Truman Establishes Sole Presidential Authority
By The Harry Truman scene in “Oppenheimer” is accurate in spirit, although Truman made the “crybaby” remark later. The film sticks with the conventional telling of the decision to use the bombs, though, which is another narrative we need to jettison. At the same time, we must recognize Truman as the originator of a trope we now find natural, that only the President can authorize the use of nuclear weapons.
The dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan is presented as the result of deliberate decisions by a small group, with Truman the ultimate decider. centering on Truman. I’m working mostly from Alex Wellerstein’s accounts of the history. Here are some resources from Alex: perhaps the fullest academic statement of his findings; a more popular version via interview; a focus on Nagasaki; a podcast with transcript.
When Germany surrendered in May 1945, the Manhattan Project was nearing its goal. A month ear;lier, President Franklin Roosevelt died, and Truman became president. Before that, Truman had not been informed of the Manhattan Project. The goal of the Manhattan Project was to get a bomb before the Germans did. With Germany’s surrender, some of the scientists questioned the purpose of their work.
But the Manhattan Project was directed by the military, and they still had a war to fight with Japan. Additionally, General Leslie Groves and Roosevelt’s advisors knew they would have to answer to Congress for that $2 billion in 1945 dollars spent on the project, and it would be hard to explain having a superweapon and not using it.
In a way, though, the decision to use the bomb was less than that. The movie depicts a meeting of the Targeting Committee, in which possible Japanese targets are discussed. The scene conflates a couple of committees and several meetings, but it represents what happened. There was enough recognition that these bombs were special that their targets were chosen carefully, but Truman was not a part of the decisions. The committee was formed two weeks into his presidency.
The military saw the bombs through the frame of firebombing attacks on Japan and Germany. Those attacks killed large numbers of civilians; the Tokyo attack about as many as were killed in Hiroshima. General Curtis LeMay had led the firebombing attacks and would become an advocate of nuclear weapons.
The movie shows the two nuclear weapons, packed in appropriately-shaped crates, leaving Los Alamos into the hands of the military. Truman never signed a directive to use the weapons. His first decision came on August 10, after the Nagasaki bombing. Truman believed or had been briefed that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were primarily military targets and that civilian casualties would be low. When he learned the estimates of civilians killed, he told the military, through General George Marshall, that his permission would be necessary for any further atomic bomb drops. (Thanks to Gene Dannen for making an image of the memo available.)
Truman would again reserve control of atomic weapons to himself in 1950, during the Korean War. The United Nations army (mainly the US) was doing badly against China. General Douglas MacArthur wanted to use nuclear weapons. Later in the war, Truman orchestrated an elaborate feint in which he dispatched atomic weapons without the nuclear cores to Guam. Again, he kept control of whether they were to be used.
The conventional story of a presidential decision to use the bombs and the consequent Japanese surrender comes from a 1947 article in Harper’s Magazine by Henry Stimson, who was Secretary of War under Roosevelt and had participated in the Targeting Committee. This article modified the history to put Truman in charge of the atomic weapons at all times.
Another part of the conventional story is that there was a decision to use the bombs instead of invading Japan. In fact, as John Emery and Anna Pluff show, invasion was an open option until Japan surrendered.
Truman’s actions to vest control of nuclear weapons in the presidency were consistent with Congress’s move to place control of production and handling of those weapons under a civilian agency, the Atomic Energy Commission. That civilian control remains in place today. As the new historical interpretations take hold, I have seen confused arguments that sole presidential authority means that Truman must have made the decision on using the bombs. But there was no doctrine until Truman invented it.
The doctrine was later confirmed and elaborated. Stephen Schwartz follows the president’s nuclear briefcase (“the football”), which both symbolizes and enables his sole control of nuclear weapons, and reports on Twitter and Bluesky.
Photo: Gary Oldman in “Oppenheimer” as Harry S Truman. Credit: Universal Pictures
Cross-posted to Nuclear Diner