Comments by "Itinerant Patriot" (@itinerantpatriot1196) on "Hiroshima and Nagasaki Bombings: Were Nuclear Weapons Required to End the War?" video.

  1. They used it for the simplest reason of all, it was there. Like Truman said when told there were scientists who objected to it being used: "What the hell did they think we built it for?" There has been a lot of revisionist history written about Truman struggling with the decision to drop the bomb and Oppenheimer waxing philosophically and thinking about Hindu scripture when it was tested ("Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds"). Horse puckey! Oppenheimer came up with that bit of fantasy years later during a television interview. According to General Leslie Groves who was in charge of the project and was there when the Trinity test took place, everyone there was blown away by the thing and pleased as punch that they had managed to pull it off. Truman said he slept like a baby after giving the go ahead to use it. If the war had gone on and we were able to build more in time I'm quite certain he would have used those as well. There was no way he was going to stand in front of the American public and say he let U.S. sailors, soldiers, and marines die on those Japanese beaches because he was afraid of killing civilians. The gloves were off long before that. The fire bombing of Tokyo killed more people than the A-Bomb's did. Total war was a reality and there was no turning back.
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