re: #57 Charles Johnson

Um, OK, well, I watched that show too and that’s not really accurate. Stone spent quite a bit of time on the debate about using atomic bombs in Japan, and he definitely did not “simply spout the claim” that it was all about bullying the USSR.

Spent time on it, but he used sources from only one side. And claiming Japan was about to surrender, which Stone did, is the kind of sloppy error that throws a historian’s whole treatment of the subject into question.

The Japanese wanted a peace treaty by the summer of 1945, but they still thought they could get one that would prevent an Allied occupation and would give them the nucleus of a rebuilt military (they did understand that any battleships or carriers they still possessed would have to be scrapped or scuttled, but they wanted to be allowed to do that themselves).