Even if the US bombed the USSR and prevented a counterstrike the US would have been worse off.
You don't get to subtract 100M people out of 2.7B , the 2nd country in GDP and expect things to remain as they were before.
Also the entire world would have reacted, anticipating that they too were going to be nuked as soon as they did something which would have even remotely alerted paranoid Uncle Sam.
You have to understand where Von Nuemann came from to see why he wanted to initiate a first strike prior to the USSR developing nuclear weapons.
He lost lots of family and friends due to the nazis. He saw his people get slaughtered due to a nation with crazy ideology being technically superior. He never wanted to be put in that situation again and worked on the Manhattan project because he believed in the USA.
He viewed the USSR as another threat just like the nazis. For many it seemed like a guarantee that war would happen. Many also claimed that early attack could save lives.
I’m not here to claim what he felt was right, but given the environment and conditions he lived through, I don’t pretend that I wouldn’t hold similar views given the circumstances.
That would be if the US bombed every single inch of Russia. There was not that capability for a while. Not saying killing any people is okay, let alone millions or hundred million. But I don't believe the intention of a strategic first strike on the USSR was to kill every person. Knocking out 1/2 cities would have accomplished their goals, resulting in the collapse of the Soviet Union, and in their mind saving more millions from the believed inevitable global nuclear WW3. Again, not saying it's justified, you're just viewing this from the future where you can see the outcome.
The war plans in the 60s against an industialized nuclear power were very different than the war plans in the 40s when von Neumann was advocating this.
> you're just viewing this from the future where you can see the outcome
No we don't know what would happens if the US did that, because thank God they did not do it.
We saw that 2 cities in Japan was bombed with no retaliation (I'm aware the bombing itself was a pretend retaliation). If anything is to be learnt from that it would be the US can get away with killing people.
>"Even if the US bombed the USSR and prevented a counterstrike the US would have been worse off."
Von Neumann may have been advocating for a strike before the Soviets had operational nuclear capabilities.
>"You don't get to subtract 100M people out of 2.7B , the 2nd country in GDP and expect things to remain as they were before."
It is unlikely that an American nuclear strike would have wiped out the entire population of the Soviet Union; one would expect a targeted strike on critical government and army facilities, or something like what happened against the Japanese.
>"Also the entire world would have reacted, anticipating that they too were going to be nuked as soon as they did something which would have even remotely alerted paranoid Uncle Sam. "
The rest of the world didn't conquer and subjugate all of Eastern Europe, then steal from them and kidnap people in large numbers.
> or something like what happened against the Japanese.
By the time the nukes were dropped, the 60 or so largest cities in Japan had been decimated by bombing (Kyoto was famously spared largely because of the sympathies of a single officer). When Tokyo was firebombed over 100k civilians were burned alive in a single night, the overwhelming majority of them women, children, and old men.
Justified as it may have been, we shouldn't promote a mythology that WW2 was a clean and narrowly targeted campaign by the allies.
There's an excellent documentary by Errol Morris named The Fog of War that has McNamara's very frank commentary on these issues. You also can find some letters Churchill wrote where he was engaging with these questions, such as asking himself if the fire bombing was morally much different from the use of chemical agents during WW1.
Any sort of pre-emptive strike by the US vs the USSR would have been similarly ugly, with very real human cost to ordinary people with no agency in the situation.
I'd expect, if there would still have been functioning-ish USSR forces after the strike, assuming the first strike wouldn't have targeted central Europe as well, a near-suicidal conventional counter attack against Germany, France and UK and US forces in continetal Europe. With the expected result in civilian losses. Overall, a very bad idea. Because how much damage would you really do with a handful of nukes against the USSR?
It's interesting to appeal to the plight of Eastern Europeans given that they were also on the list of targets. The Soviets are harming Eastern Europeans, we must nuke the Eastern Europeans!
> It is unlikely that an American nuclear strike would have wiped out the entire population of the Soviet Union; one would expect a targeted strike on critical government and army facilities, or something like what happened against the Japanese.
USSR lion share of the population is/was in Moscow and St. Petersburg. A decapitation strike would have killed many in those 2 cities for sure. Add the fires, the confusion, the famine and the fact that you must followup with an invasion because nukes radiations dissipate fast and other countries around would see it as a huge opportunity to expand. It's easy to imagine the countries of the Marshall plan abandon said plan and saying "screw it! We'll get the eastward land instead"
100M is not far fetched.
> The rest of the world didn't conquer and subjugate all of Eastern Europe, then steal from them and kidnap people in large numbers.
The US is magnanimous . Meaning like some guy who got out of the hood and lets it slide when somebody dents his Ferrari. Had that person missed on a lucky break and still be in the hood, his reaction would be very different and much more violent , and it doesn't even need to be a Ferrari, just a light fender bender on a Civic will cause trouble.
The US is magnanimous because of its standards of living , not the other way around.
The UK provided key expertise to the Manhattan Project, so to say that they were "spying" is not fair. The UK bomb project had been going on for longer, and making it a joint US/UK project sped up development.
Members of the UK delegation were spies for the Soviets, and other members looked as hard as they could to find advantage for their own country. I certainly do not look askance upon the latter, and would have done the same.
I don't think anyone doubts the contributions our British friends made to the success of the project.
Even if the US bombed the USSR and prevented a counterstrike the US would have been worse off.
You don't get to subtract 100M people out of 2.7B , the 2nd country in GDP and expect things to remain as they were before.
Also the entire world would have reacted, anticipating that they too were going to be nuked as soon as they did something which would have even remotely alerted paranoid Uncle Sam.