Did We Really Need to Drop the Bomb?<title>.

The article discusses that American leaders called the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 'least abhorrent choice,' but there were alternatives to the nuclear attacks. It mentions reasons were possibly connected with the ghastly memory of mustard gas used in World War I and the emerging horror of the Nazi death camps and gas chambers. It also mentions atomic bombs were seen as spectacular new weapons that somehow inflicted a cleaner, quicker death.