Nagasaki – the legend of the decisive bomb

Atomic warfare brought about the end of the Second World War – at least that’s the accepted justification for the employment of atomic weapons. But were the bombs that demolished Hiroshima and Nagasaki really so decisive? Based on cutting-edge historical research, film documentaries and poignant interviews with witnesses, award-winning TV reporter Klaus Scherer paints a very different picture: that of a calculated and preventable war crime perpetrated on a country already on the point of surrender.

In August 1945, the only two atomic bombs in the history of warfare were detonated over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The first bomb shocked Japan to the core, but it was the second that forced the country to surrender. Both bombs were considered necessary for the war to be won, for the conflict to end, but Klaus Scherer‘s doubts about this classic historical interpretation set in when he first questioned the purpose behind the destruction of Nagasaki. He interviewed American and Japanese historians and spoke with the last surviving witnesses — amongst others former schoolchildren who survived the hell at Ground Zero and a crew member of the bomber from which the triumphant mushroom cloud photograph was taken.
In this fascinating book Scherer presents irrefutable proof that from the outset the objective was to test the bombs’ effectiveness, and Japan, which had already suffered a resounding military defeat, was the ideal target. America’s deliberate war crimes: why the atomic bomb was politically desirable — and why it wasn’t the bomb that put an end to the war.