In Potsdam for a workshop recently, I took the opportunity to tour the site of the 1945 conference that marked the end of the last war and the beginning of the next (cold) one. Schloss Cecilienhof is a fake-Tudor mansion that the Emperor built during the Great War (yes, when the Germans were fighting the Tudors’ successors). Ex-Crown Princess Cecilie fled the palace in 1945, when the Red Army was threatening to batter down the doors. The Soviets then turned the sprawling complex into a field hospital.
The Allied leaders had wanted to hold the first post-European war conference in Berlin, but there were few places left standing after the onslaught of Allied bombing and Soviet invasion. Schloss Cecilienhof was the closest venue capable of housing the Allied leaders and staff in style, so the Soviet casualties were moved out, and Truman, Stalin, and Churchill moved in. (Halfway through the conference, the British electorate decided to replace Churchill with Clement Attlee, so you can find pictures of both flavors of the Big Three.)
According to the tour guide, 70 percent of the visitors to this site are Japanese, because, he said, this was where Truman made the decision to “launch nuclear attacks,” and they feel the need to make a pilgrimage. I was struck by the difference in phrasing – in my experience, Americans always talk about the decision to “drop the bomb.” Launching nuclear attacks sounds so much more aggressive, and even downright un-American.
I also wondered what sort of curriculum in Japan might persuade thousands of Japanese to traverse the globe to visit an old palace where Truman received a telegram saying, yes, this bomb really works. As Bart Bernstein has shown,* there was no “decision” to use the bombs, and Truman never even signed a direct order. Yet, the Japanese are there, snapping pictures, and taking the opportunity to buy snow globes of the Big Three (with Churchill, of course) in the gift shop.
As a Cold War nerd, I must admit that I now have a hankering to visit Yalta. And, of course, Bretton Woods.
*“Truman and the A-Bomb,” Journal of Military History, 62:3.
The Edge of the American West 
43 comments
May 2, 2010 at 7:49 am
kathy a.
It is not really that strange. Many Japanese also travel to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and Museum, near the site of the Atomic Bomb Dome. The park actually contains quite a few memorials; one is for the Korean victims of the bomb, who were in Hiroshima as forced workers for the war effort.
The museum documents the buildup to the bombing, focusing on Japanese military agression. Hiroshima not only had a large military presence, but a lot of war industries. The terrible aftermath of the bombing is documented in excruciating detail. There are also displays about nuclear disarmament and efforts toward world peace. The museum rather strongly advocates peace, and taking affirmative action to avoid military and particularly nuclear aggression.
May 2, 2010 at 9:22 am
Graham
There’s a great little museum tucked away in Karlshorst just outside Berlin. It’s the house where the ‘second’ German surrender was signed, and also where Zhukov’s office as Berlin administrator was located. The surrender room is PERFECTLY preserved as it was on May 8, 1945 – pretty awe-inspiring to stand there.
Picture of the surrender room: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=31083761&l=67af147f97&id=28601246
And here’s the Wikipedia page for the museum: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German-Russian_Museum_Berlin-Karlshorst
Definitely worth going to if you’re ever in Berlin; it’s only about a 30 minute S-Bahn ride.
May 2, 2010 at 10:37 am
ekogan
The surrender room is PERFECTLY preserved as it was on May 8, 1945
Or is it May 9th, 1945? Opinions vary
May 2, 2010 at 10:57 am
jim
I’m not sure the Japanese are totally wrong.
At some point between his learning of the existence of the Manhattan Project and the launching of the first nuclear air-raid (to compromise on terminology), Truman must have formed an intention not to intervene in the on-going process which would lead from the development of the device to its wartime use. It was always possible for him to intervene; Stimson, after all, intervened when he had Kyoto taken off the target list. The most likely point for that intention — the intention not to intervene — to have crystallized would have been when he received the telegram at Potsdam.
There is, of course, a difference between forming an intention not to intervene in an ongoing process and making a decision to take the action that will result from the ongoing process; there’s a whole set of philosophy problems about fat men and trolleys which can be trotted out. But there’s less difference than we might want.
May 2, 2010 at 1:38 pm
Graham
Touché, ekogan. The ashtrays were empty, after all.
May 2, 2010 at 1:43 pm
Jonathan Dresner
There aren’t all that many sites in Europe that directly relate to Japanese history, particularly epochal events: If they’re going to be in Germany anyway, they may as well visit. This surprises me much less than some of the literary sites that are substantial Japanese tourist destinations.
May 2, 2010 at 2:21 pm
kathy a.
Interesting point, Jonathan.
Forgot to mention, arranged tours are popular ways for Japanese folks to travel, particularly those of middle age forth; this is true even in Japan, but language barriers also argue in favor of tours if one wants to visit historic sites overseas. So, the destinations are not necessarily chosen by individuals, but by the tour agencies.
May 2, 2010 at 4:29 pm
PorJ
The A-Bomb. Again. Why does everything, always, in 20th c. US History, come down to the A-Bomb?
May 2, 2010 at 4:34 pm
Jonathan Dresner
It’s the culmination of millenia of weapons development, a triumph of science, and the US is the only nation ever to have invented it whole cloth. We used it, then spent half a century alternately praising and cowering from them. What else is there to talk about in US history, public transportation?
May 2, 2010 at 6:57 pm
Matt
The black sea is very nice. (I’ve never been to the Crimea, but the parts I’ve been to, in Russia, were great.) If you get a chance to go to Yalta, go.
May 3, 2010 at 2:47 am
Walt
Because the A-Bomb was awesome. That’s why it has an “A” in the name.
May 3, 2010 at 10:35 am
dave
And, like with everything else, the Brits did the clever stuff, somebody else just came in to help with the heavy lifting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tube_Alloys
;-))
May 3, 2010 at 12:02 pm
student
As noted, Bart Bernstein persuasively argues that there was no “decision” to drop the bomb and Truman was predisposed not to intervene. Nevertheless, when the target list was brought to Truman at Potsdam on 24 July, he approved a list of 4 potential targets, including Nagasaki and Hiroshima. So the Japanese are far from mistaken to draw the conclusions they have. Sean Malloy’s recent book, Atomic Tragedy, is first rate on what happened at Potsdam.
May 4, 2010 at 3:52 am
ajay
the US is the only nation ever to have invented it whole cloth.
HISTORY FAIL
May 4, 2010 at 6:06 am
Luke
How about visiting Tehran? Isn’t that where the Cold War really started?
May 4, 2010 at 6:25 am
Jonathan Dresner
the US is the only nation ever to have invented it whole cloth.
HISTORY FAIL
Not as far as I know. British and French and USSR borrowed from US; China from USSR; Israel from US and French; NK and Pakistan and India from China (with assists from elsewhere), etc.
May 4, 2010 at 7:22 am
Walt
Wait, where do you think Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn were from? Britain? France? No, Meitner was from Toledo, and Hahn from a small farm town in North Dakota.
May 4, 2010 at 9:46 am
Jonathan Dresner
I didn’t say “Americans were the only people to develop the nuclear physics”: I said that the United States was the only nation to create atomic weapons without borrowing, buying or stealing atomic weapons technology from another atomic weapon-capable state.
May 4, 2010 at 9:54 am
dave
Tube Alloys! Tube Alloys!! Tube Alloys!!!
Jeez, read the f’in link…
May 4, 2010 at 10:43 am
Jonathan Dresner
I read it. Did you? As Wikipedia says, the Tube Alloy project was “subsumed” into the Manhattan project. If the US hadn’t entered the war, or been interested in atomic weapons, the British might have succeeded, but as the actual history stands, they US got there first and then shared technology with the British who, were it not for US involvement in the war, might well have developed atomic weapons in time to use them as a form of death-before-dishonor national suicide.
May 4, 2010 at 6:59 pm
fromlaurelstreet
The language framing is what I find most interesting (“launch nuclear attacks” vs. “dropping the bomb”). The former is more accurately descriptive while the latter is a sanitized euphemism.
I suppose, given human nature, the development of nuclear weapons really was inevitable, but I hardly think we’re heroes for having been the first to create them. And the casualness with which they were dropped, or launched, is really appalling.
The longer I live, the less I like people.
May 4, 2010 at 7:23 pm
kathy a.
the hiroshima peace memorial museum is very, very sobering. i’ve had occasion to see a lot of awful stuff that humans do to humans in my day job, but — not like this. not on this scale by far; not in these specifics. and this was a bitty little starter nuclear bomb, nothing compared to more modern developments.
May 4, 2010 at 9:31 pm
TF Smith
Is “dropping the bomb” really a euphemism?
Various airpower enthusiasts had used “aerial bombardment” to describe well, bombardment from the air (as opposed to bombardment by artillery), since the earliest days of aviation….should Mitchell, Douhet, etc have been saying “launching high explosive attacks”?
I can’t figure out who is posting what, but I have to ask about this statement:
“I suppose, given human nature, the development of nuclear weapons really was inevitable, but I hardly think we’re heroes for having been the first to create them. And the casualness with which they were dropped, or launched, is really appalling.”
If the United States, from FDR on down, had not made the right decision in 1941 and gone on to put all sorts of blood and treasure into the Manhattan Project – so much, in fact, that two entirely different weapons were designed and built, using two entirely different fissionables (and, at the same time, developing two entirely different aircraft capable of carrying either weapon operationally) – and that one of the other combattants had come up with nuclear (or even radiological) weapons first, wouldn’t the average rational person alive in the 1940s be hoping or praying for some pretty damn heroic measures on the part of the West to catch up?
I mean, if Garner had won in 1940 or something and said “listen, Compton and Bush are a bunch of pointy-headed college types; all we need is good old-fashined TNT” and sometime in the late 1940s the German equivalent of TRINITY had taken place, what would the impact have been? Any one really think Hitler or Himmler or whoever would not have used such a weapon in a situation where the Allies (including the Soviets) could not respond (as they could have, historically, in case of German use of chemical or biological weapons)…
Nuclear weapons are horrific; I understand that, having had some slight responsibilities along those lines, once upon a time – but so is war, generally. The whole point of the effort is killing people; tough to make that something less than appalling.
But yet, there is this concept called “Just War”…
Given the choices of United States under FDR’s leadership being the first to develop such weapons, as opposed to Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s USSR, I think it is a fair statement that the world came off better with the first, rather than either of the later two, options…
As far as the decision to use nuclear weapons against Japanese cities, what other realistic option was there in 1945? Abstention? Demonstration? Waiting for rational leadership in Japan? Golden Gate in ’48?
Rational leaders in Japan never would have gone to war in the first place, and certainly even the most obtuse decision-maker in Japan knew their war was irrevocably lost by the end of 1942, if not before…so how long does the war go on, waiting for rational Japanese decision-making?
How many Allied service personnel get killed or maimed along the way? How many Chinese, Korean, Filipino, Thai, Indochinese, Malayan, and Indonesian civilians starve? How many Japanese civilians?
May 5, 2010 at 2:57 am
ajay
I said that the United States was the only nation to create atomic weapons without borrowing, buying or stealing atomic weapons technology from another atomic weapon-capable state.
Little-known fact: the shockwave from the Trinity test in New Mexico was powerful enough to shift goalposts at distances of up to 200 miles.
May 5, 2010 at 2:59 am
ajay
fromlaurelstreet: when talking about actually dropping an actual bomb, the phrase “dropping the bomb” is not a euphemism, sanitised or otherwise.
May 5, 2010 at 7:18 am
dave
Ahem; “the US is the only nation ever to have invented it whole cloth” is what JD said, isn’t it, JD, since it’s right there a bit higher up? A process which apparently includes hoovering up a major ally’s research programme, and then pretending it never happened. Nice to know.
It was a minor point of historical information, if you choose to make it into an episode of douchebaggery, that’s your business.
May 5, 2010 at 7:39 am
kathy a.
i understand why the decision to drop nuclear bombs was made, and also believe that far more casualties were likely had the war continued. i can’t speak to the continued strength of japanese forces, but the japanese military had wreaked considerable and widespread havoc by then, and showed no signs of stopping.
my knowledge about the japanese military aggression is limited, but the efforts went far beyond the invasions and battles one might find in a war timeline. koreans were conscripted as forced workers, and women as sex slaves. a poor growing season in vietnam turned into a large-scale famine in 1945, because the japanese took much of the crops; one family i know lost 10 children to disease during that famine. ordinary japanese, too, suffered greatly as all the nation’s resources went to the war effort.
i don’t know that there were realistic options for ending it as swiftly as possible; none really come to mind. that sits uncomfortably with my horror at the result.
May 5, 2010 at 8:45 am
Jonathan Dresner
Apparently the line between clarification and “douchebaggery” has been eliminated. I stand corrected, flayed and humbled.
I should know better than to attempt humor here. There’s no audience for it.
May 6, 2010 at 5:08 am
ajay
I should know better than to attempt humor here. There’s no audience for it.
Bingo!
May 6, 2010 at 5:50 am
Walt
What kind of monster would attempt humor on a thread about nuclear weapons? Some topics are too serious for levity.
May 6, 2010 at 1:45 pm
student
The assertion that “the United States was the only nation to create atomic weapons without borrowing, buying or stealing atomic weapons technology from another atomic weapon-capable state” shows a blinkered understanding of the Manhattan project. It involved refugees from Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, and Italy (I’m sure I missed some countries) as well as the cooperation of Australian, British, and Canadian scientists. Truly an international project. The U.S. could not have produced an atomic bomb without “foreign aid.”
May 6, 2010 at 5:52 pm
Jonathan Dresner
student, you’re right. I thought I covered that with “corrected, flayed and humbled.”
Ajay, you’re right. When I comment here as a pedant, it makes very little impact. Any attempt to comment in any other mode seems to result in being treated like a troll.
Walt, you’re wrong. There’s a long tradition of satirical and humorous discussions of atomic weapons, especially about our attitudes towards atomic weapons, which are often more enlightening than ponderously solemn and sincere ones.
May 6, 2010 at 8:51 pm
cargo
Truman (acting under advice from people like Averell Harriman and Secretary Byrnes) also bombed Japan to “send a message” to the Soviets – or, as Byrnes put it to his aide:
“After the atomic bomb Japan will surrender and Russia will not get in so much on the kill…”
By 1945 it was clear that the German effort had faltered due to a lack of supplies during wartime, and thus there was no threat of an atomic attack on U.S. soil – which had been the justification for the Manhattan project.
Within a few years, Truman was proclaiming the need for the U.S. to prepare to wage large-scale nuclear and biological attacks against Soviet cities, industry and agriculture – in order to forestall Soviet aggression, the claim went. The military-industrial nuclear weapons complex was already rising up from the leftover complexes of the Manhattan Project – Truman was the midwife.
The original rationale for the Manhattan Project – the Nazi threat – had by then been completely forgotten.., but what if Oppenheimer had resigned from the bomb project as soon as they found that out? That might have slowed the bomb by a year or so – and by then, the blockade of Japan would have led to a complete surrender, with no atomic bombs needed.
May 6, 2010 at 10:11 pm
Walt
There’s a long tradition of satirical and humorous discussions of atomic weapons by moral monsters. I bet Joe Lieberman is cracking a joke about the A-bomb right now.
May 7, 2010 at 2:59 am
ajay
I’m still not entirely sure what Dresner’s “joke” was. Saying “the United States was the only nation to create atomic weapons whole-cloth” isn’t particularly funny. It’s wrong, but not comically so.
By 1945 it was clear that the German effort had faltered due to a lack of supplies during wartime, and thus there was no threat of an atomic attack on U.S. soil – which had been the justification for the Manhattan project.
There’s an interesting book by Samuel Goudschmit about this, called “ALSOS”. He was the scientific head of the Alsos mission. I remember the scene in which, in (IIRC) about February 1945, they track down the last bits of the German bomb programme and conclude that it was nowhere near success.
And he tells his military counterpart “Isn’t this wonderful? Now we know this, we won’t have to use our bomb.”
The reply: “Of course, Sam, you realise that if we have this bomb, we’ll have to use it.”
If Oppenheimer had resigned at this point, I rather doubt it would have done very much to slow bomb development.
May 7, 2010 at 4:20 am
Jonathan Dresner
Ajay, it was setup…. never mind. I’m done.
May 7, 2010 at 5:11 am
silbey
That might have slowed the bomb by a year or so – and by then, the blockade of Japan would have led to a complete surrender, with no atomic bombs needed.
And during that “year or so” of blockade, more people would have died from fighting, starvation, and other causes than both atomic bombs killed. Or, because you’re assuming that the U.S. would have gone to a strategy of blockade as opposed to invasion (which is what they were planning, a lot more people would have died (on both sides) in the initial assault on the home islands.
May 7, 2010 at 6:30 am
PorJ
And during that “year or so” of blockade, more people would have died from fighting, starvation, and other causes than both atomic bombs killed.
Careful, Silbey. You’re treading dangerously close to this territory. Let’s not open that can of worms, O.K.?
May 7, 2010 at 6:31 am
PorJ
(previous comment is facetious. I love that can of worms, and so do a lot of followers of this blog, apparently).
May 7, 2010 at 7:37 am
ajay
a lot more people would have died (on both sides) in the initial assault on the home islands
Not just there, but elsewhere too. The British invasion of Malaya would presumably have gone ahead as planned. The Soviets would have continued their campaign against the Japanese in Manchuria.
May 7, 2010 at 7:52 am
silbey
@PorJ: Eek! Fussell!
@ajay: Indeed.
May 9, 2010 at 10:30 am
TF Smith
Silbey’s point here is correct:
“…and during that “year or so” of blockade, more people would have died from fighting, starvation, and other causes than both atomic bombs killed. Or, because you’re assuming that the U.S. would have gone to a strategy of blockade as opposed to invasion (which is what they were planning, a lot more people would have died (on both sides) in the initial assault on the home islands.”
An end to the war in 1945 depended upon a Japanese surrender; a Japanese surrender depended on rational decision-making by the Japanese; such decision-making was not displayed at any point until after the use of atomic weapons.
At the time the surrender order finally went out from Tokyo, the Japanese armed forces were still actively fighting the Soviets in Manchuria and the Kuriles, the Chinese (and Americans) in and over China, the Americans and Filipinos in the Western Pacific, British, Indians, and Africans in South East Asia, Australians in Indonesia, and the Americans (and Allied units) at sea across the Pacific and in the air over the Home Islands.
At the same time, the US had already moved significant elements of the Atlantic fleet(s) and no less than 13 Army divisions (13th and 20th Armored and 2nd, 4th, 5th, 8th, 10th Mountain, 44th, 86th, 87th, 95th, 97th, 104th infantry) and most of the (re-quipping with B-29s) 8th Air Force from the ETO to the US prior to redeployment to the Pacific, to join the 21 Army and six Marine divisions (and six numbered air forces, plus land-based marine and naval air, and the Navy and Merchant Marine) already in the theater; in addition, the 12th Division (PS) was being re-raised in the Phillippines.
In addition, three Commonwealth divisions (one each from Australia, Britain, and Canada) were being moved, organized, or trained for service alongside the US for service in the Home Islands, and additional Commonwealth (including Indian, New Zealand, and African troops, and naval and air units), and French and Dutch units were being moved, organized, or trained for service against the Japanese in Malaya, Indonesia, and Indochina.
The Japanese could have ended the war at any time between 1941 and 1945; they chose not to until after use of atomic weapons, even after the destruction of their navy and merhcant marine, much of their air forces, and significant destruction and/or isolation of their army via conventional means; given the level of resistance displayed by Japanese troops and civilians in Micronesia, the Bonins, and the Ryukyus, even after they were completely isolated, I see no reason to expect anything less than such resistance in the Home Islands, had the Allies mounted an invasion.
The death toll, among Allied forces, and Japanese civilians and their military, would have been undeniably higher than number of the human lives lost in Hiroshima and Nagasaki due to the bombings. Casualties among Allied and Japanese military personnel, and Allied civilians, across Asia and the Pacific, would have been higher still, whether due to blockade or outright invasion(s).
Fussell was right.
May 10, 2010 at 5:07 am
Walt
I have to say that on a thread where I wrote “…the A-Bomb was awesome. That’s why it has an “A” in the name” that someone later patiently explained to me that it’s okay to make jokes about nuclear weapons makes the internet all worthwhile.