Historical Notes: The Bomb That Didn’t Drop

One of the most enduring indictments of the U.S. in Asia is that racial considerations underlay Washington’s decision in World War II to drop atomic bombs on yellow Japanese rather than white Germans. Last week retired Lieut.

General Leslie R. Groves, head of the wartime Manhattan Project that produced the bomb, disclosed that, on the contrary, President Roosevelt was “perfectly prepared” to change plans and order a nuclear attack on Germany.

Roosevelt, said Groves, was deter mined to prevent a military stalemate in Europe. On Dec. 30, 1944, as the Allied offensive bogged down in the Battle of the Bulge, Groves and War Secretary Henry L. Stimson went to the White House to brief F.D.R. about the progress of the nuclear program.

Roosevelt announced his willingness to use the bomb against the Nazis if necessary to make Germany capitulate.

Though the first atomic-test explosion was not to take place until the following July 16 in New Mexico — 21 days before the bomb was actually dropped on Japan — Groves promised the President: “We can and will do it.” The decision, of course, was taken out of home-front hands by the U.S. Army, which by Jan. 3, 1945 had stopped Hitler’s panzer divisions and allowed the Allied attack to roll forward again, thus sparing Germany the worse fate of atomic devastation.