That is the standard argument we’re given, yes: that it would ultimately save lives compared to a conventional war. You can find dissenting views from Noam Chomsky & Michael Parenti & Howard Zinn & others, including the US government’s own analysis, if you care to.
There’s also the ‘Ask Historians’ analysis, which posits that there were at least three major ideas about how to handle a nuclear bombing entertained between the principles deciding.
While it’s tempting to look at the situation in retrospect and agree with the report that ‘yes obviously there wasn’t a need to bomb to elicit a surrender’ that nevertheless doesn’t mean that the majority of the deciders were fully on board with that understanding & approach, unlike Ike.
Without doing a deep dive, the AH approach makes about the most sense to me and seems consistent with history, in which there was a level of uncertainty and multiple players & arguments going in to the final decision.
Btw, that first link barely mentions the matter, and the second link is far too subjective to be of much use, far as I can tell.
That is the standard argument we’re given, yes: that it would ultimately save lives compared to a conventional war. You can find dissenting views from Noam Chomsky & Michael Parenti & Howard Zinn & others, including the US government’s own analysis, if you care to.
There’s also the ‘Ask Historians’ analysis, which posits that there were at least three major ideas about how to handle a nuclear bombing entertained between the principles deciding.
While it’s tempting to look at the situation in retrospect and agree with the report that ‘yes obviously there wasn’t a need to bomb to elicit a surrender’ that nevertheless doesn’t mean that the majority of the deciders were fully on board with that understanding & approach, unlike Ike.
Without doing a deep dive, the AH approach makes about the most sense to me and seems consistent with history, in which there was a level of uncertainty and multiple players & arguments going in to the final decision.
Btw, that first link barely mentions the matter, and the second link is far too subjective to be of much use, far as I can tell.