The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb
by Gar Alperovitz · first published 1995
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…the loss of 500,000 lives invading the mainland the historical record is rather different. Recent scholarship has made this plain. For those interested I recommend starting with Gar Alperovitz's 'The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb.' On a point of detail, ironically it isn't true that 'the only casualties were Japanese." In Nagasaki there were a large number of conscripted foreign workers as well as the native Japanese population…
on “Obama Order Sped Up Wave of Cyberattacks Against Iran” ↗…Japanese leaders didn't understand that until they were forced to realize it by the Soviet invasion of Manchuria (the same morning that the Nagasaki bomb was dropped). Two good detailed references are The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb by Gar Alperovitz and Racing the Enemy by Tsuyoshi Hasegawa. > they also made several decisions that massively limited the amount of death - for instance, instead of picking relatively small military…
on “A mine in the Northwest Territories provided uranium to the Manhattan Project” ↗Gar Alperovitz wrote the definitive book on the subject "The Decision to use the Atomic Bomb". Many US military experts and top generals believed it was unnecessary. Japan was defeated, particularly with the entry of the Soviet Union into the war, it was over for them.
on “Hiroshima (1946)” ↗I quite enjoyed that book, it's one of my favourites, actually. One part that caught me by surprise was Feynman's praise for the quick decision to use the atomic bomb. That stood out as something in apparent disagreement with the character of his which I learned of, and I didn't know what it was about that that he respected.
on “All of Richard Feynman’s physics lectures are now available free online (2014)” ↗> Gar Alperovitz wrote the definitive book on the subject "The Decision to use the Atomic Bomb". "definitive"? What does that even mean in a field of study like history? You're telling me there has been zero new analysis on the subject since 1995? No new insights? And even that assumes that Alperovitz's…
on “Hiroshima (1946)” ↗…summer of 1945 the decision was primarily influenced by diplomatic considerations related to the Soviet Union" - Gar Alperovitz, founding fellow of the Harvard Institute of Politics and author of "The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth"
on “OpenAI and Hugging Face partner to address security incident” ↗