Stop, guys. Please. To throw Truman in the same boat as Stalin, Hitler, and Pol Pot is absurd. Yeah, he used the A-bomb, and nukes suck. Please demonstrate that dying by bullet, incendiary, or conventional bomb is a more pleasant way to go. Also, please demonstrate the Truman ought to have had in 1945 the perspective on nukes that we now enjoy today. Yeah, he bombed civilians. So did the allies in Europe; and using the terror of murder and rape on the civlian populations of Asia was part of Japan's modus operandi. Finally, please recall that Japan was the aggressor in the Pacific War, not the US. I'm not aware that Japan had signalled a willingness to negotiate before the A-bombs were used, but suppose that they were, and the US and Japan had worked out a deal that was something less than unconditional surrender on the part of Japan. That would imply the US permitting Japan, whose regime was every bit as bloody and racist as Hitler's, to keep some of its empire. It implies the US acknowledging the sovreignty of Japan's form of race-worshipping military dictatorship as legitimate on some level. Truman would hardly be well-remembered for that, would he? Few people would deny that Nazi Germany must be utterly defeated before a democratic Germany could be rebuilt...is there any reason Japan wouldn't have fit the same criteria under the circumstances? The A-bomb was horrible and many contemporary scholars think its use may have been unnecessary. To judge Truman Hitleresque solely on the basis of his decision to use that weapon, though, without fully considering the context of the time and without considering how he used the rest of his presidency, is ludicrous. It gives Truman too little credit and Hitler way, way too much. Marvin Long Austin, Texas
