Susan Neiman chief guest at Winternachten 2016: Why the atomic bomb really fell on Hiroshima

Propaganda is not just something that occurs in, say, Russia, but also in the West - more so than we ourselves realise. For example, is it widely believed today that the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to force Japan to capitulate and thus end World War II, nothing could be further from the truth. In this respect, Germany handles its war past more honestly and better than America, says philosopher and writer Susan Neiman.

Winternachten Lecture

American-German Susan Neiman (1955), director of the Einstein Forum in Berlin, will give a lecture next week at the international literature festival Winternachten on how nations deal with the black pages of their history. Neiman is working on a new book on the subject, titled Learning from the Germans, which will be published in a year or two.

During the programme section 'Past evils, present problems' of the Winternachten Festival, the moral philosopher will discuss the way Germany (has) processed its war past, compared to how Americans deal with their slavery past and their bombing of Hiroshima. She also establishes a relationship between processing the past and how Europe deals with current problems, such as the refugee issue. Her lecture will be followed by a debate in which Geert Mak, among others, will participate.

'I have lived in Germany for many years and have thought and talked a lot with Germans about how they deal with their Nazi past,' Neiman said. 'Any German will say it's not enough, but having looked at it for 30 years, I can say that it's incredibly impressive how Germany has accounted for its past, especially when compared to other countries.'

Exhibitions, television series, films, books, theatre performances - every art form has been exploited to express that traumatic past. A three-part, Emmy-winning drama series, Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter, about five young people who are close friends at the start of World War II but all go their separate ways, caused a stir recently. Still struggling with the inheritance burden of the past, Germans do not bury their heads in the sand. How different it is in America, Neiman discovered when she was asked to write an essay to mark the 70th 'anniversary' of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. 'I did not know the person who asked me, nor the magazine. Normally I refuse such assignments, but it involved a good question: why has so much more attention been paid to Auschwitz than to Hiroshima? I thought: I have a moral obligation to think about that question. I read books about Hiroshima and discovered that the story that the US threw the bomb to end the war was false. Historians know this, but it is not widely known.'

What was the real reason?

''There are actually two reasons: the first was that the US had spent so much money developing it that they had to justify it to themselves. But that was less important than the second reason: To show Stalin that the US possessed this weapon and could use it against the Soviet Union if necessary. Even up to a year and a half after the bomb was dropped, no one was saying it had been necessary. All reports and accounts said that otherwise the war would have ended in November at the latest. President Truman and Secretary of State Jimmy Byrnes, those in charge, told The New York Times that bombing Hiroshima was not necessary to end the war. That was common knowledge.''

What changed that image?

‘'There were growing protests among scientists, intellectuals and artists against the use of the atomic bomb. And writer John Hersey published 'Hiroshima', which tells the story of six survivors of the Hiroshima bombing. It appeared in The New Yorker and reached a large readership. Suddenly, then, a lot of criticism sounded. Harvard's then director, James B. Conant, who had also been involved in the Manhattan Project that had developed the first atomic bombs, said: they may be a minority of hypersensitive intellectuals, but they influence the youth, so we have to come up with a story. The lie that the bomb was necessary was put into the world in 1947 through an article written by defence secretary Henry Stimson.'‘

They have been quite successful in 'adapting' the truth.

‘

'Very successful! They have brainwashed 98 per cent of the people - including the highly educated. A Russian colleague said to me: at least in Russia you know it's propaganda, people there are used to reading between the lines. But in the West we are not. Fifty years after the atomic bomb, the Smithsonian National Museum in Washington, the largest museum in the world, wanted to dedicate an exhibition to it and investigate why the atomic bomb was thrown. Congress blocked that. The legacy of slavery is also far from over in America; that still plays a very big role in society.'

‘

Why have the Germans processed their past better than the US?

‘

'They were the losers, they had to be. But my interest focuses more on the how than the why. I will interview people about concrete issues: what works and what doesn't? For example, I want to talk to people in America about what is going on there right now; in South Carolina, they lowered the Confederate flag only last July, after a shooting at a church in Charleston. My aim is not to point fingers; with this book, I hope to contribute to both American and European coping processes. Many Europeans are ashamed of their imperialist history. People wonder: what does Europe have to be proud of? That unprocessed past infects Europeans. But if you process your criminal past the way the Germans did, if you can really face the past instead of burying it, then you are able to say: okay, we have a past of imperialism, and that is downright terrible, but still there is a notion of a Europe with which we can connect.

I believe in Europe, even though it may not look so prosperous at the moment. It is best for humanity at the moment, with Russia on one side and America on the other, where money rules and the president doesn't really have that much power at all. The European model comes closest to true democratic values and standards and has the most perspective.'

‘