8/10/2023 0 Comments Atomic bomb mushroom cloudHe told the Russians just where they got on and off and generally bossed the whole meeting," Churchill noted, according to Secretary of War Henry Stimson's diary.Īnother aspect of this is usually known as "atomic diplomacy." In other words, the bomb was a warning shot to Stalin just before the onset of the Cold War. When he got to the meeting after having read this report he was a changed man. could unilaterally finish off Japan with the bomb, the thinking went, why give postwar concessions to the Soviets? Churchill observed Truman's suddenly confident demeanor at Potsdam, which Kuznick says is important to ascertaining the American president's mindset. "I couldn't understand it. Yet during the conference, Truman got another piece of news and a subsequent full report: American scientists had successfully tested the A-bomb in New Mexico.Īt this point, Kuznick says, Truman no longer wanted the Soviets' help. With hopes for a quick end to the Pacific war, Truman secured Stalin's assurance that the Soviets would enter the war against Japan, too. At the July-August 1945 Potsdam Conference in Germany, Truman met with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to discuss postwar plans. The irony is that the Japanese were ultimately allowed to keep their emperor after the war concluded.Īmerican mistrust of the Soviet Union played a role in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Kuznick says. ![]() But adviser and Secretary of State James Byrnes had Truman's ear, telling the president that any change in those terms would be politically disastrous. To the Japanese, the emperor was almost a god," Kuznick says.Ī number of American military and diplomatic officials believed that those surrender terms should be changed, Kuznick says. "Unconditional surrender, to the Japanese, meant that the emperor would be executed as a war criminal, which they couldn't abide. "And we know that as early as May, the Japanese had decided to try to enlist the Soviet Union to help the Japanese get better surrender terms."Ĭables and reports informed American policymakers about a key sticking point: Japanese leaders insisted on keeping their emperor, Hirohito, as opposed to "unconditional surrender" sought by the U.S. We were intercepting Japanese cables," he says. "The United States, you have to remember, broke the Japanese diplomatic codes. But Kuznick disputes this, based on what U.S. Some historians have characterized Japanese leaders as recalcitrant, with surrender far from imminent. No president would have allowed an invasion."Īnother question arises in this discussion: How close were the Japanese to surrendering? If Japanese leaders were actually ready to end the war, this undercuts the argument that atomic weapons were necessary.īelow: A photo of the "Atomic Bomb Dome" in Hiroshima, Japan. "It was going to be a question of finding another way to force Japanese surrender or else using the bomb. "In August, we dropped the bomb, allegedly, to avoid an invasion that was not intended to begin until November?" he asks incredulously. Truman steadily increases that number over the years, as the criticism of the decision to drop the bomb mounts," he explains.Ī massive mainland invasion was unlikely, Kuznick says. Truman's post-bomb statements were that "thousands of American lives were saved. "I think that is a theory that was concocted after the bombing in order to justify such a horrific act," Kuznick says. hadn't swiftly ended the war that summer. The 'bomb instead of invade' narrative is powerful, presupposing that a lot more American and Japanese lives would have been lost if the U.S. Kuznick says a persistent myth about the bombings is that they thwarted a full-scale invasion of the Japanese mainland. And he challenges basic assumptions many Americans hold about the end of World War II. ![]() In an interview timed with the August 6th Hiroshima anniversary, Kuznick expands on why he thinks the U.S. Though numbers are inexact, Kuznick says that estimates in 1950 found 200,000 people dead in Hiroshima and roughly 140,000 killed in Nagasaki. And he's formed a highly critical view of President Harry Truman's decision-one he calls baffling and militarily unnecessary. Peter Kuznick, an American University history professor, has closely studied the circumstances surrounding the American use of atomic weapons. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, yet the debate on whether it was justified is far from settled. A photo of the mushroom cloud resulting from the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945.
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