On the one hand, he was extremely dedicated to achieving unconditional surrender. On the other hand, he was more willing to work with Stalin (afaik) than Truman, and Byrnes would never have become Secretary of State. Would FDR living to the end of WW2 have changed the outcome of the war with Japan?
I think a major reason the bombs were dropped on Japan is they weren't white.
Consider an alternate history "what if" for 1945. For the sake of simplicity...
Japan's leadership was wildly different and Japan surrendered to the US before nuclear weapons were used on them.
The USSR was entirely uninvolved in the war which means Germany is still very powerful and dangerous as late as 1945.
US military planners estimate Germany can fight on for at least five more years.
Would the US drop nuclear weapons on Germany? My answer is probably not.
Edit
Another thing to consider in our reality is - was the second bomb (the one used on Nagasaki) necessary? I assume the answer is no. The US government and military wanted to use it to test an alternative nuclear tech.
Japan was chosen as a target in 1943. The reasoning given was that the Germans would be more likely to gain information from a failed bombing and possibly then develop their own bombs, but yeah, racism has to play a role in that decision.
I guess my own initial response to my question is no though, because even Truman understood that once the Soviets invaded, Japan would likely surrender. The difference though is that Truman didn't want the Soviets to invade if he could avoid it, since him and Byrnes were so anti-Soviet, whereas FDR and Stettinius might be more willing to end the war with the help of the Soviets. FDR might've also included the Soviets on the Potsdam Declaration, ending the war sooner without the bomb.
I do agree FDR probably would've wanted to drop the bomb on Japan rather than Germany, but I think also FDR could've ended the war without dropping the bomb at all.
After the firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo, I see little to suggest Americans would have drawn an kind of line.
Would Americans have been shy about nuking Normandy if they'd had the Bomb sooner? Would they have forgone dropping a nuke in Hamburg or Dusseldorf, preferring to destroy 75% of the respective cities the old fashioned way?
I doubt it.
The French might not have appreciated that one, though.
They didn't have a ton of say in the matter.
Neither was necessary. The US just hated Japanese and wanted to see what the bombs would do.
I'd say it was partly that, and partly an ego thing. The Japanese pretty much just wanted assurance that their emperor wouldn't be executed or anything, and the US had no intention of executing their emperor or anything. So any reasonable person would look at the situation and go "looks like there are no problems here, both sides want the same thing, let's see it happen" but the US thought that allowing your enemy to make any request at all makes you a little beta bitch or whatever and so they were literally willing to do anything to get the Japanese to agree that the US could execute the emperor if they wanted to
Even though they didn't want to
:amerikkka:
they should've executed the emperor though. :sicko-wistful:
I haven't fully read this yet, but Tsuyoshi Hasegawa makes the point that once the Soviets invaded, suddenly surrender to the US looked a lot more inviting because of the Japanese leadership's fear of communism sweeping away the imperial institution. They thought the Americans would be much more likely to allow them to keep the emperor in place.
Truman and Byrnes were also extremely worried about public opinion. Most Americans at the time wanted the emperor removed from power in some way (executed or imprisoned, etc) and Byrnes thought Truman would be "crucified" if he was seen as going back on unconditional surrender.
...and then they didn't remove the emperor from power.
and they were never going to remove the emperor from power. Most of the military leadership supported leaving the emperor in place. Afaik, there was never any real chance of the emperor being removed from power, at least by the US (could be wrong on that though). Just an insane push for unconditional surrender by Truman and Byrnes. Truly :amerikkka: