The rhetoric of “unconditional surrender” and the decision to drop the atomic bomb

Abstract

Since 1945, scholars have become more critical in their assessment of the decision to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This essay analyzes the atomic attacks from a rhetorical purview, arguing that they were launched in large measure because of an American commitment to a particular rhetoric—the “rhetoric of unconditional surrender.” First articulated by President Roosevelt at the Casablanca Conference in 1943, the slogan metamorphosized by 1945 into a political shibboleth which operated to constrain policy makers. By August, 1945 the doctrine's calcifying effect on American decision‐making precluded an earlier end to hostilities in the Pacific and resulted in atomic devastation for the two Japanese cities.