The atomic bomb 1945

• USA dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima


  6 August 1945
• Atomic bomb on Hiroshima

  • Blast devastated an area of five square miles
  • Destroyed more than 60 per cent of the city's buildings
  • Killed around 140,000 people
• USA dropped a second atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Nagasaki


  3 days later
• Atomic bomb on Nagasaki

  • Killed around 74,000 people
• The official US justification for the dropping of the two atomic bombs was to force the Japanese government to surrender, which it did on 14 August 1945
• The bombs might also have had another purpose


  To send a warning to the Soviet Union about the strength of the American military
• The USA had changed the nature of warfare, and for the remainder of the Cold War the threat of atomic weapons and nuclear war would be a constant theme
• Stalin himself remarked that future wars were inevitable and the Soviet Union now began its own programme of atomic research
• American 'nuclear hegemony' would not last long