The atomic bombings of World War II decimated the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and set a horrific precedence of carnage and destruction never before seen. In Hiroshima 80,000 people died in the blast and another 90,000 – 110,000 in the weeks, months and years following due to radiation sickness and complications thereof. The event was not just US history but world history as we had entered the Atomic Age.
The decision to drop the atomic bomb was not one that was reached easily. The ethical necessity to drop the bombs was debated then and continues to be debated now. I understand the difficult decision that President Harry Truman and his staff faced and of course they did research the potential devastation that the bombs would produce. The concept that bringing a decisive and quick end to the war in order to save lives does have merit. It was estimated that the conventional bombing campaign would have produced many more casualties than the two bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki produced. Now that the war was over in Europe, our military was re-aligning to concentrate the majority of its combat power on Japan, which would have meant full commitment of the US Army Air Corp, tripling the bombing capability and at least doubling the land force capability. The planned invasion of Japan would have produced many more casualties but now add to this the dynamic the fact that 10s of thousands more American military would have been lost. The Japanese had a reputation for deception as their claims of compliance in peace treaties and accords were suspect.
The first location did have great military value; Hiroshima was a supply and logistics hub for the Japanese Army/Navy and their communications and intelligence commands were based there as well. The population of Hiroshima was evacuated by the Japanese government during the later years of the war as the conventional bombing campaign increased; this was another planning consideration. Cities with larger civilian populations were immediately dismissed from the list of possible targets as well as cultural and religious centers, such as Kyoto.
I don’t know if the decision to use the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the right decision; it may have saved lives and prevented the devastation of such a horrible war from unnecessarily continuing. It may have even helped to diffuse cold war close calls such as the Cuban Missile Crisis. As the leaders of the former Soviet Union and the United States replayed horrific images of radiation burns and city leveling in their minds maybe they came to the sobering conclusion that dialogue should have been opened. When an African Liberation Theologist tells me that we dropped bombs and didn’t even bat an eye, I know that he’s full of ****, because I know US history.

Imagine what Japan would have done had they had the bombs, or the Nazi's.

Lets face it the Germans were working on making the Atom bomb as well. The big fear was that they would stick it on a V2.

Originally Posted by LeEnfield

Lets face it the Germans were working on making the Atom bomb as well. The big fear was that they would stick it on a V2.

In the nick of time, those V-2s were nearly fully operational.

If the Germs or Japs had it, I assume they would not have been considerate in their use of it in against us.

Originally Posted by AikiRooster

Imagine what Japan would have done had they had the bombs, or the Nazi's.

It won't change the history a lot:

1. We can speak about few hand-made bombs, not mass production of them for that time.
2. Because of large territories of target countries (USA, USSR) and large length of front lines, neither Germans nor Japans could significantly paralyze Soviet or American war industry, and strikes over the front lines could result in small tactical result without chances to influence situation in entire front (literally, blast radius of 15 kt yield nuke is about 3 km - i.e. only 1 division could be totally destroyed and few partially incapacitated.
3. Both Germany and Japan will face some problems with delivering bombs to target, since at 1944-1945 both of them had lost air superiority. And risk the bomb won't be dropped on the designated area because of hostile air defense fighters was too high.

Well, from points 1 and 2 shows that even in case Germans or Japans could made the nuke, they won't have significant effect from its use. They could only increase the Soviet or American casualties, not win the war with this potential Wunderwaffe.

Yeah, my thinking though was just on where they would have dropped here in the States had they had the ability to fly it over here. Wasn't thinking in regards to battlefield use.

Originally Posted by AikiRooster

Yeah, my thinking though was just on where they would have dropped here in the States had they had the ability to fly it over here. Wasn't thinking in regards to battlefield use.

I'd say NYC, just because it's huge, Pittsburgh or Cleveland, which were the main sources of steel, Detroit, a huge production hub, or DC, home to the entire US Government.

Either way, would have been REAL ugly. And the bad guys would have won.

I wonder if the US would have dropped it on a German city instead (given say Japan was defeated first)? Remember, we did consider the Japanese racially inferior to us in ww2.