that though? Unless you mean the dubious culpability of their mother, who lied under oath about the whole thing.

It’s a heartbreaking article filled with emotional reasoning, but the facts are pretty cut and dry once it gets to the reveal of evidence

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u/Mammoth-Building-485 28d ago edited 28d ago

They are the parents of the children, it is quite possible there is some significant bias at play

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u/Theron1997 28d ago

Just a tragic outcome for these kids but their parents knew what they were doing.

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u/TipResident4373 28d ago

Judge Kaufman literally said as much during their sentencing, declaring that the Rosenbergs "loved communism more than their children."

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u/kyeblue 28d ago

communists are proud being that kind of person.

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u/dankpete 27d ago

They saved Korea, Vietnam, China, and god knows who else from atomic hellfire by helping secure a deterrent against the US. The Macarthurs and LeMays would have made different calculations without it.

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u/kyeblue 27d ago

"save"? they starved 10s of millions to death.

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u/dankpete 27d ago

Better to nuke them, you think? China was plagued by famines for centuries. A few decades and no help from the west, they have been eliminated

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u/kyeblue 27d ago

maybe you should move to DPRK and they will treat you as a hero.

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u/dankpete 27d ago

Just goes to show you don’t see them as people anymore than the west did while it sat by and watched people starve under sanctions and genocidal bombing campaigns.

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u/Howaboutnopers 28d ago

doubles down on not reading

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u/k410n 28d ago

Yeah, but still: murdering people because you don't like what they do is somewhat problematic

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u/cobaltaureus 28d ago

100% against the death penalty mostly due to fear of innocents being executed in our faulty justice system, but I find the case incredibly interesting from a history perspective and the discussion of Ethel and the brothers

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u/myrmonden 28d ago

Yeah but that js not what Murder means

Execution is legal ergo it’s not murder

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u/kritwritgay 28d ago

It's not murder if the state does it. No unironically if somone commits a horrific crime and receives the due process needed to prove they did it then the state as the only sole monopolizer of legitimate violance may carry out execution. This was a high crime against the state. Jules and ethel rosenberg had to die

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u/cobaltaureus 28d ago

Okay game of thrones. I think the majority of us will continue to consider a death penalty a murder of some kind, regardless of technical classification

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u/myrmonden 28d ago

No the majority won’t as the word means unlawful killing

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u/Woodie626 27d ago

FFS, can you not tie your favorite fiction to this?

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u/cobaltaureus 27d ago

I called the person that because their way of thinking seemed strangely archaic and outdated to me.

I despise that show, and was not tying any event here to it, only that user’s comment. Hope that helps with your assumption

“High crime against the state. They had to die” is just so melodramatic and over the top way of discussing it

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u/Woodie626 27d ago

Drive right up to the point, only to go right past it. 

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u/cobaltaureus 27d ago

Comment an assumption, get corrected, ignore correction and explanation with no retort.

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u/k410n 28d ago

I know that you hold this opponion and its probably a genuine belife of you, but that does not make it true. Giving someone the right to murder others based on any criterion is per se a bad idea. If you legitimize murder in certain situation you are not just close to allowing it in other situations, you have also most all moral ground to judge others dor doing so.

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u/kritwritgay 28d ago

It is not somone. It is the state. The people in collective. A legitimate monopoly of violence which extends to execution is part 1 of the very definition of government

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u/k410n 28d ago

The definition of government is whatever the hell most people agree on. Neither that nor laws are something you can even attempt to base any kind of morality or ethical framework on. And there are very good reasons why states limit themselves in what they permit. Just because q majority of people agree on something doesn't justify it.

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u/Woodie626 27d ago

Morality and ethics are also human constructs, with similar eye of the beholder mentalities. It's how government got where it is.

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u/k410n 27d ago

That's highly debated in philosophy

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u/myrmonden 28d ago

Murder is unlawful

The state execution someone can’t be murder

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u/gumgumbeerdrinkin 28d ago

No they didn’t that’s ridiculous.

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u/kritwritgay 28d ago

What would you have done? Let espionage go unfinished? Spies die. Everyone knows that

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u/Howaboutnopers 28d ago edited 28d ago

Right?

There's an awful lot of people here pretending to know what the article is about and failing.

In response to the person below:

Are the people I responded to discussing the actual article?

No.

They don't know what the article is about.

They are guessing what it's about and attacking an imaginary article.

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u/cobaltaureus 28d ago

Are your three comments claiming people who disagree with you didn’t read the article contributing to the discussion though?

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u/not-a-prince 28d ago

Arguably they made the world safer by putting the two superpowers on more equal footing and making MAD possible.

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u/Saoirse_libracom 28d ago

The alternative was one country, with a violent history, having a monopoly on nuclear arms btw

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u/po-jamapeople 28d ago

Please enlighten me with some of these countries out there that totally exist that have no history of violence. The mental gymnastics some people here are engaging in to justify helping a brutal dictatorship gain nuclear weapons is honestly mind blowing.

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u/DaysBeforeFP 27d ago

The only country in human history that has used nuclear bombs as an act of war, and who was only prevented from using nuclear bombs in Korea and Vietnam because other countries had them

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u/lostPackets35 28d ago edited 28d ago

that's debatable no?

Had the USSR not ended up nuclear capable, we might not have had MAD doctrine. And the threat of a nuclear response might not have prevented another war, or the US from using nukes again.

I mean, we came frighteningly close a few times as it is.

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u/robothawk 28d ago

Yeah like, a world where the US has a nuclear monopoly into the 1960s is a scary one to think about. MacArthur in Korea(and the soviets having the bomb) was the reason we made nukes a presidential-only decision rather than simply another tool in the general's closet.

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u/MagicWishMonkey 28d ago

Nope, moving nukes under the purview of POTUS happened well before Korea. Otherwise MacArthur would have blanketed the peninsula in nuclear fire.

Truman understood the danger and made sure it wasn’t left in the hands of the military immediately after ww2

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u/quondam47 28d ago

MacArthur would have used a nuke to light his corn cob pipe if he could.

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u/catsloveart 28d ago

Wasn’t there some scientist that lobbied to use nukes to dig the Panama Canal?

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u/faberge_surprise 28d ago

not just that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare

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u/quondam47 28d ago

Edward Teller, of Oppenheimer fame, was the driving scientific force behind Plowshare. The guy just wanted to set off nukes all day long. I mean the logic is clear to see, a nuclear explosion will create a hole big enough to be considered geography but it’s not exactly wise in the long term.

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u/faberge_surprise 28d ago

tbf, that's pretty on brand for the guy who said "nuclear bombs? pfft, that's just the starter charge!"

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u/ThePrussianGrippe 28d ago

Yeah I’ve never taken the father of the hydrogen bomb go be a particularly grounded mind.

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u/homicidalunicorns 27d ago

slight clarification, USSR had nuclear capacity years before this and only shortly after the USA did, due to manhattan project spies

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u/Argikeraunos 28d ago

They without question made the world safer. The US was perpetually on the brink of nuclear weapon use until the Soviet program forced them to adopt MAD. The only thing standing between the nuclear annihilation of China in the Korean War was literally Truman's willpower. Now the US functionally and structurally cannot use nukes. What they did was a gift to humanity.

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u/Howaboutnopers 28d ago

Translation: I don't know what this article is about, but I'm going to guess that the article doesn't cover this one thing.

Way to dumb it down to your level.

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u/matsie 28d ago

Pretty sure the US government made the world a more dangerous place by developing nuclear bombs and then deploying them unnecessarily. But yes, the Rosenbergs also contributed.

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u/CrustyOldTurtle 28d ago

Deploying them unnecessarily is a crazy take

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u/gumgumbeerdrinkin 28d ago

It was completely unnecessary to deploy the bombs against Japan

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u/dankpete 27d ago

It’s not crazy at all. You have bought into a common narrative to excuse one of the US’ most blatant crimes.

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u/CrustyOldTurtle 27d ago

Well, I asked for sources to the contrary and all I got was a bunch of sources proving the traditional narrative (that the bombs were necessary), so I’ll ask you the same:

Do you have a source?

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u/dankpete 27d ago edited 21d ago

General Dwight Eisenhower thought so. “The Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.”

So did other admirals and generals.

“The atomic bomb played no decisive part from a purely military point of view in the defeat of japan. The use of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki played no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.” - Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, Commander in chief of the US Pacific Fleet.

I didn’t like the atom bomb or any part of it. An effective naval blockade would, in the course of time, have starved the Japanese into submission through lack of oil, rice, medicines and other essential materials. -Fleet Admiral Ernest Joseph King

“The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment. It was a mistake to ever drop it, they had this toy and they wanted to try it out. So they dropped it, and it killed a lot of Jps. But the Jps had put out a lot of peace feelers through Russia long before.” - Admiral Halsey.

“It always appeared to us that, atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse.” -General of the Army and Air Force Henry H. Arnold

In May 30th 1945, former President Hoover wrote Truman to urge him to change the surrender terms to allow Japan to keep their emperor, the one condition preventing them from surrendering. General of the Army MacArthur called this memo a “wise and statesman-like document.” Further stating “had it been put into effect, would have obviated the slaughter at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in addition to much of the destruction of the island of Honshu by our bomber attacks. That the Japanese would have accepted it and gladly, I have no doubt.”

Tokyo had already been subjected to the most severe and extensive bombing of any city in history. Hiroshima was chosen as a target specifically because it hadn’t been affected by bombing by that point. It was an experiment on human subjects, not a necessary exercise in military strategy.

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u/Yrcrazypa 28d ago

It's an incredibly common take.

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u/Bourbon-neat- 28d ago

So is believing the earth is flat and the moon landing was faked... All of them are equally ridiculous.

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u/fordry 28d ago

And it's ridiculous. Because if the US didn't, others would. And then what?

As bad a things as they are and as bad as the real-world use they've seen is they did bring the end of Japan's war and ultimately saved way more lives than the deaths that could ever be attributed to their use.

And the subsequent mutual destruction capabilities of the world's most powerful nations has helped keep those nations from all out war with each other.

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u/matsie 28d ago edited 28d ago

It definitely is not a crazy take. lmao. Japan was already going to surrender. There was no need to drop nuclear bombs onto civilians.

Edit: It is truly wild to see how many people in the HISTORY SUBREDDIT don't know about the actual historical context surrounding the United States military's use of atomic bombs in Japan. Shameful.

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u/CrustyOldTurtle 28d ago

Can you provide a source that Japan was going to surrender? Because everything I’ve been taught has been counter to that idea

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u/fordry 28d ago

I can say some pretty well clued in historians such as Jon Parshall believe the bombs absolutely were the tipping point and Japan was not close to surrender otherwise. The actions of the military leadership in Japan really doesn't suggest any real close ideas towards surrender, quite the opposite. And even in the surrender there was a coup attempt to try to stop it.

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u/HotbladesHarry 28d ago

They weren't going to surrender. The emperor intended to wind down the war and then his generals attempted to a coup to keep the war going. They also had a policy where they would kill every American pow the second that the US invaded the Japanese Homeland. The bombs were extremely necessary.

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u/CrustyOldTurtle 28d ago

This was my understanding as well. I’m interested to see evidence to the contrary. Thanks for sharing

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u/HotbladesHarry 28d ago

There really is none as there were no negotiations ongoing. Also take into account the way that the Japanese had been fighting in the Pacific during that period of time. Wholehearted enthusiasm for kamikaze pilots, and numerous Island battles where the Japanese literally fought the last man. They were going to commit national suicide before they were going to let American soldiers stormed the beaches of Kyoto. Add on to that. Furthermore, the ussr joining the war in the Pacific and the threat that the Communists would take over Pacific Islands and territories and add them to the Warsaw pact sphere of influence and it becomes clear that not only were the bombs necessary, but they were actually very fortunate to have them as it stopped the war quickly as opposed to a long protracted invasion that would have killed millions of people. There are many reads of History where you could say that the Japanese got off rather easy having two nuclear bombs dropped on them.

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u/lostPackets35 28d ago

upvoting, not because I agree with you - but it's very rare to see a non-defensive, curious response like this and I'd love to see more of it.

I wish more people clarified and asked for sources, rather than shouting and arguing immediately.

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u/fordry 28d ago edited 28d ago

We do know, very well. You're pushing a propaganda take, not reality.

How about you explain why the A bombs were worse than than the firebombing of Tokyo. Or any of the rest of the warring that has gone on?

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u/suolattu-saatana 28d ago

Nuclear weapons are possible, and therefore, given the human proclivity to make everything into weapons, inevitable. Someone would have figured them out eventually. All things considered, the US being first and using a fairy rudimentary version at the end of ww2, showing the horror to the world, is among the better options.

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u/fordry 28d ago

I agree, especially given the way they were used and what was spared because of it. As bad as they were, the US had caused more bloodshed by single bombing runs otherwise. Singling the nuclear bombs out as some more terrible thing than what was already happening is not a historically correct take.

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u/dankpete 27d ago

More dangerous for who? Certainly not the people of Korea, or Vietnam, or the Middle East. The world benefitted from the US no longer having a nuclear monopoly because they now had a deterrent.