Week 6 - February 8 to February 12 - The End of the 2nd World War

In class this week we "role-played" the kinds of decisions that a leader must make when faced with differing opinions by her most trusted advisors. It is unclear whether or not Truman faced the same type of opposing cabinet that Arely faced in our classroom, but it is quite clear that dropping the atomic bomb was not an easy decision to make.

Part of the difficulty with making such a decision is the uncertainty in the outcomes. How much information did the U.S. have with regard to the Holocaust prior to entering World War II, how much did we know about the lives that we could take once involved, and how much information did we have about the lives that would be taken and subsequently affected by the dropping of the atomic bomb?

The truth is that some of the hardest decisions we have to make in life and historical figures have faced in history have many uncertainties but the responsibility is to be as well-informed as one can be prior to making such decisions.

The U.S. was also uncertain about the outcomes we might face with the development of nuclear weapons but the Cold War intensifies as we learn that the Soviets develop an atomic bomb in 1949 and a hydrogen bomb in 1952. The Cold War becomes a stare-down between two countries for 45 years, both fearing the use of their newly-developed weapons of mass-destruction and the possible end of the world.