THIS BOOK, by the priest and cold war historian Wilson D. Miscamble, is a volume in the Cambridge Essential Histories series, which is (according to its statement of purpose) â??devoted to introducing critical events, periods or individuals in history â?¦ through thesis-driven, concise volumes.â? Concise The Most Controversial Decision certainly is: it packs into its 150 pages discussions that other scholars have spent careers grappling with. And it is undeniably thesis-driven. Miscamble has written a full-throated defense of Harry Trumanâ??s decision to drop nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There really was no viable alternative, he says. In a moment of exasperation with the presidentâ??s later-day critics, he exclaims, â??Must we still ask was it right? Must we still wrestle with the morality of the atomic bomb?â? Well, yes, we must.
Miscamble is at his strongest, and most persuasive, in providing the context for Trumanâ??s decision by helping us to understand what the world looked like to the president and his advisers. The truth is that there really was little choice involved. No one high up in policy-making circles ever argued against dropping the bombs. It was wartime; new weapons had been developed; they would be used. As Winston Churchill told Niels Bohr, â??this new bomb is just going to be bigger than our present bombs and involves no difference in the principles of war.â? The controversy came later, after the full impact of nuclear weapons began to be understood. But as Miscamble insists, much of this subsequent criticism is misguided, because it requires the advantage of hindsightâ??along with a large amount of forgetting.
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