EP34 Atomic Accountability

33:50It just wasn't a point of discussion. And even in the military, it does not seem to have been a point of discussion. The only person who occasionally tried to look into it was Stimson. And they basically told him it was fine. And I don't know if Stimson accepted that. He may have just been busy. He may have also, again, not felt like he was in a political position where he could challenge what these people were doing. But I think we often look at that and say, essentially, well, because they were firebombing, they didn't have moral qualms about destroying cities. And I'm not sure that's true. I think that they could both be firebombing and people could have moral qualms about cities.

34:40Marshall, who you brought up, is really interesting because he's a chief of staff. He's ostensibly the highest military person with any authority. And people don't generally go to him and ask him what he thinks about this kind of stuff. And occasionally they do ask him and record his responses. And his opinions aren't what you'd expect. I mean, as you said, at one point he suggests maybe they just shouldn't use the atomic bomb. He also suggests that they shouldn't use it on cities, that it's not a good idea. At the same time, he also says we could use chemical weapons against troops, but we wouldn't use them against cities, which is not the general way in which we tend to divide these things up, right?

35:21Right. And yet when he received pushback for these, he just said, OK, whatever. Right. I mean, he basically let other it was clear that was not the direction people were going in. I think with. You know, I don't know how aware Truman was of the firebombing. Again, it's in the newspapers. He must have been aware of it to some degree. Stimson did go to him and suggest that they were going to get the reputation of outdoing the Nazis and atrocities. At the same time, his opinion was never asked. Nobody ever went to him and said, should we keep doing this? Yes or no. Even Stimson, who was essentially trying to lobby for restraint, never said, could you stop doing this?

36:05He instead simply said, you know, here are some issues. Here are some qualms. Anyway, moving on. Right. And I think that's very interesting. My suspicion, and this is just from being a human being, we don't have records that tell us this. You know, if you ask somebody to do something and they say no, that's a bigger defeat than simply putting the idea out there and hoping they might do something about it. And I don't think that Stimson necessarily felt that it was his place to ask the president to stop doing something, that that's maybe not the role he's supposed to have. If the president wants to stop it, the president can stop it.

36:42I think that certainly if it was peacetime, it would be a bit different. We see a little bit of that with the H-bomb development, which Truman ultimately essentially approves, but for very domestic political reasons and with a very heavy heart and with the sort of explicit sentiment that he does not plan to use these things, that they just need to maybe build these things, which is a way to lessen the moral hazard, arguably. Well, let's remember, you know, we were talking about, like, why can't some of these people in positions of power think more about this and think more about, you know, sparing people and whatnot.

37:23But maybe we're forgetting, you know, how the average American was feeling at that time. You quote a poll by Fortune magazine taken in December 1945, which, of course, is after the war was over by a few months, asking how people felt about, quote, our use of the atomic bomb. And here's what you write. It indicated that only 4.5 % of those surveyed believe the atomic bombs ought not to have been used at all, and only 13.8 % believed that they ought to have had their power demonstrated in a way that did not kill anyone first, for example, dropping one first in some unpopulated region. A solid majority of 53.5 % endorsed the use of the bombs on cities just as they were used.

38:08And a striking 22.7%, you write, wished that there had been more time to have quickly used many more of them before Japan had a chance to surrender. So let's not in cold blood forget that these people were still talking about Pearl Harbor, gold star families. I mean, all this sort of stuff was still fresh in the mines. So had Truman or Stimson or Marshall or any of those guys been proposing something softer, they would have actually been outside the norm of public opinion for that time period, wouldn't they? I think it's hard to know how much public opinion follows what happens and seem to have worked.

38:49Right. If they had done that's a good point. And it's right. So this is and I'm not I agree that. So Stimson, for example, is really interesting in this respect because he one he kept a diary, which is really helpful. Right. He wrote down every little thought he had, which super helpful. Thank you, Secretary of War Henry Stimson. Um, but like he was really concerned with, um, you know, how do you set up the conditions for getting the kinds of things that he thinks will be useful. And so, for example, he really is not a fan of the anti-Japanese, um, sort of the really extreme version of that, because in his mind, that's going to get in the way of ending the war.

39:34So he was a big proponent of what if we basically clarify to the Japanese emperor that we won't harm their position and they can still run the country and we're not going to change their government if they don't want to once they've demilitarized. in part because he really felt that that was what was going to be needed to get the Japanese on board with surrender. And that got turned down by Truman, both for complicated reasons, but also under the influence of Burns, in part because of Pearl Harbor, right? Like that's not a sentiment that he doesn't want to give the Japanese any concessions of any form.

40:18But it's interesting that somebody like, not just Stimson, Winston Churchill thought this. I mean, these are views that look much more conciliatory, but if you believe that that's going to be a major stumbling block for the Japanese, which Stimson did, and Stimson had been to Japan and thought of himself as a sort of Japan expert. And, you know, one of the things that Stimson hated was that there was a view that the Japanese were these fanatical, basically death cult people, which, you know, some of them were. But Stimson would be quick to point out that like not all the Japanese and not all the Japanese in power, and there's going to be a significant chunk of the ones in power who are pretty rational.

41:00And so if you treat them all like they're going to fight to the last man, then that's what you're going to get. You're going to get fighting to the last man. If you can find a way to let the ones who are more reasonable have a way out and give them power, then that's going to get you the end of the war. And then ultimately, you know, what people want is to win the war. So I think he, you know, if you can get that, people will probably be happy no matter what you do, or at least be conflicted because you know how people are. So I think it's tricky. I do think that public opinion was part of some of these deliberations.

41:37I don't think it was why they dropped the bomb. I don't think it really had a big impact on the decisions they made in that respect, just because they already had other reasons for wanting to make those decisions. Yeah, you list. I don't think it. Yeah. I was gonna say you list four reasons, only two of which I are the ones normally pointed out there of reasons why they wanted to drop the bomb. and the message to the Soviets, demonstration of the weapon, a whole bunch of things. But as you pointed out, there are so many little things that went into it. It's strange to think of the possibility nowadays when we look back on it and think about them not dropping it.

42:19Didn't Groves, the head of the program, the military engineer, say something like that they would be justified given all of the resources that had been put into that in a zero-sum kind of game? If they didn't use it, the American people could hang them from every lamppost or something like that. But but what's interesting to get back to what you've put out here that no one else has put out is is the idea that Truman may have thought he was doing something he really wasn't. And then afterwards, he took responsibility for it anyway. And then behind the scenes, tried to see that it never happened again.

42:51How does a president get hoodwinked? so i you know hoodwink implies like deliberate deception and i don't think it was that like i don't think stimpson well let me back up so the whole context of this is this kyoto question which uh you know people sometimes know a little bit about there's some myths about this uh you know he wasn't on his honeymoon there you know this kind of stuff uh but for whatever reason stimpson when Stimson hears the list of atomic targets, this is in May 1945, Kyoto is not only on the list, but it's what the military wants to use the bomb on the most. And he immediately and almost instinctually objects to this.

43:39And I don't know exactly why he did. I mean, there's rationalizations one can give. It's a place of culture. It's mostly civilian. It's the old capital that the Japanese will be sad if we do that, and then they won't be our friends in the post-war. And Stimson himself has a bunch of rationalizations that he uses over time to defend this, but it's pretty clear that, to me, that this is almost an emotional response, that he just, he knows Kyoto, he doesn't want Kyoto on the list, that there's something else going on there. the military uh in this case general groves is is not interested in really taking kyoto off the list and really resents this i mean groves later says that he's happy that stimpson does this but the the words that groves uses even decades later he regards this as the only instance in which stimpson interfered with military planning and military objectives i mean interfered is such a great word, right?

44:39Anyway, Stimson all the way up through Potsdam, Groves has been going back to Stimson and saying, what if we put Kyoto back on the list? And Groves himself says that they met, you know, a dozen times after that initial meeting. And every time Groves tried to put Kyoto back on the list. And he says that Stimson, you know, took this in good humor. I find this very unlikely that Stimson actually appreciated this at all. And finally, the last bit was right as they're finalizing the target list. This is now being done over teletype, you know, quite remote. While Stimson's at Potsdam, he gets a teletype from Groves and from his people there, who says, hey, can we put Kyoto back on the list just as a backup, just in case the weather conditions, just in case there's a good reason.

45:28And he immediately goes to Truman because it's clear that Groves is not willing to back down on this and is not accepting, you know, Stimson's emphatic rejection that Kyoto should be on the list as authoritative. So he goes to Truman and basically gets Truman to agree that Kyoto shouldn't be on the list. And then he can write back Groves and said, I've had it confirmed at the highest level. Kyoto's off the list. Great. Done. That takes Kyoto off the list. That makes Hiroshima number one. That actually is what adds Nagasaki to the list as a backup target. There's a whole lot that goes from that.

46:04The interesting thing is that meeting. So we have Truman's account of what that was about. And we have Stimson's account. These are accounts from the time, Stimson's diary and Truman kept a journal at Potsdam. and Stimson's diary, you know, makes it sound like he laid out a very rational case for basically Kyoto is this historic city and it's a civilian city and it's not a real military target. And if we bomb it, then the Japanese will never be our friends in the post-war and it'll get in way of our long-term goals. Truman's writing on what this discussion was, and this is again at pots them, is that he and the Secretary of War decided that the first use of the bomb should be used against a military target, that women and children should not be the target, but sailors and soldiers, and that this is why they're doing this and that he's pretty happy with this.

47:05And this is sort of the context for how you could be so confused on this. What does Stimson say to Truman at the meeting. I don't know. We have no direct record or objective record. But my suspicion, just based on other ways that Stimson justified keeping Kyoto off the list, one is that Stimson will say sort of whatever it takes to keep Kyoto from getting bombed. Two, Stimson's whole argument is that there's this sort of division between a place like Hiroshima and a place like Kyoto, Kyoto doesn't really have military industry in it or headquarters or anything like that. And Hiroshima has a bunch of military factories and army, you know, points of interest and things like this, which is true to a degree.

47:52The military even then and even afterwards would point out, like, actually, Kyoto has military facilities as well. Actually, Hiroshima is city as well, The line between them is not as firm as Simpson would have probably drawn it, but Simpson is trying to force an outcome. And I think it's very plausible that Truman misunderstood the nature of this discussion, that it's about two cities, and instead thought it's about, should we bomb a big city or should we bomb a big military base? and then came away thinking, and again, this is from Truman's journal, that they had chosen a, quote, purely military target.

48:36And this purely military language crops up in a few other things that he works on up until they have the first pictures of Hiroshima, and it's clearly a city. And so that's the way, in my mind, that this happens. It's not so much that Stimson sets out to confuse Truman, but Stimson sets out with a different goal, which is to save Kyoto. And I don't think Truman realizes that he's misunderstood this conversation. And I think the consequence of that is that he doesn't, and also Truman is busy at this time to be sure, but he doesn't ask for follow-up. He doesn't ask for, you know, he doesn't reconfirm that he's understood these things.

49:18If you put it that way, it's not hard at all to understand how a president could be misunderstood about something. We have presidents misunderstanding things all the time. And this is also not some sort of like formal briefing with all of his advisors in the room. This is a one-on-one conversation with somebody who has a very definite goal in mind entering into this conversation. I don't think Stimson would have wanted to mislead Truman at all. That's just not his character. But I think it's totally possible he could have. So you bring up an interesting point when you talk about the fact that Truman, as you said, may have entirely misunderstood the targeting of Hiroshima.

50:05And then you say, I've tried to provide the context here that would make this seem like a plausible interpretation because the idea of Truman being in italics so wrong on this matter feels fantastical on the face of it. But as you point out, stuff like this actually happens more often than we might think. I'm trying to put myself in an empathetic sort of situation here with Truman and try to imagine how it must have felt to him if he did entirely misunderstood his choice of cities here when he got the casualty reports back. I mean, what is the moment of the light bulb going on over his head when he realizes what's happened here?

50:46So by August 8th, 1945, he 100 percent knows that it's a city. And that's the first day that you have any reports from the Japanese that mention it being a city or casualties or anything like that. It's also the first intelligence they have over what happened to the target. They have the first photographs because it took them two days for the smoke from the fires to dissipate to the point where they could get a good picture of Hiroshima. And we know that on that morning, Stimson actually goes to Truman and shows him a report on the damage to Hiroshima. And it's clearly a city. What is Truman thinking?

51:31One can only guess. He is at this time reporting to people that he is suffering from terrible headaches and difficulty sleeping and other things like this. There's a picture of him getting this report from Stimson because the press was there. And he's smiling, but I don't know. Maybe it's my wanting to read into a photo. Behind his eyes, it doesn't look like a happy person. You can look at them. On my website, I posted this photo, among others. And you can take a look and judge for yourself. But I think Truman would be quite disturbed. I mean, Truman is not thrilled at the idea of killing, as he put it, women and children.

52:12This is the code. Sometimes these are called Trumanisms, but they're like repetitive phrases that is Truman's way of always talking about noncombatants, say women and children. He does this throughout his whole life and career. now you might ask well what about Nagasaki this August 8th Nagasaki's August 9th if he doesn't want to bomb cities why does he approve the bombing of Nagasaki and I have found zero evidence that Truman knew that there was a second bomb about to be used and in fact while he's getting his briefing from Stimson the plane is starting to take off in in from Tinian because of all the time zones and all of that kind of stuff.

52:52But, you know, with the first bomb, Truman was told right before it was going to be used. He was very interested in the schedule. He himself always referred to it as just the atomic bomb. And what happens when it is used? The actual strike order, which I'm not sure Truman even actually saw, was approved by Stimson and Marshall, basically describes in detail how the first bomb will be used, but then says you can keep dropping bombs as soon as they're available.

53:25It's not clear to me at all that Truman would have even remembered. He would have been told at least once early on that they were planning to have two bombs ready by early August. But the one time he asked about the schedule of bombings at Potsdam, He was read a telegram, which we have, which says that the first one of the tested type will be ready around the 1st of August, and then the next one will be ready, you know, a week or so later.

53:59And that is, or even over a week later. And that sounds accurate unless you, but there's two types of bombs. There was the tested and the untested. And at none point did they clarify, by the way, there's an untested type of bomb that will also be ready by August 1st. So the Hiroshima and the Nagasaki bombs are different bombs. I don't think Truman caught that. And again, being sympathetic with him, he's like negotiating with Stalin. He's got other things on his plate. I'm not sure he's catching these little tiny details, which frankly would confuse most people today who only knew a little bit about atomic bombings and things like that.

54:38So what happens? means Nagasaki gets you the bomb gets attacked on August 10th. Truman tells his cabinet that he has ordered the atomic bombings to be stopped. And it's on the basis of the women and children. And he tells him he can't stand the thought of killing all those kids. And so this is, again, if I'm reading into his psychology, and again, this is an impossible job. I will just acknowledge that. But if I'm trying to get inside his head, I see a person who realizes that he is not in control of this thing at all and seizes that control back. And fascinating to a modern person in cold blood to look back and note that here's a man who doesn't want to kill any more women and children, but the fire bombings continue after the Nagasaki attacks.

55:28The contradictions in this whole thing are mind-spinning. I think my sense about the firebombing in general is that Truman does not feel responsible for those in the same way he does the atomic bombing. And we could debate whether he should feel responsible for those, but my sense is that he doesn't. And that's an interesting distinction. And maybe it's the distinction, as you were saying earlier, between you know, what's already been happening. The fire bombings, of course, started under Roosevelt, not under Truman. And also the sense that, sure, that's an area that we count as the military's prerogative.

56:12But the atomic bombing to him does feel like something special. And again, we could say, well, is it that special? Is it different? Is it just a very effective way to do firebombing. I think Truman's own writing makes it clear again and again that he 100 % thinks the atomic bomb, even from the beginning, even before it's used, is special. I mean, he writes about it at Potsdam as being, you know, maybe the end of the world that was prophesied in the Bible. Maybe this is the most terrible invention in the history of mankind. And certainly even by the time he leaves office in 1953, he gets asked again, oh, is it really so bad?

56:51And that's where the quote about it, it's slaughtering civilians comes from, where he just says, I don't think you get it. This thing is worse. It's even worse than biological and chemical warfare. The atomic bomb is like the worst weapon ever made, which that's a very strong sentiment. Again, we could disagree with Truman, but I think the important thing historically is to say, oh, he really seems to believe this. You know, it's interesting, too. You have sort of a I would call it a hardcore history point that you make when you talk about the functional difference a person would have experienced on the ground between something like a firebombing or the bombing of Dresden or Hamburg or anything like that that went on in Europe.

57:32and the instantaneous change in your world that happens when the atomic bomb has dropped. And you had written that for someone on the ground, all of this, meaning the bombing and the aftermath, would have happened in an instant, a normal morning immediately transformed into hell on Earth. And then you write, quote, The aftermath of the fire bombings and the atomic bombings looked similar, but there were key differences in the experiences themselves. The fire bombings took hours to unfold and the threat of hundreds of B-29s could be heard from a great distance. The atomic bomb was a weapon of suddenness and of tremendous, almost instant destruction, followed up by the firestorm that engulfed the city core and consumed it block by block.

58:16end quote but what so it is it's like almost like i always thought that in kurt vonnegut's description of of the of the dresden bombings he talks about going into a bomb shelter and the city's intact and coming out of the bomb shelter and it's all gone but that's the moment that anyone who lives through one of these atomic bombings experiences not to mention of course the uh the thermonuclear super weapons that have never been used in war uh you make it clear that But the one thing that Truman seems to have learned from all of this is that, as he put it, some dashing lieutenant colonel somewhere shouldn't have the power to order an attack here.

58:52How does this play into the fact that we've evolved into a wartime situation here where all of this now is wrapped up in the hands of our president as opposed to the joint chiefs of staff or a bunch of it's not a group decision? And that's Truman's Truman's decision that he made. Right. Right. That's part of his legacy. He, starting the day after Nagasaki, centralizes any atomic use decisions in himself, basically. In him, the president. And at first, that's just sort of the arrangement. It eventually gets articulated as policy, though I think later than most people realize it's not really official U.S.

59:36policy. There's, in fact, no official U.S. policy about who decides who uses an atomic bomb until 1948. And even then, it's like one sentence. It's a sentence that says, well, it's up to the president, which there were other options floated at the time, but that's ultimately what happened. I think the key thing here is that Truman's centralization of the use power in himself, today we talk about that centralization as being justified by either the Constitution or by the strategy. Well, you have to make a decision very quickly. You know, we have lots of reasons for saying this is how it ought to be.

1:00:18I think it's very clear that the reason Truman does that is he does not trust the military, and he doesn't trust anybody. He trusts himself, and he does not want to use these weapons again. Again, this is one of his other things he repeats over the whole course of his administration, that his whole goal is to never use nuclear weapons again. That's the goal, which again, is not the standard version of Truman that I think most people have in their head as a guy who's almost above everything else committed to the idea of not using nuclear weapons. Again, there's an obvious paradox here. The book tries to explain what that is, the resolution of it.

1:00:53But it's ultimately the presidential power to use nuclear weapons, the exclusive presidential power to use nuclear weapons in the United States was created so that they wouldn't get used. And that's, I think, surprising, right? That's certainly not the way it's talked about today. Today and in previous administrations, there's discussion about, well, could the military stop the president from using the bomb if he wanted to. And that's exactly the flip of the situation in the 1940s. So I see it as influencing the closest time we ever came to nuclear war, famously. I mean, maybe not, but famously, the Cuban Missile Crisis and Kennedy's problems with what he called the brass hats and everything.

1:01:41And, you know, when we look back at history, you think it's a long time between the Truman administration and the Kennedy administration. But we're talking about, you know, a dozen years or something like that. And with a general in between them as president. So maybe an unusual figure between the two. So the next civilian president you get in there is by comparison with his august Second World War cabinet members like Curtis LeMay that you mentioned earlier, appears to be a kid. right a low-level officer in the second world war who doesn't know anything and is up against all these people that were actually dropping bombs on japan and yet that's really isn't it sort of the first test of truman's centralization of the power of the bombs in the hands of civilians even though eisenhower had that power he's sort of only a pseudo-civilian um how much did what Truman sort of tried to make standard operating procedures, civilian control of these bombs and what have you, how much of that impacted how the Cuban missile crisis unfolded and those sorts of concerns that came to the fore again then?

1:02:50Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, so what happens in under Truman is he almost totally centralizes everything with himself, right? Because he does not trust the military. Under Eisenhower, things eventually flip. Eisenhower actually maintains initially a lot of Truman's policies, but he eventually, for a variety of reasons, goes entirely the other direction. So the military get access to these weapons. Under Truman, after World War II, the military never have access to more than nine nuclear weapons out of hundreds. And they only get that access in 1951. And it's a whole complicated story about why they get nine in 1951.

1:03:31And it's not to use them. It's for political reasons. Under Eisenhower, they end up with 90 % of the stockpile. And some of this is because the weapons change. It's not possible to keep them sort of separated into their nuclear and their non-nuclear components, which is what they did in the 40s. And also the situation changes. The Soviet Union has hundreds of weapons. And so now they're very worried about being attacked. And the fear of Eisenhower is not the military will start war without permission. The fear is we'll get caught with our pants down and we'll get destroyed by the Soviet Union.

1:04:11The result of all that is that in the, by the end of the fifties, before Kennedy takes power, the military has the ability to wage nuclear war one on a scale much bigger than it ever could in the forties, but like without any involvement from the president, I mean, there's no locks on the weapons in the fifties. There's no codes or anything like that. They just have them. They could use them. Um, and they're ready to use them. And they're very clear at times. And even in the 40s, they do this a little bit. People like LeMay, they say, well, if we had to use them and the president was in the way, we're not gonna sit out this fight.

1:04:54If it looks like World War III is going down, we aren't gonna let some political order from Washington, even the great General Eisenhower stand in our way. So that's the situation when Kennedy and his people take over. And they are horrified by this. They don't realize that the nuclear war plan is much larger than they have really been told. It's all being all war planning is being done in the Pentagon. It is not being shared with the White House. They do try to put some barriers in place. They're the ones who add locks to all weapons that are overseas and eventually domestic ones, permissive action links.

1:05:36They're the ones who try, not completely successfully, to centralize war planning within the executive branch. Like they don't let the Joint Chiefs of Staff just make their own war plans without input from the White House. They are the ones who start to push for like flexibility. Like the early war plans of the 50s and early 60s, you couldn't not nuke China, even if China was not part of the war. because the people who made those plans basically literally said, are you telling me you would have World War III and let a giant communist power survive? No. Like this is an ideological war, which may not be what your politicians want to happen, but they're not in the loop.

1:06:15This is covered, by the way, very well. Dan Ellsberg's book, The Doomsday Machine. Oh, yes. All about this period. And he was personally involved in some of these discussions and things like this. It's really interesting. But so like, that's kind of the situation. So by the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, yes, Kennedy 100 % has been trying to basically convince both Khrushchev and his own generals that he's actually a tough guy, and, you know, should not be underestimated. He also is very well aware that despite his efforts, if the military blunders into a nuclear war, there isn't a whole lot that Kennedy himself can probably do to stop it.

1:06:57It's not the kind of thing where if he doesn't give his positive order, they're all going to just stand there. They have their own people running things, and they do not 100 % trust Kennedy, and that's an issue. It's one of the reasons that that whole crisis is so dangerous is that Kennedy recognizes only after it's sort of been going on for a little while that there are a lot of pathways to nuclear war, and he doesn't have control over all of them. He cannot actually make the decision to avoid nuclear war under those conditions. What's crazy is when you look at all of the opportunities, I mean, the Cuban Missile Crisis is obviously famous and maybe even oversighted compared to, you know, Berlin blockade, MacArthur wanting to to nuke the Chinese in Korea, the request at the NBM food by the French, the Vietnam War and everything else.

1:07:52Oh, and not to mention accidents and problems with false positives on radar and everything else. How much it seems to me that that that had things broken differently in the very early Truman eras, had had Truman allowed the military to control these weapons, which, as they were pointing out, are just like weapons. Right. We control all the other weapons. Why not these? It seems to me some of those situations might have easily broken the other way. And if that's the case, can we suggest that Truman may be centralizing this and being distrustful of the military, keeping these very unusual weapons may have likely been the reason that they weren't have more.

1:08:30I mean, if MacArthur controls the use of nuclear weapons on the ground in 1950, 51, it seems to me they're likely used. So did the centralization of this in the hands of a single person who then has to live the rest of his life with knowing he made the decision to kill untold numbers of people? I mean, that's how Truman has to live with this, right? How much does that impact the fact that we haven't had a nuclear war since? I think quite a lot. I think if you had somebody, there are people you could imagine being in power in 1950, 1951, including Eisenhower, including Brian McMahon, who was one of the major Democratic politicians at the time, who was definitely planning to run for presidency in 52, but he happened to die of cancer first.

1:09:21But these people who did not have qualms about either giving the military weapons or using these weapons. And in fact, some of these people really disliked the idea that these weapons created unique moral hazards, especially in situations like the Korean War, where they weren't, the reason you aren't using them then isn't because you think you're going to get nuked back. I mean, the Soviet Union has a tiny arsenal. They can't really deliver them over great distances, they are not not using them because of deterrence. They're not using them for a variety of reasons, but one of them is that Truman has made it very clear that he's not interested in using these weapons.

1:10:05There were a contingent of people within the military who were trying to see and push the edges of, well, maybe under certain circumstances. And part of the reason they're doing this, and they're explicit about this in these classified hearings and things like that, and some diary entries and things like this, is that they're worried that there's this taboo being created, this idea that atomic bombs were not usable weapons because they are morally problematic. And the person who is the most important person to advocate that point of view is President Truman. And they know this. They're very clear about this at times, that the president is the source.

1:10:49Of course, there's going to be people who believe this and the common people and the Soviets are going to push that line as propaganda, etc. But the president is the only one at that point in his administration who actually advocates this view. So I think it's very important. There's been a lot of scholarship by largely political scientists over why nuclear weapons don't get used after World War II. And one of the answers, some of it's things like deterrence and rational choices and things, but a big answer is this belief that nuclear weapons are not something you should use, that there's a problem with using them, and the bar for using them is much higher than it is for other weapons, especially in non-deterrent situations like the French at Dien Ben Phu or wherever, where using them, you're not worried about getting attacked back with nuclear weapons per se.

1:11:45And if that's true, if that played any role at all, then I think having the first American president with nuclear weapons be one of the biggest subscribers to the taboo possible, that's got to have an impact, right? And so, you know, the irony of Harry Truman, I think, is that he is the only president who presided over the use of nuclear weapons in war. he may be one of the main reasons they don't get used again. You know, it's interesting, and I'll make this the last question before asking you if you have any points that I haven't already asked you. But, you know, I grew up in an era where we were very aware of the sort of Damocles hanging over our heads.

1:12:28We did drills, all those kinds. You know, there were movies, there were literature, everything sort of talked about this. We saw nuclear weapons on television being paraded down the streets of the Kremlin, all these kinds of things. And then during the 90s, when we sort of had our, what did they call it, the vacation or the break from history, I think a generation sort of forgot that that sort of Damocles is still there. And now we're reminded again, Annie Jacobson's, of course, had a new book with nuclear war scenario. They're making a movie. There's all kinds of good material, including yours coming out here.

1:12:58What would we say then is the lesson from the era, the only era where these sorts of weapons have ever been employed against human beings, now that we're being reminded that they're still out there, that it could, you know, her books are wonderful example of just how easily dominoes could start to tumble. Decisions could go from, you know, leaders pushing the envelope to being pulled by them. I mean, what is the lesson of something all the way back in 1945 for us in a sort of Damocles situation that we're realizing never has left us since then by what Truman did and the way he sort of took this concrete and created a new reality with it that hardened and that is still our reality today?

1:13:38What's the lesson of this book in terms of real world things in 2025? I think it's really easy, especially when we talk about nuclear weapons, to assume that they're sort of a big system that will lead to certain types of outcomes, right? And generally, my experience is that a lot of people have a lot of faith in nuclear deterrence, right? Okay, we've got all of these weapons, we've got all of these self-interested rational actors out there, they won't use them because it's not in their interest to do so. And that sounds great, assuming that they see it that way, which, of course, they may or may not, depending on the people.

1:14:21I think the point of my book is that it's easy for us to abstract away the individuals. I think there have been trends in history, which I support largely. There's been such a pushback against the idea of great man history, the idea that individuals are the ones pushing the trajectory of history forward. And that's completely right and good. This is not about great man history. But on the other side of that extreme is just like, well, everything just kind of happens and there's forces that sort of things emerge from and it would happen one way or the other, no matter what. Individuals don't matter.

1:14:57And I think there's something to be said for sometimes individuals matter. They're specific individuals get into positions of power. They have specific mindsets, specific worldviews, which are not just the product of everybody around them. Obviously, they're of their time. They have to be. What else could they be? What if they're mentally unbalanced? What if they're mentally unbalanced? What if they just feel very strongly about women and children and the people around them don't. Who's right in that situation? Who's wrong? It doesn't matter, right? The issue is that these individuals matter a lot.

1:15:32And if we're going to be thinking about how these systems work, we do have to talk about the technical stuff and talk about the strategy and talk about the planning and all this stuff. At the end of the day, if the system is set up in such a way that ultimately the position of the one person at the top is the opinion that everybody else will probably bend themselves around, then that person really matters. And there's relevance in that for the United States. There's relevance not in thinking about Russia. If you're thinking about how worried should you be about, say, Putin wanting to use nuclear weapons, or even in China with Xi, part of it that is ultimately, well, what does he think the situation is?

1:16:12What does he value? What does he not value? That stuff's hard to get at, right? Getting inside somebody's head. But we have to do that if we're going to think about these things seriously. We can't just put our faith in, well, they'll think about it the way I do, because who knows who they've been talking to? Who knows how much they understand? Who knows how good their intelligence briefings are? Who knows if they understand the weapons correctly? Those are harder things to grasp than I think is obvious. What's crazy is that a single person in a number of countries, including North Korea, maybe our firewall protecting us from some sort of nuclear Armageddon.

1:16:50And yet, as you point out in your book, in 1945, if we'd gone with sort of the group decision on things, we might have dropped atomic bombs on even more cities. The one guy who said no was the firewall in that situation. Doctor, is there anything else I didn't ask you about today that you want to get in this conversation before we end it? uh i'll just say if if if people find the claims i make especially delivered you know over a podcast to be hard to believe please read the book uh i fully acknowledge that these are big claims and require evidence and in the book i try to give that evidence and also practically every source in the book, I've found a way to make easy to access online.

1:17:40You can use either the footnotes or, I mean, every primary source. I'm also setting up some documents on my own website of some of the key documents from it. People are more than welcome to take a look at this. I think this is an area that is, again, we're fed these kind of stories about how the atomic bombs were used, and we weave them into our worldviews very seamlessly. And so anything that suggests something alternative seems, I think, a little surprising. But I think people will be surprised that there's actually other ways to look at this. Oh, for those of us who've read lots of books on this subject, you had all sorts of things I'd never heard, read, or thought about before.

1:18:25Dr. Alex Wellerstein, thank you so much for coming on the program. It is a fantastic book. Thank you so much. I really appreciate that.

1:19:01those are always, in my opinion, the best ones. And if nothing else, it's another lens through which to view all this. And one of the lenses is sort of to put yourself in the position of a guy like Harry Truman. It really is sort of worthy of a movie or something. I mean, think about it. Guy's not anywhere near the presidency. It's not even on his mind. And then ipso facto this, all that happens, and you find yourself as vice president all of a sudden to a guy who's not really bringing you in at all because he's been president longer than anyone's been president ever in American history. And he just sort of, you know, goes about doing his own things like a puppet master and a master politician.

1:19:42And you're nowhere near anything. And you barely had the job for five seconds and he dies. And now you're in control of it all. And it happens to be in the middle of the greatest war humanity's ever been involved in. And oh yeah, there's a secret weapon we've been working on. It's the most terrible thing anyone's ever had control of. And what do you want to do with it? Holy cow. And then, you know, in the book, Wellerstein puts you in his position sometimes where Truman is saying to people in small rooms, you have no idea what it's like to be in in this position I'm in and having to make these sorts of decisions.

1:20:19And then to try to maybe mitigate them, you know, not kill women and children because you're a decent human being and then wake up and find out that's exactly what you ordered or did or maybe never ordered at all it's a fantastic look into a subject that as i said if you did ask me about it before i read this book i would have been a lot more sure of saying well yeah you know truman ordered the bombs dropped and this and that and well that's sort of like the connect the dots sort of theory of history where these are bullet points and that's what we know and as usual when you start to dive into the white space between the dots that's where all the interesting nuance happens and wellerstein's book gets into all that and the reason you should care and the reason we talk about nuclear weapons a lot and the reason it came up in every live show i did spontaneously with people is because this should be naturally interesting to us because it is the occam's razor answer to the question what happened to humanity because we can kill ourselves in any number of different ways and something could kill us you know meteors some sort of pathogen but the most likely way we kill ourselves is going to be offing ourselves with our own weapons because all we have to do to end up in that reality is everything we've ever done in the past forever we continue standard operating procedure as human beings going as far back as we can read certainly and we will certainly use these weapons and people do not think enough about what these weapons can do and when you realize where those lines cross right all we have to do is everything we've always done and what we have to work with now compared to what we've ever had before well this should be our number one concern shouldn't it because it's as i said the most likely answer to the question of you know how do we end up with statues of liberty in the sand

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