"The atomic bomb is too dangerous to be loose in a lawless world. That is why Great Britain, Canada and the United States, who have the secret of its production, do not intend to reveal that secret until means have been found to control the bomb so as to protect ourselves and the rest of the world from the danger of total destruction."
The rationale for using the bombs in 1945 was to prevent what was widely believed to be a bloodier invasion of the Japanese mainland. But that has been questioned from the start, and proponents of the use of the bomb have been raising the estimate of lives saved ever since. If one is to defend the use of the atomic bomb, I suppose, any lives that are saved, even if it is only one or two, not hundreds of thousands or millions, is justifiable.
But then we start getting into complicated math — because there were casualties, between 50,000 and 150,000 initial civilian casualties, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. It is hard to be precise. Harry Truman had been told that a quick resolution of the war in the Pacific would save about 200,000 soldiers who could be expected to be lost in an invasion of Japan.
If you are of the opinion that all lives matter, though, even if the civilian casualties were the low–end figure, that would produce a much smaller net gain than simply focusing on the invasion that was prevented.
But that is just one part of the story, and it really only compares apples to oranges. The estimated casualties from an invasion would be accumulated over weeks and months of painstakingly capturing ground from a determined enemy; the civilian casualties I just cited came from the bombs' immediate detonations. To be more accurate, you would have to include those who died weeks and months later from radiation poisoning, which would further reduce the number of lives that were presumably saved.
Those who supported the use of the bomb kept raising the estimate over the years; recent estimates have been in the millions.
Of course, the whole subject of how many lives were saved by dropping two atomic bombs 70 years ago is a purely hypothetical one — and, as a rule, I prefer to avoid hypotheticals. What really is of greater importance is where we are now, seven decades later.
I suppose the nuclear technology that was born in World War II could not have remained secret for long, especially when you consider that so many scientists on both sides had been trying to harness the power of the atom; showing the world what the bomb could do may well have made the world, as some people claimed, safer — for awhile.
Until other countries began to get the technology, by legitimate or illegitimate means, and that was inevitable because, throughout history, unconventional weapons have, in time, become conventional weapons. It might have been delayed for a time by withholding the revelation from the public — but it could never have been kept under wraps forever.
That visual display of the bombs going off — and the photographs of victims that circulated later — may have been more valuable than anyone knew in preventing the use of nuclear weapons in the last 70 years. As more nations have joined the nuclear club, a sense of the awesome responsibility in their hands seems to have come with it. Perhaps that has been because, until fairly recently, everyone who acquired nuclear technology felt the weight of a moral obligation not to use it.
But now nations that sponsor terrorism are acquiring the technology, and I fear they will not hesitate to use it. They have already expressed their objectives, and the annihilation of perceived enemies is at the top of their lists. They have made no attempt to conceal their intention, and the United States has made no real attempt to prevent them from achieving it.
The "secret" to which Truman referred has been out for a long time, and there is much work to be done if his pledge to "control the bomb" is to be fulfilled.
"Outside in the passageway, Dr. (Joseph) Goebbels, (Martin) Bormann and a few others waited. In a few moments a revolver shot was heard. They waited for a second one, but there was only silence. After a decent interval they quietly entered the fuehrer's quarters. They found the body of Adolf Hitler sprawled on the sofa dripping blood. He had shot himself in the mouth. At his side lay Eva Braun. Two revolvers had tumbled to the floor, but the bride had not used hers. She had swallowed poison."
William L. Shirer The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
World War II and Adolf Hitler and the Nazis all came before my time so I only know what I have read or seen in documentaries.
It was real for my parents, though. They were not quite grown when the war began, not even when the war ended, but they were old enough to know who was fighting and what the stakes were.
And when the news that Hitler had committed suicide 70 years ago today reached them, they must have known that the war in Europe would be over soon.
I don't know if that means they felt the war in general was over — or if they realized that the war in the Pacific continued.
My guess is that, in 1945, most people who were old enough to remember Pearl Harbor knew there would still be a fight to finish in the Pacific. There was considerable angst about the prospect of an invasion of Japan — widely believed in April 1945 to be the only way to end the fighting but just as widely believed to be likely to claims hundreds of thousands of American lives in the process.
The Japanese were determined fighters, and no one thought they would go down easily. The invasion of Japan was expected to be won by whoever was the last man standing.
But that was a matter to consider some other time. Seventy years ago today, Hitler was dead, and the German surrender was only days away.
Hitler's death, TIME magazine recalls, was shrouded in mystery.
"It wasn't immediately clear what had happened on April 30, 1945," wrote TIME. "This much the world knew: Adolf Hitler was gone, one way or another."
And Hitler had been at the core of Nazi Germany. The tide had turned against the Nazis — it was why Hitler committed suicide — and, when Hitler was gone, all motivation to continue fighting was gone, too.
Questions remain, though, about Hitler's final hours, even after seven decades. Was his suicide the last act of an irrational man who had been waiting vainly for the arrival of Nazi troops who never came? Or was it the cool, deliberate act of a man who had considered all the possible endings to the scenario and concluded suicide was the best choice? The people who were with him in the bunker insist they heard a single gunshot — and that Eva Braun's revolver was not fired. Papers in the Russians' files indicated that Hitler poisoned himself. Were both accounts true? Did Hitler shoot himself after (or while) biting down on the poison capsule? Or did someone else pull the trigger?
We'll probably never know — and it really doesn't matter, does it?
My parents were both teenagers when, 70 years ago today, President Franklin D. Roosevelt died of a massive cerebral hemorrhage in Warm Springs, Ga. He was 63 years old.
Like millions of other teenage Americans, my parents could not remember a time when FDR had not been president — and, unless the 22nd Amendment is repealed, theirs will be the only generation like that. No succeeding president will ever be able to serve more than 10 years; if circumstances ever do permit one person to serve as president for 10 years (which can only happen if a vice president succeeds a president who has just under half of his current term left and then is elected to two four–year terms), it will be nearly, but not quite, as long as FDR's actual tenure turned out to be. Roosevelt was elected to four four–year terms, but he died only a few months into his fourth term so he wound up serving 12 years, not 16.
The authors of the 22nd Amendment made it clear the restriction would not apply to whoever was president when it became the law of the land. So Harry Truman, who succeeded Roosevelt and was the president when the 22nd Amendment was ratified in 1951, could have served more than 10 years. Truman, of course, did go on to win a four–year term of his own in 1948, but his popularity had deteriorated so by 1952 that Truman chose not to run again.
Thirty years from now, we may be able to find out if the New York Times was correct when it wrote, following FDR's death, "Men will thank God on their knees a hundred years from now that Franklin D. Roosevelt was in the White House."
That story is yet to be written, of course, and I often doubt that it ever will, so little regard do most people seem to have for history anymore. By the time 2045 rolls around, it is possible that few people will remember his name, let alone his actual existence. There will be fewer still who will remember him as a living, breathing human being who led his country through its worst economic crisis and a war to stop fascism.
Here's a tip for anyone who may be reading this 30 years from now: Those who are alive in 2045 who want to know more about FDR's life and death should read Jim Bishop's book, "FDR's Last Year: April 1944 to April 1945." It is likely that those who read it will learn more about FDR and the decisions he made (and why he made them) than nearly all Americans knew at the time.
That isn't unusual, I suppose. At one time or another, every administration must operate in secret. Some do cross the line and use unlawful tactics, though, so a republic must remain forever wary, and the press must never lose sight of its primary role — watchdog.
Of course, there are certain things that were long considered personal and off limits that are not that way anymore. The members of the press who covered FDR knew that he was handicapped, but they never mentioned it in their articles nor did they photograph FDR in a way that showed the heavy leg braces he wore or the wheelchair in which he sat.
And it seems no one outside Roosevelt's inner circle knew that the woman with whom he had been having an affair for two decades, Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, was with him at the Little White House, the cottage where he had stayed when he came to bathe and exercise in the natural spring waters of western Georgia, when he died. In spite of reports of an affair between FDR and an unnamed woman — and the mention in a book by FDR secretary Grace Tully, who was also there, of Rutherfurd as one who was present when Roosevelt died — the affair itself wasn't public knowledge until the 1966 publication of a book written by a former Roosevelt aide.
Over the years, I have become convinced that the story of Franklin D. Roosevelt should be a cautionary tale for presidents and their doctors. Indeed, in some ways, I guess it has. Bishop's book showed that the president's doctor knew FDR was dying, could see it in his face and body, for at least a year before Roosevelt finally died, but he did not stop Roosevelt from doing many of the things that were accelerating his decline. Presidential physicians seem to have more authority with their patients now.
Bishop's passage about the moment when FDR was stricken paints a vivid domestic picture of a spring afternoon. It was lunch time, and Roosevelt was posing for artist Elizabeth Shoumatoff, who was painting his portrait. It seemed like a fairly ordinary kind of lazy afternoon when Roosevelt began rubbing his temples. "I have a terrific headache," he said, almost in a whisper, then slumped and his hand fell to his side.
One of the women on hand thought perhaps the president had dropped something and asked him what he had dropped. Roosevelt's eyes were on Rutherfurd who was standing straight ahead, Bishop wrote, then he slipped into unconsciousness. Shoumatoff screamed and never got back to the portrait she had been painting as the folks on hand focused all their energies on trying to save the president's life. For the last 70 years, her painting has been known as the "Unfinished Portrait."
As a veteran of newsrooms, I have often wondered what it must have been like for people who were working on days when important, truly historic events, like the death of a president, occurred out of the blue. Oh, I've had my share of races with the deadline clock, but there haven't been any major unexpected events on days when I have been at work at a newspaper. So it was that I read with interest Val Lauder's recollections of being a young copygirl for the old Chicago Daily News, an afternoon daily, when FDR died. When the news came racing across the newswire, she wrote, the newsroom was sucked into "the silence of shock."
Newsrooms are noisy places. When a cloak of silence descends upon one, it becomes an eerie place.
Then, like an aftershock, the newsroom sprang into action. "The Daily News, an afternoon newspaper, was strictly limited in the hours it could publish," Lauder wrote. "Only an hour or so remained for EXTRAs."
Observing that "I knew clips would be needed," Lauder made a beeline for the newspaper's morgue. A newspaper morgue isn't a place where bodies are kept (well, I guess that is a matter of opinion); it is or was, basically, a newspaper's library where clips and photos were kept in file folders (perhaps they are now extinct, like photographers' dark rooms, with everything being stored digitally).
Anyway, Lauder discovered there was a lot of material on FDR but not so much on the new president, Harry Truman. It reminded me of the first time Ross Perot ran for president. I was working for an afternoon daily in Texas, and we had just finished putting together that day's paper and the presses were running when the news came that Perot was officially in.
It was a chance for the managing editor to go to the pressroom and say something I've always wanted to say — "Stop the presses!"
Which he did.
And I was dispatched to gather information from our morgue for a story on Perot — but I found, when I went to the morgue, that the material we had on Perot was sparse, even though Perot had been a prominent Texan who had been making news as an entrepreneur for 30 years. We went with the newswire story instead.
By the way, an observation here: From time to time, a populist candidate like Perot will gather some momentum, presumably on the logic that, as a political neophyte, such a candidate has not been corrupted by the system. For some, there is a desire to return to the days when it seems it was possible for someone to rise from the ranks of ordinary civilian to the highest office in the land. But political neophytes are apt to make mistakes, which is why they almost never win the presidency — unless they happen to be General Eisenhower fresh from winning World War II against the Nazis.
And which is why I don't think a Ben Carson candidacy will get very far, regardless of what some have told me.
But I digress.
For those who had been close to Franklin D. Roosevelt, his death 70 years ago today was a loss, but it may not have been a surprise. For the rest of the nation, though, it must have been a shock. Roosevelt's appearance clearly had changed in his 12 years in the White House, but many people could rationalize that as normal aging. In the aftermath of his death, they had to come to terms with some unpleasant facts.
The Dearborn (Mich.) Press & Guide probably summed things up for many when it wrote recently, "This year marks the 70th anniversary of several events huge in our nation’s history. None stunned us more than the sudden death in office of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt ..."
It was a milestone in mass communication, though, as the Press & Guide observed: "It had been 22 years since President Warren G. Harding had died in office in 1923, and there were no networks then. Radio news, if there was such a thing, meant an announcer grabbed a newspaper and read it on the air. ... In 1945, within minutes of the 5:47 p.m., Eastern time, INS announcement, the sad message had been flashed to a nation."
The next time that a president died in office — John F. Kennedy in 1963 — many Americans got the news and followed the developing story on television.
We've had no presidential deaths since then, but the next time we have one, my guess is that most Americans will get the news via the internet — or whatever technology is dominant at the time.
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
George Santayana (1863–1952)
This week, we observed the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz at the end of World War II. The day of the liberation by Russian troops — Jan. 27, 1945 — is commemorated annually as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
It is an appropriate time and Auschwitz an appropriate place to mark this anniversary. It has a unique significance, being the site of the first executions in what was to have been the Nazis' "final solution."
It was before my time so I have no firsthand knowledge, but I guess this was the first time that most people in the Allied countries realized what had been happening in the camps. If so, it probably came as quite a shock to some folks. Must have been hard to imagine how one group of people could be so hostile — so savage — in its treatment of another group. Sadly, it really isn't hard to imagine. Man has always been capable of great cruelty. Read your history.
I guess no one will ever know the actual figures, but the widely accepted casualty number is 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust. It is further estimated that one in six Jews who died in the Holocaust died at Auschwitz. Could there be a more appropriate day or place to remember what happened?
Well, remembering is the problem for some Auschwitz survivors. If you happen to meet an Auschwitz survivor today, he or she likely was a teenager — or younger — when the camp was liberated. You can still find a few who were in their 20s when the camp was liberated, and there may be a few who were 30 or so, but they would have to be 100 or older by now.
Before long, they will all be gone. No one who lived through it will be alive to tell the tale, making it all the easier for those who deny the Holocaust to press their case.
Those Auschwitz survivors fear that the past will be forgotten, opening the door for it to happen again. It is only natural, I suppose, for them to fear renewed persecution of the Jews — it's been going on for centuries — but those who love freedom should be concerned as well.
For if one group is persecuted, none are safe. If rights are denied to some, they can be denied to all.
That is why America must remain vigilant.
The modern enemies of freedom do not wear the uniform of a country and are therefore harder to see when they are in our midst "hiding in plain sight." But they are there. Of that, you may be sure.
And they will not be defeated until we face facts and call them what they are. This isn't a religious war. But every extremist group has at least one characteristic that its members have in common with each other. In this case, it happens to be devotion to an extreme religious doctrine. For America to preserve its way of life, it will have to confront the enemies of freedom
There is always an extreme characteristic. No more searching for euphemisms that hide the truth.
It is the anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camp at Auschwitz in January 1945.
It was actually a system — a network, if you will — of camps in parts of Poland. It was the largest of the German concentration camps and arguably the most notorious.
The Nazis, history tells us, committed all kinds of atrocities.
Not every atrocity for which they were responsible was committed in every place — but all the repugnant, barbaric, offensive acts ever committed by the Nazis were committed within the walls of Auschwitz — mass murder, human medical experimentation, slave labor, everything. It all happened at Auschwitz.
It is virtually impossible to document how many people were killed at Auschwitz, but the figure that has been agreed upon by most is 1.1 million. In the process of arriving at that figure, the number tended to vary considerably, a point that has often been seized upon by those who deny that the Holocaust ever occurred.
Most such denials have been discredited.
When the camp was liberated by the Russians, one of those liberated prisoners was a man named Elie Wiesel, a writer and, eventually, a Nobel Prize winner who had been, the Nobel committee said, a "messenger to mankind."
On the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Wiesel gave a speech there, saying, "Close your eyes and listen. Listen to the silent screams of terrified mothers, the prayers of anguished old men and women. Listen to the tears of children. Jewish children, a beautiful little girl among them, with golden hair, whose vulnerable tenderness has never left me. Look and listen as they walk towards dark flames so gigantic that the planet itself seemed in danger."
Those are the words of one who has gazed into the gaping jaws of hell — and, somehow, has survived.
Ordinarily, I suppose it is overly dramatic to assert that everything changed on a given day.
There have been few things in human history that were powerful enough to sweep away the old order the minute they came into existence.
But that certainly seems to have been the case on this day 65 years ago, when the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on a densely populated city (Hiroshima, Japan), killing tens of thousands of people instantly and condemning tens of thousands more to die in the years ahead from radiation poisoning and burns.
On this day in 1945, an old friend of mine wrote on Facebook today, "there was a bright flash of light and 80,000 people, men, women and children, were suddenly, instantly incinerated. They were the lucky ones."
I suppose that is a matter of opinion, but it seems to be beyond dispute that what happened on this day 65 years ago changed the course of human events.
Forever.From that day forward, the world truly was a different place. As the years went by, the United States ceased to be the only nation that possessed nuclear weapons. Others joined the club — Russia, China, Britain, France — and the earth's inhabitants learned to live with the knowledge their country could be obliterated in a matter of minutes.
I hadn't been born when "Little Boy" was dropped on Hiroshima 65 years ago today. In fact, my parents were merely teenagers themselves — and they may or may not have realized the significance of what was happening.
In hindsight, that may be hard to understand. After all, nuclear weapons have dominated our lives for more than six decades — perhaps not as much now as they did before the breakup of the Soviet Union 20 years ago, although concerns have been expressed in recent years that terrorists may acquire and use "dirty" bombs.
However, in the context of that day in 1945, I wonder, did my parents realize how radically things would be altered? For that matter, while I'm sure it was clear to most adults that a new and powerful force had been unleashed, how many of them knew just how far–reaching its influence would be?
After the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, a debate began over whether horrific casualties had been avoided, which was the main reason that President Truman gave for dropping the bombs in the first place.
And he said that it had been payment in kind for the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor less than four years earlier — although he tended to emphasize the more humane objective of saving lives (by avoiding an invasion of Japan) over the desire for revenge.
But both seem to have played roles in the decision.
"Having found the bomb we have used it. We have used it against those who attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten and executed American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare. We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans. We shall continue to use it until we completely destroy Japan's power to make war."
I've always been fascinated by the concept of time travel.
If time travel was a reality, I'm guessing that the last week of April in 1945 would be a popular destination. That was when World War II was coming to an end in Europe.
Tomorrow, for example, is the 65th anniversary of the wedding of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun in the bunker in Berlin where they killed themselves the next day. On that same day, American troops liberated Dachau.
And, on this day in 1945, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and his mistress, Clara Petacci, were executed by a firing squad. Their bodies were brought to Milan the next day, where they were hung upside down on hooks from a gas station's roof. This was in keeping with a medieval practice of hanging criminals by their feet.
The dangling corpses of Mussolini, Petacci and other officials were stoned by observers who vented their anger at being betrayed by a leader they had once loved.
Mussolini was in power for more than 20 years. During that time, Italy saw its old economic problems resolved by fascism — and countless others created by it.
I suppose it was due, in part, to a desire to resolve these new issues that Mussolini forged an uneasy relationship with Adolf Hitler. Hitler considered Mussolini (who rose to power a decade before Hitler did) to be an influence, but Mussolini was uncomfortable with Hitler, particularly when it came to the subject of race. Germans accused Italians of being "mongrelized," and Mussolini responded by questioning whether the Aryan race was as pure as the Nazis contended that it was.
Nevertheless, Italy joined Germany and Japan in signing the Tripartite Pact, the original basis for the Axis alliance.
Italy surrendered in 1943, more than a year before either Germany or Japan. The situation had grown progressively worse for the Italian people since the outbreak of the war, and discontent with Mussolini reached the point that when he was removed from power by the king and placed under arrest, they offered little, if any, resistance. German troops rescued Mussolini from being handed over to the Allies, per the Italian armistice agreement, and Mussolini was a puppet ruler for the remainder of the war.
Sixty–five years ago today, the Italian people — and the people of the world — were rid of him, once and for all.
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act but a habit."
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
"Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn."
Unknown
"Everything in life can teach you a lesson. You just have to be willing to observe and learn."
Howard Arnold Walter (1883-1918)
"I would be true, for there are those who trust me; I would be pure, for there are those who care; I would be strong, for there is much to suffer; I would be brave, for there is much to dare."
"In the best of times, our days are numbered anyway. So it would be a crime against nature for any generation to take the world crisis so solemnly that it put off enjoying those things for which we were designed in the first place: the opportunity to do good work, to enjoy friends, to fall in love, to hit a ball and to bounce a baby."
Unknown
"If you're lucky enough to get a second chance at something, don't waste it."
Harry Truman (1884-1972)
"It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit."
George Carlin (1937-2008)
"I've got this real moron thing I do. It's called thinking. And I'm not really a good American because I like to form my own opinions. I don't just roll over when I'm told to. Sad to say, most Americans just roll over on command. Not me. I have certain rules I live by. My first rule, I don't believe anything the government tells me."
Stephen King (1947- )
"People who try hard to do the right thing always seem mad."
Dr. Seuss
"Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You."
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)
"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face."
Groucho Marx (1890-1977)
"Whatever it is, I'm against it."
Mel Brooks (1926- )
"If Shaw and Einstein couldn't beat death, what chance have I got? Practically none."
Edward R. Murrow (1908-65)
"The speed of communications is wondrous to behold. It is also true that speed can multiply the distribution of information that we know to be untrue."
Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)
"Every man is my superior in that I may learn from him."
Confucius (551-479 B.C.)
"It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop."
Ancient proverb
"Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad."
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction."
Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)
"Where they burn books, at the end they also burn people."
Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007)
"The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers. The people don't acknowledge this. They claim membership in two imaginary parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, instead."
I got my bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Arkansas, and I got my master's degree in journalism from the University of North Texas. Most of my adult life has been dedicated to writing and editing in one form or another. Most recently I have taught writing (news and developmental) as an adjunct journalism professor at Richland College, where I advise the student newspaper staff. Go, Thunderducks!
