Stanley Kutler: 65 Years After Hiroshima: Truman’s Choices
[Stanley Kutler is the author The Wars of Watergate (Norton), Abuse of Power: The New Nixon Tapes (Free Press), The American Inquisition: Cold War Political Trials (Hill & Wang), and numerous other books and articles.]
“Stuff happens,” Donald Rumsfeld infamously said to explain why some of his plans in Iraq went awry. But it does not just happen by chance—rather, stuff happens because of conscious, deliberately executed decisions. And sometimes it happens when a decision is made by doing nothing.
The personalities, the interests and the considerations that propelled the United States’ decision to use the atomic bomb in August 1945 are parts of an interlocking puzzle. The historical reconstruction of events reveals a seemingly inexorable decision to use the weapon. We had made a bomb and successfully tested it in July, and the scientists, generals, politicians and civilians caught up in events readily supplied the accelerating momentum to a decision: “We must use it.” That inexorable force in fact found no resistance among civilian decision-makers anxious to justify the expenditures of unprecedented sums of money to develop a weapon designed to end the war.
The historical narrative of the decision to use the bomb largely derives from the recollections and rationales of President Harry Truman and his civilian and military advisers. For them, the stark choice came down to drop the bomb or sustain a “million” American casualties (with apparently no effort to consider and realize the potential for Japanese civilian casualties) if the planned invasion had been launched. A small number of scientists raised ethical and moral considerations, but their influence was of no immediate consequence.
President Truman fashioned himself as a decisive man who easily and readily made the decision. “It isn’t polls or public opinion of the moment that counts,” he said in 1954. “It is right and wrong and leadership—men with fortitude, honesty, and a belief in the right that makes epochs in the history of the world.” So Truman described himself and conducted himself as president, and it is how he has generally been perceived....
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“Stuff happens,” Donald Rumsfeld infamously said to explain why some of his plans in Iraq went awry. But it does not just happen by chance—rather, stuff happens because of conscious, deliberately executed decisions. And sometimes it happens when a decision is made by doing nothing.
The personalities, the interests and the considerations that propelled the United States’ decision to use the atomic bomb in August 1945 are parts of an interlocking puzzle. The historical reconstruction of events reveals a seemingly inexorable decision to use the weapon. We had made a bomb and successfully tested it in July, and the scientists, generals, politicians and civilians caught up in events readily supplied the accelerating momentum to a decision: “We must use it.” That inexorable force in fact found no resistance among civilian decision-makers anxious to justify the expenditures of unprecedented sums of money to develop a weapon designed to end the war.
The historical narrative of the decision to use the bomb largely derives from the recollections and rationales of President Harry Truman and his civilian and military advisers. For them, the stark choice came down to drop the bomb or sustain a “million” American casualties (with apparently no effort to consider and realize the potential for Japanese civilian casualties) if the planned invasion had been launched. A small number of scientists raised ethical and moral considerations, but their influence was of no immediate consequence.
President Truman fashioned himself as a decisive man who easily and readily made the decision. “It isn’t polls or public opinion of the moment that counts,” he said in 1954. “It is right and wrong and leadership—men with fortitude, honesty, and a belief in the right that makes epochs in the history of the world.” So Truman described himself and conducted himself as president, and it is how he has generally been perceived....