Disinformation and the Dropping of the Atomic Bombs › American Greatness
Victor Davis Hanson
Legitimate disagreement about the wisdom of dropping two bombs on Japan to end World War II in 1945 persists even 80 years later, as reflected in discussions this past week.
But recently, there has often been no real effort even to present the facts, much less to consider the lose-lose choices involved in using such destructive weapons. In an age of revisionist history—when Churchill is deemed a “terrorist,” Germany did not really mean to starve millions of Jews and Ukrainians in summer and fall 1941, the British forced Hitler to continue the war, and World War II was not worth the cost—so too are Hiroshima and Nagasaki judged as either war crimes or colossal and unnecessary follies.
For today’s generation, it seems so easy to declare one’s 21st-century moral superiority over our ancestors. So we damn them as war criminals, given that they supposedly dropped the bombs without legitimate cause or reason.
What follows are some of the most common critiques of President Truman’s decision to use two nuclear weapons against wartime Japan, with an explanation of why his decision to use the bombs proved, at the time and in hindsight, the correct one.
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https://amgreatness.com/2025/08/11/disinformation-and-the-dropping-of-the-atomic-bombs/
