Performance, Violence, and War

A “performance,” as defined by Richard Bauman, is “an aesthetically marked and heightened mode of communication, framed in a special way and put on display for an audience” (quoted in Fujii Reference Fujii2013, 413). Numerous scholars have analyzed human behavior through the lens of performance. Sociologist Erving Goffman highlighted the central role that “impression management” plays in many types of social actions, which is what imbues them with a performative character. This involves an actor “influencing the definition of the situation” and creating for audiences “the kind of impression that will lead them to act voluntarily in accordance with his [or her] own plans” (Reference Goffman1959, 3–4, bracketed language ours).Footnote ⁴ IR scholars have also conceptualized some facets of international life as performative acts. Weber (Reference Weber1998), Campbell (Reference Campbell1992), and Laffey (Reference Laffey2000), for example, analyze state sovereignty itself as a kind of political performance, whereas Adler and Pouliot (Reference Adler and Pouliot2011) see diplomats as engaging in performance practices. Also noteworthy are recent works that analyze the performative aspects of summit diplomacy (e.g., Ku Reference Ku2025; Naylor Reference Naylor2025; Nair Reference Nair2019).

Why might the public “performance” of extreme violence be politically useful? Such acts create a “spectacle,” which Bakogianni (Reference Bakogianni, Bakogianni and Hope2015, 4–5) defines as a high-profile performance “controlled by a producer…seek[ing] to elicit particular responses from their audience” via a “multi-sensory experience.” Scholars of colonialism, civil war, and racist violence in the American South have addressed the role of such violent spectacles. Kim Wagner (Reference Wagner2016, 195, 205), for example, describes how Britain’s East India Company staged mass executions by cannon as a “performance of colonial power pure and simple” after the Sepoy uprising of 1857. These “were never intended solely, or even primarily, for the attendant sepoys, but…were intended for the entire Indian population.” More generally, Paul MacDonald (Reference MacDonald2023, 746) has argued that colonial states governing fragile imperial hierarchies were often prone to “insecurity, paranoia, and a tendency to respond to challenges with performative violence.” White supremacists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century U.S. South organized “spectacle lynchings” with an analogous purpose (e.g., Wood Reference Wood2011). The Islamic State and Mexican drug cartels have likewise used public displays of brutality to dramatize their power and enforce local dominance (e.g., Euben Reference Euben2017; Friis Reference Friis2018; Lantz Reference Lantz2016).Footnote ⁵

The late political scientist Lee Ann Fujii’s work on “extralethal” spectacles and the communicative power of putting “violence on display” helps pinpoint the common thread in these works: power and order.Footnote ⁶ “Display makes the imagined ‘real,’” she argued, “by giving it materiality, visibility, and three-dimensional form” (Fujii Reference Fujii and Finnemore2021, 2). Violent displays are linked to political orders insofar as they help actors support arguments about “who should have power and who should be included and on what basis people should claim belonging” in a political hierarchy (2). Fujii used this insight to explain why some acts of violence in civil conflicts—for example, rape and mutilation during civil war, lynchings of African Americans in the twentieth-century American South, tend to be so ostentatiously brutal and public, that is, “extralethal.”Footnote ⁷

Staging Violence: Choosing the Message

Expanding on Fujii’s arguments in particular, we disaggregate the process that leads to the staging of violent spectacles into two basic steps. The first step involves identifying a message, given that such violence is—like other performative acts—a “mode of communication” (Fujii Reference Fujii2013, 413). As Fujii writes, by putting violence on display, political actors “are telling the world ‘who they are’ and by extension, who everyone else is not” (19, emphasis added). The content of the message may vary depending on context. In Roxanne Euben’s (Reference Euben2017, 1007) account, the goal of ISIS’s public beheading videos was to communicate that they were a “legitimate, invincible sovereign.” Ahsan Butt (Reference Butt2019, 270) argues that the George W. Bush administration sought to “convey a message of unbridled hegemony” by attacking Iraq in 2003. Adapting these insights, we argue that an ostentatious display of a new and frighteningly destructive type of weaponry can help its user stake out a claim to greater power and influence in international politics.

Staging Violence: Setting the Scene

The second step in designing an ultralethal spectacle involves the “how,” or the mechanics by which a given message will be conveyed. As Emanuel Adler argues, a “compelling performance depends not only on whether the knowledge represented is valid”; just as important are “gaining control over the means of symbolic presentation” and “imposing one’s own narrative on others” over potentially competing narratives (Reference Adler2010, 204). And scholars of spectacular violence have made a compelling case that few performative devices are as symbolically gripping or imposing as scenes of visible death and destruction. Focusing on human bodies, Fujii (Reference Fujii and Finnemore2021, 2) remarks that the communicative value of ostentatious violence comes from its ability to make the abstract real. If not for “bodies moving and acting in particular ways”—for example, mutilated, immolated, or otherwise transgressed in plain view—violent “displays would…[not] have the power to draw in new audiences over time and place.” In a similar vein, philosopher Adriana Cavarero observes that war and modern weaponry tear at the “constitutive vulnerability” of the human condition: “Ground-up bodies, limbs torn apart, carnage, and butchery are all part of [the] habitual theater” of war (Cavarero Reference Cavarero and McCuaig2009, 8, 12). Such scenes can imbue violence with a dramatic, transfixing quality. As such, drawing on feminist theories of the body, Lauren Wilcox (Reference Wilcox2015) argues that violence to human bodies has productive effects for the identities of those involved and for understanding a “political world, in and through their relations with other bodies” (167).

We supplement this work on bodies with additional insights about the impact of violent wartime displays on the built environment and natural landscape. Scholars like Jairus Grove (Reference Grove2019, 41) have observed that war and war preparation can have “terraforming” effects, altering the very geological features of the planet.Footnote ⁸ Apart from war’s unintended geological ramifications, other scholars note the value of intentionally altering the physical environment through violence. Butt notes that the spectacular destruction of urban terrain was one reason why invading Iraq, in addition to Afghanistan, was attractive to U.S. policymakers after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was arguing as early as September 13, 2001 that Afghanistan’s underdeveloped infrastructure would not allow for “the kind of costly damage that could cause terrorist-supporting regimes around the world to rethink their policies” (quoted in Butt Reference Butt2019, 271). By contrast, the presence of “more impressive physical targets” made Iraq a better setting in which to “demonstrate to the world the extent of [American] power and will to use it” (272).

What enables the success of performances that visibly violate human bodies and the surrounding environment? We highlight the importance of staging, a concept in scenography (i.e., the art of crafting stage environments) that “refers to how the director physically arranges bodies, objects, lights, sound, and set pieces to create a particular stage picture” or “stage space” (Howard Reference Howard2002, xix). Much like theater directors, political actors often deliberately select and compose scenes to create spectacles—that is, to amplify the impact of their extralethal performances and the message they hope to convey.Footnote ⁹ Fujii (Reference Fujii and Finnemore2021, 3–4) notes that staging extralethal displays in civil conflicts requires heeding the “look and feel” of a violent event. Without effective staging, audiences may disagree about the performance’s meaning or even fail to recognize it as an act of communication with a specific message. Spectacles must do more than just generate harm. Performances work in large part because of their emotive power—for example, fear, awe, or horror. Performing violence thus has “both strategic and expressive value”; indeed, it is this emotive aspect that might “be key to explaining certain outcomes of violence, such as displays that feature more force than is necessary” at first glance (Fujii Reference Fujii and Finnemore2021, 7, emphasis in original).

Tending to the Problem of Backlash

Ultralethal public displays are not without risks. Following Goffman (Reference Goffman1959), the key to successful “impression management” in performative acts is not simply to elicit the biggest reaction. Rather, it is to create the right kind of impression that could lead others to accommodate one’s goals. Ostentatious violence carries inherent risks of alienation and revulsion among observers. Integrating this problem of audience backlash adds important nuance to how we think about performative displays of violence in interstate war and other settings.

Most studies of performative violence do not deeply engage with the problem of backlash. Fujii, for one, summarizes her own argument as stating that political actors use violent displays to “broadcast power, authority, sovereignty, and other political claims in the most graphic terms possible (Reference Fujii and Finnemore2021, 5, emphasis in original). While she acknowledges that extralethal performances “might be counterproductive,” she devotes the bulk of her theoretical and empirical discussion to the communicative benefits of violent displays (4). Other works have similarly hinted at the problem of backlash while stopping short of explicitly theorizing it. Wagner (Reference Wagner2016, 215), for example, describes how the memory of grotesque public executions in colonial India “caused an outcry” in British public opinion many decades later because it became a symbol of the “excess of colonialism” that “belied the ideals of the civilizing mission in…a spectacular manner.” Amy Wood (Reference Wood2011, 199) notes that graphic photographs of Southern lynching victims circulated by their opponents induced “shock and revulsion” among viewers, contributing to political mobilization against the perpetrators.

We argue that states contemplating violent spectacles during war should account for the risk of unduly repulsing their audiences and thereby defeating the purpose of the performance. How might they deal with this problem? One response might be to conceal or suppress images of grotesque death and suffering that could alienate audiences, directing observers’ attention to other, less upsetting but nonetheless awe-inspiring images of destruction (e.g., Slattery and Doremus Reference Slattery and Doremus2012). Put differently, after deliberately bringing violence to the “frontstage” of international politics in a spectacular way, states may try to relegate some of their fallout to the “backstage” as they engage in continued impression management (Carson Reference Carson2018). Another response might be to tailor the performance itself. In this scenario, the state still orchestrates a highly visible and lethal spectacle but channels this violence to avoid at least some of the most damaging forms of backlash. Leaders may, for instance, impose restraints on the kinds of victims that will be used to showcase ultralethal violence. As Ron Hassner (Reference Hassner2009, 60) observes regarding religious spaces in war, counterinsurgents often “hesitate before attacking, entering, or damaging a site sacred to a local community” for fear of sowing irreversible hostility among those they ultimately seek to govern. A similar logic may hold for a state whose aim is not only to broadcast its power but also to inspire deference from others in the international political order. It may channel its ultralethal display away from spaces known to hold special sentimental value to relevant audiences. We return to this issue when discussing which Japanese cities were targeted with—and spared from—the violent debut of the atomic bomb in 1945.

When to Stage Spectacular Violence?

Given their potential benefits as well as risks, under what conditions are states likely to perform ultralethal spectacles during interstate war? We highlight two. One derives from the general effect of spectacles on perceptions of power and political order. The second emerges from the problem of uncertainty inherent to military innovations.

Taking a cue from earlier scholarship, we argue that spectacles of violence will be especially attractive when a state perceives an acute need to redress a relative power deficit while trying to exploit an opportunity to shape a new political order. As Jonathan Renshon (Reference Renshon2016, 526) points out in the context of international status, shifts in widespread perceptions of an actor’s relative position may lag because “[e]vents… might be interpreted differently by different observers.” A revelatory event “must change all (or the vast majority) of observers’ beliefs in the same way” to trigger change. The vividness of an event or experience, in short, affects the extent to which it helps strengthen the performer’s claim to power and influence. States perceiving relative weakness may thus seek to create spectacles of violence when facing an “ordering moment”—that is, times “when the rules and institutions of the international order are on the table for negotiation and change” (Ikenberry Reference Ikenberry2011, 12). Such opportunities often arise at the conclusion of a major war (Ikenberry Reference Ikenberry2001). In short, the combination of relative power concerns and a perceived window of opportunity to shape the emerging political order should make ultralethal displays attractive.

A second condition is specific to the empirical context we address: military innovations. Most new military technologies and tactics trigger debates about the innovation’s broader significance. Before their debut on the battlefield, political and military leaders often fiercely disagreed on the importance of innovations like the blitzkrieg or air power (e.g., Kier Reference Kier1997; Mearsheimer Reference Mearsheimer1988; Pape Reference Pape1996). Even after an innovation’s first use, historians and practitioners continue to debate its military consequences and political effects (Knox and Murray Reference Knox and Murrary2001). In short, new methods of war carry a fundamental problem of uncertainty, both for the governments developing them and especially for outside observers. When it comes to an especially destructive innovation, spectacles featuring ostentatious lethality can help showcase its properties and advantages. This, in turn, can affect the innovating state’s perceived power to observers across the international system.Footnote ¹⁰ By extension, actors who do not believe that a given innovation’s lethality is distinctive are unlikely to treat it as a promising tool of violent spectacle even when they are looking for ways to alter widespread perceptions of their relative power.Footnote ¹¹

Observable Implications for the Debut of the Atomic Bomb in 1945

We apply this theoretical framework to illuminate the decision-making process that led to the atomic bomb’s lethal debut in August 1945. Our arguments about performative violence generate expectations about the conditions that make a spectacularly violent atomic debut attractive, the concerns and goals that policymakers have in mind when weighing alternative debut options, and the details of how and where to perform this act of violence—that is, “staging.” They thus offer theoretical guideposts for empirical analysis and bring to the fore certain aspects of the August 1945 atomic bombings that have been overlooked in past scholarship.

First, our framework has implications for the conditions that drew U.S. decision-makers to an ultralethal atomic spectacle. The risks of backlash suggest that states should normally shy away from such displays. However, when (1) concerns about relative power deficits during a political ordering moment and (2) uncertainty about a military innovation’s significance are especially acute, leaders will be tempted to put on ultralethal performances. We therefore expect U.S. policymakers in the leadup to Hiroshima to harbor serious fears about America’s deficiency in relative power, especially with respect to likely postwar rivals like the Soviet Union. Leaders should also express related concerns about shaping the postwar order, framing their decisions as not merely addressing the needs of the immediate war but also considering their country’s long-term position and influence in the broader international system. They should also deliberate about the distinctiveness and significance of the atomic bomb and, if convinced of its revolutionary character, be wary of the possibility that its qualities will remain unknown to outside observers. In 1985, Robert Jervis wrote that “[i]f everyone denied the importance of the change introduced by nuclear weapons, then indeed there would be more continuity between the current situation and prenuclear ones” (Jervis Reference Jervis1985, 40). We should observe U.S. leaders fearing precisely this possibility and making significant choices about the method of atomic debut to discourage it.

Our theoretical claims also have implications for the “reason-giving” of leaders as they weigh alternative methods of debuting the atomic bomb. Individuals advocating ultralethal debut options should note the value of spectacular violence for shaping outside perceptions and the importance of visible destruction. They should highlight the strategic importance of a debut that clarifies the atomic bomb’s revolutionary capacity to destroy humans and material environments at high speed. Officials favoring more lethal options should further cite the impact of the atomic debut on the postwar international order. The intended impression should target not just the immediate enemy (i.e., Japan) but also wider international audiences. Echoing the link between spectacles of violence and power, they should see a highly visible and lethal debut of the atomic bomb as a means to evocatively demonstrate American power.

Other expectations address “staging.” Leaders should pay close attention to details on the staging of the atomic bomb’s first use, including options for the “stage space” or how different locations may or may not adequately showcase the lethality of the atomic bomb. This will likely make them prioritize targeting densely populated cities rather than strictly military targets. Decision-makers will also see special value in locations that promise the starkest “before-and-after” contrast in damage to human life and the surrounding environment. They should appraise specific features of candidate targets, elevating locations thought to amplify the atomic detonation’s lethality. Moreover, as good stage directors do, once an appropriate setting has been selected, policymakers are likely to take proactive measures to safeguard it for the grand debut. Finally, given the centrality of “impression management” for a successful performance, they should display an interest in appropriately tailoring the ultralethal display to mitigate the problem of backlash.Footnote ¹²

Postwar International Order and U.S.–Soviet Relative Power

U.S. policymakers at the end of World War II were acutely conscious of the fact that their actions would help “define the terms on which nations would live and relate” in the postwar international order (Wertheim Reference Wertheim2020, 78). Washington further believed it would need to hold “unquestioned power” to shape the postwar world (Council on Foreign Relations Economic and Financial Group, October 19, 1940, quoted in Wertheim Reference Wertheim2020, 69).

Yet it was the Soviet Union’s conventional military capabilities that were playing the decisive role in crushing Nazi power in Europe.Footnote ¹⁵ Although Soviet successes against the Wehrmacht were welcomed in principle, prominent American analysts were warning as early as 1942 that “[a] Russian state from the Urals to the North Sea can be no great improvement over a German state from the North Sea to the Urals” (Spykman Reference Spykman1942, 460). In 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Chief of Staff Admiral William Leahy wrote that given Soviet “resources, manpower, geography, and particularly our ability to project our strength across the ocean,” the United States “might be able to successfully defend Britain, but we could not, under existing conditions, defeat Russia” (excerpt from Leahy letter, May 16, 1944, FRUS 1945, doc. 104). Thus, seeing the Soviet Union consolidate control in Eastern Europe, Roosevelt admitted there was “no point to oppose these desires of Stalin” in the region “because he has the power to get them anyhow. So better give them gracefully” (quoted in McAllister Reference McAllister2002, 39). Roosevelt’s successor Truman was briefed in mid-1945 that “Russia will emerge from the present conflict as by far the strongest nation in Europe and Asia” that might easily “outrank even the United States in military potential” (Office of Strategic Services 1945). Not surprisingly, Truman’s own view was that the Soviet Union presented the United States “with an accomplished fact” of preponderant power—“there is little we can do” (quoted in Marc Reference Marc1981, 328).

Secretary of War Henry Stimson later recalled that American policymakers were searching for “a badly needed ‘equalizer’” in late World War II (Stimson and Bundy Reference Stimson and Bundy1948, 638). Without it, Stimson told the President in May 1943, the United States would be left “hold[ing] the leg for Stalin to skin the deer” in key global regions at war’s end and “not be able to share much of the post-war world with him” (quoted in Malloy Reference Malloy2008, 74). In the language of our theory, American leaders foresaw an ordering moment and yet worried about their country’s ability to influence this order, given its deficiency in conventional metrics of military power. Without some kind of “equalizer,” Washington would almost certainly not “end the war with an unprecedented lead in military capability.”Footnote ¹⁶

A New Relationship of Man to the Universe

At the same time, the Manhattan Project was producing a military innovation that could serve as the much needed equalizer. This equalizing potential would become the key message around which the United States would orient its “staging” efforts. Most American officials privy to the new bomb understood it as a “special and unique” development in international politics rather than “simply another powerful explosive” (Malloy Reference Malloy2008, 49–50).Footnote ¹⁷ The atomic bomb “should not be considered simply in terms of military weapons,” Stimson observed at a top-level meeting in May 1945. Instead, it represented “a new relationship of man to the universe. This discovery might be compared to the discoveries of the Copernican theory and of the laws of gravity, but far more important than these in its effect on the lives of men…the implications of the project went far beyond the needs of the present war” (May 31, 1945, NSAEBB716 2020, doc. 18).

While this view was not uniformly held, it did prevail among the most important decision-makers. As early as September 1944, Vannevar Bush and James B. Conant, lead scientist-administrators of the Manhattan Project, were referring to the weapon under development as a “super-super bomb” that would present “a new challenge to the world” by virtue of the fact “that very great devastation could be caused immediately after the outbreak of hostilities to civilian and industrial centers by an enemy prepared with a relatively few such bombs” (September 30, 1944, in Stoff, Fanton, and Williams Reference Stoff, Fanton and Williams1991, 78). This view was further entrenched after the first full-scale test of the device. Lieutenant General Leslie Groves, military supervisor of the Manhattan Project, approvingly relayed to Stimson a report from his deputy, Major General Thomas F. Farrell, who described the explosion in theological terms:

Routinely receiving such briefs, Truman himself came to see the bomb as a revolutionary contraption. His own words in July 1945 make this attitude clear: “We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world…It may be the fire destruction prophesied in the Euphrates Valley Era, after Noah and his fabulous Ark.”Footnote ¹⁸

U.S. leaders also believed that their possession of this revolutionary technology could alter the perceived balance of global power and America’s postwar influence. Stimson observed to Truman that nuclear weapons could be “used suddenly and effectively…against an unsuspecting nation or group of much greater size and material power” (April 26, 1945, NSAEBB716 2020, doc. 6B). “[T]he nature and power of the projected weapon” was, therefore, such that it could “have a decisive influence on our relations with other countries” (Truman Reference Truman1955, 90). “If it explodes,” Truman remarked on his way to the Potsdam Conference in July, “I’ll certainly have a hammer on those boys (Russia as well as the Japs [sic])” (quoted in Bernstein Reference Bernstein1975, 49, fn. 88). According to physicist Leo Szilárd, Secretary of State James Byrnes told him in a private meeting of May 28, 1945 that it was not strictly “necessary to use the bomb against the cities of Japan in order to win the war…Byrnes’s view [was] that our possessing and demonstrating the bomb would make Russia more manageable in Europe” (quoted in Bernstein Reference Bernstein1975, 48, fn. 80, emphasis added).

Yet U.S. leaders also faced a challenge: would other leaders and publics also see the atomic bomb as revolutionary? Stimson hinted at this conundrum in a February 1945 diary entry. Regarding the “S-1 [atomic bomb] and its possible connection with the Russians[,]” his view was that U.S. policymakers should “tread softly and to hold off conferences on the subject until” they could figure out ways to secure “tangible ‘fruits of repentance’ from the Russians[.]”Footnote ¹⁹ He elaborated this reasoning two months later: “[E]very prophecy thus far has been fulfilled by the development [of the atomic bomb] and we can see that success is 99% assured, yet only by the first actual war trial of the weapon can the actual certainty be fixed” (Summary diary entry, April 6–11, 1945, quoted in Sherwin Reference Sherwin2020, 47–9, emphasis added). In June, Stimson told Truman that “[t]here should be no revelation to Russia or anyone else of our work on the S-1 until the first bomb had been successfully laid on Japan” (June 6, 1945, NSAEBB716 2020, doc. 21). A group of senior scientists involved in the Manhattan Project highlighted the importance of this problem, observing that “the way in which the nuclear weapons, now secretly developed in this country, will first be revealed to the world appears of great, perhaps fateful importance” (June 12, 1945, NSAEBB716 2020, doc. 22).

Rejecting a Noncombat Demonstration

The chief alternative to using the bomb to kill large numbers of civilians was the so-called noncombat demonstration, which was debated on three important occasions from 1944 to 1945.Footnote ²⁰ The reason-giving that led to its rejection illustrates key aspects of our performative logic.

The noncombat demonstration idea was first broached in mid-1944. Scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory suggested that “perhaps the best use of the gadget is in a staged field test in an American desert; to which could be invited such foreign observers as the United States desired to impress with our victory over the atom and our potential power to win victories over our future enemies.” Navy Captain William S. Parsons, chief of the Ordnance Division at Los Alamos, wrote in a private report to Groves that “tender souls are appalled at the idea of the horrible destruction which this bomb might wreak in battle delivery” (September 25, 1944, quoted in Malloy Reference Malloy2007, 489). He then advanced the main case for rejecting such a demonstration in favor of lethal use:

Parsons here foreshadows what would become a consistent theme: a focus on debut options that promised the crystal clear ruination of human life and material infrastructure. Destruction had to be “obvious.” Anything less would be “spectacularly expensive” but insufficiently spectacular otherwise. J. Robert Oppenheimer, wartime director of Los Alamos, wrote to Groves that “I agree completely with all of the comments of Captain Parsons’ memorandum on the fallacy of regarding a controlled test as the culmination of the work of this laboratory.”Footnote ²¹

Noncombat demonstration was debated again in May 1945 at a working lunch of the Interim Committee, a high level body comprising senior policymakers, scientists, and military officials tasked with advising the President on nuclear matters. Physicist Ernest O. Lawrence had suggested earlier that the United States might “give the Japanese some striking but harmless demonstration of the bomb’s power before using it in a manner that would cause great loss of life” (Hewlett and Anderson Reference Hewlett and Anderson1962, 358). Lawrence recorded that the proposal “was given serious consideration by the Secretary of War and his committee,” but was eventually dismissed because “Oppenheimer could think of no demonstration that would be sufficiently spectacular to convince the Japs [sic] that further resistance was useless. Oppenheimer felt, and that feeling was shared by Groves and others, that the only way to put on a demonstration would be to attack a real target of built-up structures.”Footnote ²² For these individuals, then, the lethal use of the bomb was itself a demonstration—the only one that would be “sufficiently spectacular” to be effective. The Interim Committee’s central conclusion was thus that the atomic bomb would be used without “any warning” with an eye toward “mak[ing] a profound psychological impression on as many of the inhabitants as possible” (May 31, 1945, NSAEBB716 2020, doc. 18). Ensuring spectacular lethality was a recurrent theme whether U.S. officials were focusing on the immediate Japanese enemy, as Oppenheimer did at the working lunch, or on the Soviet Union and other international audiences as he and top level officials like Stimson and Byrnes often did on other occasions.

Noncombat demonstration was discussed a final time on June 12, 1945. A group of senior scientists at the University of Chicago’s Metallurgical Laboratory, led by Nobel Prize-winning physicist James Franck, submitted a report on the “Political and Social Problems” related to atomic weapons. This “Franck Report” argued that using the bomb to destroy Japanese cities would accelerate a future nuclear arms race by making its enormous power obvious to foreign nations. Eschewing lethal use, by contrast, would “[let] the other nations come into the race only reluctantly, on the basis of guesswork and without definite knowledge that the ‘thing does work’” (June 12, 1945, NSAEBB716 2020, doc. 22). Atomic use in combat would also set a dangerous precedent, since “[i]t will be very difficult to persuade the world that a nation which was capable of secretly preparing and suddenly releasing a weapon…is to be trusted” not to engage in similar aggression once again. Finally, lethal atomic use would provoke intense moral opprobrium, triggering a “wave of horror and repulsion, swooping over the rest of the world, and perhaps dividing even the public opinion at home.” A highly publicized noncombat demonstration, the scientists wrote, would avoid these costs:

The Franck Report was met with strongly negative responses from key policymakers. Objections largely focused on the proposed noncombat demonstration’s underwhelming effects. Leading Manhattan Project physicist Arthur H. Compton forwarded the report to Stimson with the preface that the “failure to make a military demonstration of the new bombs” would not only risk “mak[ing] the war longer and more expensive of human lives” but also make it “impossible to impress the world with the need for national sacrifices in order to gain lasting security” (June 12, 1945, NSAEBB716 2020, doc. 22). Oppenheimer also recalled opining that “the two overriding considerations were the saving of lives in the war and the effect of our actions…on our strength and the stability of the postwar world…[W]e did not think exploding one of these things as a firecracker over a desert was likely to be very impressive” (quoted in Polenberg Reference Polenberg2002, 34). This reasoning underscores how American officials were attending to both the speed of Japanese surrender and the broader worldwide reaction, and that they sought to generate an impression with emotive power by tending to the scenography of the bomb’s debut. Thus, in a final report entitled “Recommendations on the Immediate Use of Nuclear Weapons,” the Interim Committee’s Scientific Advisory Panel concluded that a noncombat demonstration would fail not only “to bring an end to the war” but also to “promote a satisfactory adjustment of our international relations” (June 16, 1945, NSAEBB716 2020, doc. 25).

Rejecting Advance Warning

Another option was to use the atomic bomb in combat, but with advance warning to reduce unnecessary civilian deaths. Such lower lethality scenarios were also rejected using similar reasoning. Advance warning was officially discussed on May 14, 1945, in connection with the idea of issuing a public statement following the first test detonation of an atomic device (May 14, 1945, in Merrill Reference Merrill1995, doc. 4). As Malloy (Reference Malloy2008, 109) notes, this “would have constituted an implicit warning to the Japanese prior to use.” This proposal was rejected on the grounds that it would blunt the impact of the bomb’s debut and invite intrusive demands for atomic cooperation from Moscow (110). On the same day the warning possibility was discussed, Stimson told Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall that the United States had encountered difficulties with the Soviets because “we have talked too much and have been too lavish with our beneficences to them.” Now that the United States held “a royal straight flush…the thing [was] not to get into unnecessary quarrels by talking too much” and “let our actions speak for themselves” (Stimson diary entry, May 14, 1945, NSAEBB716 2020, doc. 12).

As the scheduled strikes drew near, however, Stimson himself briefly wavered due to moral concerns. In July, he raised to Truman the possibility of “formulat[ing] a warning to Japan” before “the full force of our newer weapons should be brought to bear in the course of which a renewed and even heavier warning, backed by the power of the new forces…should be delivered” (July 16, 1945, NSAEBB716 2020, doc. 37). Here we see some concern for the problem of backlash, to which we return in a later section. The idea was struck down by Byrnes, who was not only more hawkish but significantly more influential in the Truman cabinet than Stimson (Alperovitz Reference Alperovitz1995, 489). Ever “impressed with the possibilities of the new explosive” for American diplomacy, Byrnes regarded as fanciful the notion that the United States should hold back from displaying the full might of nuclear weapons due to humanitarian concerns (Leahy diary, May 20, 1945, quoted in Alperovitz Reference Alperovitz1995, 214).

The United States did issue one form of warning to Japan during the Pacific War. Under the command of Major General Curtis LeMay, U.S. Army Air Forces dropped hundreds of thousands of leaflets on Japanese cities as part of the conventional bombing campaign, with some bearing words like “ATTENTION JAPANESE PEOPLE EVACUATE YOUR CITIES” (quoted in Szasz Reference Szasz2009, 536). Some might see this as evidence that Japan was, in fact, warned about the atomic bombings. This is incorrect. The leaflets dropped in late July and early August listed various Japanese cities that would be firebombed, but Hiroshima was not one of them. Moreover, no leaflet ever mentioned the atomic bomb. In fact, a more accurate interpretation is that the protracted leaflet campaign added to the surprise and lethality of the atomic bombings. As historian Ferenc Morton Szasz notes, “when the Enola Gay, with its two escorts, appeared over Hiroshima on the early morning of August 6, 1945, the people below probably assumed that it contained yet-another-round of” the so-called LeMay Pamphlets (537).

Looking for “Untouched” Cities

As plans gravitated toward using the bomb on densely populated cities, discussions of which cities to target intensified. Here we see attention to the setting or “stage,” specifically with regard to the topography of various cities and its impact on visible destruction. It was observed early on that “the contour of the terrain” surrounding “the point of detonation” would be important for “the character and extent of damage” (Parsons letter, April 6, 1945, MEDC 1942–1946, Batch 1, scans 501–600). The first official meeting of the “Target Committee”—comprising senior military and scientific personnel—thus concluded that appropriate targets could be narrowed down “to large urban areas of not less than 3 miles in diameter existing in the larger populated areas” (April 27, 1945, NSAEBB716 2020, doc. 5).

Perhaps most telling, a premium was placed on cities whose population and industry were relatively intact. A conventional bombing campaign had been underway for some time. Since “the 20th Air Force [was]…laying waste all the main Japanese cities,” Hiroshima rose to the top of the target list as “the largest untouched target.” The city was all the more attractive because it was of “such a size that a large part of the city could be extensively damaged” and “adjacent hills” were “likely to produce a focusing effect which would considerably increase the blast damage” (May 12, 1945, NSAEBB716 2020, doc. 11). Tokyo, by contrast, was ranked lower since “it is now practically all bombed and burned out and is practically rubble with only the palace grounds left standing.” The second meeting of the Target Committee made clear that the goal was to achieve spectacular destruction to affect the views of foreign audiences—both in Japan and elsewhere.

Based on such considerations, the Target Committee officially recommended Hiroshima, Kyoto, and Niigata as prospective targets on May 28, 1945. In another indication of the focus on showcasing lethality, the committee agreed not to “specify aiming points” and to “neglect location of industrial areas as pin point target, since on these three targets such areas are small, spread on fringes of cities and quite dispersed.” The aim was “to endeavor to place first gadget in center of selected city” to achieve “complete destruction” (May 28, 1945, NSAEBB716 2020, doc. 15). Table 2 summarizes the deliberations that attended each of the potential targets.

Table 2. Deliberations on Target Cities for Atomic Bombing

Sources: NSAEBB716 2020, doc. 5; NSAEBB716 2020, doc. 11; Malloy Reference Malloy2008, 135; Gordin Reference Gordin2005, 45.

Note: Boldface indicates cities on the final target list of July 25, 1945.

Preserving Targets for the Grand Debut

U.S. leaders’ attention to preserving an appropriate “stage space” for the atomic bomb’s debut is also evident in how they sought to preserve Hiroshima’s “untouched” status with an eye toward amplifying the bomb’s impact. As early as May 1944, Captain Parsons at Los Alamos was stressing the importance of adjusting the technical details of the atomic bomb’s use to ensure that “there will be the maximum number of structures (dwellings and factories) damaged beyond repair” (Parsons letter, May 19, 1944, MEDC 1942–1946, Batch 1, scans 601–700). This concern became even more pertinent as opinions converged on the choice of targets. On June 6, 1945, Stimson briefed Truman on the Interim Committee’s conclusions, telling the President that he “was trying to hold the Air Force down to precisionbombing” [sic] in Japan until decisions on the atomic bomb were implemented. The chief concern was that conventional destruction would put a damper on the bomb’s debut; Stimson was “fearful that before we could get ready the Air Force might have Japan so thoroughly bombed out that the new weapon would not have a fair background to show its strength” (June 6, 1945, NSAEBB716 2020, doc. 21).

Stimson’s guidance was stressed over and over again in the form of specific orders. As early as May 17, nearly 2 weeks before the Target Committee had submitted Hiroshima, Niigata, and Kyoto as its official recommendations, a top-secret memo directed U.S. air forces in the Pacific that “no bombing attacks [should] be made against” these cities since they were “tentatively established as initial targets for the 509th Composite Group”—that is, the unit tasked with the deployment of the atomic bomb. Indicating an early focus on surprise and lethality, the memo also stressed that “this directive should receive minimum distribution and accomplished without publicity” (COMAF 20 memo, May 17, 1945, MEDC Batch 1, scans 401–500). General Groves again reminded the military leadership on June 30 that “Kokura, Hiroshima and Niigata” should “be reserved and…not be attacked[,]” recommending that the Joint Chiefs of Staff issue formal orders in this regard “so that there can be no possible misunderstanding with respect to the preservation of the targets” (Groves letter, June 30, 1945, MEDC 1942–1946, Batch 1, scans 201–300). The Joint Chiefs of Staff immediately assented, ordering top commanders in the Far East to refrain from conducting attacks of any kind on the target cities unless otherwise instructed (JCS memo, June 30, 1945, MEDC 1942–1946, Batch 1, scans 201–300).

Secret orders to spare a handful of major enemy cities from destruction would have made little immediate sense to subordinates. They appear eminently sensible, however, once we understand that top policymakers were attending to the minute details of the bomb’s debut. They adopted a mindset akin to that of a theater director assiduously heeding the “look and feel” of their new gadget’s first major performance. Their preference was faithfully executed. One postwar journalistic account reported that “the continued abstinence of [U.S. conventional bombings] with respect to Hiroshima had made its citizens jittery” in the days leading up to August 6, 1945; “a rumor was going around that the Americans were saving something special for the city” (Hersey [1946] Reference Hersey1999, 5).

Tending to the Problem of Backlash

Our logic of performative violence interprets violent spectacles as carefully orchestrated displays meant to “elicit particular responses from” their audiences (Bakogianni Reference Bakogianni, Bakogianni and Hope2015, 5) and “lead them to act voluntarily in accordance with [one’s] own plans” (Goffman Reference Goffman1959, 4). In this regard, it is important to emphasize that U.S. leaders staged the violent debut of the atomic bomb to shape perceptions of American power and influence in the postwar international order, not to convince key audiences of American unbridled savagery. We thus find that U.S. leaders foresaw the risks of reckless excess, such as revulsion and backlash against American power. Policymakers grappled with this problem as they weighed the political and moral costs of using the bomb. In the same letter to Truman where he discussed his concern about securing a “fair background” for the atomic bomb’s debut, Stimson wrote that he “did not want to have the United States get the reputation of outdoing Hitler in atrocities” (June 6, 1945, NSAEBB716 2020, doc. 21).

Therefore, even as they rejected options that failed to magnify bloodshed and destruction of the built environment, U.S. leaders also tried to channel this ultralethal debut to minimize the problem of backlash. The most telling example is found in Stimson’s intervention to replace Kyoto on the Target Committee’s final recommendation with Kokura, citing Kyoto’s cultural and moral significance for the Japanese people. Stimson noted in his diary that the President was “particularly emphatic in agreeing with my suggestion that” if a city that was historically so endearing to the Japanese was destroyed, “the bitterness which would be caused by such a wanton act might make it impossible during the long post-war period to reconcile the Japanese to us…rather than to the Russians” (July 24, 1945, quoted in Kelly Reference Kelly2012, 201).

Moreover, although images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s ravaged landscapes were widely circulated in the aftermath of Japan’s surrender, U.S. officials took care to censor or downplay public knowledge of some of the more repellent dimensions of the bomb’s effects. Foremost among these were the bombings’ radiological consequences on the bodies of survivors. As journalist Lesley Blume (Reference Blume2020, 11, 149) writes, while American policymakers saw publicity on Hiroshima’s destruction as a useful means to “showcas[e], to great effect, the devastating power of the United States’ new weapon[,]” they were also embarrassed by certain aspects of the coverage and especially by “allegations that the United States had bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki recklessly and without elaborate consideration.” Tailored lethality and sustained impression management were needed for the atomic bomb’s first performance to redound favorably to America’s position in the postwar international order.

Keeping a Wide Audience in Mind

As we note above, a key cleavage in the historiographical debate is the relative importance of the Japanese and Soviet audiences in the decision to use the atomic bomb. Our “middle ground plus” argument focuses on how U.S. policymakers sought to also dramatize the atomic bomb’s revolutionary lethality to influence perceptions of American power in the postwar international order. This implies a global audience that goes beyond the Japanese versus Soviet dichotomy.

To be sure, the focus on securing a preponderant position in the international order meant that U.S. policymakers would invariably think long and hard about the atomic debut’s impact on the Soviet Union’s impression of the atomic bomb. Thus, after an April 1945 meeting in which Truman was briefed on “all of the facts with respect to the Manhattan Engineer District,” Groves recorded that “[a] great deal of emphasis was placed on foreign relations and particularly on Russian relations” (April 25, 1945, NSAEBB716 2020, doc. 6C). In this respect, our findings support the revisionist focus on Moscow, as well as variants of the middle ground position which hold that ensuring “Russia will not get in so much on the kill” in key global regions at war’s end was a powerful motive behind Truman’s atomic bomb decisions in addition to accelerating Japan’s surrender (Byrnes on July 24, 1945 according to Walter Brown, quoted in Hasegawa Reference Hasegawa2005, 159).

That said, we also see evidence for the role of a more expansive audience. Recall, as a case in point, that the central goals that guided the Target Committee’s deliberations in April–May 1945 were “(1) obtaining the greatest psychological effect against Japan and (2) making the initial use sufficiently spectacular for the importance of the weapon to be internationally recognized when publicity on it is released” (May 12, 1945, NSAEBB716 2020, doc. 11, emphasis added). The following month, Oppenheimer’s top-secret “Recommendations on the Immediate Use of Atomic Weapons” to the Interim Committee rejected the noncombat demonstration option with the argument that “[t]his use…should be such as to promote a satisfactory adjustment of our international relations.” The group of countries whose reactions this memo deems significant includes Britain, Russia, France, and China (June 16, 1945, NSAEBB716 2020, doc. 25). Stimson affirmed the importance of a broad international audience in a conversation with General Henry Arnold on July 23, 1945, where the two discussed “the effect on other nations” along with “the psychological reaction of the Japanese themselves” (Arnold Reference Arnold1949, 589).

It is possible that terms such as “other nations” or “international” onlookers were simply veiled references to the Soviet Union. However, the more plausible and straightforward interpretation is that they referred to a wider audience. Direct references to the Soviet Union were common among U.S. policymakers at this time. Our earlier review of American thinking about relative power (see the “Postwar International Order and U.S.–Soviet Relative Power” section) highlights numerous top-level exchanges on the Soviets, such as Stimson’s vivid note to Truman that the United States should not “hold the leg for Stalin to skin the deer” at the end of the war (quoted in Malloy Reference Malloy2008, 74). This suggests that U.S. leaders had no qualms about speaking candidly about Moscow in closed door discussions or sensitive documents. If anything, policymakers mentioning “international” audiences or “other nations” seem to have been trying to convey the importance of a larger set of countries beyond the more obvious interlocutors.

Second, we find clear evidence that key officials were sensitive to the reactions of a truly global audience, rather than just those of Moscow, in the process that led to the dismissal of the noncombat demonstration. As we noted in the “Rejecting a Noncombat Demonstration” section, the scientists who supported this alternative wanted “a demonstration of the new weapon…before the eyes of representatives of all United Nations.” Scientist-administrator Arthur Compton similarly focused on world reactions when relaying this proposal to Stimson, advancing the opposite conclusion that a nonlethal debut would make it “impossible to impress the world” with the bomb’s power (June 12, 1945, NSAEBB716 2020, doc. 22).

Historian Martin Sherwin’s analysis of how Manhattan Project insiders like Compton came to think about the bomb’s debut provides critical context. “The Target Committee’s concern that the full implications of the bomb be recognized internationally reflected a pervasive anxiety among those scientists who had begun to worry about the bomb’s role in the postwar world,” he writes. Whether the bomb would be used “[a]s an instrument of peace based on the international control of atomic energy, or as an instrument of diplomacy to be used in postwar negotiations, the influence of the weapon depended upon a general recognition that pre-atomic age calculations had to give way to new realities.” This anxiety underscored the case for unveiling the bomb to the world “in the most dramatic fashion possible” (Sherwin Reference Sherwin1985, 11, emphasis added). Ray Monk’s detailed study also makes clear that key scientists and administrators at Los Alamos had numerous conversations about the impact that the atomic bomb would have on “civilization,” where Oppenheimer and others regularly argued that the United States would achieve its aims for the atomic bomb “only if its awesome power were made clear to everyone and this could, in turn, only be done if it were actually used” in war (Reference Monk2014, 361, emphasis added).Footnote ²³ Such conversations informed, among other things, the Target Committee’s decision to explicitly state that one of its top priorities was to ensure that “the importance of the weapon” would be “internationally recognized” through the bomb’s first use (360).

In short, American policymakers displayed a consistent awareness of the atomic bomb’s potential to reshape the United States’ standing in the broader international system as they deliberated the significance of the bomb and how to reveal it to the world. While Japanese and Soviet reactions were unquestionably important, dramatizing the atomic bomb’s lethal capability was also deemed valuable because it was expected to favorably alter international perceptions of the bomb and its possessor. In the Supplementary Material, we briefly examine evidence from after August 1945 to assess the extent to which U.S. policymakers achieved this expansive goal.