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Edward Teller: Father of the Hydrogen Bomb
pigrabbitbear writes "Edward Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb, had a thing for nuclear bombs. He wanted them bigger, smaller, faster, used in ways that no one had thought of before or since, and always more of them. He suffered no fools, and though he would be more vilified than any other American scientist in the 20th century, he always dismissed his critics as lacking in common sense or patriotism. Amid Cold War paranoia and fears of the Soviet nuclear program, the stakes were simply too high: for the free world, building the most powerful weapon in history was a matter of life and horrible death."
It served two purposes:
1. It demonstrated to the Soviets, who had massive forces amassed in Eastern and Central Europe that the West now possessed a weapon deliverable by high altitude bomber that could kill thousands.
2. It prevented the Soviets from seizing large parts of Japan by forcing a quick surrender to the Americans. An invasion of the main islands would most certainly have taken long enough that the Soviets could have moved to occupy Japan themselves. As it was, the Russians seized the northernmost parts of the Empire proper and hold them to this very day.
3. It stopped the war very quickly and forced an unconditional surrender. There was even less game-playing that the fragments of the Third Reich had tried to play.
As to the larger point you try to make, the Japanese leadership's actions even after the first H bomb were hardly singular in wanting to surrender.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It's not the same China. The government that we saved in WWII lost control of the mainland in 1949. The government that we saved is now commonly known as Taiwan, and in comparison to the PRC they are quite friendly.
First of all, even if he opposed it that doesn't mean you get to accuse him of being a communist.
But in reality the situation was more complicated than that. Oppenheimer (and others) also opposed Teller's design because they thought it wouldn't work. Teller took it personally and set out to destroy them. But those others were right and in the end the H-bomb that Teller help built was based on a design of Ulam's.
Actually the Japanese were trying desperately to negotiate a surrender even before the FIRST use of WMD against them.
The surrender effort didn't have credibility. Sure, some Japanese were trying desperately to negotiate a surrender, but other Japanese with more considerable authority were preparing for a brutal and bloody defense of the Japanese homeland at almost any cost. Those who would surrender not only had to negotiate with the US, they had to do so with their own people who advocated a war of attrition.
The atomic bombs tipped the scale decisively in favor of those who advocated surrender. The US demonstrated a weapon that could kill countless Japanese soldiers and civilians at little cost to the US. No war of attrition could succeed against that.
And one sees a difference in results. Instead of powerless officials making secret and irrelevant appeals through diplomatic back channels, the Emperor of Japan radioed a nationwide order to cease fighting and lay down their arms, and that order was obeyed. That's the difference that the use of those two atomic bombs wrought.
I was unaware the Japanese Imperial Navy indoctrinated their kamikaze pilots in Islam.
Nor the Viet Cong with their suicide bombers.
And that's just the conflicts I can think of off the top of my head involving the USA.