Hiroshima 6 augusti 1945
No sane person could applaud the dropping of the first bomb, and less still that of the second, which annihilated Nagasaki on Aug. 9.
Yet I defend President Harry Truman and those around him who shared responsibility for doing so.
At the rate people were dying in Japan — especially prisoners in Japanese hands — more victims would have perished than the 100,000 (a conservative guesstimate) who died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki had the struggle continued for even a few weeks longer.
Moreover, during the earlier months of 1945, conventional bombing of Japanese cities by B-29s had already killed more than 300,000
one-third of these in the March 9 fire-raising assault on Tokyo.Max Hastings is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. His histories include "Inferno: The World At War, 1939–1945," "Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy 1945–1975" and "Abyss: The Cuban Missile Crisis 1962."
Max Hastings Bloomberg 6 August 2025




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