Volume 9, Number 2 · August 3, 1967
Letter
DIPLOMATIC HISTORIAN
By Herbert Feis, Reply by Gar Alperovitz

To the Editors:

In his comment on my book, The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II [NYR,
June 15], Gar Alperovitz writes that I come "close to being our official
national diplomatic historian." I don't know how close that is supposed to be.
But I should like readers of his article to know that this book was an entirely
private and independent undertaking. No one in the government, or former member
of the government had anything to do with its inception; nor did any of them
pass upon the manuscript. I was under no obligation to defer to any official or
official opinion, nor did I. No branch of the government (not even the CIA
provided a dollar toward its production. Long before the book was begun my last
connection with the government had ended.

I have the impression that Alperovitz attributes my uncertitude about various
hypothetical "options" to my wish to spare friends or former associates. Could
it be due rather to knowledge that in decisions upon which so many
considerations bore, what is known justifies only surmises, not certitudes?
Sometimes decision-makers do not themselves clearly know the relative impact of
the many ideas or calculations which influence them. Sometimes what may appear
in the calm of the study years afterward to have been a genuine "option" at the
time, was not actually so in the hot flux of events.

Alperovitz also seems to impugn my judgment because of my previous personal or
professional connection with some of the chief figures in the narrative. Might
that rather not have caused my interpretation of complex circumstances to be
closer to the whole truth than any derived from the available record, even were
it impartial?

Who, if he did not know it, would gather from reading his article that a bloody
and dreadful war was being fought, that each day it continued meant agony to
our combatants as well as to the Japanese? Who would gather that the fanatic
military leaders preferred death to acceptance of defeat?

In short, this essay illustrates how preconceptions assist hindsight; they act
as a focus which selects the conclusions.

May I take this chance to state that one of my main efforts at present is to
induce the American government to make the records of the diplomacy of the
recent past available to all, more quickly and fully. My latest attempt to
arouse interest in the purpose is an article in the January, 1967 issue of
Foreign Affairs, called "The Shackled Historian." Perhaps Alperovitz and his
colleagues in the Kennedy Center will take up the cause.

Since Alperovitz, like myself, is interested in the origins of the cold war,
will he not call on the Soviet government—which he apparently thinks was
merely the hapless object of our vicious diplomacy—to do the same? Without
the Soviet documents and memoirs all accounts of the cold war must be lopsided.
Were they to be published, I do not think it possible that Alperovitz could
continue to write in the same vein as he does now.

Herbert Feis

York, Me.

Gar Alperovitz replies:
Herbert Feis's letter is strangely ambiguous: The trouble is that like his book
it never quite faces fundamental issues squarely.

My review attempted to document three specific points about the Hiroshima
decision: (1) By July 1945, before the atomic bombs were used, other courses of
action seemed likely to end the war well in advance of the planned November
landing; (2) This is true not merely in retrospect: We now know that a variety
of other courses were offered directly to the President by his highest official
advisers before Hiroshima—at a time when he was also shown intercepted cables
revealing Japan's willingness to end the war on acceptable terms; (3) The main
reason other possibilities were passed up appears to be that implicitly or
explicitly a demonstration of America's new power was judged necessary to
strengthen the U.S. hand against Russia. The bomb was a "master card" of
diplomacy, in the words of Secretary Stimson; it would make Russia more
"manageable," according to Secretary Byrnes.

Characteristically, Mr. Feis does not directly dispute any of the documents,
facts, or arguments offered in support of this view.

Neither do his comments about Soviet documents relate to the main point at
issue (although, of course, as a historian I welcome his efforts to obtain
further historical materials).

When Mr. Feis does touch on a point of substance, he does so in a curiously
defensive way. I mentioned his official connections and privileged access to
inside information not to impugn his motives. Rather I wished mainly to stress
that an established historian—not an ill-informed layman, not an inflammatory
publicist—has reached important new conclusions about Hiroshima: It is
significant that an expert of Mr. Feis's stature—who has private information
not available to other scholars—has come to understand there were other ways
to end the war. And he has written that President Truman "probably," and
Secretaries Stimson and Byrnes "certainly," viewed the bomb as a way to bolster
the US diplomatic position against Russia.

In sum, Feis's book marks a major shift in the accepted view of America's use
of the first atomic bomb (although the shift is unfortunately shrouded in
rather vague phrases). My review attempted to cut through to underlying
evidence to show that considerations related to Russia were absolutely central
to the Hiroshima decision. His response, I had hoped, might contain documented,
expert objections. Regrettably, however, his general remarks about
preconceptions and hindsight once again define a position of ambiguity. We are
left to puzzle whether Mr. Feis is withholding such objections as he has, or
whether, in fact, he holds no substantive objections at all.




Chris Mark