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War Hero Thwarted Nazi Heavy Water Production
Freshly Exhumed writes "Its doubtful you know the name of Einar Skinnarland, but his sabotage over several years repeatedly thwarted Nazi plans to exploit Norway's heavy water production capabilities for their atomic bomb research plans. Skinnerland recently passed away in Canada and his daring exploits are recounted here. Details of some of the raids on the production facilities can be found on pafko and Stephen's Study Room. So many 'what if?'s and suspicions have swirled around the Nazi atomic bomb program that this man's efforts seem crystal clear for a change."
Richard Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb shows clearly and ironically that Hitler drove many Jewish physicists out of Germany in the '30s including Einstein. If he would have let them keep there posts he almost certainly would have had the bomb before the US.
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What matters is that eventually, the cursed thing was used. Go ahead and say it was to save x number of troops or y politcal plans, or anything else, but the bottom ine is that the first to discover the thing was going to use it, and this world has been quite the scary & dangerous place ever since.
SecondPageMedia - Wha
Evidently in france the thought police come after you for even thinking about nazis. What a shame really, they don't realize certain things should never be forgotten or it will happen again.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Maybe it matters a slight amount that the thing was used by a democratic nation to end a dreadful war launched against them rather than by the Nazis to achieve world domination in a war of their own making?
> but the bottom ine is that the first to discover the thing was going to use it, and this world has been quite the scary & dangerous place ever since.
I agree, and it's unfortunate that that genie can't be put back in the bottle.
However, the curmudgeon in me can't help pointing out that the world was already a scary & dangerous place. Only the tiniest fraction of the ~50,000,000 people who died during WWII died as a result of atomic bombs.
And we've darn well kept our hand in at the killing since then, too.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The japanese had pilots willing to pilot their planes into anything deemed a target. I don't think that the era 1945 to present holds a monopoly on the world being a scary and dangerous place.
ostiguy
French. Or we'd all be speaking German now.
He was Norwegian. As were the rest of the gang of Norwegian resistance fighters who sabotaged the heavy water plant at Rjukan.
These days more than 90% of Norwegians are against an attack on Iraq without UN security council backing. (Just as pretty much all the rest of the world except the USA.)
War is not something one should enter into lightly. All other alternatives should be tried before one resorts to war.
What I can *guarantee* you without any ambiguity is that the second bomb was definitely *not* necessary.
So the US dropping that bomb was 100% a power trip. And it achieved exactly what it had started out to do: begin the cold war. The US dropping that bomb completely undermined Russia's crucial role in the war... etc. etc. Yadi yada. Read up on some history...
Japan should have immediately surrended after the 1st bomb. They are solely responsible for the 2nd dromb being dropped. They were too busy trying to rally the citizenry to defend the homeland. Rather than protecting their people, they put them in jeopardy.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
So you are acting a-la US acts when Russian hacker gets tried in US soil for un-crime commited in Russia?
You must be really naive if you think Diplomatic talks degenerate because of bad manners at the tea table.
The cards are always down, it's all about how much one is willing to bend over and grab their ankles.
And the US lately, has become the master pimp of the world... expecting anyone and everyone in their sight to bend over and grab em.
Well fuck you! It's about time you realized it doesn't work that way... You have a current world crisis going on just because of said behaviour. Just sit and watch how the US will go in like the First of the Ninth Air Cav even after the UN says "no". The world isn't your playground...
Like I said before, it's one thing to think you're right in an argument, and something else completely to try and justify glaring events of 50 years past.
"As soon as the germans capitulated, Russia was on Japan's ass, and they were scared of it."
Bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit. If you knew your history, you'd know that, after being essentially blockaded and slowly starved by the US submarine force for the better part of a year, after being nuked twice, after the Soviets declared war on Japan and the sudden influx of bloodthirsty eastern-front veterans, Hideki Tojo's army was so "scared" that they staged a desparate coup to prevent the emperor from surrendering!
If the coup had been successful, it would have taken more than just two nuclear devices to convince them to surrender. Probably far more.
" What I can *guarantee* you without any ambiguity is that the second bomb was definitely *not* necessary."
I disagree, for the reasons stated above.
If you can find it, there's a flick out there named Hiroshima that examines the final months of the war in the Pacific from both the US and Japanese sides. It feels a lot like Tora! Tora! Tora! You'll see just how "scared" and "willing to surrender" the Japanese military was. It airs on Showtime from time to time.
"And it achieved exactly what it had started out to do: begin the cold war."
The Cold War was "starting" after WWII no matter what happened to Japan. It's roots come from well before 1945 (even before 1938). The only thing that the use of the atomic bombs on Japan did was make sure that the Soviets weren't able to carve up Japan like they did to Germany and (eventually) Korea.
"The US dropping that bomb completely undermined Russia's crucial role in the war... etc. etc"
What role? The Soviet Union had a non-aggression pact with Japan until August 1945. They didn't declare war on Japan until two days after the Hiroshima bombing, the day before Nagasaki. Japan had nothing to do with the Great Patriotic War.
"Read up on some history..."
Hypocrite.
> 90% of French and British citizens were against standing up to Hitler when he waltzed into the Sudetenland. Look where that got us. No one wants war, but the realists in the world realize that inaction is actually worse in some cases.
The problem is that no one has a crystal ball that lets us examine the future the way we can examine the past. I for one am not eager to have tens or hundreds of thousands of people killed on the basis dubious claims that we can detect when history is repeating itself. Far better to reason things out on the basis of what we see now than to base our decision on a weak analogy with the past.
And remember, there have been times when we intervened and things still didn't work out exactly swell, and times when we sat back and weren't afflicted with another world war as a result. Appeals to history make great rhetoric, but so far as I can tell they are actually worthless.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Man, the historical accuracy of your posts just keeps going downhill...
"Not a single millitary outpost with it's contingency."
Off the top of my head, I can't remember the signifigance of Hiroshima, but Nagasaki was on the list of potential targets because of its port facilities.
" And don't forget, Pearl harbour was a millitary outpost,"
On US territory.
"if Uncle Sam wants to put his soldiers around the globe, he will have to face the risks of doing so..."
Uncle Sam wouldn't have had to worry if Uncle Sam would have continued exports to Japan that were fueling Japan's nine-year-old (at the time) war of aggression and expansion on the Asian mainland.
"Pearl Harbour, if anything was a major strategic win for Japan, nothing more, nothing less."
They were a major strategic loss, a minor tactical victory at best. There were no carriers at anchor at Pearl, which were Yamamoto's primary target. He played his only trump card and gained next to nothing because of it.
"That last statement is, of course, if we all play nice, and really believe the US was *completely unaware* of the impending attack (which I believe is bullshit)"
You are right only to a degree, only in the tactical sense.
Even the US public was well aware of Japanese intentions towards the US. Those on Oahu and the Philippines that day were taken by surprise by the attacks themselves, not the ones attacking them. Operation Barbarossa was far more of a surprise than 12/7/41.
"Do you *really* think the US was unaware of the actions of Bin Laden?"
The US wasn't in the middle of diplomatic negotiations with either bin Laden or Mullah Omar's government in September 2001. Afghanistan was only butchering its own civillians, and had yet to even consider invading one of its neighbors. Tojo's Japan had already slaughtered many, many more civillians for a longer period of time by 1941 than bin Laden could possibly hope to achieve, even after 2001.
Your metaphor is strenuous at best.
Far fewer casualties for whom? Japan?
I'm sorry. When you're at war, your primary concern is to mitigate the losses of your own people.
If the U.S. had to invade Japan to force it to capitulate, that would have been the wrong decision because tens of thousands of Americans would have died.
No. Japan had ample time and warning to surrender. It chose not to only until it realized that it by not doing so, Japan would cease to exist.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
From the article:
Mr. Skinnarland emigrated to the United States shortly after the war, moving to Toronto in 1965 to take a job with a construction firm.
Because Toronto's a part of the United States. Err...
And honestly Bosnia shouldn't have been our problem. Neither should have Iraq or Somalia. That is what the UN is for. Unfortunately the UN has proven itself to be completely impotent. I am still sickened by the Srebrenica massacre where the UN set up a safe haven, put Dutch troops there, and just watched idly by while 7,000 Bosnian men were killed because they were the "wrong religion".
Except that UN does not have any armed forces of it's own. Nor will or should it have any in the forseeable future. The world isn't ready for a global government yet, unfortunatelly. Best we can realisticly have right now is UN mandating use of force by it's member states.
I also object the statement that "the UN has proven itself to be completely impotent." I too am sickened by Srebrenica. But to say that the UN or the Dutch "watched idly by" the massacre is simply slanderous. The lightly armed UN/Dutch troops guarding Srebrenica were outnumbered, outgunned and cut off from suport. Would the Serbs have attacked had the UN troops refused allow the Serbs in? I don't know, but I can't blame the commanders on the field too much for not gambling with the lives of their soldiers.
Would US commanders in that situation have done anything different? Probably not. Although it must be said that it is unlikely that an US commander would find himself in that situation, as the US does not send out lightly armed ground troops into danger. Military considerations have not always been sufficently present in UN planning, hopefully a better balance has now been found.
East Timor and Angola come to mind as succesful recent UN missions. Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia are now at peace. There were serious errors and failures in the Balkan missions but they were successes in that the wars are kept local and the war-mongers were checked.
For all his tough words Tony Blair may find it impossible to lead the UK into war without UN Security Council resolution mandating it. There is no threat of force against the UK by any objecting nation, and there needs to be none. The internal war opposition will gain strenght in the absense of the UN mandate and, I belive and hope, be strong enough to prevent the UK involvement. That would an impressive feat by the UN.
Would the US go to war alone, without the UK? Militarily they could do it. There is little that the rest of world can do if the US attacks Iraq, even if it wanted to. That doesn't mean that the UN is impotent, it would mean that the US strong or foolish enough to ignore the rest of the world.
--Flam
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers - Pablo Picasso