> Outside the US it is quite common to view the bombings as war crimes,
I'm from the UK and born in the 1960s and have not heard that as a mainstream view. I've seen a bit of chatter on the Web about it, but nothing substantial.
There is very little dispute that the nuclear bombings were horrible, but it was all out war. We'd had the destruction of much of Europe including the carpet bombings and resulting firestorms causing widespread deaths. Also many of our relatives are buried in what is modern day Thailand and Myanmar after fighting on the Pacific front. WW2 was brutal on many fronts and the bombing of military, industrial, and civilian areas was a part of that, but I don't recall it being called a war crime as a child nor in most modern discussion. It was a raw fight for survival which is hard to comprehend today.
Hitler was developing atomic weaponry, despite the other many technological advances they made luckily for the world he was further behind than the allies thought as I understand.
If the war hadn't finished there, the world would be a different place. The Russians would have advanced further and it's unlike there would be a South Korea for instance. There is also the issue of did those bombings show the world what a nuclear war would be like and thus drive the stalemate of the cold war. Had they not been used in anger, would America or Russia be more casual about attacking each other in the subsequent years once they were both full armed.