You know Elon probably saw this and was super mad he still can’t fire Halli.
I’ve already had one person in the notes claim dropping the bombs was the “only option” to end the war.
No.
Shaun has a wonderful breakdown of all the nuances surrounding the Japanese surrender.
If you do not have 2 hours to spare (or you can’t watch it at 2x speed), I will give you some bullet points.
Several American leaders of the time felt the bombs provided no assistance in ending the war.
Japan was already defeated. They wanted to surrender but were stubborn and wanted conditions.
Their only concern was their god-like emperor stay in power and not be executed.
That was their concern before the bombs. That was their concern after the bombs. Nothing changed in their minds.
They didn’t actually care that the bombs killed people. It took them several days to even have a meeting after the first bomb dropped.
The idea that dropping the bomb would save millions of casualties was invented *after* the bomb was dropped and was pulled out of someone’s ass to cover said ass.
There was never going to be an invasion.
People think we dropped the bombs and the Japanese leadership was like, “Oh shit! We give up!”
But in reality, we dropped the first bomb and they were like, “I’m busy tomorrow, can we have the bomb meeting on Thursday?”
We dropped the bombs to show the world we had the bombs.
Japan was a convenient and timely excuse to that end.
