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The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II. Feis was the first historian to examine the military advisor theory as an explanation on why the atomic bomb was used at the end of World War II. Feis defended the administrations explanation by explaining the information available to Truman at the time and how dropping the atomic bomb was the quickest way out of the war. Feis' work is important because it was a historical review that supported the administrations explanations.As recently as 1997, D.M. Giangreco argued in the Journal of Military History that Truman's decision to use nuclear weapons at the end of World War II was based on the military projections that an invasion of Japan would have meant the death of many more people, especially American soldiers, than the use of the bombs caused. The military advisor theory has prevailed as the accepted explanation of use of the atomic bomb for nearly sixty years.

However, many of the works about Truman over the years have argued a significant revision to the Truman Administration's explanation of why the atomic bombs were used. This revision states that Harry Truman used the atomic bombs to scare the Soviet Union and consequently brought about the Cold War. The first major work that argued this revisionist interpretation was Gar Alperovitz's Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam: The Use of the Atomic Bomb and the American Confrontation with Soviet Power. Published in 1965, Atomic Diplomacy was a revisionist look at the use of the atomic bomb to end World War II. Alperovitz questioned Truman's motives behind using the bomb and was the first to second guess the popular military expediency explanation. Rather, Alperovitz argued that Truman used the bomb to make a political statement and to intimidate the Soviet Union with the power of the United States. Many recent historians who question Truman's decision to use the atomic bomb have linked that event with the coming of the Cold War.
The decisions around dropping the atomic bombs are a prime example of the controversy facing Harry Truman's foreign policy. Blamed by many for the onset of Cold War hostility, Truman's foreign policy decisions have been scrutinized more extensively than most other presidents'. The firing of General Macarthur, the Korean War, and Truman's handling of the Soviet Union filled Truman's years in office with controversy. The leading modern interpretation of Truman's foreign policy is Melvyn P. Leffler's A Preponderance of Power: National

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