I didn't know about the Germany thing, that's very interesting. If you have any recommended reading on that I would be interested.
On invading Japan, that's the propaganda line that we did it to force a surrender. Problem is that doesn't jive with the details:
1. Firebombing was the worse thing the Japanese population faced in the war. It killed many more than the atomic bombs. There are documents where American strategic planners turned the bombing to population centers specifically to weaken their resolve to continue the war.
2. The Japanese had agreed to a surrender around the time the bombs were dropped. The only issue as far as terms was the Emperor. Japanese officials claimed that their troops would never surrender the emperor, so talks were under way to allow the emperor to remain but in a ceremonial status.
3. While the Japanese surrender was being negotiated, the relationship between the Allies was going south and many worried Russia would fight on against the Allies. Truman felt Stalin was an animal who only understood force.
So if you look back at the situation, there was no real strategic reason to drop the 2 atomic bombs on civilians (factories in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were long destroyed). So did Truman do the right thing or was he guilty of war crimes for testing a weapon on defenseless civilians? IMHO he was right and even knowing what I know now I would have dropped at least the first one. I say this because the hundreds of thousands of dead soldiers would have died fighting the Russians, not invading Japan. The Russians had to be convinced that they could not beat what was left in Europe to fight, the bombs did that.
