1995-07-30: Black Rain in a Red Sky: The Legacy of Hiroshima

Transcription:
Leffler {UVA)
Kaufman {VPI)
With-Good Reason
Volume III, Number XXXI
Black Rain in a Red Sky: The Legacy of Hiroshima
Greeting
It was the doomsday weapon, the one that would end all wars. But
certainly the second world war, where it was first employed to
devastating, horrific results; nightmares that still today, fifty
years later, haunt us. As we'll explore next on With Good
Reason. I'm David Andelman.
Music
Background
Their code names were "Little Man" and "Fat Boy" and with their
explosion fifty years ago over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in a
blinding flash and killing fields never before known to mankind,
the nuclear age was born. It grew to maturity, nourished by the
paranoia and panic of the cold war. Both sides, communist and
capitalist, Russia and the United States, scrambling frantically
for supremacy in the first weapon that gave mankind the power to
end life on earth as we know it.
Now suddenly we are faced with an even greater challenge: How to
put the genie back in the bottle. For this extraordinary power
that was designed through the nuclear balance of terror to end
all wars, is suddenly in the grasp of international thugs and
terrorists, who are governed by none of the moral scruples or the
gee-political restraints of those who have controlled the weapons
of mass destruction until now.
Now, fifty years later we've gathered two experts in the origins
of the nuclear age to reflect a bit on its past and the lessons
for the future from this half-century in the shadow of the bomb.
Burton Kaufman is chair of the history department at Virginia
Tech. Melvyn Leffler chairs the history department at the
University of Virginia.
INTERVIEW
Andel.mm
Professor Leffler, let's begin with you since you've just
returned from Japan fifty years after Hiroshima. What are the
Japanese attitudes right now on this 50th anniversary of the
bomb? Where do they think the nuclear world is going and where
its come from and what lessons do they draw from it?
Leffler
Well the Japanese clearly feel that they were uniquely
victimized. And the Japanese do not feel, of course I'm
generalizing, but many Japanese do not feel that the equivalency
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that Americans often talk about between Pearl Harbor and
Hiroshima is an equivalency at all because they would say that
Pearl Harbor was a military target. Hiroshima meant the
destruction of tens of thousands of civilian lives. The lesson
that most Japanese still draw from that experience however is a
commitment to keep themselves free of nuclear weapons and to try
to ensure a more peaceful, you might say "non-nuclear", world
order. Certainly that is the greatest lesson I think has been
integrated into Japanese political culture as a result of the war
itself.
Andelman
There seems to be considerable. controversy now over the
whole question of the bomb itself and particularly by veterans
groups that have protested this exhibition at the Smithsonian
commemorating the Enola Gay. What's wrong with how we have
actually remembered this era?
Kaufman
Historians themselves still debate the issue of dropping,
whether we should have dropped the atomic bomb or not. I think
most historians, not all by any means, but most historians
believe that Truman dropped the bomb essentially for the reasons
that he said he was dropping the bomb. That while alternatives,
while there were alternatives to dropping the bomb, that there
were good reasons to exclude those alternatives. That while the
bomb did not save a million American lives as had been suggested
by Truman and others, that in fact it probably saved somewhere
between what, twenty-five and fifty thousand I think, American
lives.
Andelman
Are you suggesting that in fact as few as twenty-five to
fifty-thousand American lives would have been lost with an
American invasion, a direct American invasion of the Japanese
home islands?
Kaufman
The latest figures suggest that's right.
Leffler
Let me just emphasize that these are, the points that Bert
Kaufman just made, are not points that historians imposed
retrospectively. What have historians have found, finally, are
the actual planning documents and assessments of casualties that
were being undertaken by-various committees of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff in June, July, and August of 1945. The point to be made
is that the contemporary estimates of the highest military
officials in the United States during the spring and summer of
1945 is that there would only be somewhere between thirty
thousand and a hundred thousand casualties. The figure that most
Americans emphasize, that is a million casualties or a half-
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million dead, are statements that were made by top policy makers
like President Truman and Secretary of War Henry Stinson after
the war to justify their actions. Nonetheless, there is still a
question of whether Japanese lives would have been save by not
using the atomic bomb. Because if there had been another six or
eight weeks of conventional bombing, the toll taken from
conventional bombing might well have equalled the deaths at
Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Andelman
The Japanese are the only major world power with no access
to a nuclear weapon. Intentionally it would appear, yet they've
managed to survive, in fact prosper without it. Is there a
lesson to be learned there?
Leffler
The lesson, there is a lesson here and that is the Japanese
have been able over the last forty or fifty years to devote their
expertise, their most sophisticated personnel to peaceful
pursuits with regard to economic growth and technological
innovation. The Japanese economy has not been burdened with a
large military budget. All of this clearly has enabled the
Japanese to make very significant economic gains in comparison
with other major industrialized nations like the United States.
Andelman
Right but there's another issue as well and Professor
Kaufman, you've looked at the Eisenhower years in some detail and
this certainly happened during this period. The Japanese have
never really been confronted with any sort of, shall we say,
"nuclear blackmail", either from the major powers or from any,
you know, terrorist state, throughout their history. Is that
because they never made a gesture towards obtaining the bomb?
Kaufman
No, I don't think they would have, it would have been
permissible for them to develop the bomb. I think Mel's position
is well taken, as a matter of fact there has been some pressure
recently on the Japanese to increase their defense spending and
there's been terrific opposition against it, awkwardly from Japan
itself. The United States is a superpower, considering itself
the defender of the free world from the Soviet menace, indeed
felt it had to develop its military.
Andelman
How different do you think the cold war would have been in a
pre-nuclear age, if neither side had a nuclear weapon of this
type?
Leffler
Well it certainly would have developed very differently.
Exactly what course it would have taken is really hard to know.
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But what we do know for certain, especially in light of recently
opened materials from Russia is that Soviet leaders and
particularly Stalin had enormous respect for America's
technological superiority and for the United States' possession
of the atomic bomb. Clearly the atomic monopoly that the United
States enjoyed from 1945 to 1949 both deterred the Soviets and
paradoxicly exacerbated their fears and hastened their own
conunitment to developing their atomic bomb and then developing a
significant strategic arsenal.
Andelman
I guess the key issue is that early on in the nuclear age,
would the United States in fact have used the bomb again after
Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Professor Kaufman we were talking
before about the issue of Korea, which you've written about, I
believe, and whether Truman really did consider at any point
using the bomb afterwards.
ICauf:man
Yeah, there's some significant evidence that Truman at least
twice gave very serious consideration to using the bomb.
Andelman
But he didn't.
Kaufman
But he didn't. He didn't for a number of reasons, including
the pressure of our allies. The question also of how would you
use the atom bomb? What response would it produce? Would the
Chinese have responded to the dropping of the bomb? But clearly
he thought about it, particularly during the worst months
following the Chinese invasion.
Andelman
So why given that restraint, apparent restraint on the part
of the United States, did the Soviets still believe that the
United States might use the bomb since clearly when our back was
to the wall in that case, we didn't?
Kaufman
Well the possibility though is always there. And Eisenhower
also seriously considered using both strategic and tactical
nuclear weapons. And there are other instances that historians
have pointed to during Eisenhower's administration where
consideration at least was given to using the atom bomb. The
issue that you raised earlier though is an interesting one, it's
a historical debate today over whether the bomb produced what
some historians have called "the long peace", I know Mel is very
familiar with that argument, or whether it exacerbated the cold
war. It elevated the tensions and led to or came close to going
over the brink, in Cuba for example.
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Andelman
But if in retrospect, if we had left Stalin and his
successors alone, if we'd given them the cold shoulder instead of
the cold war, would the end really have been that substantially
different? Or if we had simply built, if we had developed the
Marshall Plan as simply a device to build up the economies of
western europe and so on but without attaching any of the
political, military significance to this.
Leffler
But this is why it's so important to look at these issues in
depth because they are inunensely complicated and it's very
important for people to understand how diplomatic and economic
initiatives often have profound military and strategic
implications even when they are not intended as such. Briefly
stated for example, the United States and Great Britain starting
in 1946 and '47 put a great emphasis on the rebuilding of the
West German economy. This was deemed essential in order to
recreate prosperity throughout the rest of Western Europe. You
could not rebuild the French economy or the economy of Belgium
and Holland without also revitalizing the German economy.
However, no one knew whether the new Germany after World War II
would be a peaceful Germany or a belligerent Germany. Now,
clearly the Soviets perceived our actions in Germany as
indirectly threatening themselves because they themselves did not
know what this new Germany portended. So hence here you see how
clearly an economic and diplomatic and political initiative with
regard to Germany nevertheless has significant political and
military and strategic implications for neighboring nations.
Kaufman
It may have been a lost opportunity of the 1950's following
the death of Stalin to improve relations between east and west.
But the Soviet Union wanted a neutralized, de-militarized Germany
and the didn't get that.
Andelman
Well as a student of Eisenhower, Professor Kaufman, it's
hard for me to understand how someone who could have worked so
closely as the Supreme Allied Commander during World War II could
have so misjudged the Russians really and particularly their
military capabilities which after the war they really, they were
prostrate. And yet we regarded them as an extraordinarily
dangerous and hostile power for so long.
Kaufman
I'm not so sure that Eisenhower underestimated,
overestimated the Soviet Union militarily. But he certainly did
see the Soviet Union as a threat and he saw communism as a
challenge to the American way of life worldwide.
Leffler
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But I would say that Eisenhower and his advisors, much like
Truman and Truman's advisors, placed primacy on the socioeconomic
and ideological threat rather than the military threat. We know
for example that during the middle 1950's that Eisenhower and
Dulles greatly feared the post-Stalinist economic offensive in
the third world. During the mid-1950's Moscow, for the first
time, began giving significant amounts of economic aid to third
world nations. Nations like India. This caused tremendous
amount of consternation in Washington about the prospects of
Soviet maneuvering into key third world nations. The Soviets ...
Andelman
Where they were promptly expelled several years later when
they began excessively meddling in their affairs.
Leffler
That's absolutely correct. That ultimately the Soviet
intrusiveness in many third world nations brought the same
results as had American intrusiveness or Western intrusiveness.
The dominant power was thrown out. What is so interesting and so
important to understand if we look back historically is that
American officials in the 1940's, the 1950's, the 1960's,
themselves had enormous doubts about the appeal of liberalism and
capitalism to third-world nations. Generally speaking, people
like Eisenhower and Dulles and Atchison and Paul Nitzi and many
other officials believed that Marxism, Leninism, would have
enormous appeal to third world nations, for a variety of reasons
that I could get into if you want me to.
Andelman
After a break.
Bridge
On With Good Reason this week we're talking with Melvyn Leffler
of the University of Virginia who's latest book, A Preponderance
of Power, has won the Bancroft Prize for history. And Professor
Burton Kaufman of Virginia Tech who's latest book, The Presidency
of James Earl Carter was preceded by a study of the Korean War,
Challenges and Crisis. credibility and command.
INTERVIEW
Andelman
Let's turn, before we get back to your last point Professor
Leffler, let's turn a bit down toward the present. President
Reagan and Dr. Kissinger have contended that in fact the reason
communism was finally destroyed was that we spent them into
oblivion. True or false?
Leffler
I think that's false.
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Kaufman
I'm not so sure.
Andelman
Good, we have both sides!
Leffler
I think that the main reason communism faltered within the
Soviet Union over the 1960's, '70's and '80's was mainly related
to their inability to compete economicly with western nations and
their inability to provide, the inability of a command economy to
provide the types of goods that people wanted to purchase. But I
don't think American defense spending in and of itself was the
key variable.
Kaufman
I don't disagree with that but I think it's also clear that
what Gorbachev really feared was SDI, he did not want to spend
the money that it would cost. He didn't think the Soviet Union
could afford to spend the money that it would cost to counter the
SDI initiative. He tried time and time again to get Reagan to
back down on SDI such as in Iceland. And Reagan simply said he
wouldn't, Reagan stuck to his guns and said, nNo.n And I think
that had a major impact. Finally Gorbachev I think had to
concede to that. And had to redirect for the reasons that Mel's
indicated, had to redirect resources in a domestic spending
Andelman
The late Alexander Demerange, the longtime head of French
intelligence, believes that the reason communism died was that it
was the only secular religion that promised the arrival and
paradise in this life rather than in the next and that eventually
its adherents could see that it was simply unable to deliver. If
that's the case, didn't we really hasten their demise in fact by
spending them into purgatory?
Kaufman
I have never been in the Soviet Union, I've talked to
colleagues who have and who were there in the middle '80's and
from everything that they've said it's a society that's in a
terrible decay and the decay is everywhere. Complete collapse,
for example, of their medical system. Environmental conditions
are terrible. And really, the Soviet Union had to redirect
resources.
Andelman
Let's talk about the balance of terror that has been the
principal guarantor of peace over the last fifty years since
Hiroshima. Can either of you posit any possible scenario that
might have worked to ensure a stable peace over the past halfcentury.
Any other possible scenario, other than this, that
might have worked?
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Kaufman
That's hard to know except that there were a series of
crisis that we ought not to forget when we talk about the long
peace.
Andelman
But without an atomic weapon would those have ever escalated
to a second World War in your view? Or a third World War, rather?
Leffler
Well I think paradoxicly the possession of atomic and
nuclear weapons impelled both the United States and the Kremlin
to take risks that they might not have taken, but then at the
same time to hesitate to go to the brink of war when crisis
intensified. For example, Vietnam. And they expected that their
strategic superiority would support their diplomacy and their
political influence. When that sometimes did not happen,
American officials were willing to escalate a particular crisis
but never willing to go really to war because of their profound
understanding of the implications of nuclear weapons.
Andelman
But I mean there have been enormous efforts at controlling
nuclear weapons over the past fifty years. What if we had simply
not bothered to do this? Again this goes back to the issue of,
you know, what if we had turned a cold shoulder initially on
Stalin and some of his successors. What if we had just let the
nuclear race run its course. What might have changed, what might
have been different?
Leffler
Well, I think that the efforts certainly have been
worthwhile. Most particularly in terms of contemporary contexts.
The Non-Proliferation Treaty I think has been extraordinarily
important in providing constraints on the exports of technology
to third-world nations who I have no doubt whatsoever would be
inclined to, at least several third world nations would have no
hesitation whatsoever to develop atomic weapons should they be
able to have the capability to do so. I think as well that
efforts to limit both the Soviet and American arsenals paid off
over time because it began to breed a sense of interdependence.
Of a common understanding between the Kremlin and Washington
about the dangers of nuclear weapons.
One lesson that some people draw which I'm not terribly
impressed by is the fact that you did have the proliferation of
weapons, at least among a handful of nations, and yet there was
no nuclear war. Suggesting to some experts that the
proliferation of nuclear weapons actually stimulates caution
amongst the possessors of nuclear weapons. The lesson that I
would like to convey is that the effort to stop the proliferation
of weapons is one of the most important things that the
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possessors of advanced technology can now engage in.
Andelman
Okay, we had a concept called "mutually assured destruction"
which assured the peace, also known as the balance of terror,
which is to say if we, if they use the nuclear weapon against us
they will be assured that they will be destroyed as well, the
other side. What some have suggested is a concept of "certain
destruction", if you will, to guarantee the peace in the post
cold-war era. Which is to say that if a Khadaffi or a Saddam
Hussein or you know some terrorist leader manages to acquire a
weapon of mass destruction that he and his nation will most
assuredly and certainly be destroyed, or his capability of using
it will be destroyed. How realistic is this?
Kaufman
That suggests a type of unity that I don't think exists. I
think it's a very dangerous world right now. Not withstanding
the end of the cold war. I mean Iraq, even the French have been
trying to sell the makings of an atomic bomb to Iraq. There's a
tremendous market for arms throughout the world and there are
sellers as well as buyers.
Andelman
Well it would imply a certain seeding of national
sovereignty and authority to the creation of some sort of an
international police force that would be able to act without
reference to necessarily the parliament.
Leffler
I think the notion that that could come about is really
absurd. If nations can't agree to intervene in places like
Bosnia, how are they going to agree on using nuclear weapons as a
punitive measure?
Andelman
What about all those bomb shelters that we built through the
years? All of these generations of kids, and I was one of them,
who crouched under their desks to prepare for the nuclear attack.
What's going to happen to all of these preparations that we made
for nuclear war, all the scenarios that were posited and so on,
all the wargames that were played. Does any of this have any
value whatsoever in the coming decades?
Kaufman
I have found it almost amazing going back to the late
forties, early fifties, is to see just how afraid Americans were
of a nuclear attack. The types of bomb shelters that were being
built. Bomb shelters with geiger counters inside and outside the
bomb shelters, special clothes to wear. I always found it
difficult to fathom now, especially when there was a more
rational view of the Soviet Union, the Soviet threat, among our
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policy makers.
Leffler
Right, I mean policy makers amongst themselves had a much
more modulated view, I would say a much more reasonable view, of
the Soviet threat, than they generally conveyed to the American
people.
Andelman
Right, which is interesting because reading some of the
papers from the fifties and the debates in the National Security
Council, you see them talking about the need to help the American
people understand the magnitude of the threat at the same time
they are not necessarily themselves paralysed by it. They also
were concerned about budget issues. At one point in the 'S0's,
the early 'S0's, some of the early cabinet meetings or the early
National Security Council meetings with Eisenhower, they were
talking about, "Oh my God, do we actually go to a deficit
financing. Do we actually run a budget deficit to build up our
military capabilities." and there was considerable disagreement
over that apparently.
Kaufman
Eisenhower always believed there was a direct relationship
between the military security and economic security. That
couldn't be militarily strong and economicly weak. Ironicly, his
massive retaliation which is associated with the Eisenhower
administration, the term used not entirely accurately to describe
Eisenhower's foreign policy, was predicated upon cutting back the
cost of defense.
Andelman
Gentlemen, thank you very much.
OUTRO
My guests have been Melvyn Leffler, Chair of the History
Department at the University of Virginia, and Burton Kaufman,
Chair of the History Department at Virginia Tech
. Next week, insects outnumber humans one million to one, but when
we try to control their numbers the bugs win every time. Tune in
for a discussion of managing the insect populations.
The project coordinator for With Good Reason is Michael McDowell.
Carolyn Elliott is the producer. John Wilkinson is the assistant
producer. And Kevin Piccini wrote the theme music. I'm David
Andelman. Carolyn Elliott will be back next week.
This program was produced with the help of WCVE, Richmond.
Thanks also to the University of Virginia.
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ANNOUNCER
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MUSIC
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