
The Bomb Didn’t Beat Japan, Stalin Did (2013) - georgecmu
https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-japan-stalin-did/
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Laukhi64
Apparently a literal coup involving a thousand people to prolong the war, even
after the bombs had dropped, is the same as "being ready to surrender".

And apparently the Soviets, who had essentially no capability to launch a
amphibious invasion, were a serious threat to the Japanese home islands. You
know, compared to the country which had just launched the most ambitious
amphibious operation in history.

The Japanese government at the time was prone to ultra-nationalist factions
and extreme instability, and the problem with the idea that they would
surrender just because the Soviets had closed off one of their options was
that, although any individual leader might well know that their situation was
untenable, anyone who acknowledged this would be prone to a coup by
nationalist junior officers. The incentive structures of Japanese military
leaders was such that it would be extremely difficult to justify ending the
war. Otherwise, they would have de-escalated with China in the first place, or
at the very least following the US embargo.

I'm being far less fair than I should be, but so is the article itself - the
story it presents is plausible revisionism and is taken seriously by
historians, but it is revisionism nonetheless; there is a reason historical
consensus is historical consensus, and saying that "there is a real resistance
to looking at the facts" ignores this. The story that the Soviets caused the
surrender is perfectly plausible, but so is the story that the bombs did. My
own feeling is that the article is written in bad faith.

As an aside, the idea that nuclear weapons were widely considered horrifying
at the time is very much an anachronism. Nobody really understood the
consequences at the time; to give you an idea, Operation Downfall planned to
use nuclear weapons as an opener and then _march US troops into the blast zone
after 48 hours_.

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credit_guy
I’m aware this is a tangent, but I couldn’t find any mention of nuclear
weapons in the wikipedia page for Operation Downfall

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall)

Now, Operation Downfall was supposed to be many, many times larger than the
Normandy landing, so the wiki page cannot possibly be complete. If you have
some details about the planned use of nukes, could you provide a link please?
I’m especially interested in whether the planners envisioned using NBC
equipment, in which case an invasion after 48 hours does not sound quite
absurd.

~~~
opo
>...I’m aware this is a tangent, but I couldn’t find any mention of nuclear
weapons in the wikipedia page for Operation Downfall
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall)

There is a section of that wikipedia page that talks about the planned use of
atomic bombs during the invasion:

>Nuclear weapons

>On Marshall's orders, Major General John E. Hull looked into the tactical use
of nuclear weapons for the invasion of the Japanese home islands, even after
the dropping of two strategic atomic bombs on Japan (Marshall did not think
that the Japanese would capitulate immediately). Colonel Lyle E. Seeman
reported that at least seven Fat Man-type plutonium implosion bombs would be
available by X-Day, which could be dropped on defending forces. Seeman advised
that American troops not enter an area hit by a bomb for "at least 48 hours";
the risk of nuclear fallout was not well understood, and such a short amount
of time after detonation would have resulted in substantial radiation exposure
for the American troops.[81]

>Ken Nichols, the District Engineer of the Manhattan Engineer District, wrote
that at the beginning of August 1945, "[p]lanning for the invasion of the main
Japanese home islands had reached its final stages, and if the landings
actually took place, we might supply about fifteen atomic bombs to support the
troops."[82] An air burst 1,800–2,000 ft (550–610 m) above the ground had been
chosen for the (Hiroshima) bomb to achieve maximum blast effects, and to
minimize residual radiation on the ground as it was hoped that American troops
would soon occupy the city.[83]

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MR4D
The story is incorrect on many levels, but the most important is this:

The bombs did __not __force Japan to surrender. The threat of a third bomb
did. (You can see the actual memo enquiring about the third bomb here - [2] )

Take that all in for a moment.

[1] - [https://outrider.org/nuclear-weapons/articles/third-
shot/](https://outrider.org/nuclear-weapons/articles/third-shot/)

[2] -
[https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/72.pdf](https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/72.pdf)

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credit_guy
Wow. I knew about Truman’s “rain of ruin” threat [1], but I always thought it
was a bluff. Today I learned it was not a bluff at all.

[1][https://www.trumanlibrary.org/publicpapers/index.php?pid=100](https://www.trumanlibrary.org/publicpapers/index.php?pid=100)

~~~
MR4D
Yeah - it's amazing how poorly the history of the end of the war in the
Pacific has been told. The lesson is fairly different once you learn the
reality.

Also, a fantastic link that you shared!

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georgecmu
To get around the paywall:
[https://outline.com/KLsq7C](https://outline.com/KLsq7C)

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Fins
If you were were to believe Russia's patriotic propaganda, they won pretty
much everything and anything. This seems to have come straight from the same
cookbook.

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kwhitefoot
Convincingly told. Sounds perfectly plausible to me.

