It is very common for Western governments and media outlets to tell the rest of the world to be afraid of North Korea and its nuclear weapons, or to fear the possibility that Iran could one day have nukes.
But the reality is that there is only one country in human history that has used nuclear weapons against a civilian population – and not once, but twice: the United States.
On the 6th and 9th of August, 1945, the US military dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Around 200,000 civilians were killed.
Today, nearly 80 years later, many US government officials, journalists, and educators still claim that Washington had no choice but to nuke Japan, to force it to surrender and thus end World War Two. Some argue that this horrifying atrocity was in fact a noble act, that it saved even more lives that would have been lost in subsequent fighting.
This narrative, although widespread, is utterly false.
US government documents have admitted that Japan was already on the verge of surrendering in 1945, before the nuclear strikes. It was simply not necessary to use the atomic bomb.
The US Department of War (which was renamed the Department of Defense later in the 1940s) conducted an investigation, known as the Strategic Bombing Survey, analyzing its air strikes in World War II.
Published in 1946, the Strategic Bombing Survey stated very clearly, “Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped”:
… it seems clear that, even without the atomic bombing attacks, air supremacy over Japan could have exerted sufficient pressure to bring about unconditional surrender and obviate the need for invasion.
Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.
The nuclear strikes on Japan represented a political decision taken by the United States, aimed squarely at the Soviet Union; it was the first strike in the Cold War.
In August 1945, the USSR was preparing to invade Japan to overthrow its ruling fascist regime, which had been allied with Nazi Germany – which the Soviet Red Army had also just defeated in the European theater of the war.
Washington was concerned that, if the Soviets defeated Japanese fascism and liberated Tokyo like they had in Berlin, then Japan’s post-fascist government could become an ally of the Soviet Union and could adopt a socialist government.
The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, therefore, were not so much aimed at the Japanese fascists as they were aimed at the Soviet communists.
This expressly political decision to use nuclear weapons against Japan was in fact opposed by several top US military officials.
As one of the most famous generals in US military history, Dwight Eisenhower led operations in the European theater of the war and oversaw the subsequent occupation of what was formerly Nazi Germany.
Eisenhower later became president of the United States, following Harry Truman, the US leader who had nuked Japan.
Eisenhower is renowned worldwide for his leadership in the fight against fascism in Europe. But what is little known is that he opposed the US nuclear attacks on Japan.
After leaving the White House, Eisenhower published a memoir titled Mandate for Change. In this 1963 book, the former top general recalled an argument he had in July 1945 with then US Secretary of War Henry Stimson.
Stimson had notified him that Washington was planning to nuke Japan, and Eisenhower criticized the decision, stating that he had “grave misgivings” and was convinced “that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary”.
The incident took place in [July] 1945 when Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. … But the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.
During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of “face”. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude, almost angrily refuting the reason I gave for my quick conclusions.
These “completely unnecessary” nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed some 200,000 civilians. But they had a political goal, aimed at the Soviet Union.
The political reasons behind the atomic bombing of Japan have been publicly acknowledged by the US Department of Energy’s Office of History, which runs a website with educational information about the Manhattan Project, the scientific initiative that developed the bomb.
The US government website conceded that the Truman administration’s decision to nuke Japan was politically motivated, writing:
After President Harry S. Truman received word of the success of the Trinity test, his need for the help of the Soviet Union in the war against Japan was greatly diminished. The Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, had promised to join the war against Japan by August 15th. Truman and his advisors now were not sure they wanted this help. If use of the atomic bomb made victory possible without an invasion, then accepting Soviet help would only invite them into the discussions regarding the postwar fate of Japan.
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Other historians argue that Japan would have surrendered even without the use of the atomic bomb and that in fact Truman and his advisors used the bomb only in an effort to intimidate the Soviet Union.
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Truman hoped to avoid having to “share” the administration of Japan with the Soviet Union.
Mainstream historians have acknowledged this fact as well.
Ward Wilson, a researcher at the establishment London-based think tank the British American Security Information Council, published an article in Washington’s elite Foreign Policy magazine in 2013 titled “The Bomb Didn’t Beat Japan. Stalin Did”.
“Although the bombs did force an immediate end to the war, Japan’s leaders had wanted to surrender anyway and likely would have done so before the American invasion planned for Nov. 1. Their use was, therefore, unnecessary”, he wrote.
Wilson explained:
If the Japanese were not concerned with city bombing in general or the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in particular, what were they concerned with? The answer is simple: the Soviet Union.
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Even the most hard-line leaders in Japan’s government knew that the war could not go on. The question was not whether to continue, but how to bring the war to a close under the best terms possible.
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One way to gauge whether it was the bombing of Hiroshima or the invasion and declaration of war by the Soviet Union that caused Japan’s surrender is to compare the way in which these two events affected the strategic situation. After Hiroshima was bombed on Aug. 6, both options were still alive. … Bombing Hiroshima did not foreclose either of Japan’s strategic options.
The impact of the Soviet declaration of war and invasion of Manchuria and Sakhalin Island was quite different, however. Once the Soviet Union had declared war, Stalin could no longer act as a mediator — he was now a belligerent. So the diplomatic option was wiped out by the Soviet move. The effect on the military situation was equally dramatic.
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When the Russians invaded Manchuria, they sliced through what had once been an elite army and many Russian units only stopped when they ran out of gas.
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The Soviet invasion invalidated the military’s decisive battle strategy, just as it invalidated the diplomatic strategy. At a single stroke, all of Japan’s options evaporated. The Soviet invasion was strategically decisive — it foreclosed both of Japan’s options — while the bombing of Hiroshima (which foreclosed neither) was not.
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Attributing the end of the war to the atomic bomb served Japan’s interests in multiple ways. But it also served U.S. interests. If the Bomb won the war, then the perception of U.S. military power would be enhanced, U.S. diplomatic influence in Asia and around the world would increase.
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If, on the other hand, the Soviet entry into the war was what caused Japan to surrender, then the Soviets could claim that they were able to do in four days what the United States was unable to do in four years, and the perception of Soviet military power and Soviet diplomatic influence would be enhanced. And once the Cold War was underway, asserting that the Soviet entry had been the decisive factor would have been tantamount to giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
Thus, before World War II was even over, the United States launched a Cold War against its ostensible “ally”, the Soviet Union – and against the potential spread of socialism anywhere around the world.
US spy agencies began recruiting former fascists and Nazi collaborators. US officials freed Class A Japanese war criminals from prison, some of whom went on to lead the government in Tokyo.
Many of these figures were involved in founding the right-wing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has essentially run Japan as a one-party state since 1955 (excluding a mere five years of opposition rule).
A textbook example of this was Nobusuke Kishi, a notorious war criminal who ran the Japanese empire’s Manchukuo puppet regime and oversaw genocidal atrocities in collaboration with the Nazis. He was briefly imprisoned, but later pardoned by US authorities and, with Washington’s support, rose to become prime minister of Japan in the 1950s.
Kishi’s fascist-linked family still commands significant control over Japanese politics. His grandson, Shinzo Abe, was the longest-serving prime minister in the East Asian nation’s history.
US-backed fascism in Japan: How Shinzo Abe whitewashed genocidal imperial crimes
Today, it remains important to correct widespread myths about this history, because they have a profound impact on popular culture.
In July 2023, Hollywood released a blockbuster film, “Oppenheimer”, by award-winning director Christopher Nolan. The movie was a huge commercial success, but was also criticized for its politics.
The film humanized the eponymous physicist who directed the Manhattan Project’s Los Alamos laboratory, J. Robert Oppenheimer, commonly known as the “father of the atomic bomb”.
Later in life, Oppenheimer came to regret the role he played in developing the weapon, and he campaigned against nuclear proliferation.
Ironically, Oppenheimer also became a victim of the US government’s McCarthyism, and was persecuted for his links to left-wing groups.
But while the movie was celebrated for depicting Oppenheimer’s complex internal struggles, it was accused of whitewashing the brutality of the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The Japanese civilians who lost their lives in these totally unnecessary attacks were eerily absent from the film.
By incessantly repeating the falsehood that nuking 200,000 people was the only way to get Japan to surrender, US officials have normalized this erasure of the civilian victims of its unnecessary, politically motivated war crimes.
Tom Wilke
2023-08-07 at 19:04
Ben’s reporting sets a high standard for much-needed scientific research across the spectrum on how hardened capitalists have maintained their grip on world politics and public opinion. Unfortunately, the lives and beliefs of millions, maybe billions, of people have been perverted by the capitalist program of the U. S. The solution of fundamental human problems has been stalled worldwide for no good reason; even those few who have built fortunes on the lies and tricks have been harmed, they sacrificed their humanness. Thus they can never escape the torment of endless paranoia, nor cure the split from their true being, which WAS at one time natural and free. Very stupid.
Keith Brooks
2023-08-09 at 20:03
excellent piece marshalling the on-the-record evidence from the U.S. itself that the a-bombing of japan was not what caused Japan’s surrender and its unnecessary use was aimed at the soviet union.
Audrey Nash
2023-08-11 at 03:29
Thank you so much for revealing the truth. The truth matters but rarely do we get a chance to see or hear it. God bless.
John R Moffett
2023-12-15 at 10:00
Thanks Ben, great article. Most Americans can’t stand the many terrible truths about their country, so the myths live on.
Thorstein
2023-12-22 at 20:13
And thanks for calling attention to the Kishi dynasty, an important footnote testifying to the persistent motivations of the U.S.
Henry
2025-02-13 at 18:44
This is not true. although many of the facts in this correct, the author looks at this with a very western perspective. Japan had been utterly devastated by the war, was going through a massive famine, and had lost millions of men. despite this, the level of indoctrination of its people was on par with that of nazi germany, meaning that a full scale invasion of Japan would have been necessary. This invasion would have costed millions more american lives, and would have forced even more destruction upon Japan as mass bombing continued. It is also important to realize two things. One. The atomic bombs was not the most devastating bombing raid in Japanese history. The USAAF had already absolutely destroyed dozens of Japanese cities and killed hundreds of thousands. Even after the atomic bombs dropped, General Curtis LeMay continued of his napalm fueled killing spree, killing tens thousands more. Two. One of the main points in this article is that it was actually the soviets who struck the deathblow, one which I agree with. The absolute steamrolling of the Kwamtung Army, was the final nail in the coffin. What the article fails to mention is the reason the soviets decided to go for it was because the two bombs had ALREADY been dropped on Japan. The Japanese knew the Soviets would enter the war but were not prepared for this blow, as they were repeatedly assured they still had several months remaining before their neutrality pact expired. When the Soviets entered the war and occupied Manchuria, the Japanese realized that all was hopeless, and thinking that it was only a matter of days before another bomb was dropped(given the US dropped the second bomb only three days after the first), decided that they should surrender. The Japanese ruling council was actually in a deadlock, which would have meant a continuation of the war. Only the intervention of Emperor Hirohito forced that surrender. In his address to the nation, the emperor made no mention of the soviets, only saying he would not allow his citizens to perish under the assault of these atomic weapons. There were also several Japanese army units that held out, refusing to believe the war was over. A certain Hiroo Onoda didnt surrender until March of 1974, after holding out in the jungles of indonesia for almost 30 years.
Nathan
2025-05-03 at 20:27
Right. That omission weakens even the best counterarguments if left unaddressed. Here’s the revised essay, now integrating projected U.S. casualties through November 1945—the date the article claims Japan would have surrendered anyway.
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The Geopolitical Economy Report argues that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were militarily unnecessary and primarily a political move to intimidate the Soviet Union. The article draws on a mix of declassified documents, memoirs, and revisionist scholarship to frame the bombings as part of a Cold War power play rather than a desperate bid to end World War II. While parts of this argument rest on genuine sources and legitimate critiques of U.S. policy, the article commits several analytic errors: it misrepresents timelines, attributes unified intention to disparate actors, and omits relevant evidence about wartime conditions and projections, especially U.S. casualty estimates leading up to November 1945—the date it claims Japan would have surrendered without the bomb.
To counter the article fairly, we must acknowledge that the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey (1946) did in fact conclude that Japan might have surrendered by November, even without an invasion or the atomic bomb. This view is echoed in the postwar reflections of some U.S. officials and has been developed by scholars such as Tsuyoshi Hasegawa. But the critical issue is not whether surrender by November was theoretically possible—it is whether it was likely enough, based on the intelligence available to Truman in July 1945, to justify not using the bomb. That’s where the revisionist thesis weakens.
At the time of Truman’s decision, projections for U.S. casualties in the ongoing war varied widely. The Joint War Plans Committee (June 15, 1945) estimated between 130,000 and 220,000 U.S. casualties for just the first phase of the planned invasion (Operation Olympic, scheduled for November 1). General MacArthur’s staff estimated 105,000 casualties in the first 90 days. Secretary of War Henry Stimson warned Truman that American losses could reach hundreds of thousands. A postwar Army study in 1947 stated that total casualties in both phases of invasion (Olympic and Coronet) could have exceeded 500,000. These figures—whether overblown or not—were the ones Truman and his advisors had in hand.
In that context, even if Japan might have surrendered by November under blockade and Soviet pressure, there was no guarantee of that outcome. The Japanese cabinet remained deadlocked after Hiroshima and only surrendered after the combined shock of Nagasaki and the Soviet invasion. Historians such as Richard Frank and Sadao Asada have shown that the Japanese military still hoped to force favorable terms, and that many leaders were prepared to accept national annihilation rather than unconditional surrender. Truman, facing the possibility of hundreds of thousands of American deaths in a drawn-out invasion or even prolonged blockade, made the decision to use the bomb as a way to force rapid surrender without concessions.
The article quotes Eisenhower’s postwar memoir as evidence that the bomb was unnecessary. But Eisenhower, while a major figure, was stationed in Europe and had no operational command or intelligence oversight in the Pacific. His judgment, though sincere, was formed without access to the detailed estimates of Japanese resistance or U.S. casualty projections. Moreover, his 1963 recollection came nearly two decades after the fact and cannot be read as a conclusive institutional verdict. It is one man’s dissent, not the position of the military establishment.
The article also collapses Truman, Stimson, Byrnes, Leahy, and institutional bodies like the Joint Chiefs and the War Department into a singular agent—“the U.S. government”—as if it had a unified intent to threaten the USSR. This is methodologically flawed. Decision-making in mid-1945 was fractured, secretive, and shaped by multiple competing goals: end the war quickly, avoid a costly invasion, maintain Allied unity, and shape the postwar order. There is good reason to believe that political considerations—especially the desire to limit Soviet influence in Japan—played a role in the decision to use the bomb. But to treat this as the reason, and to erase the military logic operating at the time, is to substitute retrospective clarity for wartime uncertainty.
A more defensible view is that Truman faced a genuine dilemma. Japan appeared beaten but not yet ready to surrender. The Soviets were about to enter the war, but that too posed risks: shared occupation, Communist influence, and postwar instability. The bomb, having just been tested, offered an opportunity to break Japan’s resistance quickly. It was a devastating choice—but from Truman’s perspective, one that could save an unknown number of American and Japanese lives by forcing an end to the war before the November invasion. Whether or not Japan would have surrendered before then cannot be known. What can be known is that Truman had no guarantee it would—and very good reason, based on July intelligence and casualty estimates, to believe it might not.
In sum, the Geopolitical Economy Report offers a rhetorically powerful but analytically incomplete picture. It omits the very projections that shaped wartime decisions, misrepresents the timing and scope of dissent, and conflates political interpretation with operational intelligence. The better historical position is that the atomic bomb was used as a military tool with political consequences—not purely as a political weapon. It was a tragic act, arguably unnecessary in hindsight, but not irrational or cynically plotted at the time. That distinction matters—both for moral judgment and historical understanding.