72 Years Ago Today We Dropped the Bomb on Hiroshima and It Was Unnecessary
Ike: ”It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.”
Truman was advised not to use the atomic bombs by such figures as Adm. William D. Leahy, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower. We know from Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson’s diaries and other documents that the rush to use atomic bombs quickly, rather than follow other available courses, was intimately connected with the desire to end the conflict before the Soviet Union entered it on Aug. 15, 1945, and with the hope that the bomb would help in disputed European negotiations.
Did Nuclear Weapons Cause Japan to Surrender?
Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs
Published on Jan 30, 2013Ward Wilson, senior fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, explains that the Soviet declaration of war and not the Hiroshima nuclear bombing caused Japan to surrender at the end of World War II. An audience member then posits that the Soviets declared war because of Hiroshima.
January 16, 2013. For video, audio, and transcript, go to: http://www.carnegiecouncil.org/studio…
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