making history the second world war crack

Japan’s leaders said Hiroshima forced them to surrender because it made a terrific explanation for losing the war. Kawabe Toroshiro said, 'The absolute maintenance of peace in our relations with the Soviet Union is one of the fundamental conditions for continuing the war.' In a meeting of the Supreme Council in June to discuss the war in general, policy, they said Soviet entry would determine the fate of the empire. Japan’s leaders identified the Soviet Union as the strategically decisive factor. The Soviet entry into the war was.Īnd they said this. Hiroshima was not a decisive military event. There was one fewer city behind them, but they had been losing cities all summer long, at the rate of one every other day, on average. The Soviet declaration of war was decisive Hiroshima was not.Īfter Hiroshima, soldiers were still dug in in the beaches. It might be possible to fight against one great power attacking from one direction, but anyone could see that Japan couldn’t defend against two great powers attacking from two different directions at once. Adding another great power to the war created insoluble military problems for Japan’s leaders.

The Soviet Union’s declaration of war, on the other hand, fundamentally altered the strategic situation. It was not outside the parameters of attacks that had been going on all summer long. If you graph the percentage of the city destroyed, Hiroshima is 17th.Ĭlearly, in terms of the end result-I’m not talking about the means, but in terms of the outcome of the attack-Hiroshima was not exceptional. If you graph the number of square miles destroyed, Hiroshima is sixth. Tokyo, a conventional attack, is first in the number killed. If you graph the number of people killed in all 68 of those attacks, you imagine that Hiroshima is off the charts, because that’s the way it’s usually presented. The United States bombed 68 cities in the summer of 1945.

Americans wanted to believe it, and the myth of nuclear weapons was born.

Japanese leaders said the bomb forced them to surrender because it was less embarrassing to say they had been defeated by a miracle weapon. Japan surrendered because the Soviet Union entered the war. Nuclear weapons shocked Japan into surrendering at the end of World War II-except they didn’t. Speaker: Ward Wilson, Monterey Institute of International Studies

Making history the second world war crack