How to stop worrying and love the bomb – a brief introduction to nuclear warfare, Part I.

How to stop worrying and love the bomb – a brief introduction to nuclear warfare, Part I.

In 1945, a team led by Robert Oppenheimer detonated the first nuclear device in New Mexico. Codenamed ‘Trinity,’ the blast was the culmination of Project Manhattan initiated to achieve definite domination over the Nazi Germany and the Imperial Japan.

The Americans didn’t waste time – less than a month later, on August 6th, Little Boy was airburst over Hiroshima, killing over one hundred thousand Japanese military personnel and, predominantly, civilians.

The exact cause of Japanese surrender is debatable – whether the next bomb, Fat Man and its destruction of Nagasaki, or Russian declaration of war was the deciding factor – the topic remains controversial.

It is interesting to note that Hiroshima’s recovery was surprisingly quick – even before the bombing of Nagasaki, its tramway services were already restored, and continue operating until today.

It may be shocking to the first-time visitors to the city that it was already re-developed at least twice in most areas, much like rest of post-war Japan.

The Atomic Bomb Dome, a somber relict of the tragedy (or a war crime, depending who you ask), rests in a riverside park where locals jog and otherwise chill, seemingly oblivious to the sinister reputation their city has across the globe.

Ultimately, to the Japanese command, the devastation was shocking but not greater than a carpet bombing already inflicted upon Tokyo and Osaka. To them it was yet another city that could no longer supply manpower and equipment to their brutal Asia-Pacific campaign.

What was game changing was the fact that a single bomber, with a single weapon, could do the job of an entire squadron. And even more so, that Americans developed nuclear weapons first.

Yes, the idea wasn’t new, and was already theorised since early 20th century. But the economics of firepower changed dramatically.

The ethical consequences of the atomic bombing is not a subject of this post – both Hiroshima and Nagasaki hosted significant military facilities and weapon industries, which made them both undeniably attractive. Yet, the civilian losses can’t be justified in any moral sense.

Yet the pure horror of a single bomber inflicting such insane damage reverberated around the world. The Nazi Germany was in its final days, and not considered as a major threat to the future of the free world.

The Soviet Union’s relationship with the west was, to be mild, strained for a long time. The Russian campaign in Central Asia put it in direct contest with the British Empire, occupying the Middle East and India which Russia has considered a natural extension of its previous conquests.

The two American interventions in the Russian Civil War between 1918-1920, which saw American troops on Russian land, didn’t exactly help.

Russian expansionism, which drove the nation to conquer such vast swaths of land on the first place (often with intense brutality on native tribes), took it as a personal insult – and losses of Russia’s North American territories, including Alaska and some isolated colonies in California and Hawaii were still relatively fresh in their psyche.

Now, their arch rivals and fellow expansionists had weapons that could destroy their cities and military might. And they used it on two cities packed with innocent civilians – this fact was to foreshadow and drive the distrust and paranoia of the Cold War.

Naturally, Soviet leadership could not tolerate such vulnerability, even if Americans had no real hostile intentions. The balance of power was swayed way out of comfort, and they were committed to level the playing field.

The Cold War had started.

TBC.