“I voiced to him [U.S. Secretary of War Stimson] 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 nuclear weapon.”

General Dwight Eisenhower

August 10 2025 — Eight decades have passed since the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima (August 6, 1945) and Nagasaki (August 9, 1945). The true motivations behind these attacks remain fiercely debated among historians. What is certain is that prominent U.S. military leaders — including General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Admiral William D. Leahy — opposed their use. Recently declassified documents suggest that, much like the unnecessary devastation of Dresden, the atomic bombings were driven less by military necessity than by a desire to send a chilling warning to the Soviet Union. As grim as it is to acknowledge, that may be the closest we have to the truth. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY

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“The 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.”

US Admiral William Leahy

In the early 90s, George Wells FARWELL introduced me to Hans BETHE, often described as the most important “gift” from Nazi Germany to the United States.

Bethe came to U.W. in Seattle to discuss first the 1987A supernova and then — what was known at that time as — the solar neutrino puzzle.

After graduating from Harvard in 1941, Farwell began post-graduate studies in physics at Berkeley. In 1943 he joined the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, New Mexico.

He participated in the first atomic bomb detonation at Trinity Site, New Mexico, in 1945.

After the war he completed his PhD under Enrico Fermi at the University of Chicago, studying the induced fission of plutonium.

Once George told me about stressing situations:

“Suppose you are sitting at your desk doing some calculations. Then, out of the blue, you smell Oppie’s pipe behind you. Now, that is real stress!”

(By the way, George was one of the kindest persons I have ever met.)

Hans Bethe told me two things I have never forgotten. The first is obvious to nuclear physicists, but utterly misunderstood by politicians.

U.S. President Truman proved that when — speaking of the Russians — he declared that the “Mongols” were not smart enough to build an atomic bomb.

Bethe, as the Los Alamos Primer makes crystal clear, said there is only one secret about the atomic bomb — and it is this: it can be built.

After Hiroshima, there was no secret left. Everyone knew there was a solution to the problem. Full stop.

Bethe’s second point is one I believe has never been debated adequately to this day.

He said that Hiroshima may, or may not,  have been justified. But in his mind, Nagasaki was without a doubt a war crime. I fully agree.

Moreover, I understand that the U. S. had intercepted messages revealing that Japan was going to surrender prior to August 6 1945. Therefore, I also regard the Hiroshima bombing as a war crime.

Dropping the A bomb was completely unnecessary. The Japanese were already defeated and the U.S. president knew that they were ready to surrender.

Eighty years on, the mushroom clouds over Hiroshima and Nagasaki still cast a long shadow — not just over Japan, but over the conscience of the world.

The atomic bomb, by its very nature, violates the customs and general principles of International Humanitarian Law. It does not distinguish between soldier and civilian, nor do its effects end when the fighting stops.

We can debate strategy, geopolitics, and the logic of deterrence, but in the end, what remains are the lives lost and the precedent set.

If we cannot call such acts what they are — war crimes — we risk learning nothing from them, and repeating these horrors in some future moment of fear and folly.

Perhaps sooner than we dare to imagine…

REFERENCES

Revisiting The Los Alamos Primer — Physics Today

The Los Alamos Primer — Original pdf

Nagasaki mayor warns of nuclear war 80 years after atomic bomb attack — BBC

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80 Years Ago — From Victory to Atrocity : Remembering the War Crimes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

“I returned to civilization shortly after that and went to Cornell to teach, and my first impression was a very strange one. (…) I sat in a restaurant in New York, for example, and I looked out at the buildings and I began to think, you know, about how much the radius of the Hiroshima bomb damage was and so forth. (…) I would see people building a bridge, or they’d be making a new road, and I thought, they’re crazy, they just don’t understand, they don’t understand. Why are they making new things? It’s so useless.”

Richard Feynman
Nobel Prize in Physics (1965)