What if the Trinity test had failed?
TFA asks a bunch of what-if questions -- very good ones indeed.<p>&gt; Would a failure at Trinity have changed the outcome of World War II in any significant way? Ultimately this question relies on what you think caused the Japanese to offer up a conditional surrender on August 10th, and then an unconditional surrender on August 14th. In particular, it depends on how important you think the Nagasaki bombing was for the decision-making of the Japanese high command.<p>I think it&#x27;s pretty clear that a) the Japanese had been willing to surrender on one condition (keeping the emperor) for weeks, b) the U.S. was holding out for an unconditional surrender, c) the USSR entering the war pushed Japan to make, and the U.S. to accept, a privately-conditional &#x2F; publicly-unconditional surrender.  I believe the bombs made little real difference.  From a Japanese perspective they destroyed nothing that hadn&#x27;t already been firebombed to smithereens -- all large- and medium-sized cities already had been firebombed to smithereens.  It&#x27;s really hard to believe that the war with Japan would have had a different outcome if either or both bombs had not been dropped.<p>But I found this very interesting:<p>&gt; After getting the successful results from Trinity, Truman took a very hard line with Stalin. He believed that the bomb gave him leverage for both the end of World War II and the peace that would follow. Though he did not try to argue that the Soviets should not declare war on Japan or stop their invasion plans, he was less convinced he would need the Soviet entry into the war, and did not encourage them.<p>Well!  If he had been certain enough to demand that Stalin not enter the war, that might have meant we&#x27;d have no North Korea today.  Interesting thought.