8/8: Road to Surrender: Three Men and the Countdown to the End of World War II Hardcover – May 16, 2023 by Evan Thomas (Author)

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8/8: Road to Surrender: Three Men and the Countdown to the End of World War II Hardcover – May 16, 2023 by Evan Thomas (Author)

https://www.amazon.com/Road-Surrender-Three-Countdown-World/dp/0399589252

At 9:20 a.m. on the morning of May 30, General Groves receives a message to report to the office of the secretary of war “at once.” Stimson is waiting for him. He wants to know: has Groves selected the targets yet?

So begins this suspenseful, impeccably researched history that draws on new access to diaries to tell the story of three men who were intimately involved with America’s decision to drop the atomic bomb—and Japan’s decision to surrender. They are Henry Stimson, the American Secretary of War, who had overall responsibility for decisions about the atom bomb; Gen. Carl “Tooey” Spaatz, head of strategic bombing in the Pacific, who supervised the planes that dropped the bombs; and Japanese Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo, the only one in Emperor Hirohito’s Supreme War Council who believed even before the bombs were dropped that Japan should surrender.

Henry Stimson had served in the administrations of five presidents, but as the U.S. nuclear program progressed, he found himself tasked with the unimaginable decision of determining whether to deploy the bomb. The new president, Harry S. Truman, thus far a peripheral figure in the momentous decision, accepted Stimson’s recommendation to drop the bomb. Army Air Force Commander Gen. Spaatz ordered the planes to take off. Like Stimson, Spaatz agonized over the command even as he recognized it would end the war. After the bombs were dropped, Foreign Minister Togo was finally able to convince the emperor to surrender.

To bring these critical events to vivid life, bestselling author Evan Thomas draws on the diaries of Stimson, Togo and Spaatz, contemplating the immense weight of their historic decision. In Road to Surrender, an immersive, surprising, moving account, Thomas lays out the behind-the-scenes thoughts, feelings, motivations, and decision-making of three people who changed history.

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0:30.5	This is CBS. I'm the world on John Baps with the author. The distinguished author, Evan Thomas, his new book is Road to Surrender.
0:41.5	Three men in the countdown to the end of World War Two. The three men we focused on Henry Stimson, Secretary of War, who resides on a 78th birthday. Good for Henry September of 1945.
0:54.0	A foreign minister, Togo, who is sentenced to 20 years in prison, not hang sentenced to 20 years in prison.
1:01.0	And then two e-spots, Carl Spotsk, who becomes briefly an achieves the staff of the Air Force. Well, begin with Henry Stimson.
1:09.5	It is your measure that Stimson, who opposed mass murder, did not believe in precision bombing, had great regrets about supervising a machine that turned out the two atomic weapons.
1:24.5	Came to change his mind at least about the Soviets, if not about the Japanese, is that correct Evan?
1:30.5	Yes, he went back and forth on the Soviets. He wanted to trust them there. When he first gets out, when he first retires, he goes to Truman and says we need to trust them to share the weapon.
1:41.0	About a year later, as the Cold War is now building up in this install, and it's just impossible, and gobbling up Eastern Europe, Stimson,
1:50.0	roughly, regretfully says you can't trust the Russians, and I'm afraid the arms build up is going to have to go up until they mend their own ways, or they Soviet Union falls.
2:00.0	We mentioned that was a very long wait. It happened, but it was a long wait.
2:06.0	He has to deal with some guilt that they were unable to end the war without a diplomatic solution, and they ended up with nuclear bombs.
2:15.0	He feels guilty about that. He writes a vigorous defense of the decision, which is published after, first of all, there's an article in New Yorker called Hiroshima by John Hersey.
2:26.0	It affects the country because it makes vivid, through a human example, how terrible the atom bomb is.
2:33.0	People have been for the bombs, because they ended World War II. Suddenly, go on, did we really have to do this, and Stimson authors a defense of Truman's policy and the establishment, if you will.
2:47.0	We had to do it because it was the least horrific alternative. All the other choices were terrible.
2:53.0	That's true. Stimson believes it, but he's guilty. He's bothered by this. He has a hard condition. He dies in 1950.
3:02.0	He had a proud life, and he did a lot of great things, but he's a bit sad at the end.
3:08.0	He had a theory called moral progress. Did he make the moral progress case with the atomic bomber? Did he leave it out?
	...

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