Atomic Bomb Case

The atomic bomb was always a subject that had many controversial views. The original reason for the United States to drop the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not the fact that they wanted to end the war with Japan, despite popular belief. It was the fact that they had the opportunity to intimidate the Soviet Union. The fact that we defeated Japan was just a positive outcome, but not the initial goal. The truth was obvious that the United States was not on good terms with the Soviet Union at the time, and competition due to the division of Europe proves this without question.

It is a popular opinion that the reason for dropping the bombs, Little Boy and Fat Man, was exclusively to end war with Japan. However they were actually dropped to scare the Soviet Union and ending war with Japan was just giving them more reasoning to do it. After the bombs were dropped, in response to desperation Japan happened to surrender or better known as the Potsdam agreement. The Potsdam agreement was the military agreement between the United States, the UK, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics who were attempting to rebuild Germany. The Japanese military was estimated to have about 5,000,000 men at that time. Their soldiers were scattered over many areas which caused trade to be lessened to almost nothing within their allies (Doc A).The United States military wanted to prepare for Japan's full surrender the summer before 1945. The plans of the United States were to prepare as if the atomic bomb would not work, this was because they didn't want to become reliant on it, and this was because it was not tested in New Mexico (Doc A). Japan did not only surrender because of the devastation caused by the atomic bomb but before that the US continuously hit their cities with powerful explosives aside from the atomic bomb, pretty much leaving them in ruins. (Doc B). Japan was clearly heading to its end. Russia quickly notices this and first response was intimidation and the allies ignored Japans cries for help after the dropping of the bombs. As a result about 241,000 people had been killed.

Document D states that Roosevelt asked Stalin for his support against Japan at the Yalta conference. As a result, Roosevelt made a compromise with the Soviet Union. This compromise because many tensions between the US and the Soviet Union, we felt it gave them too much power in foreign affairs. Roosevelt had a strong feeling that we could defeat Japan without