This book explores the American use of atomic bombs and the role these weapons played in the defeat of the Japanese Empire in World War II. It focuses on President Harry S. Truman's decision-making ...regarding this most controversial of all his decisions. The book relies on notable archival research and the best and most recent scholarship on the subject to fashion an incisive overview that is fair and forceful in its judgments. This study addresses a subject that has been much debated among historians and it confronts head-on the highly disputed claim that the Truman administration practised 'atomic diplomacy'. The book goes beyond its central historical analysis to ask whether it was morally right for the United States to use these terrible weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It also provides a balanced evaluation of the relationship between atomic weapons and the origins of the Cold War.
John Ireland and the American Catholic Church (St. Paul, 1988) was not a narrow study but a true "life and times" portrait that cast essential light on the Americanist movement and the place of ...Catholics in American political life in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. In revealing the contest between these two complex personalities, O'Connell addressed the larger issue (as the historian Gerald McKevitt noted) of "the struggle of European institutions-in this case, a religious congregation-to adapt to the American environment.
After its victory in World War II, it was clear that United States should move beyond the disastrous policies of the 1930s, but it was less clear how. Ultimately, a lasting postwar strategy was ...forged under President Truman. Appreciating how Truman moved well beyond Roosevelt's guiding assumptions is essential to understanding the evolution of American grand strategy. One sees that wartime planning and grand strategy formulation can prove quite inadequate for dealing with postwar challenges. An administration cannot be locked into assumptions, but must constantly test them. Thus, the Truman administration eventually developed and adopted containment and moved far beyond FDR's approach. More substantively, the fundamental geopolitical lesson of World War II and the early Cold War was that the United States must assume the essential balancing role relative to other major powers.
This article uses the relationship between George Kennan and Dean Acheson as a lens to track a classic debate over the main lines of postwar American foreign policy, especially in regard to Europe ...and over such related issues as negotiations with the Soviets, German unification, and the size of and necessity for American conventional and nuclear forces. It clarifies that Kennan did not play the role of powerful architect whose planning provided the blueprint and instructions for building the structure of U.S. policy in Europe. Dean Acheson proved the essential builder of the structures which provided the framework for American foreign policy for four decades. In the process, this article clarifies the nature of the personal and professional dealings of the two men over the period from the end of World War II until Acheson's death in 1971.
