WWII
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The Japanese did indeed agree BEFORE the a-bombs were dropping to surrender… on the condition that they could keep their emperor.
The emperor himself was their god, but still just a figurehead. But the U.S. wanted an UNCONDITIONAL surrender… How much would it have cost the U.S. to agree? Not much… in fact, it would have saved them 2 a-bombs and a lot of lives.
The a-bomb was indeed dropped as a means of intimidating the Soviet Union. Truman had just come in as president, and, uninformed about Roosevelt’s ongoing funding to the development of the a-bomb, had to be quickly briefed on the project and the implications of its use. Thus, when it came to crunch time, there were several options: demonstrate the bomb to the Japanese in America or in the jungles of Japan, warn the Japanese before using it, attack only military bases, attack civilian centers, use both bombs, use one bomb, etc. Eventually, Truman (the uneducated hick he was) decided to use it. And it did indeed intimidate the Soviet Union. They started to work frantically on developing their own shortly afterwards.
And remember Potsdam, where Truman had just been informed of the success of Trinity? He was bragging to Stalin about it. If that’s not intimidation, I don’t know what is.
Why wouldn’t American industrialists finance Nazis? If they support the enemy secretly, the U.S. has more need to join the war, and the eventual effect is heavy reliance on American industry in the war effort.
But Rockefeller actually supported Nazis because of their euthanasia /sterilization of the elderly campaign.
I haven’t heard about the last point, about U.S. leaders knowing about Pearl Harbor before it happened, but it sounds very likely. The U.S. needed an excuse to break out of its isolationist shell and Pearl Harbor was the perfect excuse. After all, wars stimulate rapid industrial growth, as well as medical growth. Penicillin was used copiously during the war, and promoted more research and eventually nobel-prize winning discoveries and inventions related to it.