[CaptainCrunch]

The atomic bomb argument was an interesting one, but there are some key factors that have effected the argument.

In the 60 years since its been dropped there has been a tremendous amount of information gathered and analyzed that wasn't available when the decision was made. But there were some key factors that made the American's make the decision to drop not one, but two bombs.

1) The American military was horrified by the high cost of the Island hopping campaign, especially with Iwo Jima where the American Marines had to basically clean out every Japanese solider at an extremely high cost. The Japanese soldier had gained a reputation as fanatical, ruthless and the feeling was that they would never ever surrender. What added to that was the use of Kamikaze pilots and the use of manned torpedoes against the U.S. Navy. It gave a bleak picture that as long as the Japanese Military had the option of an honorable death there would be no diplomatic solution.

2) The firebombing while effective at destroying cities and killing civilians was deemed as ineffective because it didn't break the resolve of the Japanese Military to fight their way out of their predicament. The Japanese Military felt that if they could bleed enough lives from the American Military that U.S. civilian opinion would swing against continuing the war and force the American's to negotiate an end to the war that would leave the Japanese with their remaining holdings, and a chance to rebuild their military.

3) Propaganda broadcast from the Japanese mainland were intercepted which extorted the civilian population to fight against American invaders, one of the key phrases was that the Japanese Culture was to great to bow to any foreign invader.

4) With the collapse of the European war, Stalin had turned his eyes to attacking the Japanese. You have to remember that there was a historic grudge against Japan by the Russians. Also the seizure of key Japanese islands would give Stalin access to both more fresh water pacific ports and cause a loss of prestige to the American's if the Russians managed to capture Japan.

5) There were only two atomic bombs built because the designs were bulky and terrible and the refining of the end amount of fissionable material required a massive amount of material. The American's depleted their stock of weapons grade plutonium in the creation of the two bombs and it would take time to gather enough materials to fabricate more bombs.

6) The American's were tired of war, and seeing their generation of young men being bled dry. Combine that with the caluculated impact on the American economy if they continued to lose these men, and couldn't get them back into the factory. The feeling was that if the American did a naval blockade of the Japanese Islands surrender wouldn't happen for years, and it would have been the equivalent of a long slow death sentence of the Japanese civilian base, and an unrecoverable destruction of their economic base. The feeling was that a marine amphibious landing would result in the deaths of the majority of the Japanese Civilian base, and the intense city fighting would cause an unacceptable loss of marines, airforce and navy assets, which was a frightening concept when you consider that the Russian Military at the time was thought to be incredibly strong due to their thrashing of the German Army.

With all of those factors there was no choice, they dropped the first atomic bomb as a demonstration of the power of the atomic bomb, the Japanese didn't surrender, Stalin officially declared war and massed his forces. Its interesting to note that the Soviets siezed the Kuril Islands after the Japanese surrender creating a dispute that continues to sour Russia Japanese relationship.

Anyways, with Japan's refusal to surrender and pandora's box ripped open, the American's decided to deploy the second bomb in order to both force the Japanese to capitulate, and as a bluff to convince the Soviets that there were more bombs.

One of the reasons worked, the Japanese surrendered, but now there are several pieces of revisionist history that have stated that the Atomic Bomb drop was necessary, however based on the factors above and the climate at the time, there was no other decision to be made.

The second reason, the bluff at the Russians failed to work, Russian Intelligence was bad, however Stalin didn't really care his strategy was to bide his time, he appointed the repulsive Beria to oversea the program and the first Russian bomb the Joe-1 was detonated in 1949.

If the American's had had more then two bombs its reasonable to assume that there would have been a strong push to use it against Stalin as both a heavy stick, and a inducement for him to behave. America had a huge strategic advantage and frittered it away

With the detonation in 1949, MAD went into full force.