[rextorres]

That the bomb ended the war is a myth that we Americans like to tell ourselves. The US was already killing 100,000s of civilians every night from fire bombings in the capital cities so please don't give me any altruistic crap about saving innocent civilian lives.

The Japanese were actually ready to surrender - they just wanted a guarantee that Hirohito would not be tried as a war criminal. The US would not agree to this. The US, however, agreed to this condition AFTER the bomb was dropped mainly because we didn't want the Russians to know that we were out of them.

We simply dropped the bomb out of revenge as Atrocities inadvertantly and explicitly highlights AND probably more importantly to show the Russians that we were willling to use them.