Ultimate Strategic Leadership Decision: Employing the World's First Atomic Bomb

摘要

After fifty years, the events leading up to historic strategic decision by thePresident of the United States to employ atomic weapons against Japan are still being debated. Because of the controversy over whether the U.S. should have dropped the first atomic bomb, countless publications, newspaper articles and books dealing with this monumental singular event in the history of warfare have been written. Truman's decision crosses the spectrum of the strategic decision making process in dealing with the political, military, economic and moral issues of the day, to include the revisionist's historian interpretations 50 years later. The paper will examine why the bomb was developed, what were the key political/economic and military decision points during the development and employment of this weapon of mass destruction. Additionally, the paper will look at the moral issues raised by what historians are writing fifty years later. Senior Military War Colleges, through their strategic leadership studies, should incorporate within this curriculum a 'study in time' of the events that led up to this singular historic decision.