Hiroshima The World's Bomb

by Rotter, Andrew J.

• ISBN13: 9780199569762
• ISBN10: 0199569762
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-10-25
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

The US decision to drop an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 remains one of the most controversial events of the twentieth century. However, the controversy over the rights and wrongs of dropping the bomb has tended to obscure a number of fundamental and soberingtruths about the development of this fearsome weapon. The principle of killing thousands of enemy civilians from the air was already well established by 1945 and had been practised on numerous occasions by both sides during the Second World War. Moreover, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima was conceived and built by an international community of scientists,not just by the Americans. Other nations (including Japan and Germany) were also developing atomic bombs in the first half of the 1940s, albeit hapharzardly. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine any combatant nation foregoing the use of the bomb during the war had it been able to obtain one. Theinternational team of scientists organized by the Americans just got there first. As this fascinating new history shows, the bomb dropped by a US pilot that hot August morning in 1945 was in many ways the world's offspring, in both a technological and a moral sense. And it was the world that would have to face its consequences, strategically, diplomatically, and culturally, inthe years ahead.

Author Biography

Andrew J. Rotter is Charles A. Dana Professor of History at Colgate University. He has written extensively on US-Asian relations during the twentieth century, including The Path to Vietnam.

Table of Contents

List of Plates	p. xi
Introduction: The World's Bomb	p. 1
The World's Atom	p. 7
Great Britain: Refugees, Air Power, and the Possibility of the Bomb	p. 31
Japan and Germany: Paths not Taken	p. 59
The United States I: Imagining and Building the Bomb	p. 88
The United States II: Using the Bomb	p. 127
Japan: The Atomic Bombs and War's End	p. 177
The Soviet Union: The Bomb and the Cold War	p. 228
The World's Bomb	p. 270
Epilogue: Nightmares and Hopes	p. 304
Notes	p. 310
Bibliographical Essay	p. 340
Credits	p. 356
Index	p. 357
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