Eventually, by 1945, allied armies had both Germany and Japan retreating. What would have happened if we had had Kofi Anan and the mushy mindset called "world opinion" at work then?

Kofi Anan would undoubtedly have called for a cease fire.

He could have pointed out that the American response to Germany was wholly "disproportionate" because the Germans had never landed troops in America or bombed American cities, and were certainly no real threat to the United States at that point.

Much of the Japanese navy was at the bottom of the ocean by this time and most of their planes had been shot down. Why not a negotiated settlement, in order to spare innocent civilian lives?

And what if we had listened to such talk?

No doubt Germany and Japan would have signed some kind of negotiated agreement in order to get the allied armies off their backs and get some breathing room.

Both Germany and Japan had programs to try to build nuclear bombs. One of the Nazis' last acts before surrendering was to send material by submarine to Japan to help advance their nuclear program.

Any peace we might have negotiated with Japan would have given the Japanese time to develop not only nuclear technology but also war planes whose plans had been gotten from Germany, which had the most advanced planes in the world at that time.

There is not the slightest doubt that Japan would not have had the slightest hesitation to drop nuclear bombs on American cities. And they would not have come back in later years to wring their hands at what they had done, as too many American have done at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

But we didn't cease firing until our enemies were defeated. Kofi Anan and today's "world opinion" would not have liked that.