Among the communist or communist-sympathizing left in the United States, there are certain “truths” that are religiously clung to; Saccho and Vanzetti and the Rosenbergs were innocent, socialized medicine is the wave of the future, and my favorite, the United States dropped the atomic bombs on Japan only to intimidate Russia. The leading American proponent of this argument was a pseudo-historian Gar Alperovitz, a communist professor of history at the University of Maryland. He has written a few books on the subject: The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and Atomic Diplomacy; Hiroshima and Potsdam. Alperovitz should receive his award as Hero of the Soviet Union, except that his beloved USSR no longer exists. His books are filled with distortions and half-truths to promote an agenda.
The essentials of this theory are this: Japan was ready to surrender, and would have done so in the very near future. The use of the bombs was not necessary in the purely military sense against Japan, so there must have been another motive. That motive was to intimidate the USSR in the post-war world. This was entirely the creation or fault of the Truman administration. Before Potsdam, we were looking at a wonderfully peaceful world where the USSR would be a fully cooperative member of the world community, and peacefully rebuild after the war. Instead, Truman deliberately concealed the existence of the atomic bombs, used them to intimidate the USSR, and then proceeded to launch the Cold War by going down a policy path that was inimical to the USSR. As a result, the USSR could not peaceably rebuild, but instead her citizens suffered privation from having to create a military power structure to defend itself against American aggression.
When looking at the historical record of Stalin’s policies in Eastern Europe starting in 1944, it’s patently obvious this theory is bunk. Where would such an idea come from? Well, for an American communist history professor, the answer is pretty obvious. He is parroting the Party Line, the official dogma he was given by his communist masters in Moscow. And that’s because there is a very simple reason the Soviets came up with the theory that the bomb was intended to intimidate them.
It’s because that’s exactly what it did.
The best source of this observation was in Alexander Werth’s book Russia At War, originally published in 1963. Werth was a British citizen who was born in St. Petersburg, and then returned to the USSR as a correspondent for the Sunday Times and the BBC. Werth was a British socialist and true lefty, no doubt about it. And for that, during the war the Soviets gave him access most other western journalists could only dream of. His book is well worth the read, although like Shirer’s Collapse of the Third Republic you have to cut through the leftist slant to get to the historical nuggets. And Werth’s book has plenty of them. The last chapter of Russia At War deals with the end of the war, the “Summer of Peace” in 1945 between the fall of Berlin and the invasion of Manchuria, and most of all, The Bomb.
First I should offer a little bit of background information here gained from Werth’s book. One thing that surprised me when I first read it was how much emphasis Werth put on public opinion in the USSR; the beliefs and opinions of the “ordinary Russian.” By this, I don’t mean the average peasant starving on the kolkhoz. That guy didn’t mean jack and Werth didn’t rub shoulders with him. I’m talking about the intelligentsia in the major cities. Those were the Russians Werth dealt with, and whose opinions Werth recorded. We all think of Stalin’s USSR as a giant ant hill/slave labor camp where the masters had the whips and the people were slaves. It pretty much was like that, but the Party cared a lot about the opinions of the educated citizenry in the cities. That’s why propaganda was so important. That’s why they worked so hard to shape those opinions.
So what was the general mood in the USSR between May and August, 1945? It was a sense of joy, of relief, of accomplishment, and above all, pride. They had narrowly survived an existential threat to their nation, triumphed over their hated foe who destroyed much of their country, and in so doing forged the mightiest land army the world had ever seen. True, there was a lot of work to be done to get the country back on its feet, but the boys were coming home and they had earned certain liberties from the state because of their sacrifice. Or so they thought. Most important, the USSR, previously shunned as a pariah state, was now strong and powerful, a force in world affairs and because of the might of the Red Army, a country whose word had to be respected.
Don’t forget one other aspect of the Russian psyche, in addition to their well-known national paranoia, which Werth didn’t really touch upon directly, but nonetheless it is very real. The paragraph I wrote above reveals much about one character trait of the Russians that has always been there and is still there today. They have a tremendous inferiority complex when it comes to Western Europe and the United States. This is particularly pronounced in technical, scientific and industrial fields. The victory over Germany made them feel our equals, or even our betters, as a great salve to that inferiority complex.
But all that changed on August 8, 1945, when they learned of the atomic bomb. Werth recorded the reactions of the “man on the street.” They immediately realized it was a “new thing.” The pessimists among them said their sacrifices to defeat Germany were “as good as wasted.” The Red Army, that great instrument of national power, was instantly made irrelevant and obsolete. And the Russians were pissed. They were mad at the United States. We came up with this new wonder weapon just to cheat them out of their rightfully won place in the world. And they took it personally. The use of the bomb touched every raw nerve in the Russian psyche; the paranoia, the fear, and the inferiority complex.
And having the bomb did exactly what the Russians thought we intended it to do. It did allow us to maintain a paper army in Germany for many years while the Red Army stayed with a high level of combat power. The USSR did a lot of damage around the world, but far less than they could have. Because we had the bomb, and they didn’t. On August 6, 1945, it immediately became the “Great Truth” about atomic/nuclear weapons that you didn’t have to use them, you just had to have them.
To the Russians, our exclusive possession of the bomb is what caused the Cold War, not Stalin breaking every promise he made at Yalta. It was the bomb that caused the Party to clamp down on the liberties they’d enjoyed during the war, not Stalin’s paranoia that caused the Purges and Collectivization in the 1930s. It was our possession of the bomb that forced them back into the factories and mines to make weapons and not blue jeans and toasters, not Stalin’s continuation of his brutal Five Year Plans begun before the war. Yes, we became the scapegoat for all their ills. It was a neat way for the Party to create the boogeyman to maintain their control over public opinion.
And that’s where the American leftist/communist mantra came from. They believe we dropped the bomb just to intimidate Russia. And the reason they were told this by their Moscow masters is because those masters were in fact intimidated.
By the way, the best refutation of Alperovitz is Richard Frank’s Downfall; the End of the Imperial Japanese Empire, which Frank wrote explicitly to refute Alperovitz, and he did a masterful job in so doing.
Awesome post.
It's amazing how long communists and their fellow-travellers clung to Soviet propaganda, and many still do despite the Venona disclosures and for a time opening of Soviet archives.
These daily threads since Roosevelt's death have revealed how the decision to drop the bombs was made and it had very little to do with the Russians. I would say, however, that some icing on the cake was that we really didn't need them in the Pacific war anymore.
Whatever one thinks about Harry Truman, what you saw was what you got. He told you what he thought straightaway. When I was growing up if the K.C. TV stations wanted a salty quote for the evening news all they had to do was go out to Independence and ask Harry for one.
there is a very simple reason the Soviets came up with the theory that the bomb was intended to intimidate them.
It’s because that’s exactly what it did.