The meeting was marked by recriminations and suspicion between the Americans and Soviets. Truman, Russian leader Joseph Stalin, and Winston Churchill (before being replaced by Clement Attlee) ended just four days before the bombing of Hiroshima. READ MORE: The Hiroshima Bombing Didn't Just End WWII-It Kick-Started the Cold Warīy August 1945, relations between the Soviet Union and the United States had deteriorated badly. It has been suggested that the second objective was to demonstrate the new weapon of mass destruction to the Soviet Union. First, of course, was to bring the war with Japan to a speedy end and spare American lives.
In the years since the two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, a number of historians have suggested that the weapons had a two-pronged objective.
