In addition to seeing the bomb as shortening the war and thus denying the Russians any significant role in defeating and occupying Japan, Stalin also saw the bomb as a means by which the United States would seek to extract postwar concessions from the Soviet Union: “A-bomb blackmail is American policy.”28 There was something in this. Truman had used the bomb chiefly to end the war, but he and his advisers did indeed expect their new weapon to induce a more conciliatory attitude on the part of the U.S.S.R.
