The Moral Dilemmas of Atomic Warfare

August 15th, 2025 is the 80th anniversary of the surrender of the Japanese to Allied Forces in the Pacific, ending World War II . To mark the occasion, Peter Robinson sits down with Jonathan Horn and Ian Toll to examine the most contested decision of World War II: the use of atomic weapons against Japan. Building from the brutal endgame—Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and Curtis LeMay’s incendiary raids—the conversation explores what leaders actually faced in mid-1945: a fanatical no-surrender ethos, mass civilian suffering across Asia, Allied casualty forecasts for an invasion, and the timing of the Soviet entry into the war. Horn and Toll probe the evidence and the arguments on both sides: claims that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the quickest way to stop the killing versus the case for alternatives (continued blockade, demonstration blasts, waiting for Moscow’s shock) and the later misgivings voiced by senior U.S. commanders. Along the way, they revisit MacArthur’s return to the Philippines, the devastation of Manila, and Midway’s pivotal shift from Japanese “fighting spirit” to American industrial might—context that frames the bomb debate not as a tidy thought experiment, but as a wartime choice among terrible options. The discussion concludes by contemplating how to teach this history—through people, decisions, and consequences—to generations for whom WWII is fast fading from living memory.

Recorded on June 5th, 2025.