The Bomb Didn't Beat Japan, Stalin Did

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Somewhat of a misleading title since the article focuses more on Soviet military action against Japanese home islands and the subsequent lack of options on the part of Japan than anything directly associated with Stalin's political maneuvers. However, I thought the premise of the article was thought provoking. While I am not enough of a historian to truly say whether the article's concepts were the primary factors in which Japan surrendered I think it is worth pondering all the same.

Link: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/05/29/the_bomb_didnt_beat_japan_nuclear_world_war_ii?pag e=0,0

[TheSocialistMetalhead]

I study history (not that this means much but still...) and I have to say that I agree with the premise. I've long held the view that the Nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn't do much toward making Japan surrender.

[Sasha]

No, indeed, wheter it was the "conventional" warfare of the US or the USSR or both that made Japan surrender may be debated, sure is that the nuclear bombs where not the last shots of WW2 but the first of the coldwar.

[Teacher]

I think the Soviet entry into the war probably had a bigger impact than the bombs, though the impact of the bombs was undoubtedly enormous. The combination of the two probably did it, who knows what would have happened if the bombs weren't dropped. We know that the Japanese fascists definitely preferred to surrender to the Americans.

[Marshal of the People]

I think an actual invasion of Japan would be silly because they (the Japanese) would fight to the death literally (it would involve suicide bombings, kamikaze attacks, booby traps etc.), it would not be nice for either the Soviet Union or America.

[Leo Tyszka]

As soon as USSR entered the war against Japan, Japan tried to make peace. The Japanese government was also seeking peace with the US before the drop of the bombs, the US refused to give them a conditional surrender before the bombs were dropped. It was the fact that the US would not specify the terms of the surrender that prevent Japan from doing it before the bombs were dropped. So no there was probably no real threat of a land war and quite frankly I doubt Japan had the capacity to in terms of supplies to hold out that long. This talk of how Japan would have fought to the death and it would have been a bloodbath for Americans and the suicide bombings, while it might have some truth behind it, stinks of the racist propaganda that was fed to American Soldiers and civilians about the Japanese having surrendered themselves and their humanity fully to their emperor.

[khad]

The key is that the Chinese northeast and Korea had been Japanese territories since before the start of WW2; had they still had an occupation force in field, they would have been able to extract territorial concessions (or even have convinced the USA to take over those regions in order create an anti-communist bulwark).

[Sasha]

As soon as USSR entered the war against Japan, Japan tried to make peace. The Japanese government was also seeking peace with the US before the drop of the bombs, the US refused to give them a conditional surrender before the bombs were dropped. It was the fact that the US would not specify the terms of the surrender that prevent Japan from doing it before the bombs were dropped. So no there was probably no real threat of a land war and quite frankly I doubt Japan had the capacity to in terms of supplies to hold out that long. This talk of how Japan would have fought to the death and it would have been a bloodbath for Americans and the suicide bombings, while it might have some truth behind it, stinks of the racist propaganda that was fed to American Soldiers and civilians about the Japanese having surrendered themselves and their humanity fully to their emperor.

The US had to demand unconditional surrender though because that had been the allied line already for years, this was actually an demand of Stalin who was afraid that the west would make peace with Hitler and wouldn't open a Western front.

[Invader Zim]

I've read a longer version of this article, in an academic format, before. I'll try to find it.

[Illegalitarian]

I think an actual invasion of Japan would be silly because they (the Japanese) would fight to the death literally (it would involve suicide bombings, kamikaze attacks, booby traps etc.), it would not be nice for either the Soviet Union or America.

I never did get this line of thinking from the A-bomb apologists. If the Japanese would have never surrendered due to some sort of cultural emphasis on suicidal attack or whatever imperialist-driven racist nonsense is being pushed these days, wouldn't a nuclear attack, or the threat of the soviets, or whatever, have also not stopped them? What, there was an ancient Japanese proverb about laying down the sword whenever the great sky fire met with the earth?


Imperialist logic :laugh:

[Leo Tyszka]

The US had to demand unconditional surrender though because that had been the allied line already for years, this was actually an demand of Stalin who was afraid that the west would make peace with Hitler and wouldn't open a Western front.

The demand of unconditional surrender was still the major road block to a quicker peace and furthermore the US in the end accepted conditions to the Japanese surrender. Anyways what provoked my response was the fact the poster I was responding to was mimicking the racist line push by the US military about the Japanese. Not defending the Japanese of course, but we should try to avoid such traps when discussing the war and call them out when they appear.

[Illegalitarian]

Let's also not forget that the secretary of defense at the time tried to half bombing campaigns over the country in late June out of fear that there would not be enough infrastructure left to truly see the effects of the Fat Man and Little Boy...

[RedWaves]

Stalin defeated fascism and gets little to no credit for it whatsoever.

[Sabot Cat]

Stalin defeated fascism and gets little to no credit for it whatsoever.

For good reason: without the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and Stalin's cooperation, the Nazis wouldn't have been nearly as successful as they were.

[A Psychological Symphony]

The fact that "conventional" firebombings of cities like Tokyo were actually killing far more people than the a-bombs did should be a pretty clear indicator that the bombs wouldn't magically change the minds of the Japanese simply because it killed them in a faster manner.

As or those mentioning the demand of unconditional surrender, the only condition the Japanese had prior to the dropping of the atomic bombs was that the imperial throne remain in place after the surrender. The United States refused the condition, dropped the bombs, and then accepted surrender AND LEFT THE IMPERIAL THRONE IN PLACE.

The United States dropped the bombs to simply flex on the Soviet Union. The Japanese and united both preferred that Japan surrender to the US instead of surrendering to the USSR and possibly dividing japan like they did Germany.

[Alexios]

For good reason: without the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and Stalin's cooperation, the Nazis wouldn't have been nearly as successful as they were.

This is probably just as silly as saying that Stalin defeated fascism. The M-R pact was more a safety measure than anything else; Hitler knew he was going to march his armies east whether Stalin agreed to it or not.

[Full Metal Bolshevik]

For good reason: without the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and Stalin's cooperation, the Nazis wouldn't have been nearly as successful as they were.

Because USSR wasn't ready at the time.
And they did offer a few men (I think 1 million) to the allies in case Hitler advanced.

[Sabot Cat]

This is probably just as silly as saying that Stalin defeated fascism. The M-R pact was more a safety measure than anything else; Hitler knew he was going to march his armies east whether Stalin agreed to it or not.

Yes, the M-R Pact assured Hitler that he would not be contending with a two-front war that Imperial Germany had in the Great War. It assured Soviet materials for the Nazi war and genocide machine; without Soviet oil, German officials estimated that they only had enough domestic supplies for 3.1 months on May 8th 1939 (Ericson 44).

The amount of raw materials provided by the Soviet Union to Germany is staggering, including (Philbin 47):


900,000 tons of oil
140,000 tons of manganese
200,000 tons of phosphates
20,000 tons of chrome ore
18,000 tons of rubber
500,000 tons of iron ores
300,000 tons of scrap metal and pig iron
2,000 kilograms of platinum


They accounted for over >50% of Germany's overseas imports in August 1940 (Ericson 208) and without these supplies, Germany could have been easily crushed by the Soviet Union.

Furthermore, this was in no way "defensive": the entire goal of the M-R Pact was to geopolitically isolate Japan so that the Red Army could concentrate itself in Asia and prop up the People's Republic of Mongolia (condemning China and Manchuria to Japanese imperialism in the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact), while carving out a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe to be conquered afterwards (as Stalin invaded Poland a day after the aforementioned pact was concluded). Stalin was an imperialist and expansionist that enabled World War II by collaborating with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan to advance Russian hegemony.

Sources:

Ericson, Edward E. (1999), Feeding the German Eagle: Soviet Economic Aid to Nazi Germany, 1933–1941.

Philbin III, Tobias R. (1994), The Lure of Neptune: German–Soviet Naval Collaboration and Ambitions, 1919–1941.