If you’re looking for the real story behind the surrender of Japan, start by researching the Japanese Emperor’s role. According to General Macarthur, the Japanese refused to surrender as long as the safety of their emperor was not guaranteed, but were willing to sign a treaty if he could remain untouched. The Americans refused to do this, and then dropped a bomb on Hiroshima. The Japanese did not respond diplomatically. Then the Americans dropped a bomb on Nagasaki. The Japanese, again, did not respond. Then the Americans guaranteed the survival of the emperor. At this point, and only at this point, the Japanese agreed to surrender.

Why did America drop the bombs on Japan, then, if it could have secured exactly the same peace terms without them? Granted, American policy makers were not simply sadistic and revenge-seeking (though the same might not be said of all aspects of the population at the time). The answer to this question might be found by looking at the bombs’ Cold War context. Historians and politicians alike have speculated that President Truman needed to show the Soviets that he was willing to use nuclear weapons against civilians in order to enhance his credibility and keep Soviet aggression contained. As George Kennan’s Long Telegram would later suggest, the American administration believed that the godless communists in Moscow could only be negotiated with using force. The Bomb was evidence of this force. It was the root of the Truman Doctrine.

In this way, the atomic bombs seem much less like the final shots of the Second World War, and, instead, much more like the opening shots of the Cold War.

When Supreme Commander A.E.F. Eisenhower wrote “It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing”, he meant to say that the Japanese would have surrendered – especially since the Russians had just entered the war against Japan – without any further American lives lost. He was not, at this time, worried about considering the bomb’s global context.

Whether Truman’s decision was moral or immoral, the incontrovertible fact remains that atomic bombs did not save any American lives during the Second World War. Whether they saved American lives by averting a direct military confrontation with the Soviet Union, however, is anyone’s guess.