ASSUMPTIONS OF ATOMIC PROPORTIONS:

WHAT CHANGED WHEN F.D.R. DIED?

Anthony Peel
HIS 299: Introduction to History
December 9, 2019
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Introduction

Harry S. Truman walked into Eleanor Roosevelt’s study on April 12th, 1945, not

knowing what to expect. Quietly Mrs. Roosevelt approached him and spoke the words, “Harry,

the President is dead.” Shocked, the Vice President finally found the words, “Is there anything I

can do for you?” “Is there anything we can do for you?” the First Lady replied, “For you are the

one in trouble now.”1 A truer phrase may have never been spoken. Harry Truman, who had been

Vice President for just 82 days, was now to be entangled in a deep spiderweb of political

problems that he did not fully understand. The second World War was beginning it’s conclusion

in Europe but still raging in the Pacific against the Japanese. Less than four months after

Roosevelt died, the United States’ new president would decide to become the first nation to

unleash a power the earth had never seen. A light as bright as the sun exploded over Hiroshima,

Japan on August 6th, 1945 when the world’s first atomic bomb was dropped. Historians have

rightfully debated the inevitability, the morality and the alternatives of the actions that were

taken by Harry Truman to end the war in the Pacific, including some suggesting that Truman’s

policies shifted from Roosevelt’s after learning of the successful atomic test at Alamogordo,

New Mexico. Were there any effects on the eventual dropping of the atomic bombs when F.D.R.

died suddenly and Harry Truman was appointed President of the United States? With an

examination into the lives, memoirs and letters of world leaders, documents signed during World

War II and secondary sources written by expert historians, I will show that, while we cannot

know for certain, President Roosevelt intended to use the atomic bombs in a similar military,

strategic, and diplomatic fashion as his successor, Harry Truman. Although the question I pose is

a hypothetical one, the evidence I have gathered is based in fact and reason. We cannot fully

1 Truman, Harry. Memoirs Volume I: Year of Decisions. (Garden City, New York: Doubleday &
Company, Inc., 1955), 5.
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know what F.D.R. was or was not planning but we will start by identifying and examining

President Roosevelt’s actions and knowledge in regards to the atomic bomb. Then we will

review what Truman assumed Roosevelt would do with the weapon and how his experiences

with Roosevelt and his cabinet created an inevitability around the bomb. Finally, we will identify

what changed after Truman became president, particularly in regards to the United States foreign

policies with the Soviet Union.

The debates around the use of atomic bombs have grown louder as time grants us the

wisdom of hindsight. The morality of the decision to use such a destructive force has been

questioned. Should the atomic bombs have been dropped? Is this action something that a morally

conscious nation should have the power over? In a journal article in Foreign Affairs, Barton J.

Bernstein questions the use of the bomb to kill innocent civilians concluding that the barbarity of

the war on all sides redefined the morality of every country post-World War II. Many authors

and historians have debated whether it was necessary to take such a large step to defeat the

Japanese in the Pacific. Could the United States have brought a quick end to the war without the

use of atomic bombs? Was Japan on the brink of surrender before Hiroshima was bombed? What

were the alternatives to using the atomic bomb? Wilson D. Miscamble attempts to answer these

questions and explain why Truman’s decision to go ahead with the bombing was critically

important to the future of the United States in his book “The Most Controversial Decision:

Truman, the Atomic Bombs, and the Defeat of Japan.”

Finally, historians questioned whether or not Harry Truman decided to launch the attack

in order to use “atomic diplomacy,” which is defined as the use or threat of use to gain or achieve

diplomatic goals. Is atomic diplomacy something that should be of acceptable use? The loudest

voice in this conversation is Gar Alperovitz in his book “Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and
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Potsdam” in 1965. Just twenty years after the end of the war, Alperovitz questions Truman’s

foreign policies and concludes that he did not intend to follow Roosevelt but instead created his

own policies revolving around the reduction of the power of the Soviet Union in post-war

Europe. My research findings are not meant to reject or modify any of the previous arguments

that have been presented by experts in the past sixty years but instead, The goal of this work is to

build upon the current understanding of how and why the atomic bombs were dropped on

Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.

What Did President Roosevelt Know?

In order to understand if Franklin D. Roosevelt’s death was a critical change in the

eventual use of the atomic bombs, we must discern how much Roosevelt really knew about the

bomb. When reviewing personal letters from Roosevelt between 1928 and 1945, there are zero

mentions of the words ‘atomic bomb.’2 The man was not one to spill his heart out on paper but

rather kept to himself. How can we learn what the President knew if there is no record of his

thoughts? We must examine his actions. On August 2nd, 1939, the President received a letter

that would begin the American governments’ increased involvement in the research of atomic

energy. Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard alerted the President to the work of Frederic Joliot, Dr.

Enrico Fermi, and Szilard himself. They believed the work of these scientists made it possible to

“set up a nuclear chain reaction in a large mass of uranium by which vast amounts of power and

large quantities of new radium-like elements would be generated.”3 Einstein and Szilard were

adamant that this process could be possible sooner rather than later and the construction of

powerful bombs would assuredly follow. The letter from Einstein and Szilard led Roosevelt to

2 Roosevelt, Franklin D., F.D.R.: His Personal Letters 1928-1945. (New York: Duell, Sloan and
Pearce, 1950).

3 Atomic Heritage Foundation, National Museum of Nuclear Science and History, Einstein-
Szilard Letter, 2019, https://www.atomicheritage.org/key-documents/einstein-szilard-letter
 4

order the creation of the Advisory Committee on Uranium on October 21st, 1939, beginning the

United States government’s research into atomic energy two years before the United States

would enter into the second World War.

Possibly the more important question when assessing Roosevelt’s knowledge of the

bomb is less about what he knew but attempting to understand how F.D.R. intended to use the

atomic bomb. Was it meant to be a deterrent against the Germans or Japanese? Was it meant to

be used as a preemptive or first strike? The American government knew that Nazi Germany was

attempting to build a bomb with atomic power. According to Michael Dobbs in his book “Six

Months in 1945,” the Third Reich was the leading power in the race for atomic weapons: “The

Germans also controlled the rich uranium reserves that the Belgian mining concern Union

Miniere had extracted from the Congo.” Additionally, Dobbs states that the German physicist

Werner Heisenberg was “believed to be hard at work building a uranium machine, the German

term for a nuclear reactor.”4 With the knowledge that they were behind and disadvantaged in a

race for a power that would change mankind, it is reasonable to believe that Roosevelt knew

what they were attempting to create would, at the very least, need to be kept as a deterrent and

could be used to end a war they soon could be engulfed in.

On October 9th, 1941, two months before the Japanese would bomb Pearl Harbor and

officially pull the United States into the global conflict, Vannevar Bush, the director of the

Office of Scientific Research and Development as well as secret science advisor to the President,

outlined the recent developments discovered by British “Maud” Committee to President

Roosevelt. The Maud Committee, according to David Holloway’s “Stalin and the Bomb,”

reported their belief that “it will be possible to make an effective uranium bomb which,

4 Dobbs, Michael. Six Months in 1945: FDR, Stalin, Churchill, Truman and the Birth of the
Modern World. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 2012), 241.
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containing 25 lb of active material, would be equivalent as regards destructive effect of 1,800

tons of T.N.T. and would also release large quantities of radioactive substances, which would

make places near to where the bomb exploded dangerous to human life for a long period.”5 The

next January, Roosevelt gave the go-ahead to Bush with a simple, handwritten note: “V. B. OK

—returned—I think you had best keep this in your own safe F.D.R."6 The awareness of the

German attempt to create a bomb, the Maud Report and the approval to proceed creates an

important point in this discussion: Roosevelt not only knew the power of the atomic bomb they

were creating but showed intent to at least match the Germans, if not outdo them.

If we move our timeline forward to 1944, another important source of information comes

into play. We can draw what may be some of Roosevelt’s intentions towards the use of an atomic

bomb from the Hyde Park Aide-Memoire. This was a top secret agreement written and initialed

by President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill just one year before the

war would end. The world leaders agreed in this document that any bomb or atomic energy

power created was not to be made public knowledge, that it may be used—specifically against

the Japanese—and the United States and the British government would be in full control of these

new powers.7 This importance of the Hyde Park Aide-Memoire cannot be understated. These

men were keeping this enormous power a secret from the world, including their own

5 Holloway, David. Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939-1956.
(New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 79.

6 U.S. Department of Energy, Office of History and Heritage Resources, A Tentative Decision to
Drop the Bomb, 2019. https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/Events/1939-
1942/tentative_decision_build.htm

7 U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, Foreign Service Institute, Aide-Memoire
Initialed by President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill, 2019.
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1944Quebec/d299
 6

governments and allies. Additionally, and possibly more importantly to our discussion, they

specifically agree that the atomic bomb may be used as a first-strike option on the Pacific Front.

Why Did President Truman Assume?

In the Foreign Affairs article “The Atomic Bombings Reconsidered,” Barton J. Bernstein

tells how a young Senator by the name of Harry Truman unknowingly led an investigation into

an expensive project undertaken by the War Department. Secretary of War Henry Stimson

described Truman as “a nuisance and pretty untrustworthy… he talks smoothly but acts

meanly.”8 Stimson was able to convince the senator not to continue with his investigation.

Truman’s memoirs state that Stimson confided in him the following, “I can’t tell you what it is,

but it is the greatest project in the history of the world,” and Truman called for the immediate

halt of investigations into the War Department. The Missouri Senator went on to describe

Stimson as “a great American patriot and statesman.”9 Harry Truman and all of Congress had

come close to tripping into one of the greatest secrets in human history, but Truman would not be

made fully aware until after he walked into Eleanor Roosevelt’s study on August 12th, 1945.

Shortly after taking his oath as President of the United States, Harry Truman’s first move

was to retain all of Roosevelt’s Cabinet. Truman stated, “It was my intention, I said, to continue

both the foreign and domestic policies of the Roosevelt administration.”10 Truman would rely on

these men for their knowledge and advice more than Roosevelt would. As previously stated,

F.D.R. was a president who would not let many of his advisors in on what his plans were.

8 Bernstein, Barton J. “The Atomic Bombings Reconsidered.” Foreign Affairs 74, no. 1. (1995):
139

9 Truman, Harry. Memoirs Volume I: Year of Decisions. (Garden City, New York: Doubleday &
Company, Inc., 1955), 10-11.
10 Truman, Harry. Memoirs Volume I: Year of Decisions. (Garden City, New York: Doubleday
&
Company, Inc., 1955), 9.
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However, the situation was different for Truman. He was not in his fourth term of office, in fact

the man had only been Vice President for 82 days before being thrown into the deep end of a war

which would change the world. In that extraordinarily short time as Vice President, Roosevelt

had not given Truman one serious briefing on the Manhattan Project.11 It was necessary for

Harry Truman to lean on his allies in the White House.

Of course, this creates the question: how was the information of the atomic research

presented to Truman? According to Wilson D. Miscamble in his book, Truman’s “advisors (and

events themselves) tended to frame the issues for him to decide and determine the timing of

them.”12 Secretary of War Henry Stimson, along with Vannevar Bush, would give Harry Truman

his first real glimpse into the new power that they had been developing. At this time, Truman

was not given specific details but he was finally made aware that the project was one of extreme

destructive power and was nearing completion. Secretary of War Henry Stimson was the most

important man in the government, according to Gar Alperovitz in his 1965 book “Atomic

Diplomacy.” Stimson had complete access and knowledge of the entire Manhattan Project as

well as a complete trust of Harry Truman. Alperovitz states, “For three quarters of an hour

Stimson discussed the atomic bomb with the President. It was assumed—not decided—that the

bomb would be used.”13 Stimson’s framing of the strategies as well as Roosevelt’s own mistakes

11 Miscamble, Wilson D. The Most Controversial Decision: Truman, the Atomic Bombs, and
the
Defeat of Japan. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 25.

12 Miscamble, Wilson D. The Most Controversial Decision: Truman, the Atomic Bombs, and
the
Defeat of Japan. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 28.
13 Alperovitz, Gar. Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam. (New York, N.Y.: Simon and
Schuster, Inc, 1965), 56.
 8

in not informing Truman created an almost certainty to Truman that Roosevelt meant to use the

bomb before the end of the war.

When the time approached to use the atomic bomb in 1945, Stimson suggested a

committee be created to decide the implications of using the weapon. The Interim committee was

chaired by Secretary Stimson himself and the group included Bush, other prominent politicians,

advisors and scientists connected to the developments such as Dr. Robert Oppenheimer and Dr.

Enrico Fermi. Holloway makes an important point that “the deliberations of the Interim

Committee provides crucial evidence on the thinking behind American policy. By asking how,

not whether, the atomic bomb should be used against Japan, the committee proceeded on the

assumption that the bomb would be used against Japan when it was ready.”14 The inevitability of

the bomb being used is highlighted again when Michael Dobbs quotes military aide George

Elsey: “there was no decision to be made about the bomb. Truman could no more have stopped it

than he could have stopped a train moving down the tracks.”15 On June 1st, this committee

recommended to the President that the bomb be used against the enemy as soon as possible

without warning. According to Truman, the committee recommended that it should not and

cannot be used as a technical demonstration but must be a “direct military use” in order to end

the war. There were to be no alternative measures considered.

“The final decision,” Truman stated emphatically, “of where and when to use the atomic

bomb was up to me.” It is important to note that the President believed that the bomb was a

“military weapon” and did not doubt whether or not it should be used. Winston Churchill told

Truman that he was unopposed to using the atomic bomb without hesitation, according to

14 Holloway, David. Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939-1956.
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 120.

15 Dobbs, Michael. Six Months in 1945: FDR, Stalin, Churchill, Truman and the Birth of the
Modern World. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 2012), 327.
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Truman, “if it might aid to end the war.”16 These are important points when considering the

current day debates that rage about the morality of the issue. Bernstein contends that the world

redefined what morality meant with the multitude of “savagery” that occurred including but not

limited to Germany’s murder of Jews, Japan’s rape of Nanking, and the United States’ use of

atomic weapons on cities in Japan.17

Changes in Foreign Policy

The Soviet Union was not excluded from these horrendous events as Joseph Stalin’s

policies “over the previous fifteen years had killed millions of people and inflicted enormous

suffering upon the Soviet Union.”18 The U.S.S.R. was to be a major factor in the Allies’ victory

and a superpower in their own right in the post-war world. President Roosevelt knew this and

according to Dobbs, his relationship with Stalin was based on a “harsh political calculation: to

defeat one dictator, F.D.R. had to ally himself with another.”19 In order to defeat the Axis

powers, he needed Stalin to continue to hold the western front to defeat Hitler and then engage

the Japanese in the Pacific. At the Yalta Conference meeting of the “Big Three,” Holloway

points out that Roosevelt was willing to concede multiple points to Stalin including “preservation

of the status quo of Outer Mongolia... restoration of rights lost by Russia in the Russo-Japanese

war of 1904–5… and annexation of the Kurile islands.” The author notes that the western

16 Truman, Harry. Memoirs Volume I: Year of Decisions. (Garden City, New York: Doubleday
&
Company, Inc., 1955), 419.

17 Bernstein, Barton J. “The Atomic Bombings Reconsidered.” Foreign Affairs 74, no. 1.
(1995): 151.

18 Holloway, David. Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939-1956.
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 73.
19 Dobbs, Michael. Six Months in 1945: FDR, Stalin, Churchill, Truman and the Birth of the
Modern World. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 2012), 18.
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leaders’ “willingness” to work with Stalin on these demands marks just how “anxious they were

to have Soviet help in defeating Japan.”20

Despite this seemingly open relationship, the West was not so willing to include the

Soviet Union in their atomic plans. Some advisors and scientists, including physicist Niels Bohr,

did suggest to Roosevelt and Churchill to include Stalin in the atomic bomb development. Bohr,

a physicist who had escaped Denmark as the Nazis gained control in September of 1943, wanted

Stalin to be convinced of the need for “international control of atomic energy.”21 Bohr, and

eventually the Interim committee, argued that they were worried about the usage of atomic

energy in the post-war world. Against this advice, Roosevelt and Churchill signed the Hyde Park

Aide-Memoire and decided to keep Stalin and the Soviet Union in the dark. The Aide-Memoire

rewarded Bohr with an investigation into his activities to “ensure that he is responsible for no

leakage of information, particularly to the Russians.”22 According to Holloway, Joseph Stalin did

not realize the importance of the atomic bomb until after the United States’ first successful test

on July 16, 1945—the day before the Potsdam conference in which Truman, Stalin and Churchill

were to meet.23

With the end in sight for the European Axis powers in the summer of 1945, the Big

Three, now including Harry Truman, met for the final time at the Potsdam Conference to

20 Holloway, David. Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939-1956.
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 123.

21 Holloway, David. Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939-1956.
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 118.

22 U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, Foreign Service Institute, Aide-Memoire
Initialed by President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill, 2019.
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1944Quebec/d299

23 Holloway, David. Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939-1956.
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 116
 11

determine what the world, in particular Europe, would look like after the last of the Nazis had

been defeated. Historians, such as Alperovitz, agree that this is one clear spot in which Truman

deviates from Roosevelt’s approach.24 Learning of his country’s first successful atomic test had

clear effects on Truman. Having a tested and confirmed atomic weapon gave the President the

confidence to approach the Soviet Union with less caution, resulting in the Potsdam Conference

being a “tense and irritable session” according to Dobbs. Truman approached Stalin without a

translator and, quoting Dobbs, told the leader that the Americans had “a weapon of unusual

destructive force,” to which Stalin replied, “Glad to hear it. I hope you will make good use of it

against the Japanese.”25 Joseph Stalin was aware of the Americans’ attempt to build the bomb

before the showdown with Truman but after hearing of the first successful test “launched a crash

program to build a Soviet bomb” in the next five weeks.26 Truman had broken away from

Roosevelt’s secretive policy to keep the U.S.S.R. behind in the race for atomic energy but it’s

difficult to say that Roosevelt would not have taken a similar route. To Roosevelt, the idea of the

bomb was just that—an idea.

Conclusion

It is impossible to fully know what a person might do in the watershed moments of

history. We cannot know what President Franklin D. Roosevelt would have done if he had a

confirmed atomic weapon in his arsenal at the end of the war. We can only compare Truman’s

actions with those of F.D.R. and all of Roosevelt’s actions appeared to point in the direction of

using the atomic bomb. Beginning with the Einstein-Szilard letter and the Maud Report,

24 Alperovitz, Gar. Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam. (New York, N.Y.: Simon and
Schuster, Inc, 1965), 13.

25 Dobbs, Michael. Six Months in 1945: FDR, Stalin, Churchill, Truman and the Birth of the
Modern World. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 2012), 329.
26 Holloway, David. Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939-1956.
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 116.
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Roosevelt knew the powerful possibilities that the bomb possessed when he approved the

research to match the Third Reich. In the Hyde Park Aide-Memoire, Churchill and Roosevelt

secretly agreed that they would be the ones to control the atomic power of the future and that it

may possibly be used on the Pacific front against the Japanese. All of these actions undoubtedly

signal that Roosevelt was at least aware that he may need to use an atomic weapon.

The bomb became an inevitable force when Truman assumed the duties of President of

the United States. The Roosevelt cabinet and advisors were retained and relied upon heavily.

These advisors always used the language of inevitability—“when” instead of “if” the bomb

should be used, an important distinction when wondering if Roosevelt had also framed his

language as such. This point we cannot know, as the previous President left no documents

detailing his thoughts on the possibility of using the weapons. Where we are sure Truman leaves

Roosevelt’s path is in regards to foreign relations, distinctly with the Soviet Union. The

administration knew victory was within its grasp and began thinking of how the world would be

shaped when the dust had settled. Whereas Roosevelt had been nothing but accommodating

towards Stalin, Truman attempted to scare the leader with his atomic power. It is crucial to note

that Roosevelt had attempted to keep the atomic research a secret from the Soviets, so would he

have eventually used the same atomic diplomacy approach that the Truman administration did?

It is possible. Unfortunately, we will never know whether Roosevelt could have or would have

stopped the use of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but when they were launched

and the dust settled we, as Dr. Robert Oppenheimer stated, had “become death. The shatterer of

worlds.”
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Bibliography

Alperovitz, Gar. Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam. New York, N.Y.: Simon and

Schuster, Inc, 1965.

Atomic Heritage Foundation, National Museum of Nuclear Science and History, Einstein-

Szilard

Letter, 2019, https://www.atomicheritage.org/key-documents/einstein-szilard-letter

Bernstein, Barton J. “The Atomic Bombings Reconsidered.” Foreign Affairs 74, no. 1. (1995):

135-52. doi:10.2307/20047025.

Dobbs, Michael. Six Months in 1945: FDR, Stalin, Churchill, Truman and the Birth of the

Modern World. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 2012

Holloway, David. Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939-1956. New

Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.

Miscamble, Wilson D. The Most Controversial Decision: Truman, the Atomic Bombs, and the

Defeat of Japan. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Roosevelt, Franklin D., F.D.R.: His Personal Letters 1928-1945. New York: Duell, Sloan and

Pearce, 1950.

Truman, Harry. Memoirs Volume I: Year of Decisions. Garden City, New York: Doubleday &

Company, Inc., 1955

U.S. Department of Energy, Office of History and Heritage Resources, A Tentative Decision to

Drop the Bomb, 2019, https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-

history/Events/1939-1942/tentative_decision_build.htm

U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, Foreign Service Institute, Aide-Memoire
 14

Initialed by President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill, 2019.

https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1944Quebec/d299