We didn’t need to drop the bomb — and even our WW II military icons knew it

[Martin Eden]

56. If US decision-makers believed The Bomb was not necessary, then they had a different motive

I'm speculating here, but demonstrating to the world we had a weapon orders of magnitude greater than anything in human experience would have profound geostrategic implications. Wiping out cities and inflicting horrific human carnage has a greater effect than a test in a remote uninhabited area.

I will further speculate that the horrific devastation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki may have raised the threshold for ever using these weapons again and that this may have precluded a first use under different circumstances, perhaps a different world power. The Soviets tested their first atomic bomb just 4 years later, and for half a century we were bitterly hostile rivals in the Cold War. Mutually Assured Destruction forestalled direct large scale combat between us and them.

I am not justifying the use of atomic bombs against the Japanese people at the end of WWII. It is, perhaps, among the greatest war crimes of all time.

I am speculating as to what the ulterior motives (other than ending the war with fewer US casualties) may have been, and what the future might have been like otherwise.