WW2 shows why you don't 'fight to the end'. The Nazi's tortured and murdered and raped through east and central Europe. After a couple of invasions, every other country knew they could never trust them not to break every promise and law and act in extreme aggression. And through ceaselessly and single mindedly murdering the Slavs and others, they sowed the seeds for what happened when the red army poured in through the east. Everyone watching understood the threat was as extreme as it got - there were no half measures - their lives depended on a war which could only ever be won by totally destroying every last bit of Nazism. There could be no mercy, they were not rational, they'd never surrender, or if they did, you had to consider that they couldn't be trusted even to act in their own interests, to save themselves. They were snakes, who had repeatedly showed nothing would get in the way of their true desire, to to kill and destroy as many of their enemies as possible. Total war is where the entire country is totally focused on the war effort. This was something even worse, where the Nazis kept chosing to up the stakes, chosing to turn it into a war that for them would only ever end with total obliteration and absolute submission of every enemy by absolutely whatever means neccessary - or with their own utter destruction.
Japan made the same mistake. Kamikaze squadrons, and defending every inch of every Pacific Island beyond any reasonable. They created a martial, nationalistic cult centered around the Emporer, that was designed to make every citizen fight with every last breath, sticks and stones, beyond anything that had been seen before. Quite similar to what happened with Nazism, but somehow the population were even more single minded, perhaps because they were not 'the Nazis who took charge of the state of Germany' - they were simply Japan, the Emporer and his people - an indivisible concept.
It was very believable that the mainland invasion would have been neccessary and resulted in utterly devestating losses. The battles for Pelilau and so on showed how outrageously costly fighting them would be. And it's arguable that the dropping of the Bomb was designed to deter any further aggressors.
We did have unbroken peace. The UN. The rise of stable democracies that provided social security, health care and universal education. Falling crime, falling poverty. And so on.
However, we don't know what would have happened if the Japanese had surrendered either before an invasion, or soon after one. One question that remains is how true it is that every last avenue was pursued in persuading a diplomatic solution. The US believed the Emporer would have to resign to ensure his people ceased waging war - yet (if I've also got this right) they also believed this would never be acceptable. Did they really try to resolve this? Did they speak to everyone they could? There's a World At War episode that deals with this, I believe, as well as other documentaries.
Anyway, I feel very greatful I grew up after this event, and not before it. It is the defining moment that took us from a world of nations locked in wasteful war, to the stability of the second half of C20. The world was watching news reels in Cinemas. After watching years films of military build up, nationalistic and patriotic fervour, stirring and incredibly striking films of the rallies in Nuremberg.... then the footage of the ongoing war, tales of heroism, and the insistent toll on everyone of the casualties and conditions... onto the celebration of VE day.
But what lived with my mother, a young girl at the time, was what came then. The films from the liberation of Bergen Belsen and other concentration camps.
The truth for me is that part of me is glad that the whole thing was ended - and it was witnessed by millions - an explosion and destruction on a scale never before imagined. But as for the reality for the human beings who suffered unimaginably at great length - so many infants and children - I'll never really understand how it was viewed as 'acceptable'.
From Dr Strangelove, to Terminator Two. Tales of the true horror of the bomb were never far away from the screen when I was growing up. Penderecki's Threnody For The Victims Of Hiroshima was used to take us into the essence of murderous madness in The Shining. David Lynch used Penderecki many times over, most recently in Episode 8 of Twin Peaks The Return. This abstract and wordless sequence forms the middle episode 8, and is seen as as close as we will ever come to a Twin Peaks origin story - A madness escaped from the bomb. Which, you may say, was what Penderecki was illustrating.
Something so beyond human comprehension and compassion. We live in a world where we can, with a single thimble of atoms, destroy more than can be imagined, kill many millions, and create more suffering than could destroy the world. We already have done so, because the horror of war as it was waged, the torture and murder and gruesome sick treatment of humans, had become intolerable, inexplicable, and it had happened on a scale no-one could really fathom. You're one person, but you know how much YOU can suffer. Multiply it by a hundred thousand, a million. Children, mothers, people in childbirth. One teaspoon of atoms can wipe them out with the only traces being those left to suffer beyond comprehension, for days, weeks, months, years to come.
And tomorrow, you will get up, and carry on, as if nothing ever happened.
