History

This is, impressively, one of the better takes I have seen on the nuclear bombings from US media. Usually the takes I see are something along the lines of "Actually it was more humane, because we would have had to kill more civilians if we invade them! or something". They even hit on some key elements that are often overlooked in western coverage, like the fact that pinning it on the nuclear bombs gave Japanese leadership an easy scapegoat.

It does glance over the fact that the US probably wanted to use the bombs, if for no other reason than a show of force to the USSR.

The biggest impetus for Japan's surrender was the Soviet invasion of Manchuria. We can see this very easily from the timeline. The first bomb landed on August 6th, the second on August 9th. The meeting of the supreme council to discuss surrender started on the morning of August 9th, starting before the second bombing. The second bomb can be assumed to not have prompted the surrender meeting, though it very well may have come up during that meeting later on. Communication wasn't as fast then as now, but I can't imagine waiting three days from the first bomb to starting a meeting about it either. What did occur right before that meeting was the USSR attacking Japan, taking any hope of the USSR mediating more favorable surrender terms off the table.

While Japan was pretty much defeated prior to the USSR entering the conflict, the fact that the USSR did probably saved a lot of lives. Could have been even more if the US weren't so eager to test their new weapons.