Dropping the Bomb: Hiroshima & Nagasaki

hello everyone today we're going to be talking about the atomic bombings of hiroshima and nagasaki during the second world war and let's start today by telling a story so at the conclusion to the second world war japan though their military forces had been soundly defeated stubbornly refused to negotiate an end to the conflict their militaristic leaders had committed to total war in defense of the japanese empire and were prepared to mobilize japanese civilians to combat any potential american invasion president harry truman and his advisors were therefore faced with a difficult choice either they could commit to a long and costly invasion of japan which they estimated would kill more than a million people or they could use their secret weapon the world's first nuclear bombs which the united states had recently constructed so in order to shorten the war and avoid the need for an invasion truman decided to drop two bombs on hiroshima and nagasaki two major military and industrial targets demonstrating the extent of the japanese military's desire to keep fighting however even after these bombs were dropped japan's supreme council remained deadlocked with some military leaders still refusing to consider negotiating a peace it took the unprecedented intervention of emperor hirohito to break the impasse in the council and finally convinced the military to stand down bringing an end to the war so that's quite a simple story there and presented like this dropping the nuclear bombs was pretty unambiguously the right and moral thing to do when compared to the worst alternative anyway what this is is a basic trolley problem you might not like dropping the nuclear bombs but if the only other option on the table is a long costly invasion that is definitely going to kill and injure even more people then the bombs become acceptable and justifiable and this is a popular and enduring perception of the events that led to the nuclear bombs being dropped that they were used specifically to force japan to surrender without the need for an invasion however this is fleet admiral william d leahy who was the senior most united states military officer on active duty during world war ii and the personal chief of staff to presidents franklin d roosevelt and harry s truman and after the war with regards to the nuclear bombs lee hee wrote the following it is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at hiroshima and nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against japan the japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effect of sea blockade and bombing with conventional weapons fleet admiral chester w nimitz who was commander-in-chief of the u.s pacific fleet during world war ii said at a speech given on october 5th 1945 the japanese had in fact already sued for peace before the atomic age was announced to the world with the destruction of hiroshima and before the russian entry into the war the atomic bomb played no decisive part from a purely military standpoint in the defeat of japan and this is general dwight eisenhower who was supreme commander of the allied expeditionary force in europe during world war ii and later president of the united states and his opinion of the atomic bomb was that the japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing and eisenhower later wrote in his memoirs about a conversation he had with war secretary henry stimson in which he states i voiced to him my grave misgivings first on the basis of my belief that japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary and secondly because i thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was i thought no longer mandatory as a measure to save american lives it was my belief that japan was at that very moment seeking some way to surrender and in 1944 president roosevelt directed henry stimson to put together a survey team to write a report on the effectiveness of the allied aerial bombing tactics during the war published in 1946 this strategic bombing survey came to the conclusion that 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 so what's going on here then the people i just quoted there were all involved in the second world war in important positions of political and military power and instead of viewing the bombs as a necessary lesser of two evils they instead see them as everything from simply militarily unnecessary to a grave moral crime now obviously if these people are correct that the bombings of hiroshima and nagasaki were not necessary to end the war then the trolley problem version of the story we told at the start of the video can't be true can it so this is what we're here to investigate today which of these versions of history is closer to the truth we're going to take a look at the closing months of the second world war in the lead up to the atomic bombings and i think we should start today by briefly introducing the various people that we're going to be talking about a few of whom we've mentioned already so first off in the united states we have president franklin d roosevelt who was in office for most of the second world war roosevelt died on april 12 1945 meaning that his vice president harry truman became president and he was in office for the remainder of the war including the period when the nuclear bombs were dropped working for truman we have chief of staff admiral william d leahy who was one of the people we just quoted who thought the bombs were unnecessary secretary of war henry l stimpson who was the person to whom eisenhower voiced his misgivings about the bomb and secretary of state james f burns and spoiler warning this man in particular makes a lot of very poor decisions leahey and stimson both served in the same roles under roosevelt but james f burns was appointed secretary of state by harry truman on july 3 1945. the nuclear bombs themselves were constructed by the manhattan project which was directed by general leslie groves and the actual laboratory that designed the bombs was headed by j robert oppenheimer over in japan at the top of the japanese government we have emperor hirohito and he was advised by the supreme council for the direction of the war the supreme council had six members and they for the most part fell into two factions the moderates and the hardliners so for the moderates we have prime minister kantaro suzuki minister of foreign affairs shigenore togo and minister of the navy mitsumasa yonai and for the hardliners we have minister of war karachika anami chief of the army general staff yoshijiro umezu and chief of the navy general staff seremu toyoda we'll get more into the differences between these groups in a little while but generally the hardliners favored a more hard-line military strategy and the moderates were more moderate also important for us here is now take a sato the japanese ambassador to the soviet union who was in frequent contact with minister of foreign affairs shigenori togo and the messages sent between togo and sato are key to understanding the thinking of the japanese leadership at the time outside of the us and japan we have british prime minister winston churchill and premier of the soviet union joseph stalin i don't know if you've ever heard of them now of course there were many more people than this involved in the end of the second world war and i'll be mentioning more people going forward this list comprises only the most principal actors in the particular events that we're going to be talking about today as well as people there's going to be a lot of dates and events to remember here so i'm going to be using a calendar going forward so that we can keep track of everything the two atomic bombs were dropped on hiroshima and nagasaki on the 6th and 9th of august respectively and we've also already mentioned the inauguration of harry truman on the 12th of april and his appointing of james burns to secretary of state on the third of july as we go through the events leading up to the bombings i'll add more to this calendar and highlight which days i'm talking about in particular and hopefully this will help us to keep organized before all that though there is one important event we need to know about prior to the second world war and that's the russo-japanese war fought between 1904 and 1905 now i won't dwell on this too long but the very quick wikipedia summary goes like this the russo-japanese war was fought between the russian and japanese empires over rival imperial ambitions in manchuria and korea so it's two empires fighting over land and influence in asia basically anyway in this war russia suffered a series of humiliating and surprising defeats at the hands of japan a nation that russia was expecting to beat relatively easily perhaps most notable of these defeats is the battle of tsushima where virtually a whole russian fleet was sunk by the japanese navy who suffered only minor losses themselves russia was forced to sue for peace which was mediated in the united states by president theodore roosevelt and the resulting treaty saw russia withdrawing their troops from manchuria recognizing japan's claim to korea as well as seeding a bunch of territory all this coupled with the fact that the japanese empire had initiated the war with a surprise attack on the russian occupied port arthur meant that the russians were to put it lightly rather ticked off about the whole affair the disastrous russian performance in the war is considered one of the main instigating factors behind the 1905 russian revolution but that's a story for another day so to summarize and generalize a bit russia held a grudge against japan for beating them in a war and denying them influence and territory in asia this is all important in the context of the yalta conference which took place between the 4th and 11th of february there this was a meeting of stalin churchill and franklin d roosevelt to discuss among other things the post-war reorganization of europe nazi germany was on its last legs at this point its defeat was inevitable adolf hitler shot himself on the 30th of april and the german high command surrendered unconditionally on may the 7th and the yalta conference was held to discuss and negotiate the various things that should happen following that upcoming nazi defeat the main focus of the conference was europe but important for us here is that the soviet union's entry into the war against japan was discussed churchill and roosevelt wanted stalin to declare war on japan specifically they wanted him to invade japanese occupied manchuria which would make japan have to fight on an extra front and spread their resources thinner and this would hopefully hasten their defeat now this was a little bit awkward as russia and japan had signed a non-aggression pact in 1941 and that wasn't due to expire until 1946 despite this non-aggression pact stalin also wanted russia to declare war against japan however he wanted something in return so on the 11th of february the allies signed a secret protocol agreeing that russia would enter the war against japan quote two or three months after germany has surrendered and the war in europe is terminated and the price for russia's doing so was that the former rights of russia violated by the treacherous attack of japan in 1904 shall be restored and then they're all listed there so basically stalin was asked to declare war on japan after the war in europe was finished and he said okay but we want back all the stuff that japan pinched off us back in 1904. churchill and roosevelt's agreed and so the deal was made and this deal was kept secret for a few reasons mainly because russia is very big it was going to take quite a bit of time for the soviet union to transfer military forces from the west to the east and they didn't want to risk tipping japan off to the impending invasion of manchuria before it was ready to go ahead president roosevelt for his part thought this was a fair deal he later stated that the russians quote only want to get back that which has been taken from them however james burns then acting as adviser to roosevelt at yalta worried that the more the united states asked of the soviet union the more they would demand in return writing in his memoirs after the war burns makes it clear that he thinks too much was conceded to the russians at yalta although he is careful to give reasons as to why he thinks the late president roosevelt made the decisions he did burns does point out however that at the time the terms of the secret protocol were decided upon he didn't know about them and thus had no influence over them because he was not secretary of state mr stetinius was secretary referring to edward stetinius jr who was roosevelt's secretary of state at yalta this is important for us here because although truman kept on other of roosevelt's staff after his death he chose to replace stetinius feeling that too many concessions had been made to the soviet union at yalta and his new pick for secretary of state was james burns a choice which signals a change towards a more aggressive stance with regards to russia which leaves the united states in a bit of an awkward situation diplomatically speaking under the previous president and secretary of state they'd signed a secret agreement with the soviet union assuring them various concessions in exchange for going to war against japan but then that president died and his secretary of state was replaced and the incoming president and secretary of state aren't at all as keen on conceding anything to the russians and i wonder if that's going to cause any problems down the line so let's leave the allies in their awkward situation there and discuss what the japanese government was up to during this time and to oversimplify a little uh throughout this whole period the japanese leadership had basically a single main aim and that was to avoid having to accept an unconditional surrender and instead achieve a negotiated peace the supreme council in japan knew that they couldn't win the war but they wanted peace on terms that they could negotiate nazi germany of course was forced to accept an unconditional surrender by the allies unconditional surrender here meaning surrender without any guarantees being made to the losing side and japan was very keen to avoid a similar fate the main sticking point was the question of japan's imperial institution and the fate of the emperor in particular the emperor was more than just a regular old leader in japanese society he was a revered quasi-divine figure of particularly special importance and with his position as the head of the japanese government and importantly the japanese military japan accepting unconditional surrender meant that the emperor could then conceivably be arrested and tried for war crimes and possibly even executed this was something that brigadier general bonner fellas when advising general macarthur described as comparable to the crucifixion of christ to us the united states was very aware of the special position of the emperor and the gravity of the question of what should be done with him but we'll get to that a little later now there were disagreements in japan's supreme council about what exact peace terms they should attempt to negotiate on the more pessimistic or realistic end of the scale we have japan just getting out of the war however they can with the preservation of the imperial institution so basically accepting whatever peace terms are offered so long as they guarantee the emperor's position and on the more optimistic or unrealistic end of the scale we have japan getting out of the war while securing the preservation of the imperial institution securing the preservation of japan's military forces avoiding a foreign occupation maintaining japan's occupied overseas territories and ensuring any trials for japanese war crimes were carried out by japan now this was all never going to happen obviously but it was argued for the hardline militarists on the council were very keen on the preservation of the military believe it or not holding out for these terms was obviously a desperate long shot but these were equally desperate men regardless of these disagreements though the supreme council was unified on the first point they were absolutely not going to lose the emperor and therefore they want to avoid an unconditional surrender at any cost and they pursued this goal both militarily and diplomatically and let's talk about military strategy first so the militarists on the supreme council favored a strategy of making the war so difficult for the allies that they would lose their taste for unconditional surrender and decide to negotiate peace rather than fight on for another year or so at huge cost to themselves so japan wasn't going to win the war they knew that but they were going to end it on terms that were more acceptable to them the council anticipated an upcoming allied invasion of japan and planned to throw everything they had at it including civilians in order to wear down the allied will to fight and thus secure better terms a similar situation played out in miniature on the island of okinawa now okinawa was occupied by the japanese military and when the u.s military invaded it local inhabitants of the island including children were conscripted by the japanese military and sent to die by the thousands and by the time okinawa was captured by the allies on july the 2nd both the japanese and u.s militaries had lost considerable amounts of lives and military equipment it was both a very costly loss and a very costly victory president truman for his part was very concerned about the losses at okinawa and feared that committing to a full invasion of japan could mean quote an okinawa from one end of japan to the other so that's the supreme council's military strategy there diplomatically the council's plan was to convince the soviet union to mediate a peace between japan and the other allies much like the united states that mediated peace at the end of the russo-japanese war japan was counting on the pact of neutrality they had with the soviet union to keep the russians out of the war they hoped that they would have a better chance at securing favorable peace terms if they had the soviet union backing them up and in exchange for helping them with negotiations the japanese leadership was prepared to offer stalin various territorial concessions from their empire now unfortunately for the japanese people both the military and diplomatic strategies of the japanese leadership were to put it bluntly rubbish to take the diplomatic strategy first in trying to persuade stalin to help them out they were bargaining from a position of weakness they had nothing to offer the soviet union that it was not in a position to just take for itself stalin didn't want the war to end before he'd had the chance to invade and recapture the territory that had already been promised to him at the altar conference so why bargain with japan in exchange for helping them when you could just invade them and take whatever you like stalin wanted to be in at the kill as he put it and he wasn't about to grant japan a stay of execution to accomplish this impossible diplomatic task minister of foreign affairs shigenore togo sent frequent messages to japan's ambassador in moscow naotake sato instructing him to somehow convince the russians to help japan broke a piece now sato was rather a lot more realistic than his colleagues back in tokyo he knew the russians he realized that the council's plan was almost certainly not going to work and he didn't mind telling them in a series of increasingly frank messages sent in response to togo's instructions sato attempted to make his superiors see sense and let's quote a few of his cables here it seems extremely unlikely that russia would flout the anglo-americans and the opinion of the entire world by supporting japan's war efforts with either moral or material means i believe in the long run japan has indeed no choice but to accept unconditional surrender or terms closely equivalent i believe that stalin feels there is absolutely no necessity for making a voluntary agreement with japan on this point i see a serious discrepancy between your view and the actual state of affairs which is a wonderfully insulting line togo however didn't appreciate his subordinates candor he responded to one of sato's complaints quote in spite of your views you must carry out your instructions endeavor to obtain the good officers of the soviet union in ending the war short of unconditional surrender and this is the general pattern of communication that went on between the two togo asked sato to do the impossible sato attempted to explain that it was impossible togo told him to shut up shut your face just do it anyway please thank you and it's worth noting here that the allies had cracked the japanese communication codes and were freely reading japan's messages so they were privy to all of this information as well as togo and sato's back and forth comedy routine they were working on now militarily the strategy of the supreme council was just as ill-fated as their diplomatic efforts expecting the opposing side to lose their nerve and call it quits faster than you when it's your territory being invaded and occupied is quite a risky strategy it's also a strategy that hinges on the enemy first doing something that you expect them to do that being here to invade japan at all an allied invasion of japan was not guaranteed to happen the united states was working on plans to possibly invade japan should it be necessary but we should not make the mistake of thinking that because an invasion was being planned for that it was an inevitability president truman wrote in his diary on the 17th of june shall we invade japan proper or shall we bomb and blockade and this is before the trinity test before truman knows that he has nuclear bombs to work with or the effectiveness of those nuclear bombs before that he's presenting an invasion as only one possible way forward at the start of the video i quoted several u.s military leaders who thought japan would have surrendered prior to an invasion being necessary regardless of the use of nuclear bombs for example admiral leahy who described japan as already defeated and ready to surrender but just how defeated was japan let's briefly talk about the state of the japanese military so firstly by the middle of 1945 the japanese navy was virtually non-existent every japanese aircraft carrier had been either sunk or disabled hundreds of warships had been destroyed and after the united states captured okinawa japan's few remaining battleships were either decommissioned or used as stationary anti-aircraft platforms because japan simply lacked the fuel to keep them moving outside of suicide attacks by small vessels the japanese navy had ceased to exist and that's not a rhetorical flourish by me there that's a quote from the us summary report of the pacific war in the air japan was faring no better there was a shortage of bombers fighters trained pilots materials to construct aircraft out of and fuel to keep them in the air as you'll probably be aware by the end of the war japan was resorting to suicide missions carried out by poorly trained pilots instructed to simply crash their planes into enemy ships due in part to the rushed training of the pilots and the increasingly poor construction of the aircraft they were flying fewer than a fifth of these planes actually hit their targets on the other side the united states air force was conducting constant bombing raids on targets inside japan basically as it pleased meeting little to no resistance in the air general curtis lemay the man in charge of america's air offensive against japan later claimed that he did not lose a single b-29 bomber to japanese fighters and to quote the strategic bombing survey i mentioned near the start of the video united states planes crisscrossed the skies with no effective japanese air or anti-aircraft opposition given its collapse both in the air and at sea a naval blockade was able to be put in place around japan which firstly was absolutely devastating for the japanese economy almost their entire merchant fleet was picked off and destroyed and imports of vital resources like coal crude oil iron ore and rubber stopped as a result many japanese ports such as the one at hiroshima simply ceased to operate the blockade also had the effect of dramatically reducing the scattered japanese ground forces ability to communicate resupply and redeploy without their navy japan's troops were increasingly under-supplied as well as stranded wherever they happened to be so given the absolutely dismal state of the japanese military situation it is presumptuous if the supreme council to assume that the united states had to commit to a costly ground invasion at all the americans could if they wanted to simply maintain their naval blockade and bombing campaign and there would be very little that the japanese leadership could do about it they were counting on the united states first launching an invasion and only then losing faith in it of course another possibility is that the united states could decide they didn't want to do a ground invasion before they'd started one which is of course what happened but we're getting a little ahead of ourselves there now it is clear from their awful unsalvageable military situation that japan's leaders should have surrendered much sooner than they did and indeed some wanted to but so long as the hard-line militarist faction in the supreme council insisted on continuing the war there was little that those who desired peace could do about it directly anyway behind the scenes members of the japanese leadership who realized that the war needed to be finished were working on plans to that end but we'll get to those in due time for now though the supreme council remained deadlocked and the terribly sad thing about all this is that while the leadership of japan waited uselessly for either an american ground invasion or rescue from the soviet union their civilian population centers were being systematically destroyed and here we need to introduce the concept of strategic bombing that being the intentional targeting of enemy cities with area bombing grades with the aim of destroying the enemy's morale and industry now strategic bombing is interesting in that its name changes depending on who is doing it to whom when we're doing it to them it's called strategic or morale bombing and it's a calculated emotionless tactic intended to bring a swift end to the war by breaking enemy morale and disrupting their war industry when they're doing it to us on the other hand it's called terror bombing and it's a cowardly despicable tactic intended to instill fear in the population by the ruthless slaughter of innocent women and children it all depends on your points of view really the strategy of indiscriminate area bombing had been used prior to world war ii but it was during the war that it really got up to speed the nazis were targeting civilians with bombs from the very start of the war and notably one of the aims of their blitz bombing campaign against cities in the united kingdom was to break the morale of the british civilian population the british royal air force began the war favoring precision tactical bombing strikes against specific targets but they soon got with the times and adopted an area bombing strategy against german cities one of the aims of which was to break the morale of the german civilian population and there were two main branches of thinking behind making civilians the target of bombing raids there's the material reasoning and the psychological reasoning and we'll talk about the material reasoning first so why spend time and resources trying to exclusively bomb small mobile military targets that can fight back when you can just fly behind those targets and bomb the factories and shipyards that are producing them and those factories and shipyards supplying the military they're staffed by civilians who usually live in nearby houses they're also culpable to some degree for keeping the war machine going right and if we bomb them there will be fewer workers to work at those factories and therefore will reduce the enemy countries production and end the war quicker so it's not that we want to bomb civilians you see it's simply that we think this will be less painful in the long run now cities aren't solely comprised of war factories and worker housing of course but all the other things in the city the non-military industries that keep those workers alive the hospitals that heal them when they're sick and injured the schools that educate their children all these things are connected in varying degrees to the functioning of that society's capacity for war so following this logic you can just bomb everything by in effect reclassifying everything in the city as a military target once you've done this bombing civilians is impossible because there are no civilians the city is just one big military installation now it is worth noting here that the united states did not enter the war with this mindset in 1939 president roosevelt sent an appeal to refrain from air bombing of civilians to various countries and that reads as follows the ruthless bombing from the air of civilians in unfortified centers of population during the course of hostilities which have raged in various quarters of the earth during the past few years which has resulted in the maiming and in the death of thousands of defenseless men women and children has sickened the hearts of every civilized man and woman and has profoundly shocked the conscience of humanity if resort is had to this form of inhuman barbarism during the period of the tragic conflagration with which the world is now confronted hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings who have no responsibility for and who are not even remotely participating in the hostilities which have now broken out will lose their lives i am therefore addressing this urgent appeal to every government which may be engaged in hostilities publicly to affirm its determination that its armed forces shall in no event and under no circumstances undertake the bombardment from the air of civilian populations so some very high-minded words from a leader not yet in the war there a few years later however the united states was in the war and its military leaders saw things a little differently and to quote general curtis lemay there are no innocent civilians it is their government and you are fighting a people you are not trying to fight an armed force anymore so it doesn't bother me so much to be killing the so-called innocent bystanders lemay's bombing strategy proceeded exactly as if he really believed there were no innocent civilians in japan once allied bombers were able to reach japan mass fire bombings of japanese population centers began killing and displacing hundreds of thousands of civilians the firebombing of tokyo on the 9th and 10th of march killed an estimated 100 000 people by itself and made a million more homeless so in the course of just a few years the bombing of innocent civilians went from inhuman barbarism to there are no innocent civilians civilians were just another military asset to be bombed as far as the allied air force was concerned now the other line of reasoning for strategic bombing was the possible psychological effects that would result from the bombing of civilian population centers those being that perhaps the population would lose faith in their government or the soldiers on the front lines would be demoralized by their families and homes being bombed while they were away and all this would therefore lead to an increased likelihood for the enemy to surrender and the material reasoning for the bombing was often used merely as a pretext for this actual psychological aim winston churchill left this slip in a memo he drafted on the 28th of march in which he addresses the controversial bombing of dresden which took place between the 13th and 15th of february in this memo churchill says it seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of german cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror though under other pretexts should be reviewed otherwise we shall come into control of an utterly ruined land the foreign secretary has spoken to me on this subject and i feel the need for more precise concentration upon military objectives such as oil and communications behind the immediate battle zone rather than on mere acts of terror and wanton destruction however impressive so bombing simply for the sake of increasing the terror though under other pretexts so you're bombing civilians to break enemy morale and if anyone gets squeamish about that you say oh don't worry i know we hit a few schools and hospitals there but we were actually aiming at that factory a few streets over that makes boots for the army or something every city had some finger other in it that supported the armed forces in some way and thus there was always a handy excuse for indiscriminately area bombing anywhere now this strategy is and was at the time very controversial not just from a moral standpoint i mean that's obvious you're blowing up innocent people but it was also controversial in terms of its effectiveness and first let's talk about the effectiveness of area bombings material goals firstly even with the enormous amount of bombs which were dropped on nazi germany the country's production actually increased throughout the war and this happened for a few reasons one of which was that nazi germany used millions of people as slave labor many german factories were staffed by prisoners when you're a fascist regime occupying whole other countries lives are very cheap also whatever damage was done to german industry during indiscriminate area bombing raids on cities was relatively minor because to quote the strategic bombing survey as a rule the industrial plants were located around the perimeter of german cities and characteristically these were relatively undamaged now you could say nazi germany's production would have increased further without the area bombings of course but we're not talking about reducing production then we're talking about slowing down the increase of production which is less likely to be a major contributing factor to a surrender we also have to consider here that while your air force is bombing civilian housing with the aim of breaking their morale they're not bombing other things which it might be more useful to bomb the strategic bombing survey concludes that allied bombing raids on for instance the nazis oil refineries and transportation network were key to hastening the end of the war in particular it caused the targeting of germany's railways and waterways the decisive blow that completely disorganized the german economy it also concludes that the importance of careful selection of targets for air attack is emphasized by the german experience the germans were far more concerned over attacks on one or more of their basic industries and services their oil chemical or steel industries or their power or transportation network than they were over attacks on their armament industry or the city areas so the specific targeting of key industries and transport networks was more effective than indiscriminate area bombing and the destruction of civilian housing basically next let's talk about the psychological effectiveness of area bombing the thinking that area bombing would lead to a surrender caused by a breakdown in morale turned out to have a few flaws firstly on the government end militaristic totalitarian fascist regimes don't care about the opinions or well-being of their civilians so they're not likely to throw in the towel just because lots of ordinary people are getting killed or injured or made homeless they don't care about that caring about people is not high on the list of priorities for totalitarian fascist regimes on the civilian end there's several reasons why trying to break their morale didn't lead to the end of the war you know beyond their governments not caring what they think firstly as much as people might be terrorized by indiscriminate bombing raids they were also already being terrorized by their own governments and the police force of those governments it's one thing to have your morale shaken and decide things would be better if hitler was gone and it's another thing to translate that into action and go and fight the gestapo someone might not like having their city bombed and their house burnt down but that doesn't necessarily mean they're gonna go out and rebel against the government and risk being executed this is arthur harris perhaps better known as bomber harris who was the commander-in-chief of raf bomber command during the height of the second world war and he oversaw the united kingdom's area bombing campaign against german cities including the bombing of dresden now as you might be able to tell from his nickname bomber harris was a very enthusiastic supporter of area bombing and he was also a very enthusiastic supporter of being honest about the point of area bombing and let's read a quote of his from 1943 the aim of the combined bomber offensive should be unambiguously stated as the destruction of german cities the killing of german workers and the disruption of civilized life throughout germany the destruction of houses public utilities transport and lives the creation of a refugee problem on an unprecedented scale and the breakdown of morale both at home and at the battlefronts by fear of extended and intensified bombing are accepted and intended aims of our bombing policy they are not byproducts of attempts to hit factories so when he said this he was clearly in favor of area bombing as a tactic and also in favor of being honest about the aim of it the point was to disrupt civilian life kill people and spread fear however after the war bomber harris changed his mind in his 1947 book bomber offensive harris writes that while in 1941 it had seemed like a good idea to use area bombing to break the enemy's morale in the long run it proved to be wholly unsound and i quote when we had destroyed almost all the larger industrial cities in germany the civil population remained apathetic while the gestapo saw to it that they were docile and insofar as there was work left for them to do industrious morale bombing was comparatively ineffective against so well organized a police state as germany the german leaders themselves admitted after the war that morale was bad after our attacks on their towns but they distinguished between the morale and the conduct of the workers conduct they say was unaffected in other words there was nothing unarmed germans could do about it with the gestapo standing by and with the concentration camp round the corner so that's the failure of morale bombing from someone who was previously both very in favor of it and directly responsible for it there and the strategic bombing survey also covers the same topic saying if they that's the german civilians had been at liberty to vote themselves out of the war they would have done so well before the final surrender in a determined police state however there is a wide difference between dissatisfaction and expressed opposition about the nicest thing you can say about this morale bombing idea is that some people apparently thought it might work but it didn't and it just so happens that in the course of it not working it pointlessly killed injured and displaced a very large number of innocent civilians attempts to break the morale of the german citizenry with terror-bombing tactics led to apathy not revolutionary action and not to get to armchair general on you all here but i don't mind concluding that every single bomb that was dropped on a german house would have been better put to use if it was dropped instead on a german railway line or something else of actual military significance however i would like to make clear here that by no means am i saying we should absolve the entire german citizenry of all fault in the second world war many civilians were of course committed supporters of the nazi party and often participants in its various crimes when i say innocent civilians i absolutely do not mean those people however many german citizens were innocent many were persecuted by the nazis themselves or many were children for instance and sadly indiscriminate area bombing does not descend between these groups of people now all this is important for us today because the manner in which the atomic bombs were targeted and used was merely an extension of this morale bombing philosophy so let's talk a little about that in the months before the atomic bomb was used a group of scientists and military personnel dubbed the targets committee was established by director of the manhattan project general leslie groves and this group met several times to discuss how the bombs should be used and the minutes of the meetings of the target committee give us an insight into the thinking behind the target selection for the bombs on the 10th of may the group met in the office of j robert oppenheimer who was the head of the laboratory that designed the bombs and one of the scientists on the committee and they discussed various points relating to how the bombs should be used one key point for us here is the section psychological factors in target selection and that reads as follows it was agreed that psychological factors in the target selection were of great importance two aspects of this are one obtaining the greatest psychological effect against japan and two making the initial use sufficiently spectacular for the importance of the weapon to be internationally recognized when publicity on it is released so when picking targets here they're not just thinking about the psychological effects upon the inhabitants of japan they're also already thinking about the effects the bomb will have outside of the war they want the bomb to be sufficiently spectacular like they're setting off a big firework or something furthermore still under the psychological factors heading regarding hiroshima it was put forward that hiroshima has the advantage of being such a size and with possible focusing from nearby mountains that a large fraction of the city may be destroyed that's an advantage remember so in picking hiroshima as a target they were aiming to destroy a large fraction of the city due specifically to the associated psychological factors reading these minutes it is clear that the members of the target committee were much more focused on the psychological effects of the bomb than its practical physical effects upon japan's military capabilities regarding this they write use against military objectives nice use of quotation marks there it was agreed that for the initial use of the weapon any small and strictly military objective should be located in a much larger area subject to blast damage in order to avoid undue risks of the weapon being lost due to bad placing of the bomb so they didn't want to bomb an isolated strictly military target for fear of missing and losing the weapon whereas if they dropped a bomb on a city missing their air quotes military target is just fine because a large fraction of the city will still be destroyed regardless and therefore the bomb will still convey the very important psychological effects now i don't know any way of reading this other than it's okay if we don't actually hit a military objective so long as we still hit a city actual material effects upon japan's military capabilities were clearly not of prime importance here it is very telling that the top of their target list was kyoto the former capital of japan which was of relatively little military significance but enormous psychological importance they also include the ludicrous reasoning that since kyoto is an intellectual center for japan the people there are more apt to appreciate the significance of such a weapon as if the inhabitants of the other cities of japan would be simply too unintelligent to understand the significance of their city being exploded in the end of course kyoto was not hit with an atomic bomb general leslie groves wanted very much to bomb kyoto but after a lot of stalling it was reluctantly taken off the list of targets on the persistent and repeated orders of secretary of war henry stimpson who and yes this is the actual reason once went there on holiday at a meeting of the interim committee on the 31st of may stimson described kyoto as exclusively a place of homes and art and shrines and argued it must not be bombed the minutes of this meeting on the 31st of may reveal the confusing and contradictory list of requirements for the bomb targets and let's read a little from the section effect of the bombing on the japanese and their will to fight after much discussion concerning various types of targets and the effects to be produced the secretary expressed the conclusion on which there was general agreement that we could not give the japanese any warning that we could not concentrate on a civilian area but that we should seek to make a profound psychological impression on as many of the inhabitants as possible now this doesn't make a whole lot of sense if you aren't concentrating upon a civilian area how do you make a profound psychological impression upon as many inhabitants as possible it's not going to make much of an impression on the japanese population if you drop the bomb on some isolated military targets somewhere where no one will see it it would just be one more thing that got bombed that day this was brought up in the meeting when someone quote pointed out that one atomic bomb dropped on an arsenal would not be much different from the effect caused by any air core strike of present dimensions however dr oppenheimer stated that the visual effect of an atomic bombing would be tremendous it would be accompanied by a brilliant luminescence which would rise to a height of 10 to 20 000 feet so that's the key thing here that's supposed to differentiate the nuclear bombs from the conventional bombing raids it's not the material effect upon japanese military capabilities it's how impressive they look now of course if you want to create a profound psychological effect with your big impressive looking bomb you need to drop it somewhere where people can see it so how do you drop the bomb on a strictly military target while ensuring there are lots of japanese inhabitants around to see how tremendous it is the members of the meeting wriggled their way out of this conundrum with the following euphemism the most desirable target would be a vital war plant employing a large number of workers and closely surrounded by workers houses so we're not bombing a civilian area to be clear we are not aiming at houses we're aiming at a factory closely surrounded by houses and if we happen to miss the factory that's okay we won't lose the bomb because it will still destroy a large fraction of the city remember but again we're not targeting the civilians we promise what a load of rubbish honestly they want to bomb civilians they have decided to bomb civilians and they know it but they're too cowardly to admit it so they're pretending the desired effects of the bomb will merely be the byproduct of an attempt to hit a factory as bomber harris put it now secretary stimson went along with this ridiculous euphemism or at least contented himself with having saved his pet city of kyoto the other target cities were placed on a no bomb list meaning that they were not to be targeted by the air force with conventional bombings prior to being hit with the atomic bombs this was because another desired attribute of the potential bomb targets was that they were as far as possible undamaged so as to better demonstrate the destructive power of the atomic bomb they want a spectacular show after all now this requirement speaks to the relative military unimportance of the cities that ended up making the list they were thus far undamaged in part because they were not high priority military targets this is something for us to keep in mind when considering those justifications for the atomic bombs that highlight whatever military industry existed in hiroshima and nagasaki because whatever military industry existed in those cities did so specifically because they were not being attacked initially because of the city's relative unimportance compared with higher value bombing targets and following that because they were on this no bomb list allied bombers had attacked dozens of japanese cities with conventional weapons tokyo was extensively fire bombed months before the atomic bombs were dropped there was nothing stopping allied bombers from also attacking the list of target cities if they were supposed to be so important to japan's military efforts except for the fact that they were being preserved on purpose to be destroyed with atomic bombs now of course before the bomb was used in the field it was first tested and the timing of the first nuclear test detonation codenamed the trinity test caused a problem for president truman as the upcoming potsdam conference in germany meant that he personally would be out of the country truman actually wanted to delay the potsdam conference until a little while after the trinity test so that he would know going into diplomatic negotiations there whether or not he had the nuclear bombs to play with but he had to settle for getting the news while he was at the conference now before we get into talking about the potsdam conference i'd just like to recap what our principal actors are up to here so truman was stating his intent to get russia to commit to the japanese war and he later wrote that it was his main objective in going to potsdam the soviet union was ignoring japan's peace feelers and per the secret agreement they made at yalta preparing to void the non-aggression pact they had with japan and invade manchuria japan was organizing a diplomatic mission to travel to moscow and meet with stalin directly in order to hopefully convince him to negotiate an end to the war this diplomatic mission was led by prince fumimaro kanoe now kanoe was a prestigious politician and former prime minister who prior to the war had advised against attacking america he thought pearl harbor was a mistake and he was very critical of the hardline militarists stating in a report to the emperor in february of 1945 that they were the greatest obstacle to a termination of the conflict and that even though they knew they would lose they are likely to continue fighting to the very end merely to save face so the selection of this chap to head the diplomatic mission to russia sends a clear message here the emperor wants the war over and he wants to send kanoe to talk to stalin to get it done to prepare for the arrival of this mission togo messaged sato to set up a meeting between kanoe and stalin and sent ahead the text of a message from the emperor himself that kanoa was to bring with him and this message reads as follows his majesty the emperor mindful of the fact that the present war daily brings greater evil and sacrifice upon the peoples of all the belligerent powers desires from his heart that it may be quickly terminated but so long as england and the united states insist upon unconditional surrender the japanese empire has no alternative but to fight on with all its strength for the honor and existence of the motherland now stalin got this message but made no immediate response he too was heading to the potsdam conference and that's what we're going to talk about next so the potsdam conference took place between the 17th of july and the 2nd of august now this conference was similar to the altar conference in that it was a meeting of the leaders of the soviet union united kingdom and united states to discuss various matters related to the post-war organization of europe however in the time between the two conferences a few important things had changed firstly as we've mentioned the u.s president and secretary of state had changed and truman and burns wanted a harder line on russia we don't need to get too deep into it here but negotiations with the soviet union regarding various matters related to europe had become increasingly difficult plus the nazis were out of the war by now which meant there was less incentive for the other allies to concede to stalin's demands another important change was the completion of the nuclear bomb project the trinity test was conducted early in the morning on the 16th of july just prior to the potsdam conference and the test was a success the manhattan project scientists demonstrated that they could detonate a nuclear bomb now though the leadership of the united states had intended to get the soviet union into the war against japan all the things we just mentioned contributed to an important shift in opinion on that issue that was going on behind the scenes and two diary entries written by president truman at potsdam make clear this shift in opinion the first comes on the 17th of july when truman met stalin for the first time and they discussed various matters including russia's entry into the war against japan truman's diary account of the conversation reports that stalin will quote be in the japanese war on august 15th finney the japanese when that comes about although truman uses a free letter shorthand for japanese that i won't repeat here on account of it being a racial slur so the indication from this diary entry on the 17th of july is that truman thinks that japan is close to being finished off and that soviet entry into the war is what is going to do it and he furthermore wrote a letter to his wife while at potsdam stating i had gotten what i came for stalin goes to war on august 15th with no strings on it and he goes on to mention how this means he thinks the war will be shorter and fewer lives will be lost as a result so truman seems positively enthusiastic about soviet entry into the war right here and it is interesting to note that truman's belief that japan would be finished off by a soviet declaration of war means that he already thinks a u.s invasion of japan is unnecessary the second entry into truman's diary i want to talk about comes the very next day now truman had been informed of the success of the trinity test already on the 16th of july but it's here on the 18th that he first gets an indication of just how powerful the atomic bomb was henry stimson received a coded message describing an explosion that could be seen for hundreds of miles and he relayed this to truman who he described as greatly reinforced and highly delighted upon hearing the news and writing in this diary on this day truman says the following believe the japanese will fold up before russia comes in i am sure they will when manhattan appears over their homeland so here truman is presenting the bombs as an event that will preempt a russian invasion as the thing that will cause the japanese to fold up this was an opinion shared by james burns who later wrote in his memoirs that during the potsdam conference quote i would have been satisfied had the russians determined not to enter the war notwithstanding japan's persistent refusal to surrender i believed the atomic bomb would be successful and would force the japanese to accept surrender on our terms i feared what would happen when the red army entered manchuria james burns also rather candidly admitted in a post-war interview that quote it was ever present in my mind that it was important that we have an end to the war before the russians came in neither the president nor i were anxious to have them enter the war after we'd land of this successful test so here burns is directly tying the desire to keep the russians out of the war to the news coming in from the trinity test and walter brown who was assistant to james burns at potsdam wrote in his diary on the 24th of july that burns told him he believed that after the atomic bomb was dropped japan will surrender and russia will not get in so much on the kill so the plan was to get russia to invade manchuria something that would likely finish the war but finishing the war with russia's help does mean having to deal with stalin being at the negotiating table afterwards and given the difficulty of how the european negotiations are going and how roosevelt god rest his soul has already gone and promised stalin a bunch of concessions for helping out maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing if russia ended up not being necessary here after all and since the trinity test was just a big success we now have these very destructive nuclear bombs to play with and maybe when we use these japan might surrender to us specifically before russia even declares war and wouldn't that be handy and i'd like to point out two more things about this diary entry on july the 18th the first is that truman writes he believes the japanese will fold up before russia comes in he does not write i believe the japanese will fold up before a u.s invasion of japan is necessary an invasion of japan is already off the table here as far as truman is concerned truman and burns are not presenting the bombs as an alternative to a u.s invasion of japan as a means to end the war they are presenting the bombs as an alternative to a soviet invasion of manchuria as a means to end the war the second thing i'd like to point out about this diary entry is that truman writes the japanese will fold up when manhattan appears over their homeland and that's when not if truman writes about the use of the nuclear bombs as a thing that simply is going to happen and then he speculates about the effects they will have nowhere here is the thought that the bombs might possibly not need to be used as truman later states in his memoirs i regarded the bomb as a military weapon and never had any doubt that it should be used and this is concerning in light of the fact that on july 18th truman learned of the message that the canoe mission was to deliver to stalin after meeting with churchill truman notes in his diary that stalin had told pm that's prime minister churchill of telegram from the japanese emperor asking for peace stalin also read his answer to me it was satisfactory as for what stalin's satisfactory answer was we can read this account of admiral leahys of a meeting 10 days later stalin enlivened the proceedings by reporting that on july 18th he had received a request from japan to mediate for them with the allies to end the war he said this request included a proposal to send a royal prince of japan to moscow as chief of the mission the generalissimo said that his reply was that the proposal was too vague to warrant his approving a meeting with the proposed mission stalin then says that he had that day received another message from japan attempting to clarify the purpose of the mission but that he was going to send the japanese the same response lee he concludes that it was clearly evident that stalin was at that time determined to enter the war against japan which plainly was to the advantage of russia now that japan was certain to be defeated so tokyo is sending messages to stalin asking for him to mediate and enter the war and he's avoiding answering them directly and instead repeatedly asking for clarifications and he's clearly just buying time while he prepares for an invasion more like joseph stalling anyway to get back on track president truman knows at potsdam that the japanese leadership are in his words asking for peace so given that why we might wonder was there no doubt in truman's mind about the need to set off nuclear bombs in the middle of civilian population centers now we could simply say that truman had resolved to drop the atomic bomb on civilians in order to force a japanese surrender on favorable terms before the soviet union invaded manchuria however this interpretation of events seemingly conflicts with another diary entry that truman wrote on the 25th of july when talking about the upcoming bombings he says this weapon is to be used against japan between now and august 10th i have told the secretary of war mr stimson to use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children he and i are in accord the target will be a purely military one so what's going on here truman states in this diary entry that the bomb is going to be used against a purely military target now by no stretch of the imagination can the middle of a civilian population center be considered a purely military target it is in fact the exact place you would drop the bomb if you were trying to target women and children if the middle of a city counts as a purely military target then there is nowhere the bomb could be dropped that would not count as a purely military target making the question of whether to drop it on a purely military target or not completely pointless and he's talking to henry stimson who of course knows the bomb is going to be dropped on a city but has apparently tricked himself into believing the lazy euphemism about a war plant surrounded by workers houses being a purely military target truman and stimpson are acting like the bomb is going to be dropped on a military base or an airfield or something and then patting themselves on the back for not dropping it on civilians for whatever reason truman is thinking about the bomb as though it is only going to affect enemy soldiers he seems to understand that it would be wrong to drop the bomb on civilians but not that that is exactly what is about to happen as for why this is there are three possible explanations that i can imagine the first is that truman genuinely thinks the bomb is not going to be dropped on civilians and that the target list only includes military races or something in this version of events truman is told by stimson that the bomb is going to be dropped on a purely military target believes him and is later surprised by the fact the bombs have actually been dropped on civilians and so he orders that no more nuclear bombs should be dropped without his express permission which is something he did do after the second bomb was dropped by the way then i guess he realizes that he's massively screwed up but decides to just run with it and pretend that was the plan all along because that's easier at that point than admitting the enormous incompetence and being like sorry i didn't actually mean to blow up two cities that's my bad the second explanation is that truman is simply deluding himself he knows exactly what the target is but he's convincing himself it's something else if he really thought about it he'd know that the bomb was not going to land on a purely military target so he's not thinking about it and he's deceiving himself the third explanation i can imagine is that truman is just consciously lying he knows the bomb is not going to be dropped on a purely military target but he's falsely claiming that that is what he believes at this point in time and i suppose this could have been done with an eye on his place in the history books or to protect himself if there was any significant repercussions after the bombs then he could have pointed to this and claimed hey i ordered them to be dropped on military targets you can't pin this on me all these options are just speculation on my part however if i was forced to guess i'd say he was probably deceiving himself but i do not know the actual reason why truman wrote that the bombs were only going to be used on military targets i only know that for whatever reason when he wrote that he was wrong now leaving the nuclear bombs to the side for a moment i wouldn't blame someone for asking at this point if truman and burns are apparently so anxious to get the war over with before the russians get involved and they knew at potsdam that the emperor was asking for peace why was peace not able to be negotiated sooner than it was why when they heard the emperor wanted peace did they not simply send him a message saying great okay let's negotiate peace and the answer to that is the deadlock over unconditional surrender as we know japan was committed to avoiding an unconditional surrender but truman was likewise committed to securing one he didn't want to accept what the japanese were offering which was a negotiated peace he wanted a full unconditional surrender now various individuals within the allied governments and armed forces understood that insisting on absolute unconditional surrender was particularly with regards to the question of the emperor going to cause problems and possibly prolong the war while at the altar conference winston churchill suggested that mitigating the terms of surrender quote would be worthwhile if it led to the saving of a year or a year and a half of war in which so much blood and treasure would be poured out but president roosevelt was unreceptive to churchill's suggestion not to be deterred however churchill tried again when talking to truman at potsdam and he later gave an account of the conversation i dwelt upon the tremendous cost in american life and to a smaller extent in british life which would be involved in forcing unconditional surrender upon the japanese it was for him to consider whether this might not be expressed in some other way so that we got all the essentials for future peace and security and yet left the japanese some show of saving their military honor and some assurance of their national existence however churchill found this president as unreceptive as the last truman quote countered by saying that he did not think the japanese had any military honour after pearl harbor but churchill responded that at any rate they had something for which they were ready to face certain death in very large numbers and this might not be so important to us as to them others attempted to influence truman on the unconditional surrender issue at various times sometimes seemingly having more luck than churchilla under secretary of state joseph grew who understood the importance of the emperor having been u.s ambassador to japan for a decade advised truman on the 28th of may that the greatest obstacle to unconditional surrender by the japanese is their belief that this would entail the destruction or permanent removal of the emperor and the institution of the throne and guru goes on to say that without an assurance that the imperial institution would not be destroyed a japanese surrender would be highly unlikely and he further notes that the president said that he was interested in what i said because his own thoughts had been following the same line another of truman's advisors who took a similar line was secretary of war henry stimpson who spoke to truman on the 2nd of july on the issue of drafting surrender terms for japan stating that i personally think that if we should add that we do not exclude a constitutional monarchy under her present dynasty it would substantially add to the chances of acceptance and stimson later wrote in his diary that truman was quote apparently acquiescent with my attitude towards the treatment of japan now i think there's two possibilities here the first is that president harry s truman was one of those intensely annoying people who simply agree with whatever the last person they spoke to said to them showing absolutely no respect for future historians attempting to figure out what they actually thought about anything the second is that truman was actually sympathetic to what his advisors were advising him with regards to softening unconditional surrender but there was some other influence preventing him from acting on that advice and we perhaps see a hint of this at a meeting on the 18th of june when this time admiral leahy tried his look at pushing for a softening of unconditional surrender stating that our insistence on unconditional surrender would result only in making the japanese desperate and thereby increase our casualty lists and truman responded that he did not feel that he could take any action at this time to change public opinion on the matter so the opinion of the public is being factored into the decision-making process regarding japanese surrender terms and i think it's fair to say that the united states public were not the biggest fans of emperor hirohito a gallup poll conducted on the 29th of june reported that when asked what the fate of the emperor should be after the war the most popular response was execute him so any u.s president with an eye on public opinion is in a bit of a tricky position when it comes to openly telling japan they can keep their emperor especially if said u.s president has a history of calling for unconditional surrender just about the only person not advising truman to soften the surrender terms was james burns who will later rather dramatically state that truman appearing to back down from unconditional surrender would lead to the crucifixion of the president all of this is complicated by the fact that behind the scenes the leadership of the allied military did not desire to get rid of the emperor in fact there was actually a pressing military reason to retain the emperor and to quote a meeting of the combined chiefs of staff that took place on the 16th of july when discussing unconditional surrender it was suggested that if for instance an interpretation could be found and communicated to the japanese which did not involve the dissolution of the imperial institution the emperor would be in a position to order the ceasefire in outlying areas whereas if the dynasty were destroyed the outlying garrisons might continue to fight for many months or years so the proposal here is to leave the emperor in place and use his influence to convince the scattered japanese troops to stand down whereas if they simply kill or imprison the emperor that might prompt the troops to fight on so truman's being pulled in different directions here strictly militarily speaking letting japan keep the emperor makes a lot of sense it will almost certainly shorten the war save lives and be the thing to convince the japanese military to give up conveying that message to the japanese leadership prior to their surrender though is potentially risky from a domestic political standpoint if you've previously been calling for unconditional surrender you don't want to be seen as reversing position on that and giving in to a hated enemy's demands however the threat of the soviet union's expansion into asia means you do want to end the war quickly so there's conflicting motivations here and these conflicting motivations came to influence the construction of the potsdam declaration now this was a statement issued by the allies on the 26th of july that called for the unconditional surrender of japan saying we call upon the government of japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all japanese armed forces and to provide proper and adequate assurances of their good faith in such action the alternative for japan is prompt and utter destruction and it laid out various terms such as the occupation of japanese territory by the allies the disarming of the japanese military and so on notably however the potsdam declaration did not contain any mention of the emperor which you might think is rather odd given that the allies clearly know how important the question of the imperial institution was to the japanese leadership however it did state that the authority and influence of those who have deceived and misled the people of japan into embarking on world conquest must be eliminated for all time and this is rather vague with respect to exactly who it means does the emperor count as one of those who have misled the people of japan when the japanese leadership received the potsdam declaration the hardliners on the supreme council interpreted this in a very unfavorable way and took it to be an indirect threat to the emperor's life another confusing point for the japanese leadership was that when the potsdam declaration was issued it was signed by the united states britain china and interestingly not the soviet union to the supreme council this inspired a question as well as a fair bit of false hope if the soviet union didn't sign this declaration does that mean that they possibly disagree with the declaration what is russia's position here since they didn't sign the document calling for our unconditional surrender does that mean they might be open to negotiating better times for us after all after receiving the potsdam declaration togo met with the emperor to discuss it the emperor thought that the terms of the declaration were quote acceptable in principle but he agreed to postpone a response until after they had heard back from the soviet union so togo sent a message to ambassador sato on the 28th of july with instructions to attempt to sound out the russian attitude towards the joint declaration ambassador sato for his part had had just about enough of this nonsense he had been repeatedly saying that the russia plan was not going to work and yet here's another message from tokyo postponing surrender in order to ask what the situation is with the russians sato's messages in response were openly insubordinate and strayed into brazenly telling tokyo what to do sato said and i'm paraphrasing here look if stalin disagreed with the terms of the potsdam declaration he would have negotiated better terms at the time and if he wasn't able to negotiate better times at the time he's not going to be able to do that now is he the soviet union is not going to help you in fact if you don't immediately surrender they are probably going to declare war on you the supreme council on receiving these messages finally saw sense and decided to end the war no i'm joking sato was ignored obviously so the potsdam declaration contained no direct information about the fate of the emperor and it left open the question of the soviet union's position which prompted the japanese leadership to postpone a response until they knew what that was until then their official position was to ignore the declaration so if the potsdam declaration was intended to produce a surrender from japan it failed however when the potsdam declaration was first drafted by the office of secretary of war henry stimson it included the following point the occupying forces of the allies shall be withdrawn from japan as soon as our objectives are accomplished and there has been established beyond doubt a peacefully inclined responsible government of a character representative of the japanese people this may include a constitutional monarchy under the present dynasty so that is a concrete offer to retain the imperial institution right there and earlier drafts of the potsdam declaration also included among the signatories the generalissimo of the soviet union so what happened here then well between the first draft leaving stimson's office and it being issued publicly the potsdam declaration went through various drafts most importantly for us here the document was edited by president truman and james burns the final draft of course saw the soviet union being removed from the list of signatories and the offer to retain the imperial institution deleted firstly on the issue of the soviet union being removed from the declaration president truman simply writes in his memoirs that stalin could not of course be a party to the proclamation itself since he was still at peace with japan so that's truman's stated reason for excluding the soviet union from the declaration the soviet union is not yet in the war and technically still has a non-aggression pact in place with japan but why we might ask does this mean that the soviet union can't sign a document calling for japan to surrender i mean truman's stated intent for going to potsdam was to convince the russians to violate that non-aggression pact and have their military attack the japanese military so i'm going to go ahead and assume that respect for the sanctity of non-aggression pacts is clearly not the reason here and if truman is implying that he was worried that the soviet union signing the document would lead to war between russia and japan well that's what he's supposed to want to happen in fact the soviet union's exclusion from the final draft of the document came as an enormous surprise to the delegation from the soviet union who had written their own draft of the potsdam declaration which included themselves as signatories so they clearly wanted in on the signing of the document instead the soviet delegation was not consulted about the drafting of the declaration and were only told it was being released to the press at the same time it was being released to the press soviet minister of foreign affairs molotov submitted a request to delay the publication of the declaration but james burns claimed he didn't get the message in time hmm as for why the soviet union wanted to be included among the list of signatories stalin and molotov wanted a pretext to abandon their non-aggression pact with japan and invade manchuria and the potsdam declaration's ultimatum to japan would have provided that pretext so after being edited out of the declaration they tried a more direct approach in a meeting on the 29th of july molotov submitted a request from stalin for the united states england and the other allies quote to address a formal request to the soviet government for its entry into the war now this put truman and burns in a very awkward position because of course they're supposed to want the soviet government to enter the war but they clearly don't anymore as burns later wrote in its memoirs we had of course begun to hope a japanese surrender might be imminent and we did not want to urge the russians to enter the war truman and burns figure they just have to wait a week or so for the first nuclear bomb to be dropped and then japan will surrender before the soviet union has a chance to declare war and invade so being asked directly for an invitation to the war put truman on the spot and he sidestepped the issue the soviets would get no invitation from him however an interesting note here is that when the soviet union does actually declare war on japan they say they have acceded to the allied request to join the war so they didn't get an invitation but they just acted like they did anyway now of course excluding the soviets from the potsdam declaration and dodging their request for an invitation to join the war confirmed to stalin that truman was planning to finish the war without him so while at potsdam stalin ordered his generals to speed up their invasion plans he wasn't going to be left out of the kill so i think it's fairly clear why the soviet union was excluded from the potsdam declaration burns and truman are planning to finish the war without stalin and that includes not having stalin's signature on the surrender papers so when japan surrenders it will not be in any way a surrender to the soviet union is the plan the second important edit to the potsdam declaration was the removal of the offer to retain the imperial institution and the reasoning for this change is found in the diary of henry stimson who writes that when the potsdam conditions were drawn and left my office where they originated they contained a provision which permitted the continuance of the dynasty with certain conditions the president and burns struck that out they were not obdurate on it but they thought they could arrange it in the necessary secret negotiations which would take place after any armistice so truman and burns think the position of the emperor is a matter to be negotiated after japan has already surrendered and they're both convinced that the nuclear bomb is definitely about to force an unconditional surrender from japan remember that truman is quote sure that japan will surrender when manhattan appears over their homeland so given that why should they make any concessions beforehand and risk an unnecessary backlash truman and burns plan to use the bomb to make japan surrender unconditionally before russia joins the war and anything else like the position of the emperor can simply be sorted out afterwards so here's the situation we're in at the end of the potsdam conference the japanese leadership is still refusing to accept an unconditional surrender but truman is refusing to accept anything less even though on the principal point the fate of the emperor both sides are in agreement they don't want to get rid of the emperor but since neither side wanted to blink first the deadlock remained japan waited for rescue from the soviet union that would never come and the united states moved forward with the atomic bombings the first atomic bomb was dropped in the center of hiroshima on august 6th at about 8 15 in the morning it exploded directly above a hospital immediately killing everyone inside within the immediate blast radius with the hong kong and fukuromachi elementary schools which were completely destroyed instantly incinerating hundreds of school children this is the purely military target right here now my video is about the reasons why these bombs were dropped not the actual explosions themselves there are many sources for first-hand accounts of the terrifying effects of the atomic bomb and you can look those up yourself if you're in a particularly good mood today and would like to ruin it i'll just say here that tens of thousands of civilians including thousands of schoolchildren were killed permanently injured and disfigured in a number of cruel and horrible ways many of those not killed by the initial blast also suffered the effects of radiation poisoning which killed and made seriously sick many more people all together between the two atomic bombs it's estimated that between 129 and 226 000 people were killed and the vast majority of these were innocent civilians this is particularly true in the case of nagasaki where it is estimated that of the tens of thousands of people who were killed only 150 of them were soldiers when the leadership of japan got news of the hiroshima bomb they discussed what to do foreign minister togo saw in the bomb a chance to end the war and he argued at a meeting on the 7th of august that japan should now accept the terms of the potsdam declaration he was ignored the militarists on the council were too far gone at this point to be shaken by the destruction of just one more city war minister anami after hearing the news said i am convinced that the americans had only one bomb after all even after the destruction of hiroshima anami and the other militarists remained committed to pursuing a negotiated peace togo met with the emperor the next day on august 8th and they both agreed that the war was lost and they should surrender but even these two who have both wanted peace for a long time now are still thinking at this point about the possibility of negotiating a peace togo stated after the war that while he and the emperor wanted to end the war quote as soon as possible they would not completely discard the possibility of negotiating conditions armed with the emperor's wish that the war should be ended togo called a meeting of the supreme council for the direction of the war to be held the next day as some ministers were unavailable and i'd like to comment on two incredibly frustrating things here first is obviously that the japanese leadership did not unanimously and immediately unconditionally surrender the militarists were still conning themselves into thinking they would get to force favorable terms by fighting against an allied invasion the second incredibly frustrating thing is just how amazingly slowly this process is going hiroshima was bombed on august 6th togo's advice to surrender was ignored on august 7th he met with the emperor to discuss what to do on august 8th and then called the supreme council meeting to discuss things further on august 9th because some ministers weren't available sooner what were they doing oh they had something more important to do clearly where were they if truman and burns had intended the bomb to immediately shock the japanese leadership out of the war they severely miscalculated the militarists heard of the destruction of hiroshima and they shrugged it was just one more bombed city they'd seen dozens of those already the emperor and the less unwise members of the council desired peace as they had before but despite claims they wanted to end the war as quickly as possible they too were moving in slow motion there is an arrogant lack of urgency here the emperor isn't ordering an end to the war here he's simply letting it be known again that he thinks ending the war is desirable and asking togo to pass the message on to the supreme council once they get back off their holidays or wherever it was they went more than a full day after the atomic bomb was dropped on hiroshima ambassador sato in moscow received the following message from tokyo the situation is becoming more and more pressing and we would like to know at once the explicit attitude of the russians so will you put forth still greater efforts to get a reply from them in haste upon reading this i picture sato justifiably imagining himself doing various types of violence to the members of the supreme council sarto wouldn't have to wait long to find out as though he needed to the explicit attitude of the russians molotov summoned sato to the kremlin on august 8 and handed him the soviet union's declaration of war against japan and you rarely have to feel for the poor bastard at this point he warned them this was coming and they didn't listen the soviet army crossed the border into japanese occupied manchuria near midnight on the 8th of august and began smashing apart the japanese defenses because their leadership had refused to accept the inevitable reality of an imminent russian invasion the under-equipped japanese troops were not prepared for or expecting a fight and they were quickly overwhelmed when the news of the soviet declaration of war reached tokyo prime minister suzuki met with cabinet secretary sakomizu and after discussing the news came to the conclusion that their only two options were either to declare war on the soviet union and fight to certain death or they could accept the terms of the potsdam declaration suzuki met with the emperor early in the morning on the 9th of august and the emperor agreed to accept the terms of the potsdam declaration a meeting of the supreme council was called the six members of the council met to discuss their upcoming surrender and immediately deadlocked again i sound like a broken record here i know but the moderate faction supported accepting the potsdam declaration with the singular condition that the imperial institution be protected and the militarist faction supported accepting it only if they got to keep the emperor do their own war crimes trials remain free of foreign occupation everyone gets a pony the army gets fridays off now etc hours into this ridiculous conversation a messenger arrived to announce that nagasaki had just been hit with a nuclear bomb now if anyone expects this news to have any impact whatsoever upon the impasse in the supreme council i have done a very poor job of explaining what the supreme council is like the bombing of nagasaki of course had no effect whatsoever the council remained deadlocked they spoke for hours they upgraded to a full government cabinet meeting with 16 members they spoke for hours again in that meeting no conclusion was reached and they broke for dinner now i wouldn't blame anyone for considering this a very unlikely sequence of events how could they be hit with two nuclear bombs and that still not be enough to break this deadlock and the answer to that is they the supreme council haven't been hit with any nuclear bombs some unimportant peasants somewhere have been hit with nuclear bombs the council are fine they don't care this brings us back to one of the failures of morale bombing totalitarian militaristic regimes don't give a toss about their citizens you can't frighten them by killing poor people that's their day job at one or other of these council meetings prior to the end of the war chief of the army general staff umezu was asked about japan's defense against atomic bombs and he replied though we haven't made sufficient progress so far in dealing with air raids no kidding we should expect better results soon since we have revised our tactics but there is no reason to surrender to our enemies as a result of air raids so that's the militarist position on the bombs stated pretty clearly there they don't really care the nuclear bombs were no reason to surrender this impasse in the council did need to be broken somehow though so suzuki togo and sakomizu met in the prime minister's office and hatched a plan to have the emperor himself resolve the argument with a sacred royal judgment something which was highly unusual the emperor was not supposed to get involved in affairs of state so directly to achieve this they had to call an imperial conference so suzuki went to the emperor to request that one be called a request which was granted immediately which is very shocking for this lot i'm surprised they didn't take a week off to think about it at this imperial conference the members of the supreme council immediately deadlocked along the same lines as all the previous meetings their arguments were the same as before the militarists wanted to insist on attaching multiple conditions to their offer to accept the potsdam declaration and the moderates wanted to attach only one the preservation of the emperor they talked until past two am in the morning when prime minister suzuki talking over the protests of war minister anami dared to ask the emperor directly what he wanted to do the emperor said he agreed with the moderates and this intervention did the trick japan would offer to accept the terms of the potsdam declaration quote with the understanding that said declaration does not comprise any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of his majesty as a sovereign ruler truman and his advisors got the message that morning on the 10th of august and they gathered to discuss their response admiral leahy thought that the condition should be accepted he argued that the matter of the emperor's position was a trivial one compared to passing up an opportunity to bring an end to the war secretary stimson likewise thought the condition should be accepted and he also notes in his diary in my opinion with a slightly sarcastic tone it is curious that this was the very single point that i feared would make trouble and then he talks about his earlier draft of the potsdam declaration which included an offer to retain the imperial institution the very thing that was now delaying the end of the war if stimson managed not to say i told you so then he's a more disciplined man than i in support of accepting the japanese condition stimson argued that the united states wanted to keep the emperor anyway they needed to use his power to convince the japanese military to stand down stimson was also aware that time was a factor here the soviet army was on the march and he thought that the war with japan needed to be ended quickly before the russians were able to reach the japanese homeland james burns on the other hand said no we should not accept this condition i do not see why we should retreat from our demand for unconditional surrender he said if any conditions are to be accepted i want the united states and not japan to state the conditions that was his account of his words from his memoirs there so the conditions to the unconditional surrender work that out should be coming from us here they lost the war why do they get to say the conditions we won we say the conditions a justification for burns position is found in stimson's diary where he writes that burns was troubled and anxious to find out whether we could accept this in light of some of the public statements by roosevelt and truman of course during three years of a bitter war there have been bitter statements made about the emperor now they come to plague us so according to stimson burns is again worried here about the public perception of backing away from unconditional surrender we've been calling the emperor a monstrous dictator for the last three years and now we're gonna let him off the hook because he told us to that's not gonna play so truman and his advisors came up with a compromise position they would send a note to japan written by burns intending to imply without stating it so directly that japan would be allowed to keep the emperor the note stated that the emperor shall issue his commands to all the japanese military naval and air authorities and to all the forces under their control were ever located to cease active operations and to surrender their arms and to issue such other orders as the supreme commander may require to give effect to the surrender terms so they're giving the emperor a list of jobs basically they're implying that he gets to stay around by laying out what his role is going to be going forward and the note also states that the ultimate form of government of japan shall in accordance with the potsdam declaration be established by the freely expressed will of the japanese people truman sums up the intended aim of the burns note in his diary when he says they wanted to make a condition precedent to the surrender they wanted to keep the emperor we told him we'd tell him how to keep him but we'd make the terms so what's happened here is the united states said to japan we demand you surrender unconditionally and japan responded we will gladly accept unconditional surrender on the condition that you first agree to this condition to that unconditional surrender to which the united states responded oh we will happily agree to this condition to the unconditional surrender on the condition that you agree that you're accepting the condition not that we are accepting the condition you're keeping the emperor because we want that not because you want that so there when the japanese leadership received the burns note well we all know how this goes by now don't we there was yet another stalemate they disagreed over its exact meaning there were arguments plots threats proposed possible revisions to the note prime minister suzuki swapped sides for a bit and then swapped back again none of this matters at all they're just wasting time not accomplishing anything after several days of this nonsense the emperor intervened to break the stalemate again on august 14th the emperor summoned his cabinet to an imperial conference listened once more to the tedious arguments of the militarists and responded that he had not changed his mind and still wanted to end the war this second direct intervention finally mercifully brought about a surrender japan would accept the terms of the potsdam declaration at 12 midday on august 15th the emperor broadcast by public radio an address announcing that the war was over now around this time there was a coup attempt organized by some junior officers in the japanese military trying to prevent japan's surrender but they failed to gain support of the military leadership and it quickly fizzled out war minister anami refused to support the coup choosing instead to go home and commit suicide and though the war with the other allies was over stalin stepped up his offensive against the japanese occupied territories he wished to capture surrender or no surrender stalin was going to take what he felt he was owed and russia's annexing for instance of several of the kuril islands led to a dispute over ownership that is still going on today with both japan and russia arguing over who has sovereignty of the islands when really it should be neither of them there were already people on those islands before either russia or japan turned up other than that though the second world war was over just about now with regards to our main topic today we can ask a question what effect did the nuclear bombs have on japan's decision to end the war well japan needed three main things i would argue in order to end the war firstly they had to be in a hopeless military situation with no chance of winning the war and be aware of that and this one we can tick off the japanese leadership knew it had no chance to actually defeat the allies militarily they had known that for quite a while their only hope for their military was to use whatever was left of it to drag out the war with the hopes of securing better peace terms for themselves secondly japan had to be in a hopeless diplomatic situation and be aware of that now ever since the russians signed the secret pact to declare war on japan at the yalta conference the japanese government was in a hopeless diplomatic situation but for a long time they didn't understand that they were they held out hope for russian mediation all the way until the soviet union declared war on them now some of the actions of the allies undoubtedly contributed to japan not understanding the position they were in principle among those probably being the soviet union's signature being struck off the potsdam declaration but we also can't ignore the capacity for willful ignorance and self-deception among the members of the japanese leadership they should have known their situation was hopeless after the soviet union declared war on japan however the japanese leadership finally understood this second point and i'd like to add something here the strategic bombing survey that i mentioned at the start of the video stated 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 now i don't actually agree with that on the russia point anyway i personally feel that if the japanese leadership with regards to getting help from the soviet union thought there was any hope remaining whatsoever they probably never would have surrendered even if it meant their entire country was banned to the ground the soviet union declaring war on japan was crucial in that it forced them to confront their hopeless diplomatic situation to return to our list of things japan needed in order to end the war third is an assurance that the imperial institution would not be abolished this was the main problem the japanese leadership had with the ally to demand for unconditional surrender of course and i'd argue that the question of the emperor was the most important point on this list and that's both on a national level the emperor being a very important figure in japanese society but also on a personal level because it's the emperor himself intervening to end the war so an assurance that the emperor himself would not be executed as a result of doing that would probably help to speed things along there people who defend the atomic bombings as being necessary often point to the bluster of the japanese militarists who were even after the bombings and the russian declaration of war still promising to fight to the last with the desperate idea of somehow securing better terms for themselves but they didn't do that once the emperor intervened and the emperor intervened not to avoid more cities being destroyed remember dozens of cities had already been destroyed the emperor intervened to protect the imperial office in a post-war interview he explained one of his reasons for choosing to intervene as being that quote if the enemy landed near ise bay both issei and atsuta shrines would immediately come under their control there would be no time to transfer the sacred regalia of the imperial family and no hope of protecting them now you'd think that protecting the imperial knickknacks would be an unmentionably minor concern when compared to the nuclear bombing grades but apparently not the emperor took all this emperor business very seriously as did the rest of the japanese government the militarists on the supreme council might have wanted to hold out for better terms even if it meant fighting to the death but they were not prepared to contradict the will of the emperor admiral leahy wrote in his memoirs that himself and secretary stimson in their combined staff meetings were quote certain that the mikado that's an antiquated term for the emperor could stop the war with a royal word and this turned out to be accurate that is how the war was stopped on the japanese end now i don't want to get too deep into speculation about alternate history timelines today but i think it's fairly obvious that president truman and james burns deleting the offer to retain the imperial institution from the potsdam declaration almost certainly lengthened the war if the emperor didn't intervene to bring about a surrender immediately upon receiving peace terms that assured his position he almost certainly would have when that was coupled with a soviet declaration of war japan had only been holding out for russian mediation in the hopes of securing better peace terms after the soviet declaration of war that option was fully off the table so i'd say it's vastly more likely than not that having in hand both a declaration of war from the soviet union and surrender terms from the other allies that assured the imperial house would survive the emperor would have ended the war right there regardless of whether japan had been hit with nuclear bombs or not henry stimpson later noted in his memoirs that it is possible in light of the final surrender that a clearer and earlier exposition of american willingness to retain the emperor would have produced an earlier ending to the war and he concluded in 1948 that history might find that the united states by its delay in stating its position had prolonged the war now it would be very simple to conclude at this point that with regards to the end of the war the question of the emperor was everything and the nuclear bombs didn't do anything but is that really the case let's pose a few questions firstly we can ask were the bombs necessary to defeat japan militarily and the answer to that is obviously no the japanese leadership were beaten and they knew they were beaten long before the bombs were dropped so were the bombs necessary to defeat japan without needing to carry out a ground invasion of the four main japanese islands well to start with we've quoted multiple us military leaders today who say that japan was ready to surrender without either an invasion or the bombs being necessary but can we really trust their judgment of the situation you see those leaders had a couple of potential reasons to downplay the effectiveness of the bomb the first of these is simply that they didn't want to be put out of a job by this thing the worry there was that if the atomic bombs really are that effective then maybe we don't need such a large conventional military force anymore so clear your desk and another reason i imagine was pride if it's you who's been fighting the war all this time backing japan into a corner and bringing them to the verge of surrender you probably don't want the narrative afterwards to be scientists save the day and end the war with their new bomb it kind of undercuts all the work you did prior to that so i can see the motive there for us military leaders at the time to say hey hang on japan was already beaten we did that the bomb was not necessary however these ulterior motives do not mean that the military leaders who spoke out against the bomb were necessarily lying or wrong we know from what we've talked about today that the japanese leadership was close to surrender and was as president truman wrote in his diary asking for peace japan would have surrendered long before an invasion if for instance they thought they could secure terms which were acceptable to them they didn't actually want to be invaded just for the sake of it they were holding out for an invasion in the hopes of avoiding an unconditional surrender so us military leaders who claimed the bombs were not necessary to end the war were correct even if they had an ulterior motive for saying so instead of a motivation to lie they could just of easily have had a motivation to tell an uncomfortable truth so then were the bombs necessary to force japan to offer to surrender on the allied terms without any conditions and the answer to this is also no because they didn't do that even after two atomic bombs the japanese leadership still only offered to surrender on the condition that they were assured they could keep the emperor and between that offered to surrender and their eventual actual surrender they didn't get hit with any more nuclear bombs all this being said i do not think that the nuclear bombs had absolutely no effect at all on japan's decision to surrender it would be going much too far to make that claim in my opinion i'd say there were two main effects that the bombs had upon the end of the war firstly the nuclear bomb probably indirectly shortened the war because its existence prompted truman to try to finish the war without the soviet union which in turn prompted stalin to speed up his plans to declare war on japan and that declaration of war sped up the emperor intervening in the supreme council to bring about an offer to surrender with their condition of course the soviet union declared war on japan on the 8th of august and it's likely that if they weren't racing to get in the war as quickly as possible they would have declared war later in august sometime the 15th is what stalin told truman at potsdam so we can say that all other things being equal the existence of the atomic bomb probably shortened the war by a week or so the other effect the nuclear bomb had on the end of the war is a rather interesting one and let's read a post-war quote from cabinet secretary sako mizu talking about the bomb the chants had come to end the war it was not necessary to blame the military side the manufacturing people or anyone else just the atomic bomb it was a good excuse someone said the atomic bomb was the kamikaze to save japan so the bomb provided the non-military japanese leadership with an excuse to proclaim defeat that didn't involve blaming or shaming their proud military it lessened the risk of a revolt of the armed forces and it was a way to end the war while salvaging some pride as well as casting those killed by the bombs not as civilian war victims but as heroic martyrs the emperor's radio announcement declaring the end of the war took a similar approach moreover the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb the power of which to do damage is indeed incalculable taking the toll of many innocent lives should we continue to fight it would not only result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the japanese nation but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization so the bomb allowed the japanese leadership to say hey we weren't beaten in a fair fight here our brave military was gearing up for a decisive last battle but those cowardly americans they were too scared to face us so they invented this terrible bomb and started dropping it on innocent civilians those monsters so i suppose we have to be the adults in the room here and agree to stand down before you lunatics go and blow up the whole planet in a nuclear war so instead of being beaten fairly here we're sort of like heroes for giving up right does anyone buy that now this is desperate spin from a government trying to salvage whatever pride it could anyone who takes this at face value particularly the bit about the toll of many innocent lives is falling for imperial propaganda the emperor and the japanese leadership did not care about the innocent civilian casualties the supreme council's plan for their civilians was for them to die in a wave of suicide attacks fighting a vastly better equipped allied military so do not lie to me that they suddenly came over all sympathetic about their poor subjects the problem for the japanese leadership was not that innocent civilians were being killed it's that innocent civilians were being killed in a manner that was not useful they didn't want them being blown up in nuclear explosions they wanted them rushing american machine guns armed with bamboo sticks if they actually gave a toss about their civilians they would have surrendered months before they did when it was obvious the war was lost instead they selfishly hung on trying to save their own positions and reputations they didn't want to take responsibility for the enormous mistake they had made so the bomb provided to the japanese government an excuse to end the war that did not involve blaming anyone in particular it's not anyone's fault all this it's not like we did anything wrong it's just that they've got nuclear bombs now and there's no accounting for that so it's possible in this regard that the bombs also shortened the war by providing a face saving excuse for the japanese leadership to call it quits now as for whether this was a decisive factor as in if the bombs didn't exist and the japanese government had no similar excuse they wouldn't have surrendered when they did i honestly can't say however i will note that both of these possible effects of the bombs those being speeding up the soviet declaration of war and providing a face-saving excuse to quit do not require the bombs to be dropped in the middle of cities and this is a very important point that often goes overlooked in the debate about whether the bombs were necessary or not because beyond whether the bombs were necessary we also need to ask whether or not it was necessary to use the bombs in the manner in which they were used there are other ways to use nuclear bombs than to drop them on civilians of course on that note this person is leo zillard zillard was a hungarian physicist who in 1933 conceived the idea of a nuclear chain reaction zillard once lived in germany but he left when hitler became the chancellor in 1939 zillard approached albert einstein and asked him to put his name to a letter zillard had written warning then-president roosevelt about the possibility of nazi development of nuclear weapons the einstein zillad letter prompted action by roosevelt leading to the creation of the manhattan project which zillard also worked on now zillard and many other scientists working on the project were motivated by fears of a nuclear nazi germany something which thankfully never came about once it was clear the nazis would be defeated however several scientists began warning against the now unnecessary use of the nuclear bomb a document called the frank report was put together in 1945 and signed by several prominent physicists including zillard the frank report warned about the possibility of the bomb's use triggering an international arms race and strongly advised against an unannounced attack against japan the scientists behind the frank report instead advised truman that quote a demonstration of the new weapon may best be made before the eyes of representatives of all united nations on the desert or a barren island now allow me to lay my cards on the table here and say that this is how i think things should have been handled a public announcement and demonstration of the bomb coupled with an explicit warning to japan would have provided the peace faction in the japanese government with the exact same excuse to quit without blaming their military the emperor could still have done his where pulling out of the war to save the world routine except without two cities full of civilians being destroyed if the nuclear bombs were influential in ending the war it was by their existence not by their use in order to use them as an excuse to surrender the japanese leadership just needed to know about them not actually be hit by them one argument against demonstrating the bomb publicly was that they were worried it might not work henry stimpson later wrote that nothing would have been more damaging to our effort to obtain surrender than a warning or a demonstration followed by a dud which is a perfectly valid line of reasoning until the trinity test when you know they work after that there's no excuse and the infuriating thing about this is that if this public demonstration and warning didn't work you could still then use them against japan afterwards i mean you shouldn't drop them on cities regardless but you could do that doing it this way around costs you nothing and potentially spares the lives of two cities full of civilians the united states absolutely should have went public with the bomb however with regards to the frank report's suggestions groves and oppenheimer didn't appreciate this bunch of bleeding hearts telling them what to do with their new toy oppenheimer had previously written about the quote fallacy of regarding a controlled test as the culmination of the work of this laboratory the laboratory is operating under a directive to produce weapons this directive has been and will be rigorously adhered to so they didn't put in all this time and effort just to blow up an empty field somewhere for some diplomats and journalists they were making a weapon and they were going to drop it on a city without warning the frank report was ignored not to be deterred leo zillard put together a petition signed by 70 manhattan project scientists warning truman about the possibility of quote opening the door to an era of devastation on an unimaginable scale in attempting to get this petition to the president zillard on the 28th of may met with james burns who i'm sure you can guess was not very sympathetic to zillard's view zillard later stated burns was concerned about russia's post-war behavior russian forces had moved into hungary and romania burns thought it would be very difficult to persuade russia to withdraw its troops from these countries and that russia would be more manageable if impressed by american military might i shared burns concern about russia's throwing its weight around in the post-war period but i was completely flabbergasted by the assumption that rattling the bomb might make russia more manageable zillard's petition never did make it to truman now this quote from burns here about making the russians more manageable along with other documents that came to light in the post-war period for instance the target committee's desire for the bomb to be used in a manner that would ensure international recognition and truman's diary entries revealing that he knew of the emperor's desire for peace prior to the bombs being used allowed certain people to construct an alternative historical narrative to the accepted story of america using the bomb to avoid an invasion of japan in this new telling america thinking ahead to the post-war period used the bomb primarily as an indirect diplomatic weapon against the soviet union rather than as a direct military weapon against the empire of japan now there is evidence to support that this motivation was certainly a factor it definitely was for secretary of state james burns for instance but this evidence has led some to conclude that the bombs were dropped solely to intimidate russia and this is going much too far in my opinion anyone who points to a singular reason as the explanation for why the bombs were dropped is definitely oversimplifying the history the bombs were dropped for a combination of many reasons and let's list some of them so first the bombs were dropped in part to limit soviet influence in asia and make other diplomatic negotiations with the soviet union ghost mover for the united states although this turned out to be an enormous miscalculation it was assumed incorrectly that it would take the soviets a lot longer to develop their own nuclear weapons than it actually did and the united states would get to enjoy a long stretch of time as the world's only nuclear power unbeknownst to truman however stalin had spies inside the manhattan project who were sending plans and information back to russia in just a few short years the soviet union would be testing their own nuclear weapons and the feared arms race was on next the bombs were dropped in part to force an end to the war without the united states being seen to back down from unconditional surrender it was more preferable to certain people that the united states set off nuclear bombs in the middle of cities than the president take a knock to his popularity by looking hypocritical or weak another possible reason the bombs were dropped was to justify their expense admiral leahy argues in his memoirs that it was my reaction that the scientists and others wanted to make this test because of the vast sums that had been spent on the project truman knew that and so did other people involved the manhattan project was enormously expensive and diverted many of the united states top scientists and engineers away from other useful work it was very costly in terms of dollars materials and manpower and the project's management wanted something to show for the expense they didn't want the culmination of their work to simply be blowing up a field somewhere another motivation surely was revenge the white house press release announcing the use of the bomb at hiroshima stated the japanese began the war from the air at pearl harbor they have been repaid many fold so this thinking is that the japanese began the war with a sneak attack they carried out many war crimes and atrocities they mistreated prisoners of war and even though they began the war and lost it they still arrogantly refused to surrender and dared to try and impose their own surrender times on the allied forces that had beaten them so yeah we bombed them but they were asking for it this motivation would be a lot more sympathetic and understandable had the bombs not been dropped on civilians because counter to what the white house press release said the japanese did not begin the war at pearl harbor the japanese leadership and military did that the japanese civilians were not consulted if the united states wanted to use the bombs to pay back pearl harbor they should have dropped one on a military target or the supreme council i suppose related to that last point another motivation that influenced the use of the bombs was just basic regular racism it is very worth remembering that the racist ideas that inspired nazi germany to commit such terrible atrocities were not limited to that country's borders when we've been talking about america today it was in america decades prior to the signing of the civil rights act james burns a very influential figure in the events we've been talking about was a supporter of racial segregation and president truman himself referred to the japanese people as beasts several times and once when defending the use of the bomb specifically he wrote that when you have to deal with a beast you have to treat him as a beast this is also undoubtedly one of the reasons that japan and not nazi germany was targeted with the nuclear bombs it was much easier for the people behind the bomb to justify the use of such a destructive weapon if it wasn't going to be used to kill white people and now hold up a second scroll back up everyone who just scrolled down to type in the comment box that of course the bombs were used against japan and not nazi germany nazi germany surrendered before the bombs were ready to be used now i know that obviously but i didn't say used i said targeted and japan was chosen as the target for the nuclear bombs two years before nazi germany's surrender japan was chosen as the target way back in 1943 and when general leslie groves briefed president truman about the project in april 1945 he stated the target is and was always expected to be japan another factor behind the use of the bombs was simply the momentum of the project at the top of the united states leadership there was a vacuum of responsibility with roosevelt's death and the newly installed president truman only just learning about the project near to its completion there's a sense that things were simply too far along to be halted without very firm leadership anyway truman's job was not to get in the bomb's way leslie groves described truman's role in the atomic bombings as quote one of non-interference basically a decision not to upset the existing plans he was a rubber stamp for the project basically truman simply assumed the bomb would be used when ready he didn't even give a specific order for the first two bombs to be dropped and after the first two bombs it was ordered that no more would be dropped without his explicit permission to do so which of course implies that they didn't need that permission beforehand we can see something of an abdication of responsibility among those behind the nuclear bomb in his memoirs truman states i had realized of course that the atomic bomb explosion would inflict damage and casualties beyond imagination on the other hand the scientific advisers of the committee reported we can propose no technical demonstration likely to bring an end to the war we see no acceptable alternative to direct military use it was their conclusion that no technical demonstration they might propose such as over a deserted island would be likely to bring the war to an end it had to be used against an enemy target on the other hand several top manhattan project scientists including oppenheimer made efforts to distance themselves from what they claimed was merely a military decision in a report issued on the 16th of june they stated that we have no claim to special competence in solving the political social and military problems which are presented by the advent of atomic power oppenheimer also later stated that we didn't know beans about the military situation in japan we didn't know whether they could be caused to surrender by other means or whether the invasion was really inevitable so truman's sharing responsibility with the scientists here saying well i knew the bomb was going to be horrible obviously but these scientists told me a peaceful demonstration would never work and that i had to drop it on a city so you know and the scientists are saying hey well what are you listening to us for we don't know we're physicists we just built the thing we don't know about foreign policy or military strategy there's a sense that nobody's really in control of this thing the ball was rolling and nobody had the inclination to stop it i would like to add however that regardless of any of this truman is still responsible here and he still made a decision even if it was more of a passive decision than an active one now all this has led some to wonder about whether or not the bombs would have been used had president roosevelt not died when he did albert einstein who i'm told was a rather smart guy in certain regards came to this conclusion stating that the use of the atomic bombs was precipitated by a desire to end the war in the pacific by any means before russia's participation i'm sure if president roosevelt had still been there none of that would have been possible so as we've seen the bombs were dropped for a combination of many reasons but none of these was to avoid an invasion of japan by the time it was an option to drop nuclear bombs on japan an invasion was already off the table it was no longer necessary both truman and burns thought that japan was going to surrender because of the upcoming russian declaration of war and the bombs were dropped in part to attempt to force a surrender prior to that before we wrap up today we should ask where did this invasion narrative come from why is it the enduring popular perception of events let's return to the start of the video and talk again about what i called the trolley problem version of events now i have a confession to make about this what i do when i want to find an example of a poor argument put forward ineptly is go and check if prager university has ever made a video on the topic and would you know it they have made one about the nuclear bombs titled was it wrong to drop the atom bomb on japan which of course concludes it was completely justified and the version of events written at the start of my video is constructed almost entirely out of statements made in their video so that's right this was a stealth prageru response video this whole time what a twist so this prageru video starts out by giving far too much agency to a certain mr president truman when they say truman sought to bomb hiroshima and nagasaki two major military industrial targets to avoid an invasion of japan so they're assigning to truman the decision of which targets to bomb there now truman had no input on deciding to target hiroshima or nagasaki he didn't even know nagasaki was going to be bombed until after it already had been nagasaki wasn't even the target city of the plane that dropped the bomb on nagasaki it only got attacked because the primary target was too cloudy to hit now i could pick through this video line by line giving rebuttals like this to each of its claims but this video is long enough already so instead i just want to focus on two quotes that concern the bombs versus invasion narrative and the first is this it was only the dropping of the atom bombs that allowed the emperor and the so-called peace faction in the japanese government to negotiate an end to the war now this is just a total inversion of reality the atom bombs did not allow the emperor to negotiate and enter the war either with the united states or within his own government the problem was not that prior to the bombs japan was refusing to negotiate an end to the war it's that they were insisting on negotiating an end to the war the united states was the country refusing to negotiate an end to the war because they were insisting on unconditional surrender and the emperor didn't negotiate and enter the war within his own government he was the emperor the government did what he said the militarists wanted to fight to the death even after the nuclear bombs were dropped there was no negotiation there was no convincing them it was a deadlock broken by the emperor's divine ruling this idea that the japanese leadership were committed to total war only until the bombs forced them to the negotiating table is entirely false i also have a particular distaste for the phrasing it was only the dropping of the atom bomb because imperial japan was beaten long before the nuclear bombs were dropped and pretending that it took the nuclear bombs to defeat japan is not only untrue it's a dangerous exaggeration it makes the empire of japan into such a powerful enemy that you need nuclear force to take them down and it covers up the reality which is that imperial japan was already a defeated state run by incompetent ignorant leaders the next quote i want to talk about is this all the viable alternate scenarios to secure american victory all would have meant significantly greater american and allied casualties and much higher japanese civilian and military casualties according to american military estimates at the time those numbers would have been well above 1 million now you may have noticed today that we have not thus far discussed what the projected wartime casualties of a full allied invasion of japan were going to be and that's because until after the war there were no such projections made this quote from prageru here is a lie the enormously high death estimates for a full invasion of japan were entirely a post-war fabrication now before we talk about where this one million figure came from i'd like to remind everyone that an invasion was unnecessary and not going to happen anyway whatever death estimates you come up with a thousand a million a hundred million it does not matter an invasion was not going to happen and the bombs were not used to avert it right so with that in mind this one million figure comes from an article published in henry stimson's name in harper's magazine in 1947. this article was written in response to various criticisms of the use of the atomic bomb which had begun emerging after the end of the war and it was edited by various people responsible for the bomb including general leslie groves the article lays out the trolley problem excuse we simply had to do the nuclear bombs it argues there was no other way talking about the apparently inevitable invasion the article states i was informed that such operations might be expected to cost over a million casualties to american forces alone now as i've already stated there is no evidence of such an estimate being made prior to the end of the war and president truman at no point presented the nuclear bombs as an alternative to an allied invasion of japan until he had to justify the use of the bombs after the war only then did the invasion become inevitable and did the death estimates shoot up into the millions this is where the atom bombs vs invasion narrative comes from after the bomb was dropped the u.s leadership started telling lies about it president truman himself got started very early on august 9th 1945 when he addressed the nation with a speech seeking to justify the use of the nuclear bomb and i quote the world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on hiroshima a military base that was because we wished in this first attack to avoid insofar as possible the killing of civilians now this is a lie obviously hiroshima was a city the bomb's target committee describes it as a city remember that hiroshima has the advantage of being such a size that a large fraction of the city may be destroyed and truman's lying continues as follows but that attack is only a warning of things to come if japan does not surrender bombs will have to be dropped on her war industries and unfortunately thousands of civilian lives will be lost i urge japanese civilians to leave industrial cities immediately and save themselves from destruction so truman isn't justifying the bombing of hiroshima by saying it was a city with several war industries in it which is what the eventual excuse came to be he's going for broke here and saying it was solely a military base and that unless japan surrenders bombs will have to be dropped on her war industries implying that that has not happened already averting an invasion was not given as a reason for using the bombs in this speech because they hadn't come up with that excuse yet truman also here claims the bomb was used to spare the lives of thousands and thousands not the later claimed millions and millions another lie that became popular after the war was that the nuclear bomb was dropped in response to japan ignoring the potsdam declaration however the only existing direct order to go ahead with the use of the nuclear bombs against japan was issued prior to the potsdam declaration not by truman of course he didn't have anything to do with it it was drafted by leslie groves approved by henry stimson and delivered to general carl spatz commander of the strategic air forces on july the 25th the day before the potsdam declaration was issued they did not wait for a response before issuing the order to proceed with the atomic bombings the order was issued before japan had even seen the surrender terms as a result of these lies and others the simplified version of the history came into existence and it isn't hard to understand why this caught on firstly it took me two minutes at the top of the video to explain the easy lie and the whole rest of the video to explain the much more complicated truth the bombs versus invasion narrative is simple it's plausible and it's easy to understand it isn't true of course but why let that get in the way of a good story but the invasion narrative is not just easier to understand it's also easier to accept because if we question it we have to contend with the possibility or the certainty that the united states of america incinerated two cities full of innocent civilians for no good reason given the enormous death toll the truth that the use of the bombs was pointless and accomplished nothing is very difficult to accept now it's about time for me to conclude this video here and trying to neatly sum up such a complicated event with so many actors all with their own contradictory motivations is surely an exercise in frustration there is no doing it justice that said the nuclear bombs used against japan were an expensive gamble that did not pay off they were dropped on civilians intentionally per the flawed strategy of morale bombing to force japan to surrender unconditionally before the soviet union joined the war in this they were a complete failure the lie that the bombs were used only to avert an invasion of japan was a post-war construction intended to provide justification for a completely avoidable and indefensible slaughter of innocent civilians the civilians who died in hiroshima and nagasaki were not killed to avert an invasion of japan nor did they bravely give their lives in sacrifice to save their empire their deaths were entirely unnecessary and we owe it to them to admit that often when terrible injustices towards the inhabitants of one country are discussed the response will come well what about all the terrible injustices carried out by that country to other people this is a question that has varying motivations behind it of varying legitimacy on the one hand certain events from the second world war and wider history in general i suppose do get much more attention and discussion for whatever reasons than other events of equal importance and it is perfectly valid to ask that we do not forget that imperial japan committed many terrible war crimes and was both during and before the war a brutal totalitarian oppressor of many different people i think it's very important to make clear here that nothing we've talked about today should generate any sympathy whatsoever for imperial japan as a concept or the leadership of the imperial japanese government or military the crimes of the empire of japan were dreadful and there is no punishment that perpetrators would not deserve and many of these crimes it is worth pointing out have went either ignored or unapologized for by the japanese government to this day all that being said we must be careful to accurately allocate fault here because unfortunately that same question what about all the stuff they did it's not always asked with such innocent intentions sometimes this question reveals something very worrisome and that's the belief in racial crimes that can be avenged with violence towards other members of that group and this is the worst sort of us versus them thinking they did something bad to us so they and by they i mean anyone i reckon is in that group deserves something bad in return so while we should have no sympathy whatsoever for the empire of japan the school children of hiroshima and nagasaki were not the empire of japan they were some school children they had nothing to do with pearl harbor they did not consent to go to war they were needlessly put in danger by one power and needlessly killed by another nothing was avenged or paid back there was no point to it but to provide yet more evidence that there's no monopoly held by any nation or race on a disregard for the lives of the powerless thanks a lot for watching everyone if you enjoyed this video please consider clicking the subscribe button so you'll be informed of future videos which hopefully won't all be this long and take quite so long to come out and thank you in particular to my wonderful supporters over on patreon for supporting me while i make videos like this one and providing very useful feedback i'm currently accepting suggestions for future video topics on my patreon page so if you have anything in particular you would like to suggest you can head over to the patreon link in the video description and let me know right thanks a lot folks i'll see you next time

Channel: Shaun

Views: 707,050

Rating: 4.8946757 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: RCRTgtpC-Go

Length: 140min 19sec (8419 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 11 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/J__P]

Shaun taking Prager U dunking videos to the extreme.

the final line: "there's no monopoly held by any nation or race on a disregard of the lives of the powerless" is killer

[u/mackanj01]

ITT: People who haven't watched the video assuming that it is in favour of the use of the atom bombs because the word justifications is in the title.

[u/LigitBoy]

I found a few points I don't agree with in this video.

He made a point that the military had excused the bombing of civilian targets by saying "they were actually aiming for the factory a few streets over" when they intended to hit civilians anyway. he also touches a bit but doesn't really elaborate on the fact that japanese industry was very decentralized and unplanned. The fact of the matter is, that bombing during that time was extremely inaccurate. You needed hundred of bombers to even hope for hitting a single factory. This problem was compounded by the fact that japan didn't have few large factories like the west, but many smaller factories. So I think it was more of a limitation of technology at the time than evil commanders wanting to murder civilians.

He also made a point that even before the bombings, japan was sueing for peace. They were, but conditionally, which US command wasn't having. The bombs were used to make sure peace would be achieved unconditionally. He framed the discussion to make it appear as though the japanese were pleading for peace but the US just ignored them. He even stated that before the bombings, only a few people in the council wanted peace at that time. Also the emperor didn't have much say in state affairs, even though he used the emperor as an example as japan wanting peace.

The video made fun of the Americans for saying they wanted the bomb to be a spectacle or to "appear like fireworks". He dismissed this as just the Americans being callous or acting like is was a toy. I think the need for the bomb to be a spectacle is a fair point. If the objective was to simply cause damage or end lives, then they would have just intensified their firebombing attacks. In fact more people died from firebombing than both the nukes, so it wasn't about killing. It was showing japan america in fact has the resources to make nukes, and that we have the capability to level entire cities with a SINGLE bomb. So it was supposed to be the super weapon that shocked the japanese and put a clear point across.

He also made fun of the Americans by saying they planned for the bomb to be a shock and awe weapon yet the japanese didn't respond as such. The Americans couldn't have been able to guess what the japanese response would have been and it was only clear after the bombing that the japanese didn't apparently care. I don't even believe his point that the japanese commanders didn't care because he even stated in the video that it had directly caused the council to have an extremely long meeting to make a decision about unconditional surrender. It look them a few days to start, but they still did it as a direct result. So I think he's underplaying the affect the bomb had in the council's morale.

He criticized america's decision to regard civilian targets as important to the war effort. I think he underestimates the scale of what "total war" was like during those times. every country in the war had implemented the idea, and it was an ideology that every single man, woman, child, vehicle, service, building, tool, everything was devoted to the war effort. It wasn't an idea that americans had made to rationalize bombing civilians, it as an ideology that every single country took part in. He shouldn't blame this idea in america. Also we weren't even the first to do it. Germany had resorted to bombing british civilians long before we did it. I think it was an ideology of the time rather than callous american commanders choosing to kill civilians.

If we had even chosen to blockade japan to starve them out. An untold number of civilians works have died to unrest and starvation as a result. Also the war still would have lasted many more months, so I don't think from a civilian casualties standpoint, the blockade plan would have been much better.

He also said that the bombs would have had the same effect had they not been dropped on a civilian population. Yet he also stated that the main reason why the council had decided to give up, was because the bomb was killing their civilians in a non-useful way. Not what their strategy had intended. This is a pretty glaring contradiction.

He had concluded that the bombs had only shortened the war by a week or so. I believe this to be outright false as the allies were going to accept nothing short of unconditional, and the japanese weren't going to accept those terms. Their entire strategy was banking on the US invading the mainland. So it sounds like it would have either been a months long blockade or a years long invasion.

Finally, the bombs weren't just about ending the war with japan. They were also about sending a message to other powers. Don't fuck with America, we hold the advantage now. I'm sure it benefitted the US greatly as leverage after the war.

Those are my points. I agree with some things, but I still believe the bombs served their purpose and had potentially saved more lives than they took. Someone at some point would have invented and used the nuclear bomb anyway. I'm glad it was in the hands of a democratic nation rather than a tyrannical communist or fascist one.

[u/mks113]

If you really want to get inside the heads of those who made the decisions to drop the bombs, listen to Dan Carlin's Logical Insanity I know it is in the paid section now, but that $1.99 will change your way of thinking.

[u/officialjoshwoods]

Listened to this at work the other day. Wish I could have watched it, but very informative nonetheless. Nice one, Shaun!

[u/El_Zancudo]

It's a an easy topic to analyze with what we know today of the circumstances of yesterday. It's a really tough topic to analyze with what we knew back then of the circumstances of that present time.

[u/calibared]

Pretty fked that bomb. I wonder if the japenese would’ve surrendered if tbe US dropped it a few miles away from a city, leveled a forest, and said “surrender or else a heavily populated city will be next”

[u/misterHaderach]

I visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum a couple years ago and it was the most sobering experience of my life. To the people arguing that America's decision to obliterate two entire cities was justified: watch testimonials of the people who were there. Tell me if you feel the same after.