Why World War II ended with Mushroom Clouds - 65 years ago, August 6
and 9, 1945: Hiroshima and Nagasaki
“On Monday, August 6, 1945, at 8:15 AM, the nuclear bomb ‘Little Boy”
was dropped on Hiroshima by an American B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay,
directly killing an estimated 80,000 people. By the end of the year,
injury and radiation brought total casualties to 90,000-140,000.”[1]
“On August 9, 1945, Nagasaki was the target of the world's second
atomic bomb attack at 11:02 a.m., when the north of the city was
destroyed and an estimated 40,000 people were killed by the bomb
nicknamed ‘Fat Man.’ The death toll from the atomic bombing totalled
73,884, as well as another 74,909 injured, and another several hundred
thousand diseased and dying due to fallout and other illness caused by
radiation.”[2] In the European Theatre, World War II ended in early
May 1945 with the capitulation of Nazi Germany. The “Big Three” on the
side of the victors – Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet
Union – now faced the complex problem of the postwar reorganization of
Europe. The United States had entered the war rather late, in December
1941, and had only started to make a truly significant military
contribution to the Allied victory over Germany with the landings in
Normandy in June 1944, less than one year before the end of the
hostilities. When the war against Germany ended, however, Washington
sat firmly and confidently at the table of the victors, determined to
achieve what might be called its “war aims.”
As the country that had made the biggest contribution and suffered by
far the greatest losses in the conflict against the common Nazi enemy,
the Soviet Union wanted major reparation payments from Germany and
security against potential future aggression, in the form of the
installation in Germany, Poland and other Eastern European countries
of governments that would not be hostile to the Soviets, as had been
the case before the war. Moscow also expected compensation for
territorial losses suffered by the Soviet Union at the time of the
Revolution and the Civil War, and finally, the Soviets expected that,
with the terrible ordeal of the war behind them, they would be able to
resume work on the project of constructing a socialist society. The
American and British leaders knew these Soviet aims and had explicitly
or implicitly recognized their legitimacy, for example at the
conferences of the Big Three in Tehran and Yalta. That did not mean
that Washington and London were enthusiastic about the fact that the
Soviet Union was to reap these rewards for its war efforts; and there
undoubtedly lurked a potential conflict with Washington’s own major
objective, namely, the creation of an “open door” for US exports and
investments in Western Europe, in defeated Germany, and also in
Central and Eastern Europe, liberated by the Soviet Union. In any
event, American political and industrial leaders - including Harry
Truman, who succeeded Franklin D. Roosevelt as President in the spring
of 1945 - had little understanding, and even less sympathy, for even
the most basic expectations of the Soviets. These leaders abhorred the
thought that the Soviet Union might receive considerable reparations
from Germany, because such a bloodletting would eliminate Germany as a
potentially extremely profitable market for US exports and
investments. Instead, reparations would enable the Soviets to resume
work, possibly successfully, on the project of a communist society, a
“counter system” to the international capitalist system of which the
USA had become the great champion. America’s political and economic
elite was undoubtedly also keenly aware that German reparations to the
Soviets implied that the German branch plants of US corporations such
as Ford and GM, which had produced all sorts of weapons for the Nazis
during the war (and made a lot of money in the process[3]) would have
to produce for the benefit of the Soviets instead of continuing to
enrich US owners and shareholders.
Negotiations among the Big Three would obviously never result in the
withdrawal of the Red Army from Germany and Eastern Europe before the
Soviet objectives of reparations and security would be at least partly
achieved. However, on April 25, 1945, Truman learned that the US would
soon dispose of a powerful new weapon, the atom bomb. Possession of
this weapon opened up all sorts of previously unthinkable but
extremely favorable perspectives, and it is hardly surprising that the
new president and his advisors fell under the spell of what the
renowned American historian William Appleman Williams has called a
“vision of omnipotence.”[4] It certainly no longer appeared necessary
to engage in difficult negotiations with the Soviets: thanks to the
atom bomb, it would be possible to force Stalin, in spite of earlier
agreements, to withdraw the Red Army from Germany and to deny him a
say in the postwar affairs of that country, to install “pro-western”
and even anti-Soviet regimes in Poland and elsewhere in Eastern
Europe, and perhaps even to open up the Soviet Union itself to
American investment capital as well as American political and economic
influence, thus returning this communist heretic to the bosom of the
universal capitalist church.
At the time of the German surrender in May 1945, the bomb was almost,
but not quite, ready. Truman therefore stalled as long as possible
before finally agreeing to attend a conference of the Big Three in
Potsdam in the summer of 1945, where the fate of postwar Europe would
be decided. The president had been informed that the bomb would likely
be ready by then - ready, that is, to be used as “a hammer,” as he
himself stated on one occasion, that he would wave “over the heads of
those boys in the Kremlin.”[5] At the Potsdam Conference, which
lasted from July 17 to August 2, 1945, Truman did indeed receive the
long-awaited message that the atom bomb had been tested successfully
on July 16 in New Mexico. As of then, he no longer bothered to present
proposals to Stalin, but instead made all sorts of demands; at the
same time he rejected out of hand all proposals made by the Soviets,
for example concerning German reparation payments, including
reasonable proposals based on earlier inter-Allied agreements. Stalin
failed to display the hoped-for willingness to capitulate, however,
not even when Truman attempted to intimidate him by whispering
ominously into his ear that America had acquired an incredible new
weapon. The Soviet sphinx, who had certainly already been informed
about the American atom bomb, listened in stony silence. Somewhat
puzzled, Truman concluded that only an actual demonstration of the
atomic bomb would persuade the Soviets to give way. Consequently, no
general agreement could be achieved at Potsdam. In fact, little or
nothing of substance was decided there. “The main result of the
conference,” writes historian Gar Alperovitz, “was a series of
decisions to disagree until the next meeting.”[6]
In the meantime the Japanese battled on in the Far East, even though
their situation was totally hopeless. They were in fact prepared to
surrender, but they insisted on a condition, namely, that Emperor
Hirohito would be guaranteed immunity. This contravened the American
demand for an unconditional capitulation. In spite of this it should
have been possible to end the war on the basis of the Japanese
proposal. In fact, the German surrender at Reims three months earlier
had not been entirely unconditional. (The Americans had agreed to a
German condition, namely, that the armistice would only go into effect
after a delay of 45 hours, a delay that would allow as many German
army units as possible to slip away from the eastern front in order to
surrender to the Americans or the British; many of these units would
actually be kept ready - in uniform, armed, and under the command of
their own officers – for possible use against the Red Army, as
Churchill was to admit after the war.)[7] In any event, Tokyo’s sole
condition was far from essential. Indeed, later - after an
unconditional surrender had been wrested from the Japanese - the
Americans would never bother Hirohito, and it was thanks to Washington
that he was to be able to remain emperor for many more decades.[8]
The Japanese believed that they could still afford the luxury of
attaching a condition to their offer to surrender because the main
force of their land army remained intact, in China, where it had spent
most of the war. Tokyo thought that it could use this army to defend
Japan itself and thus make the Americans pay a high price for their
admittedly inevitable final victory, but this scheme would only work
if the Soviet Union stayed out of the war in the Far East; a Soviet
entry into the war, on the other hand, would inevitably pin down the
Japanese forces on the Chinese mainland. Soviet neutrality, in other
words, permitted Tokyo a small measure of hope; not hope for a
victory, of course, but hope for American acceptance of their
condition concerning the emperor. To a certain extent the war with
Japan dragged on, then, because the Soviet Union was not yet involved
in it. Already at the Conference of the Big Three in Tehran in 1943,
Stalin had promised to declare war on Japan within three months after
the capitulation of Germany, and he had reiterated this commitment as
recently as July 17, 1945, in Potsdam. Consequently, Washington
counted on a Soviet attack on Japan by the middle of August and thus
knew only too well that the situation of the Japanese was hopeless.
(“Fini Japs when that comes about,” Truman confided to his diary,
referring to the expected Soviet entry into the war in the Far East.)
[9] In addition, the American navy assured Washington that it was able
to prevent the Japanese from transferring their army from China in
order to defend the homeland against an American invasion. Since the
US navy was undoubtedly able to force Japan to its knees by means of a
blockade, an invasion was not even necessary. Deprived of imported
necessities such as food and fuel, Japan could be expected to beg to
capitulate unconditionally sooner or later.
In order to finish the war against Japan, Truman thus had a number of
very attractive options. He could accept the trivial Japanese
condition with regard to immunity for their emperor; he could also
wait until the Red Army attacked the Japanese in China, thus forcing
Tokyo into accepting an unconditional surrender after all; or he could
starve Japan to death by means of a naval blockade that would have
forced Tokyo to sue for peace sooner or later. Truman and his
advisors, however, chose none of these options; instead, they decided
to knock Japan out with the atomic bomb. This fateful decision, which
was to cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, mostly women
and children, offered the Americans considerable advantages. First,
the bomb might force Tokyo to surrender before the Soviets got
involved in the war in Asia, thus making it unnecessary to allow
Moscow a say in the coming decisions about postwar Japan, about the
territories which had been occupied by Japan (such as Korea and
Manchuria), and about the Far East and the Pacific region in general.
The USA would then enjoy a total hegemony over that part of the world,
something which may be said to have been the true (though unspoken)
war aim of Washington in the conflict with Japan. It was in light of
this consideration that the strategy of simply blockading Japan into
surrender was rejected, since the surrender might not have been
forthcoming until after – and possibly well after - the Soviet Union’s
entry into the war. (After the war, the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey
stated that “certainly prior to 31 December 1945, Japan would have
surrendered, even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped.”)[10]
As far as the American leaders were concerned, a Soviet intervention
in the war in the Far East threatened to achieve for the Soviets the
same advantage which the Yankees’ relatively late intervention in the
war in Europe had produced for the United States, namely, a place at
the round table of the victors who would force their will on the
defeated enemy, carve occupation zones out of his territory, change
borders, determine postwar social-economic and political structures,
and thereby derive for themselves enormous benefits and prestige.
Washington absolutely did not want the Soviet Union to enjoy this kind
of input. The Americans were on the brink of victory over Japan, their
great rival in that part of the world. They did not relish the idea of
being saddled with a new potential rival, one whose detested communist
ideology might become dangerously influential in many Asian countries.
By dropping the atomic bomb, the Americans hoped to finish Japan off
instantly and go to work in the Far East as cavalier seul, that is,
without their victory party being spoiled by unwanted Soviet gate-
crashers. Use of the atom bomb offered Washington a second important
advantage. Truman’s experience in Potsdam had persuaded him that only
an actual demonstration of this new weapon would make Stalin
sufficiently pliable. Nuking a “Jap” city, preferably a “virgin” city,
where the damage would be especially impressive, thus loomed useful as
a means to intimidate the Soviets and induce them to make concessions
with respect to Germany, Poland, and the rest of Central and Eastern
Europe.
The atomic bomb was ready just before the Soviets became involved in
the Far East. Even so, the nuclear pulverization of Hiroshima on
August 6, 1945, came too late to prevent the Soviets from entering the
war against Japan. Tokyo did not throw in the towel immediately, as
the Americans had hoped, and on August 8, 1945 - exactly three months
after the German capitulation in Berlin - the Soviets declared war on
Japan. The next day, on August 9, the Red Army attacked the Japanese
troops stationed in northern China. Washington itself had long asked
for Soviet intervention, but when that intervention finally came,
Truman and his advisors were far from ecstatic about the fact that
Stalin had kept his word. If Japan’s rulers did not respond
immediately to the bombing of Hiroshima with an unconditional
capitulation, it may have been because they could not ascertain
immediately that only one plane and one bomb had done so much damage.
(Many conventional bombing raids had produced equally catastrophic
results; an attack by thousands of bombers on the Japanese capital on
March 9-10, 1945, for example, had actually caused more casualties
than the bombing of Hiroshima.) In any event, it took some time before
an unconditional capitulation was forthcoming, and on account of this
delay the USSR did get involved in the war against Japan after all.
This made Washington extremely impatient: the day after the Soviet
declaration of war, on August 9, 1945, a second bomb was dropped, this
time on the city of Nagasaki. A former American army chaplain later
stated: “I am of the opinion that this was one of the reasons why a
second bomb was dropped: because there was a rush. They wanted to get
the Japanese to capitulate before the Russians showed up.”[11] (The
chaplain may or may not have been aware that among the 75,000 human
beings who were “instantaneously incinerated, carbonized and
evaporated” in Nagasaki were many Japanese Catholics as well an
unknown number of inmates of a camp for allied POWs, whose presence
had been reported to the air command, to no avail.)[12] It took
another five days, that is, until August 14, before the Japanese could
bring themselves to capitulate. In the meantime the Red Army was able
to make considerable progress, to the great chagrin of Truman and his
advisors.
And so the Americans were stuck with a Soviet partner in the Far East
after all. Or were they? Truman made sure that they were not, ignoring
the precedents set earlier with respect to cooperation among the Big
Three in Europe. Already on August 15, 1945, Washington rejected
Stalin’s request for a Soviet occupation zone in the defeated land of
the rising sun. And when on September 2, 1945, General MacArthur
officially accepted the Japanese surrender on the American battleship
Missouri in the Bay of Tokyo, representatives of the Soviet Union -
and of other allies in the Far East, such as Great Britain, France,
Australia, and the Netherlands - were allowed to be present only as
insignificant extras, as spectators. Unlike Germany, Japan was not
carved up into occupation zones. America’s defeated rival was to be
occupied by the Americans only, and as American “viceroy” in Tokyo,
General MacArthur would ensure that, regardless of contributions made
to the common victory, no other power had a say in the affairs of
postwar Japan.
Sixty-five years ago, Truman did not have to use the atomic bomb in
order to force Japan to its knees, but he had reasons to want to use
the bomb. The atom bomb enabled the Americans to force Tokyo to
surrender unconditionally, to keep the Soviets out of the Far East and
- last but not least - to force Washington’s will on the Kremlin in
Europe also. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were obliterated for these
reasons, and many American historians realize this only too well; Sean
Dennis Cashman, for example, writes:
With the passing of time, many historians have concluded that the bomb
was used as much for political reasons...Vannevar Bush [the head of
the American center for scientific research] stated that the bomb “was
also delivered on time, so that there was no necessity for any
concessions to Russia at the end of the war”. Secretary of State James
F. Byrnes [Truman’s Secretary of State] never denied a statement
attributed to him that the bomb had been used to demonstrate American
power to the Soviet Union in order to make it more manageable in
Europe.[13]
Truman himself, however, hypocritically declared at the time that the
purpose of the two nuclear bombardments had been “to bring the boys
home,” that is, to quickly finish the war without any further major
loss of life on the American side. This explanation was uncritically
broadcast in the American media and it developed into a myth eagerly
propagated by the majority of historians and media in the USA and
throughout the “Western” world. That myth, which, incidentally, also
serves to justify potential future nuclear strikes on targets such as
Iran and North Korea, is still very much alive - just check your
mainstream newspaper on August 6 and 9!
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20478