What was worse ?? The Nazis killing the Jews or the American bombing of hiroshima and nagasakhi??

Answer 1

believe it or not,(probably you will not),the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved lives. an invasion of the Japanese home islands would have cost millions of Japanese civilians their lives and the Americans estimated they could loose up to a million soldiers. dropping the bombs produced such awe that the Japanese surrendered without any further struggle. it also had the effect of producing a nation so horrified at the thought of armed conflict that they are unlikely to ever go to war again as pacifism has become so ingrained in the culture. the holocaust was just cold blooded murder, not just of Jews but of gypsies, Jehovah's witnesses, gays, the disabled, political opponents, in fact anyone who annoyed the Nazis. these people were just locked away and brutalised and killed on a whim or by an industrial process. if the Americans were such brutes they would have used their overwhelming nuclear power every time they wanted to deal with a problem. i know the Nazis would have and many of Americas present opponents would without a second thought. although i disagree with many of Americas policies, i know they are not monsters and the government and military are restrained by the integral decency of the American people.

Answer 2

It's true we lost the moral high ground after use of the nukes on Japan, but looking at what Truman faced in 1945, i probably would've done the same thing. To compare the moral depravity of state sponsored genocide where the death ovens at Aushwitz/Birkenau were topping out at 2,600 per day or 80,000 killed per month and the aerial bombardment of civilians is looking at different scales.

The "Final Solution" was the policy of only one country during the last century, and it wasn't the U.S. My beef is with the multi-national business cartels that allowed it to happen, the top being IG Farben (now BASF, Bayer, among others).

Not only did they finance Adolf, they supplied him with Zyclon B for use in the death camps. The American side of the company was not tried at Nuremburg, although they were just as culpable, go figure.

The fire bombing of Dresden by the 8th Air Force and RAF Bomber Command, caused the destruction of 15 square kms including 14,000 homes, 72 schools, 22 hospitals, 18 churches, etc. with a conservative estimate of around 30,000 civilians killed. At the time, the Germans used it as propaganda to advocate against following the Geneva conventions and to attack people's perception of the Allies claim to absolute moral superiority. The military claimed the railroad center was a military target, which it was, altho it was up and running a week later. Feb 1945 was only 3 months away from May 1945 (end of the Euopean war), the outcome of the war was not in doubt, so why bomb a 'cultural' medieval city of 600,000?

The firebombing of Dresden and nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were war crimes, genocide should also include civilian victims of aerial bombardment. Even after saying this, i still don't think the Allies were close to the moral depravity of the Nazis and their wholesale holocaust of the Euopean Jews.

The bombing of civilians is a great tragedy, none can deny. It is not so much this or the other means of making war that is immoral or inhumane. What is immoral is war itself. Once full-scale war has broken out it can never be humanized or civilized, and if one side attempted to do so it would be most likely to be defeated. That to me is the lesson of Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Answer 3

I have read all replies, all sound very impressive except that none of you pointed out the main difference:

The Japanese were the ENEMIES of the Americans, and enemies in war are killed. The "justification" of throwing the bomb by the the Americans was to stop the war, Japan would have never surrendered if the Americans would not have thrown the bomb. I do not approve of this terrible deed but it was WAR.

The Jews were never enemies of Hitler, on the contrary, in Germany they were perfect citizens, they were assimilated, contributed to German culture in so many way, to medicine to
science. The Jews were slaughtered for being Jews not for any other reason. The war was not between the Jews who lived in Europe and Hitler, this you forgot, ALL OF YOU!.

This is the main difference, that is why I think the Holocaust the killing of 6 million innocent people is much worse than killing the enemy.

Answer 4

One cannot be compared to the other. There was never any justification for the dropping of bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki but they really didn't know what it would do. That doesn't make it excusable. The killing off of hundreds of thousands of people is never to be written off without apologies and compensation. If Americans do not like foreign opinions on foreign policy, they might want to think about who is really affected by it, which is why people criticize it so harshly.

The Holocaust is the worst example of a state-instituted massacre and it was premeditated. There is little justice for the Jews, gypsies, Eastern European Slavs and other victims, but at least it has been acknowledged. However, due to the pervasiveness of anti-Semitism in society and politics, people try to deny it.

The Armenian Massacres are hardly acknowledged and the Turkish government vehemently denies that the Ottoman Empire's new revolutionary government, the Young Turks, did such things. Both did, actually.

About anti-Semitism: because if it affected another group besides mainly Jews, they would not deny it. It is the basis of their denial of Israel's right to exist and denunciation of Zionism. That their denial of Israel and the Holocaust is actually a sign of support for the militant actions of the Palestinians and the Arab leadership against Israel would never cross their minds, but it is a vote for the other direction.

Answer 5

ronnie s ....when the Nazis murdered the Jews it was with the blessings of the higher echelons of the party. The Wansee Conference showed quite clearly that this action of the German Nazi Party was a planned, and premeditated act of cruelty. For crying out loud, the participants of that infamous meeting were arguing over cattle cars for military, or the Jewish slaves. Unfortunately the military lost the argument.
The bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki were just as horrific in action, but not as the Nazi's premeditated slaughter!
All three were acts of evil, I don't think that there is a lesser of the evils, but there was a lot of gut wrenching on the Americans part. The only wrenching of the Nazi's was " who was going to get the cattle cars first"? The cattle cars were wrenched out of the militarist hands.

Answer 6

Good question. They are both wrong, however one could argue justification for the bombings, and not for the slaughter of the Jews. Nazis made a very clear, outlined attempt to exterminate an entire population. Overtaking nation after nation and systematically annihilating men women and children based on race. The goal was to wipe all Jews from the face of Europe, if not the earth. The Americans made a strategic move in order to bring about the end of a global war. The fighting in WW2 had engulfed the entire globe. It truly was a WORLD war. The fighting had ended in most nations, and the world was attempting to establish lasting peace agreements. Japan was the hold out they wanted to continue the fight. There was no ability to negotiate with them, therefore we dropped a bomb. They continued so we dropped one more, and Japan agreed to a peace. America's intent was NEVER to destroy the entire Japanese race and culture.
So what it boils down to, if you take race religion and nations out of it, is it worse to sever an arm in an attempt to stop a disease, or to sever a head in order to kill a body.
The slaughter of the Jews could have been avoided. I don't think that something as drastic as the atomic bomb could have been avoided in order to put the world on a path of peace.

Well put Theodosius.

Answer 7

Killing of the Jews, for several reasons.

1) Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not a 6+ year long event
2) 6 million people did not die at Hiroshima and Nagasaki
3) The deaths at Hiroshima & Nagasaki were instant for those close to the blast. So at least many of them never saw it coming.
4) The Hollocaust, not meaning to sound detracted from their atrocities, were more self-destructive. You see Hitler wasted manpower for concentration camp guards, expenses, etc when they could have been on the front. Also the Jews could have been used for more war-effort things instead of killed. So really it did more harm to Hitler than good.
5) The atomic blasts at least saved more people in the long-term. Had we invaded, millions of people would have been killed since the Japanese fought to the last man, considering that honorable. But when they realized we could kill thousands without setting a foot in the mainland, they realized there was no honor in just getting obliterated and gave up. Although it is unfortunate that such action had to be taken, in the long-term many lives were spared.

Answer 8

The Nazis wanted to 'cleanse' the world by commiting genocide on an entire race of peoples, plus annihilate a further number which they considered 'undesirables'.
This was not the American's intentions when they nuked the two Japanese cities, but rather a very drastic way to put an end to WW2 (which worked....)
Ethically, there is no 'worse' so to speak, as both involve tragic loss of human life and therefore one can't be 'better' than the other. Maybe 'lesser of the two evils' ?
One thing's for sure, both have taught the human race immense lessons which we must at all costs assure they never happen again!

Answer 9

Why is it that Yahoo features at least a dozen questions each day on the subject of the holocaust or related issues?
The German elimination of 6 million Jews is by no means the most horrific example of ethnic cleansing in the 20th century.
The elimination of 10 million native Congolese under the Belgian King Leopold in the 1920s far surpassed Hitler but nobody seems as infatuated about that.

Answer 10

The American bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The Nazis just killed them,
While the Americans infected them with radiation which passes on to their children, and troubles the survivors their whole life