title: Reclaiming Realism for the Left: Gar Alperovitz and the Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb
abstract: Sixty-seven years after the decision to use the atomic bomb in World War II, controversy remains whether the United States was justified in using fission bombs in combat. Gar Alperovitz, the great revisionist historian, in his Atomic Diplomacy and The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb transformed our knowledge of the geopolitical motives behind the atomic attack against Japan at the end of World War II. These uranium and plutonium-core bombs were political, not primarily military in purpose and mo
journal: Advances in Historical Studies