Analyze the Holocaust and the decision to use the atomic bomb, including the genocide carried out by Nazi Germany, the American response, the development of the bomb, and the debate over its use (Louisiana Student Standards for Social Studies, US History Standard 4: Becoming a World Power through World War II).

What this topic is asking

World War II produced both an unprecedented crime and a fearsome new weapon. Standard 4 (Becoming a World Power through World War II) wants you to analyze the Holocaust, the Nazi genocide and the American response, and the atomic bomb, its development, use against Japan, and the debate over the decision. LEAP often uses a survivor's testimony, a liberation photograph, or a quotation from the bomb debate as the source, and these topics demand careful, respectful handling.

The Holocaust

The genocide was carried out in stages: stripping Jews of rights, herding them into ghettos, mass shootings, and finally industrialized murder in death camps such as Auschwitz. As the Allies advanced in 1945, they liberated the camps and revealed the full horror to a stunned world. After the war, an international tribunal at the Nuremberg trials prosecuted leading Nazis for crimes against humanity, establishing that "following orders" was no defense for such atrocities.

The development of the atomic bomb

While the war raged, the United States pursued a secret program to build a revolutionary weapon.

The decision to use the bomb

By the summer of 1945 Germany had surrendered, but Japan fought on, and an invasion of the Japanese home islands was expected to cost enormous numbers of American and Japanese lives.

President Harry Truman decided to use the new weapon. In August 1945 the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and then Nagasaki, killing well over a hundred thousand people, many of them civilians, and leaving lasting devastation. Days later, Japan surrendered, ending World War II.

The debate over the bomb

The exam expects you to weigh both sides of a genuine moral controversy.

• In favor. Supporters argue the bombs forced a swift surrender and avoided a land invasion of Japan that was expected to kill many hundreds of thousands of Americans and even more Japanese, so the bomb, on this view, saved lives overall.
• Against. Critics point to the massive civilian deaths and suffering, argue Japan might have surrendered soon anyway (especially as the Soviet Union entered the war against it), and ask whether a warning or demonstration could have been tried first.

A strong LEAP answer presents both positions and the evidence behind each, rather than asserting a single verdict.

The new world

These events reshaped the postwar order. The horror of the Holocaust spurred the founding of the United Nations and the creation of the state of Israel, while the atomic bomb opened the nuclear age and the arms race that would define the Cold War (see the origins of the Cold War).