Hiroshima was a crime of the ages

If I had foreseen Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I would have torn up my formula in 1905. Albert Einstein

When the US B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, arrived over Hiroshima early on the morning of August 6 1945, its nuclear payload symbolised the exaltation of death, destruction, and brute force as the summit of an Enlightenment that ushered into being the liberal values that underpin Western democracy. Those values were encapsulated most succinctly by famed painter Pablo Picasso, who said of the event: “The genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima.”

Those who continue to defend the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima, followed by a second bomb on Nagasaki days later, assert that they saved lives in bringing a speedier end to the war than would have occurred otherwise, citing in support of their argument the heavy casualties US forces suffered during the previous series of battles to take control of the Pacific islands that lay between Hawaii and Japan.

This particular line of thinking was debunked by none other than General Douglas McArthur, US supreme commander in the Pacific in WWII, who said that the Japanese were “already beaten” by the time of the bomb. McArthur’s was a view that was endorsed by the head of US air operations in the Pacific at the time, General Curtis LeMay, who asserted that “Even without the atomic bomb and the Russian entry…