Update 2: Once you've read this diary, (or before) please go to Journeyman's Diary on the likelihood of Japanese surrender. I would not say that the conclusion of the US. Strategic Bombing Survey's conclusions are meritless, but at the very least, Journeyman's point throw them into considerable doubt. (Thanks, Journeyman!)
You may have seen Jon Stewart both claiming Truman was a war criminal, and then retracting his statement and apologizing during episodes from this week of the Daily Show. I can only respect Mr. Stewart for correcting himself both quickly and voluntarily, but I have to wonder. Was he right? And in which case?
To answer this, we need to first define a war crime. Happily, there are a number of conventions that the United States has been a signatory to; we shall use as a reference the London Charter of the International Military Tribunal, which is handy because it is also contemporaneous to the events we’re speaking of. We shall also make comparisons to the Hague Convention of 1907.
Still interested? Click on!
At the heart of thing is the concept that during wartime, certain actions are expected and permissible, if horrible, such as killing enemy soldiers. Alternatively, there are some actions that are so horrific as to be prohibited, such as executing POWs. Now, at the time of the original Hague Conventions, some of these notions were rather quaint, in that they did not address the use of weapons of mass destruction that had not been invented yet, most particularly bombing from the air, and the use of gasses. Happily, after the devastations of WWI, a secondary meeting at Geneva hammered out the idea that using gas as a weapon was a bad, bad idea. Despite this prohibition, everyone still made and stockpiled it, but still; this was a case where international condemnation actually led to reform. During WWII, gas was not generally used. (Although there was an incident when the Allies started stockpiling gas in an Italian Port, just in case. Alas, the Germans bombed the ship carrying the gas, and it ended up killing civilians and Allied personnel. Whups!)
So, here we have a convention that was outdated, perhaps, but clearly open to modification. Imperfect, but perhaps sufficient.
Now, following the end of WWII, something funny happened. As the Allies prepared to try their former enemies for their many crimes, they prepared a set of legal documents to govern those proceedings. In the London Charter, they defined war crimes as "WAR CRIMES: namely, violations of the laws or customs of war. Such violations shall include, but not be limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave labor or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity." What they did not do was make explicit reference to the Hague Conventions, which seems odd given that those were the primary documents governing the conduct wars prior to that moment. What had changed?
Well, there was an unfortunate problem with the Hague Conventions. In particular, they had this bit: SECTION II HOSTILITIES - CHAPTER I Means of Injuring the Enemy, Sieges, and bombardments: Article 25. The attack or bombardment, by whatever means, of towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings which are undefended is prohibited.
Uh-oh.
Now, in the years following WWI there were multiple attempts to address how bombs and air power would change prosecution of wars, but none were ultimately successful to make their way into binding international law. Furthermore, it was declared at Nuremberg that the laws of war in the Hague Convention were so universal, that everyone was bound by them regardless of whether they had been a signatory.
Double uh-oh. The real problem here was the initiation of a scheme to break the morale of the axis in WWII by...bombing civilian populations and targets in order to cause maximum casualties. (To be fair, this was in response to an identical effort to break morale through bombing begun under Hitler.) Churchill himself made explicit reference to this intent in a later declassified telegram.
"It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed." "...I feel the need for more precise concentration upon military objectives such as oil and communications behind the immediate battle-zone, rather than on mere acts of terror and wanton destruction, however impressive."
The United States would also use terror bombing to break morale among the Japanese. While the fire-bombing of Dresden in Europe would cause perhaps 250 thousand casualties, the US could not be guiltless in killing roughly 100 thousand through the firebombing of Tokyo...twice. This was why the London Charter was so vague: it left room to prosecute the Axis while leaving wiggle room for the Allies. A strict reading of the Conventions would have indicted both sides as guilty of War Crimes.
So, in a technical sense, according to the Hague Conventions, Truman necessarily would have been a war criminal for ordering the bombing of a civilian target. Let us move beyond this for a moment, though, and recognize the contemporary laws recommended in the London Charter. In a modern sense, was Truman a criminal?
The key language here is the condemnation of "wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity." By this standard, even an effort to end a war sooner in order to minimize casualties can qualify as legal, no matter how horrifying the cost. The traditional statement has been then that Truman dropped the bomb in order to force the Japanese to surrender rather than prolong the war and force a bloody invasion.
But is this true? Not really. The Japanese had been seeking peace for months prior to the bombings, and were prepared to capitulate on every point, save that of surrendering the Emperor. Given their lack of resources, it was only a matter of time and discreet assurances. If the Japanese had been told that the Emperor would not be touched even after an "unconditional surrender," then it is extremely likely that they would have surrendered. Even without such private guarantees, their surrender was still only a matter of time. This was known to the administration even prior to FDR’s death. If surrender was desired by the Japanese, it was largely inevitable. So why drop the A-bombs?
UPDATE! I've had several comments asserting the use of atomic bombs was necessary to force a Japanese surrender. I refer you to the post-war study of the matter by the United States Strategic Bombing Survey. They stated:
"The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs did not defeat Japan, nor by the testimony of the enemy leaders who ended the war did they persuade Japan to accept unconditional surrender. The Emperor, the Lord Privy Seal, the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister, and the Navy Minister had decided as early as May of 1945 that the war should be ended even if it meant acceptance of defeat on allied terms ..."
If this in untrue, then the my assertion necessarily falls apart. My argument for the criminality of Truman relies on him making a decision to bomb that was not based on wartime necessity, but instead on a post-war realpolitik assessment regarding Russia.
Answer: Russia. The U.S.S.R. had been extremely aggressive in grabbing land as a buffer and refusing to play ball with British/American plans in the post war European landscape. There was certainly an understanding in Washington that the U.S.S.R. was to be the post-war foe. By dropping the most advanced weapons ever in Russia’s Asian backyard, the U.S. was making a statement: we have them, we’ll use them. Essentially, Truman bombed Japan in order to start the Cold War off on the right foot, with America in the lead.
So, with this said, I feel comfortable giving credit to Jon Stewart. "The atomic bomb [was] a very complicated decision in the context of a horrific war." Quite true. But the atomic bomb wasn’t used due to considerations during the war; it was used due to considerations about the post-war environment. As such, Truman’s decision cannot meet the standard of the London Charter, because the decision to use such weapons was not related to the war at hand. Hence, in a limited sense it qualifies as "wanton," or unjustifiable within the context of the war.
So, technically, Jon, I think you were right in the first place. It isn’t unpatriotic to say so, or unreasonable. It’s just...accurate. Truman kinda was a war criminal.
So, I guess the question for all of you is, does War Criminality depend on a stringent reading of current or contemporary international Law, or is it something else?