I’ve often wondered if it was even possible to NOT drop the nuclear bombs. The nuclear weapons program was undertaken at immense expense. And while kept secret as much as possible, the government created an entire town and research complex at Oak Ridge, TN in an area that was undeveloped. Knowledge of the nuclear weapons program was going to make it out to the public eventually.
I’ve wondered whether a sitting president at war, knowing there was a devastating and powerful weapon, which was created at great expense and effort in a program involving thousands of people, could afford NOT to wield it. I imagine a POTUS thinking of the criticism that would come- you spent all this treasure, all this effort to develop a devastating weapon and you had it in your arsenal and never deployed it? You let the war with Japan drag on without using that bomb?
This in a war that saw the wholesale bombing of cities. Two cities wiped out with just one sortie doesn’t seem much more monstrous than two cities wiped out with hundreds of sorties. In the end, I think Truman likely calculated the very existence of the bomb required that he use it. And that two more destroyed cities and hundreds of thousands of civilian dead were just more for the pile of carnage already piled up from that war.
When we build devastating and monstrous weapons, it becomes hard NOT to use them during exigent circumstances.
I’ve often wondered if it was even possible to NOT drop the nuclear bombs. The nuclear weapons program was undertaken at immense expense. And while kept secret as much as possible, the government created an entire town and research complex at Oak Ridge, TN in an area that was undeveloped. Knowledge of the nuclear weapons program was going to make it out to the public eventually.
I’ve wondered whether a sitting president at war, knowing there was a devastating and powerful weapon, which was created at great expense and effort in a program involving thousands of people, could afford NOT to wield it. I imagine a POTUS thinking of the criticism that would come- you spent all this treasure, all this effort to develop a devastating weapon and you had it in your arsenal and never deployed it? You let the war with Japan drag on without using that bomb?
This in a war that saw the wholesale bombing of cities. Two cities wiped out with just one sortie doesn’t seem much more monstrous than two cities wiped out with hundreds of sorties. In the end, I think Truman likely calculated the very existence of the bomb required that he use it. And that two more destroyed cities and hundreds of thousands of civilian dead were just more for the pile of carnage already piled up from that war.
When we build devastating and monstrous weapons, it becomes hard NOT to use them during exigent circumstances.