# History Channel's 'Decision to Drop the Bomb', revisionist history? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 15, 2003, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/history-channels-decision-to-drop-the-bomb-revisionist-history/201690 "2003-09-15T06:15:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2003, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/history-channels-decision-to-drop-the-bomb-revisionist-history/201690/41 "2003-09-17T01:41:05Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by amarone \* > \*\*I did watch the program and the point is that, as they presented it, there was not going to be a bloody, protracted invasion and land war because the Japanese were looking to surrender. Truman went ahead and dropped the bombs anyway, as a show of strength to the Russians. At least, that is how the History Channel presented it. \*\* And here you touch on the problem that so many people face–they refuse to accept that a historical event such as this is, even half a century later, still open to different analyses and interpretations. So we have people like **spingears** presenting a conclusion about the results of dropping the bomb as if that were the _only_ possible conclusion. No admission that others, infinitely more familiar with the sources and the various arguments, might actually have something important to contribute to the issue. It’s this sort of hubris that is so hard to take. And, of course, if one questions this absolute certainty, one is nothing more than a “liberal revisionist.” Sure, everyone is entitled to an opinion based on his or her reading of the sources and the competing arguments, but in cases as complex as this the notion that we can arrive at an ultimate, uncontestable truth is pretty damned naive. The countervailing evidence is too great, and the counterfactual possibilities are too many. ---
**Author:** ![Muldoon\_s\_Squishiness](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/13edae/32.png) [@Muldoon\_s\_Squishiness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muldoon_s_Squishiness)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2003, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/history-channels-decision-to-drop-the-bomb-revisionist-history/201690/42 "2003-09-17T01:48:20Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Eolbo \* > \*\* After the Hiroshima bomb the Japanese government sent their own scientists to the scene and they concluded that the damage was no worse then the mass fireraids that they were already enduring, and that the Americans could not possibly have more then a few atom bombs in any case (they were correct). \*\* The long term damage was much, much worse and is still being felt today. And since the Japanese had no idea of the existence of the Manhattan Project, what evidence do you have that **proves** that simply by examing Hiroshima, the Japanese scientists deduced that the US had a very limited supply of bombs. Which in itself is a moot point, because the US was the only country in the world capable of making them and would continue to be that way for nearly 4 more years. ---
**Author:** ![Lissa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/85f322/32.png) [@Lissa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lissa)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2003, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/history-channels-decision-to-drop-the-bomb-revisionist-history/201690/43 "2003-09-17T03:51:30Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by spingears \* > \*\* There once was a time when researching newspaper articles was a dependqable source of factual information. \*\* When was that? ---
**Author:** ![Eolbo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d07c76/32.png) [@Eolbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eolbo)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2003, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/history-channels-decision-to-drop-the-bomb-revisionist-history/201690/44 "2003-09-17T03:51:32Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Muldoon’s Squishiness \* > \*\*The long term damage was much, much worse and is still being felt today. > \*\* Which is a hindsight judgement not their contemporary one. > [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Muldoon’s Squishiness \* > \*\* > And since the Japanese had no idea of the existence of the Manhattan Project, what evidence do you have that **proves** that simply by examing Hiroshima, the Japanese scientists deduced that the US had a very limited supply of bombs. > \*\* I’m at work now and away from my books but the obvious point is that the atom bomb wasn’t an unforeseen development. The concept was known to scientists around the world not just to American ones. In addition to the Manhattan project in the US, which itself involved scientists of various nationalities, both the Germans and the Japanese had their own bomb projects. Regardless of who got there first, and for a time the Germans were considered the frontrunners, the bomb was an idea for which the time had come. When the bomb was dropped, it was apparent to those in the field what it was and the Japanese didn’t need any particular knowledge of your own project to know the colossal scale of such an undertaking and why you could not possibly have many bombs. Their own experience and logic led them to the correct conclusion. > [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Muldoon’s Squishiness \* > \*\* > Which in itself is a moot point, because the US was the only country in the world capable of making them and would continue to be that way for nearly 4 more years. \*\* Not pertinent to their calculation though. They weren’t going to be facing a continued war of years with you dropping many atom bombs on them. Whatever they did or didnt do the war was coming to a close, and would be decided before you could have any significant amount of bombs. If they hadn’t surrendered they were going to be invaded in the near future (unknown to them starting in November 1945). The destruction of another city from the air didn’t change their fundamental position, that threat began long before Hiroshima with the mass fireraids. ---
**Author:** ![Eolbo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d07c76/32.png) [@Eolbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eolbo)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2003, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/history-channels-decision-to-drop-the-bomb-revisionist-history/201690/45 "2003-09-17T04:37:04Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Dogface \* > \*\*The truth is that the left in the USA WANTED the bomb to be used and the right did not and now they very CONVENIENTLY sweep that under the rug because it doesn’t agree with their current groupthink of “everything the USA does is bad, no matter what”. \*\* God I hate this partisan age. Why does everything have to be distorted and perceived through a left/right prism? Silly me, I have always thought the Second World War wasn’t really a partisan affair that it was one of the great unified moments of American history but no, apparently its just another tedious example of the left/right did this and the left/right did that blah blah blah left/right left/right blah blah lets milk whatever crappy and ridiculous political point we can out of it blah blah blah. I realise now my folly, Anne Coulter isn’t just a moron she is the archetype of our age, the High Priestess of Blah. St Anne be praised and if you dont agree with me you’re a traitor. ---
**Author:** ![Dave\_D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/49beb7/32.png) [@Dave\_D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dave_D)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2003, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/history-channels-decision-to-drop-the-bomb-revisionist-history/201690/46 "2003-09-17T06:10:17Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Eolbo \* > \*\* > > Not pertinent to their calculation though. They weren’t going to be facing a continued war of years with you dropping many atom bombs on them. Whatever they did or didnt do the war was coming to a close, and would be decided before you could have any significant amount of bombs. If they hadn’t surrendered they were going to be invaded in the near future (unknown to them starting in November 1945). The destruction of another city from the air didn’t change their fundamental position, that threat began long before Hiroshima with the mass fireraids. \*\* Actually according to this link the US was more than capable of producing quite a few bombs. [http://nuketesting.enviroweb.org/hew/Nwfaq/Nfaq8.html#nfaq8.1.5](http://nuketesting.enviroweb.org/hew/Nwfaq/Nfaq8.html#nfaq8.1.5) If I read this right there would have been about 20 bombs available by the end of 45.(Not sure how accurate this is however.) ---
**Author:** ![Eolbo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d07c76/32.png) [@Eolbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eolbo)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2003, 10:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/history-channels-decision-to-drop-the-bomb-revisionist-history/201690/47 "2003-09-17T10:04:02Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Dave\_D \* > \*\*Actually according to this link the US was more than capable of producing quite a few bombs. > > [http://nuketesting.enviroweb.org/hew/Nwfaq/Nfaq8.html#nfaq8.1.5](http://nuketesting.enviroweb.org/hew/Nwfaq/Nfaq8.html#nfaq8.1.5) > > If I read this right there would have been about 20 bombs available by the end of 45.(Not sure how accurate this is however.) \*\* I had a figure about half that in mind but your link is plausible so I’m inclined to accept that production figure but I dont think it means much. My point is still that Japan was likely to surrender before these bombs could be used (\* see below) , and that the effects of the bomb on that decision to surrender have been exaggerated in any case. In saying this I’m not making a value judgement or a moral one but a historical one on what I think was going to happen. I have no interest in finger-pointing or outrage and I’m not interested in making any contemporary political point or condemning the decision makers of the time over the issue. I also think its important to remember the context in which the bombs were dropped which was a total war in which Europe and Asia were left in ruins and some fifty odd million people killed. Seems Hiroshima and Nagasaki due to postwar sentiments have attracted a special moral disgust, as if the atomic bombing was somehow ‘worse’ then say the March firebombing of Tokyo which ‘only’ used conventional weapons. In the Tokyo raid, over 100,000 people were killed, about a million were wounded and a similar number left homeless. Curtis LeMay in mid 1945 was warning that by September he would be running out of targets so successful and devastating were the low level fireraids on Japanese cities. Firebombed or nuked it amounted to pretty much the same to those on the ground, and nothing fundamental changed for the Japanese from US possession of the new weapon. - Consider for instance the verdict of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey which after analysis of the cumulative impact of the destruction of the Japanese economy concluded: > [@](#): > > There is little point in attempting precisely to impute Japan’s unconditional surrender to any one of the numerous causes which jointly and cumulatively were responsible for Japan’s disaster. The time lapse between military impotence and political acceptance of the inevitable might have been shorter had the political structure of Japan permitted a more rapid and decisive determination of national policies. Nevertheless, it seems clear that, even without the atomic bombing attacks, air supremacy over Japan could have exerted sufficient pressure to bring about unconditional surrender and obviate the need for invasion. > > Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, **it is the Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945** , 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 Full text of the USSBS report with quote on page 26 here: [http://www.anesi.com/ussbs01.htm](http://www.anesi.com/ussbs01.htm) Also worth pointing out that is a considered contemporary assessment (July 1946) by the US military, and not latterday ‘Liberal revisionism’ if there even is such a thing. ---
**Author:** ![gex\_gex](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/94ad74/32.png) [@gex\_gex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gex_gex)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2003, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/history-channels-decision-to-drop-the-bomb-revisionist-history/201690/48 "2003-09-17T16:06:51Z")
> [@](#): > > _originally posted by Dogface_ > After four years of that sort of rubbish spewed by the “liberals” at my college, I got my degree and was free. Not a straw man at all. It’s reality. I’ve experienced it. Ah. You had a bad experience at college and compensate now by foaming at the mouth about all the “liberals” that supposedly gave you such a hard time. But, no matter how mean those nasty liberals were to you\*, it doesn’t mean your allegations are validated. You constructed an argument that certainly no-one in this thread, and save for the very rare nut, no-one outside it, was espousing (that liberals “demoni[se] the USA whenever possible and rewrit[e] history”) - a strawman - and proceeded to tear down that strawman. Your college experience has nothing to do with this. \*don’t worry, they’re gone now ---
**Author:** ![Opengrave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/919ad9/32.png) [@Opengrave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Opengrave)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2003, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/history-channels-decision-to-drop-the-bomb-revisionist-history/201690/49 "2003-09-17T16:38:07Z")
I haven’t read all the posts in this thread but the show struck me as somewhat revisionist. Mind you I’m so young that I have very little knowlege of the real truth (whatever it may be) but one of the main points I got from the documentary was _there was absolutely **no** military reason to drop the bomb. Japan would have surrendered unconditionally in less than three months and that one of the reasons to drop the bombs was to justify the huge US MIC (Military-Industrial-Complex)._ I think the documentary brought out a lot of interesting angles on things (USSR invading china a week early, etc…) but my gut feeling watching it was there was a little bit of an agenda. Maybe not an overt agenda but a subconcious one that crept in. \ ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2003, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/history-channels-decision-to-drop-the-bomb-revisionist-history/201690/50 "2003-09-17T17:11:54Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Dogface \* > \*\*I am talking about the blind, mindless, knee-jerk liberal attitude, every bit as stupid and short-sided as its converse among conservatives, of demonizing the USA whenever possible and rewriting history. The truth is that the left in the USA WANTED the bomb to be used and the right did not and now they very CONVENIENTLY sweep that under the rug because it doesn’t agree with their current groupthink of “everything the USA does is bad, no matter what”. \*\* Well, you’re not just “talking about the blind, mindless, knee-jerk” attitudes; you’re also doing a pretty good job of demonstrating such attitudes yourself. In contrasting liberals and conservatives on the issue of whether or not to drop the bomb, i assume you are placing people like Truman and other New Deal Democrats in the former group, given that they were the folks in charge of running the country? Well, i’d really like you to show me a piece of “revisionist” history that sweeps Truman’s involvement under the rug, and that blames conservatives rather than liberals for the dropping of the bomb. Probably the best-known “revisionist” historian on the topic, Gar Alperovitz, focuses most of the blame on the liberal establishment, including but not limited to Truman, for the dropping of the bomb. His work, and that of other “revisionist” historians, is certainly no attempt to make Democrats or liberals look good at the expense of Republicans or conservatives. It is certainly true that there were many leftists who opposed allowing Japan a conditional surrender, including Owen Lattimore, I.F. Stone, and the editors of _The Nation_ magazine. And it is also true that the conditional surrender advocates were often conservatives. Your biggest mistake is not in asserting this, but in implying that it has been ignored by subsequent scholars. Alperovitz and other “revisionists” all quite openly admit that many leftists opposed allowing Japan a conditional surrender, and that it was conservatives who tended to be more sympathetic to allowing such a surrender. Just because a bunch of liberals and leftists believed something in 1945 does not mean that liberals and leftists have to believe the same thing in 1995. Your implication of hypocrisy is completely unjustified. You claim that any revision of the standard Hiroshima narrative is just the result of a bunch of knee-jerk liberal America-haters, yet you show yourself to be little more than a knee-jerk liberal-hater. You act as if there are no grey areas in this whole debate, and that there were and are no moral or strategic questions still to be discussed regarding the dropping of the bomb. I just don’t understand how you translate a desire to discuss these issues, and present them to the American people, into an argument that liberals believe “USA bad, no matter what.” If qualms over dropping the bomb are anti-American, maybe you should update your list of traitors to include George Marshall, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Admiral William D. Leahy and Air Force General Curtis LeMay, because all of these men (and many others, conservatives and liberals) expressed moral and/or strategic reservations about using the bomb, even though they eventually supported the decision. Indeed, even after the fact, these men were happy to discuss those reservations, and never had to suffer the indignity of being labelled traitors for doing so. You accuse liberals of revisionist history, yet the true revisionism seems to come mainly from those pushing the patriotic orthodoxy, like you. Such people seem to be arguing that not only is the use of the bomb beyond questioning now, but that it was not questioned or debated or agonized over back in 1945. And that’s just not true. Note, i have made no argument here about whether i think the decision to drop the bomb was justified. All i am pointing out is that your anti-liberal frothing at the mouth serves only to confuse the issue, and to discourage rational debate. But poor schnookums **Dogface** apparently took an intellectual beating from a few liberals back in college, so he’s now on a lifetime payback mission. ---
**Author:** ![cheddarsnax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a587f6/32.png) [@cheddarsnax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cheddarsnax)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2003, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/history-channels-decision-to-drop-the-bomb-revisionist-history/201690/51 "2003-09-17T22:45:12Z")
Hmm. Speaking of **Dogface** , here’s a [link](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=211744) to my Pit rant. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/history-channels-decision-to-drop-the-bomb-revisionist-history/201690.md?page=2)