WWII history

Atomic bombs sent message to Soviets

The myth that the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima to end World War II has been perpetuated by Victor Davis Hanson's column in the News Sentinel on April 24. He invoked a long-discredited justification for the use of nuclear weapons to "cut short plans for an invasion of Japan … that might well have cost a million Allied lives." This was a political defense intended to shape public opinion, written by Secretary of Defense Henry Stimson in Harper's magazine. Military leaders at the time estimated the number of casualties (dead and wounded) at 27,500. U.S. military deaths would have been a small fraction of that number.

There is now a broad consensus among historians that the bombs were not dropped to save American lives but to head off the Soviet Union's entry into the war and limit its influence in post-war Asia. The actual facts support that reading.