Summary Of Thank God For The Atom Bomb By Paul Fussell

When Paul Fussell admits to the atrocious nature of the atom bomb in his essay, ‘Thank God for the Atom Bomb,’ he appears to weaken the central emotional argument of his piece: that the destruction of Hiroshima is an intricate issue that one must look upon from a perspective which considers both sides. Paul Fussell makes the point men had been through hell for some years: “Why allow one more American high school kid to see his intestines blown out of his body and spread before him in the dirt while he screams when we can end the whole thing just like that?” Here he belives the concept of taking thousands of lives save many thousands more is much more important and that the dropping of the bomb was for the greater good. Fussell’s vivid descriptions, “not for the weak-stomached” seem to work against him, creating intense

Although Fussell admits that the bomb was a “most cruel ending to that most cruel war”, and that those who claim that the use of the atom bomb was wrong are simply attempting to “resolve ambiguity” concerning the ethics of war, he believes that the bomb was, without doubt, necessary. Using mainly statistics and accounts of soldiers, Fussell introduces several compelling figures. First, he reveals that for the anticipated Allied invasion of Japan, “one million American casualties was the expected price“. Secondly, Fussell tells us that “Universal national kamikaze was the point” which means that every man, woman, and child in Japan would have been prepared to sacrifice their life in defense of the homeland. If this suicidal loyalty is taken into consideration, it seems that the loss of Japanese life upon the invasion of the mainland would have far outweighed the actual loss of life that occurred when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed. Perhaps most important though is that Fussell has defeated his own hypocrisy on a deeper