Ending the War with Japan: Paul Nitze's "Early Surrender" Counterfactual

Reassessing Truman, the bomb, and revisionism: The burlesque frame and entelechy in the decision to use atomic weapons against Japan

“…Like Newman (1994Newman ( , 1995aNewman ( , 1995b, I also find many counterfactual claims being made by these revisionists. However, I do not intend to discount the discoveries and work of revisionists as "Monday-morning quarterbacking of scholars long after the event" (Holley, 1995, p. 53) because such a position tends to dismiss any new ideas that grow after the exposure of previously undiscovered or ignored information.…”

“…and in press articles (Blute, 1995;Holley, 1995;McManus, 1995;Newman, 1994;Polmar & Allen, 1995;Roberts, 1994;Rosenfeld, 1995;Van de Velde, 1995). Newman (1995b) calls these revisionists a cult and argues that their contemporary popularity stems from a memory more informed by Vietnam than by World War II, from an open desire to oppose nuclearism via rewriting atomic history, and from a frame interested in determining culpability for the world's current nuclear condition.…”

“…However, Newman (1995a) has called the possibility of early surrender counterfactual. He explains that "Truman had no good reason to believe" (1995b, p. 57) that altering the demand for unconditional surrender would result in Japanese capitulation.…”

“…As Taylor (1992) has showed, technical imperatives drove the development of the bomb; similarly, bureaucratic and discursive trajectories prevented Truman from seeing another way out of the war in the Pacific. While the main battles over the history of Truman's decision have been fought by concerned veterans and historians, recently communication scholars concerned with rhetoric, Truman (Hikins, 1983;Medhurst, 1988;Newman, 1995aNewman, , 1995b, and our nuclear age (Bjork, 1988(Bjork, , 1992Mechling & Mechling, 1991Taylor, 1990Taylor, , 1992Taylor, , 1993aTaylor, , 1993bWilliams, 1988) have started to look at rhetorical influences on nascent moments in our history. This article continues this line of research by drawing attention to how rhetorical frames can so dominate a discourse as to make meaningful search for alternatives difficult.…”

Moral Judgments and Wars of the Twentieth Century

“…Unfortunately none of the critics went to the basic data. The Nitze report was a complete fraud, but its exposure began in earnest only in 1995 (Newman 1995a;Gentile 2001 (1931)(1932)(1933)(1934)(1935)(1936)(1937)(1938)(1939)(1940)(1941)(1942)(1943)(1944)(1945) between China and Japan, the Japanese had virtually killed over 30 million Chinese, nearly 90 percent of them being innocent civilians, more than the casualties of all our Allies in World War II combined, no Chinese Holocaust which is doubtless worse than that of the Jewish has been planned in your exhibit. Any discussion on war in Asia without due emphasis on the Sino-Japanese War is a distortion of truth and history.…”