Hiroshima: Lincoln's Legacy to Civilians

The Thirty Years' War, 1618-48, ended with the Treaty of Westphalia. That was one of the great events in Western history. It lasted until the summer of 1864.

The Thirty Years' War shook Europe to its core. Prior to that war, the influence of the Catholic Church in restricting warfare to warriors had been dominant in the West. Protestants generally respected this tradition for a century. But in 1618, the tradition ended. It ended in Germany, and it ended in the Netherlands a year later, with the end of the 12-year truce between Spain and the Netherlands. The 80-year war of secession resumed.

In the German principalities, armies destroyed civilian households and churches. Family records ended in Germany for most people during the war, because both sides burned down the churches of the opposing side, and birth records in the form of baptismal records were burned with them.

In 1648, two wars ended: the Thirty Years' War and the war of Spanish Independence. In reaction to the bloodshed, German society was restructured. The new rule was this in Germany: the religion of the local prince would decide the religion of his subjects. A great migration began, as families moved from principality to principality in search of religious toleration.

It was understood by Europeans in 1648 that the bloodshed would have to de-escalate. Europe would have to go back to what it was before 1618, where the rights of civilians would be respected.

BREAKING THIS TRADITION

This tradition was honored until 1864. Then, Lincoln made a decision to unleash the military forces of the Union Army against Southern civilians. It began in the summer of 1864, when he authorized Sheridan's forces to burn the farms of civilians in the Shenandoah Valley. This was the origin of the modern war of terror on civilians. Sherman's troops dug up railroad tracks, placing them in the proximity of trees, and heating them, so that they could be hammered into "Sherman's neckties" around the trees. Sherman fully understood the the only way to get rid of those reminders of defeat would be to chop down the trees. He burned Atlanta because he wanted to send a message to a defeated, helpless population. "War is hell," he famously said. He helped make it so as a matter of policy. Then he took his troops on the legendary march to the sea. The Union Army stole everything it could from Southern civilians. It lived off the land. Only it didn't; it lived off the wives and children of the region.

The American Civil War was the first modern war. It was the first war ever to be fought by means of telegraphy and the railroads. Rapid communications and rapid transportation combined to create a new form of warfare. Europe recognized the transformation immediately. But Europe did not immediately adopt the other aspect of the American Civil War: the legitimacy of war on civilians. Lincoln, as Commander in Chief, oversaw a return to the bloodshed of the Thirty Years' War. That tradition lasted operationally until August 9, 1945.

With the two bombs, the technology of civilian destruction advanced, in one technological quantum leap, to such an extent that it terrified the world, and for good reason.

In Japan, the United States had been using high-altitude incendiary bombing against 67 Japanese cities ever since March 10, 1945, the first raid on Tokyo. The war on civilians continued to escalate. This matched the war on civilians on both sides by Germany and England that had taken place in World War II. But that war ended in May. Now it was Japan's turn to experience the devastation that the allies had imposed on Dresden the previous February. The ruthless annihilation of civilians would continue.

Then, on August 6, 1945, the first stage of the next escalation in the war against civilians took place in Hiroshima. Three days later, the second event took place in Nagasaki. At that point, the Emperor announced the surrender of Japan to American armed forces.

The debate went on before the bomb was dropped over the military necessity of it. Senior military commanders were divided, but this indicated to President Truman that the attacks might not be strategically necessary. It was clear that Japan could be blockaded, and that, by July of 1945, the ability of Japanese military forces to inflict serious damage on American forces outside of Japan had ended. But Truman wanted to make a point. He did not want to be in the possession of a weapon of mass destruction that he would not use. He knew that word would get out to the public that such a weapon existed, and he knew the public would insist on its deployment.

The American government in 1945 was taxed out, borrowed out, and inflated out. It had to have an end to the war. But Truman, like Abraham Lincoln, had adopted the policy of unconditional surrender. That policy was an all-or-nothing policy. It had been adopted by Roosevelt to fight World War II. In other words, it was basic to American civilian strategy.

We must not forget the United States Constitution does place the President at the head of the military. There is civilian military control in this country. President Truman had the decision to make, and he made the decision to drop the first bomb, and then to drop the second bomb.

It has been argued that he did this to make a point to the Soviet Union. That has never been proven. It may have been true, but the documentary evidence doesn't indicate it. But Truman was, above all, a politician. He recognized that the United States government could not continue to tax, borrow, and inflate if the American public believed the war could be brought to a speedy end. They would stop buying war bonds. The Federal Reserve System would have to continue to inflate, and price and wage controls would have to suppress this monetary inflation, creating massive shortages. The public would no longer tolerate rationing and control over occupations if the public knew that the war could be brought to a speedy end. The black market would have extended its influence across the economy.

Truman therefore had two choices: drop the two bombs or else abandon unconditional surrender as civilian policy governing the military. He was unwilling to drop unconditional surrender, just as Lincoln had been unwilling to drop it in the summer of 1864. So, he decided to escalate the war on civilians.

The main criterion of conditional surrender for Japan would have been the maintenance of the Emperor's formal control, at least officially, over Japan. That was exactly what Truman unofficially gave to Japan. American military forces did not bomb his residence during the firebombings of Tokyo. After the war, he was not removed from command. So, the most important single condition that Japan would have held out to achieve, Truman allowed Japan to keep. But he never announced it as policy. He simply imposed it as policy.

At least with respect to what has happened since August 9, 1945, the world has gone back to the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. The United States government remains the only government ever to use nuclear weapons against a military enemy.

MUTUAL ASSURED DESTRUCTION

The United States and the Soviet Union adopted the immoral program of the mutual assured destruction of civilians, beginning no later than the Kennedy administration. Some historians would date it earlier: the Eisenhower/Dulles policy of "brinksmanship." Both sides saved money on their armed forces by adopting nuclear first-strike capabilities, which equated to Armageddon on the cheap. Both sides assumed that the other side would not attack first, because of the threat of retaliatory mutual annihilation. In October, 1962, the world almost lost the bet. But after that time, Kennedy pulled back, and so did the Soviet Union. Never again would there be, officially anyway, anything close to mutual assured destruction.

The policy of mutual assured destruction was never officially announced. Civilians on both sides of the Iron Curtain were never told that they were gigantic bargaining chips in foreign-policy conflicts. They were never told that they were not protected from nuclear attack as a matter of policy, a policy to save money on military expenditures.

Both sides understood this. In 1972, the United States government authorized the sale to the USSR of the crucial technology for manufacturing MIRVed nuclear warheads. These were missiles on which one rocket could launch at least 10 warheads against 10 separate targets. To do this, a country had to have ball bearing production, and the Soviet Union did not have it. But the United States government authorized the one company in the West that possessed this technology to sell it to the Soviet Union. This enabled the Soviet Union to escalate its threat against the United States to match the United States' threat against the Soviet Union. This was national policy. The public never knew this. It was policy on the side of the United States government to make certain that the Soviet Union always had the power to annihilate the United States of America. It had the power to annihilate civilians. This would retain the policy of mutual assured destruction. America would not get ahead of the Soviet Union, which would keep the great game between them going on.

The public never knew any of this. The Soviet Union did not announce it to its people, and the United States government did not announce it to its people. If any policy in the modern world can be regarded as satanic, mutual assured destruction certainly is at the top of the list. So far, it has worked, and we hope that it will continue to work, but inherently, it is satanic. It is a war against civilians.

CONCLUSIONS

So far, we can date the war against civilians. It began with Abraham Lincoln, and it ended with Harry Truman. It did not end strategically with Truman, but it did end operationally. Nuclear weapons have never been used against civilian populations since August 9, 1945. Let us hope that this unofficial Treaty of Westphalia continues to operate.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki marked the turning point back to something like operational sanity. It was not a turning back to strategic sanity. Strategic insanity continued to escalate, along with the mega-tonnage of the hydrogen bomb. But neither side ever again pushed the button.