Re:Why did Japan surrender? (2011)
by the_watcher on Sunday January 18, 2015 @08:12PM
(#8909772)
Interesting. Perhaps I need to actually read Hasegawa's work, but this piece skips over a pretty important possibility (to me): that while the atomic bombs did not, on their own, convince the Japanese to surrender, they may have been major factors in the Soviets deciding to enter the war on the side of the Allies.
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They could have been a factor, but the Soviets also had an agreement with the Allies that they would declare war on Japan before August 9. They declared war a few minutes before midnight on August 8
You mean enter the war against Japan? USSR were already on the Allies side fighting the Nazis in Europe.
But after a very sharp action which the IJArmy lost very badly, commanded in part on the other side by an obscure Soviet general named Zhukov (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgy_Zhukov who unlike his two counterparts managed to avoid the 1941 purge), they signed a neutrality pact, reaffirmed after Operation Barbarossa, that they scrupulously observed. Being faced with another even more bloodily minded opponent certainly didn't hurt the surrender decision.