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United States History and Geography SS0906World War II Lesson 8

Holocaust Topics

Topic #1: Wannasee Conference

Summary:

On January, 20, 1942, Reinhard Heydrich, Himmler's second in command of the SS, convened the Wannsee Conference in Berlin. Fifteen top Nazi bureaucrats attended with the purpose of coordinating the “Final Solution.” The “Final Solution” was the Nazis’ attempt to exterminate the entire Jewish population of Europe, an estimated 11 million persons.

According to Heydrich, "Europe would be combed of Jews from east to west."

The minutes of that meeting have been preserved but were edited by Heydrich. He substituted the coded language Nazis used when referring to lethal actions to be taken against Jews.

When referring to mass deportations of Jews to ghettos in occupied Poland and then on to the death camps that would be opened at Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblink, Heydrich wrote: "Instead of emigration, there is now a further possible solution to which the Führer has already signified his consent - namely deportation to the east." Heydrich referred to death by a combination of hard labor and starvation as "...eliminated by natural causes."

"...treated accordingly," refers to execution by SS firing squads or death by gassing - also seen in other Nazi correspondence in a variety of connotations such as "special treatment" and "special actions" regarding the Jews.

Minutes of the Conference

. . . At the beginning of the discussion Chief of the Security Police and of the . . . SS (Special Services Forces) Heydrich reported the Reich Marshal had appointed him delegate for the preparations for the final solution of the Jewish question in Europe and pointed out that this discussion had been called for the purpose of clarifying fundamental questions.

The Chief of the Security Police and the SD (Heydrich) then gave a short report of the struggle which has been carried on thus far against this enemy, the essential points being the following:

a) the expulsion of the Jews from every sphere of life of the German people,

b) the expulsion of the Jews from the living space of the German people.

In carrying out these efforts, an increased and planned acceleration of the emigration of the Jews from Reich territory was started, as the only possible present solution.

. . .[Other] important tasks were:


a) to make all necessary arrangements for the preparation for an increased emigration of the Jews,

b) to direct the flow of emigration,

c) to speed the procedure of emigration in each individual case.

The aim of all this was to cleanse German living space of Jews in a legal manner.

. . . Another possible solution of the problem has now taken the place of emigration, i.e. the evacuation of the Jews to the East, provided that the Führer gives the appropriate approval in advance.

These actions are, however, only to be considered provisional, but practical experience is already being collected which is of the greatest importance in relation to the future final solution of the Jewish question.

Approximately 11 million Jews will be involved in the final solution of the European Jewish question. . . .

The number of Jews given here for foreign countries includes, however, only those Jews who still adhere to the Jewish faith, since some countries still do not have a definition of the term "Jew" according to racial principles.

The handling of the problem in the individual countries will meet with difficulties due to the attitude and outlook of the people there, especially in Hungary and Rumania. Thus, for example, even today the Jew can buy documents in Rumania that will officially prove his foreign citizenship.

The influence of the Jews in all walks of life in the USSR is well known. Approximately five million Jews live in the European part of the USSR, in the Asian part scarcely 1/4 million.

Under proper guidance, in the course of the final solution the Jews are to be allocated for appropriate labor in the East. Able-bodied Jews, separated according to sex, will be taken in large work columns to these areas for work on roads, in the course of which action doubtless a large portion will be eliminated by natural causes.

. . . In the course of the practical execution of the final solution, Europe will be combed through from west to east. Germany proper, including the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, will have to be handled first due to the housing problem and additional social and political necessities.

The evacuated Jews will first be sent, group by group, to so-called transit ghettos, from which they will be transported to the East. . . .

It is not intended to evacuate Jews over 65 years old, but to send them to an old-age ghetto - Theresienstadt is being considered for this purpose.


. . . . In occupied and unoccupied France, the registration of Jews for evacuation will in all probability proceed without great difficulty.

Under Secretary of State Luther calls attention in this matter to the fact that in some countries, such as the Scandinavian states, difficulties will arise if this problem is dealt with thoroughly and that it will therefore be advisable to defer actions in these countries. Besides, in view of the small numbers of Jews affected, this deferral will not cause any substantial limitation.

The Foreign Office sees no great difficulties for southeast and western Europe.

. . . In the course of the final solution plans, the Nuremberg Laws should provide a certain foundation, in which a prerequisite for the absolute solution of the problem is also the solution to the problem of mixed marriages and persons of mixed blood.

1) Treatment of Persons of Mixed Blood of the First Degree

Persons of mixed blood of the first degree will, as regards the final solution of the Jewish question, be treated as Jews.

From this treatment the following exceptions will be made:

a) Persons of mixed blood of the first degree married to persons of German blood if their marriage has resulted in children (persons of mixed blood of the second degree). These persons of mixed blood of the second degree are to be treated essentially as Germans.

b) Persons of mixed blood of the first degree, for whom the highest offices of the Party and State have already issued exemption permits in any sphere of life. Each individual case must be examined, and it is not ruled out that the decision may be made to the detriment of the person of mixed blood.

The prerequisite for any exemption must always be the personal merit of the person of mixed blood. (Not the merit of the parent or spouse of German blood.)

Persons of mixed blood of the first degree who are exempted from evacuation will be sterilized in order to prevent any offspring and to eliminate the problem of persons of mixed blood once and for all. Such sterilization will be voluntary. But it is required to remain in the Reich. The sterilized "person of mixed blood" is thereafter free of all restrictions to which he was previously subjected.

2) Treatment of Persons of Mixed Blood of the Second Degree

Persons of mixed blood of the second degree will be treated fundamentally as persons of German blood, with the exception of the following cases, in which the persons of mixed blood of the second degree will be considered as Jews:


a) The person of mixed blood of the second degree was born of a marriage in which both parents are persons of mixed blood.

b) The person of mixed blood of the second degree has a racially especially undesirable appearance that marks him outwardly as a Jew.

c) The person of mixed blood of the second degree has a particularly bad police and political record that shows that he feels and behaves like a Jew.

Also in these cases exemptions should not be made if the person of mixed blood of the second degree has married a person of German blood.

3) Marriages between Full Jews and Persons of German Blood.

Here it must be decided from case to case whether the Jewish partner will be evacuated or whether, with regard to the effects of such a step on the German relatives, [this mixed marriage] should be sent to an old-age ghetto.

. . . sterilization will have to be widely used, since the person of mixed blood who is given the choice whether he will be evacuated or sterilized would rather undergo sterilization.

. . . With regard to the issue of the effect of the evacuation of Jews on the economy, State Secretary Neumann stated that Jews who are working in industries vital to the war effort, provided that no replacements are available, cannot be evacuated.

. . . State Secretary Dr. Bühler stated further that the solution to the Jewish question in the General Government is the responsibility of the Chief of the Security Police and the SD [Heydrich] and that his efforts would be supported by the officials of the General Government. He had only one request, to solve the Jewish question in this area as quickly as possible.

In conclusion the different types of possible solutions were discussed, during which discussion both Gauleiter Dr. Meyer and State Secretary Dr. Bühler took the position that certain preparatory activities for the final solution should be carried out immediately in the territories in question, in which process alarming the populace must be avoided.

The meeting was closed with the request of the Chief of the Security Police and the SD to the participants that they afford him appropriate support during the carrying out of the tasks involved in the solution.

Source: Wannasee Conference. The History Place. Holocaust Timeline. 19 Feb. 2010 <http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/h-wannsee.htm>.

Holocaust Topics

http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/h-wannsee.htm


Topic #2: United States Response to the Holocaust

During World War II, rescue of Jews and other victims of the Nazis was not a priority for the United States government. Nor was it always clear to Allied policy makers how they could pursue large-scale rescue actions behind German lines. Due in part to anti-semitism (prejudice against or hatred of Jews), isolationism, the economic Depression, and xenophobia (prejudice against or fear of foreigners), the refugee policy of the U.S. State Department (led by Secretary of State Cordell Hull) made it difficult for refugees to obtain entry visas to the United States.

The U.S. State Department also delayed publicizing reports of genocide. In August 1942, the State Department received a cable revealing Nazi plans for the murder of Europe's Jews. However, the report, sent by Gerhart Riegner (the World Jewish Congress [WJC] representative in Geneva) was not passed on to its intended recipient, American Jewish leader and WJC president Stephen Wise. The State Department asked Wise, who had almost simultaneously received the report via British channels, to refrain from announcing it.

The United States failed to act decisively to rescue victims of the Holocaust. On April 19, 1943, U.S. and British representatives met in Bermuda to find solutions to wartime refugee problems. No significant proposals emerged from the conference. In 1943, Polish underground courier Jan Karski informed President Franklin D. Roosevelt of reports of mass murder received from Jewish leaders in the Warsaw ghetto. U.S. authorities did not, however, initiate any action aimed at rescuing refugees until 1944, when Roosevelt established the War Refugee Board (WRB). That year the WRB set up the Fort Ontario Refugee Center in Oswego, NY, to facilitate rescue of imperiled refugees. By the time the War Refugee Board was established, however, four fifths of the Jews who would die in the Holocaust were already dead.

By the spring of 1944, the Allies knew of the killing operations using poison gas at the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. Some Jewish leaders pleaded unsuccessfully with U.S. government officials to bomb the gas chambers and rail tracks leading to the camp. Even after the Anglo-American air forces developed the capacity to hit targets in Silesia (where Auschwitz was located) in 1944, U.S. authorities decided not to bomb the gas chambers or the rail lines. U.S. officials argued that U.S. aircraft did not have the capacity to conduct air raids on these targets with sufficient accuracy, and that the Allies were committed to bomb exclusively military targets to win the war as quickly as possible.

Source: United States and the Holocaust. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 19 Feb. 2010 <http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005182>.

Holocaust Topics

Topic #3: Liberation of the Camps

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005182


As Allied troops moved across Europe in a series of offensives against Nazi Germany, they began to encounter tens of thousands of concentration camp prisoners. Many of these prisoners had survived forced marches into the interior of Germany from camps in occupied Poland. These prisoners were suffering from starvation and disease.

Soviet forces were the first to approach a major Nazi camp, reaching Majdanek near Lublin, Poland, in July 1944. Surprised by the rapid Soviet advance, the Germans attempted to hide the evidence of mass murder by demolishing the camp. Camp staff set fire to the large crematorium used to burn bodies of murdered prisoners, but in the hasty evacuation the gas chambers were left standing. In the summer of 1944, the Soviets also overran the sites of the Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka killing centers. The Germans had dismantled these camps in 1943, after most of the Jews of Poland had already been killed.

The Soviets liberated Auschwitz, the largest extermination and concentration camp, in January 1945. The Nazis had forced the majority of Auschwitz prisoners to march westward (in what would become known as "death marches"), and Soviet soldiers found only several thousand emaciated prisoners alive when they entered the camp. There was abundant evidence of mass murder in Auschwitz. The retreating Germans had destroyed most of the warehouses in the camp, but in the remaining ones the Soviets found personal belongings of the victims. They discovered, for example, hundreds of thousands of men's suits, more than 800,000 women's outfits, and more than 14,000 pounds of human hair.

In the following months, the Soviets liberated additional camps in the Baltic states and in Poland. Shortly before Germany's surrender, Soviet forces liberated the Stutthof, Sachsenhausen, and Ravensbrueck concentration camps.

U.S. forces liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar, Germany, on April 11, 1945, a few days after the Nazis began evacuating the camp. On the day of liberation, an underground prisoner resistance organization seized control of Buchenwald to prevent atrocities by the retreating camp guards.

American forces liberated more than 20,000 prisoners at Buchenwald. They also liberated Dora-Mittelbau, Flossenburg, Dachau, and Mauthausen. British forces liberated concentration camps in northern Germany, including Neuengamme and Bergen-Belsen. They entered the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, near Celle, in mid-April 1945. Some 60,000 prisoners, most in critical condition because of a typhus epidemic, were found alive. More than 10,000 of them died from the effects of malnutrition or disease within a few weeks of liberation.

Liberators confronted unspeakable conditions in the Nazi camps, where piles of corpses lay unburied. Only after the liberation of these camps was the full scope of Nazi horrors exposed to the world. The small percentage of inmates who survived resembled skeletons because of the demands of forced labor and the lack of food, compounded by months and years of maltreatment. Many were so weak that they could hardly move. Disease remained an ever-present danger, and many of


the camps had to be burned down to prevent the spread of epidemics. Survivors of the camps faced a long and difficult road to recovery.

Source: Liberation of Nazi Camps. United States Holocaust Museum. 19 Feb. 2010 <http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005131 >.



Holocaust Topics

Topic #4: Nuremberg Trials

Beginning in the winter of 1942, the governments of the Allied powers announced their determination to punish Nazi war criminals. On December 17, 1942, the leaders of the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union issued the first joint declaration officially noting the mass murder of European Jewry and resolving to prosecute those responsible for violence against civilian populations. Though some political leaders advocated summary executions instead of trials, eventually the Allies decided to hold an International Military Tribunal.

The October 1943 Moscow Declaration, signed by U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt, British prime minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet leader Josef Stalin, stated that at the time of an armistice persons deemed responsible for war crimes would be sent back to those countries in which the crimes had been committed and adjudged according to the laws of the nation concerned. Major war criminals, whose crimes could be assigned no particular geographic location, would be punished by joint decisions of the Allied governments.

The trials of leading German officials before the International Military Tribunal (IMT), the best known of the postwar war crimes trials, formally opened in Nuremberg, Germany, on November 20, 1945, only six and a half months after Germany surrendered. Each of the four Allied nations -- the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and France -- supplied a judge and a prosecution team. Lord Justice Geoffrey Lawrence of Great Britain served as the court's presiding judge. The trial's rules were the result of delicate reconciliations of the Continental and Anglo-American judicial systems. A team of translators provided simultaneous translations of all proceedings in four languages: English, French, German, and Russian.

After much debate, 24 defendants were selected to represent a cross-section of Nazi diplomatic, economic, political, and military leadership. Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, and Joseph Goebbels never stood trial, having committed suicide before the end of the war. The IMT decided not to try them posthumously so as not to create the impression that they might still be alive. In fact, only 21 defendants appeared in court.

The IMT indicted the defendants on charges of crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The IMT defined crimes against humanity as "murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation...or persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds." A fourth charge of conspiracy was added both to cover crimes committed under domestic Nazi law before the start of World War II and so that subsequent tribunals would have jurisdiction to prosecute any individual belonging to a proven criminal organization. Therefore the IMT also indicted several Nazi organizations deemed to be criminal, namely: the Reich Cabinet, the Leadership Corps of the Nazi Party, the Elite Guard (SS), the Security Service (SD), the Secret State Police (Gestapo), the Stormtroopers (SA), and the General Staff and High Command of the German Armed Forces.

The defendants were entitled to a legal counsel of their choosing. Over 400 visitors attended the proceedings each day, as well as 325 correspondents representing 23 different countries. American chief prosecutor Robert Jackson decided to argue his case primarily on the basis of mounds of documents written by the Nazis themselves rather than eyewitness testimony so that the trial could not be accused of relying on biased or tainted testimony. Testimony presented at Nuremberg


revealed much of what we know about the Holocaust including the details of the Auschwitz death machinery, the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto, and the estimate of six million Jewish victims.

The judges delivered their verdict on October 1, 1946. Three of four judges were needed for conviction. Twelve defendants were sentenced to death, among them Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hans Frank, Alfred Rosenberg, and Julius Streicher. They were hanged, cremated in Dachau, and their ashes dropped in the Isar River. . . .The IMT sentenced three defendants to life imprisonment and four to prison terms ranging from 10 to 20 years. It acquitted three of the defendants.

The IMT trial at Nuremberg was just one of the earliest and most famous of several subsequent war crimes trials. The overwhelming majority of post-1945 war crimes trials involved lower-level officials and officers. They included concentration camp guards and commandants, police officers, members of the Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units), and doctors who participated in medical experiments. These war criminals were tried by military courts in the British, American, French, and Soviet zones of occupied Germany and Austria, and in Italy in the immediate postwar years.

On October 17, 1946, only one day after the IMT defendants were executed, President Truman appointed a new American chief war crimes prosecutor, who went on to prosecute 185 high-ranking German officials in 12 separate trials. These American military tribunals are often referred to as the Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings. Gestapo and SS members, as well as German industrialists, were tried for their roles in implementing the Nuremberg Laws, "Aryanization," mass shootings of Jews in concentration camps, shootings by Einsatzgruppen, and deportations.

Other war criminals were tried by the courts of those countries where they had committed their crimes. In 1947, a court in Poland sentenced Auschwitz camp commandant Rudolf Hoess to death. In the courts of West Germany, many former Nazis did not receive severe sentences, with the claim of following orders from superiors often ruled a mitigating circumstance. A number of Nazi criminals therefore returned to normal lives in German society, especially in the business world.

The efforts of Nazi hunters led to the capture, extradition, and trial of a number of Nazis who had escaped from Germany after the war. The trial of Adolf Eichmann, held in Jerusalem in 1961, captured worldwide attention. Many war criminals, however, were never brought to trial or punished.

Source: International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. United States Holocaust Museum. 19 Feb. 2010 <http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10007069>.



Holocaust Topics

Topic #5: German Refugees 1933-1939

Several factors determined the ebb and flow of emigration of Jews from Germany. These included

the degree of pressure placed on the Jewish community in Germany and the willingness of other

countries to admit Jewish immigrants. However, in the face of increasing legal repression and

physical violence, many Jews fled Germany. Until October 1941, German policy officially

encouraged Jewish emigration. Gradually, however, the Nazis sought to deprive Jews fleeing

Germany of their property by levying an increasingly heavy emigration tax and by restricting the

amount of money that could be transferred abroad from German banks.

In January 1933 there were some 523,000 Jews in Germany, representing less than 1 percent of the

country's total population. The Jewish population was predominantly urban and approximately one-

third of German Jews lived in Berlin. The initial response to the Nazi takeover was a substantial

wave of emigration (37,000-38,000), much of it to neighboring European countries (France,

Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Czechoslovakia, and Switzerland). Most of these refugees

were later caught by the Nazis after their conquest of western Europe in May 1940. Jews who were

politically active were especially likely to emigrate. Other measures that spurred decisions to

emigrate in the early years of Nazi rule were the dismissal of Jews from the civil service and the

Nazi-sponsored boycott of Jewish-owned stores.

During the next two years there was a decline in the number of emigrants. This trend may partly

have been due to the stabilization of the domestic political situation, but was also caused by the

strict enforcement of American immigration restrictions as well as the increasing reluctance of

European and British Commonwealth countries to accept additional Jewish refugees.

Despite the passage of the Nuremberg Laws in September 1935 and subsequent related ordinances

that deprived German Jews of civil rights, Jewish emigration remained more or less constant.

The events of 1938 caused a dramatic increase in Jewish emigration. The German annexation of

Austria in March, the increase in personal assaults on Jews during the spring and summer, the

nationwide Kristallnacht ("Night of Broken Glass") pogrom in November, and the subsequent

seizure of Jewish-owned property all caused a flood of visa applications. Although finding a


destination proved difficult, about 36,000 Jews left Germany and Austria in 1938 and 77,000 in

1939.

The sudden flood of emigrants created a major refugee crisis. President Franklin D. Roosevelt

convened a conference in Evian, France, in July 1938. Despite the participation of delegates from

32 countries, including the United States, Great Britain, France, Canada, and Australia, only the

Dominican Republic agreed to accept additional refugees. The plight of German-Jewish refugees,

persecuted at home and unwanted abroad, is also illustrated by the voyage of the "St. Louis."

During 1938-1939, in an program known as the Kindertransport, the United Kingdom admitted

10,000 unaccompanied Jewish children on an emergency basis. 1939 also marked the first time the

United States filled its combined German-Austrian quota (which now included annexed

Czechoslovakia). However, this limit did not come close to meeting the demand; by the end of June

1939, 309,000 German, Austrian, and Czech Jews had applied for the 27,000 places available under

the quota.

By September 1939, approximately 282,000 Jews had left Germany and 117,000 from annexed

Austria. Of these, some 95,000 emigrated to the United States, 60,000 to Palestine, 40,000 to Great

Britain, and about 75,000 to Central and South America, with the largest numbers entering

Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Bolivia. More than 18,000 Jews from the German Reich were also

able to find refuge in Shanghai, in Japanese-occupied China.

At the end of 1939, about 202,000 Jews remained in Germany and 57,000 in annexed Austria,

many of them elderly. By October 1941, when Jewish emigration was officially forbidden, the

number of Jews in Germany had declined to 163,000. The vast majority of those Jews still in

Germany were murdered in Nazi camps and ghettos during the Holocaust.

Source: German-Jewish Refugees, 1933-1939. United States Holocaust Museum. 19 Feb. 2010 <http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005468>.

Holocaust Chart



Summary of News Reports

Wannasee Conference

US and the Holocaust

Liberation of the Camps

Nuremberg

German Jewish Refugees


Argument One: Enola Gay: Was Using the Bomb Necessary?

by Gar Alperovitz Published on Sunday, December 14, 2003 by the Miami Herald

Tomorrow's opening by the Smithsonian Institution of an exhibit featuring the Enola Gay, the B-29 Superfortress that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945, has occasioned the protest of hundreds of prominent scholars, writers and religious leaders. The reason is that the plane is being put forward with no mention of the huge number of civilians killed at Hiroshima (and subsequently at Nagasaki), and no acknowledgment of the ongoing domestic and worldwide controversy over the use of the atomic bomb. Instead, Air and Space Museum Director General John ''Jack'' Dailey has put the emphasis elsewhere -- on the plane ``in all of its glory as a magnificent technological achievement.''

News of the century

In 1999, a distinguished group of journalists deemed the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki the most important news event of the 20th century. A recent poll found that more Americans age 30-39 disapprove than approve of the bombings by a margin of 50 percent to 45 percent -- with almost as many (49 percent to 46 percent) also disapproving in the 18-29 age group. One of the main reasons why controversy still persists after almost 60 years is that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, there is very little evidence that top U.S. military leaders at the time believed that the atomic bomb was needed to end the war without a costly invasion. Indeed, quite the opposite appears to be true.

Adm. William D. Leahy, President Truman's chief of staff and the man who presided over meetings of both the U.S. chiefs of staff and the combined U.S.-British chiefs of staff, minced few words. Seven weeks before Hiroshima, his diary shows that he believed that the war could be ended in a manner that achieved all U.S. security aims.

`This barbarous weapon'

In his memoirs, the conservative admiral wrote: ``[T]he use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender. . . . [I]n being the first to use it, we . . . adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.''

Among the many other top World War II leaders who are on record as stating that the bomb was unnecessary are the commanding general of the U.S. Army Air Forces, Henry H. ''Hap'' Arnold; Fleet Adm. Chester W. Nimitz, commander-in-chief of the Pacific Fleet; Adm. William F. Halsey Jr., commander of the U.S. Third Fleet; and the famous ''hawk'' who commanded the 21st Bomber Command, Maj. Gen. Curtis E. LeMay. Army Chief of Staff Gen. George C. Marshall privately proposed that the bombs be dropped first on a military target such as a large naval base -- then, if that didn't work, that civilians be warned to leave before a city were targeted.

In his memoirs, President -- and former general -- Dwight D. Eisenhower reported the following reaction when Secretary of War Henry Stimson informed him that the atomic bomb would be used: ''During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression, and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose


employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives.'' In a 1963 interview, he put it bluntly: ``[I] it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing.''

Notwithstanding these and many related facts, writers who defend the atomic bombings claim that a fanatical Japanese military leadership would have fought on, no matter what. It is, of course, impossible ever to fully resolve the historical dispute, because the bombs were, in fact, used. However, the evidence that we have strongly indicates that the Japanese emperor would likely have ended the war without the use of the atomic bomb -- just as so many U.S. military leaders believed.

Top U.S. leaders were advised as early as April 1945 -- four months before the bombing -- that a combination of the forthcoming declaration of war by the Soviet Union (which occurred almost simultaneously with the bombings) plus a clarification of the surrender terms for the emperor would almost certainly have brought an end to the fighting. With three months still to go before the November invasion could begin, the bomb could have been used if the shock of the Red Army attack failed to produce the expected results. When the Japanese Army general staff issued a statement on surrender, it explained that the existence of the nation was threatened ''as a result of Russia's entrance into the war.'' No mention was made of the atomic bomb.

International law

There are also ongoing questions of morality and international law involved in the Truman administration's decision to sacrifice large numbers of civilians. Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, who during World War II helped plan the bombing of Japanese cities as an aide to LeMay, recently observed that he and LeMay ''were behaving like war criminals.'' A prosecutor, McNamara says, would have argued that directly targeting cities was not proportional to our war aims, thus prohibited under international law. He quotes LeMay as stating explicitly: ``If we lose the war, we'll be tried as war criminals.''

An additional reason why the bombing is still controversial is that it was done in a way that minimized the possibility of what later came to be called ''arms-control'' measures. Instead of initiating some kind of ''confidence-building'' negotiation in advance with the Soviets (as many had advised at the time), a major goal was to demonstrate what Stimson called the ''master card'' of American diplomacy in as dramatic a way as possible.

The role of force

Obviously, the issues surrounding Hiroshima still bear on the role of force in foreign policy and on the possible future use of nuclear weapons. The Clinton administration explicitly threatened the possible use of nuclear weapons in Korea, and the Bush administration's policies in general -- to say nothing of its new more-aggressive nuclear posture -- open the clear possibility that such weapons will be used in questionable ways.

In light of these many considerations, however one judges the numerous still-debated issues concerning the bombing of Hiroshima, the Smithsonian as one of the nation's premier educational institutions had, and still has, an obligation to present all sides and all important aspects of the continuing controversy.

Gar Alperovitz, author of The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, is Lionel R. Bauman Professor of political economy at the University of Maryland, College Park.


Source: Alperovitz, Gar. “Enola Gay: Was Using the Bomb Necessary? Miami Herald, 2003. 19 Feb. 2010<http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views03/1214-06.htm>.

http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views03/1214-06.htm


Argument Two: Blood on Our Hands?The New York TimesAugust 5, 2003 OP-ED COLUMNIST By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Tomorrow will mark the anniversary of one of the most morally contentious events of the 20th century, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. And after 58 years, there's an emerging consensus: we Americans have blood on our hands.

There has been a chorus here and abroad that the U.S. has little moral standing on the issue of weapons of mass destruction because we were the first to use the atomic bomb. As Nelson Mandela said of Americans in a speech on Jan. 31, "Because they decided to kill innocent people in Japan, who are still suffering from that, who are they now to pretend that they are the policeman of the world?"

The traditional American position, that our intention in dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and then Nagasaki was to end the war early and save lives, has been poked full of holes. Revisionist historians like Gar Alperovitz argue persuasively that Washington believed the bombing militarily unnecessary (except to establish American primacy in the postwar order) because, as the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey put it in 1946, "in all probability" Japan would have surrendered even without the atomic bombs.

Yet this emerging consensus is, I think, profoundly mistaken.

While American scholarship has undercut the U.S. moral position, Japanese historical research has bolstered it. The Japanese scholarship, by historians like Sadao Asada of Doshisha University in Kyoto, notes that Japanese wartime leaders who favored surrender saw their salvation in the atomic bombing. The Japanese military was steadfastly refusing to give up, so the peace faction seized upon the bombing as a new argument to force surrender.

"We of the peace party were assisted by the atomic bomb in our endeavor to end the war," Koichi Kido, one of Emperor Hirohito's closest aides, said later.

Wartime records and memoirs show that the emperor and some of his aides wanted to end the war by summer 1945. But they were vacillating and couldn't prevail over a military that was determined to keep going even if that meant, as a navy official urged at one meeting, "sacrificing 20 million Japanese lives."

The atomic bombings broke this political stalemate and were thus described by Mitsumasa Yonai, the navy minister at the time, as a "gift from heaven."

Without the atomic bombings, Japan would have continued fighting by inertia. This would have meant more firebombing of Japanese cities and a ground invasion, planned for November 1945, of the main Japanese islands. The fighting over the small, sparsely


populated islands of Okinawa had killed 14,000 Americans and 200,000 Japanese, and in the main islands the toll would have run into the millions.

"The atomic bomb was a golden opportunity given by heaven for Japan to end the war," Hisatsune Sakomizu, the chief cabinet secretary in 1945, said later.

Some argue that the U.S. could have demonstrated the bomb on an uninhabited island, or could have encouraged surrender by promising that Japan could keep its emperor. Yes, perhaps, and we should have tried. We could also have waited longer before dropping the second bomb, on Nagasaki.

But, sadly, the record suggests that restraint would not have worked. The Japanese military ferociously resisted surrender even after two atomic bombings on major cities, even after Soviet entry into the war, even when it expected another atomic bomb — on Tokyo.

One of the great tales of World War II concerns an American fighter pilot named Marcus McDilda who was shot down on Aug. 8 and brutally interrogated about the atomic bombs. He knew nothing, but under torture he "confessed" that the U.S. had 100 more nuclear weapons and planned to destroy Tokyo "in the next few days." The war minister informed the cabinet of this grim news — but still adamantly opposed surrender. In the aftermath of the atomic bombing, the emperor and peace faction finally insisted on surrender and were able to prevail.

It feels unseemly to defend the vaporizing of two cities, events that are regarded in some quarters as among the most monstrous acts of the 20th century. But we owe it to history to appreciate that the greatest tragedy of Hiroshima was not that so many people were incinerated in an instant, but that in a complex and brutal world, the alternatives were worse.

Source: Kristof, Nicholas D. “Blood on Our Hands? New York Times. Aug. 5, 2003. 19 Feb. 2010 <http://www.firstpulseprojects.net/bombproject/NKristoff.html>.

http://www.firstpulseprojects.net/bombproject/NKristoff.html


Article Three: Dropping the Atomic Bomb

BY PETER BASTIAN (AUSTRALIAN CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY)

For two decades after the dropping of atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 most historians accepted the US government’s justification of its decision to use these weapons: that given the unwillingness of the Japanese government to seriously consider unconditional surrender, the bombings brought the war to a speedy end by allowing the US to avoid a conventional invasion of the Japanese mainland that would have cost hundreds of thousands of American (and Japanese) lives.

In the 1960s, however, some revisionist historians challenged these claims, arguing that the US decision to use these bombs had little to do with ending the Pacific War. Writing in the context of a broader debate on responsibility for the Cold War, these historians argued that Japan was effectively defeated by mid 1945 but that the US wanted to use its destructive new weapon to intimidate the Soviet Union (especially in Europe) and to end the Pacific War before the Russians became too heavily involved in East Asia.

In the mid-1990s the debate over the dropping of the atomic bombs – until this time confined largely to historians – became the focus of public controversy. In 1995 the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington DC staged an exhibition to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the ending of the Pacific War. The exhibition included the restored forward fuselage of the Enola Gay, a photographic exhibition, and commentary on the bombings. It included discussion of the reasons for the bombing of the Japanese cities, photographs of the Japanese victims of the bombs, and a commentary on the nuclear arms race in the subsequent Cold War era. Various veteran organizations, backed by the US Senate, strongly objected to the format. It was condemned for a lack of patriotism, a lack of respect for US war veterans, and an overly sympathetic view of the Japanese position. In the end the Smithsonian backed down and made major modifications to the exhibition, including dropping references to the subsequent arms race and many pictures of the Japanese victims. The issue sparked a debate over political interference in the re-telling of history and also revived the atomic bomb controversy among historians. The scholarly debate now had the advantage of the large amount of US archival evidence declassified after the 1960s

Despite the release of official documents from the 1970s, the broad outlines of the debate between traditionalist and revisionist historians remained unchanged. The revisionists took issue with traditional views in three main areas. They claimed that the US had ignored the fact that by July 1945 Japan was ready to surrender provided some arrangement could be made for the future of the Emperor Hirohito. Traditional historians continued to argue that the Japanese were divided on the surrender issue and that there was every indication that the war would go on. It was also claimed by the revisionists that the Truman administration delayed Russian involvement in the war and then ignored the significance of the entry of the Soviet Union into the war - which in itself would have been enough to bring about a Japanese surrender. The traditionalists countered that the


US supported Russian entry as early as possible and that there was no indication that the attacks by the Red Army on the Japanese positions on the Asian mainland would have allowed the US to avoid an invasion of the Japanese islands. Finally, the two sides argued over whether Truman and others later inflated the estimated number of American casualties in a conventional invasion of Japan, in order to make the use of the atomic bombs seem a palatable alternative.

The last ten years have seen some attempt, in various ways, to deal with what had clearly become a rather polarized debate. . . .

On the issue of Japanese surrender, various studies suggest that in July 1945 the government had not decided to surrender and that Hirohito and the militarists had not been prepared to reach such a decision until the entry of the Russians into the war and the dropping of the atomic bombs finally forced the Emperor’s hand. In that sense the traditional view is supported. However, Hasegawa does suggest that the entry of the Russians into the war ended Japanese hopes that the USSR might act as intermediaries with the Americans and may have been even more important than the bombs in the decision to surrender. This at least gives some credence to the revisionist claims that Japan would have surrendered before a US invasion if the bombs had not been dropped. However, there is some danger of hindsight in such a view. Many militants wanted to continue fighting even after Russian entry and after the two bombs had been dropped; they were willing to surrender only because of the Emperor’s orders. Moreover, Truman could not be certain of Japanese intentions. Evidence that the Americans hoped or suspected that Soviet entry might be enough to end the war does not demonstrate that Truman knew that the atomic bombs would not be needed.

On the issue of simply using the bombs in order to head off the Russians in Asia and intimidate them in Europe, the findings suggest that the traditionalists are generally closer to the mark. Truman and his generals first and foremost pursued the war against Japan, and the atomic bombs were an important part of their strategy for ending the war. This, however, is not to say that they were not aware of the race with the Russians or the advantages of being able to demonstrate the destructive power of the new super bomb. Yet such a view has not been disputed by most recent traditional historians, who have seen Truman as a practical statesman with one eye on the post-war world and already dealing with problems with Stalin over Eastern Europe. He and his administration clearly saw advantages in possessing and even using the new bombs, but the issue was what primarily motivated them to do so in August 1945.

On the US casualty issue, the traditional view that the US would have suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties in an invasion of the Japanese mainland has not been supported by these studies. However, Truman and his advisers did not know how many American casualties would result from such an invasion. It is understandable that they erred on the side of pessimism. Moreover, even the revised estimates presented in recent studies suggest that the human costs of an invasion would have been large. The atomic bombs would have represented the lesser of two evils and been the more attractive solution for


Truman in ending the war. In this sense the traditional interpretation is closer to the truth, even though it exaggerates the likely casualty rate.

On the racial issues, it is true that stereotyping of the Japanese as sub-human was a significant part of US war propaganda. The perceived Japanese treachery at Pearl Harbor also made it easy to justify American revenge bombings on Japanese cities. On the other hand, the massive destruction of German cities throughout the war, including the fire-bombing of Dresden as late as February 1945, showed little in the way of US restraint when dealing with a European enemy. Indeed, the atomic bomb was developed primarily with a view to its use against Nazi Germany; and the weight of evidence suggests that had it not been for Germany’s surrender in May 1945, before development of the atomic bomb had been completed, a German city rather than Hiroshima would have been the first nuclear target. US wartime strategy was to use all means to bring the European and Pacific conflicts to an end as quickly as possible and to minimize American combat casualties.

Whether it was correct or not, US military planners during the war had placed a great deal of faith in the use of massive air power to destroy an enemy’s military capacity and will to fight. The US government had always regarded the atomic bomb, from the beginning of its development, as a legitimate weapon of war. It was essentially just a more terrifying type of super bomb to be dropped in the same way as any of the conventional bombs of the war. Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bombs on Japan in order to quickly finish the war fitted in with these American military strategies that had little to do, ultimately, with racial attitudes irrespective of the personal beliefs of the President or for that matter Americans in general. However, provided we keep in mind US military thinking, perhaps racism did make the decision to use the bombs easier even if it was not an overriding factor and we also acknowledge they certainly would have been used against Germany if they had been ready in time.

Overall, the recent studies, have, in various ways, modified but not displaced the traditional views on why the bombs were dropped. Much of the revisionist case is based on the ahistorical assumption that Truman and US policymakers understood Japanese intentions with the same clarity as historians have been able to achieve decades after the event. In any case, the Japanese showed no serious signs of being willing to surrender in July and early August 1945, and the US government was faced with a possible conventional invasion of Japan which would have involved substantial casualties - if not quite the rates earlier figures had suggested. The bomb had been developed in accordance with US military strategies to win both the European and Pacific war as quickly and cheaply as possible and had the bonus of heading off Soviet influences in Asia. The war propaganda that depicted the Japanese as treacherous and sub-human reflected an American racism that may have made such a decision a little easier for Truman.


Source: Bastian, Peter. “Dropping the Atomic Bomb.” Historiography. American History for Australian Schools. 19 Feb. 2010 <http://www.anzasa.arts.usyd.edu.au/ahas/bomb_historiography.html>.

Argument Four: Bomb! Unbomb!Book Review By J. Samuel Walker of Richard B. Frank’s book, Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire. Published: Sunday, December 12, 1999

The use of atomic bombs against Japan and the end of World War II in the Pacific have inspired a staggering volume of literature. In 1995 alone, 50 years after the end of the war, seven books and dozens of articles on the decision to drop the bomb appeared. In the past four years, the barrage has slowed but not ceased. In light of the large number of scholarly and popular works, one might reasonably ask why we need another book on the topic.

The answer lies largely in the continuing controversy that the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki have ignited. Despite the enormous body of literature on President Harry S. Truman's decision to use the bomb, scholars still differ on many important questions, sometimes in sharply acrimonious exchanges. As Richard B. Frank, the author of ''Guadalcanal,'' suggests in his introduction to ''Downfall,'' we need further study of the events that led to Hiroshima because the debate is so highly polarized. He seeks to avoid the partisanship that is so prevalent in the literature and to present events ''as they were perceived and recorded by American and Japanese participants in 1945 -- not years or decades thereafter.'' Frank's approach is not as original as he claims, but it enables him to offer a carefully reasoned and admirably balanced account that should be required reading for anyone with an interest in the atomic bomb and the end of the war.

The fundamental question that has triggered so much controversy is whether the atomic bomb was needed to force the Japanese to surrender at the earliest possible moment. The traditional view is that nuclear weapons were essential to win the war. Writers who take this position maintain that the bomb prevented a United States invasion of the Japanese homeland that would have cost hundreds of thousands of American casualties. Traditionalists assert that Truman faced a categorical choice between the bomb and an invasion that was forced on him by the refusal of the Japanese to surrender. In their view, the United States dropped the bomb primarily for military purposes -- to shorten the war and save huge numbers of American lives.

http://www.anzasa.arts.usyd.edu.au/ahas/bomb_historiography.html


The traditional interpretation is sharply contested by scholars known as revisionists. They contend that the bomb was not necessary for victory. They insist that Japan was seeking a way to end the war on the sole condition that the emperor be retained and, further, that American policy makers were well aware of this. Revisionist scholars argue that the United States used atomic weapons more for political than for military reasons, especially to intimidate the Soviet Union in the emerging cold war.

Frank evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of both positions. Although he does not accept either unconditionally, he is particularly critical of the revisionist view. Drawing on evidence that has opened up within the last few years, especially intercepts of Japanese diplomatic messages, he argues convincingly that the Japanese had not decided to surrender before Hiroshima. Indeed, his analysis of this issue drives a stake into the heart of the most cherished revisionist contention -- that Japan was seeking peace and the United States prolonged the war by refusing to soften its demand for unconditional surrender.

Frank shows beyond reasonable doubt that neither Emperor Hirohito nor most of his top military advisers had concluded that the war must end. Although they recognized that Japan could not win, they hoped that a last ''decisive battle'' in the homeland would force the United States to offer milder surrender terms. ''It is fantasy, not history,'' Frank writes, ''to believe that the end of the war was at hand before the use of the atomic bomb.''

Although Frank aims his heaviest fusillades at the revisionist interpretation, he does not fully embrace the traditional view. He questions the prevalent idea that an invasion of Japan, had it proved necessary, would have cost several hundred thousand, perhaps even a million, American casualties. This issue has been the single greatest source of controversy among scholars over the past few years, and the documentary evidence is frustratingly inconclusive. Frank estimates that the first phase of the invasion, scheduled for Nov. 1, 1945, on the Japanese island of Kyushu, would have caused in the range of 156,000 to 175,000 American casualties, of which 33,000 to 39,000 would have been fatalities. In the book's most original argument, he proposes that such heavy losses might have been enough to persuade American leaders to modify their surrender terms. Japanese resistance to an American landing on Kyushu would have been so formidable that it might have succeeded in accomplishing the political goals that the Japanese militants sought.

Frank also raises doubts about another staple of the traditional interpretation -- that without the bomb an invasion would have been essential. He makes clear how vulnerable the Japanese railroad system was to aerial attacks and how dependent food distribution was on the railroads. Food supplies were already short in August 1945, and the scarcities would have become increasingly acute if the war had continued. Thus, vast numbers of Japanese faced death from starvation within the not-too-distant future. Frank demonstrates as well that the emperor and his closest advisers were growing concerned that domestic unrest and internal upheaval might pose as much of a threat as the American military. Therefore, the emperor was likely to have


sought peace even without the atomic bomb, particularly since, Frank suggests, the United States would have shifted its strategy from invading Japan to starving it into submission.

Frank makes the arresting point that despite the horrors visited upon Japan by the atomic bombs, we should not assume that ''any termination of the conflict that avoided the use of nuclear weapons would have been preferable.'' By reminding us that the war might have been even worse than it was for both Americans and Japanese had it continued, he places Truman's decision to use the bomb in its full historical context. His conclusions are likely to incite attacks from those who cling to doctrinaire positions in the endless controversy, but those who seek a well-informed, thoughtful and judicious account have good reason to applaud this book.

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