Weapons for Victory: The Hiroshima Decision

by Robert James Maddox

Book Overview

The highly acclaimed Weapons for Victory originally appeared in 1995, the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II. Now, in this paperback edition, Robert James Maddox provides a new... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0826215629
• ISBN13: 9780826215628
• Release Date: August 2004
• Publisher: University of Missouri Press
• Length: 215 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A Public Service

Some of the most popular books on the atomic bombing of Japan are filled to a depressing extent with distortions and incaccuracies. These books argue that there was no military necessity to use the bomb. Various nonsensical theories are offered to explain its use e.g.: The bomb was deployed to provide diplomatic leverage against the Soviets or as a result of American racism. These authors routinely take many indisputable facts and ignore or twist them beyond recognition in order to justify their arguments. Robert James Maddox does a great public service by exposing these abuses of truth in Weapons for Victory. Point by point the tendentious butchering of historical source materials is exposed until there is little doubt that the methods used by these writers are the historian's equivalent of junk science. Various quotes, documents and other pieces of information are often used selectively and taken out of context. This process drastically alters the real meaning of these sources as facts are chopped up and forced to conform to predetermined conclusions. Maddox reproduces many of these misused sources in their full context and thereby shows their true meaning to be something quite different than what these authors claim. In addition, many basic facts that contradict the revisionists' claims (and that are usually ignored by them) are recited. For example, it's often said that the Japanese would have surrendered by mid-1945 if they had only been assured that their emperor could remain in place. Drawing on U.S. intercepts of Japanese diplomatic communication, Maddox shows that the Japanese wanted the emperor to remain the actual ruler of Japan, not the figurehead that he became after the surrender. Many other revisionist arguments become farcical after Maddox compares them to the documentary evidence.This book is an indispensable antidote to such widely known and wrongly respected travesties as The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb by Gar Alperovitz and Hiroshima by Ronald Takaki. Weapons for Victory clearly exposes the malpractice of the historian's profession contained in these books. A similar work of equally high quality is Truman and the Hiroshima Cult by Robert P. Newman. The issue here is not about varying interpretations fo history, which are completely legitimate. It is about the proper and responsible use of source materials by certain authors who hold themselves out to the public as careful historians. We should all hope that despite the popular appeal of conspiracy theories and gratuitous America bashing that has propelled many revisionists to fame, good scholarship like Maddox's will still prevail.

A Neccessary Book!

Unfortunately their is so much revisionist junk history about the atomic bomb and the cold war. Nuclear diplomacy, racism and other unfounded theories about the bomb have found their way into textbooks and classrooms. Anyone who does not think Truman used the bomb to end WWII quickly and with less lives lost is simply ignoring the obvious and the evidence. This book helps set the record straight. The decision to use the bomb was simple: to get Japan to stop fighting. Truman wanted to save lives and end the war: end of arguement. This book helps set the record straight.

Must read for anyone interested in the A-bomb decision

Mr. Maddox has done a great service in analyzing the decision to use the atomic bomb on Japan. He systematically demolishes the arguements used by those who (for whatever reason) think that the bombing was unjustified. He shows through intercepted transmissions how the Japanese were ready to commit themselves to a bloodbath to fight off an invasion and how the Japanese military still wanted to fight even after Hiroshima was destroyed. Overall, the book is great work and should be required reading in schools and the Smithsonian Museum.