Clidney Joseph
Professor B. O’Malley
History 3005: Shaping of the Modern World
9 December 2013

The Atomic Bomb Secret: A Micro-History

By the end of 1945, the Allies won World War II, and were introduced to the atomic bomb after the United States dropped it on Japan in August. At the time, people had mixed opinions about what this bomb would do in terms of international relations, which was an especially important concern, considering that the United Nations was recently formed in order to foster world peace. “International Rivalries and the Atomic Bomb Secret,” an editorial published in The San Antonio Express on December 22nd, 1945, takes a clear stance on sharing the secrets of the atomic bomb with the international community. This paper will be exploring this opinion through contextualization and analysis. The editorial board of The San Antonio Express writes in its article that the United States should be slow to revealing the atomic bomb secret with the rest of the international community. Both sides of the argument are presented: those who favor revelation believe that it would “create good will” while those who oppose revelation say that the world powers have not yet created an effective world organization that would assure that the bomb would only be used for self order. In addition, the article states that the world is comprised of actual and potential rival states because no one had yet to achieve real unity. Because of this, the revelation of the atomic bomb to all world powers may not institute order, but may increase world apprehension. The editorial board is essentially arguing that the United States and its allies should keep the secret of the atomic bomb to itself for the sake of world safety. However, I argue that there is another motive; the United States should do whatever it can to maintain its status as the dominant world power. The article implies that the entire world has confidence that America would not abuse the power of this weapon, and should use that as a platform to exercise ‘unparalleled influence’ in the world. These mainstream ideas expressed in the article sound a lot like the ideologies held by America and the Western Powers during the duration, and even after the Cold War. However, there were more far-reaching undertones in the article. The whole point of the United Nations was to prevent future wars, improve social conditions, and to promote world peace; for The San Antonio Express to say that there was no real unity among the world powers was quite a radical statement to say the least. Personally, I feel that the opinions of this newspaper’s editorial board are realistic. During the Potsdam Conference of 1945, the last of the meetings held by the Allied Powers before the end of the war, Harry Truman was informed about the atomic bomb and authorized to drop it on Japan, but never informed Stalin about it during the conference. Considering the fact that the United States and the Soviet Union were allies at the time, it is a fair to say that nation states have not yet achieved real unity by the end of the war. In addition to this, the United States and the Soviet Union already started to experience tensions due to the USSR occupying a lot of Eastern Europe; the United States felt that too many