Recently the matter of the Armenian Genocide has become quite polemic, with Turkey authorities still in denial about the facts that happened, claiming the killings were justified "by war".
With that in mind I'd like to know how the American nuclear strikes in Japanese soil are viewed by people that doesn't have the "i don't want a stain in my country's history" bias.
This is actually a pretty heated debate amongst WWII historians. Leó Szilárd (Hungarian-American physicist that worked on the Manhattan Project) hypothetically stated;
"Suppose Germany had developed two bombs before we had any bombs. And suppose Germany had dropped one bomb, say, on Rochester and the other on Buffalo, and then having run out of bombs she would have lost the war. Can anyone doubt that we would then have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and that we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them?" (http://members.peak.org/~danneng/decision/usnews.html)
Now, Szilard isn't really "outside the US" and also isn't a historian but his view is shared by many.
Tsuyoshi Hasegawa is a Japanese born Cold War Historian currently still teaching at UC Santa Barbara. In one of his writings he argues that the atomic bombs were wildly unncessary because the real breaking point to capitulation for the Japanese was Russia entering the Pacific Theater. He points out that in late July of 1945 Emperor Hirohito, fearing a Russian entrance into the war, attempted to send several envoys; even his former Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe himself, in order to keep Russia out of the war. This was unsuccessful and on August 8th Russia declared war on Japan.
"On the basis of available evidence, however, it is clear that the two atomic bombs… alone were not decisive in inducing Japan to surrender. Despite their destructive power, the atomic bombs were not sufficient to change the direction of Japanese diplomacy. The Soviet invasion was. Without the Soviet entry in the war, the Japanese would have continued to fight until numerous atomic bombs, a successful allied invasion of the home islands, or continued aerial bombardments, combined with a naval blockade, rendered them incapable of doing so" (Hasegawa, Tsuyoshi (2005). Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. ISBN 978-0-674-01693-4.)
Now there's an entirely different argument to be made as to why both of these statements aren't entirely accurate but you didn't ask that ;)
A further question, what is the Chinese intellectual view on the subject?