Archival

Throughout the world, throngs of people hail the end of the war in Europe. It is five years and more since Hitler marched into Poland, years full of suffering and death and sacrifice. Now the war against Germany is won.

This is your victory, victory of the cause of freedom.

Kirk Saduski

May 8th, 1945, Germany surrenders. And the war in Europe is over. Still, the humanitarian crisis in Europe defies comprehension. But for this brief moment on May 8th, the world celebrates. Well, Don, let's go back to May 8th, 1945. And the flash, the war in Europe is over. And the country, needless to say, naturally explodes. Paint us a picture, Don. What must that have been like, not just in Times Square, but across the country?

Donald Miller

Well, in my hometown, we have a lot of photographic evidence of it happening. Like a lot of World War II families of vets, I was born in November, 1944. So I was alive, I was a baby. My cousin and my brother were babies. We all lived with my grandparents. My other cousin on the other side with two girls, they lived there too. It's a world of women. In all the pictures, like at Christmas time, everybody's gathered around the tree. And there's my grandpa. Where is he? He's in the background there. He's surrounded by these women who controlled the household. All of them worked. They worked hard. My mother worked, you know, she was a Rosie the Riveter. She worked in an airplane factory while my father was in the Eighth Air Force. And the factory was right up the street. And just beyond the factory was a cemetery, you know, where they're bringing boys home. Our next door neighbor was killed in North Africa in a tank accident. And his house was like a funeral home. They never changed the room. Louis Mumford, who I wrote about later, he lost his boy in Italy. They never changed the room. So this is what the interior of these houses looked like. And they were mournful places. I was scared to go next door. I knew Johnny. I was a little kid and, you know, he'd cork around with us, as we used to call it, and throw us balls and stuff. And then he disappears; he's gone. Well, then we get the word. I don't remember any of this, obviously, too young. But my brother has collected this amazing photographic evidence in letters and things like that. Everybody is worried. The town is an industrial town, home of the Reading Railroad. We lived in a slow lock neighborhood with a church right across the street. My mom said the church bells rang: ding dong, ding dong. There was nothing like it since D-Day. 'Cause on D-Day, the women put on their veils and they kneeled, and they kneeled up the steps into the church all the way to the altar. Unbelievable.

Kirk Saduski

Yeah.

Donald Miller

Unbelievable. And my mom has pictures of that, you know. The same thing happened on V-E Day. Not so much V-J Day 'cause they're kind of torqued out by then. And then it's worry because my uncle was flying B29s. And everybody was, "Well, what about Uncle Bill? "You know, they're bombing-"

Kirk Saduski

Yeah, the war isn't completely over.

Donald Miller

Yeah, you know, so it's a riven community. I mean, those people, my Aunt Margaret was crazy about this. And my mom was saying, you know, she was hard to control. "Why haven't I heard from Bill? "When's Bill coming home? "What's he bombing over there? "I thought we beat those guys." There was a misunderstanding about what was happening in the Pacific. It was gonna be, "Now, we'll take care of them. "We took care of the Germans. "We can certainly take care of the Japanese. "And we got a, you know, a much bigger force." Anyway, big celebrations. My mom said they put ramps up after the women had gone in for their mass. They put ramps up the steps of the church. And the young greenies, as they called 'em, the ones who had come over just before the war, immigrants, young boys, they were in their 16s, 15, 16, they rode motorcycles up to the church and down the aisle with flags right by the church. And raising hell. The slow lock home was around the hall. The Democrats, you know, they had a symbol of the donkey. They bought a donkey, they let it loose in the streets. People are riding the God damm donkey all over the place. And they have pictures of that. They had a carnival. They brought in this carnie guy. They put up a Ferris wheel, this little Ferris wheel. But people just went crazy. 'Cause as my mom said, "He's not gonna die," meaning my father. "These boys aren't gonna die." They had it horrendous. Everybody, man, in our neighborhood, no exaggeration, served. So there was constant worry during the war. And the anxiety levels were really high. And there was a tremendous release of anxiety there.

Kirk Saduski

I'm just realizing, you could make a case that May 8th, 1945 was the single happiest day in American history.

Donald Miller

I think that's a great observation, because it became part of the family lore. Again, listening to the stories, I'd go to the picnics later when I was seven and eight years old, and I'd hear the stories. They're still telling the stories. "Johnny Vicek, he was on a motorcycle "riding up to the church. "Whoa, the pastor went crazy, you know?"

Kirk Saduski

Yeah.

Donald Miller

Yeah.

Kirk Saduski

Well, again, you think about the nation is holding its breath. We talk about all the people who served in World War II. But no one served more valiantly than mothers and fathers who took a deep breath when their sons were sent overseas. And they couldn't let that, they couldn't exhale again until the German surrender and eventually the Japanese surrender. So you can imagine that pent up anxiety, like you said, the sheer exhilaration.

Donald Miller

Yeah, what really added to the anxiety, according to my aunt who kept better records than anybody in the family, was the point system. "What's this? "I thought they were coming home after the shooting stopped. "What are these points? "How many points does he have? "I have no idea what the points are." So they didn't all come home together.

Kirk Saduski

But yes, they didn't. And that was cause for some anxiety. But again, that idea, as you just said-

Donald Miller

People were pissed. I mean, you know, 'cause some guys just really took it in the neck. They had served a lot of combat. My uncle didn't get home right away, and he served in North Africa, Sicily, shipped to England, landed on the first 15 minutes at D-Day, went through the Hurtgen Forest, crossed the Rhine, was captured and put in a German stalag and wounded twice. And he wasn't high on the point list. Now how does that happen?

Kirk Saduski

Still, yes. And there's no downplaying that anxiety of bring the boys home. But like, as you said earlier, he's going to live. And that's what May 8th meant.

Donald Miller

And then there's like a hangover, I think. And this comes from my reading. You know, there's a hangover because there's real worry because the headlines are blasting away on this idea, "Are we gonna keep price fixing?" Which supposedly run by Galbraith and the Office of Price Control during the New Deal. That means you couldn't... It's like the old Puritan just price. You couldn't charge over a certain price for a loaf of bread. You could be convicted for that. And that kept things under control. But it was an artificial introduction into the economy of the government hand. And the Republicans were strenuously against it. And it was part of their platform in '44. And so everybody wondered, what's gonna happen when they lift that? And you got an uncontrolled economy. And the more sophisticated economic thinkers are beginning to write editorials about, "Wait a second. "Can this economy... "What pulled it outta the depression, military spending? "Can it run at full throttle without military spending?" And that's never been proven since the war.

Kirk Saduski

Well, and of course, the other-

Donald Miller

We've never pulled the plug and tried it.

Kirk Saduski

The other concern was, yes, depression, but also inflation. And because you couldn't buy many consumer goods. You couldn't buy washing machines or automobiles during the war. And people were making more money than ever. So what were they going to do? As soon as these items became available, what were they gonna do? They're gonna buy 'em. And what's that gonna lead? Prices are gonna go sky high.

Donald Miller

Absolutely. The guy who founded Levittown figured Levittown out in a foxhole, in the Bulge. He said, "I got a dream. "Every GI is gonna come home. "They'll have enough money in the GI Bill "to buy a house that I'm gonna sell to them for $11,200. "And it will have a TV in it and it'll have a dishwasher."

Kirk Saduski

You bring up a good point, and I think we should, we owe it to the audience to discuss a little bit. You said in quoting Boorstein that the GI Bill was the most important thing- Let's talk, what was the GI Bill, Don?

Donald Miller

Well, you know, it starts in '43, and it's a Republican program originally. It gets through pretty smoothly. Each GI received a benefis, as they used to call those things then, a cash outlay per week, like 25 to 50 bucks. And they could do anything they wanted with that. That wasn't earmarked, as some of the GI Bill was, for education. As one of our characters in the "He Has Seen War" war pointed out, "He blew it all when he got it." You know, "he just had a hell of a time for like six months "and then he's hurtin'." So we have that disposable income. There's a lot of what economists call slack in the economy, so disposable money. And we're not at full production in some consumer items. People raced to buy cars. And, of course, you couldn't buy a car during the war. And it was hard to get a car repaired if you had one and you couldn't get tires. And it was hard to get gasoline. But now all of a sudden, that's possible.

Kirk Saduski

Well, and the GI Bill, there was a philosophy behind it. It was to take an age old American impulse. Even after the Civil War, I mean, when you look at Lincoln's second inaugural, towards the end, he's saying, "And we will take care of the widows." And it behooves us, we're morally bound to do that. Well, the GI Bill is a recognition of that finally, officially. And it was about the future. It was, "You gave us the best years of your lives. "And so we are going to help you live the rest of your life "with education and money for housing and such." That's really the thought behind it.

Donald Miller

It is. That's a great point, Kirk. Because look at the Homestead Bill. That was passed during the war, cheap to free land, the Transcontinental Railroad to improve transportation. 'Cause we expect this great population migration that started to occur during the war when war industries went south to take advantage of year round dry climate, you know, and the decent temperatures. So a lot of these measures are passed with bipartisan support, or they wouldn't have been passed, during the war. And there's a feeling... We really felt after World War II that we owed these guys something. The largest of the programs of all, of course, is the GI Bill as it applies to hospitalization.

Kirk Saduski

The Veterans Administration.

Donald Miller

The Veterans Administration. Who's head of the Veterans Administration? Omar Bradley, the second most powerful general in the U.S. Army. That was a step down for him, but he wanted to do it.

Kirk Saduski

Yes.

Donald Miller

He took the job.

Kirk Saduski

That's such a great point that it was so important to take care of those guys when they came back, particularly the wounded, that yes, you're right. Eisenhower's number two, that's an administrative job. Omar Bradley could have run for president. Instead, he gladly headed up the Veterans Administration because he knew what we owed those guys.

Donald Miller

Yeah, it'd be like putting Bobby Kennedy in charge of a program like that after Vietnam. It was considered like MacArthur's pledge to go back to the Philippines, a moral obligation.

Kirk Saduski

President Harry Truman described May 8th as a solemn but glorious hour. But he also noted how much he wished President Franklin Roosevelt had lived to see this day. Joining me again is Doris Kearns Goodwin. Franklin Roosevelt, he had done so much to ensure the defeat of the Axis. And yet, he wasn't able to live long enough to see the day when the Germans surrendered.

Doris Kearns Goodwin

Oh, you know, Kirk, what saddens me the most is to think of what it would've been like if Roosevelt had been able to go over to Europe to be with Churchill on V-E Day. They had planned for it. In fact, there's a note that Franklin writes to Eleanor saying, "I want you to get good clothes "so you can make a handsome appearance. "We're gonna go together." And Churchill had promised him there'd be the greatest reception, anything ever in England, probably since Lord Nelson. They would visit the King and the Queen. He'd planned this whole trip out. And he was talking about it to Frances Perkins, his Secretary of Labor. And it was maybe in April that he was talking to her about it. And she said, "But how can you talk about that? "You can't go to Europe until it's all done." And he just nodded to her, "It will be all done soon." He knew that it was probably coming soon, the surrender of Germany. And the fact that it was only weeks before that happened that he died and was not able to see the fruition of all of those months of worry, all of those speeches he had given, all of those decisions he had made and be able to share that with his buddy Churchill makes me so sad. And for Churchill too, they said, of course he was in the center of attention that day. But he said his own thoughts kept going back to Roosevelt and missing the fact that they were not there together.

Kirk Saduski

There are times when I think what it would've been like if FDR and Eleanor had been able to go to England. And can you imagine the roar as Eleanor and Franklin joined the King and Queen and Churchill on the balcony of Buckingham Palace? Can you imagine the roar?

Doris Kearns Goodwin

Oh, I think about this all the time, I really do. It's just one of those things that it seemed only right and just that there should be that coda to all of that planning and all of those years together that Churchill and Roosevelt had had, and to finally, finally that victory. I mean, both of their primary concerns had always been Hitler. And now finally, Hitler is dead and the war has come to an end, and Germany's surrendered, and he's not there.

Kirk Saduski

A week after Hitler committed suicide, the Germans surrender on May 8th, 1945. And one of the first things that Harry, now President Truman said was, "How I wish that Franklin Roosevelt had been here "to enjoy this moment."

Doris Kearns Goodwin

Yeah, he understood too. I mean, he understood too that it's just the timing of history is always something, right? And you just, I think all of us can just picture that fantasy, as you talk about, of the two of them on that balcony with the King and the Queen and the roar of that crowd below. And it should have been that way. You would've wished that he had that before he died. But at least he knew. I mean, I love the fact that Abraham Lincoln knew that the war was coming to an end even before he died, even if he didn't see the final fruition of that. And FDR knew that the German part of the war was coming to an end. And for him, that was priority. So at least he had that before he died

Kirk Saduski

On May 8th, the Germans finally surrender. Help us understand now across the country the joy that was felt across not just our country, of course, not just America but all the Western nations: Great Britain certainly, but France, and in the Soviet Union. Help us understand the joy the world felt on V-E Day.

Doris Kearns Goodwin

Well, you just imagine what it had been like really from 1940 to that moment in 1945 where the country, America, had been through enormous strain. There was pressure, there was anxiety. And then there was all the changes that took place on the home front: you know, the sacrifices that were made, the numbers of people who had died, the families that were disrupted. And there was just a sense, I think, once Germany surrendered. Even though there was still that huge problem out there of Japan, but there was just an enormous relief that the reason we had gone to war in the first place, even though Japan had attacked us in Pearl Harbor, it was Germany. And luckily, Germany that declared war on us that allowed us to declare war back on Germany, that was the priority of focus. Because Europe had been in our imaginings even from 1939 on till that period of time. So people come out in the streets. There was a great sense of relief. There's still a sense that that other chapter has yet to be met. But I think somehow that moment, you just knew that it was gonna be all right somehow.

Kirk Saduski

Well, and let's talk... Because we talked about President Truman now, the challenges he met. Let's talk about how he met them in those first few months. He's been referred to as the accidental president. He was not that well known. And yet, he was thrust onto the world stage and presented with problems no leader in American history certainly has faced. Maybe Lincoln, I would guess. How did he do in those first few months? And then, what I'm really thinking about is the Potsdam Conference.

Doris Kearns Goodwin

Yeah,

Kirk Saduski

Yeah, in July. Because now, he's part of the Big Three. Let's talk about Harry Truman replacing FDR as part of the Big Three.

Doris Kearns Goodwin

Yeah, well, one of the things I loved reading about was that Truman decided on the way over to Potsdam that he would take a naval vessel rather than a plane. Because he wanted time to be able to absorb all the briefing papers. And he knew that that would be the time when he could think it through. And people said he seemed so well prepared when he was there. I mean, interestingly, he was more prepared this time than Churchill. Because Churchill was there at the beginning of the Big Three. I mean, the incredible thing is by the end, it's only Stalin that's the one who was there at the beginning in Yalta. Because Churchill's election has been lost by the conservatives so that he's replaced in the middle of it by Clement Attlee, the Labor leader. And he was nervous and anxious about the election, so he didn't seem as well prepared or, you know, as articulate as he normally was. And there was Truman with that humility to know, "I've got to make sure I understand everything "that's going on." It was his first appearance on the world stage. And it seemed like, from the people who were there, he was a real student of history. The one thing people didn't know about him that proved to be critical, even though he had never gone to college, he had loved history from the time he was in high school. I remember when I went out to his house and they showed all the history books that were on the shelves of his study. And they said when he was in high school, he would come home and he read several hundred books about history during that period of time. And thank God he knew history. Because when the question came about reparations and what Germany should be made to suffer, he had the memory of the Treaty of Versailles and how that had helped to make Hitler rise in Germany because of the, you know, extreme nature of the reparations and the whole tone toward Germany at that time. So we luckily had a man who we didn't know very much about, but who had a deep sense of history and had a deep confidence in himself and had the plainspokenness to be able to talk to the American people as well, in a very different way from FDR but his own way. "Give 'em hell, Harry," is what it became. But people liked this man as well, and deservedly so. He's a very good man, a decent man, and the right man probably for that decision.

Kirk Saduski

Victory in Europe was viewed differently in the eyes of those serving in the Pacific. E. B. Sledge was there.

Gary Sinise

On 8 May, Nazi Germany surrendered unconditionally. We were told the momentous news. But considering our own peril and misery, no one cared much. "So what," was typical of the remarks I heard around me. We were resigned only to the fact that the Japanese would fight to total extinction on Okinawa as they had elsewhere, and that Japan would have to be invaded with the same gruesome prospects. Nazi Germany might as well have been on the moon.

Kirk Saduski

July 17th, 1945, Harry Truman, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin meet in Potsdam, Germany, a conference to negotiate the terms for the end of World War II. But those leaders did not yet know a massive explosion had taken place in New Mexico. America has successfully tested the world's first atomic bomb. Once again, Don and I are joined by our good friend, Rich Frank. Rich, let's start with what happened in the deserts of New Mexico on July 16th. Take it from there.

Richard Frank

At that time, the Manhattan Project had come to a fruition that there were gonna be two types of bombs. One was what was called a uranium bomb, which they nicknamed Little Boy. And the scientists were extremely confident that that design, which was very simple, would work without a test. The other type of bomb which we called Fat Man, the plutonium bomb, was a very complex bomb for reasons we don't need to get into. But in any event, it was so complex that there was not a really high degree of confidence it would work. So it was believed that it was absolutely necessary to test a model of that device first to make sure it's actually going to work. And what was critical about the test was that because there was so little uranium that had been produced to make an atomic bomb, most of the bombs are gonna be plutonium bombs. So this was an absolutely critical test called Trinity. And, of course, this takes place in July. It's very dramatic. The movie "Oppenheimer" captures exactly what that is like very well. In some ways, when you talk about when did the Atomic Age begin, to me, it seems to me that when you had demonstrated a usable atomic weapon weeks before Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in effect, that's where we went through the barrier to the future.

Kirk Saduski

Well, Don, the Potsdam Conference, this is in July of 1945. Truman's been president for a few months. And Germany has surrendered. And now, what's the post-war going to look like? Particularly post-war Germany and Europe, but particularly Germany, what are they gonna do with Germany?

Donald Miller

Well, they had pretty much decided that... And here, the military finally gets together in a coordinated fashion with the politicians and they work out a plan, the four great powers. France really tried to wedge in there as one of the great powers. That was a big controversy whether to include the French, but de Gaulle was very insistent. So the French and the English and the Russians, the Soviets I should say, and the Americans decide to occupy Germany until it's de-Nazified. And the way to do that would be to divide it up into four parts, and give a section, a territory, to each of the four powers. And they would decide themselves how long they would sit on Germany, as it were, until they felt that the pacification had been satisfactory, completed. Well, the Russians forgot to leave.

Kirk Saduski

Well, what do you mean by that?

Donald Miller

They didn't leave. They never got outta East Germany. And so, there it is, Germany is permanently split and Berlin's kind of in the middle. And while all this is going on, there's lots of spy novels on this, the Russians and the Americans... First of all, the Russians know, obviously, we have an atomic bomb. Because the Soviets had spies. The KGB wanted to run an operation to, we called it later Operation Paperclip, to gather together and bring to their side the best physicists and scientists in the world to rush ahead with their atomic projects. So there's all this subterfuge going on. Spy novels, you know, galore are produced by this. People are switching sides. It's more going on in Berlin than in Potsdam. Potsdam's a pretty placid place. But Stalin comes in cocky. He thinks he's in the catbird seat because the Soviets are ground infantry monolith. And they had their footprint all over Europe. And wherever they were, they weren't gonna leave. Stalin's not gonna get negotiated out of Poland. Truman had made vows to the Polish liberation forces who had their headquarters in London throughout the war. And the Poles, of course, fought with the RAF, the Polish pilots. The Poles fought with valor. And there's a wonderful memorial cemetery at Monte Cassino. They promised them... They're fighting because... The Russians even released them from prison. They had arrested a lot of Polish officers early in the war as potential saboteurs and spies. They released them 'cause they need 'em and promised them that, you know, all of Poland will fall into their hands after the war. Well, Stalin goes to Potsdam with the intention of not following through on that. So it's a dirty deal. And the Poles, really to put it roughly, got screwed. And it was a shame.

Kirk Saduski

Well, Stalin had made those promises back at Yalta, right?

Donald Miller

Yeah, he did; but now, he's gonna follow through on 'em. There's hope till the very end. Hope dies hard with these Polish liberation groups. Churchill was of two minds about the Russians, and Stalin. He's often accused of being a Stalin apologist. And yet, he's the strongest voice at the conference for keeping an eye on Russia and mistrusting Russia, the Bear as he called the Russians. A lot of the more astute diplomats felt the same way: that they were needed. But now, they're not needed anymore. So where do they go on the shelf? Are we gonna try to align with them diplomatically, establish trade relations? No, no. It's interesting in the States how fast public opinion shifted on Joe Stalin. Because Henry Luce, who ran the Luce empire, "Life," "Time" and everything, he's the guy who coined the phrase "Uncle Joe," you know, for Stalin and "a guy that's gonna help us win the war." And they ran a big photograph of, to my estimation, the best general in the war, Zhukov, this celebration of his military acumen. All of a sudden, that's not... Whenever they run anything with the Soviets on it, they'd have the hammer and the sickle over in the corners, you know, beware, largely because of the Polish deal. It's bald-faced what they do in Poland, even before they completely took over their zone. They're in there, the KGB's in there. You know, they have an alternative government set up in Moscow ready to go. Everything's in place, and the allies knew that. A lot of the press knew it, Lil Thomas and people like that. And they wrote warning editorials about getting too cozy with the Russians, that the Russians have designs. And these designs seemed to be fulfilled when Stalin announces that he will come into the war

Kirk Saduski

Against Japan?

Donald Miller

Against Japan. And that he will move against the Japanese Army in the north. That army is probably Japan's best army, the Manchurian Army. Of course, as we know later, he went through it like a knife through hot butter. The numbers are compelling and shocking. You know, he's killing 100,000 people a week up in Manchuria, and taking huge swaths of territory. And where is the arrow pointing? The arrow's pointing to Northern Japan. Now, one of Truman's avowed aims is to prevent that, not to allow it. There was a possibility that after the war, there would be a Northern Japan and a Southern Japan.

Kirk Saduski

Like North Korea, South Korea.

Donald Miller

North Korea and South Korea are created at the same time. 'Cause Stalin envelops that plan. He makes that part of it. He says, "Oh, by the way, you know, "we're running down close to the Korean border. "We'll just jump over there and pick up some territory."

Kirk Saduski

It's little known that there actually could have been, if things had turned out a little bit differently, there could have been a North Japan and a South Japan, North Japan being dominated by the Communists.

Donald Miller

And that that is not emphasized in the press. It's all about controlling the possible continuing spread, continuing meaning after Poland, of the Red Army, Soviet regime into the rest of Europe. We know Stalin has expansionist designs. You know, as Marshall said, "Read 'Das Kapital,' read. Or better yet, "Read, you know, the manifesto." It seems that it's inevitable.

Kirk Saduski

I wanna go over a couple things. The British have not had an election since the beginning of the war. And they have an election immediately after V-E Day. And to the shock of many, most particularly to Prime Minister Churchill himself, he loses the election to Clement Attlee, the Labor leader. Tell us about that. I mean, it's shocking, and because here, he's the iconic legendary leader who-

Donald Miller

It blew people's minds, it really did. And even in England, like the sentiment in the papers was before, maybe he has to go. Even today, popular films like, a series like "The Crown" make that point. But he's still a lion. He's still a force. My God, he saved civilization. And to put him on the shelf. Now, Clementine, his wife, blamed it on him. She said, "He didn't pay enough attention to the election. "He didn't campaign. "And secondly, he didn't pay enough attention "to the working class during the war." While we're pushing through, for example, a GI Bill, England makes no effort to push a GI Bill. And their Labor Party, Attlee had pushed hard for it. And he said, "We're gonna pay for it economically. "We're gonna fall behind France and the United States "more than we are with the United States right now." So that was a big mistake. And those districts Churchill lost, he lost resoundingly.

Kirk Saduski

Rich, so in July 16th is when Trinity was successfully tested. Shortly thereafter, President Truman is alerted to this, is informed. What happened then between then and August 6th?

Richard Frank

I think the first thing I would point out is that when you read Truman's diary and the other contemporary evidence, you know, he was a man who was incredibly weighted down with responsibility to end the war. And secondly, the prospect that it was gonna be extremely costly. And you see him oscillating. I mean, he was in a situation where sort of any burst of what seemed to be good news, he went up a good deal. And you'll see some episodes like that in his diary. But by and large, he settled down. The more the intelligence showed that the Japanese were preparing on Southern Kyushu, the grimmer it got. The other thing that happened was that there was tremendous political pressure in the U.S. First, they wanted to have the Japanese surrender unconditionally. But at the same time, there was a notion that if we defined in effect what unconditional surrender really meant, maybe that would persuade the Japanese to surrender. And so we came up with what was called the Potsdam Declaration, which basically was, it's an ultimatum but an ultimatum with terms that if you do obey the ultimatum, you will get A, B and C and D. So we issued that. And of course, infamously, the Japanese government was deadlocked and would not respond one way or the other officially. And the Prime Minister, Suzuki, was quoted famously as saying that they would... Effectively, the translation was, "They would ignore or pay no attention to it." And we had expressly included in the Potsdam Declaration the notion they must respond to this ultimatum. And they didn't.

Kirk Saduski

Didn't the Japanese attempt to negotiate through the Soviets who were not yet at war with them?

Richard Frank

The Japanese did in fact attempt to conduct a negotiation line. This was running from their foreign minister in Tokyo, Foreign Minister Togo, and the Japanese ambassador in Moscow, Sato. That's being done because the inner cabinet, this what we call the Big Six, would not countenance attempting to negotiate with the U.S. This was the only alternative that was available to the foreign minister. The problem was that the Soviets effectively were not very receptive to the thing to begin with. And secondly, we're saying, "If this is a serious negotiation, you must provide terms. "What are your terms you're prepared to surrender on?" And, of course, when that went to this inner cabinet, the Big Six, the answer was they weren't gonna provide any terms because they still had confidence in this counter-invasion battle. Why should they set out any concessions whatsoever until they were able to survey the terrain after the invasion battle? Eventually, the ambassador in Moscow, Sato, who was beyond the range of most of the radicals, he gets totally frustrated. And he sees that this is going nowhere. And in fact, when you read his cables, they're scathing. I've sometimes described it as like cross-examining Japanese diplomacy on behalf of the Truman administration. And he finally says, "Look, you know, "the best we can possibly hope for "is unconditional surrender, "modified only to the extent the Imperial Institution "should be preserved." And what does Togo say? Togo replies, "Unconditional surrender "under any circumstances is totally unacceptable." Not even a, "That might be a good starting point," or something like that. And so this is read in Washington, I think, correctly in terms of the deadlock in Tokyo that diplomacy is going absolutely nowhere.

Kirk Saduski

So while the diplomacy is going nowhere, what are we doing militarily? Kind of help us understand briefly, then what happens.

Donald Miller

I think the Atomic Age begins at a certain point. But for Japan, it's feignous at this point. They had declared to us that they don't have, they don't want anything to do with our most liberal terms. They are diehards. Leahy, for example, right through this whole thing, I mean, he's very close with the president. That's his job.

Kirk Saduski

Tell us who-

Donald Miller

Admiral Leahy. He wrote a very interesting diary of the whole operation. And Leahy from the beginning thought two things. He thought that the bomb would not work, and he never believed that the bomb would work. And he didn't believe that you should end the war with a gigantic hecatomb, this slaughter of millions of people, and you move into an era of peace.

Kirk Saduski

And Admiral Leahy wasn't the only one who had, who was skeptical, and for a variety of reasons. There wasn't complete unanimity at this point within the government in terms of using the bomb. Isn't that correct?

Donald Miller

Well, the Navy's on the shelf.

Kirk Saduski

Yeah, what do you mean by that?

Donald Miller

About the invasion. See, this all came down to what it was gonna... Look, if you're gonna have an invasion, you gotta get ready for it. You just can't say, "We're going in, you know, tomorrow." Nimitz is not keen on an invasion. King's not keen on an invasion.

Kirk Saduski

Admiral King?

Donald Miller

Yeah, Admiral King. These are powerful voices.

Kirk Saduski

Because they know, they anticipate the casualties.

Donald Miller

This is Nimitz who believed that if we had a bomb, we should have dropped it on Iwo Jima.

Richard Frank

What you have to understand is that there was this fundamental division between the Army and the Navy about ending the war with Japan. And the Navy had studied fighting Japan literally since 1907, and particularly between the wars. And they thought that it was absolutely folly to attempt to invade the Japanese home islands because it would produce politically unacceptable casualties. And the Navy, however, was biding its time because the Army under General Marshall believed to the contrary that the critical issue was time, that the American people would not tolerate a protracted war going on for months and then years to end the war with Japan. So they're at loggerheads basically over this. They have only achieved what I call an unstable compromise to authorize Operation Olympic going into Kyushu in November. And at the time that they issued the order in April, which gets back to Don's point, I mean, the preparations for this go back months and months and months and months. You don't suddenly turn around in July and say, "Okay, I think we're gonna invade Japan in November." So that ship had sailed a long time ago. So what happens then, however, is after Okinawa, Admiral Nimitz who initially had at least been ready to contemplate Olympic says, "I can no longer support any invasion of Japan at all." And King has that, and he's holding it. 'Cause King wants to ultimately bring on a showdown over the invasion. Not bombing or atomic bombing, but an invasion. He wants to kill an invasion above all.

Kirk Saduski

And what was at this point, because, again, we haven't used the atomic bomb, what was the Navy's proposed strategy to defeat Japan?

Richard Frank

Well, this goes back to their long time strategy going back to the '20s and '30s, which is blockade and bombardment. And blockade meant fundamentally blockading food from the Japanese people, to threaten to kill or actually kill millions of Japanese, obviously mostly civilians, by starvation. That was the Navy alternative.

Kirk Saduski

Well, and that was happening, was it not?

Richard Frank

Right, and the Japanese were sliding down through a period where they, certainly they knew in Tokyo, they already knew that the rice harvest in 1945, which was critical, was failing, faltering. They didn't yet know exactly how bad it was gonna be, but they already knew it was so bad that in April, they began taking rice out of Korea to stockpile in Japan. And one of the things about, you know, if you imagine this alternative scenario where the war sort of goes on, one of the things you can be absolutely sure of is that the Japanese would've ruthlessly stripped food out of Korea at the expense of the Koreans.

Donald Miller

In a sense, both countries, Germany in World War I and Japan in World War II, are defeated in large by starvation. That's why I like when Rich makes that point about food being so important to this whole thing. And the Navy would concomitantly patrol the outskirts of the islands and then through the channels and get in real close, it's almost tactical artillery bombardment, and blow the hell out of everything. And they're doing this every day. So they're bringing in this indictment. And why risk all these American guys when nobody's blowing these 29s out of the sky?

Kirk Saduski

You mean, why risk-

Donald Miller

Why risk American lives

Kirk Saduski

In an invasion?

Donald Miller

In an invasion.

Kirk Saduski

Join us next time. August 6th, 1945, President Truman is sailing aboard the Augusta after Potsdam when he is handed an urgent message. The Army Air Force has dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima.