“Japan was not destroyed by atomic bombs, Stalin did”

/Pogled.info/ Truman admits that the beginning of the Soviet invasion in Manchuria means the end of the war

On August 15, 1945, at 12 noon, the Japanese heard the voice of their divine emperor on the radio for the first time. Hirohito read a rewrite accepting the terms of the Potsdam Declaration of the Allies regarding the terms of Japan’s surrender and the “holy decision” to end the war.

Proving the unsustainability of such a decision, the emperor also mentions the use of new weapons by the United States against Japan: “The enemy has used a new bomb with an unprecedented destructive power that has killed many innocent people. If we continue to wage war, it will not only mean the death and terrible destruction of the Japanese people, but it will also lead to the death of the entire human civilization.”

These words would later be used to defend the argument that Japan had surrendered as a result of American atomic strikes.

But in Japan they forgot or suppressed another statement from the Emperor on August 17, entitled “To the Soldiers and Sailors.” In it, the Supreme Commander of the Imperial Army and Navy, Generalissimo Hirohito, without mentioning the “new bomb”, admitted that it was the main reason for the surrender of the Soviet Union into the war .

The Emperor says: “Now that the Soviet Union has entered the war against us, to continue the war would be irresponsible, causing us further damage and threatening the basis of at the Empire.”

It should be noted that the decision to surrender almost on the day the USSR entered the war was directly related to the fear of the Red Army landing on Japanese soil and the change in the political system after that is the result of the revolution.

Already in February 1944, with information about IV Stalin’s promise to enter the war against Japan, the member of the imperial family Fumimaro Konoe, who had been prime minister three times, persuaded the Japanese monarch “to end the war as soon as possible.”

At the same time, fearing the emperor with a communist revolution that could arise as a result of the entry of the USSR into the war, Konoe strongly recommended attacking the States United and Great Britain before “the Soviet Union interferes in the internal affairs of the country. Japan.” At the same time, there is an emphasis on that “Public opinion in England and America has not yet reached the demands for a change in our political system.”

The agreement of unconditional surrender in Tokyo was related only to the entry of the Soviet Union into the war. This is eloquently proved by the fact that only the absence of the USSR’s signature under the Allies Potsdam Declaration on the terms of Japan’s surrender prevented the Japanese government from accepting it.

After the declaration was published and its text discussed at a meeting of the Supreme War Management Council, Japanese Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo sent a telegram to Moscow Ambassador Naotake Sato on July 27: “The position taken by the Soviet Union regarding the General Declaration Potsdam, from now on they will affect our actions.

The ambassador was given urgent instructions to get out “What measures will the Soviet Union take against the Japanese Empire”. Tokyo did not want to go to the US and Britain. On July 28, the Japanese government rejected the Potsdam Declaration, saying it intended “Go ahead for a successful end to the war” . As stated above, this situation did not change even after the atomic attack on Hiroshima.

The truth shows that without the USSR entering the war, the Americans would not have been able to quickly conquer Japan by “dropping atomic bombs on it”, as was the propaganda the American military and President Truman himself confirming the Japanese population in leaflets and so on. the radio.

According to the calculations of American headquarters, at least 9 atomic bombs were needed to ensure the landing of troops on the Japanese islands. After the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the US no longer had bombs ready, and a lot of time was needed to make new ones. “Those Bombs We Dropped,” US Secretary of War Henry Stimson said, “the only ones we had, and their production levels at the time were very low. “

In the period after the war, the United States tried to hide the role of the USSR or even just silence in losing the Japanese military force. Although American military strategists in 1945 proceeded from the fact that although the developed plan for landing American troops on the Japanese islands, code-named “Drop”, had been carried out, there was no certainty that “the mighty Kwantung Army, being. completely self-sufficient, he would not continue his fight.

The commander of Anglo-American forces in the Pacific and the Far East, General Douglas MacArthur, also believed that American soldiers “They must not land on the Japanese islands until the Russian army begins military operations in Manchuria.”

America’s leading military and political figure of the time, Army General George Marshall, said: “The importance of Russia entering the war is that it could be a decisive act that would force Japan to seize it.” So it happened.

Even US President Truman, who had openly anti-Soviet positions, admitted: “We really wanted the Russians to go to war with Japan.” In his memoirs he notes that “There is a greater need for Russia to enter the war to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans.”

An impartial analysis of the military-political situation in the Far East that arose in August 1945 forces even the most uncompromising critics of the Soviet Union to admit that facts are obvious. Therefore, the professor from the University of California (USA), the Japanese ethnographer Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, recognizes the decisive influence of the USSR’s entry into the war on the emperor’s decision to accept surrender terms.

In the last part of his multi-page work “In Pursuit of the Enemy. Stalin, Truman and the Surrender of Japan,” he wrote: “The two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not decisive in Japan’s decision to surrender. Despite the brutal power of the atomic bombs, they were not enough to change the vector of Japanese diplomacy.

The Soviet invasion allowed this to happen. Without the Soviet Union’s entry into the war, the Japanese would have continued to fight until multiple atomic bombs, successful Allied landings on Japan’s own islands, or sustained aerial bombardment under naval blockade had put out of the possibility of resistance any longer.” Realizing this, American generals recognized that it could last a year or two and a half without the USSR entering the war.

Hasegawa’s opinion is shared by the British journalist Ward Wilson, author of the book “Five Myths about Nuclear Weapons”, who titled his article in the journal Foreign Policy “The atomic bombs were not conquered Japan, but Stalin”. The author says that American aircraft bombed 66 Japanese cities with conventional bombs in the summer of 1945 – in whole or in part the destruction was very great, in some cases similar to the destruction who carried out atomic bombing. On March 9-10, “carpet” bombing in Tokyo burned 16 square miles of urban area, killing an estimated 120,000 people.

Hiroshima is only 17th in urban area destruction (in terms of percentage). Wilson writes: “What were the Japanese worried about if they weren’t worried about the bombing of cities in general or the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in particular? The answer is simple – it was the USSR.

And in addition: “The traditional version that Japan surrendered because of Hiroshima is convenient because it satisfies the emotional needs of both the US and Japan itself. How did the US benefit from the traditional version? The prestige of US military power has improved significantly, the influence of US diplomacy in Asia and around the world has increased, US security has strengthened…

On the other hand, if the entrance of the USSR into the war is considered a reason for entering the war, Moscow will be able to say that it achieved in 4 days what the US could not achieve in 4 years, and the ideas about military power and diplomatic influence would strengthen the USSR… And during the Cold War, there were claims that an important role at the USSR equal to “helping the enemy”.

Without taking into account the importance of the atomic bombs that brought Japan’s surrender closer, we cannot agree that they, and they alone, decided the outcome of the war. This was also recognized by prominent Western political figures.

So Winston Churchill said: “It would be a mistake to believe that the fate of Japan was decided by the atomic bomb. US President Truman spoke of the certainty of the USSR’s entry into the war when, after receiving news of the start of the Soviet offensive in Manchuria and Korea, he said with excitement: “Russia mentioned. The Japanese War – that’s it!’

Note that this was not said on the day of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, but on the day the USSR entered the war.

It was reported by US Senator Thomas Connolly, who, upon learning of the Soviet government’s declaration of war, exclaimed: “Thank GOD! The war is almost over.” General Claire Chenault, commander of the US Air Force in China, told the New York Times on August 15, 1945: “The entry of the Soviet Union into the war against Japan was the main factor in hastening the end of the war in the Pacific, which would have happened if atomic bombs had not been used. The Red Army’s swift strike against Japan ended the encirclement, bringing Japan to its knees.

The influential New York Herald Tribune on August 10 noted in an editorial: “There is no doubt that the entry of the Soviet Union into the war will be a military demonstration. “

On the day the Soviet Union declared war, a special statement was made by the British government which read in part: “The war which the Soviet Union has today declared on Japan is proof of the closeness between the main allies, and it should shorten the period of conflict and create conditions conducive to the establishment of an all- general. We welcome this great decision from the Soviet Union.”

They were honest, fair assessments. Unfortunately, during the Cold War, they began to move away from such fair assessments and, contrary to generally known facts, to present the participation of the USSR in the war with Japan as an act “unnecessary” and even “harmful”.

Subsequently, this “thesis” was adopted by the Japanese government, which, with the initiative of the Americans, used it to organize a revival campaign demanding a review of the results of the war that had included in international agreements and the UN Charter, while at the same time presenting illegal territorial claims to the Soviet Union and now the Russian Federation.

Translation: ES