As the war concluded, Liddell Hart discussed the impact of air raids. He noted that ‘so long as the process is gradual’ human beings can accommodate to degradation of their standard of life. ‘Decisive results come sooner from sudden shocks than long-drawn-out pressure. Shocks throw the opponent off balance. Pressure allows him time to adjust to it.’1 To throw the enemy off balance was precisely what was required. Before the atom bomb was employed to shock Japan into submission, Germany had tried to do the same to Britain with new weapons of its own.
Hitler had often expressed the belief that retaliation in kind was the only way to get the enemy to desist from the terror-bombing of German cities. But, once the Allies had air supremacy, it became harder to retaliate with equivalent effect to massive air attacks on Germany. As the war progressed Hitler faced this problem with increasing urgency. This was why he placed such hopes in the V-1 flying bomb. Though somewhat unreliable, it saved on fuel and aircrew. It has been estimated that the V-1 campaign cost the British four times as much to deal with it as it cost the Germans to wage. It was followed by the V-2 rocket. Though a greater technical achievement, the V-2 was inefficient. For improvements in performance (greater speed and reliability in penetrating air defences) and an added sense of spectacle, it cost one hundred times as much as the V-1. The production of V-1 s and V-2 s got under way too late to demonstrate their full potential. Their introduction was delayed by technical problems and hampered by allied bombing. The use that was made of the weapons was very much conditioned by Hitler’s belief in the need to retaliate against Britain, but was also restricted due to limited accuracy and range—the latter problem becoming increasingly relevant as the Allies overran the launch sites. The very name of the new weapons—Vergeltungswaffe (revenge weapon)—underlined their purpose.
People are already making bets that the war will be over in three or four or eight days. I see this as an enormous danger for us if these exaggerated hopes and illusions are not met. In the end, those carried away by enthusiasm will blame the government. I fear this excessive enthusiasm will end in great disappointment.3
The V-1 and V-2 were seen from the start as weapons of terror, with little interest shown in alternative uses (although when used against the port of Antwerp in a bid to impede the allied invasion the attack was of some success). They also arrived too late to make any difference against the Soviet Union, though given the brutality of the Eastern Front over the previous three years, their utility as ‘terror weapons’ were unlikely to have had much effect. The war had already turned against Germany. Evidence that the British were finding ways to cope showed that there was no miracle delivery for the Germans.4
If the V-weapons failed to produce the desired results the same could not be said about the atomic bomb. As a result of its first use it gave every appearance of being a war-winning weapon. Whether this was truly the case was investigated thoroughly in response to a revisionist case based on two propositions. The first was that Japan was close to surrendering by the summer of 1945 and so the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were unnecessary. The second was that US policy-makers were conscious both of this and of the Soviet challenge and saw the use of the bomb as an assertion of strength.5 There is evidence to support both propositions, although neither gets to motive and the strategic thinking of US policy-makers at the time.6 To understand the strategy of the atom bombing we need to try to understand what US policy-makers thought they were trying to achieve.
common objective throughout the war was to be the first to produce an atomic weapon and use it. The possible atomic weapon was considered to be a new and tremendously powerful explosive, as legitimate as any other of the deadly explosive weapons of modern war. The entire purpose was the production of a military weapon; on no other ground could the wartime expenditure of so much time and money have been justified. The exact circumstances in which that weapon might be used were unknown to us until the middle of 1945.7
It was not until July 1945, with the ‘Trinity’ test of the first bomb, that the full enormity of atomic power could be properly appreciated. By this time Germany had surrendered. Only Japan continued to resist.
As news of the test came to Potsdam, where the ‘big three’ were meeting to decide on how to finish the war and the nature of the post-war world, its potential to revolutionize international relations and warfare was not yet appreciated. In August 1941, after being informed that a weapon equivalent to 1800 tons of TNT could be produced, Churchill noted his contentment with ‘existing explosives’ before recognizing that ‘we must not stand in the path of improvement’. Compare this with his apocalyptic exclamation to Stimson on hearing about the New Mexico test: ‘Stimson, what was gunpowder? Trivial. What was electricity? Meaningless. This Atomic Bomb is the Second Coming in Wrath!’8
Although Churchill had long been aware of the potential of nuclear energy, Truman had only found out on 25 April when he met with Stimson and Groves. He was told that the US was on the verge of acquiring a weapon that could destroy cities with one blow. It could maintain a monopoly for ‘some years’ but not indefinitely. Eventually adversaries could deploy this weapon ‘suddenly and with devastating power’ leading potentially to the ‘destruction of modern civilization’. The US had a moral responsibility to secure the ‘peace of the world’ and the future of civilization. ‘Undoubtedly’, notes David Boscious, ‘this was a lot to absorb for a president who had been in office less than two weeks’.9 Truman recalled that after hearing Stimson the first comparison that came into his mind was with the shells that the large German gun, Big Bertha, had sent into Paris in World War I.10
By this time Japan was a spent force, unable to project her strength beyond the existing territory she already controlled. Having lost command of both the sea and the air, the Japanese homeland was being starved of resources through blockade and was being subjected to a regular and unmerciful burning and battering by waves of B-29 bombers. The problem for the Japanese was how to come to terms with defeat. The leadership’s unwillingness to surrender, despite the hopelessness of the position, was not so much based on a lingering sense of glory and honour as on a deep sense that the constitutional essence of Japan, embodied in the personage of the Emperor, was at stake. The most hard-line faction not only wanted to preserve the Emperor’s position but also to avoid the humiliation of a foreign occupation, and to control their own disarmament and demobilisation. They continued to fight in the hope that the further costs they could impose on the Americans during the course of an invasion would encourage the United States to modify its war aims. There was also a hope that the Russians, at that point still neutral in the Pacific War, might be able to act as mediators.
The problem for US policymakers was how to turn this defeat into actual surrender as rapidly as possible and with the least number of American casualties. A successful Allied invasion which would lead to the physical occupation of the key decision-making centres in Japan was one way to settle the matter. This was conceived as a two-stage campaign, commencing in November 1945 with the capture of Kyushu (Operation Olympic) followed by the invasion of the Kanto Plain near Tokyo in March 1946 (Operation Coronet). But the experience of the heavy fighting over Okinawa led to estimates of high casualties. While the figure of one million casualties has been dismissed as a later rationalisation there were still numerous legitimate reasons to expect heavy losses. The Japanese did have a reasonable idea of the likely US invasion plan and they could have made life very difficult for the invaders, at least during the first days.11 The longer the war continued the more lives would be lost, whether through continued bombing of Japan or deteriorating conditions within the country. In these last stages of what had been a vicious and unrestrained war senses had been numbed and massive loss of life in single events had become familiar.
I am influenced by the conviction that the present stage of development in the air war against Japan presents the AAF for the first time with the opportunity of proving the power of the strategic air arm. I consider that for the first time strategic air bombardment faces a situation in which its strength is proportionate to the magnitude of its task. I feel that the destruction of Japan’s ability to wage war is within the capability of this command.12
At Potsdam President Truman had been pleased to gain agreement from Josef Stalin that the Soviet Union would enter the war, thereby removing one of the last props of Japanese optimism. This was not seen as an alternative to bomb use, although it certainly became part of the shock inflicted on Japan in August. The strategy was essentially to try everything to bring the war to a conclusion without being sure which would work first.
The first recorded discussion, in May 1943, of possible A-bomb targets included General Groves and scientist-administrators Vannevar Bush and James Conant. They focused on an exclusively military target—‘a Japanese fleet concentration in the Harbor of Truk’. The minutes of the meeting noted: ‘General Styer suggested Tokio [sic] but it was pointed out that the bomb should be used where, if it failed to go off, it would land in water of sufficient depth to prevent easy salvage. The Japanese were selected as they would not be so apt to secure knowledge from it as would the Germans’.13 When in April 1945 Groves established a Target Committee he set down criteria. The ‘governing factor’ was that the targets chosen should if bombed ‘adversely affect the will of the Japanese people to continue the war’. This was similar wording to that customarily used by the Air Force to explain the purpose of terror-bombing. In addition the targets should be ‘military in nature, consisting of either important headquarters or troop concentrations, or centres of production of military equipment and supplies’. Lastly, they should have been preferably not damaged by previous air raids so that the effects of the bomb could be accurately assessed.14 The discussion moved forward at meetings in May which emphasised the importance of obtaining the ‘greatest psychological effect’ and ‘making the initial use sufficiently spectacular for the importance of the weapon to be internationally recognised when publicity on it is released’.15 When targets were discussed against these two criteria, shock might be derived from different features: thus in the ancient capital Kyoto people were ‘more highly intelligent and hence better able to appreciate the significance of the weapon’, with Hiroshima ‘a large fraction of the city may be destroyed’, the Emperor’s Palace in Tokyo because of its ‘greater fame than any other target’, but it was also noted that it was ‘of least strategic value’.16
The next critical meeting took place on 31 May. This was the Interim Committee, set up to discuss the wider implications of the bomb. It included Secretary of War Stimson and James Byrnes, soon to be Secretary of State. Also involved were a series of key luminaries of the scientific establishment who had been associated with the project since its inception, such as Bush and Conant. Robert Oppenheimer, General Groves and General Marshall, Army Chief of Staff, were invited to attend.17 It is a curiosity of the development of a strategy for the bomb’s use that it included many of the key figures who had been directly involved in its design and construction. They were au fait with the properties of the new weapon but it was still unusual for the use to be so influenced by the developers rather than the normal operators.
the visual effect of an atomic bombing would be tremendous. It would be accompanied by a brilliant luminescence which would rise to a height of 10 000 to 20 000 feet.
After much discussion concerning various types of targets and effects to be produced, the Secretary expressed the conclusion, on which there was general agreement, that we could not give the Japanese any warning, that we could not concentrate on a civilian area, but that we should seek to make a profound psychological impression on as many Japanese as possible. At the suggestion of Dr Conant the Secretary agreed that the most desirable target would be a vital war plant employing a large number of workers and closely surrounded by workers’ houses.18
It was on the basis of this spectacular quality that those considering the use of the bomb began to move away from the previous, implicit, strategy of cumulative pressure to one of maximum shock. Stimson wrote in 1947: ‘I felt that to extract a genuine surrender from the Emperor and his military advisers they must be administered a tremendous shock which would carry convincing proof of our power to destroy the Empire.’ The atomic bomb ‘was more than a weapon of terrible destruction; it was a psychological weapon’. He noted that General Marshall was ‘emphatic in his insistence on the shock value of the new weapon’.19
Both he and Marshall were uneasy with regard to targeting civilians and had been thinking on how best to avoid this in the days before this meeting. On 29 May Marshall told Stimson that he hoped the weapon ‘might first be used against straight military objectives such as a large naval installation’ and only later, if necessary, against ‘large manufacturing areas’, and only then after adequate warning.20 In private both Stimson and the President professed their desire to spare civilians. Yet despite his misgivings Stimson, now old, tired and unwell, paid little attention to what was being planned or whether there were alternatives to use.21
I was a little fearful that before we could get ready the Air Force might have Japan so thoroughly bombed out that the new weapon [the atomic bomb] would not have a chance to show its strength.22
In practice, and despite the talk of military targets and psychological impact, the stress on the shock value of the weapon ensured that civilian casualties would be high. This is evident with regard to two issues also discussed by the Interim Committee. The first, recorded in the minutes, is of a discussion of the desirability of several simultaneous strikes: Groves objected because this would require a rush job, the extra knowledge of the bomb’s effects gained through successive blasts would be lost and ‘the effect would not be sufficiently distinct from our regular Air Force bombing program’.23 Groves understood that this was not simply going to be an extension of the 20th Air Force’s campaign.
Another issue was discussed over lunch and is not mentioned in the minutes. According to Arthur Compton he raised the possibility with Stimson of a ‘non-military demonstration of the bomb’s effects’. The main obstacles to this course were soon identified: if prior warning were given there could be interference with the detonation; a failure following a great advertisement would be wholly counter-productive; a detonation on uninhabited territory might not impress those who most needed to be impressed. This discussion lasted ten minutes. Despite the difficulty of devising a convincing demonstration, the scientific panel of the committee was asked to see if one could be found. Their efforts then merged with those of the Franck Committee of concerned scientists anxious to find any way of avoiding mass destruction. They advocated a demonstration ‘before the eyes of representatives of all the United Nations, on a desert or a barren island’.24 The Interim Committee observed at its next meeting after reviewing the issue: ‘the difficulties of making a purely technical demonstration that would find its way into Japan’s controlling councils were indeed great’. Most important of all was the lack of warning. This was critical to the whole strategy. A general warning, already made credible enough by the air campaign, had been issued at Potsdam which threatened ‘prompt and utter destruction’ if there was no unconditional surrender. As Marshall observed: ‘It’s no good warning them. If you warn them there’s no surprise. And the only way to produce shock is surprise.’25 Groves made the same point. He claimed not to understand how ‘anyone could ignore the importance of the effect on the Japanese people and their government of the overwhelming surprise of the bomb’.26 A lack of specific warning also reduced the risk of the whole thing turning out to be a dud after being heralded as a spectacular instrument of destruction.
The weapon exploded directly above Shima Hospital in the centre of Hiroshima, instantly killing all patients, doctors and nurses. The heat wave charred every living thing within a 500-metre radius, and scorched uncovered skin at 2 kilometres. …. Water in tanks and ponds boiled. Leaves in distant parks turned crinkly brown, then to ash; tree trunks exploded.
The relief workers shuddered to think of the deranged souls left behind in Hiroshima: a man in rags cycled around and around with what appeared to be a piece of charcoal fastened to his bicycle: it was the remains of his child. ‘The man himself seemed crazed’. Or the utterly wretched, who spent the night in the Yasu Shrine in Gionand in the caves and dugouts on Hijiyama Hill ‘groaning with pain, their bodies covered with maggots, and dying in delirium’ observed a witness. And the tribe of enraged soldiers camped under a railway bridge near Hiroshima Station who pranced around with Japanese flags shouting the battle cry, ‘Banzai!’ And there were the animals, the fallen birds charred black; the burned dogs, sniffing the debris; and the blinded cavalry horses that galloped, or wandered, or walked lamely in the city.27
At first the Japanese Board of Information played down the disaster at Hiroshima so as not to alarm the public. This did not stop the Prime Minister concluding immediately that Japan must now ‘unequivocally’ sue for peace. This was before the news of the Soviet entry into the war on 9 August. Although unlike the Hiroshima bomb this had been anticipated the news was still a blow. Civilian leaders in the Japanese government were already aware of the urgent need to bring the war to an end but they faced resistance from many of the key military leaders to any surrender and a risk of mutiny by junior officers. They had been stuck with a wait and see policy though the domestic situation was deteriorating.28 Now the situation was truly urgent.
On 9 August, as senior members of the government were digesting news of both these events, and of Emperor Hirohito’s desire for a cease-fire, there were reports of yet another atomic explosion at Nagasaki. Ministers were told that the Americans might have as many as 100 weapons. Still the Army Minister refused to abandon the fight. Consider two diary entries for 9 August. Torashiro Kawabe, Vice Chief of the Imperial General Staff: ‘No change with regard to continuing the war’. Admiral Matome Ugaki: ‘We must think of countermeasures against it immediately, and at the same time I wish we could create the same bomb …’.29
With the government now completely divided it was left for the Emperor to decide the matter. This he did on 14 August. When he broadcast to the nation the next day he mentioned atom bombs but not the Soviet invasion: ‘The enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb,’ he reported, ‘the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable … Should we continue to fight, it would not only result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization.’30
It was not that the military men had suddenly become reasonable in the hours following the Hiroshima and Nagasaki disasters; it was rather that they … had momentarily been caught off balance. They were also at a loss for words which could make any lasting impression upon the end-the-war faction. Prior to the dropping of the two A-bombs they had been able to pledge their belief in their ability to meet effectively any action taken by the enemy, but now whatever they said made them look foolish and insincere.32
In that sense the strategy worked. In some ways it worked faster than anticipated. American policy-makers were surprised by the speed of the Japanese response. The tentative Japanese peace feeler on 10 August led Truman to order that no more bombs should be used for the moment, although conventional bombing continued. The ambiguous US response to this peace offer made it apparent in Tokyo that they had no bargaining position left. The Emperor decided to side with the peace party. But without this, or if a military coup had led to a determined last stand, then another bomb was likely to have followed. The third weapon was being made ready for use after 18 August.33
not the same day or anything like that. We might do it a couple or three days before. You plan to land on a certain beach. Behind which you know there is a good road communication and maybe a division or two of Japanese troops…. I don’t anticipate that you would be dropping it as we do other type bombs that are in support of the infantry. I am thinking about neutralizing a division or a communication center or something so that it would facilitate the movement ashore of troops.35
The atom bomb’s use was therefore symptomatic of a period in warfare which had seen the development of a number of weapons suitable for indiscriminate slaughter, and the erosion of restraints on the employment of these weapons. The legitimacy of these targets, which tended to be cities, was found in the character of total warfare, in which victory depended on the effective utilization of the total resources of a society, and not just the armed forces. Oppenheimer’s famous observation, after viewing the New Mexico test, from the Bhagavad-Gita (‘Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’) did not stop him advising on how best to use the weapon. There is no evidence that the priority for those making the decision in the US was anything other than defeating Japan as quickly as possible, and preferably without an invasion. It is, however, important to note that there was also a retributive element. In justifying Hiroshima, Truman noted that the bomb had been used ‘against those who attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten and executed American prisoners of wars, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare.’ Only then did he mention the need to ‘shorten the agony of war’ and ‘to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans’.36
None of this precludes other factors reinforcing the decision. After speeding the end of the war in order to save American lives, five other reasons have been cited why Groves wanted to use the bomb: (1) ‘the sheer momentum of the project’; (2) concerns about the likely political backlash had such large expenditures been spent on a weapon that was not used to save American lives (3) the impact on careers as well bureaucratic and organizational interests; (4) the desire for ‘retribution and revenge’ (5) the possibility it could be used as leverage against the Soviet Union.37
While some did have an eye on a developing conflict with the Soviet Union this was not a paramount consideration. Nor was it the case that this necessarily argued for the bomb’s use. All governments knew about the possibility of atomic bombs but the US was unaware how well Moscow was informed about the Manhattan Project (which was actually a lot because of its spies). Either way there was as good an argument for the Americans to keep quiet on its project as there was for confirming the potential of the new weapon, as this would certainly encourage the Soviet leadership to develop its own.
The fact that the weapon was used in this way stimulated an arms race and complicated attempts to achieve international control of atomic energy. Whether an arms race could have been avoided or international controls established without Hiroshima and Nagasaki is impossible to say because the origins of the Cold War and the distrust that came with it lay elsewhere. The best case against the decision was that it was unnecessary and that Japan would have surrendered anyway before an invasion would have been required because its position was already so fragile. In this respect the bombings were like administering poison on the death bed. The target was a fragile one. It was a structure not only weak, but on the point of collapse. There were few operational problems. The ‘command of the air’ had already been won; there were no Japanese defences or threats of retaliation. Many in Tokyo, including the Emperor, had known for some time that the game was up, but the government remained divided and the wrangling continued about whether and how to surrender. The official response to the Potsdam Declaration was to stay silent. The impasse might have been broken before Hiroshima by an offer to preserve the Emperor’s position (and he stayed in place after the war) but this was also an intensely divisive issue in Washington. After all that had happened it was always going to be difficult to do more than hint at the possibility. A reappraisal of any war leads to many regrets at what might have been avoided. The counter-factual of the US attempting to keep the bomb as its own secret and a later Japanese surrender are impossible to know. All we do know are the very real consequences of the course that was followed.
the most virile nation might not be able to withstand another, inferior to it in all natural qualities, if the latter had some decisively superior technical appliance.
The flying bomb may well tear away the veil of illusion that has so long obscured the reality of the change in warfare—from a fight to a process of destruction. Being palpably an ‘inhuman’ instrument, it creates the feeling which counts more than a truth apprehended by reason—that war is no longer a matter of fighting. Thus its introduction on June 15, 1944, may come to be regarded as the start of a new era.
Liddell Hart’s book, The Revolution in Warfare, was not published till after the war. By that time, he had had time to write an epilogue. The introduction of the atom bomb reinforced his arguments concerning the danger of conceiving warfare in terms of unlimited aims and unlimited methods. The bomb was merely a further stage in the evolution of ‘automatic warfare’, but one that by virtue of its apparent success was liable to make a more dramatic impact than either the V-1 or the V-2. These had not gone ‘far enough in their actual effort to convince the world that the problem of security had undergone a fundamental change’. They had not succeeded in their strategic aim and public opinion did not ‘probe into the underlying causes of failure, but tends to be swayed by the outcome’. The speed with which the use of the atomic bomb was followed by Japan’s surrender meant that ‘its decisive effect can hardly be disputed’.40
Yet there were many observers at the time who did not consider it a revolutionary development in relation to warfare though they feared its implications for traditional military means. As General George S. Patton Jr. noted in his diary on 18 August, ‘the bomb is no more revolutionary than the first throwing-stick or javelin or the first cannon or the first submarine. It is simply … a new instrument added to the orchestra of death which is war’. His main concern with the new weapon was that ‘now it gives a lot of vocal but ill-informed people—mostly fascists, communists, and s.o.b.’s assorted—an opportunity to state that the Army, Navy, and Air Forces are no longer necessary as this bomb will either prevent war or destroy the human race’. Patton envisioned a future war in which an enemy would be using atomic-armed rockets from the beginning. The only way to stop them would be to ‘invade the country sending the bombs and destroy their place of construction. We have proved definitely that you cannot put factories out from the air’.41