Quote:
Originally Posted by JurisDictum
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Truman, also known as the little man from Missouri, liked to brag a lot. It's all highly irrelivant...But from what I've heard from presidential and history scholars is that the bomb was done as an attempt to scare Stalin. I'm sure Truman was down with that part of the plan.
Yes, ground demonstrations were needed back then. It's stupid argument to say otherwise because the reason we bombed Japan twice is because after the first one they didn't believe we had a second.
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In no way do I mean to excuse Truman for his decisions, or his bragging afterwards. I'm just saying, the history's a little more complex than "Truman said bomb and we bombed". It's more like the military and Truman were working together (they created some commission for the whole thing) and Truman wasn't exactly 100% sold with completely mindless mass killing, so to get around his reservations details were left out when they asked for his approval. Afterward Truman didn't want to look foolish so he pretended like he had been 100% pro-mindless-killing, and we only even know he was more complicated than that from his diaries and a few other historical sources.
As for bombing twice, I always think of Ender's Game. In the beginning of the book Ender (a child in the future being trained to be a military strategist) gets attacked by a bully. Ender manages to defeat the bully (bomb #1). Then he starts kicking the crap out of the bully as he lies there on the ground (bomb #2). I forget how they explain it in the book exactly, but the idea was that he was sending a message to other bullies.
That message was basically "if you mess with us we will not only mess with you back (and win), but then afterwards we'll kick the crap out of you for no damn reason, because we're freaking crazy ... so don't mess with us". And again, while you could consider that message directed at Japan (and to be fair the Japanese were stubborn and the war might have gone on for years without the bomb), I think most historians see it at least partially as a message to "the commies".