By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

Harry Truman's character and view of the world were different from Franklin Roosevelt's. Yet it must not be thought that his sudden assumption of the presidency meant an instant change in America's relations with Russia. True, when Truman received Molotov in the White House less than ten days after he had become president, he spoke to this Russian in solid words to which the latter said that he was thoroughly unaccustomed. Truman's advisers instantly thought that the president's language was too harsh, and the next day Truman thought it better not to press the issue (again, it was mostly Poland) with Molotov. When Churchill, a few days after the German surrender, implored Truman to take a harder line with Moscow (it was in that letter that Churchill first used the phrase iron curtain), Truman did not follow Churchill's urgings; another few days later, he sent Joseph Davies and then  Harry Hopkins to Moscow to try to iron out problems with Stalin. During the Potsdam summit meeting in July, Truman's behavior and his impressions of Stalin were still cordial and positive.

Throughout 1945 (and even for two years after that), Truman did not altogether abandon the hope of maintaining at least good relations with the Soviet Union, and particularly with Stalin.

However, he had, commendably, few or no illusions about Stalin or Russian ambitions or Communism. The following year, 1946, was marked by more and more troubles with Russians and Communists, involving Iran, Turkey, Greece, Yugoslavia, Berlin. In March 1946, Truman accompanied Churchill to Fulton, Missouri, where Churchill delivered his famous Iron Curtain speech (though the president and the State Department were careful to state publicly that they were not necessarily associating themselves with the former prime minister's views). By early 1947 Truman's decision was to oppose further Soviet advances and aggressions and contain the Soviet Union and Communism. By that time, Stalin had decided to proceed to the more or less complete Communization of the countries that had fallen into his sphere of interest in Eastern Europe. There was, as yet, no sharp conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States in China or the Pacific.

Truman believed in American power and American righteousness. So did his newly appointed secretary of state, James F. Byrnes. Byrnes was a longtime Washington power broker, a former conservative senator from South Carolina, Supreme Court justice, and wartime overlord of the American economy. Truman liked Byrnes, who had befriended him as a new senator in the mid-1930s, and thought him shrewd, knowledgeable, and challenging. He let Byrnes do most of the contentious bargaining at Potsdam on German reparations, Polish borders, and the composition of the new governments in Eastern Europe. Once Stalin agreed in the first days of the conference to attack Japan, Truman felt satisfied. "I've gotten what I came for," he confided to Bess on July 18. "Stalin goes to war August 15 with no strings on it. ... I'll say that we'll end the war a year sooner now, and think of the kids who won't be killed. That's the important thing."

To Truman and Byrnes, the atomic bomb meant more than the weapon to defeat Japan and save American lives. It was a vast new instrument of American power. Truman went to Potsdam not knowing it would work; Admiral Leahy said it wouldn't; Byrnes thought it might, "but he wasn't sure." By all accounts, and there are many, news of the successful testing of the bomb enormously buoyed Truman's self-confidence. It "took a great load off my mind," he confided to Joe Davies. The president did not order the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima to impress the Russians, as some historians claim; nevertheless, he believed that it would impress them and make them more manageable.

Truman quietly took Stalin aside at Potsdam and elliptically mentioned that the United States had a powerful new weapon to use against Japan. Nothing more needed to be said. Nor did all the pressing issues have to be resolved at Potsdam. Truman was eager to go home. He grew impatient with the incessant haggling at the conference. Stalin, he thought, was stalling. He "doesn't know it," Truman again wrote his wife, "but I have an ace in the hole and another one showing-so unless he has threes or two pairs (and I know he has not), we are sitting all right." The "atomic bomb," Byrnes also was thinking, "had given us great power, and ... in the last analysis, it would control."

When Truman ordered that atomic bombs be dropped on Hiroshima and then Nagasaki, these were not tough decisions. They were necessary, in his mind, to save American lives. They vividly demonstrated American power; they confirmed that enemies of America would pay for their transgressions. The Japanese did pay, and then they capitulated unconditionally, except for the preservation of the emperor. They had little choice, for Stalin's troops attacked simultaneously, seized parts of Manchuria, invaded northern Korea, and set their sights on Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost home island.

The war ended. The American people celebrated. Truman breathed a sigh of relief. He now eagerly delegated peacemaking to Secretary of State Byrnes, who he thought had performed ably at Potsdam. Truman wanted to turn his attention to demobilization, reconversion, and the domestic issues he knew and understood. Byrnes, for his part, was eager to take command of the nation's foreign policy. He was sure of himself. He told his closest colleagues that the atomic bomb was a great weapon that could be used to exact concessions from potential adversaries. But experienced colleagues in the State and War departments had their doubts. They deeply resented Byrnes's attempts to monopolize American diplomacy. Many of them left office in September and October 1945; however, Byrnes was in charge, exhausted from years of wartime responsibility.

Byrnes was not as shrewd as he thought he was, nor was the Soviet Union quickly threatened. At the first postwar meeting of foreign ministers in London in September, Byrnes thought he could outmaneuver Molotov and arrange for more representative governments in Romania and Bulgaria. But Molotov chafed at Byrnes's procedural moves and sneered at his not very subtle efforts to use America's atomic monopoly to leverage concessions. The Soviet foreign minister was willing to negotiate on some of these points until Stalin ordered him to stiffen his resolve. Let the conference end in deadlock, Stalin wired Molotov. Let Byrnes stew for a while. Stalin's adulatory comments about Byrnes in front of Truman at Potsdam had, typically, concealed the dictator's emerging contempt for a man who wielded power so flagrantly.

Byrnes returned to Washington chastened. The Russians would not be intimidated, he realized. Perhaps, Byrnes now thought, the bomb could be used as a carrot rather than a stick. Maybe the Soviets could be lured into a favorable agreement to regulate the future of atomic energy. Some of the Soviets' arguments, he believed, had merit. He conceded certain hypocrisy in the American insistence that the Soviets open up eastern Europe while the United States locked the Kremlin out of Japan. He could understand why the Soviets feared the revival of German power and wanted friendly governments on their periphery. It might make sense, he thought, to acquiesce to what was happening in Bulgaria and Romania, more or less, if, in return, the Kremlin promised to withdraw Soviet troops as soon as the peace treaties were negotiated.

Moreover, a four-power treaty guaranteeing the demilitarization of Germany might hasten this process. In other words, Stalin's obsession with security might be assuaged by a demilitarization treaty. At the same time, his domination of eastern Europe might be diluted by his agreement to withdraw Soviet troops from Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria, as they just had been removed from Czechoslovakia.

An example from the WWII era of the rewriting of history is President Truman's decision in August 1945 to drop atomic bombs on Japanese cities. As a result of the president's decision, over 200,000 Japanese civilians were slaughtered. This decision was justified at the time as necessary to prevent the deaths of tens of thousands of American soldiers that would ensue from an invasion of the Japanese islands. 

President Truman decided to detonate atomic bombs over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, without consulting broadly with his advisors.1 The majority of the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff did not believe at the time that dropping atomic bombs on Japan was warranted: Of the eight five-star generals in the US military, only one – Marshall - thought the bombing was justified.2 Postwar appraisals of Truman's decision by the leading generals of the US military - Arnold, Eisenhower, Halsey, King, Leahy, MacArthur, and Nimitz - concluded that dropping nuclear bombs on Japan was unnecessary.3

There are several reasons for this consensus against dropping atomic bombs on Japan among military leaders. Both American and Japanese officials understood by the summer of 1945 that Japan had lost the war. The US military had total, unopposed control of the skies and had blockaded the main Japanese island. Because of the Allied bombing and the blockade, the Japanese government had been rationing food since early 1945, but supplies were expected to run out by November.4 In fact, the emperor feared that if the war did not end soon, a domestic revolt would overthrow his dynasty.5

The Soviet Union was poised to invade the Japanese homeland to the west.6 The Japanese particularly feared Russian occupation. Admiral Toyoda said in a postwar statement that "the Russian participation in the war against Japan rather than the atom bombs did more to hasten the surrender." 7 

Recognizing the inevitable, Japanese officials had made numerous overtures to the US government.8 Throughout 1945, the emperor and his advisors sought assistance from Sweden and Portugal to negotiate a peace treaty with the United States. On May 5, a cable from a member of the Admiral Staff of the Japanese Navy stated that much of the Japanese military "would not regard with disfavor an American request for capitulation even if the terms were hard." 9 On July 13, another cable from the Japanese foreign minister reported that the emperor was "mindful of the fact that the present war daily brings greater evil and sacrifice upon the people of all belligerent powers," and that he "desires from his heart that it might be quickly terminated." 10 

After Japan's surrender, Secretary of War Stimson commissioned an interrogation of some seven hundred Japanese military, government, and industry officials and concluded that "before December 31, 1945, and in all probability before November 1, 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated." 11 Truman was aware of the Japanese overtures and the content of the diplomatic cables. But Truman did not respond to any of them.12

Despite what is written in most American textbooks, there were alternatives to dropping atomic bombs on large population centers that incinerated and fatally poisoned hundreds of thousands of civilian men, women, and children. In our view, the best option would have been to wait. Stalin had committed to Truman to declare war on Japan on August 15, including announcing an invasion of the Japanese islands. The looming prospect of a Soviet invasion might have prompted an immediate Japanese surrender. And Truman did not have to drop the second bomb soon after the first. It was impractical for Japan to negotiate a surrender with an unresponsive US president in the seventy-five hours between the detonation of the first and second atomic bombs. 

Of course, it cannot be known for sure how long Japan may have delayed negotiating a surrender to end the war without the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Japanese military was divided. Some wanted to fight on, but many were willing to accept a peace that maintained the emperor's dynasty. (While Truman demanded unconditional surrender, the United States supported the Imperial Dynasty after the war, and the emperor's grandson sits on the Japanese throne today.) The Japanese also knew that an invasion would likely cost tens of thousands of American lives and believed this grim prospect gave them negotiating leverage. And Japanese scientists at the time had correctly guessed that the United States had only a few atomic bombs in early August. (A third bomb would have been ready by August 21, and more would have followed in September.) 13

In any case, an invasion of the Japanese mainland would have occurred at the earliest in late October or early November.14 Given the collapse of food supplies, the threat of an overthrow of the Imperial Dynasty, and a threatened Soviet invasion and occupation, a delay of even several weeks may have resulted in a Japanese surrender. At a minimum, Truman could have paused for more than seventy-five hours before dropping the second atomic bomb.

The fact is that Truman did not hesitate to order the detonation of all the atomic bombs in the military's possession as soon as they were ready. But it is doubtful the Japanese regime could have survived more than several months without negotiating an end to the war. Hundreds of thousands of lives might have been saved if Truman had delayed the detonation of atomic bombs over Japanese cities until just before a planned invasion of the Japanese islands later in the year. And Truman could have responded to the Japanese entreaties for surrender.

But he did not. There is no evidence Truman considered even a short delay or the possibility of peace.15

On August 9, after A second atomic bomb had incinerated Nagasaki, Truman received a telegram from a Protestant clergyman, pleading with him to stop the bombing. Truman's racist attitude toward the Japanese was no secret. Truman replied, "When you have to deal with a beast, you have to treat him as a beast." 16

The version of history recorded in most American history textbooks and commonly repeated today is that the decision to drop bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August was justified to avoid further American casualties. But Truman could have waited, even for just a few weeks, and that might have saved the lives of over 200,000 Japanese people. It might have even delayed the start of the Cold War and the nuclear arms race that followed.

 

1. Background on the decision to drop two atomic bombs on Japan comes from Huczko (2014); Maciej. (2014. “Alternatives to Dropping the A-Bomb in Bringing the War with Japan to an End.” Warsaw School of Economics. Vol. 1. No. 39. p. 128–137.

2. Ellsberg (2017), Ellsberg, Daniel, (2017). The Doomsday Machine, Bloomsbury Publishing, New York, Daniel, (2017). The Doomsday Machine, Bloomsbury Publishing, New York.

3. Frank (1999), and Alperovitz (1995). Frank, Richard, (1999), Downfall, Penguin Books, New York, Alperovitz, Gar. (1995). The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. New York.

4. The role of the emperor and the Japanese government at the time comes from Bix (2000) and Laquerre (2013). 

5. Huczko (2014). “Alternatives to Dropping the A-Bomb in Bringing the War with Japan to an End.” Warsaw School of Economics. Vol. 1. No. 39. p. 128–137.

6. Frank (1999), Downfall, Penguin Books. New York.

7. Ellsberg (2017), The Doomsday Machine, Bloomsbury Publishing. New York.

8.​ Huczko (2014), p. 133. 

9. ​Huczko (2014), p. 131. 

10.​ Huczko (2014), p. 131. 

11.​ Frank (1999), p. 355. 

12. ​Huczko (2014), p. 131.

13. Frank (1999), p. 303. 

14. ​Frank (1999), p. 358. 

15. ​Frank (1999), p. 303. 

16.​ National Park Service (2017). Bix, Herbert, (2000), Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan. Harper Collins, New York.

 

 

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