i wouldn't worry too much about freeman. he's a really smart guy and if you want to kniow about the history of nuclear policy, he can't be beat, but his vision is narrow, and in particular he seems to know no political or diplomatic history other than nuclear theology -- a failing in a historian. he makes some really elementary mistakes aboiut soviet history -- not this one, other ones. his book on the history of nuclear strategy is essential for people interested in the topic, though.
--- Leigh Meyers <leighcmeyers at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I'm not sure this is news to anyone, but it's
> significance
> might lie in the fact that NewScientist published
> it.
> (as a reminder to scientists, perhaps?)
>
> Hiroshima bomb may have carried hidden agenda
>
> 13:46 21 July 2005
> NewScientist.com news service
> Rob Edwards
>
>
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7706&print=true
>
> The US decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima
> and Nagasaki in 1945 was meant to kick-start the
> Cold War rather than end the Second World War,
> according to two nuclear historians who say they
> have new evidence backing the controversial theory.
>
> Causing a fission reaction in several kilograms of
> uranium and plutonium and killing over 200,000
> people 60 years ago was done more to impress the
> Soviet Union than to cow Japan, they say. And the US
> President who took the decision, Harry Truman, was
> culpable, they add.
>
> "He knew he was beginning the process of
> annihilation of the species," says Peter Kuznick,
> director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at
> American University in Washington DC, US. "It was
> not just a war crime; it was a crime against
> humanity."
>
> According to the official US version of history, an
> A-bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945,
> and another on Nagasaki three days later, to force
> Japan to surrender. The destruction was necessary to
> bring a rapid end to the war without the need for a
> costly US invasion.
>
> But this is disputed by Kuznick and Mark Selden, a
> historian from Cornell University in Ithaca, New
> York, US. They are presenting their evidence at a
> meeting in London on Thursday organised by
> Greenpeace and others to coincide with the 60th
> anniversary of the bombings.
>
> Looking for peace
> New studies of the US, Japanese and Soviet
> diplomatic archives suggest that Truman's main
> motive was to limit Soviet expansion in Asia,
> Kuznick claims. Japan surrendered because the Soviet
> Union began an invasion a few days after the
> Hiroshima bombing, not because of the atomic bombs
> themselves, he says.
>
> According to an account by Walter Brown, assistant
> to then-US secretary of state James Byrnes, Truman
> agreed at a meeting three days before the bomb was
> dropped on Hiroshima that Japan was "looking for
> peace". Truman was told by his army generals,
> Douglas Macarthur and Dwight Eisenhower, and his
> naval chief of staff, William Leahy, that there was
> no military need to use the bomb.
>
> "Impressing Russia was more important than ending
> the war in Japan," says Selden. Truman was also
> worried that he would be accused of wasting money on
> the Manhattan Project to build the first nuclear
> bombs, if the bomb was not used, he adds.
>
> Kuznick and Selden's arguments, however, were
> dismissed as "discredited" by Lawrence Freedman, a
> war expert from King's College London, UK. He says
> that Truman's decision to bomb Hiroshima was
> "understandable in the circumstances".
>
> Truman's main aim had been to end the war with
> Japan, Freedman says, but adds that, with the wisdom
> of hindsight, the bombing may not have been
> militarily justified. Some people assumed that the
> US always had "a malicious and nasty motive", he
> says, "but it ain't necessarily so."
>
> Related Articles
> The A-bomb: 60 years on, is the world any safer?
>
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18725083.800
>
> 16 July 2005
>
> Nuclear test fall-out killed thousands in US
> http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn1993
> 01 March 2002
>
> Careful with that nuke
>
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg17022960.700
>
> 30 June 2001
>
> Weblinks
> Peter Kuznick, American University
>
http://domino.american.edu/AU/media/Expt2004.nsf/80ae7d46ef4066b9852569e7005a9bb0/6d2fd4951fdf116085256ccc005e7e04?OpenDocument&Highlight=0,Kuznick
>
>
> Mark Selden, Cornell University
> http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/ms44/
>
> Lawrence Freedman, King's College London
>
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/wsg/prospectus/staff/lf.html
>
>
> #30#
>
>
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