Countdown 1945: The Extraordinary Story of the Atomic Bomb and the 116 Days that Changed the World, by Chris Wallace, is a look back at the tumultuous five months between the death of FDR in April and the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in August.
Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace looks at the three months preceding the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima. It is a fast, relatively short read (300 pages, big print!) that gives you the impression that you are present at what was happening around the world in the closing days of WW2. Harry Truman, Robert Oppenheimer, the pilots and crew of the B-29 bombers that dropped the bombs, Japanese children living in the target areas, all come alive as he brings us to the inevitable finish of the book and the war.
Truman comes across very well, especially considering that FDR had totally frozen him out of any serious policy discussions, including the work that was being done to develop nuclear weapons. Harry got up to speed quickly, but, like everyone else, was very conflicted about whether to actually use the bomb.
Wallace shows that the effort to come up with an effective weapon depended on everything going right for a long time. The Los Alamos scientific team was literally world-class. Ironically, many of the key scientists were Jews who had fled Europe because of the Nazis.
Truman decided to drop the bomb after being presented with estimates of the troop levels required to take the Japanese homeland. The low end called for 500,000 troops and the high end estimate was 1,000,000 soldiers being involved in the invasion, with casualty rates of 35%. For comparison, the D-Day attack involved 156,000 troops. (Author’s note: My future father was on a ship with the 6th Marine Division headed to Japan for the invasion when the bombs were dropped and the war ended.)
Despite some serious front- and back-channel communication with the Japanese government, it was clear that Japan had no interest in surrendering and would fight to the death. Thus, on August 2,1945, President Truman hand-wrote a two-sentence note to Secretary of War Stimson authorizing the strike.
One really interesting tidbit involved the cost of WW2 as of June, 1945: $280 billion. Compare that to the $2 trillion (with a “t”) cost of the CARES Act that was passed this April to fight the coronavirus.
All in all, this was a very good look at a critical period in American history.
