World War II was home to some of the largest and most gruesome massacres in history. From the beginning of the war in 1939 until the end of the war in 1945 there were three mass killings, by three major countries, of what they thought were lesser peoples. The Rape of Nanjing, carried out by the Japanese, resulted in the death of between 150,000 and 200,000 Chinese civilians and prisoners of war. A more well-known event involved the Germans and the Holocaust. Hitler and the Nazi regime persecuted and killed over 500,000 Jews. This last country might come as a surprise, but there's no way anyone can leave them out of the conversation. With the dropping of the atomic bombs the United States killed over 200,000 people, not including radiation deaths, in the cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima and ultimately placed the United States in the same group as the Japanese and Germans. What are the alternatives other than dropping the two atomic bombs? And was it right? The United States and President Truman should have weighed their choice a little more before deciding to drop both atomic bombs on the islands of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. In the case of the dropping of the atomic bombs the United States did not make the right decision. This essay will explain through logical reasoning and provide detailed reasons as to why the United States did not make the right choice. One of the most discussed topics today, the end of World War II and the dropping of the atomic bombs, still resonates with Americans. ear. Recent studies by historians have argued that the United States actually did not make the right choice when it chose to drop the atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Furthermore, with the release of once classified documents, we can see that the United States... middle of paper... that Japan was ready to surrender. Stimson, Churchill, Truman were all well aware of this. Declassified documents state that "Japanese leaders had decided to surrender and were simply looking for a sufficient pretext to convince the die-hard army group that Japan had lost the war and had to capitulate to the Allies." (Alproviz) According to this scenario, no exists there would have been some casualties but no more than 5000. As noted before, this was Truman's original plan, but due to the number he received he backed out that there would only have been 31,000 American casualties, not deaths According to him the rhetoric is not understood. The number given to Truman concerns the dead and not the victims 66,000.