The Nation

Still other respected writes, such as Rufus Miles Jr. and Stanford Univerity's Barton Bernstein, have effectively refuted Truman's oft-repeated argument about the number of American lives saved by the bomb. Citing the most recently de-classified materials, Bernstein could not find a worst-case prediction of lives lost higher than 46,000-even if an invasion had been mounted, which, as noted, was deemed highly unlikely by July 1945. Most estimates went no higher than 20,000 combat deaths. "The myth of the 500,000 American lives saved", Bernstein concludes, "thus seems to have no bases in fact."