Did America need to use the Atomic Bomb to end World War II?.
The atomic bomb killed many innocent people, but it was necessary to end World War II. After World War II began in 1939, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt announced the neutrality of the United States. Many people in the United States thought that their country should stay out of the war. The people wanted the Allied Forces to have the victory. President Roosevelt also wanted an Allied victory because an Axis victory might endanger democracies in the world. The United States equipped nations fighting the Axis with ships, tanks, aircraft, and other war materials, which angered the Axis nations. At this time, Japan was aiming to take control of China, though China refused. So, the United States started supplying China with war gear. This caused Japan to see United States as a target. A surprise attack was ordered by Japan on December 7, 1941. The target was the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii . Three hundred planes bombed the naval base killing around three thousand seven hundred people and destroying many warships, aircraft carriers, and submarines. This was a catalyst that brought the United States into World War II. .
Earlier in the century, Albert Einstein predicted that mass could be converted into energy early in the century and was confirmed experimentally by John D. Cockcroft and Ernest Walton in 1932. In 1939, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann discovered that neutrons striking the element uranium caused the atoms to split apart. Physicists found out that among the pieces of a split atom were newly produced neutrons. These might encounter other uranium nuclei, caused them to split, and start a chain reaction. If the chain reaction were limited to a moderate pace, a new source of energy could be the result. The chain reaction could release energy rapidly and with explosive force. Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, and Edward Teller, allied physicists were frightened by the possibility that Germany might produce an atomic bomb .