Of the Japanese leaders, it was the military ones who held out against the civilian leaders who were closest to the emperor, and who wanted to surrender provided the emperor’s safety would be guaranteed. The evidence has become overwhelming that it was the entry of the Soviet Union on 8 August into the war against Japan that forced surrender but, understandably, this view is very difficult for Americans to accept. Those bombings had little to do with the Japanese decision to surrender. I believe that it was a mistake and a tragedy that the atomic bombs were used. Japan would have surrendered anyway” – Martin J Sherwin Robert James Maddox is author of Hiroshima in History: The Myths of Revisionism (University of Missouri Press, 2007) “No. However, even if they had known, I don’t think it would have changed their decision. It is true that the radiation effects of the atomic bomb provided a grisly dividend, which the US leaders did not anticipate. The experience with Germany after the First World War had persuaded them that a mere armistice would constitute a betrayal of future generations if an even larger war occurred 20 years down the line. Only this would enable the Allies to occupy Japan and root out the institutions that led to war in the first place. The bombs were the best means to bring about unconditional surrender, which is what the US leaders wanted. A bloody invasion and round-the-clock conventional bombing would have led to a far higher death toll and so the atomic weapons actually saved thousands of American and millions of Japanese lives. The atomic bombs were horrible, but I agree with US secretary of war Henry L Stimson that using them was the “least abhorrent choice”. It was the least bad option” – Robert James Maddox Read more | The history of neutrality and what it would mean for Ukraine.Richard Overy is a professor of history at the University of Exeter and editor of The Oxford Illustrated History of World War Two (OUP, 2015) Restraint was possible, and, at the very end of the war, perhaps more politically acceptable. The British and Americans had planned in detail the gas-bombing of a list of 17 major German cities, but in the end did not carry it out because the moral case seemed to depend on Germany using gas first. But it is possible to imagine greater restraint. Of course it is easy to say that if I had been in Truman’s shoes, I would not have ordered the two bombings. President Truman was the man faced with deciding whether to drop the atomic bomb on Japan. There was, in other words, a cynical scientific imperative at work as well. It was deemed to be needed, partly because it was a different design, and the military (and many civilian scientists) were keen to see if they both worked the same way. As for the second bomb on Nagasaki, that was just as unnecessary as the first one. Further blockade and urban destruction would have produced a surrender in August or September at the latest, without the need for the costly anticipated invasion or the atomic bomb. Militarily Japan was finished (as the Soviet invasion of Manchuria that August showed). However, it was clearly not moral to use this weapon knowing that it would kill civilians and destroy the urban milieu. The dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima was justified at the time as being moral – in order to bring about a more rapid victory and prevent the deaths of more Americans. It was immoral, and unnecessary” – Richard Overy His most recent book is Ardennes 1944: Hitler’s Last Gamble (Viking, 2015) “No. Read more | The science behind the bombing of HiroshimaĪntony Beevor is a bestselling military historian, specialising in the Second World War.Japanese documents apparently indicate their army was prepared to accept up to 28 million civilian deaths. All civilians were to be mobilised and forced to fight with bamboo spears and satchel charges to act as suicide bombers against Allied tanks. What Truman did not know, and which has only been established quite recently, is that the Imperial Japanese Army could never contemplate surrender, having forced all their men to fight to the death since the start of the war.
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