Eight Days in August: The Countdown to the Collapse of Japan and the End of World War II

The final week of World War II unfolded like a political thriller—with millions of lives hanging in the balance.

By early August 1945, Japan had been chased across the Pacific, hemmed in on the Asian mainland, and isolated by the fall of Nazi Germany. But it did not surrender. Even after an atomic bomb destroyed Hiroshima, Japan held on – and seemed prepared to fight to the last man. For Japan to raise the white flag, it would take another atomic blast, a Soviet attack, and a failed coup by ...