Truman and the Bomb
Aug 2023 · U of Nebraska Press
Ebook
272
Pages
family_home
Eligible
info
About this ebook
Many myths have grown up around President Harry S. Truman’s decision to use nuclear weapons against Imperial Japan. In destroying these myths, Truman and the Bomb will discomfort both Truman’s critics and his supporters, and force historians to reexamine what they think they know about the end of the Pacific War.
Myth: Truman didn’t know of the atomic bomb’s development before he became president.
Fact: Truman’s knowledge of the bomb is revealed in his own carefully worded letters to a Senate colleague and specifically discussed in the correspondence between the army officers assigned to his Senate investigating committee.
Myth: The huge casualty estimates cited by Truman and Secretary of War Henry Stimson were a postwar creation devised to hide their guilt for killing thousands of defenseless civilians.
Fact: The flagrantly misrepresented “low” numbers are based on narrow slices of highly qualified—and limited—U.S. Army projections printed in a variety of briefing documents and are not from the actual invasion planning against Japan.
Myth: Truman wanted to defeat Japan without any assistance from the Soviet Union and to freeze the USSR out of the postwar settlements.
Fact: President Franklin D. Roosevelt and President Truman desperately wanted Stalin’s involvement in the bloody endgame of World War II and worked diligently—and successfully—toward that end.
Using previously unpublished material, D. M. Giangreco busts these myths and more. An award-winning historian and expert on Truman, Giangreco is perfectly situated to debunk the many deep-rooted falsehoods about the roles played by American, Soviet, and Japanese leaders during the end of the World War II in the Pacific. Truman and the Bomb, a concise yet comprehensive study of Truman’s decision to use the atomic bomb, will prove to be a classic for studying presidential politics and influence on atomic warfare and its military and diplomatic components.
Making this book particularly valuable for professors and students as well as for military, diplomatic, and presidential historians and history buffs are extensive primary source materials, including the planned U.S. naval and air operations in support of the Soviet invasion of Manchuria. These documents support Giangreco’s arguments while enabling the reader to enter the mindsets of Truman and his administration as well as the war’s key Allied participants.
Myth: Truman didn’t know of the atomic bomb’s development before he became president.
Fact: Truman’s knowledge of the bomb is revealed in his own carefully worded letters to a Senate colleague and specifically discussed in the correspondence between the army officers assigned to his Senate investigating committee.
Myth: The huge casualty estimates cited by Truman and Secretary of War Henry Stimson were a postwar creation devised to hide their guilt for killing thousands of defenseless civilians.
Fact: The flagrantly misrepresented “low” numbers are based on narrow slices of highly qualified—and limited—U.S. Army projections printed in a variety of briefing documents and are not from the actual invasion planning against Japan.
Myth: Truman wanted to defeat Japan without any assistance from the Soviet Union and to freeze the USSR out of the postwar settlements.
Fact: President Franklin D. Roosevelt and President Truman desperately wanted Stalin’s involvement in the bloody endgame of World War II and worked diligently—and successfully—toward that end.
Using previously unpublished material, D. M. Giangreco busts these myths and more. An award-winning historian and expert on Truman, Giangreco is perfectly situated to debunk the many deep-rooted falsehoods about the roles played by American, Soviet, and Japanese leaders during the end of the World War II in the Pacific. Truman and the Bomb, a concise yet comprehensive study of Truman’s decision to use the atomic bomb, will prove to be a classic for studying presidential politics and influence on atomic warfare and its military and diplomatic components.
Making this book particularly valuable for professors and students as well as for military, diplomatic, and presidential historians and history buffs are extensive primary source materials, including the planned U.S. naval and air operations in support of the Soviet invasion of Manchuria. These documents support Giangreco’s arguments while enabling the reader to enter the mindsets of Truman and his administration as well as the war’s key Allied participants.
Many myths have grown up around President Harry S. Truman’s decision to use nuclear weapons against Imperial Japan. In destroying these myths, Truman and the Bomb will discomfort both Truman’s critics and his supporters, and force historians to reexamine what they think they know about the end of...
Discover more
About the author
D. M. Giangreco served as an editor of the Military Review for the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College for twenty years and served as the editor and publications director for the Foreign Military Studies Office in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He is the award-winning author or coauthor of fourteen books on military and sociopolitical subjects, including Hell to Pay: Operation Downfall and the Invasion of Japan, 1945–1947 and Eyewitness Pacific Theater: Firsthand Accounts of the War in the Pacific from Pearl Harbor to the Atomic Bombs.
D. M. Giangreco served as an editor of the Military Review for the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College for twenty years and served as the editor and publications director for the Foreign Military Studies Office in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He is the award-winning author or coauthor of fou...
Rate this ebook
Tell us what you think.
Reading information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.
