They dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan to make the Soviet Union's invasion of Hokkaido unnecessary and as a performative act to horrify the world in to subjugation.
The whole 'saved more lives than it cost' is a bad argument unless the plan was to slaughter a hundred thousand civilians on landing. Note the Nazi invasion of France cost 60,000 lives in civilian resistance...this was at the beginning of the war.
Japan would have surrendered on the first day of invasion.
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Also that the Japanese military advised against war with the USSR due to their defeat at Khalkhin Gol, as well as the Red Army literally steamrolling through the Japanese army in Manchuria in two weeks kinda says something about the matchup between the two.
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Everyone really needs to keep in mind that the eastern front generals wanted to go to war with the ussr the minute they got Germany on lock down
most milhis nerds would probably say that the rkka had no capability of invading japan, so ACKSHUALLY the nukes made us surrender. this ignores of course their amphibious operations in the baltic and the ijn being the equivalent of a battleship and about 200 other artifical reefs around the pacific
I like Dan Carlin's podcasts, but his most recent Hardcore History series focuses on just this very thing. Between that and his constant political "both-siderism", I'm probably going to stop listening to him.
Carlin is an absolute coward hack who hides behind the flimsy excuse of "I'm not a historian".
would you happen to have a link to this? I'd like to read more
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On the other hand, even when the Emperor recorded his surrender announcement, elements of the Imperial military basically stormed the Imperial Palace to stop it from being broadcast. The discs had to be smuggled out of the Palace grounds.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_incident
So yeah, Japan was not a monolith and not everyone was on board with fighting to the last ditch, but elements of the military certainly were and in 1945 they were effectively running the show.
The Japanese aren't a monolith, and that's one of the most irritating things trying to read about the Pacific campaign. It intrigues me as far as WW2 goes because the European campaign (in the west of Europe anyway) gets all the spotlight, with the Pacific campaign - especially the not-US contributions to it - gets a lot less attention. But unfortunately most of the writers are warhawks from the West who write about Japan as if it's this monolithic entity, as if every single person had the exact same BuShIdO sPiRiT and how the US couldn't invade because swarms of schoolchildren would attack them with grenades and sticks or something.
Meanwhile the Japanese are actual human beings and while bushido spirit type shit was taught to the officers and soldiers I highly doubt the claim that every single Japanese person was a secret ninja samurai ready to die for their country.
My Asian history professor was Japanese and he told us that his grandfather was arrested and thrown in prison for opposing the war and the emperor system. So yea, the idea that the Japanese were some sort of brainwashed horde that would fight to the death for their government is just racist, orientalist horseshit, there was opposition to the war and to Japanese imperialism within Japan.
From diary accounts and military strategy this is true, actually. (Warning, long read). From accounts, the heads of military strategy barely responded to the nuclear bombs, Japan had already been hit hard by firebombing runs and this was loosely par for the course. They were hoping for Soviet neutrality, (or better yet- get the Soviets to fight with them against the US/UK) and the invasion of Manchuria took the wind out of their sails, so to speak.
I'm not sure how Howard Zinn frames the argument so maybe I'm totally wrong. The top brass definitely wanted to keep fighting though, and as seen with the Hokkaido invasion, (which happened after the Japanese had already surrendered) some military forces kept fighting defensively after stand down orders came in.
The nukes were definitely a posturing move by the US though, no argument there, I've always felt it was more about scaring the Soviets than forcing surrender
This is accurate, to my knowledge. The firebombing killed more people than the nuclear bombs did, even.
The emperor and military were pretty far removed on whether to surrender. I don't have the sources on hand, but I believe the military was planning a coup before the emperor announced the surrender on national radio. The American projections on Japanese civilians fighting to the death or whatever was clearly wrong, but the military forcing the fight to continue until the capital was captured, same as Germany, is not that farfetched.
Hokkaido invasion? Can't find anything about it.
Do you mean Kuril islands? That went on a bit after the end of the war.
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