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.

    • claz [comrade/them]
      ·
      4 years ago

      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.

        • Papanurgel [none/use name]
          ·
          4 years ago

          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

        • dinklesplein [any, he/him]
          ·
          4 years ago

          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

    • star_wraith [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      The idea that japan never would have surrendered, that the japanese people were brainwashed into fighting till the very end is very… western.

      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.

      • Tankiedesantski [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Carlin is an absolute coward hack who hides behind the flimsy excuse of "I'm not a historian".

    • emizeko [they/them]
      ·
      4 years ago

      america intercepted a transmission to the Japanese ambassador in Moscow asking for him to mediate their surrender

      would you happen to have a link to this? I'd like to read more

    • Tankiedesantski [he/him]
      4·
      4 years ago

      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.