Alex WellersteinVerified account

Hmm, I would disentangle this loaded question. I give emphasis to Truman's attitude towards not relaxing unconditional surrender, because it's important to make clear this was a choice by him (and what we have from him is a "gut" justification for it, not high strategy).

That's not the same thing as saying that's why he wanted to use the bomb. I don't think that's actually the case. But at the same time, the "end the bloodshed" narrative doesn't really capture Truman's motivations at the time either, from what we can tell.

That's an after-the-fact motivation, one that interestingly does not really show up until after he learned that the atomic bombs had killed huge numbers of civilians. And one that doesn't get "cemented" as "the justification" until the war actually ends.

The attitudes of those involved in the decision to use the bomb were that one bomb, even two, probably wouldn't end the war. Groves thought it would take around EIGHT bombs. They were actually surprised it ended when it did.

But in general, I tried not to get too deep into internal motivations. It's hard to know those. Even at the time, people don't record them accurately — and may not even know them themselves, really. And most people become unreliable about them after the fact.

My main interest was in talking about the sequence of events, because even that basic knowledge is typically lacking. And if you don't have that, it's easy to fall into myths. In my experience most Americans don't even know the invasion wouldn't have started until November.

Well, I appreciate you engaging (I got into it yesterday with Martin who's not so 'academic' on this topic and it went badly lol!). But I think you're equivocating between "here's some basic factual corrections for people confused about timelines" and curating an anti-bomb case.

Some people think I'm curating an anti-bomb case, some people think I'm curating a pro-bomb case. I don't know; it's no-win territory. (I call myself an "inverse moderate" — I think everybody's a bit wrong.) I would prefer everyone to say, "this is pretty complicated."