With the new movie “Oppenheimer” out, we are once again debating whether it was right to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II. I have talked about this question many times before, so I will not go into it again,1 except for one thought that I have had for a while but not written about before. Actually, it’s more of a possibility or a question than a certainty. In any case, I thought of it again because of a couple of things in a review of Road to Surrender, a new book by Evan Thomas focusing on three men involved in the decision to drop the bomb and end the war:
“After receiving a full description of the destruction wrought on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, including an account of the civilian death toll, President Truman ordered that further atomic bombs would be used only on his explicit order – first time in American history that a president had taken direct control of a military weapon. …
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