Hiroshima: The World’s Bomb (review)

Andrew Rotter examines a well-worn topic. Beginning with the administrative history commissioned by General Leslie Groves and written by Henry Smyth, Atomic Energy for Military Purposes (1945),many have sought to explain the creation of “the Gadget”—the code name given to the first nuclear explosive developed by the Manhattan Project—and the subsequent deployment of Little Boy and Fat Man. Ambitious researchers have attempted to paint in broad strokes the technical scale and grand political implications of the dawn of the atomic age, while others have focused on more narrowly defined topics. Rotter’s book straddles the line between the two approaches, presenting a new perspective and challenging insights.

Since Richard Hewlett and Oscar Anderson’s 1962 history of the Manhattan Project and the early U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, The New World 1939–1945, researchers have followed two lines of inquiry: into the Gadget as a scientific/technical achievement or into the political rationales for and implications of the decision to use the bomb. While there have been some attempts at bridging these two, such as Richard Rhodes’s The Making of the Atomic Bomb (1986), none has yet done so as seamlessly as Rotter does here.

According to Rotter, the bomb was never solely an American or even Anglo-American creation, and he weaves within the typical narrative of the Manhattan Project examinations of the German, the Russian, and even the embryonic Japanese atomic projects. He ties these usually separated scientific/engineering efforts back together and shows that the bomb was not just the work of the cosmopolitan collection of scientists assembled at Los Alamos.

More significantly, he contextualizes the factors that contributed to the decision to use Little Boy and Fat Man by exploring the involvement of scientists in the development of poison gas during World War I and the long-term ethical implications of this earlier decision. Long before Trinity challenged the morality of scientists, many had violated the spirit of the international republic of science by willingly working on poison-gas programs. While some later rationalized or condemned this behavior, the fact remains that scientists could easily become swept up in such an effort during wartime, and Rotter believes that this explains their willingness to work on the Manhattan Project and then to see the bomb actually deployed.

Rotter also addresses the escalation of strategic bombing in Europe during World War II. Initially, there was some effort to pursue a policy of “precision” bombing, but heavy casualties and marginal results forced the adoption of the British concept of strategic bombing as a means of destroying civilian morale. Once entire cities became acceptable targets, bombers carried not only high explosives but also incendiaries. In mid-1944, American B-29s began the air offensive against the Japanese home islands, and a series of successful raids convinced General Curtis LeMay to focus on incendiary bombings and the destruction of entire Japanese cities, not just industrial sectors. Thus, Rotter argues, by the summer of 1945 civilian populations had already become acceptable targets, and the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were part of the accelerating evolution of airpower.

Rotter blends together the internal debates that took place between President Truman and his advisors, the growing mistrust among the Allies, and the paralysis experienced in the Japanese imperial cabinet that led to the atomic bombings. While several historians have examined these events in greater detail than Rotter, his narrative conveys an aura of uncertainty and hesitation, rather than a sense of inevitability that others sometimes project. By looking at an earlier crisis of conscience among scientists during World War I, by examining the fraught evolution of aerial bombardment into a strategy aimed at destroying entire cities, and by considering the political debates that played out in the summer of 1945, Rotter provides a context that makes the atomic bombing of Japan seem far from inevitable. And by having bridged two primary lines of inquiry, he has not only created an accessible work for students but...