[81alum]

I'm confused. What I'm taking from your comments is that Operation Downfall (the projected ground invasion of Japan in late 1945) would not have resulted in over a million+ Allied casualties. Do I have that correct? This after 400k+ American deaths to that point in WWII and four years of global war for the Americans? The study for Stimson's staff indicated between 400k and 800k American soldier deaths, 1.7 million Allied casualties and 5 mm to 10 mm Japanese casualties. You're saying those projections were complete BS? This after Japanese soldiers essentially fought to the death in territories away from the Japanese mainland? So my read of your remarks is that the Japanese people would have been less resolute in defending their home country? That Operation Ketsu-Go, with the motto "The sooner the Americans come, the better...One hundred million die proudly." would not have been executed?

It was a false choice, according to some, because the war could have been won with no ground invasion at all.  Most Americans today do not understand how complete our naval victory was by August 1945.  The Navy's preferred strategy was blockade, not invasion.  While much of Japan's army was intact, nearly all of their naval power and merchant marine had been sunk, and Japan could not feed or supply either its home islands nor its army in distant locations.  US submarines had done what German U-boats had never been able to do--completely annihilate enemy shipping and isolate the enemy homeland.  Japan's warmaking potential was over. 

So Stimson's group might have been perfectly correct in its estimate of casualties--based upon our horrific experiences in Iwo Jima and Okinawa.  But they would have been irrelevant if we decided to take the Navy's recommended strategy and not invade at all.  It was, after all, probably the most comprehensive and successful naval blockade in world history, by that point in time.

However, as neither the Navy nor Stimson understood at the time, the A-bombs might have been more humane than a blockade--if you are just counting deaths.  Blockade may have killed 10-20 times more Japanese civilians than the bombs.  But that was never part of the calculus of the Stimson group, whose proceedings are now available.

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IMO the argument that the bombs were dropped as a statement to over-awe Russia is a retrospective analysis based on what we know now. Truman and the other decision makers didn't know there was going to be a "Cold War". They weren't thinking much about keeping Russia out of Japan. Some people were, but not many. Things were starting to get tense with the USSR but weren't there yet.

Gaddis argues that the Cold War originated very much during WWII, particularly Churchill's desire to delay D-Day by a year to allow the Germans and Soviets to chew each other up.  Whether this was actually deliberate or not--Stalin certainly thought it was--and he thought that the United States and UK had reneged on a promise to open the western front in 1943.   (North Africa and Italy being a sideshow, to him.)  I think there is a good consensus of scholarship that by 1944 all sides knew that as soon as the Axis was defeated that there would be a contest for influence between the West and the Soviet Union. Now just how strong Bart Bernstein's thesis that the A-bombs were a demonstration for the benefit of the Soviet Union I'm not sure.  I haven't read this literature in years--my guess is any such interpretation would--by now--be proven or disproven as the documents from that era become increasingly public.

Getting back to Ukraine, the Soviet propaganda that the United States is willing to support Ukraine "fighting to the last Ukrainian" is eerily reminiscent of the Soviet Union's bitterness that the West left it to fight alone for a long time against Hitler.  Just as we bled it dry by not opening the second front as promised, now we are bleeding it dry by subsidizing a war on its border (without actually risking American lives.)

I believe both such views are distortions, by the way, in case anyone wonders.  But I do think this is how Russia generally perceives the West--as cynically using every opportunity possible to prevent Russia from being the great power it deserves to be.

[81alum]

I'm confused. What I'm taking from your comments is that Operation Downfall (the projected ground invasion of Japan in late 1945) would not have resulted in over a million+ Allied casualties. Do I have that correct? This after 400k+ American deaths to that point in WWII and four years of global war for the Americans? The study for Stimson's staff indicated between 400k and 800k American soldier deaths, 1.7 million Allied casualties and 5 mm to 10 mm Japanese casualties. You're saying those projections were complete BS? This after Japanese soldiers essentially fought to the death in territories away from the Japanese mainland? So my read of your remarks is that the Japanese people would have been less resolute in defending their home country? That Operation Ketsu-Go, with the motto "The sooner the Americans come, the better...One hundred million die proudly." would not have been executed?

It was a false choice, according to some, because the war could have been won with no ground invasion at all.  Most Americans today do not understand how complete our naval victory was by August 1945.  The Navy's preferred strategy was blockade, not invasion.  While much of Japan's army was intact, nearly all of their naval power and merchant marine had been sunk, and Japan could not feed or supply either its home islands nor its army in distant locations.  US submarines had done what German U-boats had never been able to do--completely annihilate enemy shipping and isolate the enemy homeland.  Japan's warmaking potential was over. 

So Stimson's group might have been perfectly correct in its estimate of casualties--based upon our horrific experiences in Iwo Jima and Okinawa.  But they would have been irrelevant if we decided to take the Navy's recommended strategy and not invade at all.  It was, after all, probably the most comprehensive and successful naval blockade in world history, by that point in time.

However, as neither the Navy nor Stimson understood at the time, the A-bombs might have been more humane than a blockade--if you are just counting deaths.  Blockade may have killed 10-20 times more Japanese civilians than the bombs.  But that was never part of the calculus of the Stimson group, whose proceedings are now available.

---

IMO the argument that the bombs were dropped as a statement to over-awe Russia is a retrospective analysis based on what we know now. Truman and the other decision makers didn't know there was going to be a "Cold War". They weren't thinking much about keeping Russia out of Japan. Some people were, but not many. Things were starting to get tense with the USSR but weren't there yet.

Gaddis argues that the Cold War originated very much during WWII, particularly Churchill's desire to delay D-Day by a year to allow the Germans and Soviets to chew each other up.  Whether this was actually deliberate or not--Stalin certainly thought it was--and he thought that the United States and UK had reneged on a promise to open the western front in 1943.   (North Africa and Italy being a sideshow, to him.)  I think there is a good consensus of scholarship that by 1944 all sides knew that as soon as the Axis was defeated that there would be a contest for influence between the West and the Soviet Union. Now just how strong Bart Bernstein's thesis that the A-bombs were a demonstration for the benefit of the Soviet Union I'm not sure.  I haven't read this literature in years--my guess is any such interpretation would--by now--be proven or disproven as the documents from that era become increasingly public.

Getting back to Ukraine, the Soviet propaganda that the United States is willing to support Ukraine "fighting to the last Ukrainian" is eerily reminiscent of the Soviet Union's bitterness that the West left it to fight alone for a long time against Hitler.  Just as we bled it dry by not opening the second front as promised, now we are bleeding it dry by subsidizing a war on its border (without actually risking American lives.)

I believe both such views are distortions, by the way, in case anyone wonders.  But I do think this is how Russia generally perceives the West--as cynically using every opportunity possible to prevent Russia from being the great power it deserves to be.