Best/Worst Presidents

[rocketpig]

Kasz216 said:

rocketpig said:

Mr Khan said:

rocketpig said:

bouzane said:
2. This may be true but it doesn't change the fact that the Axis was crushed almost entirely by the Soviets with comparatively little being accomplished by the British.

I find it a little difficult to swallow that the Soviets singled-handedly crushed the entirety of the Axis powers when they fought neither Italy nor Japan in force. Italy was almost a laughing stock, for sure... Japan, not so much.

Threat of the Soviet Union (despite their nonagression pact) did hurt the Japanese war effort, as they had significant resources invested in Manchuria awaiting the invasion, which could have been used to build control over the Aleutians or make the difference on Guadalcanal.

They distracted the Japanese, yes. But distraction without major conflict is not the same thing as actually defeating the enemy.

You'd be surprised.

Some historians now suggest the reason Japan surrendered is because they thought Russia was going to invade.

It generally gets lost in common conversiation but in reality it was found that when Japan was trying to send the US a surrender message through Russia before the second nuclear bomb dropped... the reality was. 

Japan wasn't trying to surrender.  They were trying to put off a Russian invasion by convincing the Russians the war was over so they would stop there preperations. 

The Japanese gameplan was to force the US to invade... while keeping russia unprepaired... deal heavy casualties and force the US to break it's treaty with the British, French and Russians to seek nothing but unconditional surrender.  Allowing Japan to keep the emepror and it's government, and possibly some of it's outside conquest.

 

This is something generally ignored because people either want to use that fake surrender as a claim that the second nuclear bomb was worthless or that the second nuclear bomb is what forced the surrender.   (It really did help, but that combined with the russian invasion were what did it.)

There are a lot of historians that suggest a lot of things. Was Japan afraid of Russia? Oh, I'm sure they were. Did Japan not want assets captured by Russia? I'm pretty certain of that as well, especially when the other option is surrendering to the United States, a much more forgiving and progressive nation.

But let's be realistic about this. The United States killed over a quarter of a million people in three days without losing a single life. Japan was going to surrender. They had absolutely no other option. Did Russia help them along with that process? Possibly, but it wouldn't have mattered much in the end. Japan was going to surrender in the coming days or weeks anyway. The threat of atomic weaponry was too real and too imminent not to surrender, lest they face total and complete annihilation.