Russia Honors the Spy Who Stole the A-Bomb 506
An anonymous reader writes "The New York Times reports on the life of George Koval, codenamed Delmar, one of the most important spies to have infiltrated the Manhattan Project, the secret program that created the world's first nuclear weapon. President Putin recently granted Koval a posthumous Hero of the Russian Federation award, the highest honorary title that can be given to a Russian citizen. Koval was born in Iowa, spoke fluent American English, and played baseball. But he was also recruited and trained by the GRU, Russia's largest intelligence agency."
Elections is coming... (Score:5, Insightful)
Imperialists don't want to admit simply that Russia as "strong arm dictarionship" is dead horse, which will never work in modern time settings. I just hope their last resort won't be trying to play "hard" with the rest of the world. As we easily know how it is to have people who have nothing to loose.
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Re:Elections is coming... (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's remember how it was in US 100 years _after_ their Constitution was created. KKK, crime by army and police, religious nuts, US Indians issue. Capitalism wasn't rosy game altogether. Even now they still have problems. But heck, they are trying, even if there is some nuts like Bush who trying to undo all achieved.
People simply need to be more patient, and work on democracy to achieve it best. However, people want to have miracle already. Lot of problems, including huge bribery and corruption in post-Soviet countries, are just consequences of so called "fall out generation", which were in their best years when USSR felt. Generation which knew that they won't see fruits of huge work in democracy today, so they want everything NOW.
Just my humble opinion,
Peter.
So he was the one (Score:2)
But how does this fit into the Rosenberg trial and other people the US executed for passing on state secrets?
I know that post cold war pretty convincing evidence has come out saying they did perform spying for the Soviet Russian state.
But how does this all fit together?
eh hem.... (Score:5, Funny)
When you're an English-speaking, baseball-playing, corn-on-the cab chewing, native-Iowan, those young Prussian female recruiting babes, I mean 'agents', are pretty hard to resist.
They should be the ones getting the honors, actually...
Prussian? (Score:5, Informative)
East Germans? (Score:2)
And when they recruited the guy, they had no idea what he would bring in.
Does that even make sense (Score:2)
So if a prussian (ie german, possibly polish) did it, then surely the results would have gone to the reich?
Perhaps I'd better actually RTFA!
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In Soviet Russia... (Score:3, Funny)
surely a hero to the whole World (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:surely a hero to the whole World (Score:5, Insightful)
The one thing that history has taught us is that power corrupts. If we in the west had the ability to make communism go away with one button and no chance of any reprisals we may have done it (or our policians may have done it for us without asking).
Also note that the Russia had a policy of never striking first with Nuclear weapons unless we deployed them first, we (NATO) had no such policy. We held on to Nukes as way to discourage a conventional invasion so we had a policy that allowed us to strike first with WMD's, otherwise this policy would not have been effective.
The rulers of the west had one thing in common with Hitler, they both despised the idea of Socialism in the form adopted by Russia. The fact is that in the cold war we came very close to a nuclear exchange anyway, and this was when we knew the opposing side could match us.
If we knew they had no chance of retaliating except with a conventional attack I could see us in the west having taken things a lot further. I also believe that Russia would probably have not stopped the tanks when they did, if not for us demonstrating our nuclear ability against Japan.
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And General Patton would have loved to see them try that too. The perfect quote for this was Patton to the Under Sect. of War: "I would have you tell the Red Army where their border is, and give them a limited time to get back across. Warn them that if they fail to do so, we will push them back across it." It would have been bloody, but in the end we still ha
hmmmm (Score:2)
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An American traitor is just as bad as a (Score:3, Insightful)
So, you know... (Score:2, Funny)
Well, not so much (Score:5, Informative)
Chances are, given the considerable security, he did not learn a whole lot.
Even the top designers of the Oak Ridge gas separation plant did not know exactly what they were doing. What are the chances this guy got the goods?
And half of what they did at Oak Ridge was electromagnetic separation, which turned out to be way too inefficient. If he gave the Soviets that info, he did us a huge favor.
The Polonium separation that went on at a scientist's mother's house in Dayton was straightforward chemistry, nothing particularly novel or secret.
No James Bond here.
Mixed up story, I don't recall him being a traitor (Score:5, Insightful)
Although lots of people seem to think him a traitor, he really wasn't (although it depends heavily on how your read the history). His father at one point emigrated to the US, then moved back to russia, taking his american born son with him. So while the guy was american born, when he became an agent he was a soviet citizen.
Using people as agents who have lived in the country they are supposed to work in is nothing new. But he worked as an agent for the country of which he was a citizen. He entered the US as a spy and as such did NOT commit treason.
That is an important difference to make.
Odd by the way that a lot of americans seem to condemn hailing this guy as a hero, when their own space program was built upon a nazi war criminal. Russian spy vs nazi, oh yeah the ruskies are the baddies alright. Working people to their death vs taking a dangerous mission to protect your home country.
For those of us with a mind (american, Idol is on) this guy and others helped created the policy of mutually assured destruction. While nukes are scary, they ain't half as scary as they would have been if only one side had them. Would you have trusted the US as the only country with nuclear weapons?
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It's worth noting that it would be far worse if the USSR was the sole nuclear power in the world. Any rational evaluation of the mass starvations and outright idealistic purges that mark communism can only conclude that it's wrong and evil.
Even today, 20 years after the fall of the wall, Ex-soviet bloc countries continue to pay the price of
Re:Mixed up story, I don't recall him being a trai (Score:5, Interesting)
For several years, the United States WAS the only country with nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. The United States under had the means to directly dominate the entire world. It refrained from doing so.
Re:Mixed up story, I don't recall him being a trai (Score:5, Insightful)
So what? One or two presidents were either smart enough or lacked the motivation to use them or both. How long do you really think that would have kept up? How long before we had a dim bulb in power with an enemy to provoke him? We'd have never lasted until now, without using them.
Remember, the US was involved in several wars after WW2, and one the the big reasons it refrained from using nukes, or even fully committing to those wars for that matter was the threat of nuclear retaliation from the USSR if they pushed too hard.
Re:Mixed up story, I don't recall him being a trai (Score:4, Interesting)
According to the Quebec Agreement [wikipedia.org], the USA was bound to not use them without the consent of Canada and the United Kingdom.
That also means that Canada and the UK were just as guilty as the USA for the bombing of Japan.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Who's Next (Score:2)
TITLE: Who's Next
First we got the bomb, and that was good
'Cause we love peace and motherhood
Then Russia got the bomb, but that's okay
'Cause the balance of power's maintained that way
Who's next
France got the bomb, but don't you grieve
'Cause they're on our side, I believe
China got the bomb, but have no fears
They can't wipe us out for at least five years
Who's next
Then Indonesia claimed that they
Were gonna get one any day
South Africa wants two, that's right
One for the black and one for the whi
Hitler was working on the bomb too (Score:4, Informative)
One can fuel a reactor with unrefined uranium if one uses heavy water as a moderator, but they were unable to get enough heavy water because some commandos blew up the Norsk Hydro heavy water plant in Norway, then when they were trying to ship their existing inventory to Germany, the commandos sunk the ship it was on. Their heroics were portrayed in the movie The Heroes of Telemark.
After the war, the Allies found a sub-critical heavy water reactor in Germany.
Saddam Hussein really was trying to build a bomb before the first Gulf War - arms inspectors found calutrons, as well as buried power cables going from power plants to the calutrons (they require prodigous amounts of electricity to power their electromagnets).
The arms inspectors also found copies of World War II-era US patents on improvements to Calutron technology. They had been declassified, you see.
I discuss these and other fun facts in my essay Kiss Your Sorry Ass Goodbye, The Atom Bomb Is Gonna Fly [hydrogenbomb.org].
Sped up the process by perhaps one year or two (Score:4, Interesting)
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Keep world balance in place?
Can't his name save.
Treachery on his face.
God have mercy on the knave,
And lather this disgrace:
Burma Shave
Re:Pride? (Score:5, Funny)
'cuz your A-Bomb just won't work
Go ahead and steal the thing
Then you'll finally have the US's bling.
BURMA SHAVE
Tragedy: A Tale of Two Russians (Score:3, Insightful)
Politkovskaya had spent most of her career in helping the victims of horrific human-rights abuses. She was their only voice in an icy land of indifference. Commenting on the murder of Politkovskaya, Putin insulted her, "The level of her influence on political life in Russia was utterly insignificant."
By contrast, Koval helped the Soviet Union to develo
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Are you refering to the one who stole that specially tuned pipeline control program (http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=829)?
And of course, I suppose you take great pride in the apolo missions but conviniently forget that fromer nazi war criminals took an important part in post WWII US space superiority.
As a western european, I don't like the idea that Russia has a lot of nukes, but I can't see why we should
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Remember, some days you eat the Bear and some days the Bear eats you. No precedent in this case...by far.
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Let me guess, that guy would have been a hero, right? Why? Because he was working for "God's" country and not for the "evil" Soviets.
Wake up! US is not the only country in the world and it doesn't have any sort of moral high ground. It might have had it be
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Are you saying if I take your car you would not be the victim?
Something was stolen from someone. How are they not a victim of the theft? Or is that not a crime in your world?
Re:Pride? (Score:5, Funny)
You are forgetting something. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:News for Nerds How?!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
This man was a thief, a traitor
No, that's the nuance between a traitor and a spy. From the Russian point of vue, this guy helped shape history in their favour, by tremendously helping them get the tool required to afford to make the USA crap their pants for about 40 years.
Re:News for Nerds How?!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
So this man somehow bring balance (yes, rather unpleasant, but still) in the world again. USSR having nukes stopped any other nuclear attacks just because US didn't want to risk with it.
I don't admire or celebrate what he did, but definitely it wasn't easy time for anyone, because both countries were at constant readiness to blow each other in pieces.
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we must admit that US started it, because they hated Commies so much
Not really. Americans started to hate communists as a result of the Cold War, not the other way around. Conflicts of this importance don't start off an ideological different. And as you seem to think that USSR was just being bullied around, it's necessary for me to recall you that the leader of USSR was Joseph Stalin, the most proficient genocidaire ever.
Anticommunist sentiment in the US goes back to... (Score:5, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Red_Scare [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_Raids [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Communism [wikipedia.org]
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_Intervention_in_the_Russian_Civil_War [wikipedia.org]
Re:News for Nerds How?!!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
This kind of mindless rhetorical "The US hated the USSR, so the cold war was justified" crap is tragic in the extreme. We had a 4 year window to get rid of nuclear weapons. That window closed when the USSR blockaded Berlin, and refused International control... and the rest of mankind has suffered ever since.
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A spy works works for their government, their country, and works to benefit their country by being engaging in authorized missions. A traitor betrays their country, by selling their own people out for financial gain, ideological drive or whatever.
Well in this case, it all depends on which country we consider was that man's.
Don't forget it wasn't just the Americans that were "crapping their pants" during the Cold War.
Thanks I know but it's irrelevant. My point was that thanks to his work, USSR could ente
Re:News for Nerds How?!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
What's the news for nerds angle here?
That Russia Honors the Spy Who Stole the A-Bomb . Duh...
Yeah, some nerds like to take a break from playing D&D and are actually interested in what's happening in the real world.
Re:News for Nerds How?!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:News for Nerds How?!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Trinity was the biggest physics experiment ever until George. Your definition of 'geeky' must be very sectarian.
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If he did not steal it USSR would have had no bomb for 3-4 more years until the early 50-es. USA may have probably stated WW3 by that time. Just around the time the bomb was ready. I would rather not guess the location for "testing" the prototype under those circumstances.
It is the same as with Beria. Regardless of what do I think about him and regardless of the fact that he sentenced to death many millions he has to be given the credit for "Stalin passing away in his sl
Re:News for Nerds How?!!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Very unlikely, since the citizens were pretty anti-war back then. You might have noticed how long it took us to get into WW2, and what circumstance it took?
=
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that's awesome (Score:4, Informative)
you do realize the japanese were slaughtering millions themselves in the name of imperialism? you do realize that if no A bomb was dropped, that more japanese and americans would have died in a land invasion of japan?
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You do realize that if no A bomb was dropped, that more japanese and americans would have died in a land invasion of japan?
True, too many people ignore that, but Japan had never known defeat before, and they were ready to fight it to the death. And actually, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki apparently almost failed at convinced Japanese generals and such to surrender, some believing that they didn't have more than two of such bombs. Besides, the use of incendiary bombs on Tokyo killed a lot more peo
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END COMMUNICATION
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The excuse for dropping the bomb was to force Japan's capitulation, in order to avoid a costly land invasion. This, while partially true, is mostly a matter of the victors writing the history books. Many modern historians do not believe in this interpretation, as Japan was already defeated by then. The oil fields of China were retaken, the islands of southeast Asia had been reconquered. Japan was back to its pre-war territorial borders, which contain precious few resources (they couldn't even produce enough
so you yourself admit (Score:2)
which only means you are a cynic, not a historian
Re:that's awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
In spite of all this, the Allies were ready to invade Japan. After the nukes were dropped, they revised the plan to include "softening up" the beachheads with nukes three days before GIs would hit the shores. (They didn't know too much about fallout back then.) The plans were for deaths in the hundreds of thousands. The order for Purple Hearts, the military honor for being wounded in combat, in preparation for this invasion was so large that the supplies did not run out until recently in the new Iraq War. Despite what we now may know, Allied leaders were planning on invading Japan, and the nuclear bomb stopped this from happening, and saved many lives on both sides of the table. In the documentary "The War," an American infantryman that was going to be sent to Japan, when asked about the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, said that he was relieved and glad, and that he knew this was horrible, but that the news meant that he wouldn't have to die. The troops tasked to invade Japan had no illusions of getting out alive; they assumed there were going to die because the Japanese were ruthless soldiers who fought to the death and mistreated the few prisoners they took.
The Japanese were not innocent victims in World War II. They committed all sorts of atrocities such as vivisection, raping and pillaging, and testing biological weapons on civilian populations. Japanese soldiers in the Phillippines were actually cannabalizing American GIs. (Read "Flyboys.") The Japanese still had a dominion over a large civilian population in occupied territories at the time the nuclear bombs were dropped. The civilians there were dying at a very high rate due to Japanese mistreatment. And the Japanese had said they were going to execute all the POWs they held (about a hundred thousand or so) if there was an invasion.
The bombings saved lives. Even if it didn't, the Allied leaders thought that they were saving lives by dropping the bombs. Sixty years later, it's easy for us to sit back and second guess them. But the leaders truly believed Japan had to fall. No one planned for the Japanese to surrender peacefully, even if their situation was screwed. Everything else is revisionist history ignoring who started the war, who committed the true atrocities, and who refused to quit fighting a war they had lost.
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Although I agree with the thrust of your argument it is worth keeping in mind that the Japanese were keen to surrender to the Americans than they were to the Soviets, who had just entered the Pacific War. Problem with deciding what the main cause of the Japanese surrender was is that you hear different things from differ
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Interesting that so many prominent American military leaders at the time didn't agree with your views on the atomic bombs:
From http://www.antiwar.com/henderson/?articleid=9443 [antiwar.com]
Many Army leaders had similar views. Author Norman Cousins writes of Gen. Douglas MacArthur:
"[H]e saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor."[6]
Gen. Dwi
Re:that's awesome (Score:4, Insightful)
The only disputable fact is whether it was the lesser of the evils to do so or not.
Yes, Japan had lost the war. Anyone that has done any real research on the subject knows this. But in the same vein, it is also a fact that Japan was NOT going to surrender, despite the fact that they had already lost. We're talking about a country with a mentality that allowed for using it's citizens as suicide bombs. They simply could not surrender. They had to save face. There are interviews out there with Japanese officials that stated that being Nuked was the only way to end the war without mass casualties on both sides. A land invasion of Japan would have been an all out fight for honor, to the death. Period.
Noting is ever Black And White, especially in war. But your argument tries to make it into such a beast. There is little doubt that there was some incentive to beat the Soviets in the nuke arms race. But trying to say that that is WHY those bombs were dropped, well, it's ignorant at best.
Want more proof? What do arguments like yours conveniently overlook? Hint: How many nukes were dropped? If it was as your argument suggests, then why was the 2nd one dropped?
The answer is that the Japanese STILL refused to surrender even after the first one fell. It took TWO for them to finally suck it up and admit defeat, to realize that this was the only easy way out of the war. It's horrible, for sure. But anything less would have required a full on invasion of Japan, and along with it, HUGE casualties well over and above the losses incurred from the two nukes being dropped.
I have no doubt whatsoever that the nukes would have been dropped even if Russia hadn't been working on the bomb as well.
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I strongly suggest before you post again that you look into what the Japanese did as policy to civilians in the places they invaded. To the POW's they took. Further, look in to how they treated their own civilians, women, children.
You have a lot of enlightenment ahead of you if you'll only look for it.
PS: Please don't mistake this for an argument towards stating that what the US did was Just and Good. War sucks. Many innocents died. But to
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Look up Operation Downfall. All estimates are that Japan would have suffered more casualties simply leading UP to an allied invasion than they did in the two bombings. At that time there were more than 200,000 casualties per month in the pacific theatre. Further, the casualty rate for Operation Downfall, once initiated, was at least as high as that of the bombings at best, and that's
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I'm calling you out on this -- I want a list credible historical sources who argue this. You hear this nugget of historical interpretation over and over, without anyone of significant merit backing it up.
Giv
Re:that's awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
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I guess the same folks who say it's OK to drop the bomb on Japan (twice) wouldn't mind if the war took a different path and Japan dropped two nukes on the US - after all, it would save lives, wouldn't it?
Mod parent down, he is lying (Score:5, Informative)
They did not volunteer, they were drafted.
If you're going to comment on something like this as though your opinion should be considered, you'd better make sure you don't make an obvious and glaring mistake like that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_the_United_States#World_War_I_and_World_War_II [wikipedia.org]
"Conscription was next used after the United States entered World War I in 1917. The first peacetime conscription came with the Selective Service Act of 1940, which established the Selective Service System as an independent agency. The duration of service was originally twelve months. It was expanded to eighteen months in 1941. When the United States entered World War II, service was required until six months after the end of the war."
Learn about the subject before you pretend to knowledge you obviously don't have.
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War is ugly on all levels. Killing civilian members of the enemy's society is part of it. Note that I am not excusing it, just pointing it out.
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Re:that's awesome (Score:4, Insightful)
The other faction realized they had lost, and that they could not hope to win. And that if they continued to fight then millions would die on both sides.
The atomic bombs gave them the leverage to displace the controlling faction.
****
Mind you, anyone who thinks that Japan was ready to surrender is easily disproved by history. If that was the case, we would not have to have used "two" bombs.
It's an absolute proof they were not ready to surrender.
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Yes there were factions... but none of them were stupid enough to think that they could continue the fight under existing conditions.
Two bombs were used to prove a point. Point *fucking* proved. There was very little reason to drop the first bomb, there was no reason to drop the second bomb. Re
Re:that's awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, duh. If you drop one atomic bomb and they still don't surrender, what else are you supposed to do? You have to convince the Japanese (and, yes, the Soviets) that Hiroshima wasn't just a one-shot parlor trick. The idea of losing one major city wasn't enough to convince everyone in Japan not to fight. The idea of losing one major city every three days, though, was.
It's hard for people like you to realize that nobody considered it that big a deal back then. A-bombs didn't have the totemic power they have today. All they offered at the time was one-stop shopping convenience; you could carry out a Dresden- or Toyko-scale firebombing campaign with a single plane. The idea that atomic explosions represented something radically new, different, and immoral didn't gain widespread traction until they became a hundred times more powerful.
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Re:that's awesome (Score:5, Informative)
You just had to try both designs out, didn't you?"
Prior to being dropped on its target, the Uranium bomb wasn't even tested. The mechanics of it were so simple that it was assumed to be every bit as reliable as a conventional bomb. The Plutonium bomb had been tested previously, so we knew it worked. The physics were solid, but the mechanics of the implosion device were in question until it was tested (at the Trinity test site).
So in one hand you've got a bomb we knew would work, and in the other you've got a bomb we'd tested already. Just had to try out both designs? That's just stupid.
Both were dropped because they didn't surrender immediately. Had they continued their refusal to surrender, we would have kept dropping nuclear weapons until no one was left alive from that country to threaten the world. The United States did not start that war, we ended it. We ended it by hitting two military targets, one of which was chosen because of the military value combined with the fact that the surrounding topography drastically limited the blast radius to minimize civilian casualties. You just can't drop bombs that big without civilian casualties. On the other hand, there was no way to convince Japan that continuing the fight was futile without dropping bombs that big. Until they believed that they would be completely annihilated without even the honor of taking as many of their enemy down with them, they were committed to a land war where every man, woman, and child would fight to the death.
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Then again, there are some new reading materials that challenge my understanding of the situation... http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/HASRAC.html [harvard.edu]
Who knows what to believe.
i find that hard to believe (Score:2)
the japanese, in their actions throughout southeast asia and the island hopping campaign, made it abundantly clear time and again that they were not going to give up one inch of land without fierce resistance to the death, even when that meant suicide by the thousands of personnel, down to the individual decisions of individual japanese soldiers
consider japanese actions on iwo jima, saipan, etc, by the truckload of examples. now ask yourself at the time what any l
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As the GP said, the A-Bombs probably saved more Japanese lives than they killed (considering the alternative was a land invasion). Of course, the US intent was only the US lives, which it also saved in much greater number.
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you're not a historian, you're an anti-american (Score:2, Insightful)
the japanese, in their actions throughout southeast asia and the island hopping campaign, made it abundantly clear time and again that they were not going to give up one inch of land without fierce resistance to the death, even when that meant suicide by the thousands of personnel, down to the individual decisions of individual japanese soldiers
consider japanese actions on
Re:you're not a historian, you're an anti-american (Score:5, Insightful)
Go ask Korea or some of the other surrounding neighbors about how vicious Japan was to fight against. The Japanese believed they were doing you a favor by killing you instead of letting you return home shamed. They didn't understand how Americans could surrender. To them surrendering made you a non person.
I swear...I am pretty pissed about a lot of things that America has done over the years, but this is one of those areas that people need to wake up, read their history, and attempt to understand the cultural differences that lead to that horrific event. "America is eeevil" card gets so overplayed, now that we actually need it to fix things no one takes it seriously. Catapult the propoganda and all... But hey, good luck explaining that to the folks you are chastising for believing the anti-American propoganda. That's kinda the point of propoganda.
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Do I believe the bomb was bad? Absolutely. Do I believe dropping it on civilians was bad? Absolutely. Do I
Nice trolling (Score:5, Insightful)
Millions of japanese? 140.000 at Horishima 80.000 at Nagasaki, several thousand afterwards. That is a quarter million from the results of the way. The cities in question would have had to been wiped out from fallout and after effects SEVERAL times to even reach one million.
So where do you get your millions from? The total death toll of WW2 is estimated around 50 million, the americans accounted for a small fraction of that. Major culprits where the germans, the russians and the japanese. It is often forgotten but they had a regime as brutal as the holocaust.
The A-bombs are noteworthy because they killed a lot of people with just one device. Before that you needed large bomber formations or massive organisation to achieve the same amount of killing, but compare it to the slaughter on the eastern front, the japanese death camps, the german concentration camps or even carpet bombing, and they were just a small note on that huge ledger of lost lives that we call WW2.
Millions of japanese lives, geez. Grow up and read a book.
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Wow, get a history lesson.
The Germans started the European stage. The Japanese started the Pacific stage. About the only thing they had going on between the two was
1) Agreements not to attack eachother (both planned to drop this as soon as convinient)
2) Slight sharing of tech and resources.
World War II was really two separate wars. The Japanese war against the US and mainland Asia, and the German/Italian war against Europe/Africa/Russia.
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World War II was really two separate wars.
Yes and no. He's right in that the USA had to wait for Japan to attack them to enter the war in Europe. Basically, Roosevelt wanted to enter the war, as back then they were providing stuff to both sides, the problem was the public opinion was against way. FDR knew that the attack on Pearl Harbor would occur (only they didn't expect how big it would be) and let it happen to change people's mind about the way and enter a full-blown war against the Axis both in Europ
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But I'd wager you'd betray this nation in a heartbeat if the opportunity presented itself. Sure this nation has a long list of wrongs. But compared to most countries that wielded as much power as America has (or even a lot less) their atrocities far outweigh America's.
Remember, before America started winning wars, the victors made the losing nation(s) pay for the war costs. I
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Yes, I totally see your point. Ask the Vietnamese, they can vouch for the humanism and compassion in napalm form they received by your country! What you are comparing is apples and oranges because it suits you, and your nationalistic "morality" (brings back Emma Goldman's statement about patriotism but I'll leave it out).
What happened over the years is not US becoming a benevolent hegemon (only american citizens believe that, I wonder why?) but the public
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The US of today is not the same US of the 1940's. Nobody's trying to say 'What the US did then was good, and thus everything they do now is golden'. The world has changed.
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That doesn't make it right, but considering the density of Japan, there aren't a whole lot of options. Cosider what would have happened if they had gone for Tokyo and Kyoto instead?
Re:youre a dirty damn hippy (Score:4, Informative)
Both cities had relatively small populations in comparison to other locations in Japan with major military installations. They probably could have made a good case for a military installation in Tokyo, but they didn't. They could have gone for minor installations, but that would have been ineffective.
Sometimes you can't avoid colatteral damage, but you can minimize it, and this does appear to be the case.
Article text (Score:5, Informative)
The New York Times
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November 12, 2007
A Spy's Path: Iowa to A-Bomb to Kremlin Honor
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
He had all-American cover: born in Iowa, college in Manhattan, Army buddies with whom he played baseball.
George Koval also had a secret. During World War II, he was a top Soviet spy, code named Delmar and trained by Stalin's ruthless bureau of military intelligence.
Atomic spies are old stuff. But historians say Dr. Koval, who died in his 90s last year in Moscow and whose name is just coming to light publicly, was probably one of the most important spies of the 20th century.
On Nov. 2, the Kremlin startled Western scholars by announcing that President Vladimir V. Putin had posthumously given the highest Russian award to a Soviet agent who penetrated the Manhattan Project to build the atom bomb.
The announcement hailed Dr. Koval as "the only Soviet intelligence officer" to infiltrate the project's secret plants, saying his work "helped speed up considerably the time it took for the Soviet Union to develop an atomic bomb of its own."
Since then, historians, scientists, federal officials and old friends have raced to tell Dr. Koval's story -- the athlete, the guy everyone liked, the genius at technical studies. American intelligence agencies have known of his betrayal at least since the early 1950s, when investigators interviewed his fellow scientists and swore them to secrecy.
The spy's success hinged on an unusual family history of migration from Russia to Iowa and back. That gave him a strong commitment to Communism, a relaxed familiarity with American mores and no foreign accent.
"He was very friendly, compassionate and very smart," said Arnold Kramish, a retired physicist who studied with Dr. Koval at City College and later worked with him on the bomb project. "He never did homework."
Stewart D. Bloom, a senior physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, who also studied with Dr. Koval, called him a regular guy.
"He played baseball and played it well," usually as shortstop, Dr. Bloom recalled. "He didn't have a Russian accent. He spoke fluent English, American English. His credentials were perfect."
Once, Dr. Bloom added, "I saw him staring off in the distance and thinking about something else. Now I think I know what it was."
Over the years, scholars and federal agents have identified a half-dozen individuals who spied on the bomb project for the Soviets, especially at Los Alamos in New Mexico. All were "walk ins," spies by impulse and sympathetic leaning rather than rigorous training.
By contrast, Dr. Koval was a mole groomed in the Soviet Union by the feared G.R.U., the military intelligence agency. Moreover, he gained wide access to America's atomic plants, a feat unknown for any other Soviet spy. Nuclear experts say the secrets of bomb manufacturing can be more important than those of design.
Los Alamos devised the bomb, while its parts and fuel were made at secret plants in such places as Oak Ridge, Tenn., and Dayton, Ohio -- sites Dr. Koval not only penetrated, but also assessed as an Army sergeant with wide responsibilities and authority.
"He had access to everything," said Dr. Kramish, who worked with Dr. Koval at Oak Ridge and now lives in Reston, Va. "He had his own Jeep. Very few of us had our own Jeeps. He was clever. He was a trained G.R.U. spy." That status, he added, made Dr. Koval unique in the history of atomic espionage, a judgment historians echo.
Washington has known about Dr. Koval's spying since he fled the United States shortly after the war but kept it secret.
"It would have been highly embarrassing for the U.S. government to have had this divulged," said Robert S. Norris, au
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you mean the rocket and missile technology they stole from the germans?
Uhh, yeah, you realize that we did the same thing [wikipedia.org], right?
Don't underestimate Russian technology or engineering. It's easy to make light of it (vacuum tubes in their fighters, Chernobyl, In Soviet Russia.... jokes, etc, etc) but in so doing you miss some of their real accomplishments.
Russian rocket/missile technology is every bit as advanced (in some cases more so) as Western technology. There is no Western version of this [wikipedia.org] for example. Their ICBM technology was sufficiently advanced to scare the hell