The programs long predate the fall of Germany, and thus saying they were developed to compete with a German nuclear program are completely accurate and reasonable.

The Japanese were in the war, and a land borne invasion would have bore heavy casualties. There was no clear and obvious certainty of Japans will to surrender, and there was political infighting, an attempted coup against the surrender.

I'm tired of this inaccurate, revisionist, fringe crap coming up every time the atomic weapons program comes up. This is not mainstream history, but historical-fiction entertainers like the irresponsible Oliver Stone keep promoting it and people lap it up.

For a more nuanced view of the decision process, I recommend http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2015/08/03/were-there-alterna..., and other entries on that blog about the Target Committee and Truman's role on the process.

Generally, my takeaway is:

There was a moral argument to be made in favor of atomic bombing for political effect. However, that argument was not very influential on military decision making at the time - generally, the military philosophy was "we have a weapon, why would we not use it to the greatest extent possible?" This disconnect was so strong that when the civilians who were making these sophisticated moral calculations saw the manner and (more importantly) the rate at which the bombs were used, they put on the brakes.

>This disconnect was so strong that when the civilians who were making these sophisticated moral calculations saw the manner and (more importantly) the rate at which the bombs were used, they put on the brakes.

Those civilians names were not auto-penned at the bottom of letters that started with "The United States Army regrets to inform you...". Those civilians had not seen what kind of end conventional warfare had lead to on inner islands like Iwo Jima and Okinawa. They did not understand how committed to their cause the people we were fighting were. The disconnect goes both ways.

On the contrary; they knew exactly what kind of relentless bombing the Allied Armed forces were willing to undertake, completely leveling non-military cities with conventional munitions just to break the will of the “enemy”. The civilians rightly feared that with these new weapons of war, the similar indiscriminate use of them could result in efficient wiping out of cities in days rather than years.

At the time of their invention, nuclear weapons were seen as more effective munitions and not necessarily the civilization ending tools that they are now considered to be.

> The programs long predate the fall of Germany, and thus saying they were developed to compete with a German nuclear program are completely accurate and reasonable.

The existence of the atomic program is not the question. It is their _use_ against a nation that was on the brink of surrender.

I'm sorry that the truth does not fit your neat model of the US. It stands to reason, that the only nation in the world to use atomic weapons against dense human populations needs to be scrutinized appropriately, and not hailed as the "hero", the decision to do so being "inevitable". Nothing about the use of nuclear weapons was inevitable, and their use simply egged on similar development in other nations and a general increase in the probability of nuclear holocaust.

I downvoted this because it is wrong.

> By that time in the war, Germany had already been defeated, the Imperial Japanese Armed forces were already signalling a willingness to end the war, with the one condition that the Japanese emperor (who most Japanese view as divine) would not be harmed."

Assuming that "by that time in the war" means prior to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, this is false. Even after the bombing of Nagasaki 3 of the 4 military members of the Supreme War Council wanted additional terms that would never have been acceptable to the Allied Powers (among them, no occupation of the home islands). It took the intervention of the Emperor himself to break the deadlock.

The idea that the armed forces were amenable to a surrender with the sole condition that the emperor remain in power before Hiroshima is simply not true.

Sorry, but GP's post is absolutely correct.

Japanese surrender was not prompted by bombings of 6th and 9th August -- they had endured already much worse bombings of their cities during that summer, and were not particularly scared of atomic weapons.

However, Japan was very scared of USSR, who up until then was neutral against them. All that changed rapidly and hugely, when USSR declared war on Japan, and attacked Manchuria on 12:01am 9/August.

Check the timelines -- the argument is solid and much more compelling than "Japan surrended because nuclear bombs".

https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-jap...

That's not the GP's argument.

"Japan was ready to surrender before the atomic bombs" and "Japan surrendered because of the USSR's declaration of war, not the atomic bombs" are two completely different arguments.

Both these arguments are true. "Japan was ready to surrender" should be interpreted as "Japan wanted to surrender if the terms were acceptable".

To spell it out for you: Japan was ready to surrender before atomic bombs, but held back because the allies terms were unacceptable, and Japan were hoping to get better terms, using USSR to mediate them. Only when that hope was removed (by USSR declaring war on Japan) did Japan realise they had no other choice. And then they actually surrended.

The post I replied to very specifically says "Japan was ready to surrender" should be interpreted as:

"[Before the atomic bombs were dropped], the Imperial Japanese Armed forces were already signalling a willingness to end the war, with the one condition that the Japanese emperor ... would not be harmed."

I don't know why you're trying so hard to read things that are not there.