re: The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - Animated

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Yep, there was no need to drop it other than as a show of force to Russia. Japan didn’t even surrender as a result of the bombs, it surrendered to the US after Russia invaded to avoid succumbing to Soviet rule. Not to mention the fact that in the lead up to Hiroshima, the US intentionally gave peace terms it knew Japan could never accept.

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I disagree - I think the Soviet’s declaring war is a bit of revisionist history rationalized after the fact. Japan’s war aims since 1941 never changed - it was always a negotiated peace. Humanity on all sides had long left the building and in terms of atrocious actions by 1945, the bomb was just a continuation. It was total war.

After VE Day, the US appetite for war was quickly waning- we were looking for a knockout blow and the bomb was it. After Iwo Jima and Okinawa, we would have had to go house by house, tunnel by tunnel to win the war on mainland Japan. It would have made Stalingrad look like a cakewalk.

If you had a son that was killed in the invasion of Japan, and it came to be known that Truman had the Ace (a-bomb) that made an invasion unnecessary, how would you feel? Multiply that by the million other casualties. Quite honestly, I don’t think our democracy survives that scenario.