Hiroshima, 1945

This photo captures what little remained of the city of Hiroshima after the United States dropped an atomic bomb on August 6, 1945. Without the bomb, the U.S. military foresaw a long and costly struggle to defeat Japan, given that country’s overall strategy of fighting to the last person and in the process inflicting the maximum number of enemy casualties. Some claim that the United States dropped the bomb to menace the Soviet Union, its opponent in the cold war that was just beginning. Others point to the fact that no such bomb was ever dropped on a Caucasian population. (The Everett Collection, Inc.)