Compare and contrast the contributions of three historians to the historical debate on the decision to drop the atomic bomb.

Liddell Hart then goes on to provide us with his analysis of why the bomb was dropped. He puts forward two reasons, which are both fundamentally political concerns. Firstly he puts forward the idea of a power struggle. “Stalin’s demand at Potsdam to share in the annexation of Japan was very embarrassing, and the U.S Government were anxious to avoid such a contingency. The atomic bomb might help to solve that problem”. What Liddell Hart is trying to get across here is that if the Americans used the atomic bomb on Japan, they would be able to claim full responsibility for the end of the war and thus be the sole power administrating post war Japan, which is what they wanted, in his view.

His second reason for the use of bomb is primarily concerned with money, and large spending on behalf of the Americans. He claims the Government had to justify the Manhattan Project and its ridiculous over spending. So much money had been pumped into this bomb, it simply had to be a success. There was no way to explain the huge expenditure. These two points combined, shows that Liddell Hart clearly views the decision to drop the bomb as politically motivated.

In contrast to this, historian John Keegan’s perspective is entirely of military concern. He tells of Japan’s unwillingness to surrender even though the Americans were systematically destroying all of their towns. The devastation of their burnt out towns didn’t seem to deflect the Japanese Government from its commitment to continuing the war. As a direct result of this, the Americans found themselves trying to look for alternative routes to destroy the Japanese. They desperately wanted to avoid land invasion at all costs, and hence they turned their focus to dropping an atomic bomb and ending the war “in a unique, spectacular and incontestably decisive way”. It is worth noting that Keegan doesn’t bring as many elements to the debate as Liddell Hart, however neither historian projects their analyses into cold war mindsets. Another distinctive contrast with other historians is that Keegan seems to think that it was only during Potsdam that Truman and Churchill agreed to actually use the atomic bomb. Other historians believe that it was never even a question, but always an assumed given. Let us now look at our final historian and his views.

As far as Barton J. Bernstein was concerned the atomic bomb was built for use. He writes that when Truman assumed presidency he assumed that the bomb should and would be used. He agrees with Liddell Hart’s expression of the political concerns that motivated the use of the atomic bomb. The project had cost up on two billion dollars, there was no desire to avoid its use. Bernstein also takes up part of Keegan’s argument that the primary goal of the Americans was a swift end to the war in order to evade invasion. It is evident that this third historian agrees with strong elements of the first two historians, however, he also introduces a third and crucial explanation for the bombs use, that of racial hatred. He writes that the people of Japan seemed like “yellow sub humans”. Many American citizens and their leaders looked down on the Japanese as sub standard individuals and Bernstein argues that this mindset meant that there was no hesitation about using a bomb to kill many Japanese in order to save 25,000 – 46,000 Americans who might otherwise have died in the invasion. Put bluntly, “Japanese life, including civilian life, was cheap”. Thus we see that Bernstein, though he believes that the decision to build the bomb held within it implicitly the decision to use it, also hold other arguments for its use against Japan.

The debate on the decision to drop the atomic bomb centres on an emotive issue that catches people’s interests and arouses social consciousness. It is comforting to be able to look back and condemn the actions of Truman and his administration. But to do that to the guise of historical study is to adopt an irresponsible attitude to the past. The three historians concentrated on here barely even touch on the moral issue linked to the bomb, quite simply because, in the context of which it was dropped, it was of little importance. What we can ascertain from this study of three historians is that the environment of aggravated U.S – Soviet relations did matter, they do not view the decision as the first act of the cold war. For them, the most overwhelming reasons that led to the decision to drop the bomb were the political pressures to justify the Manhattan Project and more importantly again the desire to end the war as quickly as possible. With the indispensable tool of consistency we can find some clarity in the past without obscuring it with the eyes of the present.

Bibliography

Bernstein, Barton J. ‘Saving American Lives and Pressing the Soviets: The Atomic Bomb Decision.’ In The Origins of the Cold War, edited by Robert J. Mc Mahon and Thomas G. Paterson, 95-109. New York, 1999

Keegan, John, The Second World War. London 1989

Keylor, William, R The Twentieth Century World, An International History. New York, 2001

Liddell Hart, B.H, History of the Second World War. London, 1979

Walker, J. Samuel. Prompt and Utter Destruction, Truman and the use of the Atomic Bomb against Japan. Chapel Hill, 1997

---