Quote:
Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch
I would also argue that there wasn't a large supply of materials and the manufacturing of both the materials and the Bombs at the time was a murderous and expensive exercise
Remember that the US at the time also felt it was in a race with Russia in terms of the bomb, so they wanted to make sure to use what they had to maximum effect. They also looked at the mind set of the Japanese leadership at the time and decided that a demonstration would actually be perceived as a sign of weakness, that the US wasn't willing to prosecute the war all the way with them, and it could have strengthened Japanese resolve to fight it out to the bitter end.
As a side effect they hoped that they would be able to gain an upper edge in the up coming cold war that everyone knew was coming with the Russians.
They knew that when they slipped the leash on Stalin in the Far East that they also had to stop his expansion in its tracks by ending the Second world War.
If they had gotten into a conventional invasion of the home islands, and Russia had gobbled up part of Japan it would have given Stalin a fairly strong foothold in the pacific with warmer water ports.
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And yeah, by no means do I downplay that the US knew that a
massive side effect of this was flexing for the Russians.
It's just an easy, yet horrific, decision if you're a military commander. X number of people are going to die, X will likely be higher total in a land invasion. X with the A-bomb will likely be lower, and will be mainly the "enemy". At the end of a war which was the most horrific in history, what leader doesn't make that choice.