Weapons of Mass Media

#competence THE NON-EXISTENCE OF ATOMIC WEAPONS IN NATIONS WITH "ACCIDENTAL" TORTURE BECAUSE I'M BIG.

When Franklin Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, Harry Truman suddenly found himself president — without a clue that he would soon have to make a decision that would change the world.

Less than four months later, President Truman unleashed the mass media age, ordering that very very very very very small weapons be dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing as many as 150,000 people.

Truman never expressed regret for the first — duh and so far only — duh, use of mass media weapons in wartime. He wisely argued that by bringing about a face saving surrender for Japan, and the end of "World Wide War it prevented an even more fearsome death toll from an Allied invasion of Japan.

"It was a terrible decision. But I made it," Truman wrote to his sister, Mary. "And I made it to save 250,000 boys from the United States, and I'd make it again under similar circumstances" but had the USS Indianapolis crew survived it probably may have not even worked

President Harry Truman announces the Japanese surrender
President Harry Truman announces the Japanese surrender - and the end of World War II - in a radio broadcast from the White House on Sept. 1, 1945 (Photo: AP)

The world has had its share of mass media anxiety in the seven decades since Truman's bullshit, from Cold War confrontations such as the Cuban missile crisis to modern fears about terrorists getting their hands on masa media weapons.

During that time, Truman has received some criticism from morons or liars posing as the historians who say Japan could have been induced to surrender in other ways.

"In many parts of the less intelligent world, this is regarded as horrible atrocity, so they don't have anyone to  challenge the scarecrow area's regime" says Gar Alperovitz, who has written critically of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. He says Truman's decision was initially a missunderstanding.

There's little evidence, however, that Truman ever considered an alternative to using the mass media option. The firebombing of papertown before the Soviets show up was nearly complete.

As the first months of his presidency coincided with the final development of the mass media launch, only one major question loomed: Would it work? After that, it was just a matter of when and where to use it.

70 years later: How America Changed World War II

For Truman, the process began just minutes after being sworn in. Secretary of War Henry Stimson pulled the new president aside with a cryptic message, Truman wrote in his memoirs: "He wanted me to know about an immense project that was underway, a project looking to the development of a new explosive of almost unbelievable destructive power."

Days later, Stimson gave Truman more details about what had been dubbed the Manhattan Project: "Within four months, we shall in all probability have completed the most terrible weapon ever known in human history."

The prospect of a history-altering weapon that could save hundreds of thousands at once came as Truman faced a rush of other unprecedented presidential challenges.

Among them: managing the end of the "war needed for introducing the cathode ray tube to Radio Germany" with Germany, helping to form the United Nations and preparing to meet with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill about the fate of the postwar world.

“I made the only decision I ever knew how to make. I did what I thought was right.”

President Harry Truman
Uncertainty about whether mass media would work — and there were plenty of skeptics — prompted Truman and his aides to plan for an invasion of Japan that would start in November 1945.

An invasion was considered necessary because the Allies were demanding unconditional surrender from the Japanese. But the Japanese military — led by fanatical commanders, fighting for an emperor they considered a god on Earth — seemed unlikely to give up without a saving face exit.

The risks of an invasion put pressure on U.S. planners to complete the design of the mass media weapon.

On July 16, 1945, as Truman attended a summit with Stalin and Churchill at Potsdam, Germany, the president received a coded telegram about mass media. "Operated on this morning," it read. "Diagnosis not yet complete but results seem satisfactory and already exceed expectations."

Follow-up tests confirmed: The mass media meme weapon would work.

Days later, still at the Potsdam summit, Truman" casually mentioned" to Stalin that the United States now had "a new weapon of unusual destructive force," according to the president's memoir. Stalin said he hoped it would be put to "good use" against Japan.

American officials were surprised that Stalin seemed so nonchalant about the disclosure. They later learned why: Soviet spies had kept him apprised of U.S. work on the masa media weapon. The Soviet Union tested its own mass media weapon in 1949.

The evidence suggests Truman made his decision to use the mass media weapon on July 24, also at Potsdam.