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Home > Cold War Cast > Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Cold War
Podcast: Cold War Cast
Episode:

Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Cold War
Category: Society & Culture
Duration: 00:42:03
Publish Date: 2017-08-08 23:44:24
Description:

We’re right around the 72nd anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki…and every year at this time the moral debate of whether or not it was ok to nuke Japan in order to (potentially) forego an invasion of mainland Japan and save hundreds of thousands of American lives.

There’s more to the story though – when you look at the bigger picture, it appears as if the decision to use the atomic bomb had the Soviet Union in mind just as much as Japan.   The USSR had made it clear to Team West that they had different ideas on the postwar world order and the wartime alliance began to fall about pretty much as soon as the guns went silent in Europe.  Truman and Churchill were worried about potential Soviet expansion in Europe and Asia and no one had the stomach to check Soviet designs on Eastern Europe with force.   Showing Stalin that we had a weapon like the atomic bomb and the will to use it sent a clear signal to the USSR that they should tread lightly.

Also, the timing of the bomb is coincidentally immediately before the Soviet Union agreed to declare war on Japan.   Did the United States expedite the bombing in an attempt to get Japan to surrender before the Soviet entry and potentially keep them out of the Pacific theater in postwar dealings?   I think so.

Relevant episodes:   Manhattan Project  Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam.   Stalin.  Russo-Japanese War

 Pearl Harbor part II: Toppling Sleeping Giants

 
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