just to be clear on the timeline:

Aug. 6th 1945 - bombing of Hiroshima
Aug. 8th 1945 - USSR declares full war on Japan, invades Manchuria
Aug. 9th 1945 - bombing of Nagasaki
Aug. 15th 1945 - japanese emperor breaks the gridlocked tie in council to declare surrender

so to be clear, its not a historical claim that the bombs didn't necessarily prove to be the final reason Japan surrendered, nor my claim. its my claim and a claim many echo that the bombs were entirely unnecessary to get a surrender, also an invasion itself may have been unnecessary. the Japanese council was already debating surrender before either bomb or USSR pivoted most of it's forces from the western front. Japan was encircled, the european allies were ready to reinforce both US and USSR forces. The US's war machine was at full tilt and between the may surrender of Germany and August all focus turned to Japan. Hirohito in an interview much later on in the 1970s admitted that while the bombs shocked him, his council, and the nation they were already depleted and it was clear they could not fight on heading into august. it was only a few council holdovers that wanted to fight which were losing favor among their peers with each subsequent council meeting. The Potsdam Declaration didn't specify the Emperor's fate or status moving forward, a major misstep by the allies maybe due to cultural differences and not understanding the reverence japan had for its spiritual ruler, then zero further attempts from July to Hiroshima. imo because they wanted to bomb them, and u cant bomb someone who surrendered.

so really my main point was the bombs were not motivated by japanese surrender, but rather a show of force to the world. perhaps even an attempt to dissuade large scale conflicts moving forward.

Lol. There are a couple other historians who covered this period, but they were all overwhelmingly in favor of Justinian. The fact that you are critical of him proves my point, all of your opinions on Justinian come directly from Procopius.

Justinian retook Rome after 60 years, and much more lost territory. He created the corpus juris civilis and built the Hagia Sophia as well as restoring/building thousands more historical buildings across the empire. Saying that Justinian ran his empire into the ground is entirely Procopius’ bias, in fact Justinian’s rule was a massive resurgence of Roman power, culture and law. He did all this in spite of the horrible outbreak of plague during his reign. He was undeniably one of the most productive emperors in history, possibly number 1.

The fact that you don’t realize that all of your knowledge comes from Procopius suggests to me that you got it all from youtube. If I’m wrong you’re free to quote another historian that wrote the things you have claimed here.

It should be noted that I did not compare Justinian to either Israel or Trump, I only brought him up as an example of historical bias which you have now hammered home.

That timeline is not exactly correct, the surrender was signed and announced on August 15th, but it was offered on August 10th.

Again, I agree with you on the show of force. What we know is that there were plans for a ground invasion of Japan, which projected a lot of allied casualties, and that the bombs were used as an alternative. Whether the ground invasion was unnecessary or they would have surrendered in a week regardless is all speculation. What we know for a fact is that the bombs forced an immediate and unconditional surrender.

sure, but its like if a man was laying dying and we shot him in the head. we could say the bullet immediately ended his life. what matters is why he was shot, and if he'd have died anyways. the real issue here is the US army spent a lot of time in may, june, and july planning how to crush japan with germany and italy out of the war. but made a single sloppy attempt to negotiate a surrender, not even negotiate, demand. i'd say its because we had a bomb, and wanted to use it, so we made plans to make sure we could drop it on japan. we drafted some papers stating we'd lose millions in a ground war, which may still be true, but it didnt matter. no ground war was going to happen, and they didnt want a surrender before we bombed.

in any case we're wandered far from the original context, and i think we largely agree.

(a) I don’t need a bitter historian that you have a crush on to tell me Justinian was a failure. The events speak for themselves: overextended wars, a drained treasury, repeated humiliation of his best general Belisarius, and an empire left exhausted and vulnerable by the time he died. You don’t need Procopius to tell you Justinian left the empire worse off than he found it — all you need is a map.

(b) Likewise, I don’t need a bitter historian to tell me the United States committed atrocities against Native Americans. I can’t reconcile the notion of hundreds of years of “Indians winning” with the systemic ethnic cleansing that took place. The events speak for themselves: mass killings, broken treaties, and the systematic seizure of land. You don’t need anyone’s opinion to see that these actions were morally reprehensible — again, you can just see it on a map, same applies to Israel and the Palestinians by the way. I dont need an expert to lecture me on whether ethnic cleansing is occurring or not.

By all meas read Procopius but at the same time a degree of logic and simple common sense does help. Also if we can discuss football, we can discuss politic's or history, we dont need a exclusive degree for this, but i accept some people simply refuse to have these conversations.

This post was edited by ferdia on Nov 7 2025 10:53am

Lol I thought you were joking when you said your reading comprehension is bad.

I’ve read all of Procopius’ work, but I don’t “have a crush on him” lol I’ve repeatedly called him a liar, that was the whole point of the post you just quoted… you are the one defending Procopius’ views, you just don’t realize it because you haven’t read his work and all your information is coming from youtube or wikipedia.

This post was edited by Shadowoffury on Nov 7 2025 11:02am

well you just proved my point.

with brevity, look, this is the Israel thread. if you want to talk about Justinian, go make a thread, If you want to talk about bias there is enough of that in this thread or even the russia thread. why bother to argue about an empire long dead when we have bias here in this thread. or go to any of the US threads, noting that the bias in those threads is next level. you dont need to go that far back in history for examples of bias.

people in here are still not agreeing that there is ethnic cleansing going on in the occupied territories, or that they are occupied. some people think that collective punishment is OK.

This post was edited by ferdia on Nov 7 2025 11:27am

I wasn’t even talking to you when I brought up Justinian, you quoted me replying to someone else and expanded on a small point I made in reference to a question I was asked. You started the argument, don’t act like I’m being ridiculous in arguing with you about it. If you didn’t want to argue about Justinian then you shouldn’t have argued about Justinian, I didn’t force your hand.

And no I didn’t just prove your point because that would require you to have had a point in the first place.

In simplistic terms, you came into this topic. You basically said the Palestinians deserve to be destroyed, all of them, because they attacked someone stronger, just like the Indians deserved to be wiped out by the Americans, because they were weaker. Neither are victims, based on your bias, because they were weaker.

This is the view that you conveyed when you said:





This post was edited by ferdia on Nov 7 2025 01:00pm

All of that is a mischaracterization of my views. I don't think all Palestinians deserve to be destroyed, nor did I say or in any way imply that. And I didn't say that they aren't victims because they were weaker. They aren't victims because they are guilty of the same things and would have done the same or worse if they had won.

Disproportional response does not mean "kill every single person". I defined and qualified it for you, in fact, right in that portion of my post that you just quoted. Seriously, you should put a little more effort into understanding what you are reading before you respond to it.