“They also sent a warning to the soviets.’s”
Let’s say all of these quotes are correct, and that the Japs were “already finished”. (I wonder if shortly after D-Day, when Germany surely knew that they were “finished” if we should have just stood by and waited for the end?)
I would suggest that dropping the two bombs was still necessary to keep the Soviets at bay, as well as others over the years.
If we hadn’t used them, would they have been more apt to have been used during the Cold War? It is one thing to have the scientists do tests in the desert or some island in the Pacific. It is quite another for the politicians and humanity to see the actual results.
And if we used them once, the Soviets had to think that we would use them again.
I’m sure somebody already pointed it out, but if we had just waited Japan out, the Soviets probably would have gone in first and taken it for themselves.
I was sort of a nut on WWII since the late 60’s. I did a lot of reading. I do think a lot of people are trying to rewrite history. It’s not that they are bad people. It’s really just that they need something to talk about. It gets clicks.
In a nutshell, using those bombs saved millions of lives on both sides and using two bombs sent a message to Russia that we had more than one, so back off.
Sure, there are infinite nuances, but that’s it in a nutshell.
There is no reason that both can’t be true. We dropped the bombs both to force Japanese surrender and as a means to contain the Soviets. Based on Soviet actions in Eastern Europe in the three months between the German surrender and the Soviet declaration of war on Japan, it was pretty clear what Stalin’s intentions were in Asia- grab as much territory as he could. Dragging out the war for another year or more would likely have resulted in far more Communist dominance in Asia than what actually occurred. Further, nobody was sure that Stalin was going to be satisfied with what he had in Europe. There was a very real possibility that he could have fought only with a token force in Asia, fortified Europe and moved the Iron Curtain further west while the US was occupied with and diverting most of its military resources to a Japanese invasion. The threat of nuclear retaliation might well have been the only thing that could have deterrred Stalin.
Obviously we can never know what didn’t happen because of dropping the bombs, only what did happen. But it is at least conceivable that many lives were saved and much suffering was avoided globally because of it.