Understanding the Decisions to Drop The Atomic Bomb Essay

President Truman's decision to drop the atomic bomb on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the direct cause for the end of World War II in the Pacific. The United States felt it was necessary to drop the atomic bombs on these two cities or it would suffer more casualties. Not only could the lives of many soldiers have been taken, but possibly the lives of many innocent Americans. The United States will always try to avoid the loss of American civilians at all costs, even if that means taking lives of another countries innocent civilians.

During World War II, President Harry S. Truman ordered for an atomic bomb to be dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6th ,1945. The second and last atomic bomb to ever be dropped was in the city of Nagasaki on August 9th, 1945. Many Americans believed dropping the atomic bomb was necessary to end the war in a more timely manner, however, many others believed dropping the atomic bomb was too extreme of a measure to take against Japan. With the creation of the atomic bomb, the United States had a weapon of mass destruction that no one else yet had. Therefore, with the power the atomic bomb possessed, some people believed its use should only be used as a last resort. If Japan would not surrender during this war, then the United States would have a valid and necessary reason in using the power of an atomic bomb. For the other Americans that believed in the immediate drop of the atomic bomb, dropping it would end the war sooner, which would then decrease the amount American soldiers who would be killed during the war. Whether dropping the atomic bomb on Japan was the most ethical decision that President Truman could have ordered is still debated.

The dropping of the Atomic Bomb changed not only warfare forever, but also all international relations. With that being said, the decision to do so was one of the biggest decisions made by any government in the history of time. Nuclear warfare was way more destructive and way faster than any other form of warfare preceding. With the United States seemingly always viewed to be “the good guys” it is puzzling that this country is the same one who killed hundreds of thousands of people all at once and essentially ruined not one but two entire cities within minutes of dropping two single bombs. This decision was not taken lightly, and with basically two schools of thought, liberalism vs. realism, insisting to do so or not to do so, and realism won out. Realism and the many counterparts that strengthen this school of thought is what drove the decision to go ahead and drop the atomic bomb.

As president Harry S. Truman states in his speech, “With this bomb we have now added a new and revolutionary increase in destruction to supplement the growing power of our armed forces… We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city” (Document D). This newly attained bomb would not only add to America’s destructive firepower, it would also have the power to end the war. It would ultimately destroy Japan and its ability to continue fighting the war against the Allied

Technology has allowed for the furtherance of warfare, from the invention of gun powder to the splitting of the atom. These findings have propelled the leap of numerous nations’ in the ability to wage war against each other. Of these discoveries, the splitting atom spawned an invention that would hurl the world from conventional warfare into the nuclear age. These ideals were the brainstorming of some of the greatest minds in America and abroad. These scientists began to formulate the creation of the atomic bomb, a device that would change the world in ways that had never been imagined before.

The Manhattan Project was created out of the fear of their current enemy, Germany of making the first atomic bomb and using it in the war. The current President of the United States was Franklin Roosevelt. It was seen that Germany was making great advances in the war which worried many. But the people who were very worried were three prestigious scientists. Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, and Edward Teller who were Hungarian scientists who immigrated to the United States during the war. Szilard and the other scientists wished to advocate for the start of a program that put all efforts into making an atomic bomb. But of course they were very intelligent on how to get their cause across seriously. “Though the three men, particularly Szilard, were well known

The decision to drop the atomic bomb, made by President Truman, was largely influenced by political factors rather than military factors. Traditionalist historians argue from the military perspective that the bomb was used to end the war as quickly as possible and with as minimal causalities as possible. Revisionist historians, on the other hand, argue the political perspective where they believe that the bomb was dropped as a diplomatic tool to intimidate the rising superpower that was the Soviet Union. In 1945, there was little reason to doubt the traditionalist perspective; however, in retrospect, with the evidence now gathered and available, it was very likely there were other strategic reasons that played a larger role in the decision Truman had made. By observing the historical timeline, the Cold War began shortly after World War II. Truman was aware of the rising power of the USSR and the threat of the spread of communism into Europe and Asia. The fear of this threat was what likely influenced him and Congress to use the bomb more so than the desire to end the war more efficiently.

Imagine yourself making the toughest decision in your life, whether sacrificing a million of our men and thousands of war ships and plans, verses several thousand of Japanese civilian populists. This decision was on the shoulder of Harry S. Truman, the United States President, who had to make this decision by deciding whether or not to drop a newly designed weapon. The atomic bomb was tested in the sands of New Mexico, where it proved to be very successful. Harry S. Truman made a very successful decision, because he wanted to end the war quickly, show others that the United States had power, and the retribution of Pearl Harbor.

Many debates have been provoked based on President Truman's decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The debate is not solely based on the bomb being dropped, but more on the actual necessity and intention of the bomb being dropped.

On August 6, 1945 the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. This was an extremely controversial military strategy in the United States. Was the United States justified in the dropping of the atomic bomb? The U.S. feared the rise of communism and gave aid to any country against it. The U.S. also fought countries threatening the spread communism. One of these countries was Japan. We began a harsh and brutal war against Japan and against communism. This war was killing many soldiers and Japan was not backing down. President Truman decided to use the atomic bomb when things were getting worse. The decision to use the atomic bomb was a difficult one and many people wonder if it was the right

Necessity is the mother of invention. Michael Blow wrote in his book, The History of the Atomic Bomb, that the United States was building an atomic weapon for the main purpose of beating the Germans to the creation of the bomb (95-96). After uranium was used to create atomic fission in Berlin in 1939, Albert Einstein and other scientists wrote a letter to Roosevelt, talking him into government funding for atomic research in America (Foner and Garraty, “Manhattan” n. pag.). In a bit of irony, American leaders believed that the Germans, in the race to create the ultimate weapon, were beating them. In actuality, however, they never got far in their research, and America defeated them by a sizeable amount (Blow 96). In the United States, research for the “Manhattan Project,” the code name for the secret project to use atomic energy to create a bomb, expanded all around the country. This included universities such as Columbia, Princeton, California, and Chicago. While the research had been independent and government funded up until the middle of 1942, the army took over guidance of the project at that point. The possibility of an atomic bomb had become too realistic to keep the research in the private sector (Foner and Garraty, “Manhattan”).

As the war continued and violence escalated, bombings caused enormous destruction and high death tolls, leading inevitably to the use of the atomic bombs. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki represented a culmination in the destructiveness of bombings, not a significant deviation from previous bombing practices. The alternatives to the use of the atomic bomb were likely to have caused equal suffering for the Japanese people. The use of the atomic bomb was no less moral than these horrific wartime practices. Harry Truman’s decision to use the atomic bomb against Japan was justified by Japan’s refusal to immediately surrender. Harry Truman gave the Japanese time to surrender in order to preserve the existence of their people. They did not comply and as a result endured the consequences. (Walker) Yet an alternate perspective states that it was quite unnecessary to drop the Atomic Bombs in that Japan was practically an already defeated opponent. If a conditional surrender were to be issued by the United States to Japan in

The atomic bomb was one of the most impacting event of the 20th century. It forever changed the way that people looked at war. For the first time, the human race possed the ability to destroy on a massive scale, and they actually got to see how they could do it during the second World War. It was a decision that the president, Harry Truman, had to think and decide very carefully on what exactly he wanted to do. Never in the history of war has anyone had the power that now existed within the United States of America. With a single decision, the President struck fear in the people of other nations. It was an exclamation point that stated how powerful a nation that America now is.

The decision to drop Atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 was not an easy decision. Some people were astonished by the idea of America having Nuclear weapons in their possession and by the fact that it could end this deathly and overdue war quicker, while others believe 200,000 civilians would die in vain. Both opinions were deeply taken into consideration before making the decision on dropping the bombs. In 1942 the U.S government created the Manhattan project. A top secret research and developmental program to develop the first atomic bomb ever. President Roosevelt assigned General Leslie Groves and scientist Robert Oppenheimer co-leaders of the Manhattan Project. In April 1945 the new president Truman

After President Roosevelt died from a stroke on April 12, 1945, Harry S. Truman had the opportunity to become president and decide whether the United States should dispense a weapon that was named “the most terrible weapon ever know in human history” (Foner 898) because of the damage it was able to inflict. However, it is interesting that he did not know about the atomic bomb until after he became president. In this way, his decision was made more difficult because he did not know how dangerous it could be. However, after much deliberation and the push from Einstein to Roosevelt in 1939 to use the atomic bomb, United States aircraft dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945. This risky move by the United States opened doors that could not have been foreseen. With the power lying somewhat in the hands of the United States, they again dropped the atomic bomb in Japan. This time, the bomb detonated over Nagasaki. The combined total of approximately 140,000 people were killed by the atomic bombs when they denoted. However, the number continued to rise as the atomic bomb released deadly