17. Atomic Bombs Were Not as Abhorred in 1945 as They Are Today
Another flaw with the theory that America’s leaders deliberately refrained from nuking Germany out of scruples about nuking other white people has to do with presentism: the assumption that people in the past saw things like we do today. In the 1940s, nuclear weapons were not viewed with the same repugnance with which they are viewed today. Far from horrific last resort weapons whose use would be unthinkable except in the direst emergency, atomic bombs in August of 1945 were new weapons whose potential and impact had not yet been thought through.
Back then, a nuke was simply seen as another bomb, just a big and exceptionally devastating one. Modern abhorrence of nuclear weapons did not exist to the same extent when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed, so if the US had atomic weapons before Germany’s surrender, there would have been little reason to refrain from dropping them on German cities.
