My understanding is that the Japanese navy was cooked long before either the bombs or the soviets joining the war. The US could have simply waited for the corrosive fuel they resorted to using to finally brick their fleet.
That’s probably true but that’s not what this article is about. The question is what prompted Japan to capitulate when it did.
Even without any navy whatsoever Japan could still have held out for quite some time just on the basis of their land forces which were dug in and fortified all along the eastern coast of the home islands. The bombing of their cities - atomic or not - as the article explains, actually did little to reduce their defensive capabilities or their resolve to keep fighting.
The same was true in Europe too by the way. The mass bombing raids by either side, while horrific for civilians, had very little impact on the balance of forces in the war or the political leadership’s resolve.
The article makes the argument, and i think it’s true, that if the Soviets had not entered the war Japan could and likely would have tried to force the US to attempt a land invasion in hopes the casualties incurred would be large enough to give Japan leverage in the negotiations.
It was the fact that the Soviet army steamrolled them so hard in Manchuria and made such rapid progress in liberating the northern islands one after another that completely erased any hopes of holding out for better terms that Japan may have had. All their options went out the window then within a matter of days.
And what the article does not say is that at the end of the day the Japanese imperialists and the Japanese bourgeoisie knew they would have a much better time under a US occupation than a Soviet one. Like the Nazis and the German industrialist elite, all but a few of them would get away with their crimes and be integrated into the US led bourgeois world order.
My understanding is that the Japanese navy was cooked long before either the bombs or the soviets joining the war. The US could have simply waited for the corrosive fuel they resorted to using to finally brick their fleet.
That’s probably true but that’s not what this article is about. The question is what prompted Japan to capitulate when it did.
Even without any navy whatsoever Japan could still have held out for quite some time just on the basis of their land forces which were dug in and fortified all along the eastern coast of the home islands. The bombing of their cities - atomic or not - as the article explains, actually did little to reduce their defensive capabilities or their resolve to keep fighting.
The same was true in Europe too by the way. The mass bombing raids by either side, while horrific for civilians, had very little impact on the balance of forces in the war or the political leadership’s resolve.
The article makes the argument, and i think it’s true, that if the Soviets had not entered the war Japan could and likely would have tried to force the US to attempt a land invasion in hopes the casualties incurred would be large enough to give Japan leverage in the negotiations.
It was the fact that the Soviet army steamrolled them so hard in Manchuria and made such rapid progress in liberating the northern islands one after another that completely erased any hopes of holding out for better terms that Japan may have had. All their options went out the window then within a matter of days.
And what the article does not say is that at the end of the day the Japanese imperialists and the Japanese bourgeoisie knew they would have a much better time under a US occupation than a Soviet one. Like the Nazis and the German industrialist elite, all but a few of them would get away with their crimes and be integrated into the US led bourgeois world order.