Using Wikipedia to “Read the Scholarly Room”

Using Wikipedia to “Read the Scholarly Room”

Wikipedia is an indispensable resource for reading the room when you’re still finding your way into a topic and don’t know who the players are, the differences that separate them, and the big issues still under debate. For example, you’ve heard that near the end of World War II there was a lot of controversy around the decision to drop the atomic bomb. When you google “Atomic bomb + debate,” this article comes up.

Figure 7.10 Article from the website of the History News Network (https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/181372)

It appears on historynewsnetwork.org, a site for history buffs out of the College of Arts and Sciences at George Washington University. The authors argue that when the bombs were dropped, the Japanese were already on the “verge of defeat.” Surrender, claim authors Jeremy Kuzmarov and Roger Peace, “could likely have been achieved without the atomic bomb.”17

A bold claim that, if true, could have prevented untold human suffering. It’s not quite what you remember from your history books. Then again, textbooks lag years—sometimes decades—behind the latest scholarship. Is this what the latest research says? Would a room full of historians nod in unison?

Wikipedia’s entry on the “Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki” is long—excruciatingly long. It runs thirty-seven pages, with a five-page bibliography and over 350 references. It’s easy to get lost. Since our goal is to read the room, not immerse ourselves in every detail, we do a quick scan of the table of contents. Near the end, we spy a subsection called “Debate over the Bombings.” It’s blissfully short. Two paragraphs.

The first sentence hints that things are, well, let’s just say a bit more complicated than authors Kuzmarov and Peace let on. The role of the bombings, according to Wikipedia, is “the subject of scholarly and popular debate.”18

The short section lays out three positions:

1. 1 The atomic bomb was responsible for bringing the war to a swift end. Had the Allies attempted a land invasion, there would have been an even greater loss of life among the Allies as well as the Japanese defending their homeland.
2. 2 It wasn’t the bomb that brought Japan to its knees but the Soviets’ declaration of war in August 1945.
3. 3 Japan was indeed ready to surrender. The Americans dropped the bombs anyway to intimidate the USSR in what would become the first round of the Cold War.

So how do the claims of Kuzmarov and Peace fare? Their position is not beyond the pale—it’s not “fringe.” On the other hand, it’s by no means universally accepted. It’s one position among several in an ongoing historical debate.