Hiroshima calls for nuke-free world (4 Viewers)

[Tangent]

Quiet you. I'm very uninterested in your opinion, but it is clear that you view the attrocities committed by the axis powers as equal to the allied ones. Ofc I agree that aerial bombing/terror bombing was a horrendous, flawed strategy, which was rather useless against Germany, yet apparently decisive against Japan. But when you look at the total record, the greedy illegitimate aggression, the holocaust, biological experiments, slave labour etc totally dwarfs allied war behaviour - even with the Soviet Union included.
It's not even worth debating, esp w homosexual highschoolers

No, its not about equality, nothing is fair in war. Even if that were true, I still hold that there is NO excuse to kill civilians, especially that many and by the means, which is still being felt today.

Note: When Germany surrendered, we took all that research, and wouldnt be where we are today in genetics and the like without it. Germany got the research done and the allied powers got to keep their hands clean. win win no?

I dont see how my age nor my sexuality demeans my argument. If anything your constant attacks at people demean yours, as well as your choice to ignore other people instead providing a counter-argument.

On a lighter note, cant wait until everyone blows everyone else up because a group of people making all the decisions want something they cant have.

 

[loquasagacious]

This was by no means a random attack on civilians. If they had bombed Tokyo or another area of dense civilian populations, perhaps we could be arguing that the A bombs were unjustified.

It is worth noting that by this point in the war there wasn't that much of Tokyo left to bomb. More than 44km², or more than 50% of the city was destroyed. Estimates of deaths vary however we can assume they were well over 100,000. Wiki. Imo the incindiary bombings of Tokyo and Dresden are much closer to war crimes than Hiroshima+Nagasaki.

I can't understand these reject fuckheads who think we should have shown Japan some compassion, because they certainly didn't show their enemies or their POWs any compassion.

I think that we have a duty to uphold our own morals even in the face of an enemy which doesn't. This is important to maintain our own moral legitimacy, if we don't do this then are we any better than them? Having said that, I believe that the A-bombings were moral.

Actually, even then if that were the case, that wouldn't really matter to me. What happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki is wrong, whatever way you look at it. I don't care if it ended with a positive outcome, or if more human life would have been expended if they hadn't done it. That doesn't come into consideration for me, at least with regards to deciding whether it was a moral thing to do.

Look at me, I seem like quite the moral absolutist.

Evil wasn't ended by force, it was ended by evil. And don't start talking about the "lesser of two evils" crap. This is the taking of innocent human life we're talking about. There is no scale; it's wrong.

While I believe in universal morals I am also a firm utilitarian. As a moral absolutist what would you do? Not go to war at all? Go to war but baulk at actually being victorious? I am genuinely interested.

No way. It's hugely controversial. Hell even the history they teach for the hsc doesn't teach the orthoox narrative. Look in any hsc guide - they have to teach that there is a huge debate around the legitimacy of the bombings. And they outline both sides etc.

The HSC is not a arbiter. It is (rightly or wrongly) routinely criticised as having a left-wing/revisionist bias, but more importantly it is high school.

It is no way a handful of revisionist conspiracy theorists. Here http://userpages.umbc.edu/~simpson/Hist 725 Summer 2006/Walker on A Bomb recent lit.pdf a guy called Walker examines the huge debate. He's no extremist, he's 'Searching for a middle ground'.

Kudos for digging out some sources but tbh I've never heard of umbc before which does somewhat reduce it as an effective 'appeal to authority'.

A message from the Japanese foreign minister to the Soviet ambassador:
'His majesty the emperor, mindful of the fact that the present war brings greater evil and sacrifice upon the peoples of all belligerent powers, desires from his heart that it may be quickly terminated'.

shows that he did want to surrender and if America lessened their demand for unconditional surrender it is likely they would have. Why did America have to demand unconditional surrender? If they wanted the war to end, why didn't they compromise etc?

The key here seems to be what compromise would be required. Even after the A-bombs and the Soviet invasion of Manchuria the hardliners were proposing a conditional surrender which specified: that Japan handle her own disarmament, that Japan deal with any Japanese war criminals, and that there be no occupation of Japan.

These terms were clearly unacceptable because they do not address the threat of Japan as a state. The hardliners version of conditional surrender was equivalent to saying "Lets create Weimar Germany". The Allies having been badly burnt by this once before (refer to Nazi Germany) were understandably never going to accept this. I feel that I need to reiterate that this was their version of conditional surrender after the a-bombs and soviet entry.

Also as Iron mentioned earlier there was an attempted military coup to prevent surrender.

Seems to make the case for Japan being unwilling to surrender in an acceptable manner without a-bombing.

Provide what documents?

...I think it is you that needs to provide documents to back up your broad claims of 'These regimes were intent on violence - it was their underlying philosophy. They had to be occupied, disarmed and put on trial for the good of the world'
Wow. That is so broad you can be talking about anyone. America for instance.

Documents could include books, journal article, primary material etc. The key would be that these should be from respected sources. I don't think that Iron really needs to provide sources to back-up his statement that Japan had an underlying philosophy of Imperialism, militarism, violence and genocide. Their bushido code, war crimes in China and treatment of POW really speak for themselves. However you feel about America it is plainly ridiculous to compare their actions to Imperial Japan.

War has to one of the most idiotic ways to solve disputes, especially as technology advances. If one bomb can kill hundreds of thousands, then what is the point of it all? Those were small compared to the ones we have today. What a waste of human life. And the puppeteers are safe while their 'defence forces' fight, kill and die.

War is the final way to resolve disputes, it should never be the first option however should always be available as the option of last resort. There are simply some circumstances in which it is required. While I don't necessarily agree with Iron's larger philosophy the guide he provides for casus belli is a good one.

The fact remains that it happened 64 years ago, and yet you still hold these feeling. If everyone held grudges the world would be in chaos. How can you justify killing hundreds of millions of innocents??? They weren't responsible for what the government did, nor the soldiers.

Now, if you have read all that stuff above you have probably wasted your time. As i have said before, and what they governments have recognised, is that this all happened 64 years ago. Its over. The war has been won on our side. The people who have died are still dead. Most of the people who faught and lived are now dead. What lingers is the memory. Around the world there is still fighting going on.

Agreed that people need to bury the hatchet and I think it is reasonable to say that there is not a great deal of animosity between Australia and Japan today. I don't believe that anyone here has suggested that we bomb present day Japan into the stone age. There is however a difference between not holding a grudge and not acknowledging past transgressions. Japan has not sufficiently acknowledged it's war crimes and is not sufficiently educating it's citizens regarding them.[/QUOTE]

It's our collective memory, our cultural inheritance, the glory of our forefathers, the same blood runs thru our veins, i was there amongst the arrows which blackened the sky at crecy, the fury of cannon and clamour of sabre at waterloo, the flying woodenm splinters of trafalgar, the mud of the somme, i was there and you can tiioo!

'We' as people are a product of our society, our society is a product of our collective history. Iron is correct that our history, including but not limited to wars, shape who we are today.

Yea I can believe that. They were also supposed to drop leaflets on the cities, warning them and oops they forgot... and dropped the warnings on them the day after the bombings instead.

Reference?

Warning a city of an impeding bombing is not a particularly good strategy. What does the warning say? "To the authorities: could you please evacuate civilians but leave behind military-industrial targets. PS: please do not increase air defences."

 

[katie tully]

They did actually warn Japan about experiencing heavy losses and wide spread destruction, they just omitted the part where they tell them it's an atom bomb

 

[katie tully]

"we should have"

ww2 is over

none of "us" fought

We, collectively, as in the allies who fought for us

Don't be a nitpicking dickhead.

 

[Serius]

What an interesting game. It appears that the only winning move is not to play.

 

[Tangent]

It is worth noting that by this point in the war there wasn't that much of Tokyo left to bomb. More than 44km², or more than 50% of the city was destroyed. Estimates of deaths vary however we can assume they were well over 100,000. Wiki. Imo the incindiary bombings of Tokyo and Dresden are much closer to war crimes than Hiroshima+Nagasaki.



I think that we have a duty to uphold our own morals even in the face of an enemy which doesn't. This is important to maintain our own moral legitimacy, if we don't do this then are we any better than them? Having said that, I believe that the A-bombings were moral.





While I believe in universal morals I am also a firm utilitarian. As a moral absolutist what would you do? Not go to war at all? Go to war but baulk at actually being victorious? I am genuinely interested.



The HSC is not a arbiter. It is (rightly or wrongly) routinely criticised as having a left-wing/revisionist bias, but more importantly it is high school.



Kudos for digging out some sources but tbh I've never heard of umbc before which does somewhat reduce it as an effective 'appeal to authority'.



The key here seems to be what compromise would be required. Even after the A-bombs and the Soviet invasion of Manchuria the hardliners were proposing a conditional surrender which specified: that Japan handle her own disarmament, that Japan deal with any Japanese war criminals, and that there be no occupation of Japan.

These terms were clearly unacceptable because they do not address the threat of Japan as a state. The hardliners version of conditional surrender was equivalent to saying "Lets create Weimar Germany". The Allies having been badly burnt by this once before (refer to Nazi Germany) were understandably never going to accept this. I feel that I need to reiterate that this was their version of conditional surrender after the a-bombs and soviet entry.

Also as Iron mentioned earlier there was an attempted military coup to prevent surrender.

Seems to make the case for Japan being unwilling to surrender in an acceptable manner without a-bombing.



Documents could include books, journal article, primary material etc. The key would be that these should be from respected sources. I don't think that Iron really needs to provide sources to back-up his statement that Japan had an underlying philosophy of Imperialism, militarism, violence and genocide. Their bushido code, war crimes in China and treatment of POW really speak for themselves. However you feel about America it is plainly ridiculous to compare their actions to Imperial Japan.



War is the final way to resolve disputes, it should never be the first option however should always be available as the option of last resort. There are simply some circumstances in which it is required. While I don't necessarily agree with Iron's larger philosophy the guide he provides for casus belli is a good one.



Agreed that people need to bury the hatchet and I think it is reasonable to say that there is not a great deal of animosity between Australia and Japan today. I don't believe that anyone here has suggested that we bomb present day Japan into the stone age. There is however a difference between not holding a grudge and not acknowledging past transgressions. Japan has not sufficiently acknowledged it's war crimes and is not sufficiently educating it's citizens regarding them.



'We' as people are a product of our society, our society is a product of our collective history. Iron is correct that our history, including but not limited to wars, shape who we are today.



Reference?

Warning a city of an impeding bombing is not a particularly good strategy. What does the warning say? "To the authorities: could you please evacuate civilians but leave behind military-industrial targets. PS: please do not increase air defences."

Thankyou, nothing like good rebuttle. I can see your point of view, and it is justified very well. I cannot and will not defend what the Japanese soldiers did in war, just like i cannot justify what some of the Australians did in war.

I still feel that the dropping of the 2 nuclear warheads could have been avoided if the U.S would have waited it out a little longer, accepted the Japanese conditions of surrender, tried harder to negotiate with the Japanese.

Also i think the rivalr between Russia and the U.S played some part in the decision to drop the bombs.

In any case, this post was refreshing

What an interesting game. It appears that the only winning move is not to play.

It's not about winning or losing, it's about what is learned.

 

[SnowFox]

During World War II, the Second Army and Chugoku Regional Army were headquartered in Hiroshima, and the Army Marine Headquarters was located at Ujina port. The city also had large depots of military supplies, and was a key center for shipping.[7]

Tactical choice #1.

The city of Nagasaki had been one of the largest sea ports in southern Japan and was of great wartime importance because of its wide-ranging industrial activity, including the production of ordnance, ships, military equipment, and other war materials.

Tactical Choice #2.

Why?

These cities were largely untouched during the nightly bombing raids and the Army Air Force agreed to leave them off the target list so accurate assessment of the weapon could be made. Hiroshima was described as "an important army depot and port of embarkation in the middle of an urban industrial area. It is a good radar target and it is such a size that a large part of the city could be extensively damaged. There are adjacent hills which are likely to produce a focussing effect which would considerably increase the blast damage. Due to rivers it is not a good incendiary target."[14] The goal of the weapon was to convince Japan to surrender unconditionally in accordance with the terms of the Potsdam Declaration. The Target Committee stated that "It was agreed that psychological factors in the target selection were of great importance. Two aspects of this are (1) obtaining the greatest psychological effect against Japan and (2) making the initial use sufficiently spectacular for the importance of the weapon to be internationally recognized when publicity on it is released. In this respect Kyoto has the advantage of the people being more highly intelligent and hence better able to appreciate the significance of the weapon. Hiroshima has the advantage of being such a size and with possible focussing from nearby mountains that a large fraction of the city may be destroyed. The Emperor's palace in Tokyo has a greater fame than any other target but is of least strategic value."[14]

Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hiroshima - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

These targets were in no way random or unjustified. It knocked out Japans fighting capability and showed Japan that America was the big boy of the yard.

As it says above, they could of targeted Kyoto and Tokyo, but chose targets of militaristic importance and for psychological effect.

 

[loquasagacious]

As far as I'm concerned there were a couple of options:

• Drop the a-bombs: Kill 200,000 or so people, destroy important targets, break the will of the Japanese and force a surrender.
  
  
• Launch an invasion: Fight a re-run of the Battle for Okinawa on a larger scale. At Okinawa an allied force of 550,000 faced 100,000+ Japanese soldiers and local conscripts. The allies had 50,000 casualties. The Japanese soldiers basically fought to the death (virtually all died). Civilian casualties were around 100,000 or 25% of the population. Estimates of allied casualties from an invasion of Japan vary widely from 250,000 to over 1 million. It is telling that 500,000 purple hearts were manufactured in anticipation.
  
  Add to this the majority of the Japanese army and if the Okinawa pattern of civilian death continued perhaps 18,000,000 civilian deaths. This could have been the single bloodiest invasion in history.
  
  
• Lay siege: Japan was surrounded and starving. The allies could have pressed this tactic. How long would Japan last though? It is certainly possible that millions would starve or die from illness before a Japanese surrender.
  
  
• Accept a conditional surrender: As I mentioned earlier the conditional surrender that the Japanese were offering was not acceptable as it would not have destroyed the Japanese state and would have allowed it to fester aka Weimar Germany-> Nazi Germany.

 

[loquasagacious]

Haven't read it but stumbled on the below, may be interesting further reading for someone:
Unconditional surrender, demobilization and the atomic bomb

 

[SnowFox]

Australia is going to be a global superpower when the Arabs take over. Yullleh we don't care about the environment...we are going to experiment nukes on people! inte listen boyz, then we will send a nuke to the yahoodi's!

Its funny, i think this forum is run by phpBB, and if so its got a IP check, so troll is gonna be gone.

 

[Tangent]

Haven't read it but stumbled on the below, may be interesting further reading for someone:
Unconditional surrender, demobilization and the atomic bomb

I thought, might as well spend the next 2 - hours reading this among doing other things. I was skeptical, seeming that this was on a U.S Army website.

At a minimum, the peace faction would need to be able to convince the Japanese Army that they could avoid national humiliation by negotiating what the Army called "peace with honor." This phrase, later used by America in the Vietnam, War, was defined by Japan as "the protection of the fundamental character of our government." At most, unnamed parties hinted through Sweden (indirect contacts that could be denied) that although discussions about "the Japanese constitution must be, considered as excluded ... the Imperial power could be somewhat democratized" (Italics mine), Unfortunately, the constitution and the character of that government was highly disposed to, when not controlled by, the imperial army. Even Joe Grew, "hoodwinked" by Hirohito according to widely read newspapermen, took a firm public stance that unconditional surrender meant "termination of the influence of the military leaders" (which he communicated in words written for him by MacLeish). Under these general circumstances, according to Japanese officers and diplomats, "it was taboo for us to speak about the problem of peace," let alone compose serious terms "in any concrete form." 38




Unconditional surrender, as an ill-defined slogan, did not foreclose any possibility, no matter how horrendous. A quick glance at American speeches, opinion polls, and movies would not reassure Japan. Thirteen percent of the respondents wanted to "kill all Japanese"; another 33 percent wanted to destroy the Japanese state. Life magazine showed photos of American war trophies sent home to loved ones in the form of hollowed out Japanese skulls. "This," responded Japan's most popular newspapers and writers, "is American Savagery Unveiled." "Barbarism is a conspicuous characteristic of their history," If Japan capitulates, they said, America will "inflict a general massacre and defile the purity of our blood." "All our men would be made into slaves and all our women would be prostitutes," ("It was a great relief," recalled one former teenager, "when the Americans came and no such things happened.") Less hyperbolic, the minister of foreign affairs wrote a subordinate in 1945: "The difficult point is the attitude of the enemy, who continues to insist on the formality of unconditional surrender.... Then our country and His Majesty would unanimously resolve to fight a war of resistance to the bitter end

The U.S. armed forces overheard all these diplomatic conversations, having broken the enemy's codes. Internal Japanese memos stated that "the Japanese believe that unconditional surrender would be the equivalent of national extinction." But U.S. military thought about modifying the slogan, the public had a strong opinion of its own. From late February through June, polls that went directly to the White House, when not printed on the front page of the Washington Post, repeatedly stated that only 10 to 18 percent of Americans approved "working out peace terms" with Japan. The idea of governing through the present dynasty had support from only 3 percent ofthe public. Another 33 percent wanted to execute Hirohito, 11 percent wanted imprisonment, 9 percent wanted him banished, and 17 percent wanted him tried. Appropriate punishment, presumably, would be determined by the court.

After reading, i picked up this little bit in the middle. It made me wonder about 2 things.

1. Would some lives be spared if the general public on each side new the truth of what happened in war, instead of the illusions created by their patriotism and their ignorance to what war is really like. It seems on both side that this was the case, fueled by hate and thoughts of revenge. It brings to mind- what if?

2. If the U.S. changed the wording of the damn definition of "unconditional surrender" then maybe the Japanese would surrendered, having properly understood what the U.S were asking for.

As i said before, war is the stupid. Mistakes cost lives, egos cost lives, everything costs lives. It's enough to drive a person insane by the sheer pointlessness of it all, something like breaking down and weeping for the victims of war who have lost so much.

In the end, everyone loses. Even the winners

 

[zstar]

YouTube - Unit 731 Japanese Torture & Human Medical Experiments 部隊の真実

Japan was building a dirty bomb that would kill millions and they did it by expermenting on live humans.

It was all a matter of who would be the ones to suffer WMD attacks us or them.

If Hitler and the Imperial Japanese had the nuke you can be assured they would have used it without hesitation.

 

[Tangent]

Didn't mean we had to be as bad as them. Also, it wasn't the civilians who did those experiements, though it was a majority of them that died.

 

[Rockyroad]

Someone might want to have a read of this:Racing the enemy: Stalin, Truman ... - Google Books

It's a book preview of 'Racing the Enemy' by Tsuyoshi Hasegawa and lends powerful evidence towards the idea that the Soviet entry into the war was heavily influential in Japan's decision

Western historians have largely focused on Truman's decision to drop the bomb and his motive, whereas the decision-making of Japanese and Soviet leaders has been comparatively ignored. The number of Japanese writings on the debate has increased markedly in the 21st century, Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, a Japanese historian wrote a book called ‘Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan’29, published in 2006. Hasegawa is fluent in Russian, English and Japanese, which has allowed him to analyse primary sources from all these three countries central to the issue.

In his book, Hasegawa takes a revisionist view that the bombing was not necessary to end the war and that the objective was 'to get Japan to end the war quickly before the Soviet Union came into the Pacific war and demanded a say in Asia' - thus racing the enemy. Hasegawa's thorough research allows him to offer new insight into the question of whether the bombing was justified or not. In his book Hasegawa comes to the conclusion that the dropping of the atomic bomb did not by itself cause Japan to surrender & therefore did not directly lead to the ending of the war.

Hasegawa argues that the combination of the Soviet Union's entry into the pacific war and the US deciding to let Japan retain the emperor caused Japan to surrender not the bombing. Hasegawa agrees with Alperovitz that America seemed to act hastily, racing to drop the bomb on Japan before the Soviet Union entered the Pacific war and made strategic gains. Hasegawa's multilingualism compelled him to research into records of Japanese and Soviet leadership deliberations at the time of the bomb which have led to his conclusion that, regarding Japanese surrender " “It would be more accurate to say that the Soviet entry into the war, adding to that tipped scale, then completely toppled the scale itself.”. By arguing that the Soviet entry into the war prompted Japan’s surrender, Hasegawa casted doubt on the essence of the orthodox argument that the bombings led to Japan’s surrender and the end of the war.


And do you anti-revisionists concede that racism influenced the decision to drop the bomb? Imo it's hard to deny after reading the quote where Truman calls them beasts.

 

[Iron]

And do you anti-revisionists concede that racism influenced the decision to drop the bomb? Imo it's hard to deny after reading the quote where Truman calls them beasts.

Seriously, stfu. What is it that makes you hate your own kind? Why do you insist that youre morally superior to your grandparents?

Strictly speaking, America only had a duty to preserving the lives of its own citizens - ie two safe, high altitude bomb runs compared to the slaughtering of their own men in the tens of thousands on Japanese beaches, which would have resulted in more Japanese deaths anyway.

Sure the US is a force for good, but why the hell should they be expected to needlessly sacrifice their own sons to a vicious, unbelievable enemy who started the damn thing in the first place?
Would that be moral? Would that be wise?

 

[Graney]

If this attack is to be condemned, you should condemn all bombing, which is imo an unreasonable response when such bombing was undertaken as part of a campaign of national defense.

Nuclear weapons have a romantic and hysterical terror around them, but as mentioned, conventional bombings of cities such as dresden, tokyo, were worse.

Forcing a japanese surrender was necessary, and a conventional bombing of hiroshima/nagasaki, or any target, has no guarantee of ending fewer lives, and with constant conventional bombings for years, the country showed no sign of surrender. The big splashy play was the simplest, quickest and cleanest route to surrender.

 

[Graney]

Hasegawa argues that the combination of the Soviet Union's entry into the pacific war and the US deciding to let Japan retain the emperor caused Japan to surrender not the bombing.

I would respond that it's easy to make these claims after the war, with access to internal Japanese documents and opinion, but such reasoning was probably not obvious to the allied forces when making the decision to use nuclear weapons.

Should they have halted the conventional bombing campaign, since it was apparently obvious that japan was going to surrender?

 

[Iron]

I think the issue is not so much incendiary bombs. I think the issue is: in order to win a war should you kill 100,000 people in one night, by firebombing or any other way? LeMay's answer would be clearly "Yes."

Do you mean to say that instead of killing 100,000, burning to death 100,000 Japanese civilians in one night, we should have burned to death a lesser number or none? And then had our soldiers cross the beaches in Tokyo and been slaughtered in the tens of thousands? Is that what you're proposing? Is that moral? Is that wise?

Why was it necessary to drop the nuclear bomb if LeMay was burning up Japan? And he went on from Tokyo to firebomb other cities. 58% of Yokohama. Yokohama is roughly the size of Cleveland. 58% of Cleveland destroyed. Tokyo is roughly the size of New York. 51% percent of New York destroyed. 99% of the equivalent of Chattanooga, which was Toyama. 40% of the equivalent of Los Angeles, which was Nagoya. This was all done before the dropping of the nuclear bomb, which by the way was dropped by LeMay's command.

Proportionality should be a guideline in war. Killing 50% to 90% of the people of 67 Japanese cities and then bombing them with two nuclear bombs is not proportional, in the minds of some people, to the objectives we were trying to achieve.

I don't fault Truman for dropping the nuclear bomb. The U.S.-Japanese War was one of the most brutal wars in all of human history -kamikaze pilots?, suicide?, unbelievable. What one can criticize is that the human race prior to that time, and today, has not really grappled with what I'll call "the rules of war." Was there a rule then that said you shouldn't bomb, shouldn't kill, shouldn't burn to death 100,000 civilians in one night?

LeMay said, "If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals." And I think he's right. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?

 

[Graney]

How would the war be different if it were carried out today?

If you look at the iraq war, there was no surrender. On the 2nd may 2003, we simply decided we won, and that was it. Subsequently we have attempted to introduce a new, democratic govenment, but such attempts are weakened when not enforced with the mandate of an unconditional surrender.

How might this contemporary war have ended differently if played out using the tactics of the 1940s?

Technology has greatly changed war to make this possible. Modern soldiers have a much greater capacity to defend themselves, there is a greater disparity between the abilities of a modern soldier and even the most organised militia, than there was in 1945. The invasion of Iraq was comparitively easy.

There's also much greater ability to distinguish and target military targets, avoiding civilian casualties with things such as 'smart' weapons. This lends a greater responsibility to carry out war in a more humane manner. Technology has shifted the moral landscape so that blind incendiary bombing for years would undoubtedly be considered war crimes, even if you were on the victorious side.

 

[Iron]

Meh. You can have all the technology in the world and it wont mean squat if you dont have a good, moral truth to back it up with. The reason of Athens must be matched by the faith of Jerusalem.
I cant think of many significant worthy causes which were defeated by less worthy, yet better equipped ones.
Gallipoli, Vietnam, Iraq...

At the end of the day, the Axis cause was rotten and they knew this on some level. Defeat was inevitable.