Separately, the goal of my Tweetstorm was to emphasize instead of seeing it as "bomb versus invade," the real question is "bomb 2 cities with 2 bombs in 3 days versus a lot of possibilities." The *specifics* of what occurred were not dictated by strategy, and
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Decisions not made by Truman: whether or not to use the bomb. That was already in motion, clearly, and there was no question by anyone that Truman would intervene. Unsurprisingly, he didn't. The focus on that "decision" is, historians have known for a long time now, misplaced.
Decisions actually made by Truman: 1. Whether to tell Stalin much about the bomb (no). 2. Whether to modify unconditional surrender (no). 3. Whether the city of Kyoto should be bombed (no). 4. Whether to continue bombing after Nagasaki (no).
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And I appreciate the constructive engagement here. My core point is that we have to resist the temptation to frame this in chessboard terms. There was history, old & recent, at work, & visceral reactions that were hardly irrational.
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I'm not trying to frame it in chessboard terms, to be sure, but I would argue much more of it was non-rational (as opposed to irrational) than either the "orthodox" or "revisionist" versions acknowledge. It's messy. Some things were conscious decisions and many things were not.
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To the "decisions not made" pile, I'd also add, "Whether to drop two bombs or just one on Japan," "Whether to demonstrate the bomb before using it," "Whether to wait a reasonable amount of time between the bombings," etc. Truman had no role in any of these decisions.
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Why make these points? Not because I want people to think the bombings were unjustified. As I've emphasized, over and over again, I don't actually think that's an easy thing to answer one way or the other with authority. I admit this is a position that displeases *everyone*.
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I make them because the "wrong, overly simple" version of this history (in this case, the "orthodox" version, but I frequently poke holes in the "revisionist" simplicity as well) causes Americans to understand this whole thing very poorly.
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And given that the atomic bombings are one of the foundational ways in which Americans think through questions of actions taken during war, I think it's important that people see that they are actually a pretty tricky issue, if you take them seriously.
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The fact that most Americans don't even know the basic timeline, and frame the issues entirely ahistorically, is more than a pet peeve to me — it's a real, basic civics issue. Anyway — thanks for listening and replying. FIN.
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My understanding was that though the US got the Japanese to surrender "unconditionally",it was already understood on the part of the decision makers that the Emperor would be allowed to remain,not as a condition of peace,but as a separate decision made by the US. Am I incorrect?
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All of those decisions were deferred into the postwar. It wasn't some big strategic determination made at Potsdam. (One can post facto rationalize it that way, if one wants — but that isn't how they thought about it at the time, which is what I care about.)
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