Should the atomic bomb have been dropped on Japan in 1945?
I am currently in the process of watching on Sky Atlantic the series “Oliver Stone’s Untold History Of The United States”. It’s a fascinating, if controversial, project and I have just seen the third of the 10 episodes. This deals with the end of the Second World War in the Pacific and the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima (which i have visited) and Nagasaki.
The conventional wisdom is that, without the use of the bomb, the United States would have had to make a land invasion of Japan which would have resulted in hundreds of thousands of dead and injured American troops.
Oliver Stone argues that the intervention in the east of the Soviet Union would have quickly led to Japan’s surrender and that US President Harry Truman authorised the use of the bomb for geo-political reasons – essentially to demonstrate to Stalin the new power of the US in an effort to block the Soviets’ aggressive post-war intentions.
It’s a fascinating thesis – but highly debatable.