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On 6 August 1945, an American B-29 bomber dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. A second US atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki on 9 August. Less than a week later, on 14 August, Japan surrendered. The Second World War was over. As Winston Churchill had cause to know, the A-bomb was no ordinary weapon. To the contrary, it represented the harnessing of ‘the secrets of nature, long mercifully withheld from man’. [ 1 ] At Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 100,000 people died instantly, a figure that would soon double thanks to the lingering effects of radiation. [ 2 ] For Churchill, the ends - Tokyo’s capitulation without need for a costly Allied invasion of Japan - justified the means.
In parliament on 16 August, Churchill make four striking claims:(1) ‘It is to this atomic bomb more than to any other factor that we may ascribe the sudden and speedy ending of the war against Japan.’ (2) The A-bombs saved ‘a million American and a quarter of a million British lives’ which would have perished in the planned Allied invasion of Japan. (3) ‘The decision to use the atomic bomb was taken by President Truman and myself at Potsdam’. (4) The A-bomb decision involved no moral-ethical agonising because ‘had the Germans or Japanese discovered this new weapon, they would have used it upon us to our complete destruction…’ [ 3 ] In public in the years that followed, Churchill stuck to this four-point position. But as we will see, in private he was less certain and more conflicted about the atomic bomb.
To understand Churchill’s 1945 mind-set we need to consider his earlier involvement in the atomic story. In August 1941, fearful that Nazi scientists were working on a super-weapon, Churchill had approved “Tube Alloys”, the codename for a top-secret British A-bomb effort. However, with America’s entry into the war in December 1941, it was not long before Tube Alloys was eclipsed by its US counterpart, the Manhattan Project. [ 4 ]
At Quebec in August 1943, Churchill and US President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) agreed on an atomic merger. Henceforward, the Americans would be the major partner, the British the junior. But in one vital respect, the UK enjoyed equality: the combat use of any A-bomb was to be a matter for US-UK mutual consent. [ 5 ] In September 1944, a second atomic agreement signed at FDR’s home at Hyde Park, New York, stated that an A-bomb ‘might perhaps, after mature consideration, be used against the Japanese...’. [ 6 ]
Entering 1945, Churchill knew that an A-bomb might be combat-ready by mid-summer, probably too late for use against Germany but likely to feature in the war with Japan. In the meantime, encouraged by Japan’s deteriorating miliary position, he focused on non-atomic methods of bringing the war to an end.
Across Asia and the Pacific, Tokyo’s land and air forces were in retreat. At sea, the Japanese navy was a spent force while Japan’s home islands were prey to a US naval blockade which impeded the import of food, oil and other vital supplies. Moreover, the recent capture of Saipan, Tinian and Guam provided US bombers with geographically convenient launchpads from which to conduct an intensive bombardment of Japan’s cities.
To Churchill, Japan’s situation appeared hopeless. Yet Tokyo fought on. The reason, he concluded, was the Allies’ public allegiance to the policy of “unconditional surrender” which left Japan facing the unhappy prospect of humiliation, occupation and potentially the elimination of the emperor (the living embodiment of the nation’s religion and culture).
At the Yalta conference in February 1945, Churchill urged Roosevelt to speed Japan’s surrender by offering Tokyo some assurance about the future of Emperor Hirohito. A ‘mitigation’ of strict unconditional surrender might lead to ‘the saving of…a year and a half of a war in which so much blood and treasure would be poured out’. The president, unimpressed, rejected the idea. [ 7 ]
FDR did support another Churchill Yalta initiative, namely, to get Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to end his country’s neutrality and declare war on Japan. Churchill had long maintained that the Japanese, if faced with the added might of the Soviet Red Army, would ‘burn and bleed in a manner which would vastly accelerate their defeat.’ [ 8 ] In the event, Stalin agreed to enter the war once hostilities in Europe were concluded but demanded as a price significant postwar territorial concessions in Asia. [ 9 ]
On VE Day, 8 May 1945, amidst the general rejoicing occasioned by the defeat of Germany, Churchill reminded the British people that ‘Japan, with all her treachery and greed, remains unsubdued’. [ 10 ] At the same time, in secret, the Manhattan Project remained on track to deliver viable A-bombs by high summer.
Given this timetable, Tube Alloys leaders in London grew uneasy about the silence from Washington on consultation. However, when they urged Churchill to raise the issue with Harry S. Truman, who became president following Roosevelt’s death in April, he preferred to trust the US government to eventually honour its FDR-era undertakings. [ 11 ] Being less trusting, his atomic lieutenants used a back-channel to Washington and discovered to their dismay that Roosevelt had not only failed to tell anyone about the Hyde Park agreement, but that the Quebec agreement, encompassing mutual consent, did not bind his successor. Accordingly, by June 1945, the Americans had decided - unilaterally - the target of the first A-bomb. [ 12 ]
When, belatedly, the Truman administration did approach the Churchill government on A-bomb consent, it was more a diplomatic courtesy than acknowledgement of an obligation. Even so, on 2 July, Churchill willingly, unhesitatingly, approved US plans. [ 13 ] Two days later, British “consent” was formally recorded in Washington. [ 14 ]
As we know, following Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Churchill told parliament that the A-bomb decision was taken by himself and Truman at Potsdam. [ 15 ] In truth, the issue was cut-and-dried before the Big Three meeting, and far from being an equal partner in the decision-making process, Churchill simply went along with US preferences.
The Potsdam conference ran from 17 July to 2 August. On the opening day, the Americans confided to Churchill that the world had entered the nuclear age. Twenty-four hours earlier at Alamogordo, New Mexico, a plutonium device was successfully detonated. Codenamed Trinity, the test exceeded expectations in producing an explosive yield equivalent to 18,600 tons of TNT.
After the war, Churchill recalled how the first reports from New Mexico conjured a ‘vision’ in his mind’s eye ‘of the end of the whole war in one or two violent shocks'. [ 16 ] At the time, however, Churchill, like Truman, reserved final judgement until the official detailed Trinity report reached Potsdam. Until then, the Anglo-American leaders prioritised non-atomic methods of effecting Japan’s surrender. To that end, when Stalin reaffirmed his intention of declaring war on Japan, Churchill and Truman were exultant (‘Fini Japs when that comes about,’ the president wrote). [ 17 ]
Churchill also pleaded with Truman to consider the tremendous cost in US and British/Commonwealth life arising from ‘enforcing “unconditional surrender”.’ Might not a signal to Tokyo that the position of the emperor would be safeguarded allow the Japanese ‘some show of saving their military honour’ and hasten the end of the war? Indignant, Truman said that he ‘did not think the Japanese had any military honour left after Pearl Harbor’. There the matter rested. [ 18 ]
On 21 July, Truman received the official Trinity report. He was so stunned by is contents that he wondered if the A-bomb it might be ‘the fire destruction prophesied in the Euphrates Valley Era, after Noah and his fabulous Ark'. [ 19 ] When Churchill read the report, he reached a similarly apocalyptic conclusion: the A-bomb was ‘the Second Coming in Wrath’. [ 20 ] Soon after, the countdown to Hiroshima began when a top-level US military order approved the use of atomic weapons as soon as possible. [ 21 ]
On 25 July, Churchill endorsed the Potsdam Proclamation. [ 22 ] Calling on Japan to surrender unconditionally or face ‘prompt and utter destruction’, the proclamation was ignored by Tokyo. [ 23 ] The next day, Churchill and the Conservatives were swept from power by a Labour landslide in the UK General Election. In a radio address that night, Churchill, disappointed at not being able ‘to finish the work against Japan’, hinted that victory might yet ‘come much quicker than we have hitherto been entitled to expect.’ [ 24 ]
Just eleven days later, on 6 August, the world learned all about the atomic bomb, nuclear fission and Hiroshima’s fiery fate. In a pre-prepared press statement, Churchill underlined the importance of Britain’s contribution to the A-bomb’s success. He also called on Japan to surrender immediately. [ 25 ]
In the end, it took Soviet entry into the war (8 August), the atomic bombing of Nagasaki (9 August), and a US assurance to Tokyo (12 August) that the emperor would be retained postwar as a constitutional monarch (Churchill’s preference previously rejected by Roosevelt and Truman) before Japan surrendered.
In Britain, there was enormous relief that the war was over so quickly and without the need for a costly invasion of Japan. But there was also apprehension about what the A-bomb portended. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher, spoke for many when describing Hiroshima and Nagasaki as ‘a terrible and shocking reminder that war must be an unclean business.’ [ 26 ]
As we have seen, Churchill laid down his version of events in parliament on 16 August, but each of his assertions warrant some refinement. In the first place, his estimate of 1.25 million Anglo-American casualties had the Allied invasion of Japan gone ahead was essentially guesswork. As to his view that the A-bomb was primarily responsible for Japan’s surrender, that needs to be weighed alongside the undoubted impact on Tokyo of the Soviet declaration of war and the American assurance about the emperor. The idea of a binary choice, meanwhile, invasion versus atomic bomb, is contradicted by Churchill’s own efforts to bring about peace by moderating unconditional surrender. Lastly, the A-bomb’s deployment did not derive from a joint and equal Anglo-American decision; rather, Churchill approved already concretized American plans.
Yet even if Churchill’s role was supportive not determining, the fact remains that he still signed-off on arguably the most momentous military decision in the history of warfare. And that, in turn, meant he carried with him a sense of personal responsibility for what happened.
Nine months on from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Churchill, not known for his religiosity, admitted privately that he would have ‘to account to God as he had to his own conscience for the decision made which involved killing women and children and in such numbers’. [ 27 ] The ‘decision to release the Atom Bomb was perhaps the only thing which history would have serious questions to ask about...I may even be asked by my Maker why I used it.’ [ 28 ]
In 1953, in his history of the war, Churchill wrote that ‘the decision whether or not to use the atomic bomb to compel the surrender of Japan was never even an issue.’ [ 29 ] That, though, was the public Churchill. In private, his tendency to bracket the A-bomb decision with references to God and divine judgement hints at a conscience not fully at ease. [ 30 ]
Today, eighty years after the atomic bombings, one further reflection offered by Churchill in August 1945 entirely stands the test of time. The leaders of all nuclear-armed states should take heed. ‘The bomb brought peace,’ he averred, ‘but men alone can keep that peace, and henceforward they will keep it under penalties which threaten the survival, not only of civilisation but of humanity itself.’ [ 31 ]
