Did the Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki help end WW11??
I share your estimates and sentiments closely. But there are a couple of additional points I’d make as well. Probably most important for Americans to finally learn, we cannot credit the bombs alone for Japan’s final capitulation. The Japanese Supreme War Council did not decide to surrender after Hiroshima. They still couldn’t agree to unconditional surrender after Nagasaki, and there are some historians who maintain that whatever you say about Hiroshima, the Nagasaki bomb meant nothing at all in terms of the decision-making outcome. We almost always forget to recall in the calculus of events that the Russians entered the war between the two atomic-bomb explosions, and quickly overran Japan’s forces in Manchuria. With the Cold War’s approach, many have seen Stalin’s decision to enter the war just as a opportunistic way to get some of the spoils of victory, since he knew the a-bombs were going to be dropped. But the Allies had been pleading with Stalin to enter the war in the Far East al
