The US beating Japan in WW2 is a common myth
here is a different perspective: The soviets were the reason Japan surrendered
foreignpolicy.com
Japan surrendered not because of dropped nukes but because they were terrified of Soviet invasion over Hokkaido after Manchuria fell.
Other urls found in this thread:
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
apjjf.org
mconway.net
en.wikipedia.org
muse.jhu.edu
networks.h-net.org
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
twitter.com
WITH WHAT BOATS
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PLEB TIER OBSERVATION
le baltic fleet over again
its not a new theory at all. And with what boats? they were beginning to move against japan in China (since they invanded there)
no
Well, your theory has been discussed, and the Soviet Pacific Fleet wasn't adequate for an amphibious invasion of the home islands.
not new. I see that you recently read the latest book by ul
Look, buddy, you clearly lack even the faintest bit of knowledge on the Pacific War aside from one internet article so it's probably best if you don't go spreading this nonsense around anywhere else. The Soviet contribution was notable but it wouldn't have resulted in Japan's total capitulation unless it was backed by a US naval and air assault campaign and a threat of invasion. And at any rate the success of the soviets against the Kwantung army is partially a result of the attrition it took sending units off to the Pacific.
Yes, the Soviet invasion that would have materialized with the massive fleet the Soviets didn't have in the Pacific.
And the absolute shit-stain performance on the Kuril islands would have assured the Japanese that the Soviets weren't going to manage any amphibious attacks anytime soon.
I'm assuming he means the Soviet's ability to project power in Manchuria was dependent on American support. To say America played no role Soviet action in Manchuria ignores that the bulk of forces in the far east were equipped with American-made equipment.
In fact the terms of lend-lease specified that equipment the Soviet Union did not intend to pay for was sent East anyway to Vladivostok. The equipment the Soviets did keep, for example the Liberty ships which the USSR kept in service until the late 70's, were the basis for any projection in the far east.
Did anyone ever think the opposite?
Japan lost 100s of cities to millions of bombs. What's two cities to two bombs to them?
The emperor was mortified of the Soviets, and what 1500 year old bourgeois dynasty wouldn't?
>Did anyone ever think the opposite?
Several generations of westerners, hundreds of millions of people over decades; still do.
can anyone help?
And what if Tokyo was bombed (which was next in line)?
>what if Tokyo was bombed (which was next in line)?
You got it backwards.
I didn't know Tokyo was hit with an atomic bomb
>The Operation Meetinghouse air raid of 9–10 March 1945 was later estimated to be the single most destructive bombing raid in history.[2]
What difference, at this point, does it make?
An atomic bomb is psychological.
The irony being that more Japs died fighting the Americans is dismissed when "more Germans died fighting the Soviets" is the immediate fall back for any discussion about the role of the Western Allies in Europe.
I'm not sure about what point are you trying to make but soviets captured more than half million japanese and claimed to have killed eighty thousands while suffering only something like eleven thousand deads.
Soviets faced one million soldiers in manchuria.
en.wikipedia.org
jap had terrible war tech and supplies, especially in manchuria.
I have a seriously hard time believing the Japs weren't terrified of nuclear destruction. I mean, even today, Japan has very strong feelings about the nukes and I'd imagine those feelings were even stronger around the time they were dropped.
What an absolute fucking meme. This bullshit is only propagated by Russians and Russiaboos. The Soviets did fuck-all in the Pacific. It was all the Americans. That's why they and the Soviets are the only real powers of note in WWII. The Soviets won in Europe and the Americans won in Asia.
I have a hard time believing that weapons which literally caused a global Cold War wouldn't put fear into the Japanese. I'm sure Russia may have been a factor too, but it sounds like total bullshit to me to think the Japs weren't terrified of the weaponry when they still have an extreme stigma about them today.
Soviet liberators were even worse than nukes.
The Soviets faced one million starved, conscripted reservists who knew the war was already over.
>who knew the war was already over
Soviets invaded on 9th august, japanese surrender was signed on 2nd september.
I'm pointing out that using the Eastern Front "who killed more of who" metric, of 2,300,000 total Japanese military deaths the bulk came from fighting the Western Allies. Even if the entire Kwangtung Army was slaughtered to a man.
And Okinawa fell in June. Nowhere on the home islands had been safe from bombing for the better part of a year. The war was already over.
In japan soviets were the western allies.
And if this board was written in slant-eyed chicken scratch that would be relevant.
Nigga the war was lost well before the surrender
edgy
Does it matter who beat who? Japan lost in WW2. Having arguments about who 'beat them' doesn't do much.
Do you think the average nip was retarded? There's a reason why they stopped bothering with warships and planes and started focusing on suicide boats and Ohkas.
All the Soviets could do was invade the Kuril Islands. That was 6 days after they surrendered.
russia continues to illegally occupy the Kurils.
I really wish vatniks would fuck off and stop shitting up every goddamn board with their presence
Japanese signed surrender on 2nd september, Kuril operations ended on 1st september.
but they announced the cease fire and surrender before invasion of the kurils.
Why is it the minute the Soviet Union fell and no longer a threat, everyone out side the United States, gets on this historical revisionism meme about how the Soviets won ww2 and America didn't do anything?
It's cool to hate america
I wish they would have invaded.
We could have nuked them both.
That implies that the Japanese surrendered because of the threat to their home islands. The counterpoint is that they may have been holding out for an uti possidetis peace settlement where they could keep Manchuria and Korea. After losing them to the Soviets, uti possidetis became only marginally better than the unconditional surrender to the Americans that they went with.
Last book I read on this was Bix's Hirohito, which IIRC accorded the bombs and the Russians similar importance.
The original question in that article is if they were necessary, something that could only be answered in the hypothetical even with the benefit of hindsight.
Considering nuclear deterrence is still working, its hard to argue their use had no positive effects. There hasn't been a shooting war between super powers since. You can't just say X number of Japanese and Allied lives were saved by it, you'd have to include all the lives spared in further wars we have no way of predicting. Considering the 20th century was, by most accounts, the bloodiest in history that number would probably be pretty high.
Veeky Forums is full of edgy contrarians, get used to it.
>philosophy is better than science
>christianity gud
>communism gud
>being a Christian is contrarian
>Implying science isn't part of philosophy
That's nice for the common person who's knowledge of history need only be an elementary who, what, when, where, why.
For politicians, political analysts, and historians of all levels (us), digging into details does actually matter.
I'm 2 for 3, somebody hit me with some marx so i can fill out my score card.
>Western Allies in the Europe advance into Germany after the best of the Wehrmacht were killed fighting the Soviets in the eastern front
>Nah you were fighting the volksturm and the old guys, we were fighting the Tiger IIs and shit, Soviets did everything
>Nah the West didn't do shit, Mother Russia killed the most people, stop saying you won the war
>Soviets in the Siberia advance into Manchuko after the best of the Japanese were killed fighting the Western Allies and China in Singapore, the Philippines and the Pacific
>Guadalcanal? Midway? What's that?
>Nah man it was us the Soviets who totally beat the Japanese by killing those starving soldiers you guys didn't do shit.
????
...
Because the Soviets censored and controlled so much of even their own documentation and records that they ended up destroying their own credibility on the subject.
To the outside world it looked like Western revisionism and politicking to rely on or show preference to western and especially German sources.
Now that the Soviet archives are finally been opened and interrogated we're finally learning just how much of the accepted history is accurate and historians like Glantz can make an entire career out of correcting it.
Except even Glantz won't say that the Soviets would have just conquered Germany on their own without a western front. All he says is that the eastern front was a larger fight.
and so on and so on
None of the island engagements in the Pacific were anywhere near the scale of the Soviet invasion of Manchuria.
Also, the Soviets were fighting the nips long before we were.
en.wikipedia.org
>None of the island engagements in the Pacific were anywhere near the scale of the Soviet invasion of Manchuria.
Just put Okinawa and the Phillippines campaigns (which happened at the same time) together and it'd be bigger than the scale of the Soviet Invasion of Manchuria. Meanwhile the US, UK and China were fighting the Japanese in China and Burma and the USN was blockading IJN military ports in Truk and Rabaul. And this was all late-war, well after the worst was over.
>Also, the Soviets were fighting the nips long before we were.
Are you also going to cite the Japanese involvement in the Russian Civil War as a basis for the Soviet Union's contribution? They fought a battle and signed a neutrality pact for 6 years, that battle didn't do shit in defeating Japan in world war II.
No, Japan surrendered because the US gave favorable surrender conditions, such as keeping the emperor and not blasting Japan back to the 16th century. The only thing the Soviets did was make Japan back down on the condition of keeping some of their territories, since they were no longer under Japanese control.
Oh get over yourself, 550,000 Chinese Muslim Cavalrymen armed with swords killed nearly as much Japanese out of an 850,000 strong force in 1939 as the Soviets with three times that number, rocket launchers and IS-3s in 1945.
He was asking about the historical revisionism meme. Glantz on the subject;
>...the most important factor in the creation of the existing perverted view of the war is the collective failure of Soviet historians to provide Western and Russian readers and scholars with a credible account of the war. Ideology, political motivation, and shibboleths born of the Cold War have combined to inhibit the work and warp the perceptions of many Soviet historians.
>While many Soviet studies of the war are detailed, scholarly, and accurate as far as they go, they cover only what State officials permit them to cover and either skirt or ignore those facts and events considered embarrassing by the State. Unfortunately the most general works and those most accessible to Western audiences tend to be the most biased, the most highly politicized, and the least accurate. Until quite recently, official State organs routinely vetted even the most scholarly of these books for political and ideological reasons. Even now, 10 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, political pressure and limited archival access, prevents Russian historians from researching or revealing many events subject to censorship in the past.
>These sad realities have undercut the credibility of Soviet (Russian) historical works (fairly or unfairly), permitted German historiography and interpretation to prevail, and, coincidentally, damaged the credibility of those few Western writers who have incorporated Soviet historical materials into their accounts of the war. These stark historiographical realities also explain why, today, sensational, unfair, and wildly inaccurate accounts of certain aspects of the war so attract the Western reading public and why debates still rage concerning the war’s direction and conduct.
It's just easier to blame the West, as seen so often on Veeky Forums.
>Just put Okinawa and the Phillippines campaigns (which happened at the same time) together and it'd be bigger than the scale of the Soviet Invasion of Manchuria.
In terms of US forces vs. Soviet forces, yes, but not in terms of Japaneses ground forces involved, it would seem. You're also strawmanning like crazy in this post and the last. Yeah we killed a bunch of them, but the Soviet invasion of Manchuria had a disproportionate strategic impact (per , , or the OP)
>In terms of US forces vs. Soviet forces, yes, but not in terms of Japaneses ground forces involved, it would seem.
Would you also like to include the the Battle of Burma that was also occurring, and Iwo Jima as well? Or the remaining garrison in Truk and Rabaul in 1945? My point is that a thousand small battles in the Pacific both killed far more and accomplished far more than the Soviets arriving in the eleventh hour to hammer in a last-minute blow to a foregone conclusion.
>Yeah we killed a bunch of them, but the Soviet invasion of Manchuria had a disproportionate strategic impact
No, it didn't. Compared to what? Compared to the annihilation of the Japanese Navy and Army Air Force? Compared to the hundreds of the actual Kwantung Army that were killed fighting the Chinese?
The Soviet Invasion of Manchuria was a nail in the coffin, but negligible compared to the nails the Chinese hammered in at Guangxi and Hunan, the US hammered in at Okinawa and Midway, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Great Britain hammered in at Imphal. The United States would have won without it in the same way the Soviet Union may have won in Europe without the west.
>but the Soviet invasion of Manchuria had a disproportionate strategic impact
Before you say I'm strawmanning again, let's look at the posts you ennumerated.
>After losing them to the Soviets, uti possidetis became only marginally better than the unconditional surrender to the Americans that they went with.
No, having Kyoto and Tokyo go up in flames because they thought the US was all coked up with Atom Bombs made surrendering marginally better than having its two capitals evaporated.
And the other post , literally says
>No, Japan surrendered because the US gave favorable surrender conditions, such as keeping the emperor and not blasting Japan back to the 16th century.
Again, he mentions
>The only thing the Soviets did was make Japan back down on the condition of keeping some of their territories, since they were no longer under Japanese control.
Which apparently is disproportionate? Meanwhile, the US and UK had already made Japan back down on the condition of keeping the Phillippines, Indochina, Burma, China, Borneo, Papua New Guinea, most of the South Pacific and India in the meantime with the same tactic of driving them off the land. But yes, the Soviet Union won it all by convincing the Japanese they couldn't keep Manchuria. As opposed to mass starvation, the nonexistence of half of the Japanese military and the vaporization of two of Japan's remaining cities.
>Compared to what?
Compared to the atomic bombings, per the OP.
>No, it didn't.
It may have precipitated Japanese surrender, per the OP.
I thought there was some creedance to the soviet/japan theory in that war time comunication between japanese forces and comand talked a lot about manchuria and the soviets while the atomic bombs featured very little
>Compared to the atomic bombings, per the OP.
At most they were of equal importance, and both were of minimal importance compared to allied contributions in completely eliminating the IJN and isolating much of the IJA.
>It may have precipitated Japanese surrender, per the OP.
Again, the straw that broke the camels back does not preclude the bricks that others had already placed upon it.
(gunboats)
(boats)
(with guns)
More like
W I T H W H A T E X P E R I E N C E
The US already handed them landing craft as per the Lend Lease. They still did not have the experience to handle amphibous landings and the invasion of the Kurils proved that.
I'm just reading the wikipedia entry on the battle of Shumshu and...
>Soviet officers later often said that the operation demonstrated the difficulty of amphibious invasions of enemy territory and Soviet shortfalls and inexperience in amphibious warfare, and cited the Soviet experience on Shumshu as a reason for not invading the island of Hokkaido in the Japanese Home Islands.[11][12]
That's as close as anyone can get to the Soviets going "we fucked up bigtime". AND THEY MANAGED TO OCCUPY THE KURILS.
The atomic bombs werent much of a concern to japan....they had allready endured a frebombing run that had devastated 50+ cities and tho hiroshima and nagasaki were in the top ten destruction wise neigther was actualy number one(if i remeber right) also there was a meeting proposed to discuss the bombings and it was cancled becuase the japanese cabinate didnt see much important to talk about....it was just 2 more bombed cities to them
It's not a resolved issue, there are historians on both sides, most notably Hasegawa, who states that the Soviet Union's entrance dominates over the bombs, and Asada, who alleges that the soviet entry was only a secondary concern over the war.
>apjjf.org
>mconway.net
There are strong arguments from quotes on both sides as well, so this is one that probably won't be resolved anytime soon.
>When the Russians invaded Manchuria, they sliced through what had once been an elite army and many Russian units only stopped when they ran out of gas.
In other words, the US oil embargo retarded Russian and Japanese expansion into Asia without even putting boots on the ground.
The only thing Russians were good at during WWII was sending their own men to their deaths like lemmings.
>At most they were of equal importance
That's what we're arguing about. Specifically that wasting two more cities (after firebombing many previously) was less important to Japanese high command than the loss of their pre-1937 continental possessions and a solid chunk of the remaining IJA.
>and both were of minimal importance compared to allied contributions in completely eliminating the IJN and isolating much of the IJA.
I can get on board with that.
Nigga, that sounds to me like the Japanese lying through their teeth to take credit away from the US.
>That's what we're arguing about. Specifically that wasting two more cities (after firebombing many previously) was less important to Japanese high command than the loss of their pre-1937 continental possessions and a solid chunk of the remaining IJA.
I'm not so sure of that.
>en.wikipedia.org
>At 04:00 on August 9 word reached Tokyo that the Soviet Union had broken the Neutrality Pact,[30] declared war on Japan,[81] and launched an invasion of Manchuria.[82]
>However, the senior leadership of the Japanese Army took the news in stride, grossly underestimating the scale of the attack. With the support of Minister of War Anami, they started preparing to impose martial law on the nation, to stop anyone attempting to make peace.[85] Hirohito told Kido to "quickly control the situation" because "the Soviet Union has declared war and today began hostilities against us."[86]
>The Supreme Council met at 10:30. Suzuki, who had just come from a meeting with the Emperor, said it was impossible to continue the war. Tōgō Shigenori said that they could accept the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, but they needed a guarantee of the Emperor's position. Navy Minister Yonai said that they had to make some diplomatic proposal—they could no longer afford to wait for better circumstances.
So they were clearly still discussing a diplomatic exit after news of the Soviet invasion occurred, well before the news of Nagasaki arrived at 11:00.
>In the middle of the meeting, shortly after 11:00, news arrived that Nagasaki, on the west coast of Kyūshū, had been hit by a second atomic bomb (called "Fat Man" by the United States)
It's only after Truman's announcement that they were ready to drop another one that the war council and cabinet finally crumbles and lets Hirohito have his way.
It's not like there aren't westerners in it too. Hasegawa bases his arguments on Glantz' initial arguments, and there are westerners supporting Asada's arguments as well:
>muse.jhu.edu
>networks.h-net.org
It's not a really cut-and-dry topic, particularly because they happened so close to each other.
Lets be honest the Soviet Union was just the best country ever and was better than the USA in every possible way.
Of course this is going to make Americans mad because they're North Korea tier brainwashed to believe socialism is all about standing in breadlines in between trips to the Gulag.
It was even doing just fine up until Gorbachev started believing the American propaganda and fucked the country up. Then the even bigger Kool-Aid drinker Yeltsin stepped in and fucked it up even more.
>Free healthcare
>Free education
>Full employment
>Non-existent homelessness
>Lots of food
>Stable economy
>Won WW2 basically single-handedly
How can capitalists even compete?
Because Japan is notorious for its communist sympathies.
>1500 year old dynasty
But Sadao Asada and Tsuyoshi Hasegawa are both Japanese?
Kek you are wrong. Its because the British fought the Japs in Burma. The Japanese forces in Burma outnumbered the ones in the pacific by thousands. Americans literally contributed a navy and two nukes, that's it.
>burma campaign even significant
>this is what bongs believe
The two nukes killed as many people as the entire fire bombing campaign. Anyone who spouts the muh firebombing was worse than nukes meme simply doesn't understand the facts or is incapable of the simple logic required to put things into perspective.
Nice troll post. Too obvious though I'm afraid, maybe post it on /pol/ it will get some bites there.
>No, Japan surrendered because the US gave favorable surrender conditions
US demanded and got unconditional surrender.
Just as predicted, western shills cannot handle the concept that everything they've been taught to believe from birth is wrong.
There was 4 times more Japanese troops in the Burma campaign than on the pacific islands. Americucks literally didn't even fight a fraction of the Japanese army.
Dude, seriously, too obvious.
>better country
>collapses
Hmmmmm why would that happen if they were superior?
>en.wikipedia.org
>Japan: 316,700 (1944)
>en.wikipedia.org
>Japan: 529,802[3]
????
>Leader comes to power who actually believes anything the US government says.
>Everything instantly implodes
Social democrats, not even once.
>better country
>collapses
>USA
>Loses to third world communists
>tries to country beaten by goat farmers
>collapses
>USSR
>talking to anybody about losing to third worlders
~compete with
>USSR
>Loses to third world shit hole
>USA funds Islamic fundamentalist militants
>Has been paying for it for the last few decades with the blood of their citizens.
God is a communist.
>Fights Islamic fundamentalist militants
>Collapses