On August 6 and 9, 1945, the United States unleashed a nuclear inferno over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively. By the end of 1945, the attacks had killed 210,000 people, with 330,000 more dying later of burns and radiation. The spectre of nuclear war had dawned on humanity, with the ability to destroy whole cities in an instant and to poison generations that follow.
The path to that moment began in the trenches and capitals of Europe and in the ambitions of imperial states across Asia. When Hitler invaded Poland in September 1939, Europe was plunged into war. Japan’s imperial ascent had older roots: rapid industrialisation after the Meiji reforms led to military victories over China and then Russia in the early twentieth century. By the late 1930s and through the war years, Japan had occupied Korea, Manchuria and large swathes of China, and by 1941 it had driven into Southeast Asia and the Pacific. The result was a clash of empires that drew the US into the conflict after the attack on Pearl Harbour that killed 2,400 Americans and destroyed hundreds of aircraft.
