He is fairly convincing when arguing these issues, yet by choosing sides he weakens his claim to dispassionate historiography. Maddox tends to side with conservative historians on both counts (who argue, briefly, that Moscow was not a variable in the decision and that Japan could not have been impressed). The Soviet issue (whether dropping the bomb was done solely to impress Moscow for political and military gains) and the Japanese one (whether Tokyo would have surrendered solely because of a threat to drop the bomb) have become major points of contention between conservative and revisionist historians. In analyzing the decision to bomb, Maddox considers several major points, including the Soviet and Japanese dimensions and the casualty question.
Maddox begins his investigation by reviewing the dilemmas president Harry Truman faced as he took over from Franklin D. motives for bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki. political scholarship influenced by the Vietnam war, which heavily criticized U.S. Maddox argues, with reason, that Alperovitz epitomizes the extreme revisionism that characterized 1960s U.S. Over nine chapters, Maddox takes the reader along the complex and sometimes confusing path of political and military decision-making in an attempt to dispel what he terms "the fondness of many academics for tales of conspiracy in high places." The "many" academics seem to have a single leader: Gar Alperovitz, the author of Atomic Diplomacy (1965 rev. This also becomes clear in historiographical terms in Robert James Maddox's review of the events leading to the decision to drop the bomb.
postage stamp showing an atomic cloud, opinions ran deep.
From the congressional rancor over the canceled Enola Gay exhibit to Japanese disgust with the U.S. Sociétés & Représentations, 22, 49-62.The controversies of summer 1995 surrounding the fiftieth anniversary of the atomic bombings of Japan left all sides agreed on only one point: little, if anything, was historically resolved. "The Adventures of the Enola Gay", Sociétés & Représentations, vol. « Les aventures de l'Enola Gay », Sociétés & Représentations, vol. URL : ĭEBOUZY Marianne, "The Adventures of the Enola Gay", Sociétés & Représentations, 2006/2 (No 22), p. This battle illustrates the opposition between historians who try to approach a complex truth as objectively as possible and social and political groups eager to appropriate the past so as to promote a certain idea of the nation and its history.ĭEBOUZY Marianne, « Les aventures de l'Enola Gay », Sociétés & Représentations, 2006/2 (n° 22), p.
This “scandal” has to be set in the political context of the 1990’s: cultural wars, the 1994 Republican victory in Congress, the emerging new patriotism. The offensive launched against the exhibit as unpatriotic by the lobbies of the Air Force Association and the American Legion was relayed by eighteen Congressmen who asked for the resignation of the director of the Museum and the cancellation of the project. The planned National Air and Space Museum’s exhibit in Washington for the fiftieth anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to put and end to World War II was meant to raise such large questions as: Why were the bombs used? Were there alternatives? Why were civilians targeted? How was the bomb linked to the emerging Cold War? The exhibit did not stick to the “official” version according to which the dropping of the bomb only aimed at saving American lives.