Harry Truman Read online

  My father meant it when he said he wanted results at Potsdam. He had brought with him his Joint Chiefs of Staff and put them to work with their Russian counterparts on a coherent plan for ending the Japanese war. He wanted to settle the future of Germany, and he wanted to extract from Stalin a genuine commitment to make the Yalta Declaration on Liberated Europe a reality. On both these points, he was more or less frustrated. Stalin was not really interested in making firm agreements on anything that involved surrendering control of nations or territories occupied by the Red Army. He was, on the other hand, eager to obtain concessions of every sort that contributed to the growth of Russia’s power.

  Stalin revealed his inner thinking in an offhand remark to Ambassador Averell Harriman. The ambassador congratulated him on the defeat of Germany and said it must be very gratifying to see Russia’s army in Berlin. Stalin shrugged and said, “Czar Alexander got to Paris.” Faced with a prostrate Europe, the Russian leader saw no reason why he could not push communism to the English Channel. There was, as it turned out, no reason - but Harry S. Truman’s determination not to let it happen.

  At Potsdam Stalin coolly asked for a share in control of the Ruhr, Germany’s industrial heartland, for control of one of Italy’s African colonies, and for a say in the destinies of Lebanon and Syria. Secretary of War Stimson worriedly wrote in his diary that the Russians “are throwing aside all their previous restraint as to being only a continental power and not interested in any further acquisitions and are now branching out.”

  My father remained unruffled by these demands. He assured the Secretary they were largely “bluffs” to distract attention from the Russian seizure of Eastern Europe. Though he knew exactly what was going on, Dad maintained a friendly face and struggled to reach agreement on important matters. He extracted from Stalin a promise to hold free elections in Poland. In return, he agreed to give Russia the port of Koenigsberg to satisfy their need for a northern warm water harbor.

  In these debates, Churchill was not always helpful. More often than not, he was concerned with maintaining the colonial influence and holdings of the British Empire. This badly weakened his position when, for instance, he argued for Russia’s withdrawal from Eastern Europe and Iran. He was also haunted by an agreement he had made with Stalin, in a private conversation, in October 1944, that created “spheres of responsibility” in southeastern Europe. At that time, he had agreed to assign Rumania and Bulgaria to the Soviet Union and Greece to Great Britain.

  In the midst of this complicated wrangling came the detailed report on the atomic explosion at Alamogordo Air Base. It arrived on July 21, the fourth day of the conference, at 11:35 a.m. Major General Groves and his second-in-command, Brigadier General Thomas F. Farrell, had labored two consecutive days and nights to complete it. At 3:00 p.m., Secretary of War Stimson brought it to the little White House. At this suggestion, my father had invited Secretary of State Byrnes to join them. Stimson began reading the report aloud but he was so excited, he frequently stumbled over words.

  1. This is not a concise, formal military report but an attempt to recite what I would have told you if you had been here on my return from New Mexico.

  2. At 0530, 16 July 1945, in a remote section of the Alamogordo Air Base, New Mexico, the first full scale test was made of the implosion type atomic fission bomb. For the first time in history there was a nuclear explosion. And what an explosion! . . . The bomb was not dropped from an airplane but was exploded on a platform on top of a 100-foot high steel tower.

  3. The test was successful beyond the most optimistic expectations of anyone. Based on the data which it has been possible to work up to date, I estimate the energy generated to be in excess of the equivalent of 15,000 to 20,000 tons of TNT; and this is a conservative estimate. Data based on measurements which we have not yet been able to reconcile would make the energy release several times the conservative figure. There were tremendous blast effects. For a brief period there was a lighting effect within a radius of 20 miles equal to several suns in midday; a huge ball of fire was formed which lasted for several seconds. This ball mushroomed and rose to a height of over 10,000 feet before it dimmed. The light from the explosion was seen clearly at Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Silver City, El Paso and other points generally to about 180 miles away. The sound was heard to the same distance in a few instances but generally to about 100 miles. Only a few windows were broken although one was some 125 miles away. . . .

  The report went on for many more pages, describing in detail such things as the damage done to a steel tower seventy feet high, a half mile from the explosion. The data was supplemented by a personal statement from General Groves’s deputy, Brigadier General Thomas F. Farrell, who had been at a control shelter only 10,000 yards from the explosion. He spoke of an “awesome roar which warned of doomsday.”

  Secretary of War Stimson noted in his diary that my father was “tremendously pepped up” by these details and said it gave him “an entirely new feeling of confidence.” Some historians have attempted to twist these words into an argument that Dad felt he could now make the Russians dance to his tune, or threaten them with complete destruction. Nothing could be further from the truth. My father never considered using the atomic bomb against Russia, and there is not an iota of evidence he ever made a threat to do so, even by implication. His feelings of elation and relief were connected with the problem of getting Russian cooperation in the final assault on Japan. Every time he was confronted across the conference table by Stalin’s double-talk and intransigence, he had been forced to mute his objections lest the Russians renege on this crucial military commitment. The lives of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers were at stake, and this primary consideration came before achieving ideal governments in Bulgaria, Rumania, Hungary, and Poland. Now, it was obvious we no longer needed Russia to end the Pacific war. This freed my father to negotiate with far more boldness and bluntness.

  Winston Churchill, in his comments on Potsdam, reflects precisely this shift in attitude. He told his foreign secretary, Anthony Eden, after news of the bomb arrived: “It is quite clear that the United States do not at the present time desire Russian participation in the war against Japan.”

  The following day, my father convened a conference of his chief advisers in the little White House at Babelsberg to make the final decision about the use of the bomb. More than two months of thought by the best available minds was at his fingertips. Once more he polled the men in the room. Only one man had changed his mind. Commander of the Army Air Force General Hap Arnold now thought Japan could be bombed into submission with conventional weapons. He pointed out that, in a single raid, B-29 bombers had obliterated sixteen square miles of Tokyo. One city after another had been devastated with awesome results, once the B-29s began dropping incendiary bombs rather than high explosives. But none of the other military men - especially General Marshall - concurred with General Arnold. Anyway, my father saw that conventional bombing, even if it worked - and no one doubted it might take months, even a year - would cause more Japanese deaths than the use of one or two atomic bombs. The fire raid on Tokyo, by the Japanese government’s estimate, had killed 78,650 people. My father’s decision - and this I think has been largely forgotten - was aimed at saving Japanese as well as American lives. His later comments on his decision make this clear: “It was not an easy decision to make. I did not like the weapon. But I had no qualms if in the long run millions of lives could be saved.”

  Note I have italicized the word “millions.” He was not talking about Allied casualties in the invasion of Japan, which even the darkest pessimist never estimated at more than 750,000 men.

  Churchill joined my father and his advisers at the end of their conference. He emphatically agreed the bomb should be used, if Japan refused to surrender. His recollections stress, even more vividly than Dad’s words, how its use would save Japanese lives:

  I thought immediately myself of how the Japanese people, whose courage I had always admired, might
find in the apparition of this almost supernatural weapon an excuse which would save their honor and release them from their obligation of being killed to the last fighting man.

  . . . To avoid a vast, indefinite butchery, to bring the war to an end, to give peace to the world, to lay healing hands upon its tortured peoples by a manifestation of overwhelming power at the cost of a few explosions, seemed, after all our toils and perils, a miracle of deliverance.

  After this meeting, my father formally authorized the United States Army’s Strategic Air Forces to drop the atomic bomb. He had discussed a list of targets with Secretary of War Stimson, and selected four, Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata, and Nagasaki. The bomb was to be dropped on one of these cities as soon after August 3 as the weather permitted visual bombing. All met the specifications he had laid down. They had not been bombed before and were major war production centers.

  George Elsey, who was working in the map room at Potsdam, was the man to whom my father gave the order. “I recall it vividly because he wrote it down in longhand and handed it to me for transmission,” Elsey says. “He gave authority for the first bomb to be dropped, at the discretion of the military commanders on the scene because weather and other factors had to be taken into account. But in no circumstances did he want the bomb to be dropped until after he left Potsdam. He wanted to be away from the Russians [and their prying questions] and on his way home before the actual dropping of the first bomb.”

  The time had now come to issue the final warning to Japan. My father had refused the advice of Acting Secretary of State Grew to issue the warning early in June. He felt it would be more effective if it came at the Potsdam Conference. Although Russia, not being at war with Japan, could not sign the Potsdam Declaration, their presence at the conference would underscore to the Japanese the overwhelming superiority of force that now encircled them.

  Grew had also pressed my father to specify that the Americans would permit the Japanese to retain the Emperor after their defeat. Now a major decision had to be made on this point. Should it be included in the Potsdam Declaration?

  This raised complex political questions. A great many members of Congress were bitterly hostile to the Emperor. So was a large section of the American public. Throughout the war, the Emperor had been associated with Japanese fanaticism. His use by the military clique had made him a loathsome figure. When Grew had been confirmed by Congress as Under Secretary of State, he had been grilled severely on his opinions about the Emperor and had been forced to say publicly he did not particularly favor his retention. My father and Secretary of State Byrnes, when they faced the final decision on the question at Potsdam, were keenly aware of this domestic political problem. But they looked a step beyond it, to another equally important point.

  By announcing in their call for surrender that the Japanese could keep the Emperor, they were in effect imposing him on the Japanese people. How did they know, after the cataclysm that had engulfed Japan under the Emperor’s leadership, that the Japanese people would want him to remain? He might, as many American experts, such as Assistant Secretary of State Dean Acheson, believed, be too heavily identified with the military to be tolerated, even as a figurehead. Moreover, Chiang Kai-shek, leader of China and a major ally in our war against Japan, had to approve the declaration, and he would never accept a formula that specified the Emperor could remain in power. So the final clause read as follows: “The occupying forces of the Allies shall be withdrawn from Japan as soon as these objectives have been accomplished and there has been established in accordance with the freely expressed will of the Japanese people a peacefully inclined and responsible government.”

  With this decided, my father now tackled the sticky question of how and what to tell Stalin about the atomic bomb. He decided to tell him as soon as possible, but to confine his remark to a very general description. At the end of the plenary session on July 24, Dad strolled over to the Russian leader and told him the United States had created a new weapon “of unusual destructive force.” Prime Minister Churchill and Secretary of State Byrnes stood only a few yards away, studying Stalin’s reaction. He was remarkably cool. He simply said he hoped the Americans would “make good use of it against the Japanese.” My father, Churchill, and Byrnes concluded that Stalin had failed to grasp the significance of the statement. It did not occur to them, at that time, with so many other immense problems on their minds, that Stalin, thanks to his efficient spies at Los Alamos, knew almost as much about the bomb as they did.

  Two days later, my father released the Potsdam Declaration. Signed by China, Great Britain, and America, it spelled out for the Japanese exactly what terms they could expect if they surrendered: the end of their militaristic government, temporary occupation of the Japanese home islands, disarmament and return home of their soldiers, establishment of a democratic government and basic human freedoms, as well as the guarantee Japan could rebuild her industries and have access to the world’s raw materials. The declaration pointed to the devastation that had been visited on Germany and called on Japan to surrender or face “complete and utter destruction.” This last phrase was as far as my father was prepared to go in revealing the atomic bomb. At the core of his thinking, he remained convinced the shock value of the bomb was its most potent power.

  On this same July 26, the cruiser Indianapolis reached Tinian in the Pacific and delivered to the 509th Composite Air Group the uranium-235 portion of the atomic bomb. The plutonium charge was en route to the same destination by air. By 6:00 a.m. Tokyo time, July 27, the Japanese had the full text of the Potsdam Declaration. The same day, thousands of leaflets were dropped from American planes, urging the Japanese people to accept the surrender terms. The militarists debated with the civilians in the Cabinet about what to do. Finally, their prime minister said he would regard the declaration with mokusatsu. Later, some Japanese - and those peculiar historians who are determined to indict America for moral obloquy - claimed this word had several shades of meaning ranging from “treat with silent contempt” to “no comment.” They claimed that we seized on the first meaning and ignored the second possibility. They ignore the fact that on the following day, after the word mokusatsu had been widely published in the Japanese newspapers, the prime minister collapsed under the pressure of the militarists in his cabinet, and at 4:00 p.m. issued a clarification: “I consider the joint proclamation of the three powers to be a rehash of the Cairo Declaration. The government does not regard it as a thing of great value; the government will just ignore (mokustsu) it. We will press forward resolutely to carry the war to a successful conclusion.”

  The stage was now set for some very hard bargaining at Potsdam. Freed from the need for Russia in the Pacific war, my father was ready to move toward a tougher approach to Stalin. But before Dad could begin, the conference was disrupted by very unexpected news. Prime Minister Churchill had stood for reelection on July 5. On July 26, he went home to learn the results. It had taken three weeks to count the votes from British soldiers around the world. To everyone’s amazement - including Marshal Stalin’s - Churchill and his Conservative party were overwhelmingly defeated.

  Clement Attlee, leader of the Labour party, became prime minister. Since he had served with Churchill in the coalition War Cabinet and had been at Potsdam, there was no obvious break in British policy.

  But many people sensed a serious change in the conference’s mood and tone. Admiral Leahy recorded his impression in his journal: “There was a notable coolness in their [the Russians’] attitude after Attlee took over.”

  Previous writers on Potsdam have explained this change by concentrating on Churchill’s familiarity with Marshal Stalin, and the fact that the Russian leader was now faced with two men whom he did not know well. I think there is another, more realistic explanation.

  Stalin was used to Churchill’s opposition, and was also used to ignoring it. He knew Britain no longer had the strength to enforce its wishes. The Americans were the ones he wanted to cajole into giving him what
he wanted - because they alone had the power to stop him. He was sorely disappointed when he discovered Dad was equally tough in his own quiet way, without Churchill around. It was when Stalin realized he could not get very far with the new American President that the Russian coolness noted by Admiral Leahy became evident.

  On a personal level, my father felt sorry for Churchill, but he was not sorry to see him leave Potsdam. This is clear from a comment Dad made in a letter to his mother and sister on July 28: “It is too bad about Churchill but it may turn out to be all right for the world.” Obviously, Dad thought he would have a better chance of reaching an agreement with Stalin without Churchill in the way. Dad was wrong, but it shows how eager he was to agree.

  To demonstrate his new approach, my father offered Stalin a package proposal. He would agree to the new Polish border with Germany on a provisional basis, with the understanding a final decision would be made at a peace conference. In turn, he wanted Stalin to agree to the American desire to readmit Italy to the family of nations as swiftly as possible. As for German reparations, he proposed that Russia accept 10 to 15 percent of the capital equipment in Germany’s western zones of occupation in return for raw materials from the eastern zone, and drop its unrealistic demand for $10 billion in cash.

  The package approach took Stalin by surprise. He wanted to deal with each item separately, where his native stubbornness was his greatest asset. But he could think of no reason to object to my father’s approach, and so he reluctantly agreed to these proposals. Thanks to Dad’s skill as a negotiator, Potsdam ended on a note of unity. It was, he knew, a very superficial unity - but it was better than public hostility.

  In the final meeting at Potsdam, Stalin revealed his displeasure with my father in a most insulting way. Twice Dad had tried to open a discussion which he believed was vital for the future peace of Europe and the world - the internationalization of all inland waterways, including the Danube and Rhine rivers, the Kiel Canal, and the straits of the Bosporus, as well as the Panama and Suez canals. Dad’s study of history had convinced him all major wars of the previous two centuries had originated in the area from the Black Sea to the Baltic and from the eastern frontier of France to the western frontier of Russia. He envisioned a world in which all nations would have the right to free passage of goods and vessels along these waterways to all the seas of the world. The British supported this idea, but Stalin was clearly uninterested. “We have many more urgent problems before us. This one can be put off,” he snapped.