The Nuking of Japan

[Anomalocaris]

The state department and war departments both of whose officials clearly understood that the Russian and American postwar interest are dismetrically opposite, and yet the then current administration had to work with the then widespread public perception to the contrary that had been assiduously cultivated during the war. They have understood this as far back as 1942. Long before Stalingrad memo were already flying around clearly anticipating that soviet union would end the war immensely strong in Europe, that Britain would end the war an spent force unable to provide any sort of meaningful counterweight to the soviets, and the war in the pacific is likely to drag on for a long while (until 1948) after the war in Europe ends, and some means must be found to offset the further gain in soviet strength while the US is tied down with Japan after the European war.

Until the advantage of the atomic bomb, the best the US could come up with offsetting soviet strength in Europe while us is preoccupied with Japan was to try to get the Russians bogged down in Japan as well. This was clearly not ideal as Russians could clearly help themselves with Japanese possessions in Asia proper while doing little to actually shorten the war in the Japanese home islands.

So the atom bomb must have seemed like a god sent to forstall any lengthening of the war, which for the us is lose lose.