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Gar Alperovitz's The Decision To Use The Atomic Bomb

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Gar Alperovitz’s (1995) The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb presents numbers of declassified information and historical evidences, as well as his rigorous analyses drawn from such documents. His knowledge and expertise gained through a distinguished career as a historian strongly supports against the justification of the use of the atomic bombs during World War II. In his book, Alperovitz (1995) raises an important question stating, “[h]ow could it be that what leading military figures believed – and now many historians had concluded – was so radically different from what the majority of Americans still believed?” (p. 7). In exploring Alperovitz’s question, it should be noted that the military leaders during the Pacific War era and even the
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The success of the petition lies in the ability of the author to convey his position on the use of the atomic bomb while at the same time acknowledging that situations exist where he may have to change this position. He skillfully appeals to the emotion of the reader by showing the history of the war and how the current efforts are getting dangerously close to the same tactics that the United States had previously condemned. The ability to obtain such a large support for the petition might be the authors greatest success in support of the

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The purpose of this book is to research and analyze how, why, and by whom the decision to use the atomic bomb was made in order to inform the public. The value of this source is that the author has written numerous academic papers in the past including another book: Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam. The analysis given also has the benefit of being written when a larger amount of sources are open to the public including access to primary sources that were previously closed to research. However, after checking one of the sources cited in the book, I found that Alperovtiz had misrepresented one of the sources that he used (see appendix). Although this raises the question of how accurate the narrative actually is, I believe that it is fairly reliable and thoroughly

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