Greg Mitchell at The Huffington Post (why am I not surprised?) thinks the USA should apologise for Hiroshima. Likewise, in Britain, there is a steady stream of books and articles proclaiming the bombing of Dresden as a war crime.
I have no tolerance for those who condemn the bombing of Dresden or Hiroshima. The Germans and the Japanese were brutal in the extreme against civilians and POWs. They both celebrated the cult of racial superiority and used slave labour. There is very little evidence that these regimes lacked popular support in their countries. One has only to imagine the nature of the world had the Axis powers won – and they very nearly did.
The Allied leaders did not have the advantage of hindsight. There was no reason to doubt that the Japanese would have resisted an invasion with massive fanatacism. Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved millions of lives, both Allied and Japanese, in the long run.
Terrible things happen in war and sometimes political and military leaders have to take brutal decisions but that is the nature of conflict. Why is it that in the UK and US there are always these characters whose first reaction is inevitably “my country, always wrong”?
Mitchell should be down on his knees every day of his life in thanks to those who paid the price in blood, bone and mind for his right to play the weasel….
