Some links

Here are some things worth reading. Richard Dawkins is interviewed in The Times about a forthcoming television programme he's made about Darwin. He is very good at conveying the scale, excitement and beauty of Darwin's intellectual achievement. I have problems with Dawkins when, like so many public intellectuals, he imagines his political opinions are of such depth that they merit being aired in public (see this article, half-way down, and the problem will immediately be apparent). But as an advocate of science and its methods against irrationalism he is a public resource.

My colleague Bronwen Maddox writes in the Wall Street Journal about European attitudes to America. She says:

The question is whether, in gratitude that the next U.S. president is not George W. Bush, America's critics will forgive him for decisions that are in the U.S.'s interests and not their own, or whether they will be disappointed and angry, expecting a radical transformation that was never going to happen, whichever candidate wins. In the new mood of worry, about the economy, as well as security, I'd bet on the first: that the America-bashing of the past two decades will seem like a luxury best now discarded.

I hope her wager is right, and I suspect it is. Anti-Americanism is not deep-rooted in the European psyche; it's merely a constant recycled piece of fabric in the reactionary and nativist elements of European left and right. It won't be affected by anything the US president does, because for these intellectual currents anything the US president does is, ex hypothesi, wrong.

One of my regular correspondents, the military historian D.M. Giangreco, has an interesting article on History News Network entitled "Was Dwindling US Army Manpower a Factor in the Atom Bombing of Hiroshima?" It's a valuable corrective to the notion, so common among anti-nuclear campaigners though which ought to be irrelevant to their case, that estimates of huge casualties in the event of a conventional invasion of Japan in 1945 were a postwar invention to justify President Truman's A-bomb decision. Dennis concludes:

[F]or many years, various individuals critical of Truman's bomb decision regularly maintained that estimates of massive casualties during an invasion of Japan were a post-war creation, and when the copious documentation that they were wrong began to come to light a decade ago, then switched to the line that the estimates must certainly have been developed and seen only by "lowly subordinates" when, in fact, far from being considered by obscure officers tucked away in the recesses of the Pentagon, this vital--and highly secret--matter was being examined by some of the finest minds this country has produced from Henry Stimson to Michael DeBakey. Moreover, Truman had not simply seen the genuinely huge numbers, but reacted decisively to them by calling the June 18, 1945, White House meeting in which the invasion of Japan was given the go-ahead in spite of their frightful dimensions.

Comments

[YINever]

Since the notorious Rev. Wright has repeatedly referred to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as being examples of America's worst crimes--a sentiment apparently echoed in Obama's own autobiographical writings--it will be interesting to see if this figures into the public commentary on the matter during the upcoming 63rd anniversary, amidst the usual ritual denouncements.

[Bill]

I am not a Leftist and the bombings were obviously preferable to a full scale invasion - which would have killed far more people. However, why couldnt the Americans have dropped a bomb on a largely uninhabited island (or forest) and given Japan a fortnight to surrender? It is true that they showed no sign of surrendering, but then they knew nothing about atomic bombs!
Was an invasion the necessary alternative anyway? America had destroyed allmost all of Japan's navy and merchant navy. Japan has hardly any oil or metal and could not possibly have rearmed. With patience, a blockade may have convinced them to surrender. Returning to an 18th century peasantry would have been the only alternative

[Quentin George]

Bill, the fact that the Japanese military was quite happy to keep the war going on even after Hiroshima, I don't see how the destruction of an uninhabited island would sway them.

[Chris Roberts]

It is presumably the case, Oliver, that you yourself 'imagine [your]political opinions are of such depth that they merit being aired in public.' Neither Dawkins nor yourself are experts in the field.

[Oliver Kamm]

Bill, the reason no demonstration or warning shot was given before Hiroshima was that, as Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy put it 20 years later, "it would have completely wiped out the element of surprise, which in my opinion was extremely important. As it turned out, that was one of the reasons why Japan surrendered so quickly."

Recent historical studies by Lawrence Freedman and Sadao Asada support this conclusion.

Chris Roberts, I very much agree with your first sentence.

[Chris Chittleborough]

That's yet another great paper by Giangreco.

I worry that few, if any, of the revionist historians are properly aware of the most distinctive thing about the Nipponese military: the hatred of surrender. I'm fairly sure that none of them understand just how startling and terrifying that attitude was to those who fought them. It's interesting to learn that some US leaders underestimated the Nipponese willingness to quite literally fight to the death even after Okinawa.