Well hindsight is 20-20, and anyone commenting on the bombs has the luxury of decades of historical analysis of the war.

My understanding is that the nuclear bombs were approximately as destructive as the fire-bombing technique. (Commonly used in the war) If we fire bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, just as many lives would be lost but we would never talk about it.

The difference is that fire bombing required many more planes and many more bombs, thus increasing American military risk. Enemy civilian casualties would be similar.

The firebombing would have brought the war industry to a halt but wouldn't have resulted in surrender.

The alternative would have been Operation Downfall, a conventional invasion expected to cause up to 10M casualties and involve chemical weapons.

For scale, the atomic bombings killed ~200K Japanese while the Japanese occupation of China alone killed 20M

Indeed. There's been plenty of hand-wringing since the war, mainly by those who didn't live through it.

The savagery of the Imperial Japanese forces is well documented, as is their willingness to fight until death. It is difficult to imagine what the resistance involved in invading Japan would have been like.

The atomic bombings without doubt saved hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides. Further, since WWII, nuclear weapons have been a greater force for peace than anything in history. Let's hope that status quo continues...

I don't think that's correct. The March 9/10 attack on Tokyo killed 88,000-100,000 people, but was an anomaly. Japanese civil defense forces adapted, and casualties were much less in later raids. A firebombing attack on Hiroshima in September probably would not have killed more than 10,000.

Firebombing would also fail to intimidate the Japanese command. They knew what firebombing was and were prepared for it. But not for nuclear bombs. Nuclear ordnance was the only reason the Emperor Hirohito cited for the surrender.

Firebombing would also fail to intimidate the SOVIET command. I've frequently read postulations that was an additional impetus for dropping the 2nd bomb: to demonstrate to Stalin that we could mass produce them, lest he try to make any more aggressive moves in Europe. It was also a convenient way for the Japanese Emperor to "save face". People also postulate that the overwhelmingly successful Soviet invasion of Manchuria had the Japanese leadership worried: the Soviets had a reputation for brutality and a possible Soviet invasion of the Home Islands would turn out even worse than an American one (for the Japanese people). It looks much better to say "we threw in the towel due to America's wonder-weapon" than "we threw in the towel because we were terrified of Stalin".

Japan was already preparing to surrender before the bombs were dropped.

It's not clear that it's even true: https://twitter.com/wellerstein/status/1159799358650499072?s...

Not the authors only gratuitous editorializing

> the United States… is now riven by toxic political discord and stands at the brink of social collapse

both cases unnecessary, off-topic, and detract from an otherwise good article

My guess is that American scholars are annoyed at the reality that it happened, in contrast to imagined alternatives, like a "demo" off the shore of a city, or over the Japanese fleet somewhere.

> Truman ordered nuclear bombs dropped

Or should it read "Truman authorised nuclear bombs dropped", there is a fair difference in meaning.