Why Harry Truman Dropped the Bomb on Hiroshima, and the Consequences for Humanity

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On August 6th 1945, the United States, led by Harry Truman, decided to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, forever changing warfare. This paper will be dedicated to why Harry Truman decided to use the atomic bomb on Japan and the effects that this decision had on humanity afterward.
The creation of the atomic bomb, and subsequently the Manhattan Project, was created in response to the belief that the German Government was in the process of creating atomic weapons. This belief was expressed to President Roosevelt in a letter written to him by Albert Einstein, who introduce Roosevelt to the ability of atomic weapons and shared with him that the German Government had stop selling the crucial ingredient of uranium from their recently conquered mines in Czechoslovakia. This caused Einstein to believe that the Nazis were in the process of creating their own atomic weapons and stated the “German Under-Secretary of State, Von Weishlicker, is attached to the Kaiser Wilheim Institute in Berlin where some of the American work on uranium is now being repeated.” This sparked the creation of the Manhattan project in 1941 and within 4 years and two billion dollars later, the atomic bomb was created. And although the atomic bomb was created with the notion of keeping up with the Nazi’s weaponry, by the time the atomic bomb was created and tested in the United States, Germany had already signed their unconditional surrender, officially ending the conflict in Europe, which means the United States turned its focus to potentially using the bomb on the Japanese.
So why did Harry Truman decide to use the atomic bomb? There are several reasons that factor into his decision to use the bomb. One factor was the type of war that was being fought in...

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...States possession of the weapon, and willingness to use it, a threat to the Soviet Union. This began the arms race and within four years, the Soviet Union owned atomic weapons.
Stalin also viewed Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bomb on the Japanese as a direct threat to the Soviet Union. Stalin was quoted telling Molotov, “They are killing Japanese to intimidate us.” This belief, and Truman’s aggressive approach, caused Stalin to tighten his grip on Eastern European and more openly oppose capitalism. This is exemplified in his speech on February 9th, 1946, were Stalin blames both world wars on capitalism and states that the Soviet’s social system was victorious in World War II. Because of these two factors, there is significant reason to believe that the decision by Truman to use atomic weapons to end World War II, influenced the beginning of the Cold War.

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