Quote:
Originally posted by fintstone
Imagine if we had allowed the militant Japanese remain in power...with a truce/surrender brokered by the Stalin. Since both Russia and Japan were intent upon world conquest, perhaps the new Axis would have been Japan/Russia...
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Unlikely. Lettng the militarists stay wasn't even a thought.
IF Japan did not surrender after the two atomic bombs and IF Operations and Olympic and Coronet were not successful AND the militarists were still in power, the Navy would have blockaded the home islands and starved Japan into submission while the air force pounded them from above.
By then of course, so many people would have died as to make the rest of WW2 seem like a cake walk. THAT is the worst case scenario. It's the classic case of what do you do when a fighter is down, but refuses to throw in the towel?
No. Truman was right to drop the bombs.
As an aside, once the bomb was created, politically speaking, it HAD to be used. There is no way any president could stand before the mothers of America and say "Well, we could have ended the war 6-months ago and your boys would be alive, but we thought NOT dropping the bombs would be better."
He'd be impeached for incompetence on the spot.
If the bomb had been finished in March, we would have dropped it on Berlin...afterall, we were only building it because we thought Hitler was working on one too.
I doubt Truman or Mac were too concerned about Russia taking over the Japanese home islands, as Russian naval power was negligible and they'd have to invade first. More likely they were concerned about Russia filling the vacuum left by the Japanese on the mainland.