I have heard this argument so many times, it almost seems like this has been drilled into American minds post fact to rationalize the only nuclear attack in human history. I can never take this argument seriously. There was no way there would have been more deaths unless the bombs were dropped. Imagine someone suggesting dropping a bomb in a dense city as an argument for “saving lives”. It seems absurd. Nobody knows how the exactly the war would have played out. So there was no guaranteed outcome. So, the bomb was dropped at best based on some probability.
> Imagine someone suggesting dropping a bomb in a dense city as an argument for “saving lives”.
But they did say that, and they said that after the war too.
Dresden fire bombing was justified partly with that kind of thinking.
The US's use of "Shock and Awe" had the same aims.
> Using as an example a theoretical invasion of Iraq 20 years after Operation Desert Storm, the authors claimed, "Shutting the country down would entail both the physical destruction of appropriate infrastructure and the shutdown and control of the flow of all vital information and associated commerce so rapidly as to achieve a level of national shock akin to the effect that dropping nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had on the Japanese."[10]
> Reiterating the example in an interview with CBS News several months before Operation Iraqi Freedom, Ullman stated, "You're sitting in Baghdad and all of a sudden you're the general and 30 of your division headquarters have been wiped out. You also take the city down. By that I mean you get rid of their power, water. In 2, 3, 4, 5 days they are physically, emotionally and psychologically exhausted."[11]
I had some suprisingly varied versions of this in school (also europe)
a) to save lives
b) the bombs were actually planned for use against berlin, but the nazis already collapsed when they were ready
c) because how else could you ever test these weapons in a realcase scenario
d) to force a unconditional victory
The truth is probably as often a mixture of multiple interests at different levels with different motivations
