Road to Surrender
Three Men and the Countdown to the End of World War II
1 of 1 copy available
“As Christopher Nolan’s movie Oppenheimer shows, the shockwaves reverberate still. The veteran biographer Evan Thomas now enters the debate.”—The Wall Street Journal
AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
At 9:20 a.m. on the morning of May 30, General Groves receives a message to report to the office of the secretary of war “at once.” Stimson is waiting for him. He wants to know: has Groves selected the targets yet?
So begins this suspenseful, impeccably researched history that draws on new access to diaries to tell the story of three men who were intimately involved with America’s decision to drop the atomic bomb—and Japan’s decision to surrender. They are Henry Stimson, the American Secretary of War, who oversaw J. Robert Oppenheimer under the Manhattan Project; Gen. Carl “Tooey” Spaatz, head of strategic bombing in the Pacific, who supervised the planes that dropped the bombs; and Japanese Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo, the only one in Emperor Hirohito’s Supreme War Council who believed even before the bombs were dropped that Japan should surrender.
Henry Stimson had served in the administrations of five presidents, but as Oppenheimer’s work progressed, he found himself tasked with the unimaginable decision of determining whether to deploy the bomb. The new president, Harry S. Truman, thus far a peripheral figure in the momentous decision, accepted Stimson’s recommendation to drop the bomb. Army Air Force Commander Gen. Spaatz ordered the planes to take off. Like Stimson, Spaatz agonized over the command even as he recognized it would end the war. After the bombs were dropped, Foreign Minister Togo was finally able to convince the emperor to surrender.
To bring these critical events to vivid life, bestselling author Evan Thomas draws on the diaries of Stimson, Togo and Spaatz, contemplating the immense weight of their historic decision. In Road to Surrender, an immersive, surprising, moving account, Thomas lays out the behind-the-scenes thoughts, feelings, motivations, and decision-making of three people who changed history.
-
Creators
-
Publisher
-
Release date
May 16, 2023 -
Formats
-
OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780593742938
- File size: 226197 KB
- Duration: 07:51:14
-
-
Languages
- English
-
Reviews
-
June 19, 2023
In this riveting chronicle, historian Thomas (Sea of Thunder) traces the agonizing decisions of three men “who faced nearly impossible dilemmas in the summer of 1945”—U.S. war secretary Henry Stimson, U.S. Air Force commander Carl Spaatz, and Japanese foreign minister Shigenori Togo. Stimson oversaw the production of the atomic bombs and had final say over the locations targeted; Spaatz led the American bombing campaign on Japan; and Togo persuaded Emperor Hirohito to make an unprecedented personal decision to end the war, overriding Japan’s Supreme War Council. Together, these “three unlikely partners averted a cataclysm of death beyond anything the world had seen,” writes Thomas, asserting that millions of lives would have been lost in a U.S. invasion of Japan, and that the Japanese war hawks could not have been outmaneuvered by Togo without the bomb as a manifest threat. Drawing on unpublished diary entries and interviews with family members of the three men, Thomas’s suspenseful narrative dwells on the existential angst that defined their actions. (Stimson had a heart attack the day he showed President Truman photos of an incinerated Hiroshima; toward the end of his life, Spaatz was full of regret and plagued by sleeplessness.) Regardless of whether the reader is convinced by Thomas’s moral argument in favor of the bomb, this transfixes. -
Starred review from August 1, 2023
Best-selling author and historian Thomas (First: Sandra Day O'Connor) presents a nuanced look at the key events leading to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Thomas analyzes the actions and decisions of three top-level leaders involved in the decision to use the bomb: Secretary of War Henry Stimson, General Carl Spaatz, head of strategic bombing in the Pacific, and Japanese Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo, who was carefully leading the Japanese government toward surrender. Thomas's meticulous examination outlines how President Truman eventually agreed with Stimson's recommendation to drop the bomb. The author draws upon Stimson's, Spaatz's, and Togo's previously unavailable personal diaries, revealing their agonized thoughts as they struggled with the historic decision. Even with countless volumes about this event filling the shelves, Thomas's exhaustive research into the private thoughts, feelings, motivations, and decision-making of these three people who changed history adds crucial new information that will be of tremendous value to World War II historians. Award-winning narrator Robert Fass brings his impressive skills to bear, offering an engaging and perfectly paced performance of this vital work. VERDICT Share with readers of Richard Rhodes's The Making of the Atomic Bomb or Kai Bird's American Prometheus. Essential for all audio history collections.--Dale Farris
Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
-