What was the goal of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
This question has three very straight forward answers depending on how you interpret events. Either to end the war in the pacific without further loss of life to the Allies, or quite simply, to see what it would do to people.The first answer, while true, is difficult to justify as it is estimated that the Americans would have won within two weeks without the use of nuclear weapons. Although a lot of people can die in 2 weeks, and I am not certain whether the Americans realised this at the time.The second answers is also true, as earlier atomic tests had not clearly established the effect of impact on human targets outside of ground zero. To put this into some context, one of the things earlier tests had cleared up is that the bomb wouldn't set fire to the atmosphere in general and kill almost everybody at once (i.e. globally).The third answer is that other countries were also attempting to develop atomic weaponry, and that deploying it is the simplest way of showing people you have it.I personally feel that the fact two bombs were dropped and not just the one implies that whilst all the above is true, it is the latter two statements which were the driving force in deploying the atomic bomb.