Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The names of these two cities are known worldwide and there is a sad reason for that. In August 1945, nuclear weapons were used in war for the first and so far only time in Hiroshima and Nagasaki . The explosions of the two atomic bombs not only left behind destruction on an unprecedented scale, they also changed the course of the Second World War and marked the beginning of a new era. The atomic age. In this video you will learn why the USA developed these weapons, what consequences they had and why we are still debating their use today. On the morning of August 6, 1945, an almost peaceful silence lies over Hiroshima. The sun shines from the summer sky. Only occasionally light clouds pass over the roofs of the city. Hiroshima has so far been largely spared from the war. What the residents don't know is that 6 hours earlier a B29 Super Fortress took off from a remote airfield in the Pacific. A few hours later, she dropped an atomic bomb with the macabre code name Little Boy on Hiroshima. How could it have come to this? To understand this, we have to go back a bit. At the beginning of the 20th century, Japan was an emerging superpower in the Asia-Pacific region. Step by step, the empire builds up a considerable colonial empire. Korea, island groups in the Pacific, present-day Taiwan and later also large parts of China and Southeast Asia. It's about power, resources and geopolitical influence. But Japan is not alone. The USA also secures colonies and bases in the Pacific. After the Spanish-American War of 1898, they took control of Hawaii, the Philippines, and Guam. Two powers, one space. You can certainly imagine that there is enormous potential for conflict here. In order to secure its supremacy and obtain urgently needed raw materials, Japan launched a large-scale attack on China in 1937. This marks the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War. Brutal and ruthless. A particularly gruesome chapter is the Nan King Massacre, in which Japanese soldiers murdered around 2,000,000 people in the winter of 1937-38 , including civilians, women, children and prisoners of war. The US reacts. In 1940 they imposed an oil embargo against Japan. A hard blow for the resource-poor island state. The Japanese leadership feels threatened and responds radically. On December 7, 1941, Japan attacked the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii without declaring war. You can find out more about this in the video above. At this point in time, Japan is part of the Axis powers, along with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. All three states pursue the goal of reorganizing the world according to their ideas. Under authoritarian and fascist rule. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Germany and Italy also declared war on the USA. Within a few days the wars in Europe and Asia become a world war. During the war, the USA researched bombs using two different fissile elements: uranium and plutonium. Three places play a central role. Plutonium is produced at Hanford . Uranium is enriched in Oakridge and the development center is being built in Los Alamos under the scientific direction of Robert Oppenheimer . There the bomb is finally constructed and made ready for use. Maybe you also know the story from the film Oppenheimat, it is told opulently. The war raged in the Pacific for three and a half years . The USA is pushing Japan further and further back, suffering heavy losses. Then on July 16, 1945, scientists at Los Alamos in the New Mexico desert successfully detonated the prototype of a plutonium reactor for the first time. The so-called Trinity Test. 10 days later, the USA, Great Britain and China issued an ultimatum to the Japanese. In the Potzdamm Declaration they called on Japan to surrender unconditionally. If the country continues to fight, it faces immediate and total destruction. Actually, the situation for Japan is hopeless. The German allies have already surrendered. US bombers flew devastating air raids on Japanese cities throughout the first half of 1945. At least 80,000 people died in the major air raid on Tokyo in March 1945. Although the Japanese army put up a fanatical resistance, it was hopelessly outnumbered by the Allied forces . But the leadership in Tokyo is divided and cannot bring itself to capitulate. Meanwhile, Amish President Harry Truman does not hesitate to put the threat of the Potsdam ultimatum into action. In the early morning of August 6, three American bombers fly towards Hiroshima. One of them has the atomic bomb on board. The aircraft is called Enolay, after the pilot’s mother. Hiroshima was chosen as a target because, among other things, it has a large war industry, because it is an important military base as the headquarters of the Second Japanese Army, and because it has so far remained undamaged. This means that the effects of the atomic bomb will be even more evident here. The reasons and necessity for the use of atomic bombs are still controversial today. The US government under President Truman justified the bombing early on by arguing that it had saved hundreds of thousands of American soldiers and millions of Japanese civilians from a costly invasion of Japan . An assessment shared by some historians . But many consider it too high in this dimension . Others see the deployment primarily as a political signal to the Soviet Union. Although both states are still fighting together against the Axis powers, tensions between the ideologically opposing systems are already increasing. The bombing was also intended to demonstrate that the USA was claiming global leadership after the war. A third explanation refers to the context of the course of the war. After years of intensive bombings with hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties, the inhibition threshold for the use of extreme violence has fallen. In this logic, the dropping of the atomic bomb appears as a continuation of an unlimited bombing war. In addition, there are two other domestic political factors for the USA. an increasingly war-weary US population and the enormous financial outlay of the Manhattan Project, as the atomic bomb program is called, which becomes a kind of self-justification for the use of the bomb. Incidentally, Germany could also have suffered Japan's fate if the bomb had been ready for use before the German surrender . What happened to Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, could also have happened in Germany. The city with its approximately 350,000 inhabitants awakens on this summer morning in its usual routine. People are making their way to work. Schoolchildren say goodbye to their parents. Shops open, trams start moving. Seemingly a day like any other. One of those going about their normal daily business this morning is Joshto Matsuschke. The 32-year-old press photographer works for a newspaper in Hiroshima. He has breakfast, shaves, checks his camera and prepares for the day. And then at 8:15 a.m. the bomb exploded at a height of about 600 m above the city center of Hiroshima. To put it simply, a conventional explosive charge inside the atomic bomb ignites an uncontrolled chain reaction. In the case of the Hiroshima bomb, it is the radioactive element uranium. In this reaction, its atomic nuclei split in rapid succession, releasing enormous amounts of energy . Immediately after the explosion, a bright flash of light spreads over Hiroshima. With it, a heat wave of several thousand degrees races through the city and burns everything in its path, as if a sun had fallen from the sky in the middle of the city center . At the same time, radioactive radiation is released. Later, an ash and dust storm follows, spreading further radioactive material across the city. The flash of light is followed by a powerful pressure wave that knocks over buildings, trees, trams, cars and people. Windows shatter, walls collapse, entire streets disappear. The unimaginable heat and destructive power of the explosion lead to a widespread firestorm. The city is built in a typically Japanese style. Many houses are made of wood. The buildings are dense and the streets are narrow. This structure promotes the rapid spread of flames and increases destruction. In the center, most residents die instantly or suffer severe injuries. Photographer Joshto Matzuschke survived. His house, about two and a half kilometers from the epicenter, remains largely intact. He grabs his camera and runs toward the city center, but he only takes five photos. Out of shock, but also out of respect for the victims, he holds back. Despite the destruction, Japan does not surrender. The government remains divided. Some push for peace, others want to keep fighting. Even when the Soviet Union declared war on August 8 and invaded Japanese-controlled Manai, nothing changed at first. Because Japan's surrender still did not occur, the US government decided on a second attack. On the morning of August 9, American bombers first fly to the Japanese city of Kokuda. But thick morning fog makes visibility difficult. The pilots abort the approach and head for the alternate destination, the port city of Nagasaki to the southwest. At 11:2 a.m. the second atomic bomb detonated there. This time a plutonium be. It has an even greater explosive power than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima and devastates large parts of the city. Only now is the faction in the Japanese government that is prepared to surrender gaining ground. On August 15, Emperor Hirohito addressed the population in a radio address . and announces the end of the war. On September 2, 1945, Japan signed the unconditional surrender on the US battleship Missouri . The Second World War has also ended in the Pacific. The exact number of victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki cannot yet be clearly determined. An early estimate by the US military puts the death toll from the two bombings at around 110,000. Later calculations speak of about 210,000 people losing their lives by the end of 1945. Many die instantly from the heat of the explosion or the ensuing firestorm. No identifiable remains remain of numerous victims. However, these figures only capture the immediate consequences. This does not include people who die in the following years from the long-term effects of radioactive radiation, such as cancer. In addition, there are thousands of injured people in both cities. Among the dead and wounded are Allied prisoners of war and thousands of Korean and Chinese forced laborers who were in Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the time of the explosions. Today, museums, memorials and monuments throughout the country, and especially in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, commemorate the victims of the atomic bombs. Critics, however, accuse Japan of not paying enough attention to its own atrocities during the Second World War, in addition to remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki . A well-known example is the so-called Korean comfort women, who are forced into prostitution, or the Nan King massacre, which we reported on at the beginning of the video. Although the horrors of the atomic bombs are publicly remembered, many victims suffer from being treated like lepers in Japanese society in the years following the war. This is mainly due to their obvious injuries and the many myths circulating about radiation sickness. For example, that it is contagious. Although survivors are legally entitled to financial support for medical care, there are always disputes about whether the assistance provided is actually sufficient and whether the state is actually recognizing too few people as atomic bomb victims . On August 6, 1945, a new era began, the so-called atomic age. From 1949 onwards, the Soviet Union also possessed its own atomic bombs, supported by information collected by spies in Western research programmes . In the following decades, the threat of nuclear war became a central element in the global power struggle between the USA and the Soviet Union. a conflict that we today call the Cold War. During this period, the nuclear threat continued to grow, not only due to political tensions, but also due to a series of nuclear tests and ever-growing nuclear arsenals on both sides. In 1954, the USA tested a hydrogen bomb on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean with an explosive power many times greater than that of Hiroshima. The radioactive fallout from this test also affects Japanese fishermen. An event that caused horror in Japan and rekindled fears of nuclear weapons . It is in this very climate that Godchida, known internationally as Godzilla, appears in Japanese cinemas. The giant creature that emerges from the sea and ravages Tokyo with fire symbolizes the destructive power that mankind has unleashed through nuclear technology. The film impressively deals with the collective trauma of the atomic bombings. But the atomic age is not only characterized by the fear of bombs; the civilian use of nuclear energy also plays a central role. Especially in Japan. After the war, the country relied heavily on nuclear power to secure its energy supply. As early as 1966, the first commercial reactor unit went online in Tokai. Then came 2011 and the Fukushima nuclear disaster. An earthquake and a tsunami damage the nuclear power plant so severely that large amounts of radioactive material leak out. In 2011, during the commemoration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, many people in Japan protested not only against nuclear weapons, but also against the civilian use of nuclear energy. In Germany, Fukushima is leading to a political rethink. In 2023 the last nuclear power plant in Germany will be taken off the grid. But the nuclear age cannot simply be switched off. The debate about nuclear weapons, nuclear deterrence and the civilian use of nuclear energy continues to accompany us today and will probably continue to do so in the future. If you are interested in why some countries have nuclear bombs today and many don't, then I recommend this video from the Mr. Wissen to go channel, and for the time of the Cold War there is this video here. Feel free to take a look. What do you think on this topic? Did the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki change the course of history? And what lessons can perhaps be learned from the reactor disasters? Feel free to write it in the comments below. Thank you for watching and see you next time. M.