The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 75 Years Ago

August 6 marks 75 years since the United States unleashed the world’s first atomic bomb attack on the city of Hiroshima, followed three days later by the second and last on Nagasaki, vaporizing lives, buildings and Japan’s capacity for war. Germany surrendered to Allied forces in May 1945, but World War Two continued in Asia as the Allies fought imperial Japan. The United States believed that dropping a nuclear bomb – after Tokyo rejected an earlier ultimatum for peace – would force a quick surrender without risking US casualties on the ground. On 6 August, the US dropped the first bomb – codenamed Little Boy – on Hiroshima. The attack was the first time a nuclear weapon was used during a war. At least 70,000 people are believed to have been killed immediately in the massive blast which flattened the city. Tens of thousands more died of injuries caused by radiation poisoning in the following days, weeks and months. 

When no immediate surrender came from the Japanese, another bomb, dubbed “Fat Man”, was dropped three days later about 420 kilometres (261 miles) to the south over Nagasaki. The recorded death tolls are estimates, but it is thought that about 140,000 of Hiroshima’s 350,000 population were killed, and that at least 74,000 people died in Nagasaki. They are the only two nuclear bombs ever to have been deployed outside testing. The dual bombings brought about an abrupt end to the war in Asia, with Japan surrendering to the Allies on 14 August 1945. But some critics have said that Japan had already been on the brink of surrender and that the bombs killed a disproportionate number of civilians. Japan’s wartime experience has led to a strong pacifist movement in the country. At the annual Hiroshima anniversary, the government usually reconfirms its commitment to a nuclear-free world. After the war, Hiroshima tried to reinvent itself as a City of Peace and continues to promote nuclear disarmament around the world.

Seventy-five years after the Enola Gay opened its bomb bay doors, 31,000ft above Hiroshima, views on what happened that day are still deeply polarised. Those on the ground who lived to tell the tale see themselves, understandably, as victims of an appalling crime. Sitting and talking with any “hibakusha” (survivor) is a deeply moving experience. The horrors they witnessed are almost unimaginable. Hordes of zombie like people, their skin melted and hanging in ribbons from their arms and faces; mournful cries from the thousands trapped in the tangle of collapsed and burning buildings; the smell of burned flesh. Later came the black rain and the agonising deaths from a strange new killer – radiation sickness.

 But any visitor to the Hiroshima Peace Museum might justifiably ask, where is the context? After all, the atom bombs didn’t come out of nowhere. You’ll find scant mention of the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, let alone the horrors of the Nanjing Massacre, or the slaughter at Peleliu, Manila, Iwo Jima and Okinawa. And so, to many Japanese, Hiroshima and Nagasaki stand oddly alone, detached from the rest of history, symbols of the unique victimhood of Japan, the only country ever to experience a nuclear attack. The lack of context can feel equally egregious on the other side. When I last visited Hiroshima, I asked a group of visiting American college students what they had learned in school about the attack. One young man summed it up like this: “America embarked on a tremendous scientific effort. The result was that in a flash the war was over.” The idea that Hiroshima ended the war in a single stroke is comforting, but it leaves out the second attack on Nagasaki and quite a lot else.

 Before “Little Boy” was dropped on Hiroshima, more than 60 other Japanese cities had already been destroyed by American fire bombing. The largest death toll from a single attack (in any war) is not Hiroshima, but the fire-bombing of Tokyo in March 1945. The attack created a fire storm which took 105,000 civilian lives. That ugly record stands to this day. Then there is the little-known fact that several more atom bombs were being prepared for shipment to Tinian Island. If Japan had not surrendered on 15 August, the US air force was prepared to keep dropping atom bombs until it did.

Courtesy : BBC

Unforgettable Pictures from World War II

World War II, also called Second World War, conflict that involved virtually every part of the world during the years 1939–45. The principal belligerents were the Axis powers—Germany, Italy, and Japan—and the Allies—France, Great Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and, to a lesser extent, China. The war was in many respects a continuation, after an uneasy 20-year hiatus, of the disputes left unsettled by World War I. The 40,000,000–50,000,000 deaths incurred in World War II make it the bloodiest conflict, as well as the largest war, in history.

 Along with World War I, World War II was one of the great watersheds of 20th-century geopolitical history. It resulted in the extension of the Soviet Union’s power to nations of eastern Europe, enabled a communist movement to eventually achieve power in China, and marked the decisive shift of power in the world away from the states of western Europe and toward the United States and the Soviet Union. By the early part of 1939 the German dictator Adolf Hitler had become determined to invade and occupy Poland. Poland, for its part, had guarantees of French and British military support should it be attacked by Germany. Hitler intended to invade Poland anyway, but first he had to neutralize the possibility that the Soviet Union would resist the invasion of its western neighbour. Secret negotiations led on August 23–24 to the signing of the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact in Moscow. In a secret protocol of this pact, the Germans and the Soviets agreed that Poland should be divided between them, with the western third of the country going to Germany and the eastern two-thirds being taken over by the U.S.S.R.

Having achieved this cynical agreement, the other provisions of which stupefied Europe even without divulgence of the secret protocol, Hitler thought that Germany could attack Poland with no danger of Soviet or British intervention and gave orders for the invasion to start on August 26. News of the signing, on August 25, of a formal treaty of mutual assistance between Great Britain and Poland (to supersede a previous though temporary agreement) caused him to postpone the start of hostilities for a few days. He was still determined, however, to ignore the diplomatic efforts of the western powers to restrain him. Finally, at 12:40 PM on August 31, 1939, Hitler ordered hostilities against Poland to start at 4:45 the next morning. The invasion began as ordered. In response, Great Britain and France declared war on Germany on September 3, at 11:00 AM and at 5:00 PM, respectively. World War II had begun.

In September 1939 the Allies, namely Great Britain, France, and Poland, were together superior in industrial resources, population, and military manpower, but the German Army, or Wehrmacht, because of its armament, training, doctrine, discipline, and fighting spirit, was the most efficient and effective fighting force for its size in the world. The index of military strength in September 1939 was the number of divisions that each nation could mobilize. Against Germany’s 100 infantry divisions and six armoured divisions, France had 90 infantry divisions in metropolitan France, Great Britain had 10 infantry divisions, and Poland had 30 infantry divisions, 12 cavalry brigades, and one armoured brigade (Poland had also 30 reserve infantry divisions, but these could not be mobilized quickly). A division contained from 12,000 to 25,000 men.

It was the qualitative superiority of the German infantry divisions and the number of their armoured divisions that made the difference in 1939. The firepower of a German infantry division far exceeded that of a French, British, or Polish division; the standard German division included 442 machine guns, 135 mortars, 72 antitank guns, and 24 howitzers. Allied divisions had a firepower only slightly greater than that of World War I. Germany had six armoured divisions in September 1939; the Allies, though they had a large number of tanks, had no armoured divisions at that time. 

Source : Encyclopædia Britannica

The Allied invasion of Normandy

More than 150,000 Allied soldiers stormed the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944, bursting through German coastal defenses to open the way to the liberation of western Europe from the Nazi regime. The Western Allies of World War II launched the largest amphibious invasion in history when they assaulted Normandy, located on the northern coast of France, on 6 June 1944. The invaders were able to establish a beachhead as part of Operation Overlord after a successful “D-Day,” the first day of the invasion. Allied land forces came from the United States, Britain, Canada, and Free French forces. In the weeks following the invasion, Polish forces and contingents from Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece and the Netherlands participated in the ground campaign; most also provided air and naval support alongside elements of the Royal Australian Air Force, the Royal New Zealand Air Force, and the Royal Norwegian Navy.

The Normandy invasion began with overnight parachute and glider landings, massive air attacks and naval bombardments. In the early morning, amphibious landings commenced on five beaches codenamed Sword, Juno, Gold, Omaha and Utah, with troops from the United States landing on Omaha and Utah, Britain landing on Gold and Sword and Canada landing on Juno. During the evening the remaining elements of the airborne divisions landed. Land forces used on D-Day sailed from bases along the south coast of England, the most important of these being Portsmouth.

There were several leaks prior to or on D-Day. Through the Cicero affair, the Germans obtained documents containing references to Overlord, but these documents lacked all detail. Double Cross agents, such as the Spaniard Juan Pujol (code-named Garbo), played an important role in convincing the German High Command that Normandy was at best a diversionary attack. U.S. Major General Henry Miller, chief supply officer of the US 9th Air Force, during a party at Claridge’s Hotel in London complained to guests of the supply problems he was having but that after the invasion, which he told them would be before 15 June, supply would be easier. After being told, Eisenhower reduced Miller to lieutenant colonel [Associated Press, June 10, 1944] and sent him back to the U.S. where he retired. Another such leak was General Charles de Gaulle’s radio message after D-Day. He, unlike all the other leaders, stated that this invasion was the real invasion. This had the potential to ruin the Allied deceptions Fortitude North and Fortitude South. In contrast, Gen. Eisenhower referred to the landings as the initial invasion.

Only ten days each month were suitable for launching the operation: a day near the full moon was needed both for illumination during the hours of darkness and for the spring tide, the former to illuminate navigational landmarks for the crews of aircraft, gliders and landing craft, and the latter to expose defensive obstacles placed by the German forces in the surf on the seaward approaches to the beaches. A full moon occurred on 6 June. Allied Expeditionary Force Supreme Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower had tentatively selected 5 June as the date for the assault. The weather was fine during most of May, but deteriorated in early June. On 4 June, conditions were clearly unsuitable for a landing; wind and high seas would make it impossible to launch landing craft from larger ships at sea, low clouds would prevent aircraft finding their targets. The Allied troop convoys already at sea were forced to take shelter in bays and inlets on the south coast of Britain for the night.

It seemed possible that everything would have to be cancelled and the troops returned to their embarkation camps (which would be almost impossible, as the enormous movement of follow-up formations into them was already proceeding). The next full moon period would be nearly a month away. At a vital meeting on 5 June, Eisenhower’s chief meteorologist (Group Captain J.M. Stagg) forecast a brief improvement for 6 June. Commander of all land forces for the invasion General Bernard Montgomery and Eisenhower’s Chief of Staff General Walter Bedell Smith wished to proceed with the invasion. Commander of the Allied Air Forces Air Chief Marshal Leigh Mallory was doubtful, but Allied Naval Commander-in-Chief Admiral Bertram Ramsay believed that conditions would be marginally favorable. On the strength of Stagg’s forecast, Eisenhower ordered the invasion to proceed. As a result, prevailing overcast skies limited Allied air support, and no serious damage would be done to the beach defences on Omaha and Juno.

The number of military forces at the disposal of Nazi Germany reached its peak during 1944. Tanks on the east front peaked at 5,202 in November 1944, while total aircraft in the Luftwaffe inventory peaked at 5,041 in December 1944. By D-Day 157 German divisions were stationed in the Soviet Union, 6 in Finland, 12 in Norway, 6 in Denmark, 9 in Germany, 21 in the Balkans, 26 in Italy and 59 in France, Belgium and the Netherlands. However, these statistics are somewhat misleading since a significant number of the divisions in the east were depleted; German records indicate that the average personnel complement was at about 50% in the spring of 1944. A more detailed order of battle for D-Day itself can be found at Normandy landings.

Officials attend ceremonies to mark the end of World War II in Paris

France is set to commemorate the end of World War II on Wednesday, with the main ceremony in the heart of the French capital. French President Emmanuel Macron will first go to pay his respects  to France’s wartime leader General Charles de Gaulle in the capital before heading to the Champs Elysées with an honour guard to lay a wreath at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe for Wednesday’s memorials marking Victory in Europe Day – the day Nazi Germany surrendered to the Allies in 1945. Town and villages across the country will have their own ceremonies to honour those who died in the conflict. France is one of the few European countries that holds a national holiday to mark this historic day.

Russia commemorates 1941 Red Army parade

The 1941 October Revolution Parade of November 7 1941 was a parade in honor of the October Revolution 24 years earlier. It is most famous for taking place during the Battle of Moscow. The General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Joseph Stalin delivered a speech to the soldiers on the parade on Red Square who would go to battle immediately after the parade. Many of the soldiers on the parade would be killed in battle. Every year in modern Russia November 7th is a holiday in honor of the 1941 parade as a substitute for celebration of the October Revolution, as a Day of Military Honour. Parades held on that year that are more memorable are the parades in Moscow’s Red Square and in Kuybyshev Square, Samara (formerly Kuybyshev in the Soviet period). Both are marked today by commemorative parades to honor their historic importance.

The parade was inspected by the commander of the Reserve Front, Marshal of the Soviet Union Semyon Budyonny, with musical accompaniment by a combined band made up of the Central Military Band of the People’s Commissariat of Defence and the Staff Band of the Moscow Military District, both under the baton of Colonel Vasily Agapkin, then the Director of Music, Staff Band of the MMD.

Before the parade commenced the then General Secretary of the All-Union Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) and Premier of the USSR Joseph Stalin delivered this historic address to the nation: “Comrades, men of the Red Army and Red Navy, commanders and political commissioners, working men and working women, collective farmers-men and women, workers in the intellectual professions, brothers and sisters in the rear of our enemy who have temporarily fallen under the yoke of the German brigands, and to our valiant men and women guerillas who are destroying the rear of the German invaders! On behalf of the Soviet Government and our Bolshevik Party, I am greeting you and congratulating you on the twenty-fourth anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution.

Comrades, it is in strenuous circumstances that we are to-day celebrating the twenty-fourth anniversary of the October Revolution. The perfidious attack of the German brigands and the war which has been forced upon us have created a threat to our country. We have temporarily lost a number of regions, the enemy has appeared at the gates of Leningrad and Moscow. The enemy reckoned that after the very first blow our army would be dispersed, and our country would be forced to her knees. But the enemy gravely miscalculated. In spite of temporary reverses, our Army and Navy are heroically repulsing the enemy’s attacks along the entire front and inflicting heavy losses upon him, while our country—our entire country—has organized itself into one fighting camp in order, together with our Army and our Navy, to encompass the rout of the German invaders.

There were times when our country was in a still more difficult position. Remember the year 1918, when we celebrated the first anniversary of the October Revolution. Three-quarters of our country was at that time in the hands of foreign interventionists. The Ukraine, the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Urals, Siberia and the Far East were temporarily lost to us. We had no allies, we had no Red Army—we had only just begun to create it; there was a shortage of food, of armaments, of clothing for the Army. Fourteen states were pressing against our country. But we did not become despondent, we did not lose heart. In the fire of war we forged the Red Army and converted our country into a military camp. The spirit of the great Lenin animated us at that time for the war against the interventionists. And what happened? We routed the interventionists, recovered all our lost territory, and achieved victory.

To-day the position of our country is far better than twenty-three years ago. Our country is now many times richer than it was twenty-three years ago as regards industry, food and raw materials. We now have allies, who together with us are maintaining a united front against the German invaders. We now enjoy the sympathy and support of all the nations of Europe who have fallen under the yoke of Hitler’s tyranny. We now have a splendid Army and a splendid Navy, who are defending with their lives the liberty and independence of our country. We experience no serious shortage of either food, or armaments or army clothing. Our entire country, all the peoples of our country, support our Army and our Navy, helping them to smash the invading hordes of German fascists. Our reserves of man-power are inexhaustible. The spirit of the great Lenin and his victorious banner animate us now in this patriotic war just as they did twenty-three years ago.

The enemy is not so strong as some frightened little intellectuals picture him. The devil is not so terrible as he is painted. Who can deny that our Red Army has more than once put the vaunted German troops to panic flight? If one judges, not by the boastful assertions of the German propagandists, but by the actual position of Germany, it will not be difficult to understand that the German-fascist invaders are facing disaster. Hunger and impoverishment reign in Germany to-day; in four months of war Germany has lost four and a half million men; Germany is bleeding, her reserves of man-power are giving out, the spirit of indignation is spreading not only among the peoples of Europe who have fallen under the yoke of the German invaders but also among the German people themselves, who see no end to war. The German invaders are straining their last efforts. There is no doubt that Germany cannot sustain such a strain for long. Another few months, another half-year, perhaps another year, and Hitlerite Germany must burst under the pressure of her crimes.

Comrades, men of the Red Army and Red Navy, commanders and political instructors, men and women guerillas, the whole world is looking to you as the force capable of destroying the plundering hordes of German invaders. The enslaved peoples of Europe who have fallen under the yoke of the German invaders look to you as their liberators. A great liberating mission has fallen to your lot. Be worthy of this mission! The war you are waging is a war of liberation, a just war. Let the manly images of our great ancestors—Alexander Nevsky, Dmitry Donskoy, Kuzma Minin, Dmitry Pozharsky, Alexander Suvorov and Mikhail Kutuzov—inspire you in this war! May the victorious banner of the great Lenin be your lodestar! For the complete destruction of the German invaders! Death to the German invaders! Long live our glorious Motherland, her liberty and her independence!

Under the banner of Lenin, forward to victory!”

73rd anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War Two

The surrender of Imperial Japan was announced on August 15 and formally signed on September 2, 1945, bringing the hostilities of World War II to a close. By the end of July 1945, the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) was incapable of conducting major operations and an Allied invasion of Japan was imminent. Together with the British Empire and China, the United States called for the unconditional surrender of the Japanese armed forces in the Potsdam Declaration on July 26, 1945—the alternative being “prompt and utter destruction”. While publicly stating their intent to fight on to the bitter end, Japan’s leaders (the Supreme Council for the Direction of the War, also known as the “Big Six”) were privately making entreaties to the still-neutral Soviet Union to mediate peace on terms more favorable to the Japanese. Meanwhile, the Soviets were preparing to attack Japanese forces in Manchuria and Korea (in addition to South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands) in fulfillment of promises they had secretly made to the United States and the United Kingdom at the Tehran and Yalta Conferences.

On August 6, 1945, at 8:15 AM local time, the United States detonated an atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Sixteen hours later, American President Harry S. Truman called again for Japan’s surrender, warning them to “expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth.” Late in the evening of August 8, 1945, after its April 1945 denunciation of the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact, and in accordance with the Yalta agreements, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan. Shortly after midnight on August 9, 1945, the Soviet Union invaded the Imperial Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo. Later in the day, the United States dropped a second atomic bomb, this time on the Japanese city of Nagasaki. Following these events, Emperor Hirohito intervened and ordered the Supreme Council for the Direction of the War to accept the terms the Allies had set down in the Potsdam Declaration for ending the war. After several more days of behind-the-scenes negotiations and a failed coup d’état, Emperor Hirohito gave a recorded radio address across the Empire on August 15. In the radio address, called the Jewel Voice Broadcast (玉音放送 Gyokuon-hōsō), he announced the surrender of Japan to the Allies.

On August 28, the occupation of Japan led by the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers began. The surrender ceremony was held on September 2, aboard the United States Navy battleship USS Missouri, at which officials from the Japanese government signed the Japanese Instrument of Surrender, thereby ending the hostilities. Allied civilians and military personnel alike celebrated V-J Day, the end of the war; however, isolated soldiers and personnel from Japan’s far-flung forces throughout Asia and the Pacific refused to surrender for months and years afterwards, some even refusing into the 1970s. The role of the atomic bombings in Japan’s unconditional surrender, and the ethics of the two attacks, is still debated. The state of war formally ended when the Treaty of San Francisco came into force on April 28, 1952. Four more years passed before Japan and the Soviet Union signed the Soviet–Japanese Joint Declaration of 1956, which formally brought an end to their state of war.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Russia marks Victory Day

The annual parade commemorating the former Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in World War II.

Obama’s historic Hiroshima visit

Barack Obama has become the first US incumbent president to visit Hiroshima, the Japanese city where America dropped an atomic bomb in 1945. Accompanied by Shinzo Abe, the Japanese prime minister, Obama laid a wreath at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park on Friday before paying tribute to the 140,000 victims of the world’s first nuclear attack. “Seventy-one years ago, death fell from the sky and the world was changed,” Obama said in a speech.

He told the assembled crowd that the world has a shared responsibility to ask how to prevent the suffering that took place in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, the day the US dropped the atomic bomb on the western Japanese city. The bomb “demonstrated that mankind possessed the means to destroy itself”.

Obama also greeted ageing survivors and embraced one elderly man who appeared overcome with emotion. Al Jazeera’s Harry Fawcett, reporting from Hiroshima, said Obama tried in his speech to strike the right balance in terms of the audience in Japan but also people listening to him back in the US. “This is something that no president in the 71 years since the bomb was dropped here has felt able to do,” our correspondent said. “So he tried to strike that balance by both talking about the specifics of what happened here, but also trying to put in the context not only of the Second World War, but also of human morality.”

The battle for Falluja

Fallujah was the scene of some of the bloodiest urban combat with U.S. forces. In 2004, more than 100 U.S. troops died and another 1,000 were wounded fighting insurgents in house-to-house battles. Once home to more than 250,000 people, only about 60,000 to 100,000 civilians remain in Fallujah, according to the coalition and the United Nations. Many Iraqis are suspicious of the civilians who have not fled, assuming many are IS sympathizers. On Sunday, the Iraqi military repeated calls for civilians to leave, and Davis said leaflets were dropped to warn the population. Those unable to leave were advised to avoid buildings associated with IS and raise a white flag above their homes.

But residents say that because IS controls the main roads, thousands are trapped. The U.N. reported only 80 families have fled in recent days. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said there is “a great risk” to about 50,000 civilians estimated by the U.N. to still be in Fallujah. U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said: “It’s important that they have some safe corridors that they could use.” IS previously has used civilians as human shields, forcing families to move with the fighters as they retreat from advancing forces and coalition airstrikes. The practice significantly slowed the pace of other operations in Anbar. While the counterterrorism troops are some of Iraq’s most competent forces, they still rely heavily on air support to retake territory.

Another Srebrenica mass grave unearthed

Investigators believe the site contains the bodies of massacre victims from the 1992-1995 war. The Srebrenica massacre, also known as the Srebrenica genocide  (Bosnian: Masakar u Srebrenici; Genocid u Srebrenici), was the genocidal  killing, in July 1995, of more than 8,000 Muslim Bosniaks, mainly men and boys, in and around the town of Srebrenica during the Bosnian War.

The killings were perpetrated by units of the Bosnian Serb Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) under the command of General Ratko Mladić. The Scorpions, a paramilitary unit from Serbia, who had been part of the Serbian Interior Ministry until 1991, also participated in the massacre.[6][20] In April 1993, the United Nations declared the besieged enclave of Srebrenica—in the Drina Valley of northeastern Bosnia—a “safe area” under UN protection. However, in July 1995, UNPROFOR’s 370 Dutchbat soldiers in Srebrenica failed to prevent the town’s capture by the VRS — and the subsequent massacre.