WAR ENDINGS ARE THE WORST IMAGINABLE EVENTS: 4/8: Road to Surrender: Three Men and the Countdown to the End of World War II by Evan Thomas (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 3 November 2024
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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.
1917 CONRAD
Transcript
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| 0:34.7 | This is CBSI on the world. |
| 0:36.6 | I'm John Batt who with Evan Thomas. His new book is Road to Surrender. |
| 0:40.3 | Three men in the countdown to the end of World War II. The U.S. Army Air Force, it wasn't a separate |
| 0:45.8 | service yet. A Bob Lovett, who is the Deputy Assistant Secretary of War working for Mr. |
| 0:51.7 | Simpson, imagines the future in which the Air Force will be its own |
| 0:55.0 | service. But right now, it is subordinate to George Marshall, the commander of the U.S. Army, |
| 1:01.4 | but we need to meet several personalities because they're going to get involved in this question |
| 1:06.0 | of the atomic bomb and mass murder and ending the war and precision bombing, all these euphemisms |
| 1:13.6 | that are important to understand. Evan, first we'll meet the man Tuohy Spots, who is deputy to |
| 1:21.8 | Hap Arnold, the commander of the U.S. Army Air Force. Initially, Spots has given the job of bombing Germany, and then he's |
| 1:29.6 | given the job of bombing Japan. Let's start with Germany, because Spatz is troubled by bombing |
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