
The Bomb Didn't Beat Japan - rtpg
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/05/29/the_bomb_didnt_beat_japan_nuclear_world_war_ii?page=0,0
======
DanielBMarkham
I love UFO stories, and I love history, and I love pseudo-science. Hell, I
even like counter-factuals. What if Lee had won at Gettysburg? What if Patton
had actually commanded the Normandy invasion? And so forth.

But these things are the province of speculation, not knowledge.

Think for a minute about what this essay is asking "What if action X did not
end the war in the Pacific?"

Well dang, Action X could be just about anything. The fact of the matter is
that all of the actions, taken together, were the reason for the war to end.
Yes, Stalin played a big role. But it's not an either-or situation; it's an
amalgam. The logical structure of trying to support a statement such as "The
Bomb Didn't Beat Japan" is flawed. It's like saying the landing on Tarawa
didn't beat Japan. Well no, and yes. The assertion itself is flawed.

While I love all sorts of semi-non-fictional essays, I have a little warning
bell that goes off when I'm mostly through an essay and the essayist starts
telling me a story about how I've been misled. Smells of a political agenda
and manipulation.

Japan was threatened on many fronts and made the best choice it could. That
much is clear. Atom bombs did not cause as much building and population damage
as the fire-bombing did. That's also clear. But atom bombs represented one
thing that Stalin and fire-bombing did not: the end of Japanese culture. A few
dozen atom bombs would not only have made huge holes in the landscape, it
would have erased the culture of Japan.

Nobody is finding comfort in simplistic stories. In fact, the more details
people know, the happier I am. But dropping the bombs on Japan saved millions
of both Japanese and allied lives. It served as a quick end to a long war, and
it saved thousands of allied prisoners whom the Japanese were ready to
execute. It also allowed the great Japanese culture to continue.

Most serious historians don't get into counter-factuals, except maybe as
fiction. It just doesn't work.

~~~
gruseom
This comment is contentless. It doesn't address a single specific thing the
article says. Instead it offers woolly generalities ("Japan was threatened on
many fronts and made the best choice it could. That much is clear") and
platitudes ("all of the actions, taken together, were the reason for the war
to end. Yes, Stalin played a big role. But it's not an either-or situation").
It sounds like it's saying something; indeed, it sounds like it's saying
something wise and avuncular. But I've read it three times and can't find a
single part that is saying anything at all, other than where it repeats
exactly the bromide about how the Pacific war ended that the OP is critiquing
("dropping the bombs on Japan saved millions of both Japanese and allied
lives. It served as a quick end to a long war")—ironically, right after it
says "Nobody is finding comfort in simplistic stories". If you're going to
respond to a critique, shouldn't you answer what it actually says?

It's unfair to put the article in the same bucket as "UFO stories". No one who
has read it (and is being fair) would describe it as "speculation". It isn't
anything like counterfactual fan fiction. Almost the entire piece does nothing
but cite facts, such as: the dropping of the nuclear bombs does not figure
significantly in historical records of the Japanese leadership's discussion
about surrender; the Japanese war council decided on August 8 not even to
discuss the Hiroshima bombing; damage to Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not out of
scale with the earlier fire-bombings of other cities; Japanese leaders had
expressed a willingness to sacrifice their cities if necessary; Japan's war
strategy was predicated on the Soviets staying neutral; and so on. Are these
wrong? If so, how? Are there other, more important facts omitted? If so, what
are they?

The negative responses to this article so far are so insubstantial that they
form a defense of it by omission. I'm very curious now to hear a credible
counterargument. Surely there is one?

~~~
asperous
>"Think for a minute about what this essay is asking "What if action X did not
end the war in the Pacific?"

I think it was addressing the overall idea of speculation in historical
events.

~~~
parennoob
What meaning of speculate do you mean? There are two that are nearly the
opposite of each other (making this an almost-Janus word):

1\. To meditate on a subject; reflect. 2\. To engage in a course of reasoning
often based on inconclusive evidence.

If you mean 2., the article doesn't do anything of the sort. It lays out
specific pieces of evidence based on observed historical fact and draws
specific conclusions from them. On the other hand, the top-level comment above
is pretty vague in its rebuttal.

~~~
dspeyer
In talking about causality, the article makes two counterfactual claims: had
the Soviets not invaded Manchuria, Japan would not have surrendered and had
the bombs not been dropped, Japan would have surrendered. (In my opinion, the
first claim is well-defended, the second less so). Since the bombs were
dropped and the Soviets did invade, any discussion of these possibilities is a
little speculative.

~~~
gruseom
This seems reasonable—thanks. Can you quote where the article actually claims
those two things? I'm curious, and I don't disbelieve you, but I really don't
want to have to go back and comb through the whole thing again :)

~~~
montagg
This section, primarily, argues that the atomic bomb created a political out
for the Japanese government:

> Attributing the end of the war to the atomic bomb served Japan's interests
> in multiple ways. But it also served U.S. interests. If the Bomb won the
> war, then the perception of U.S. military power would be enhanced, U.S.
> diplomatic influence in Asia and around the world would increase, and U.S.
> security would be strengthened. The $2 billion spent to build it would not
> have been wasted. If, on the other hand, the Soviet entry into the war was
> what caused Japan to surrender, then the Soviets could claim that they were
> able to do in four days what the United States was unable to do in four
> years, and the perception of Soviet military power and Soviet diplomatic
> influence would be enhanced. And once the Cold War was underway, asserting
> that the Soviet entry had been the decisive factor would have been
> tantamount to giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

It basically argues, yeah, both Stalin AND the bomb likely contributed to a
surrender. This part is not cited as well, however. It relies on implication
based on the dissonance between records before the surrender and statements by
the Japanese government after the surrender.

~~~
gruseom
Sure, but that passage is about the political uses of the causal argument that
happened to win (and that the OP thinks is incorrect). It makes no
counterfactual claims.

dspeyer's point is a good one if (but only if) the article actually does make
the two claims he mentioned. Does it? I don't remember.

------
gaoshan
The article seems determined to assign a single cause as the reason for the
timing of the surrender when I think it is quite more likely that it was an
accumulation (and a rapid one at that) of serious developments that
precipitated that end.

Claiming "Stalin did it" when there had also just been an atomic attack and an
entire summer of horrendously devastating attacks, that the Japanese were
almost powerless to defend against, on cities not to mention the ever
tightening noose of allied encroachment throughout the region and the
anticipation of an imminent final invasion, just seems like someone is trying
to come up with a catchy article title... not honestly looking at the
situation.

~~~
gruseom
Article writers don't come up with the headlines. In this case the headline
does the author a bad disservice by making his piece seem simple-minded. It
isn't. Its strongest parts come before he even gets to discussing the Soviet
invasion. Those are (a) his dissection of the timeline by which surrender
unfolded, and (b) his case that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not outliers in
the destruction of Japanese cities and thus not game-changers in the minds of
Japanese leaders. When he does turn to the Soviet invasion, his argument isn't
that the Japanese surrendered because they were overwhelmed by it, but rather
because it closed off their remaining strategic options.

Agree or disagree, these are serious arguments that deserve to be met with
more than platitudes and belief-repetition.

~~~
moogleii
I'm starting to think not many people actually read the article. Though to be
fair, the first 3 or so pages are just build up, and I almost ejected out of
skepticism, too.

------
gwright
In the first couple pages there is an argument made that the Japanese supreme
council didn't seem to react to news of the first bomb and the associated
casualties.

I don't think it is easy for us today to understand how slow information was
to travel during the time of the war nor is it easy for us to understand how
incomprehensible it would be to accept reports about a single bomb creating as
much destruction as was reported at the time.

While the slow reaction of Japan might be incomprehensible if the same events
happened today I think it is dangerously misleading to apply todays standards
regarding communication loops and the destructive force of atom bombs to the
events of the late 1940s.

~~~
bjhoops1
That's why the author lists a number of examples from roughly the same time
period (or earlier e.g. Lincoln/McClellan) as a means of comparison. It's
anecdotal, to be sure, but then again this is history, not science.

~~~
yohui
The two examples given were of a singular leader responding to something that
called for immediate action.

The Japanese were hardly in a position to strike back against the atomic bomb.
In the absence of an obvious response, it's not surprising that it took time
for their leaders, a group, to come to a decision to surrender, considering
their culture and society.

(I do agree that the role of the Soviets is indeed underplayed, but in its
desire to make a point the article overreaches.)

------
DividesByZero
The accusations of 'revisionism' show an underlying bias - in the former
soviet union and much of Europe, this is has been the accepted historical
perspective for some time.

------
ChuckMcM
The challenge I have with this, and pretty much all 'alternate history'
foreign policy discussions, is that they try to argue an indefinite (Japan
would have surrendered if we hadn't done this) against a definite (We bombed
them and they surrendered immediately).

There isn't any way to prove that stuff of course, and you can tweak the
indefinite to be whatever you want to overcome the definite. So in some ways
it is simply mental gymnastics and great fodder for writers of fiction.

The further we get away from the events of those times the easier it is to
second guess those decisions and not be challenged by someone with first hand
knowledge of the events.

~~~
gruseom
_they try to argue an indefinite (Japan would have surrendered if we hadn't
done this) against a definite (We bombed them and they surrendered
immediately)_

No, the article is not arguing against a factual claim like that, but against
a causal one: that Japan surrendered because of the atomic bombs. The latter
may be the mainstream view but it's just as "indefinite" by your standard. And
causal claims can be weakened by evidence, which is what most of the article
tries to do.

Also, one of the article's major claims is that Japan _didn't_ surrender
immediately. That argument is more intricate and interesting than I expected.

~~~
jlgreco
> _Also, one of the article's major claims (its first, in fact) is that Japan
> didn't surrender immediately._

I find it hard to reconcile this idea with the relatively persuasive reasoning
that the second bomb was unjustifiable:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombings...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki#Nagasaki_bombing_unnecessary)

I am not entirely convinced that it was so, but I do think it is reasonable
that a few days is not sufficient time to understand the full magnitude and
novel nature of such an event. The second bomb was probably necessary, but
even in an alternative universe where it was not, I think it would be foolish
to expect a surrender that immediately.

~~~
mpyne
I believe the logic of the U.S. military planners was that they were worried
the Japanese would assume the bomb was _truly_ unique and novel. They didn't
want the Japanese to assume they could simply hunker down and expect a bomb
every 2-3 months or so; the Japanese were already surviving equivalent damage
from mere conventional bombing raids.

That doesn't mean the U.S. couldn't have waited more (the Nagasaki bombing
occurred while Hirohito's Supreme Council were discussing Hiroshima and the
Soviet invasion), but I don't think they would have waited much longer either.

~~~
jlgreco
The second bomb and the surrender were probably both independently inevitable.
Better to drop the second bomb before there were Soviet troops in the same
country laying claim to it though. I find it easy to believe that they rushed
the second bomb because they didn't want to miss the opportunity to use it.

------
unoti
Wow, what an annoying travesty that sign on page is, and whatever all that
other stuff was. I understand they have to make a buck and can do whatever
they like with their content, but that was powerfully annoying. I imagine
content providers have spent a lot of time anguishing over how they can
extract money from users, but I wonder if this is the best way. No way am I
going to figure out how to get through the multiple layers of dismissals and
whatever to figure out how to get to the content.

~~~
Helpful_Bunny
I was able to view the entire contents (annoyingly spread across many pages)
without pop-ups, a sign in page or any issues at all. I'd politely suggest
that on HN, designed for those technically minded in the sphere, you should be
able to cure your own browsing problems.

Whitelists, AdBlock, Ghostery, NoScript, HTTPS everywhere and so on and so
forth should fix any issues you have.

You are perfectly able to choose when / where ad revenues are paid, rather
than being tied to someone elses business model.

~~~
smokinjoe
> You are perfectly able to choose when / where ad revenues are paid, rather
> than being tied to someone elses business model.

You can do that by just not visiting the website. I find it to be a lot more
worthwhile because you actually find legitimate alternatives instead of [in my
personal opinion] cheating the system.

------
brunorsini
Surprised to see this on HNs front page when there's an Oscar-winning
documentary that makes this pretty clear (Errol Morris's "The Fog of War").

Vonnegut also talks about this on Slaughterhouse-V:

"The advocates of nuclear disarmament seem to believe that, if they could
achieve their aim, war would become tolerable and decent. They would do well
to read this book and ponder the fate of Dresden, where 135,000 people died as
the result of an air attack with conventional weapons. On the night of March
9th, 1945, an air attack on Tokyo by American heavy bombers, using incendiary
and high explosive bombs, caused the death of 83,793 people. The atom bomb
dropped on Hiroshima killed 71,379 people. So it goes." (Chapter 9)

The nuclear attacks served their purpose, sure, but they were definitely not
decisive for the outcome of the war.

~~~
lobster_johnson
Vonnegut was very probably wrong about the Dresden numbers. One of the people
to popularize a disproportionally high death toll from the firebombing of
Dresden was David Irving — later discredited and now largely known for his
fascist leanings and his denial of the Holocaust — in his first book [1]. The
modern estimate, from a report done by the city of Dresden in 2010 [2], is is
that around 25.000 people died.

He's more right about the Tokyo bombing. Richard Rhodes, in his fantastic "The
Making of the Atomic Bomb", cites 100,000 dead and 1 million injured.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II#Falsification_of_evidence)

[2]
[http://www.dresden.de/media/pdf/infoblaetter/Historikerkommi...](http://www.dresden.de/media/pdf/infoblaetter/Historikerkommission_Dresden1945_Abschlussbericht_V1_14a.pdf)

------
stcredzero
Defense Analyst James Dunnigan, in his highly influential book _How to Make
War,_ argued that late in the war, the blockade and mining of Japanese
Shipping had by far the largest effect on the Japanese ability to wage war.
Given enough time, the Japanese military machine would just have bled to
death. However, it may have been political rough going to continue the war in
Japan long past the defeat of Nazi Germany. By other accounts, the Japanese
were pretty much ready to surrender without the bomb anyway.

------
kn0thing
The author touches on this, but I've always been fascinated with how little
awareness there is in the USA about Japanese atrocities (like the Rape of
Nanking and Unit 731) compared to the well-known and oft-discussed atrocities
of the Nazis.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731>

~~~
hga
_Some_ of us are familiar with it. Contemporary Americans certainly were
(obviously not Unit 731, but Nanking, various atrocities revealed by the
liberation of the Philippines, etc.), and the fact that the Greater East Asian
Co-Prosperity Sphere was by the end of the war killing something like 250,000
of the occupied peoples per month was one of the many inputs into the desire
to finish the war quickly by any means necessary.

------
grimtrigger
I've never heard a defense of nuclear weapons based on their ability to end
wars, only as a weapon to prevent them. I think most policy makers are in
agreement that use of a nuclear weapons means they have failed their primary
purpose.

As for the "uniqueness" of nuclear weapons, there's an interesting parallel to
the uniqueness of chemical weapons use in Syria. Even as conventional weapons
are ripping the country to pieces, there is a heavy amount of focus on
chemical weapons. I think it has to do with the desire to draw lines of
acceptability somewhere, but an inability to draw lines on anything but a
technological front.

~~~
tvon
> _I've never heard a defense of nuclear weapons based on their ability to end
> wars, only as a weapon to prevent them._

TFA aside, it is generally accepted that the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki caused Japan to surrender. Besides, the bomb was not invented until
well into the war.

------
stox
Can you imagine if we had not dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
Without the horrific evidence of those bombings, we would have inevitably
dropped a warhead in the future. Except 7 years later, we would have dropped
an H Bomb instead, with 1,000 times the power. The other side would probably
have warheads by then, and would answer back. I think we were very lucky that
history proceeded as it did.

------
mpyne
This is why I've started to dislike revisionist history. The premise that the
threat of Stalin alone forced Japanese surrender is at least as ludicrous as
saying that the nuclear bombs alone forced Japan to surrender.

I closed the page immediately because of the full-page popup ad, but I've
encountered the premise elsewhere so it warrants examination.

The first thing to realize is that for Japan, whatever else happened an
invasion of any sort would be harshly contested. It's not simply a matter of
manpower either, there was a lot that was needed to be able to provide a
workable invasion:

* Control of the air.

* Gunfire/artillery support to suppress the defenders prior to the assault wave.

* Logistical support, including landing craft (LOTS of landing craft), means of turning a beachhead into a supply terminal.

* More importantly for logistical support, a working supply chain to feed materiel to the battleground.

In almost all military aspects the U.S. was already in much better shape to
host an assault on Japan. Even assuming the U.S.S.R. could pull all their
troops from the occupation of Eastern Europe fast enough via the Trans-
Siberian railroad they still would have needed to accumulate sufficient
landing craft, field Naval support assets, build more airstrips and air bases,
etc. etc. etc. As a side note, the whole reason Stalin would have needed to
move the masses of troops _back_ to the east was because he knew from his
diplomats in Japan that Japan would respect the ceasefire that had been signed
after Gen. Zhukov decisively defeated the Kwantung Army at the Battle of
Khalkhin Gol in 1939, a military result that may have proven invaluable in the
later defense of Moscow.

The Soviet troops fighting in Manchuria/Manchukuo in 1945 were in a _much_
better military situation by comparison: The Kwantung Army's best troops had
been continually bled to fight on the real front lines, Mao and Kai-Shek's
guerrilla armies represented a constant drain on the Kwantung Army, and years
of garrison duty had the effect of further reducing the martial ability of the
KA compared to battle-hardened Soviet troops arriving from the Eastern Front.

But at this time the Soviet gains were achieved only overland. In fact the
Soviets proved unable due to logistical difficulties to completely overrun
Korea, a failure which would itself significantly alter the course of later
history.

Sometimes proponents of the "Soviet shock" theory mention that it was the
threat of attack on the Japanese Home Island from the undefended north which
truly drove the spectre of fear amongst the Japanese leadership, but that's
missing a very big point: There's a _reason_ the Japanese defenders on the
Home Islands were concentrating on the south! The Japanese could certainly
have redeployed to the north if they had wished, so it seems that they feared
the imminent U.S. invasion more than the potential threat of Soviet invasion.

But the Japanese _knew_ the Soviets were going to attack. They in fact had
been re-deploying the Kwantung Army to east Manchuria where they expected the
attack to fall. The Soviets surprised the Japanese by attacking from every
possible direction instead, but the surprise wasn't that the Soviets attacked
at all, it was that it came sooner than expected and from the wrong
directions.

None of this is to say that the atom bombs were _the_ reason that the Japanese
surrendered either. But it bears repeating that the Japanese were quite
willing to fight an invasion of the Home Islands. Whether the invaders were
American or Soviet was relatively immaterial, and given the massive American
advantage in both air cover and Naval support the Americans could have invaded
into a weak spot if that were the only concern.

In the actual event the news of the Nagasaki bombing had come during a Supreme
Council being hosted by Emperor Hirohito amongst his closest advisers. The
news drove the Council to split evenly on whether to surrender (but maintain
the Kokutai) or surrender with further conditions.

An American B-29 pilot was tortured into "confessing" that the U.S. had a 100
more atom bombs, which would be used in the next few days, news which was used
by Japan's War Minister to push for surrender. Likewise, when Emperor Hirohito
broke his Council's tie (in favor of surrender) he explicitly mentioned the
destructiveness of the atom bomb. One of the emperor's advisers even mentioned
the 'twin shocks' of Soviet invasion and the atom bombs as being gifts in a
sense, as it meant the Emperor could say he was forced to surrender and not
that Japan "gave up".

So it seems clear that the Soviet invasion was core to the decision-making,
but not that it was the only concern, and certainly not that the atom bomb was
not factored in at all.

~~~
gruseom
It's uncool to post a long comment on an article you didn't bother to read,
let alone dismiss it with a slur about "revisionist history", whatever that
is. The article is clearly a serious one, and since it challenges the #1
belief _by far_ that nearly everyone (in North America if not elsewhere) has
about the end of the Pacific War, it deserves attention.

Unsurprisingly, you haven't addressed most of the article's arguments. Even
where your material does overlap, it does so incoherently, because one can't
figure out where you actually disagree with the author or are even talking
about the same things.

A serious counterargument to the OP would be very interesting. The comments on
the FP site itself are terrible. So far, the only real argument I've seen is
that the article is old hat, since we already know that it wasn't just the
bombs that ended the Pacific war. It may be old hat among specialists, but it
isn't to the millions of us who were taught and still believe exactly that.

~~~
yohui
If you're seeking serious responses to the claim that the Soviet invasion was
paramount and the atomic bombings irrelevant, /r/AskHistorians has had several
threads on the subject:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/wwii#wiki_japan_a...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/wwii#wiki_japan_and_the_atomic_bombs)

(I think mpyne's reply is "serious", though. It's always preferable to read
first, but the argument presented in the article is not new. I did read the
article, and I'm not surprised mypne managed to address several of its points
without even looking at it.)

~~~
gruseom
Thanks. But the first thread I ran across there could hardly be more
supportive of the OP's argument:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/u6qqo/there_h...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/u6qqo/there_has_been_some_controversy_on_the_true/)

If you can point me to counterarguments more specifically, I'll look at them.

~~~
yohui
Well, there was also a short discussion about this very article:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1fhhf7/the_bo...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1fhhf7/the_bomb_didnt_beat_japan_stalin_did_opinions_on/)

As the top comment by /u/restricteddata points out, the argument about the
Soviet role was made by Hasegawa (who the FP article did not cite). There's no
refuting that the Soviet side of the story is important and relatively
unrecognized (by the public). But it's hard to say exactly how events would
have played out without the bomb. And the FP article's subheading, that US
policy has been based on this "myth", is just a puzzling conclusion.

------
ankjevel
(This is not about the content of the article, this is about the site.)

Why oh why do they have a sign-up/sign-in? The content is clearly there in the
background! So obtrusive!

This is how I was able to read the article:

    
    
      (function(){var o,w,h,b,n,s,h,i,j;o=document.getElementById("TB_overlay");w=document.getElementById("TB_window");if(!!o){o.parentNode.removeChild(o);}if(!!w){w.parentNode.removeChild(w);}h=document.getElementById("art-mast");b=document.getElementById("art-body").getElementsByClassName("translateBody")[0];n=document.createElement("div");n.style["max-width"]="625px";n.style.padding="150px 0 0 150px";n.innerHTML=h.innerHTML+b.innerHTML;document.body.innerHTML="";document.body.appendChild(n);s=document.getElementById("share-box");s.parentNode.removeChild(s);h=document.head.getElementsByTagName("script");i=h.length;while(i--){j=h[i];if(!j)return;j.parentNode.removeChild(j);}})();

------
woodchuck64
Why revisit the issue? Modern society has evolved morally to be utterly
revolted by the killing of civilians of another country intentionally and
would never support the use of a nuclear weapon in this fashion. Isn't that
all the moral judgement we need?

~~~
moogleii
Studying history is always useful. We should have known from WW1 what happens
when we don't help rebuild effectively, and from WW2 what happens when you do,
simply speaking. Yet we pretty much ignored all that info for Iraq.

Also, "intentionally" can always be fudged. We "intentionally" bombed the
house with the suspected terrorist in a dense neighborhood, but
"unintentionally" killed a lot of civilians in the surrounding area. We don't
seem to be revolted enough by that to stop doing it.

~~~
woodchuck64
The first paragraph contains this: "Obviously, if the bombings weren't
necessary to win the war, then bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki was wrong". I
don't see why articles need to go there. Studying history is useful but making
moral judgments mixes societies at different levels of moral development.

Unless "unintentionally" can be fudged to morally sanction wiping out a city
with a nuclear weapon today, I don't see the point. Maybe I slightly
exaggerated the moral repugnance of society today towards civilian death. But
the difference between moral attitudes toward civilian death today and
civilian death in WW2 is so dramatic, a little bit of exaggeration does very
little to weaken the point.

------
crusso
Apologists often give the excuse that the Civil War was unnecessary to end
slavery because slavery "would have ended soon anyway".

Ask yourself if the would-have-ended-soon-anyway defense works well for the
Civil War.

------
scarmig
I find the article rather convincing: I want to play a related alterna-history
game that takes the article as a given.

Did the Soviet Union make a serious strategic error in declaring war against
Japan when it did?

Remember, we're taking it as a given that Japan surrendered to the Allies
because of the Soviet Union. Moreover, it surrendered to the USA because it
for very good reason preferred USA reconstruction to USSR reconstruction, in a
way that mirrors whom German troops very strongly preferred to surrender to.

What if, instead, the USSR had simply decided to bide its time?

Some results:

1) Two rivals would continue to claw at each other for months, draining
massive amounts of blood and treasure.

2) In the meantime, the Allies would be forced to have at least some number of
fewer troops in Europe than they did in actuality. I don't find it plausible
that the Soviet Union would see it in their interests to, say, invade France
and Italy. But it would give the Soviet Union a much stronger negotiating
position, and a United States devoting its resources to crushing Japan would
be a United States not focused on rebuilding Europe. And a vacuum of power in
the more developed parts of Europe would have been very tasty for Stalin.

3) On the con side, the USA would likely end up in a more powerful position in
East Asia, if it won, decreasing Communist influence from China to Indonesia
and Vietnam to India.

3.5) If the USA lost (let's define that as the cessation of hostilities while
Japan managed to hold on to many of it's earlier imperial acquisitions), the
USSR would have an embittered, genocidal, and highly authoritarian state with
the capacity for total war on its border.

4) Also on the con side, Soviet influence would have been quite limited in
Manchuria and northern Korea. The main base of operations for Mao in the
Chinese Civil War would have been limited.

5) The USSR wouldn't have regained some positions in the Far East that it
imagined were legitimately Russian. It also wouldn't have been able to uproot
the large amount of industry that the Japanese had invested in Manchukuo.

6) Violating the Potsdam agreement that required the USSR to invade by August
9 would have decreased trust in the Soviet Union on the American side.

7) All those cons acknowledged, all of them except 6) could have been
mitigated by the Soviet Union dragging its feet for six months or even a year
more, drawing out and sabotaging back channel negotiations with Japan as much
as possible, and then invading at the very end.

7.5) If it waited longer, Japan's willingness to surrender might have
evaporated, leaving more time to get a full scale invasion of the whole of
Korea, northern Japan, and a wider area of China going. That's on top of
allowing for more preparation time, which may or may not have been useful.

Thoughts, HN? If anything, I think this indicates that the Soviet entering
when it did wasn't the main factor that ended the war, because from the Soviet
strategic perspective dragging the war out as much as possible seems very
preferable to what ended up happening.

~~~
andyl
"Did the Soviet Union make a serious strategic error in declaring war against
Japan when it did?"

I've always wondered why American troops stopped at the Elbe and left Berlin
to be captured by the Soviets.

Was there a deal? Soviets get Berlin in exchange for attacking Japan?

~~~
jleyank
The Western Powers had already determined the occupation zones for defeated
Germany. Ike didn't see the point in spending lives taking something he'd have
to turn over to the Russians... Russia did agree to enter the war against
Japan, and it did so. One might argue that it accelerated its entry as it
learned of the Bombs so as to have a seat at the table.

And having seen the damage from the Tokyo firebombing all the Bomb provided
was efficiency. The US had already come up with the proper means of erasing
cities.

------
cromwellian
Looking at the massive logistical effort that was the D-Day landings, did the
Soviets even have the strategic lift/naval capability to transport their army
onto Japan's northern islands? I guess that the Germans had fortified the
coast better, and maybe Japan hadn't, never expecting an invasion from the
North, but still, you need a Navy, and at that point, did the Soviets even
have one?

------
dspillett
_> It could not have been Nagasaki. The bombing of Nagasaki occurred in the
late morning of August 9, after the Supreme Council had already begun meeting
to discuss surrender, and word of the bombing only reached Japan's leaders in
the early afternoon -- after the meeting of the Supreme Council had been
adjourned in deadlock and the full cabinet had been called to take up the
discussion. Based on timing alone, Nagasaki can't have been what motivated
them._

I've not read the whole thing (just starting work, have it marked for later)
so I may be jumping the gun with this comment, but that paragraph jumped out.
A lot of arguments I see for why dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary
seem fairly rooted in hindsight - this doesn't make the arguments wrong, but
it does mean we can't judge the decisions made on these metrics because at the
time people did not have that hindsight to help them.

Did they _know_ that the effect of soviet actions would be so detrimental to
Japan long-term?

Did they absolutely _know_ that Japan, or one of its allies, didn't have
something up its sleeve had the potential to turn that situation around? Or
that a sudden change of fortunes wouldn't disable a large chunk of the
relevant forces against Japan such that they could pull themselves "back into
the game"?

No one thing beat Japan. War isn't about doing the _one_ thing that will
probably stop an enemy: it is about trying to make sure they stop and stay
stopped long enough for you to solidify your position and deal with your other
problems (particularly, in a large war, battles on other fronts). This often
means hitting an enemy while they are down just in case. Rule 4: The double-
tap.

Of course as taps go dropping a nuke over a civilian target is at best morally
dubious, this is undeniable IMO, but I find a lot of the arguments against to
be ill considered from the point of view of what people making the decisions
at the time _definitely_ knew, definitely knew that they knew, and the long
list of things that they could not confirm so strongly.

------
joyeuse6701
The article does make a convincing argument as to the reasons why the bomb was
highlighted as the main reason for the surrender of Japan, very interesting. I
suppose fear of invasion from S.U wasn't nearly as serious as the loss of
diplomatic ties. In which case an eventual two front war would have done them
in. Also, as much as the Japanese high command didn't react to the city
bombings, I doubt they ignored them as much as the article comes to say. Loss
of production power is absolutely a strategic concern. On the other hand, the
cultural preference of Army over Navy in Japan in a war that was largely Naval
may mean that other ludicrous claims about the way they strategized and
conducted war may have merit. Interesting read!

------
oneiric
I would like to see more comments on Ward Wilson's larger point, that atomic
bombs should not exist.

This is merely one piece to that larger argument, which I find convincing,
that atomic bombs are not useful in a modern world as a militaristic or
diplomatic tool. Maybe some of the commenters that are demonstrably far more
expert historians than I would explain whether they think this recollection
supports that idea, or that atomic bombs are merely less influential than a
large scale invasion from Stalin, a scary dude.

------
moo
The speed at which the Soviets defeated the Japanese in Manchuria is what
motivated the USans to drop the atomic bomb, to end the war quickly and keep
the Soviets out of a post war Japan.

------
makhanko
This is why Google and technology in general should stay away from foreign
policy where the end always justifies the means, no matter what the rhetoric
is.

------
jgalt212
Stalin hustled to make war against Japan because he knew the US had the bomb
and he did not want WWII to end without any strategic gains in the Pacific.

So either way, the bomb caused Japan to surrender or Stalin caused Japan to
surrender. Both precursors were directly or indirectly caused by the bomb. In
summation, the bomb caused Japan to surrender.

I want my 20 minutes back for reading this garbage.

------
ckozlowski
I thought it was a very well written piece. I've seen lots of debate on this
subject. The author brought a lot of evidence and work to the table for this.
While its implications can be debated (what lessons can we draw from this?) a
very strong case is made for the invasion being the cause for the end. Thanks
for sharing. =)

------
Aqueous
"Why did it take them 3 days to sit down and discuss it?"

His argument seems to come down to this 3 day delay between Hiroshima and the
Supreme Council meeting. He is not looking at this through the lens of the
Supreme Council, or even any Japanese citizen.

Remember: this is the first use of the atomic weapon in front of the entire
world in human history. As far as the Japanese were concerned, on August 6,
1945 the sky suddenly lit on fire and destroyed an entire city in seconds. To
the mind of 1945, this event was indistinguishable from magic. He cites many
examples of military emergencies inciting a quick response but none on the
level of total, wholesale destruction like the atomic bomb. Indeed, the atomic
bomb was completely unprecedented in all of human history.

It is therefore not completely mysterious why the Supreme Council would
initially not know what to do. They would be a) in a state of complete
confusion b) in a state of complete defeat and c) trying to shore up the
nation after what must have appeared like a supernatural force leveling an
entire city and killing many, many thousands of people.

~~~
hencq
The article does talk about this though and effectively dismisses your
"indistinguishable from magic" argument:

" Japan had a nuclear weapons program. Several of the military men mention the
fact that it was a nuclear weapon that destroyed Hiroshima in their diaries.
General Anami Korechika, minster of war, even went to consult with the head of
the Japanese nuclear weapons program on the night of August 7. The idea that
Japan's leaders didn't know about nuclear weapons doesn't hold up."

As for your " none on the level of total, wholesale destruction like the
atomic bomb":

" if you graph the number of people killed in all 68 cities bombed in the
summer of 1945, you find that Hiroshima was second in terms of civilian
deaths. If you chart the number of square miles destroyed, you find that
Hiroshima was fourth. If you chart the percentage of the city destroyed,
Hiroshima was 17th. Hiroshima was clearly within the parameters of the
conventional attacks carried out that summer."

In other words, there is nothing to suggest any of the state of shock that you
suggest would prevent them from meeting earlier.

------
nesu
The article's 5th paragraph says it all. From today's perspective, Japan's
defeat in the war is obvious. But Japan's leaders still needed an eye-opener
then. One bomb obliterated an entire city, and they were still deliberating
about the possibility of surrender?

About the bomb, it's not a question of necessity, but of economics. That was a
time of war. American forces beat the enemy every step of the way in the
Pacific. The Allies may have enough power to bring Japan down to its knees
during the war in the long run, but how tempting is a weapon that wreaks
destruction unseen yet on the planet, but gives zero casualties, instead of
sending your fellow soldiers to their deaths on a foreign land? Who wouldn't
get sick of a long war and not seek to end it as soon as possible?

Of course, someone may argue that since it's a question of economics, then it
is unnecessary, and therefore, the bombings were wrong. But surely, if there
is something you wouldn't want to give to your enemy, one of those is time.
The author mentioned a Japanese nuclear research program, and that really
deserved a red flag.

It took 6 more days after the Soviet invasion and Nagasaki bombing, before
Emperor Hirohito publicly announced their unconditional surrender. If the
emperor made the public announcement before the Nagasaki bombing, then the
second bombing may be wrong.

If there is something I would admire of the Japanese people, it would be their
sense of patriotism. Stalin did not beat Japan. What kept the country from
surrendering and hold that long was Japanese Pride.

Little Boy and Fat Man are very weak compared to today's nuclear weaponry.
Historians and article writers should be discreet when discussing sensitive
issues like this, as they can fuel hatred. Focus should be on preventing
nuclear war, or there would be no more history left to discuss.

------
tokenadult
This is one of those cases where submitting the article with the original
article title would be very helpful. Both on the page, as visible to readers,
and in the HTML source code title element, the title of the article is "The
Bomb Didn't Beat Japan... Stalin Did." The timeline that the article sets up
claims that the (belated) declaration of war by the Soviet Union against
Japan, which came only after Allied victory in Europe, is what forced Japan to
consider surrender to the Allies.

Responding to this, I would point out that it was a known historical facts for
a long time that Stalin had spies (plural) in the Manhattan Project, and
generally had a good idea of how far the United States was progressing toward
developing an atomic bomb. So one could just as well say that it is the
advanced development of the bomb by the United States that prompted Stalin to
declare war against a new enemy, right after a brutal and prolonged war
against the European Axis powers.

Over the years, I have read many proposed ways to defeat Japan without
dropping the atomic bomb in a variety of American sources. Submarine captains
thought that submarine warfare alone could defeat Japan. (Near the end of the
war, American submarines were operating freely very near the coast of Japan,
and even in the Inland Sea between Shikoku and the other main islands of
Japan.) American aviators were glad to have the bomb to continue to justify
their existence, of course, but many have expressed the opinion that
conventional strategic bombing alone could have defeated Japan.

Japan set up a rather harsh set of expectations by how fiercely it fought
against the Allied landing on Okinawa. That made Allied war planners revise
upward their estimate of the difficulty and cost in lives (both civilian and
military) likely from a forced invasion on the main islands of Japan. That had
to be part of the consideration as Allied war planners decided whether or not
to drop the bomb. It's still a historical fact that no surrender was offered
until after the atomic bomb was dropped on Japan.

------
scotty79
I wasn't aware that US carpet bombed 66 major cities full of civilians. That's
kinda hard to spin as life saving solution. A-bomb was most wonderful
political invention. Much better than technical one.

------
mynameishere
Pearl Harbor beat Japan.

The bomb was tactically economical, and nothing else. It did the work of 500
B-29s. Guess what? We had those 500 B-29s, and the bomb did nothing more than
save petrol.

Quit hand-wringing.

------
cowpow
Is there a link that doesn't require the user to login?

~~~
lobster_johnson
I'm not getting a login box. It would seem that it's defeated by Adblock
(Chrome).

Edit: I am getting the login box when I go to the "single page" link. Removing
the DOM elements works.

~~~
axomhacker
I have ABP installed (Chrome + Mac). Still getting the login/signup/paywall.
This is what I did: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5814168>

------
greedo
This smacks of coming up with a conclusion first, then massaging "what ifs"
and unsubstantiated viewpoints to support the conclusion. Historians should
operate in the reverse.

------
iterative
There are numerous problems with this article, but the one that jumps out at
me the most is that it doesn't seem to have occurred to the author that maybe
the Soviet Union got off the fence and declared war on Japan _because_ of the
atomic bomb. If it looked like victory was going to be achieved without an
invasion, why wouldn't Stalin have jumped onto the bandwagon and declared a
war he knew he'd never have to fight?

------
kmasters
It seems the implication of the article is to say that we have potentially
drawn the wrong conclusion on "which straw" broke the camels back.

And that if we drew the wrong conclusion that somehow this might impact or
could have impacted the rationale for developing nuclear arsenals.

It's also popular in the US war college that officers attend, the statement
that "Wars cannot be won by air power alone".

But beyond these details, whether the history is exactly right on what caused
the Japanese to surrender, there is no doubt that the conclusion of WWII
precipitated an arms race and a space race as Nazi scientists and technology
were divided among the superpowers.

Nothing would have stopped the advancement of war making technology, no
convenient conclusions about the strategic causes or effects.

Technology will advance whether we want it to or not. And whether or not its
in out best interests as we perceive them in our posited "future".

------
dxt78
what on earth does this have to do with technology or computer science?

------
Eva_Peron
Stalin has always been under-rated in the United States. Truth was, he was a
hero who helped to defeat the Nazis and Imperial Japan. But saying that
undermines those who want Churchill and FDR to take all the credit.

~~~
WiseWeasel
Maybe the fact he sent >12 million of his own citizens to slave and die in the
Gulag in Siberia could have made it difficult to cast him as a hero. For a
depressing account of the Gulag and other aspects of life under Stalin's rule,
read a few of Solzhenitsyn's books.

~~~
kmm
Where did you get that from? The total number of Stalin's victims is around
1.5 million.

EDIT: I misread. It's about double, 3 million. Unreliable figure in any case.

~~~
bjhoops1
1.5 million is a comically low estimate. Where did you get your figure? Over 3
million died in the Ukrainian collectivization political famine alone.

~~~
kmm
I want to start by saying that's controversial. Famines were frequent in that
area way before the Soviet Union even existed. Can you attribute these to
Stalin's policies alone? Nobody would blame Coolidge for the Dust Bowl.

But you're right that 1.5 million is too small. I read again and there's about
3 million officially recorded victims. I cannot trust or distrust the higher
figures, as these were reported either by western media or political
dissidents, both of whom have very good reasons to demonise the USSR.

Just as the USSR spread a lot of lies about the Western world, I don't trust
the Western media about these controversial subjects.

~~~
bjhoops1
I suggest you read Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin.

The artifical famine of 1932-1933 was not a natural famine. It was a
calculated effort by Stalin to undermine the Ukrainian peasant farmers, a
class he viewed as a threat, and force them into collectivization. It was
perpetrated by the Communist party through the steady increase in grain
quotas. It is a matter that of historic fact that Ukrainians starved to death
while trains shipped away mountains of grain that they themselves had grown.

Feel free to distrust "Western media", but there are primary sources that
support this narrative. For instance, Soviet defector Victor Kravchenko's
account, or the narrative of American (and up to that point Soviet
sympathizer) William H. Chamberlin (although perhaps you might not trust his
account since he's a Westerner).

