Mr Khan said:
rocketpig said:
Kasz216 said:
rocketpig said:
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.
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Well it wasn't so much assets as it was northern Japan. The Japanese had planned on an all out southern defense and were afraid of a "split country" scenario like Korea, or Germany.
Japanese mindset at the time was kind of.... well crazy honestly. The mindset of the Japanese leaders at the end of WW2 is facinating as hell... I mean before the bombs dropped they were in a situation that 90% of countries would surrender in. They had no food, had the war ended weeks later, millions more would starved to death. Quick US mobilization to save the japanse civilians is an untold story... and likely why the US and Japan have such an interesting cultural connection.
By historians suggest, i mean documents actually more or less say that. It's just a matter of "were the japanese honest with themselves."
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It's insane. There were elements in the Japanese government and more specifically, the military, that didn't want to surrender after the bombs. My point is that they would have surrendered. Despite their insanity, the overwhelming fear of the bombs would have pushed the stalwarts to the side as the Japanese people began to starve and their society crumbled from the inevitable chaos that follows such a situation.
If the Japanese realized that America had no more bombs, I might be more inclined to believe that they could have held out for longer than they did. But they didn't know that and the sheer terror of living in a world where entire cities could be devastated in the blink of an eye would have forced the surrender sooner rather than later.
With that said, the Russians certainly sped it up a few days by invading Manchuria. At that point, the Japanese were double-fucked. No one, and I mean no one, wanted to be under the thumb of the Soviet Union.
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What would have pushed them aside was the need for a return to stability simply because they were afraid of revolution. The widespread misery of the populace could have led to overthrow of the Emperor, and preservation of the Kokutai was their number-one priority both before and after surrender (which is why certain generals fell all over themselves to shift war-responsibility claims away from the Emperor. Hirohito was guilty as hell.)
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I wonder if that would of happened though. Revolution that is. The Japanese were facing pretty dark times already without a shred of unres... it was obvious they couldn't win, people were already starving and there was little to no unrest, and the Japanese people were still seemingly willing to fight for the empeoer who screewd them.
Japan just didn't have the same indivdualistic bent the west has... it's something to consider in eastern "non colonial" states.
It plays a huge part in the chinese economy actually.
