Bart Bernstein
11/15/79
Unconditional Surrender
I did not have a chance yet to respond to the reprint from PHR, for which thank you. May I also ask of you a copy of your paper in Pol Sci Q. 1975?
only a couple of small comments:
1) How well do you believe our leaders foresaw Hirohito's role in Japanese politics? How good was our intelligence about internal Japanese politics? Was not HST and FDR captured by undiscriminating images of the "Japs" after Pearl Harbor, kamikazes etc . . . ?
2) Perhaps you understate the autonomy and momentum of the field commands (vs. Washington) in the conduct of war. It would have been very difficult for Truman
11/19/79 arr
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to fine tune the air actions against Japan on a time scale of days. He must have been greatly relieved at being able to retain control of the nuclear deployments!
Have you thought much about "Unconditional Surrender" in Europe. I was most uneasy (at age 18) about Casablanca, the Morgenthau plan, etc. as they happened, and have, I believe, read all of the major works from Kecskemeti on. None of the apologies for UC policy appear very satisfactory to me either as normative or descriptive accounts. Soviet interest and activity in influencing our policy in particular
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has hardly been looked at. (Kim Philby did drop a cryptic line about disinformation concerning the anti-Hitler resistance in Germany.)
Have you thought of taking this on? Or do you point to an existing work that satisfies you -- if so what?
Yours
Joshua.