Atomic bomb question... WW2..10 points for best answer?

Question

Hey guys, I just want to know ur opinions about this one...

If you were president Roosevelt during WW2 [US was not yet at war with Germany .]

Will you pursue the construction of an atomic bomb for U.S protection or what ever reasons against the germans?

whats your opinion and why?

-10 points for best answer-

ciao! ^_^

Answer 1

Absolutely.

Roosevelt  didn’t have the luxury of decades of experience that we now have, and that being said, many still continue to think of nuclear bombs as just another weapon, albeit a big one.

During WW2, typical bombs  were 500 lb or 1000 lb. (Bigger ones were used, but rarely).  Even with all of the advances in the Norton Bomb Sight, and with the experience of many years of war, by late 1944, only 7% of bombs dropped by the 8th Air Force hit within 1 mile of their target!  A 1000 lb bomb landing a mile from its target is hardly effecttive - you needed waves and waves of bombs to carpetbomb an area. That’s why you see so many cities in ruin – you could not be assured that you destroyed your target unless the whole area looked like a lunar landscape.  The idea of one large bomb destroying its target even with a miss had to be investigated.

As with anything new, there were unanticipated consequences with atomic bombs.

The reality of nuclear fallout came as a surprise to the American bomb makers.  It was thought that the bomb would detonate, there would be a burst of radiation, but then it was over.  The idea that the effects of one bomb could drift miles away adds to the now understood horror of these weapons.

War is h**l.  Sadly, if you look at the damage done with conventional weapons, the horror at atom bombs is put in a lower context.  The fire bombing of Dresden (conventional bombs), for instance, destroyed 15 square km of the city with upwards of 60,000 dead.  A similar attack on Tokyo destroyed 41 sq km and killed upwards of 100,000.  By contrast, the atom bomb dropped on Nagasaki destroyed less than 10 km, with deaths from 40,000 to 70,000.  Dead is dead, whether it is atomic or not.

We tend to group these weapons into a broader group called weapons of mass destruction.  This group includes poison gas and biological agents, all of which were in the possession of both Germany and Japan.  Moreover, Japan was very much involved in using biological agents in attacks on China.  Their famous aircraft carrier submarines were designed to drop biological agents on the Panama Canal; the war ended before that attack could take place.  

As the other writer pointed out, Germany also was working on the bomb.  Japan also had a nuclear program, and there are persistent rumors that in the closing days of the war, they successfully detonated their prototype near an island outside of North Korea.  The US did recover a few pieces of the Japanese program – the rest went to the Soviets.

Sadly, the words of George Patton are too true.  Ã¢Â€ÂœYou don’t win a war by dying for your country – you win by making the other son-of-a-***** die for his country.”  It’s all about body counts.

Answer 2

Since the German Third Reich was working on the atomic bomb several years before the US, Yes!, I would pursue the bomb.