Why We Fight Page #4

World War ll is without question

the formation of the American military empire.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme

Commander in Chief of

allied expeditionary force.

I have complete confidence

that the soldiers, sailors...

and Army of the United Nations will demonstrate

that an aroused democracy is almost quantifiable

fighting machine that can be devised.

Eisenhower was there and saw it happening.

He had seen the build up of the

American military to fight World War ll.

I this war, more than any

other in history, we are...

on the side of decency

and democracy and liberty.

He believed very deeply in the

necessity for World War ll.

And felt that Nazism was a terrible tyranny.

And he brought this conviction

to defeating Nazi Germany.

People waited for this moment the

culminating victory, the end of the war.

We were on top of the world.

We were only unwrecked major power on earth.

Europe was bleeding to death, Japan was gone,

those paper cities had all been burned up.

So what are we doing?

At 2:
45 in the morning August 6th,

It is an atomic bomb, it is a harnessing

of the basic power of the universe.

The United States bombed the Japanese city

of Hiroshima on August 6th 1945.

And three days later, they detonated

another atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki.

What has been done is the greatest

achievement of organized science in history.

I can remember in the Pacific, when the word

spread, that the bombs had been dropped.

delighted, because we'd been...

convinced that if Japan was

not hit by nuclear weapons,

one million of us would be killed.

Drop those bombs and they will surrender.

Well they were trying to surrender

all that summer, Truman...

wouldn't listen, because Truman

wanted to drop the bombs...

To show off, to frighten

Stalin, to change the balance...

of power in the world, to

declare war on communism.

Perhaps we were starting a preemptive World War.

Eisenhower hated the dropping of them

and thought it should not have been done.

We just thought war was

terrible enough as it was.

I can not trace evolution of my dad's thinking.

He was complex, he was a five star general,

but he was never military fanatic, never.

One night in July of 45, that day

the Secretary of War had told...

my father about the development

of atomic weapon, atomic bomb.

He was sitting up in his bedroom

and he said that his all first...

impression, his all emotions

had been to be feeling down low.

He wished we hadn't adverted it.

In the background was the

growing conflict between...

two great powers to shape the postwar world.

Already an Iron Curtain had dropped

around Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia.

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