Weapons for victory
Subtitle: the Hiroshima decision fifty years later
By: Robert James Maddox.
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
Published: 1995
Place of publication: Columbia
Language: eng
Number of pages: 215
Subjects: Atomic bomb -- History; Nuclear warfare -- Moral and ethical aspects; Hiroshima-shi (Japan) -- History -- Bombardment, 1945; Nagasaki-shi (Japan) -- History -- Bombardment, 1945; United States -- Military policy; United States -- Foreign relations -- Soviet Union; Soviet Union -- Foreign relations -- United States
Description: On the morning of August 6, 1945, the American B-29 Enola Gay released an atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. On August 9 another bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. Fifty years have passed since these catastrophic events, and the bombings still remain highly controversial. The official justification for using these weapons was that they prevented enormous losses on both sides by avoiding an Allied invasion of Japan.

Many diplomatic historians, however, have asserted that the bombings were unnecessary. One extreme argument is that Truman knew the Japanese were ready to surrender but wanted to use the bombs to intimidate the Soviet Union. Robert Maddox examines all these claims in Weapons for Victory as he strives to dispel the many myths that have been accepted as fact.

. In addition to Maddox's valuable recasting of the circumstances leading to the bombings, he also confronts the proposed Smithsonian Enola Gay exhibit with careful historical analysis.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 193-202) and index.