Historical revisionists cannot win all the debates… but they believed the issue of Hiroshima/Nagasaki was open and shut. Impressionable undergraduates inundated with nonsense about Japanese intent to surrender and Truman’s secret agenda to begin the Cold War. Minor Japanese diplomats approaching anonymous Soviet delegates with talk of negotiating conditional surrender to the US hardly constitute serious overtures to peace. Truman issued the Potsdam declaration, the defeated Empire of Japan had to surrender unconditionally. This was the policy of Roosevelt, which Truman was merely executing. The Japanese ignored him….. So Truman unleashed the Atomic Bomb.
“It was to spare the Japanese people from utter destruction that the ultimatum of July 26 was issued at Potsdam. Their leaders promptly rejected that ultimatum. If they do not now accept our terms they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth.” August 6, 1945
There was no haphazard decision-making… from Truman or his staff. Deliberate and sober statistical analysis led to the decision to use the atomic bomb. The only argument Liberal historians can make is that the United States should have accepted conditional surrender from an enemy that initiated the conflict. This course would have remanded the wishes of Liberal icon Franklin Roosevelt. Per their usual, revisionists must have crucial debate points both ways.
Practically Historical 