I used to read old Life Magazines.

[SheilaT]

As I'm sure you all know, they started in November, 1936. Three decades ago I was attending a university that had bound issues starting with number 1.

Even though I was born several years after WWII ended, it's as if I remember the late '30's and early '40's. I learned a vast number of things from those old Life's. but I restrict myself right now just to the atom bomb controversy.

World War II was terrible. I don't need to tell you that. It was terrible no matter which side you were on. Among the things I learned from reading those old Life's were this: Japan was on a total war footing. Their economy was 100% focussed on the war, on winning it. I read at least one article on this topic. It's so long ago I can't recall the details, but it was something along the lines of small back yard enterprises to make bullets.

Germany, on the other hand, never went to a full war economy. Their citizens, until the very end, basically never suffered any shortages of food, clothing, or anything else. Of course, the conquered people in Europe suffered terribly, because they had to supply Germany. (As an aside, in an autobiography written by Miep Gies, one of those who helped Anne Frank and her family hide, she said she didn't know how they could have kept the fugitives alive in the starvation times of 1944 and 1945.) So we were able, more or less easily, to defeat Germany. By late 1944 Life Magazine was publishing articles about the coming peace, and what we'd need to do to accommodate the millions of returning soldiers.

The war in the Pacific was something else entirely. As I've already said, Japan was on a total war footing. In 1943 or 1944 there was a photo essay about our soldiers conquering some island in the South Pacific. Rather than risk being captured by American soldiers, Japanese women and children plunged to their deaths over a cliff into the ocean. It was heartbreaking for the soldiers (and journalists) who witnessed this. But it was also clear by that point that we were engaged in a total war with Japan.

It was obvious to the most casual observer that as the war in Europe was winding down, the war in the Pacific was only getting worse. I was only able to read through March, 1945. It was clear at that point that the war in Europe was nearly at an end. It was just a matter of time, and the end would come when Adolf Hitler or his generals surrendered. It was equally clear that the war in the Pacific would be continuing for at least another year, and that we'd have to invade the Home Islands at great cost to ourselves and to the Japanese people. We'd be fighting house to house, forced to slaughter every man, woman, and child along the way.

Since I haven't been able to read Life beyond the end of March, 1945, I often want to ask, How did the war end? Was Hitler ever put on trial? How long was it before we conquered Japan?

I'm being deliberately naive, because of course I really do know how the war ended. But I'm trying to give everyone who reads this the context, of what if felt like back then.

The bombs ended the war. They killed many people, but many more survived. It's also largely forgotten that the fire bombing of various cities, including Dresden, Germany, and Tokyo, Japan, killed easily as many people as died in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

War is terrible. I have a lot of trouble understanding why countries ever go to war, but then I'm a woman, and lack the go-to-war gene. But anyone who blithely says that dropping the atom bombs was completely unnecessary simply has no idea what it was actually like back then. Okay, so we could have skipped the atom bombs. But then we'd have been fire-bombing every single major city in Japan, with millions dead, and then we'd have invaded, killing hundreds of thousands more. Not to mention the million American casualties that were expected in the invasion.

So for all of those who think we could have not dropped the atom bomb, you're right, except you haven't thought of the cost of not dropping them.

[hollysmom]

1. I did that too when I was in college.

I read the ads as well as the article. I was just trying to get a handle on the feelings of people then, and what was important to them The hope that was then, the sort of innocence, not as much cynicism.

[pacalo]

2. However one feels about the atom bomb, this was a good read & thought-provoking.

I used to buy the old Life magazines at the symphony book fairs, but I mostly focused on the 60s. My mom subscribed to Life magazine beginning with the JFK presidency; she kept stacks of them around the living room.

I've missed out by not searching the earlier issues.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

3. Lately, I've been watching, on YouTube, '80s Gwynne Dyer documentaries.

Very cool documentaries on war with lots of interviews with WW2 vets - some done in the '70s.

Anyway, there was this old timer discussing, in what appeared to be an older (at the time of the making of the documentary) interview, the men that were being transferred from Europe to the Pacific theatre. He said they were gathered in a staging area when news of the bomb drop broke and grown men started to cry and hug each other when they realized the would be spared the invasion.

[RobertEarl]

4. Thanks, Shelia

I have come to this question in an attempt to answer the Bomb question:

If Japan had developed the bomb before we we did, would they have used it on us?

War is hell and is foremost a failure of diplomacy. Let us not fail at diplomacy again, I pray.

[JDPriestly]

5. Did you read this in old Life magazines?

Germany, on the other hand, never went to a full war economy. Their citizens, until the very end, basically never suffered any shortages of food, clothing, or anything else.

That is not true. The German people suffered horrible bombing raids and lacked food. Families were separated with children sent to the country to avoid the bombs. Food was rationed.

There was a rationing program in Germany during World War 2 but towards the end of the war people were lucky to find food anywhere because of all the damage done to the German cities during the bombing raids. The rationing program in Germany was not like the rationing programs in the Allied Nations. The rationing at the beginning of the war was not very restrictive on the German populace. It became a severe program about halfway through the war. See the link below for the details of Germany's rationing program.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Was_there_rationing_in_Germany_during_World_War_2

Ordinary Germans suffered during and after the war. The early years were easier than they were in some occupied countries, but it soon became very difficult. They were on a war footing. The men were taken into the army.

Americans had rationing too, but actually we fared the best in WWII.

[SheilaT]

7. I will simply say that was the distinct impression I got

from reading the magazines. Yes, they did suffer horrible bombing raids and so on, but at least during the first half of the war there were not the scarcities that existed elsewhere. There was simply not the total gearing up to a war economy that we had in this country and that they did even more so in Japan.

If my comments made it sound as if I thought the Germans simply waltzed through the war with no sacrifices, that is not what I intended. What I'm trying to convey is the sense that I got of the differences between the three countries.

After the war Germans bore the full brunt of having been the defeated aggressor. It's my understanding that many ordinary civilians in that country, as well as in Japan, would have starved in 1945 and 1946 had not various soldiers and/or civilian relief workers taken some of them under their wing and given them food. I mainly know about this from other sources because my reading of Life Magazine ended with the last issue in March of 1945.

And yes, we did fare best in that war if for no other reason than, other than the bombing of Pearl Harbor and a few isolated things on the west coast, the war never came to this country. We had rationing, but it was more at the level of creating inconvenience, rather than hardship.

Restaurants, by the way, were never subject to rationing, which is why night-life in this country never suffered.

Here's another thing that shines through to me in those old magazines: You can see the roots of the Civil Rights movement. Not directly, but indirectly as for the first time ever African Americans can now get decent jobs at decent pay. You can see it happen as white men went off to war in great numbers starting in 1942, and someone had to do the jobs they left behind. So the gap was filled by those who formerly would not have been hired.

[JDPriestly]

8. That mostly demonstrates the misinformation you can get from relying on Life magazine

for your view of history.

The German people were in war mode well before we were. The men were serving in the military leaving women and children at home. I know people who were there. They may have fared somewhat better than the people in some of the countries they invaded, but life was very hard.

The one thing that people say that is positive about Hitler was that he insured full employment. Of course. He killed or imprisoned everyone who disagreed with him (which included a lot of Germans, by the way including even some nuns and protestant pastors), shipped anyone with a severe disability or the wrong religion off to, first, labor, and then extermination, camps and put everyone on rations. If a butcher ate more than his allotted ration of meat, he was jailed even if it was his meat so to speak.

The Germans suffered during WWII, but they were so heavily propagandized that they did not readily admit it until the day the war was over. They were afraid and put on happy faces.

Misinformation is a powerful thing.

[liberal_at_heart]

6. sorry but I still don't think it justifies it. The lives of the people saved by not having an

invasion were not worth more than those who died in the bombing.

[tabasco]

9. Pro-war, fight to the death fanatics were in control of Japan

at the time we dropped both bombs. FACT.