How would have WW2 gone if the US had not used nuclear bombs on Japan?
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- čas přidán 26. 04. 2022
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Imagine if the US did not use the nuclear bombs on Japan in 1945. Instead, imagine it went through with the planned conventional attack on Japan. That called for a seaborne invasion more massive than D-Day. Operation Downfall - Allied invasion of Japan. This video will assume it actually happened.
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Wow Awesome😍😍😍
Just think this was all arranged by the same families as the shhh going on now.
Japan tried to negotiate through Sweden's intermediaries, the Vatican only the US rejected the negotiations, such are the facts of Binkov.
None of what this video says is true. They didn't surrender because of the atomic bombs OR the soviet invasion of Manchuria. In-fact Emperor Hirohito had sued for peace months before Hiroshima. His only condition? That the emperor state remained, and it remained anyway after the surrender. Japan had lost the moment they failed to achieve Air and Naval superiority over the Pacific, let alone Japanese waters. There was never going to be an "operation downfall", are you crazy? After what Americans saw in Iwo Jima and Okinawa it was out of the picture. This was purely designed as an excuse to sedate the populace into thinking that somehow nuking civilians was the "moral choice" when its really just an illusion because there was never going to be a full scale invasion of Japan when Japan had already surrendered BEFORE the nukes. The Soviet Union also had ZERO capability to invade mainland Japan. No navy whatsoever to support this. The nuclear bombs were a nasty, vile, disgusting show of force that resulted in the needless lives of hundreds of thousands children, women, and elderly people who were not involved with the war. We would have the same timeline without the atomic bombs dropped. It was not until after they dropped their new toy was when they accepted the peace terms offered by Japan and quite literally didn't change a thing about the terms. Stop trying to justify it. You can't in either a moral or logistical capacity. Also literally not a single US General or Admiral agreed with the nukes, so armchair historians need not apply:
DWIGHT EISENHOWER:
"During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude..."
In a Newsweek interview, Eisenhower again recalled the meeting with Stimson:
"...the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."
- Ike on Ike, Newsweek, 11/11/63
ADMIRAL WILLIAM D. LEAHY:
"It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.
"The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."
- William Leahy, I Was There, pg. 441.
GENERAL DOUGLAS MacARTHUR (this guy got his shit kicked in by the japanese, mind you):
Norman Cousins was a consultant to General MacArthur during the American occupation of Japan. Cousins writes of his conversations with MacArthur, "MacArthur's views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed." He continues, "When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor."
Norman Cousins, The Pathology of Power, pg. 65, 70-71.
I want to bring special attention to the last part of MacArthur's quote because it is nothing but the truth.
None of this would have happened as Russia was already amassing 1 million+ soldiers for a Japan invasion when he US dropped the bombs, many believe Japan civilians were sacrificed to stop Russia taking Japan, and was the primary reason for the use of Nuclear weapons.
Here's a hint according to contemporary estimates: the US Government commissioned Purple Heart medals in anticipation of invading Japan, for soldiers wounded in battle. The invasion never happened, so they put them in storage. The Korean War, the Vietnam War, countless third world Incursions, Desert Storm, and over 50 years later they finally ran out of Purple Hearts for the Japanese Invasion and had to commission more.
They ran out in 2006
Thats insane
My grandfather was in Europe for the war and was in the process of shipping him to the pacific, it makes me shudder that he could’ve earned one of those Purple Hearts. Luckily my mother was born in 1940
Learn something new every day.
I thought they were still going off of that stockpile.
People rail on the cruelty of the atomic bomb, but gloss over the fire-bombings which killed way more civilians in a crueler way.
and people gloss over the holocaust of 60+ native Americans when the European colonists stole North America.
@gamevalor okay bro 😂👍
I probably owe my existence to the atomic bombs. In 1945 my father was part of the Royal Navy fleet assembling in Sydney in preparation for the invasion of Japan. Instead my father sailed home, having married my mother before he left the UK. I was born in 1947...and it is only recently that I realise the debt I owe to the atomic bombs
My grandfather (on my dad's side) had fought in Europe. When Germany had surrender, he was one of many who was told that they would be retrained in preparation for the invasion of the Japanese Home Islands. I'm fairly certain he would have been in the first wave. I owe my existence to the atomic bomb as well. As do many alive today, especially in Japan. It's sad but that's just the way it was.
the subtitle to "Dr.Strangelove" was 'How I learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb'......good reasons to be grateful, gentlemen.😁
Years later, Harry Truman replied to a question about what a difficult decision it must have been to order the dropping of the bomb; "It took me one second to make the decision; can you imagine how I would have had to explain to all of the parents of the dead boys from an invasion of the home islands that we had this weapon and we didn't use it?!
Pretty much, he had to.
Japan had a large stock pile of chemical and biological weapons as well. While the United States swayed away from this. I am all but positive that Japan would have used everything by their means. From their perspective its us or them. Survival of our people or not?
The Japanese didn't care about their survival by the end of the war, to them, it was better to kill the country than to surrender, in fact, even in our timeline, when word got out that Emperor Hirohito was going to surrender, the Japanese Army tried to do a coup to overthrow him so they could continue fighting to the bitter end
Both countries had massive chemical stockpiles since neither signed the Geneva Protocol. The US had planned to use them as well.
Edit: Geneva Protocol* not Geneva Convention
@@dumbfkers they were part of the league of nations which probitied the use
They did but thankfully none made it to any cities. Japan was very desperate and used balloons late in the war for many kinds of bombs.
@@paulus121212 which is why they did use them and thankfully none hit any cities.
Such a wasted opportunity to not call this campaign “Operation Sunset”
In earlier decades I asked numerous Veterans of the Pacific War about how they felt about the use of the Bomb. Every one said it was an immense personal relief, knowing they would have lived to raise their families etc.
My father was at Iwo Jima with the 5th Division. He was on Guam, training for the invasion of Japan when the bombs were dropped in August 1945. He told me that all he could think was that he was going to live and get to go home.
Harry Truman was an artillery officer in World War I and he saw first hand the death and destruction in the trenches. I'm sure that had a direct effect on his decision to drop the bomb. How could he not use a weapon that would save millions of lives and stop the war. (And the cost of the Manhattan Project) So he did it. How could he look into the faces of all those people who lost loved ones if he decided not to use it. I'm happy because my Dad and Uncle were in Navy boot camp in Chicago and they got to be in a parade on VJ Day. Harry Truman was a real man. Your father was a real man too!!!
The resulting alternate peace in this alternate timeline would have included much deeper and lasting anger and resentment between Japan and the US. Given the type of warfare required, the number of personal stories of horrific treatment on both sides would have dwarfed the results of using the two atomic weapons, imo. I hate that it was necessary to use such weapons, but I am grateful that the US and Japan are allies today.
It wasn't necessary.
@@jpc443 It stopped the war - didn't it? And if you don't think it was necessary, then go back and learn about the Battle of Okinawa. That's what we'd have been facing the entire way through Japan - and the death toll would have been astronomically higher than 2 city centers getting leveled.
Would it tho? Germany wasn't the best enemy to deal with and there's barely any resentment.
@@chinguunerdenebadrakh7022 Of course there isn't - WE WON. There's little to no resentment when one wins a fight. Look at Germany after WW1 and tell me that LOSERS don't have resentment under the right circumstances?
@@dekardkain5469 at the time, Japan was subject to a drum tight naval blockade and with no air force to speak of B29s were pummeling it unposed from the air. It was only a matter of time before Japan sued for peace. There was no need to drop the bomb and certainly not to save millions of US lives in a land invasion that there was equally no need for.
To counter the inevitable claim that the SU would of invaded Japan's mainland, with what sealift capacity? They lost most of their US provided LSTs taking the Kuril islands and they certainly didn't have the sealift capacity to invade beyind that.
They would March so many men into the ocean to create a man bridge. Soviet Doctrine 😂
All the Soviet theorizer fanboys keep forgetting the Soviet’s had little amphibious knowledge and a crappy navy compared to Japan who had a lot of practice defending islands by now. Loss of foreign holdings in Manchuria didn’t scare Japan into surrender either, it just further reminded them that they weren’t special and their empire was dead.
I do believe that at I read somewhere that after the Japanese surrender the Soviet Union " strongly suggested " a partition of mainland Japan similar to what had happened in Germany.
It may of been Truman, Churchill or both that said,
" Oh hell no!" ( Ok they just ignored the request. )
They didn't really fear the Soviets actually invading as much as the Soviets claiming they were in the war vs Japan too, and demand a partition of Japan similar to Germany.
Japan did not go into Vietnam North Korea Will not send troops to Ukraine ?..
Let this vid be a lesson to any silly unrealistic leftwinger that thinks the atomic attacks were mistakes
The US only had material to build three bombs for a year and a half. Numbnut.
Your statement makes no point. I blame your parents for your low IQ.@@anthonyn.9228
@@anthonyn.9228 incorrect, they have enough materials to create two bombs per month. In fact, the tactical deployment of the atom bombs were considered since there will be an estimated 15 bombs available by then.
In anticipation of this invasion the US Military ordered the production of hundreds of thousands of Purple Heart Medals. They ordered so many that decades later in wars like Korea, Vietnam, Dessert Storm the Purple Heart medals given to soldiers were the ones produced from back in WW 2. They were all leftovers.
The bean counters knew their stuff.
Operation Downfall would have made it an open debate on which part of WWII was worse. The Eastern Front or the Japanese Front.
No. 1. An invasion was not necessary: all the US had to do was continue bombing until the Japanese gave up. 2. The scale of the Battle of Russia encompasses all other fighting of WW2. No single campaign comes close to it.
The talk of invading home island seems to revolve around a flawed assumption that we would have in the fall of 1945. I argue that US was not stupid and would have waited to invade until spring or summer of 1946. An extended blockade and air campaign would have destroyed and crippled Japan. Cut off of imports of oil, minerals and food Japan would have had mass starvation. Shortages of fuel would have prevented any large and quick movement of Japanese troops. Fighter aircraft brought from Europe and stationed on smaller coastal island would be roaming non stop up and down Japan shooting anything moving. When invasion came US would be facing a weakened and potentially broken Japanese army. Time was on US's sides not Japan's.
@@Privat2840 We did take those into consideration and determined that the war should be ended sooner rather than later because
a.) the Japanese were not giving up. Their industry, agriculture, infrastructure, etc. were already destroyed with our fire bombing campaign. Their navy was decimated, they were effectively cut off from receiving minerals, oil, etc. since their merchant fleet was sunk. Despite all of that and more, they would not surrender. In fact, Japanese High Command's plan, Operation Ketsugo, was, by their words, "The Glorious Death of One Hundred Million." That was their plan, to drown our forces in their blood and bury our forces beneath their bodies. They only stopped because the Emperor ordered them to do so and even then some still wanted to continue the war.
b.) we were coming up to the end of our rope at home. Not just in moral but in resources and we were sick and tired of the war like everyone else. Our High Command was not stupid but we were on a time table. We wanted the war to end sooner than later. Dragging it out with a blockade and continuation of the air campaign only extended the pain for another five or ten years.
You are not giving the fanaticism of the Imperial Japanese their proper respect.
@@Privat2840 Which is exactly why an invasion, or Atom bomb, was unnecessary. Once the Japanese saw that the food had run out, they would have surrendered, and have embraced occupation and rebuilding - just as they did historically.
If Operation Downfall actually happened, the Japan we know today would have drastically been different. This is why I appreciate our own timeline despite its faults.
Probably a dead race, or close to.
@@icecold9511 false Vietnamese and Afghans won against the US despite having much less equipment and small budgets. The USA will fall like other empires, from within.
The outcome would be the allied occupation forces driven out like the Vietnam War and Afghanistan. Note Japan would offer far more resistance than the Vietnamese. So the whole invasion would be for naught.
@@gamevalor
An insurgency war is always harder. And Vietnam wasn't fought for a victory. Rules of engagement hamstrung efforts and they had Russian support. Saying NV beat us is like saying Taiwan has held off China.
Hitler gassed 3 million Jews Europeans turned a blind eye the same USA ideology Hitler stole all the Jews wealth their
Properties usa and North Atlantic terrorist organisation NATO today Hitler ideology alive and well now steal Russia’s
Wealth and property usa like Hitlers ideology how many Jewish children suffer from terrible deformities as in Vietnam Afghanistan slaughtered 5000in Hawaiians to use thier land as war base japan Australia New Zealand poisoned the Pacific Islanders land which today uninhabitable for eternity testing usa nukes now scream if the want to try a new empire colonialism slaughtered 90 million please reply how many slaughtered by Russia And China in 200 yrs Coloniali empire
On its death bed usa citizens slaughtering their own children love assassinating their presidents trashed the White House
Passed a law Granting the usa immunity for war crimes as thier puppets isreal Democracy ??????????
Well shit looking at this video's comments they didnt need atomic bombs all they needed was some smug 14 year old youtube commentators who wouldve won the war with zero casualties pretty amazing
strange thing to call yourself out
The Germans fought on until they were pretty well completely overrun. Berlin was bought by the Soviets at a high price. For some reason some people think Japan would have been less fanatical.
Not less fanatical. Less capable. Japan was even more vulnerable to firebombing than Germany. Also unlike Germany, Japan never had a proper answer to the much-maligned M4 Sherman. They had no tanks that could really stand up against it, and their antitank weapons were designed to fight the kind of tanks they fielded. Even the old M3 Lee tanks with their bizarre layout would have posed a big problem for Japan due to the fact that the old tank bristled with machine guns and was a tough nut for infantry to crack.
Not that the Japanese wouldn't have done a lot of damage but you need weapons that work in order to mount effective resistence, and Japan didn't have that many of those left by the time the war reached the home islands.
Japan was more realistic than Germany. They would have surrendered to the US to keep Russia out which was coming shortly.
The Allies could not have known that. It did not match with their experience fighting the Japanese in the previous 4 years.
Russia could not invade Japan unless the US Navy provided taxi service, but it was a bigger problem that Russia might occupy ALL of western Europe and Korea, and China, and no one had the troops in place to stop them or to dislodge them once they occupied both continents.
@@hagamapamaless capable yes. But still dangerous. To US troops and themselves. There is no doubt in my mind that many Japanese soldiers would willingly turn themselves into human bombs, flinging themselves onto US tanks while strapped with explosives.
Also, as was witnessed on many islands that had been held by Japan, the Japanese military had told civilians many horrifying stories about what the US soldiers would do to them. Including things like slex savery, and cannibalism. This had been enough to make civilians throw themselves off of cliffs when they saw US soldiers approaching. Soldiers witnessed it, but were too far away to intercede. Imagine how much worse that would have been on the Japanese homeland. Potentially millions of women and children committing suicide because they wrongly feared what they believed to be the alternative.
@@hagamapama They did though. Part of the reason they didn't on the islands is they were preparing for a defense of the mainland Japan.
15:45 'That damned typhoon...'
-Some mongolian general
5:26 The 5 Japanese carriers you list were in no condition for any battle. Hōshō was a training carrier. Katsuragi, didn't have not enough personnel or planes to man her. Junyō, damaged in the Battle of Philippine Sea, was not repaired. Kasagi, Aso and Ikoma being constructed but not finished. Hōshō and Katsuragi were used to ship Japanese servicemen back to Japan. All lacked fuel, planes, and/or personnel, so Japan had no combat active carrier at the end of the war.
They had 3 mouths before the start of this operation, now it's possible they could have had them all repaired/ completed by the time this invasion started.
At lest in terms of how they would have been used probably not as aircraft carriers however....
Also training or not doesn't mean they wouldn't have been used, not that I think the Japanese would have used them like people think, they would have used them by trying to beach them on landing sights, and or used them for last attempts at raming enemy ship's near or around landing sights.
the Japanese had essentially nothing left. Out of gas, food, ammo. The US could have simply waited until a starving Japan capitulated.
What would happen is the same people upset we used the bombs would be upset we didn't use them 😂
Accurate
Spoken like an American. You're not the heroes you portray yourselves as.
@@sambingham1196 Nobody said we were heroes...
@@sambingham1196 compared to Imperial Japan almost anyone is a hero. Seethe and cope
@@StormCatpounce ye for real Nanking wasn't exactly a picnic
I've been waiting on this one! Excellent work, as always.
Such an interesting topic!
Don't forget to cover all the potential civilian casualties from fighting US forces with bamboo weapons and committing suicde when you get there. And don't forget to mention when you get to the Atom bombs that if they were not used, given everything we know about human history, what are the odds that you think we would've used them in any other conflict or crisis to see what they would do (IE cuban missile crisis for ex). In other words, the two bombings gave us a clear blueprint of what would happen making nuclear war less likely because people like Kennedy and Kruschev and so fourth would know exactly what to expect in a nuclear exchange as opposed to it being theoretical.
yoo
Kings and generals at one time led their Troops int battle niw they use their troops as cannon fodder illegal wars leaders
Retire on high salaries citizens fork out millions to Guard them against assisnnation in America A pastime slaughtering their own children and presidents Use lies and propaganda to their naive citizens ie USA And Uk saved Europe from the Natzi’s who now control North Atlantic terrorist organisation NATO Yugoslavia 5000 slaughtered 22 chines in their embassy
I had to watch this because my Father was a USMC aviator in the Pacific Theatre. This topic was discussed in my highschool one day. So at dinner that night, I asked him what his opinion was. He just said: "Well, look at it this way.... if it wasn't for the bombs, you probably wouldn't be here today...."
Yup ... my dad was a medic on Saipan ... he always said the same thing. He hated the bomb but was thankful for it
My dad said something similar and thanked Paul Tibbets.
Worse than that...
The A-bombs prevented Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night, the use of Bio-Weapons on San Diego, San Francisco and Portland, which would have killed between 25% of the population of North America and 25% of the World. Had OCBatN happened, the Japanese People and Imperial Japan would only exist in the History Books, as the World response would be simply "KILL THEM ALL !!!!!!!!!"
The crazy part about how many Purple Hearts they made for operation downfall (in anticipation of casualties), they stopped issuing them in ~2006, with over half left if I recall…
6 million deaths for an invasion vs 120 thousand for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As hideous as an A-bomb may be,the scales tip drastically toward it in this scenario. Also ,remember that Dresden was fire bombed by conventional weapons with a loss of 35 thousand people. A bombing like that might have happened if the A bomb was never developed.
There were bombings WORST than Dresden (the 35k number for Dresden is likely over-estimated, based on the German reports at that time) Japan. The bombing of Tokyo in March 1945 is estimated to have cost 90,000-100,000 lives en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo_(10_March_1945)
I looked at the casualty estimates 19:23 and thought they were lower than I'd previously heard, then realized they were only for the US.
'Volunteer fighting force was all healthy men and women of a certain age' If you weren't able to fight you were expected to commit suicide rather than be taken captive so really everyone.
I know it sounds insane but dropping the nukes was more humane than invading them
While I wish that we didn't have to, I believe more civilians would have died in and invasion than died in the nuclear attacks, so I agree with you.
@@jacobmott1944 Not to sound heartless but I'm more glad US service men didn't die taking the Island than civies being my grandfather was in Europe and they were going to ship his ass to the Pacific for the invasion.. Fun fact but they made so many Purple Heart medals for the invasion that they were used at least up until the first Gulf war
AGREE WITH YOU 100%.
@@lars1701again We ran out finally during the 2nd gulf war
@@nicholasprzeslawski Thats a chilling fact isn't?
The fighting in the Pacific became even more vicious and brutal the closer the US forces got to Japan and it was horrific to begin with. The Japanese strategy from the beginning was to force the US to negotiate on terms favourable to Japan through a war of attrition as they knew they couldn't invade the US or come close to matching her industrial capacity. To this end the Japanese would have mobilised their entire population to fight to the death for every inch of land and take as many invaders with them. Dropping the Bomb was horrific but an invasion of Japan would have been an even greater , more devastating ,unimaginable bloodbath as every road, village, town and city would have been a bloodier replica of Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
Would have been interesting to watch the entire population of Japan exterminated. Similar to watching 1.2 billion Chinese exterminated today. As a USAF 2W1, we often go over the models (not regarding Japan or WW2), and it does make for a better outcome on the world stage. Once the manufacturing is readjusted into other countries in a more diversified setting.
I say that because that is what would become of Japan in such an eventuality. It would have been a war that would be untenable to the political sphere. It would become a fight of constant revenge until the near desolation of the Japanese people. Eliminated largely from afar and indiscriminately
I lived and worked in Japan for a while in the 1980s. The ground is relatively flat along the coast. As you go inland, the terrain becomes mountainous, steep, and covered in dense jungle. An Invasion of this country was going to be bloody and costly.
This is sometimes a touchy topic as my wife is Japanese and her father is a survivor of Hiroshima. She has always felt that using nuclear weapons was unjust and the wrong choice taken. When we visit the Peace Memorial in Hiroshima, it's not just random names of people that died... some were my wife's extended family, included her grandmother that suffered from radiation-caused illnesses later in life.
That being said, I explained that it was the "least destructive" option available. That an invasion would have meant the total destruction of Japan as we know it, potentially even a partition of it like East and West Germany, or North and South Korea if the USSR decided they wanted to invade Hokkaido.
In war, there really isn't right or wrong choices... just choices with more or less destruction.
@@americaforer1776 my great-uncle was shot down over the Aleutian Islands... Grappa was always an advocate for the bomb.. not out of vengeance but out of he didn't millions to die needlessly in a invasion
I would say otherwise. The allies already got the soviets to perpare an invasion of Japanese territories in Manchuria and Korea; and the Japanese high command was more inclined to continue because they thought with the Soviet NAP, they can allocate more resources and hold off the allies. When the soviets did invade Manchuria, they reached Korea in a very short time, and Soviet influence in a following peace deal was something the Japanese were deathly afraid of. The "non-conditional surrender" part was also out of the question since while Truman had advertised nothing less than non-conditional surrender, they were quite happy with keeping the Japanese institutions unphased in the treaty. The nukes were less of a bomb saving american lives and more of a spectacle that was to scare the Soviet Union and to force the Japanese to agree to a surrender they already wanted.
@@shinydewott a division of the country would have been a far worse fate than those two little firecrackers right? Especially with the North Korean model present
@@mikycarney5779 the fate of Japan, both in and after the war, was sealed before the atomic bombs were even dropped. It didn't do anything to change this, because the Japanese still got all of their demands met in this "unconditional surrender" and the Soviets got as little as possible.
@@shinydewott The Soviets didn't reach Korea overland. They only got there via naval/amphibious landings.
And the Japanese knew the Soviets were going to invade. That's why they were redeploying the Kwantung Army. However, they didn't organize fast enough and were caught on the back foot.
I was born on 4 Oct 1945 on the base hospital on the Marine Air Base, Cherry Point NC. My father was there being retrained for the coming invasion of Japan. Had the US not dropped nukes on Japan the invasion would have likely happened and I would have not had a father.
You'd be statistically likely to have a father.
In the last weeks of WW2 in Asia, a New Zealander (my country of residence) was the second-highest ranked Allied POW in one of the Japanese POW camps. He and the #1 ranked Allied Officer were bought before the Camp Commandant, who shared with them that he had been copied with orders that in the moment when the first 'U.S' (Allied) soldier set foot on the Japanese mainland, all Allied POWs held by the Japanese military were to be immediately executed. This would have involved the deaths of more than one million soldiers. If not for the Atom bombs that were subsequently dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki this would have come to pass. While I doubt that the senior Allied leadership would have been aware of these orders, it can safely be said that these two bombs in fact were a fortunate conclusion to the war.
Again why do people lie on here so profusely? Whether the Japanese had such orders or not the dropping of the bombs would have nothing to do with it. In many places in SE Asia the Allies were aware of such orders and were able to contact the Japanese in charge and warn them they will be held accountable. Again, this applies to the BS about the Japanese committing suicide. Japanese commanders WERE scared of being hung. There were also Asian versions of SAARF ready to be dropped to known Japanese concentration camps. Still, those in the know understood that such orders would likely not be followed. As I said, by June-July 1945 there was a dialog with many of the Japanese forces. That is because by that time those forces knew their days were numbered.
I most likely would not be alive, as my Grandpa was in the Philipines training for Downfall when the bombs dropped. I literally owe my life to Oppenheimer.
My father had embarked from Italy bound for either the US east coast to be mustered out or the Philippines for beach landing training. My oldest sister was born in August of 1945 and the rest of us may, also, owe our lives to Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project.
Know you don't. According to Sec of war Stinson a naval blockade would have brought about a surrender and the bombing was unnecessary'
Admiral Leahy, Truman’s chief military advisor, wrote in his memoirs: “It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.- asia Pacific Journal
Eisennhower agreed with Leahy
"General Dwight Eisenhower, in his memoirs, recalled a visit from Secretary of War Henry Stimson in late July 1945: “I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of ‘face.’” Eisenhower reiterated the point years later in a Newsweek interview in 1963, saying that “the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.” "-Asia Pacific Journal
This video exactly puts forth the point I always argue when people say the US should not have used the nukes on Japan. The actual cost of human life on both the US, Japanese and US Allied side would have been magnitudes greater then what the casualties were from the dropping of the atomic bombs. Those bombings which did not even kill as many people as the conventual bombing of Tokyo with fire bombs.
But japan didn't surrender because of the bombings. They surrendered because they feared the soviet union would invade japan since they declared war on japan a couple of days before they surrendered.
@@marcelkuningas6941 1) "a couple of days!" *Same with the nukes.* And we actually have the emperor referencing the nukes when they surrendered. No such reference exists for the Soviets. 2) the Soviets didn't have the capabilities to invade mainland Japan. Nor would the US have let it happen, as they were against even the UK and Australia joining.
@@marcelkuningas6941 Not true at all. Just look at the recordings of the Japanese high command meetings after the first atom bomb until their surrender. They spend almost no time talking about the USSR attack in China. Japan by that point had already accepted that it was losing all of it's international territory after the war. Japan was just fighting on to avoid agreeing to unconditional surrender. As a result in the months and even up to a year prior to the end of the war Japan had been moving it's troops and equipment back from mainland Asia to Japan as is stated in this video. Everything to Japan by then relied on the defense of the home island and causing the Allies as much damage as possible to get them to move off the terms of unconditional surrender.
After the first nuke hit Japan their nuclear scientists said it would be the only one to the Japanese high command based on their information that to produce enough nuclear material to build a nuke would take years. When the USSR attacked on August 8th it was talked about that day alone. And according to the Japanese leadership it played no role in their decision to surrender as they already accepted that mainland Asian territory as lost territory. It was after the second atom bomb dropped on Japan August 9th that they take the vote on if they should surrender or not. Even then the vote is split 3 to 3 so they need to call the Emperor in to make the decision of if they should surrender which he agrees to after hearing what is happening to his cities by the new American weapon.
@Palpatine As I already replied to Marcel what you are saying is not true. Japan more then a year prior to their surrender had accepted they were going to lose all of their international territory at the end of WW2. All they were fighting for was to avoid unconditional surrender. And as a result they were moving all of their troops and equipment from main-land Asia back to Japan for about a year prior to their surrender. The Japanese goal was to make the invasion of Japan so costly to the US and allies that they would agree to give Japan some other surrender terms. But the nuclear bombings of Japan are what changed that opinion in the Japanese high leadership not the USSR invasion. The USSR invasion did nothing to Japan but prevent them from moving more troops back to Japan. Something they had already been having a hard time doing for months because of the destruction of their merchant ships by the US submarine force. The second atom bombing of Japan forced a vote by the leadership on if they should surrender then or not. The vote was split 3 to 3 on surrender vs continuing to fight. This forced the Emperor in to break the tie and he agreed to surrender not because of the USSR invasion even a little bit. But because he knew with the US atomic bombings it would allow the US to destroy his nation from the air without needing to use the landing force Japan was hoping to use to get better surrender conditions then the unconditional surrender conditions they agreed to.
@Palpatine Incorrect. The Japanese leadership never talked about the USSR invasion when talking about if they should surrender or not. Japan had already accepted that it was losing all non-Japanese territory after the war. Japan was fighting on to avoid unconditional surrender and as this video points out was moving troops and equipment back from main-land Asia to Japan prior to their surrender to fight the last fight on their home land.
A few years ago, I had studied this in depth. After reading the casualty estimates for all sides, reading the admiralty's predictions and reading Japan's preparations, I can understand why people were and are against the use of nuclear weapons, but I cannot understand why people could read all the data I read and think Downfall was a better option than two nuclear weapons. There aren't often good options, only better and worse ones, and logically speaking, nuclear weapons were obviously the better, but still not ideal or good option.
Most modern people in the west vastly underestimate the horrors of real war, yet they are thoroughly informed on the horrors of nuclear war and radiation so to them it is a nightmare compared to just something out of the history books (that they didn't really read anyways).
I think we also have the benefit of hindsight to look back and say "Wow that was super fucked up that we nuked a country" because we now know just how devastating and terrible nukes are, not just the detonation itself but its aftereffects. The military and scientific communities probably did not have the same knowledge we do today and shouldn't be held to the same standards that we would put on a country using nuclear weapons would today. Not saying using nukes was OK then but, to the people of the time, it was just another weapon and not the complete shift in military doctrine it became
@@hungrymusicwolf i bet you dont think the same about russias doctrine of targeting civilians it they use it also to make the war shorter i despise both
@@KennyNGA You're wrong on both in what you think is true and on what I think to begin with, but even if you weren't it would be an apples and oranges comparison. This isn't the second world war and Russia had a choice not to fight and continue existing peacefully without ever needing to start a war. Their attacks are unprovoked and the attacks on civilians completely unnecessary.
The strategy of demoralizing a country through attacking the citizens was tried multiple times during WW2 and frequently backfired, it did so in the exact same way it is happening in Ukraine right now, namely with a very angry Ukrainian population even more intend on resisting to the bitter end.
So the doctrine of targeting civilians doesn't work to my knowledge for one, if it did end the war in a few days I could at least admit that it resulted in less overall suffering even if I didn't like it, but it doesn't so I disagree with it.
Second of all you are an absolute as*hol$ for implying I have any positive view of war. War is simply a part of our reality, so you don't get to take the easy way out of "oh well I don't like any part of war!", newsflash nobody does you spoiled child, but given that it exists we're going to have to make the difficult choice of how we go about it and for once in their existence the US government made the right choice at the time. Considering the choice between the three options: "1. let Japan recover and repeatedly wage war against it until it hopefully collapses on itself a few hundred million deaths later. 2. Invade it directly and likely cause 4-5 million deaths and potentially up to tens of millions, or 3. drop two bombs with max 400 thousand - 500 thousand deaths and end the war in one go.
Well, I personally don't think nuclear weapons should not have been used. I think its use should have been much more restrained. There's nothing wrong with nuking an empty field (or the ocean) in Japan to demonstrate the power of the new weapon and state the weapon will be used on Japan's population if they don't surrender. If Japan surrenders then, great, no Hiroshima or Nagasaki resident had to die! If Japan doesn't surrender, much of the moral blame would fall on the Japanese government itself.
And in the end, you would have achieved Japanese capitulation, but with much more of your moral intact.
I’m glad you mentioned the UK and it’s commonwealth countries being a part of this attack on Japan.
Clearly use of the atomic bomb saved millions of lives,
The best decision Truman ever made.
Using the bombs was unavoidable out of sheer momentum, but they were unnecessary. The cities bombed would merely have been destroyed by B-29s. Same result.
@@jerrygoldman4484 -- How many hundreds, if not thousands, of American airmen would you have been willing to sacrifice, when you had the means to end the long war immediately?
Pretty clear as bad as the a-bombs were it probably worked out for the best even for Japan historically, it also prevented ww3 and set the current taboo on their use
Those 2 bombs saved lives on both sides. The explosion is bigger but no less deadly than fire bombs over all the cities
Hey and a reminder for the ppl claiming that the nukes were ‘too far’ and unjustified, there were reports of a ‘Kill All POW’s’ order sent out to local commanders outside of Japan (considering they still held significant territory across South-East Asia) that said they should kill all Prisoners of War from August 20th or so. Now thats based on surviving evidence. But if that’s not good enough, Hirohito when deciding on surrender days after the nuclear strikes, actually stopped a fucking COUP attempt by military officials who wanted to continue the war. If you think the nukes weren’t necessary, think again, because thousands upon thousands of people were stuck in those concentration camps or on the railroads or in Japan itself who were days away from dying. I know I owe my existence to those bombs, my grandfather was just a teenager stuck in the camps without his mom or dad and every day given less and less to survive on.
The "People claiming...nukes were unjustified" include Adm Halsey, Adm Leahy, Eisenhower and MacArthur, Herbert Hoover, and the Secretary of war. All were more knowledgeable of the situation than any of us, BTW How many pows did the bombs kill both in the cities and in retribution by the Japanese?
Let's turn that question around: How many JAPANESE did the dropping of the bombs save do you think? Millions? Tens of millions? If the US had to march up the islands by foot and blow the hell out of any resistance that showed its faces, how much of a Japan do you think would have been left at the end? Not to mention blockades, starvation, epidemics, bad food and water, and all the horrors that go with this.
Germany was pretty badly devastated, Germany's devastation would have had nothing on what happened in Japan.@@josephshields2922
Who cares? They were wrong then and now. I notice that you don’t mention Nimitz, who was the real architect behind the pacific war and the mastermind of the American naval strategy that placed Rickover in a position to dominate the seas. The same people whining over the use of atomic weapons sure do gloss over a lot of contemporaneous crimes like the mass rape of women by the Soviets, the Three Alls of Japan, the British actions in South Asia and pretty much any action the Germans took during WW2. WW2 was brutal and a knife fight to the finish. Using nuclear weapons in a limited fashion wound up making it political suicide to use them against a peer power and has made major land wars obsolete.
Japan would have fought on the home islands savagely. Okinawa, the single bloodiest battle in all of World War II, had been a staging area. Harry Truman faced a cataclysmic decision, but he is on record; he was not going to be put in the position of having to tell the families of American servicemen that the nation had a weapon which would have ended the bloodshed, but had refused to use it.
If this had happened, I doubt South Korea would be a thing. My guess is that with the Soviets occupying all of Korea, the DPRK would encompass the entire Korean peninsula.
There would be no Korean war. There would of been a Japan war between the People's Democratic Republic Of Japan against "South Japan".
The atomic bomb truly saved millions by preventing this and ww3
@@TheMrPeteChannel i guess that would depend on if the Soviets were able to invade Northern Japan as Binkov suggested was a possibility.
It would have been a horrific bloodbath.
Absolutely!
My father was in the 11th airborne in China waiting to attack Japan in 1945. He said that they were told that based on what happened in Europe they expected 90% casualties for the airborne forces when they jumped into Japan
You are lucky, you have a WW2 veteran dad
My dad was on Okinawa getting ready for the invasion of Japan,he told me exactly the same thing,the invasion saved his life.
The Japanese must have some kind of special relationship with typhoons
Call of duty or any shooter video game is really missing out by not making a game on this scenario
The 500 plane bombing raids would have turned into 1000 plane raids. Planes and ships would have transferred from the European theater to the pacific. millions of people in Japan would have died from the bombings and millions more would have starved to death. And you have to remember. Russia just declared war on Japan. If we had to invade from the south. Russia would have invaded from the north. Taking as much land as they could for themselves. And we would have had another divided Germany in Japan.
Even still Japan took so long to surrender Russia and it’s pathetic pacific naval capabilities of 1945 managed to snag the Kuril Islands which they still occupy today
My father was part of the Naval invasion force of mainland Japan, serving as comm/radar on the USS Niagara attack transport specifically designed for this. His was one of the first ships into Tokyo Bay after the surrender landing the first marines. Part of the condition of surrender was a white flag in each gun emplacement. He said there were thousands upon thousands of flags in every conceivable place. He was convinced he and most of that force would have died and that the bomb spared his and millions of lives. He passed away this year at 95 to Naval Honors.
All of Japan was preparing for a fight to the death. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to assume that a conflict on the Japanese mainland could’ve become the new Eastern front.
if the Japanese refuses to surrender, finally their homeland will be occupied and divided by the US, USSR and China...
Yep remember how Vietnamese won the Vietnam War. That's how the allies would lose in the long term.
My father was in the 11 airborne division. They were trained for this invasion they excepted very high casualties
Thanks president Truman for saving hundreds of thousands of American GIs
As horrific as the bombs were, they save MILLIONS of lives in the end. A lesser of two evils.
Japan could have been defeated without an invasion through the use of a naval blockade. In fact it already had been. Japan was no longer capable of taking any offensive operations at all. They couldn’t even fuel their ships. Their industrial capacity simply could not function without imports. In 1945 Japan was heading back to the Stone Age! But the US did not think that time was in their favor, for a whole list of political and strategic reasons. Was that belief accurate? In hindsight, probably not.
Did the bomb save lives? Probably, although far more Japanese lives than American. Did that make it the use of atomic weapons (or the indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets at all) therefore morally justifiable? I’ll let others argue that. At the time it was an atrocity when Germans bombed civilians, but it was heroic when Americans did the same on a far more vast scale. The logic of that eludes me.
@@clydeosterhout1221 Sure they could have blockaded Japan and starved them to death, therefore costing millions of lives due to slow agonizing starvation.
Japan still had vast numbers of troops rampaging through other areas of the world including China, Burma, and countless islands costing yet more lives. They would have continued to take lives while Japan was blockaded. The goal was to bring the entire war to a swift end with the least amount of lives lost (on both sides). As for considering bombing civilians heroic? I personally don't think that's heroic at all. By any side. However it was how war was conducted then. Every major side did it. Britain, US, Germany, Japan, Italy, Soviets etc.
Not really.
@@clydeosterhout1221 When a murderer who tortures, rapes and kills people, that's an issue. When we kill the murderer and his family who support him in such a way that they're immediately vaporized, no suffering, that's less of an issue.
To argue that Fat Man and Little Boy killed civilians is judging it from a modern sense. Civilians die during invasions in conventional combat. This isn't a point of contention seeing as this was normal of the era.
@@janus3555 a guy kills someone I care for, so I firebomb his entire family? That’s the way drug lords operate, not nations. Especially free nations. We need to be better than that!
An amphibious attack on Japan would've costed the US military dearly. They had to resort to a bomb as a cheap way to end the war rather than actual armies directly engaging to see who's boss.
The Soviet Union declared war and invaded at the behest of the allies to further pressure Japan. It's also important to note that Japan wanted the USSR to help negotiate a peace deal but with them having declared war that wasn't an option so they had to accept unconditional surrender.
I do hope people can look at the casualty figures and realize why the atomic bombs had to be used. It was better than millions of dead people.
who tf shortens soviet union with SU instead of ussr
My personal opinion is that atomic bomb should have been used on an empty field or ocean near Japan (and this is not my idea, many scientists on Manhattan project advocated this), then broadcast the results to threaten Japan with a bomb on a populated area.
It would have been a much more moral decision and would have wrought much of the blame of casualties on Japanese government, it's not like the US was lacking nukes, the next nuke was to be ready in about a week after Nagasaki and production was estimated to be 4 monthly from Sep onwards.
To the idiots: yes, Japan committed war crimes during WW2, that doesn't mean you have to go eye for eye. Being the better person is a much better path, especially when it doesn't really cost anything.
@@chinguunerdenebadrakh7022 we weren't that much better. We just won the war because Americans were better equipped and better fighters. Japanese were a second rate armed force brutalizing third rate nations.
@@chinguunerdenebadrakh7022 highly doubt that would have changed anything besides the number of nukes dropped being changed from 2 to 3. Hell, it may have changed it to 4 or more. Not using a weapon on an actual target doesn't have nearly impact as actually using it on a target. It can also have the exact opposite reaction you desire as you now look to your enemy as unwilling to use it and an opportunity may be there exploit your morals to prevent you from using it later on. This is why human shield tactics are still used to this day.
@@nicolivoldkif9096 Yup sometimes you just need to go eye for eye.
While awful and horrible, there was very little option but to use the bombs.
BS. Just firebomb city after city, after city. A nuclear bomb caused fewer deaths than Dresden.
So do you know what the rule of thumb is? It takes three invaders to remove one occupier so if Japan had 900,000 troops it would take almost 3,000,000 US troops to remove them. You would’ve been looking at the US death toll upwards to 1 1/2 million just for this island.
Don’t forget the civilian population who were also trained to die for the emperor, and surrender terms were not agreed to unless the emperor stayed in power. It was not an unconditional surrender.
@@slackdaddy1912 I didn't forget about the civilians but the surrender was unconditional it was MacArthur who allowed the emperor to stay in power for he knew if they were to arrest and try the emperor for war crimes that the civilian population would rise up in revolt causing a large problem for the transition of power at the time he was extremely scorn for his decision by the American people but I believe it was a wise decision at the time keep the war at hand and not let it transition into a rebel guerrilla warfare
The Japanese did have homeland advantage, so you're right there. But the americans had technological advantage and superior results in combat.
Most of the Pacific war was the US on the attack and consistently netted a 3-5:1 KD ratio against the Japanese. There were almost 3 million Japanese casualties with less than 200k American.
One of the most well defended (and arguably the most well defended) strongholds in the world, that being Iwo Jima, although was one of the only few battles where the Americans suffered more casualties, didn't have such a skewed ratio, with more Japanese soldiers dying and more US soldiers getting injured.
This most certainly would've carried over into the invasion of the home islands as the best of the Japanese troops were either dead, exhausted and malnourished, lacking equipment, or on mainland China.
The results still would've been catastrophic and seen well over 1 million American casualties, but in return you would've seen a near wipe out of the Japanese population.
If you've ever been to mainland Japan and paid attention to its geographic features, you could see how nightmarish a land campaign would have been. There's a lot of heavily forested high ground insurgents could hide in and launch attacks from. The weather extremes also wouldn't help.
This topic has long been overdue. Of all the hypothetical battles in Binkov, this has got to be the most real. Thanks, Binkov.
it's not the most real, because it is too much a western take on the topic and not forgetting how the USA failed to win the Vietnam War who had far less money and equipment.
@@gamevalor wasn't vietnam supported by the ussr?
My grandfather was an Avenger radioman/gunner on the Antietam. They were 3 days out from Hawaii en route for the invasion of Japan when they received word of the end of hostilities.
Excellent video on a topic we never heard of!!!
Whenever someone says the atomic bombs were unecessary remember that the US is still giving out purple hearts made for Downfall
Thank you for that fact, terribly interesting and I've never come across it
Oh boy, I sure can't wait to read the respectful, insightful, good-faith and level-headed discussions in the comments section that this subject will spring up!
That's what you get when discussing the moral justification for WMD's.
Personally it sound like a cope. There's really no argument saying it wasn't a crime to drop nuke's on cities. Saying "it worked" isn't really making it any better. Did the german strategy of executing civilians for partisan attacks work? Did it prevent a larger number of deaths?
If we had incontrovertible evidence of super-hitler having been gassed in a german KZ and knew super-hitler would've killed 12 billion people, would that makie the camps morally just? Yeah probably not.
Fun fact about Operation Downfall: The US produced hundred of thousands of Purple Heart medals for the invasion, so many that they have still many left for wounded soldier to this day. Even the wars in Vietnam and Korea together could only use up half of them.
One of the previous foreign ministers of Japan admitted that using the two nuclear weapons in Japan, actually saved more lives in the long run
Did you know Kokura is the luckiest city in the world?
It was our primary August 9th.
But it was overcast so they turned Nagasaki's directions.
Then since it wasn't the primary target they accidentally dropped at 7 mi to soon. Which allow the terrain to block some of the blast.
Nuking them seems a sick sort of mercy compared to this
With casualties this high and fighting this brutal, it almost seems like genocide
My father was in the Australian army, and fought in the Borneo landings. He told me if it wasn't for the atomic bombs, he and his mates would have been in the invasion of Japan. He said none of them would have probably survived and I would not have born.
The meeting that lead to the decision to surrender made virtually no mention of the bombs. Hiroshima and Nagasaki had no military significance, and air raids had been doing just as much damage to Japan for months. They had planned to fight relying on their army in China, but when Russia started destroying it, they ran out of options and surrendered. The bombs were irrelevant, the cities were chosen based on their usefulness as 'experiments' on how much damage the bombs would do, not on destroying Japanese military capacity.
You know what I find bizarre is whenever some european or whatever gets angry whenever American contributions is brought up during the war? It's like they refuse to acknowledge this out of... I don't know... pride? Arrogance? And they never think of this:
"none of them would have probably survived and I would not have born."
To them it's more important that they prove who did the most instead of how important that the war ended as soon as it did.
@@cashewnuttel9054 What do you mean? America won the war against Japan. I dont think I have ever heard anyone dispute that. But America won the war, not American atomic bombs. Japans insane exit strategy for the war just assumed many hundreds of thousands of dead civilians from bombing. Why would finding out it would only take a few planes, and not lots, have caused them to surrender?
My grandfather was on a British Navy ship and did exercises with the Australian forces inSingapore. And he agrees with you; if the invasion had happened he and his comrades would have died.
Instead, he transported several tonnes of supplies to Nagasaki. Supplies that were meant to be for the invasion.
@@jars6230 You don't know what you are talking about. The decision to surrender was made only a couple of hours after the Soviets launched their offensive. The General staff thought it was just boarder incursions. The Japanese also knew that the USSR did not have the naval capabilities to launch any successful nivation of the home islands. did the Emperor mention the Soviets, no, did he mention the bomb when he broadcast to his people, yes. So stop learning history from video games and reading real books.
War is hell
So true.
My dad was in the 98th Division stationed in Hawaii. He was slated to be part of the invasion or occupying force. If no atom bomb, I wouldn't be here.
ok
The Pacific theatre was complete and total war. No holds barred on either side because both sides viewed the other as less than human.
It truly was the mirror of the Eastern Front. "War Without Mercy" as one book put it. The nukes, and all that water, were the only things keeping the body count from Eastern Front levels.
Also, IF this had happened, Japan would have been treated more harshly in the aftermath. The Imperial line would be extinct. Legend of Zelda would never have happened.
Why would they have been treated more harshly?
@@MyChannelOnThisSite Revenge. Even as things played out, MacArthur was pushing a lot of buttons being as generous as he was, but if you add another million casualties and there would be no patience with letting Hirohito off easy.
My dad was in a convoy that he heard later was supposed to end up in Okinawa to assemble into the invasion force. Instead it went straight in and instead of landing with a Bangalore torpedo section and a BAR he stood guard over very peaceful Japanese soldiers as they unloaded ships. He credited the atom bomb as saving his life and by proxy mine.
The imbeciles who said Atom bombs shouldn't be used wouldn't realize that your dad would've died had the Invasion of Japan happened
Simply the USSR did not have the numbers or the types of ships necessary to invade the Japanese home Island
They didn't need to, really. Prior to 1945, the majority of the Japanese military was in China and southeast Asia. The USSR had already completely crushed the Kwantung Army, it would have only been a matter of time before they and the Chinese kicked the Japanese completely out of the country while the British Commonwealth kicked them out of the rest of southeast Asia. By the end of 1945, Japan would have been completely isolated. That said, the USSR would have certainly took the rest of Sakhalin and might have managed an invasion of Hokkaido as it was a lot more sparsely populated and hadn't been as reinforced by the military as Kyushu and Honshu had been
But the Japanese didn't either, sure they had more ships than the USSR's pacific fleet but those ships can't be everywhere at once to stop an invasion especially since the US is present on the other side of Japan and even then there's a lot of space to cover and the USSR could invade from a lot of places, the Japanese didn't have enough fuel to keep patrolling as well so you have to keep in mind that it is not impossible to have a temporary naval superiority on Japan for the USSR, furthermore the soviet navy in the east was not as weak as people think it is and the soviets had some experience doing amphibious assaults and when you couple that with a total air superiority then yeah it's quite possible that this could happen, and in fact it would be even more likely that such an invasion (to be successful and quick) would be jointed between the USSR and the US to really crush Japan and to avoid extreme losses for the Allies
@@Stormyy6310 Must not have research very well. 1st the Japanese basically had no capital ships left at this point of the war the US had sent them to the bottom. Now the Soviet navy had a very limited number of ships in either in the Western or Eastern fleets. The largest guns on any of them were 10 inch. (The distance between Sakhalin and Hokkaido is aprox 40km. This means the Russians couldn't just hop in their amphibious troop carriers and tanks and cross like a European river.) The Russians would have to move their fleet within the long range of Japanese big guns. The USSR didn't have any actual landing craft of LST's to carrier troops or heavy equipment ashore. This means that the Soviets would have to seize an intact port in very short order. Other factors. the Soviet doctrine required large preparatory artillery bombardment they would not have had that available. They were are centered around large armor movement. the mountainous terrain prohibited that. The Japanese had 345000 troops on the island (not counting civilian reserves) over 2000 kamikaze a number of small explosive ladened boats for kamikaze attacks and some subs set up for suicide attaches The Soviets had about a 1 in 1000 chance and thats being generous.
@@Arinisonfire The Soviets did take the rest of Sakhalin but this was because they had brought reinforcements onto their controlled area and like Manchuria launches an overwhelming assault on the Japanese garrison there. Their largest assault by sea was after the Japanese's had moved the majority of their troops north to meet the onslaught. These 5000 troops were landed fishing boats. They had 0 landing craft to send troops ashore or lsts to unload heavy equipment or supplies. They would have needed a port and fast.
It's 40km between Sakhalin and Hokkaido so the Soviets could not have crossed like a European river. Soviet capital ships did not have big enough gun (10in) to outrange the guns the Japanese had in the area.
@letsgowinnietheflu5439 While that's true, you also have to remember that the US already supplied the Soviets with lend-lease and in the event they wanted to attempt an invasion of Hokkaido, the US could have lent them plenty of landing ships, considering most of them were just converted civilian commerce ships and the actual landing craft were very cheap to produce. As for fire support, I imagine there would be more than enough US and Royal Navy warships left over to support the comparatively small Soviet fleet. I don't imagine they'd have needed much help with air support either considering the anemic state of Japanese air defenses and the large quantity of short medium range bombers they had left over from the war with Germany. 40km may be a long way by see, but not by air. Obviously there is a degree of wishful thinking to this considering the mutual distrust between the Soviets and allied powers but I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility to imagine that they may have worked together, after all the US leadership was very nervous about the projected casualty figures and would probably jump at any chance of help they could get.
Either way, the simple *pressure* of having the Soviets right there on their border, a stone's throw from the home islands, would have put immense pressure on the Japanese leadership. Remember that they had planned on using the USSR as a mediator to negotiate a conditional surrender to the allies, that's why the very act of the Soviets declaring war on Japan was such a big idea. Of course the total obliteration of the Kwantung Army was a factor there too. All I'm saying is that there's variables, a lot of variables, too many to justify using the bombs. They should have been the last option, instead of the first one
Personally I think the Japanese casualties were lowballed. On pure military, sure those are probably accurate up to Japanese surrender. But there likely would’ve been a massive Guerilla campaign afterwards, see pockets of soldiers fighting for 20+ years for reference. As for civilians, we probably would’ve seen mass suicides like at Saipan. With the propaganda and all other factors, it really isn’t hard to see Japanese populations committing suicide on mass as American forces approach or for them to join the front in suicidal patterns.
As for why this didn’t happen historically, MacArthur may be a madman but he knew how to truly capitulate a country. Firstly, circulating an image where he towered over the Emperor, showing how their Emperor was not really a god like figure. Second, having Hirohito proclaim the surrender himself to make sure his people knew it was over. Guy knew how to get a country under the start of an occupation to just be quiet.
No wonder he wanted to have a big fucking line of irradiated wasteland in Manchuria. Two nukes shut Hirohito up, fifty would've shut Mao up.
I read somewhere that when the surrender was announced the people couldn’t actually understand it because the Imperial palace was so separate from the people that it had different dialects and accents.
The allied occupiers would have left in the long run if there was a VIetnam War guerilla war, but way worse in terms of casualties.
Even if we tried to 'starve them out' the death toll would have been many times that of the nukes and the anti-nuke groupies would instead bemoaning the starvation policy. Had we invaded the same armchair generals would be declaring that it was unnecessary because japan was 'ready to surrender'. The simple fact is that the Japanese leadership was ready to allow the entire county to commit hari-kari rather than face the humiliation of surrender. Even the 'shock and awe' of the nukes did not deter them. They very nearly pulled off a coup when the Emperor ordered surrender.
That's right, Japan surrendered because of Hirohito's order. But that ordered only came when Truman offered him amnesty.
@@jeffreyerwin3665 That's right and Japan would continue a guerilla fight for however long necessary if an occupation is not beneficial. The allies would get drained over the course of years of money, equipment and casualties until they leave. Or even if they stayed, being an island country the occupiers would eventually assimilate and lose as well.
Fire bombing would have had to increase. The numbers of civilians killed would have exceeded those killed by the atomic bombs by orders of magnitude.
Fire, artillery, starvation, epidemics caused by crowding due to civilians fleeing behind defending lines, bad food and water, possibly even poison gas if the US got frustrated with the casualties they were taking. It's been estimated that an American invasion of Japan would have killed upwards of 15 million Japanese.
@@hagamapamathis is something that people don’t understand when talking about this topic. Even if we didn’t use the bombs and did a blockade. More Japanese would of died from a blockade than the bombs. And an invasion would cost Japan have of its population. People just get mad because they think the a bomb was inhumane. But as a Japanese person myself I think that Japan got what was coming after what they did in the pacific and east Asia. Nagasaki and Hiroshima are beautiful cities today, if we would invaded, the whole country would still be Recovering to this day and there is no way Japan becomes the great country that is today.
@@noblesugai355 EXACTLY! People see deathtolls from the bombs are are so shocked by it, completely ignoring the cost of a blockade or mainland invasion... Armchair generals and historians...
Operation Downfall would be D-Day on steroids!
Imagine the relief of the young Soldiers, just graduating from their basic training at the end of July 1945, who had been told that they were the ones who were going to have to invade Japan.
My grandpa had just survived the invasion of Okinawa, and was scheduled to be part of Coronet; relief is not a strong enough word.
A lot of the Army units who had just finished fighting in Europe were being told to prepare for training for the invasion of Japan. Included in that was my father’s artillery battalion. To say he was relieved would be an understatement as well.
Imagine the relief of men like my uncle and my father, who had seen combat in Europe and were on the way to the Pacific.
This would be an absolute logistical nightmare
My grandmother's brother-in-law, who survived D-day, was waiting for his turn to come home on ship got bad news. A captain mustered his group and told them their orders were changed. They were given a 4 day pass once home to get their affairs in order and report to San Diego for training for the invasion of Japan. His final words were, " You survived Germany, you won't survive Japan." They estimated 1 million American casualties and 16 million Japanese.
Yeah. People don't realize that troops that had survived Europe were destined for Japan. There was growing hostility among the troops and the families of the troops who felt that those in Europe had "fought their war" and deserved to go home.
@@weirdshibainuI never read about any "growing hostilities " are you contecturing your own thoughts in the G.I's of the 40's?
@@jaed2630 No. It's well known. Those in Europe felt they had fought "their war."
I have read estimates that the US would have suffered 1.5 - 2 million dead, while the Japanese would have 7 - 10 million dead, and that the radical wing of the Japanese military (led by Tojo) would not have surrendered. Some have said that the Emperor would have wanted to give up after US troops took the southern island and captured Tokyo, but Tojo and his radicals would have assassinated him before he could issue any surrender orders. It is also likely that Russia would have invaded the northern island, which would have drawn troops and supplies away from the main island. In the end, Japan would have had no choice but to surrender or end up with half of their nation ruled by the Soviets, which scared them more than actually surrendering to the Americans.
Basically, President Truman's decision to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war much sooner, and actually saved about 12 million lives (or more). Emperor Hirohito saw that an actual invasion would never come now that the US had the A-Bomb, and that they could blast Japan into the Stone Age one atomic bomb at a time without ever stepping foot on Japan itself.
My father’s destroyer was heading for the Panama Canal when we nuked Japan. I’m quite glad that it went the way it did.
Compared with 2 A-Bombs, with no do doubt the conventional warfare in Japan would be much more fierce. The incendiary bombardments in Tokyo kills more people than the 2 atomic bombs combined.
Yup. Yokohama too
one other point on here that you left off. During the battles of Saipan and Okinawa (the two battles featuring large numbers of Japanese civilians), many of the Japanese civilians not brought into the "defense corps" committed suicide. After Saipan, only about 1000 of 22,000 civilians were still alive. There was an estimate that on top of the war dead, another 5 million civilians may have committed suicide.
So, 5-10 million Japanese war dead, 2 millions Japanese badly injured and/or captured, 5 million civilian suicides, 600,000 allied war dead, 2 million allied war wounded.... prevented by dropping 2 bombs killing 150,000 dead. I'd say it was a no brainer for the American president to use the bomb
This, the nukes pretty much prevented a genocide by giving the Japanese the shock needed to break out of their "death before dishonor" mind set they were in at the time.
True - there is a cliff on Saipan called the "suicide cliff" because soldiers and civilians leapt to their deaths rather than be captured.
My father, then 18, was scheduled to land with the 1st MarDiv. The standing "joke" with 7th Marines was that the Downfall landing would be very short. 1st Division was expected to be so shot up by D+10 that it would no longer be functional.
A big subject was how does a Marine deal with a 10 year old child armed with a bamboo spear?
You shoot him in the head. Even our soldiers today are allowed to shoot kids if they are pointing a gun at them.
Shoot them duuuuh, children also bleed
No fr, Dealing with Child Soldiers in a "Ethical" way is an easy solution equipment wise speaking but hard to implement and do. Which is: Non-Lethal Knockout. Considering they would be using Bamboo, and the soldier wasn't ambushed or in a firefight against the imperial army, they could disarm the child, convince them, or ambush the child. US would probably have invented the Tranquilizer Gun earlier because of that too
If the US had to actually invade just 2 of the Japanese home islands in 1945-46, the carnage for all parties involved, would’ve been so great, even if Downfall went relatively to plan, I highly doubt the US public would have had the stomach to even dabble in Korea or Vietnam in the coming years.
Well, the heavy intervention in Korea was motivated by the fact that Truman was being heavily blamed for "losing China" (which is a dumb argument imo, China wasn't Truman's to lose to begin with), so it was to show he wasn't soft on communism.
So, probably still would've happened, especially as people see preventing spread of communism as preventing another Pearl Harbor.
@@chinguunerdenebadrakh7022 You make some really great points, but this is generally the biggest issue w/ alternative history: if this had happened & not that, then… it’s just not possible to know even the extent what could change, let alone just what those changes would end up being.
So if an US invasion of the Japanese home islands had to go down to end the war, what then?
Well before even the first off-loading ramp crashed down into the surf, US forces would start taking casualties at rates never before seen in the nation’s military history. It’d start w/ the targeting the naval forces supporting the invasion, then the boots on the ground, & it wouldn’t let up, not in a week, not in a month. There’d be immediate & immense pressure to make big-time concessions to the Soviet Union, to get them to do more than just mop up in Manchuria, & good luck getting the Red Army to hand over territory for which they had to shed blood to take. To just say “What happened in Korea would then happen in Japan” would be a gross over-simplification, b/c there are way too many variables, but one would have to imagine a Japan divided by capitalism vs communism would take precedence over a similar conflict taking place on the Asian mainland.
@@jamesm3471 You’re making a very good point about a subject I just wanted to bring up.
People really oversimplify “what if” scenarios, when these events shaped and effected so many lives, whole nations for generations, you don’t just simply remove them from the equation and say “things would’ve ended up better that way.”
I don’t thing there would have been a Korean War, as the Soviets would have ended up with all of Korea instead of half of it, with the whole country under Kim Il Sung, but there might have been a communist North Japan and capitalist South Japan.
If the U.S. had gone ahead with this invasion I doubt very much if either Korea or Vietnam would have been of much concern later since it’s most probable that the Soviet Union would have taken the opportunity to spread their influence and assist their political allies in the region far earlier than in the real timeline, instead of Korea being split the entire country would have been taken over and the Soviets and China would probably have provided far more support to the Viet Minh allowing them to defeat the French far quicker and gain control over the entire area and not just in the north.
Both of my grandfathers fought in the Pacific theater. They knew how the Japanese would treat troops that managed to land on the mainland. "Holy war" sums it up. They would never have surrendered. They were teaching kids how to sharpen bamboo into spikes and how to stab soldiers and run away after they received candy or something. I wholly agree with using nukes to end the war to save millions more.
Why assume Americans had to land on the island? They were already starving from American submarine campaign and the Soviet attack on Manchuria was very important in Japan's decision to surrender.
Americans are always lovely when they are trying to justify turning children to ash. War crimes are not things to be proud of. They can at least have the decency to pretend they are sorry but instead they expect to be treated like heros.
@@Zogerpogger the Russians didn't merit mention in Emperor hirohito's address to the Japanese Nation. He did specifically mention the nuclear bombs as the reason.
Once a nation turns to total war, as Germany and Japan had done, they don't get to say "oops" and walk away.
@@macmcleod1188 Except they totally did. Warcriminals where pardoned in exchange for research and assistance, the emporer got to stay...
As for total war...you think the US and USSR didn't fight a total war? The us literally used weapons of mass destruction against cities and used unrestricted submarine warfare. By your logic the US needs to be destroyed, with bioweapons if necessary.
@@nonyabisness6306 excuse me but are those Nations? You seem to have mixed up your nouns. A nation is made up of millions of human individuals.
I agree with you that it sucks that a few humans got away with it.
Japan lucky u.s won the war and gave their country back russia would have kept it
yes, certainly... the USSR would have extended into the pacific. And if D day didn't happen quick enough they'd have taken all the way to France.. or including France. If not for Nucs, then WWII would have just turned into WWIII straight away.
if you read enough japan literature at the time, the scenario they hope for is that if they hold out long enough, well in to the cold war, both american and ussr would agree to let imperial japan exist and keep its independence because they would need a buffer zone.
Yh and the whole world is lucky Britain didn't team with nazi Germany lol
@@joecater894 The USSR didn't get nukes until 1949
@@normnord9830 Yes that's the point, when US used nukes and took Japan for themselves Stalin could forget about war with America.
The US was also worried about the possibility that parts of Japan would fall to the advancing Russians and therefore create another Berlin scenario.
The Russians didn’t have the capability to cross blue water to ever set foot on the Japanese mainland.
The Russians tried negotiating their way into an occupation of Japan and that was strongly rebuffed by Truman. The Russians had tried an amphibious landing at Rumoi in late August and lost five of the sixteen landing craft supplied to them through the Lend/Lease Program by the United States. The Russians were never a threat to invade Japan. In fact, when Stalin approached one of the Russian Army generals with the idea of invading Japan the general laughed at the idea.
My father was part of the D- day invasion and was told after Germany fell, he would be transfered to the Pacific Theater. Because he had size feet that couldn't fit any available combat boots, he was relegated to clerical work but was told he would be expected to go to Japan reguardless. He was relieved when Japan surrendered.
that doesnt make any sense
The Japanese military was a suicidal death cult, something we learned during Saipan. Whole families were jumping off cliffs, folks were killing their kids, then themselves, etc. The experience in the Marianas was what started the US thinking of alternatives. One of the major themes developed in the excellent book "The Fleet at Flood Tide"
My father was in the 4th Marine Div. in assault on Saipan, Tinian, Roi Namur and Iwo Jima. He always said that for him Saipan was the worst.
@@karlheinzvonkroemann2217 I tip my hat to your father. I *briefly* visited Saipan back in 1999. Saw Marpi Point.
One way to eliminate your enemy. They do it for you, lol. One of the many failings of the ideology.
My father volunteered to join the Navy on his 16th birthday, shortly before the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were dropped. He would have been part of the invasion operation. As it turned out, he ended up facing a lot less danger than soldiers a year or two older than he was. Technically, he took part in both WW2 and was then called up from reserves for the Korean Conflict, but he was very lucky. He never talked about it, but in retrospect, he was probably the bravest man I've known personally.
My father was in Burma with the Far East Air Force. At some point he was prepping to tow gliders full of troops from the Dakota aircraft, which would have been disengaged within gliding distance of the Japanese mainland. I hate to think how risky this would have been for the towing aircraft and troops.
"How would have WW2 gone if the US had not used nuclear bombs on Japan?" My father would have likely died. He was in the Navy and an electrician's mate second class but had already been issued his boots and uniforms for the physical invasion. He had already been used by the Marines in a comm role stringing lines on the beaches so that was what he thought he would be used for. Then the bombs dropped and it was over and they took it all back. So, I wouldn't be here very likely if they hadn't bombed.
My first thought at seeing this was the fact that in preparation for Operation Downfall the US made 500.000 Purple Heart Medals, to be given out to heavily wounded and dead soldiers. And they thought they might need to make up to 1.000.000 more of them to be able to give them all to the affected soldiers.
As it stands that batch of 500.000 Purple Hearts made back then is still being used to give out medals today
Someone else mentioned that it ran out in 2006
@@captain61games49 As I'm reading it the US Military ordered several thousand medals since WW2, but it is unclear if this is because they have actually ran out.
Most experts think that it is just because they want to have more then enough medals to never run out.
But they might have actually ran out. I guess only high ranking US Military know for sure.
Tbh the only option was nuclear. Let me know how stubborn people can be in Asian cultures. Even though to the eyes, the nuclear bombs were overkill on paper it was the less deadly option
Nuke (we’ll say) 200,000 vs invasion possible millions. Wild how ppl can say the nuke wasn’t a better option
@@johnnightmare9218 Because they're close minded without knowing how war fcking works
My Father was in the Battle of Okinawa in the Navy. He knew how many millions of people would have died if we had to invade Japan homeland.
If they were willing to defend a DOT on the map like Okinawa was such fierceness, what would they have done to the Homeland
In August 1945 Japanese still occupied Indochina (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia), Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), Malaya, Korea, parts of Burma, China, Philippines and South Sea Mandate and if fighting would have continued hell of a lot of people would have died outside of Japanese Home Islands...300.000 Allied POWs and Internees in Japanese hands wouldn't also have very good prospects of surviving if the war had raged on. It really doesn't matter if Japanese surrendered because of atom bombs or Soviet declaration of war, main thing is that millions of people all over Asia survived because Pacific War ended when it did.
My dad was a 2nd Lieutenant with the 3rd Marines, scheduled to be the tip of the spear for Operation Olympic. They had all filled out their wills.
There were storehouses crammed full of bamboo spears which were to be handed out to civilians to attack any marines who made it off the beaches.
"How would world war 2 be going?" * the last Imperial Japanese soldier surrendered in 1974. He was running around the philipino jungle alone for 29 years like some real life Rambo murdering white tourists (he thought were enemies) and surviving off of the land and whatever he hunted.
Now imagine him multiplied by a few million, formed into battalions and units. That was Imperial Japan. They literally believed their emperor was a God. Some of the mostly untold things they did (Nanking) were truly despicable and revolting. (When even a Nazi party member is saying "hang on a minute guys isn't this going a bit too far" and trying to give refuge to Chinese you know the Japanese must be completely lunatic lol) But as a fighting force they were to be extremely feared. An enemy (and even civillians) who would rather die than to surrender is a frightening prospect.
Just see the footage of the old ladies jumping off of the cliffs of the islands America invaded and you can see how devout these people were. Unfortunately they were fed non stop propaganda and believed the Americans would flay them etc. Which tbf might have even happened in some cases given surrendered forces treatment (Starved, beaten, tortured executed, dehydrated and made to scorch in the Japanese sun until delirious)
Imperial Japan was insane and inhumane but they were certainly an enemy to be feared.
I have a fun little fact for all WWII history buffs
In the months leading up to what was the imminent defeat of Nazi Germany the head of the air war against Japan General Curtis LeMay was already taking the steps necessary to have literally all of the still fit for duty meaning THOUSANDS of B-17 and B-24 heavy bombers transfered along with THOUSANDS more medium USAAF bombers from the European theater of combat to be under his command in the Pacific theater of combat launched from bases like Okinawa to bomb the rest of Japan which all of Japan woukd have easily been with reach of an endless number of bombers along with absolutely overwhelming fighter escort protection keeping in mind America already had established complete air supremacy in the sky's over all of Japan already
Which would have allowed General LeMay to turn literally thousands and thousands of bombers and fighters loose essentially unopposed to bomb and strafe anything of even the least strategic military value literally out of existence in all of Japan.
The Atom bombs actually saved far more Japanese lives than they took.
As much as some Monday morning WWII history revisionist hate to admit and just as quickly choose to ignore as fact that often times history has shown the only difference between a civilian and a enemy combatant is one has a rifle and shooting at you and the other is waiting for thier turn.
The Japanese were traing mass numbers of both young men AND women as young as 14 to attack American soldiers in mass waves similar to the Bonzia charges used by thier army armed with little more than essentially farm implements not that different from medieval weapons and the intelligence service of the American military knew this.
They also knew how utterly demoralizing and destructive it would have been for our troops to have to kill huge numbers of what were essentially children and no doubt the JIA knew this and was a major part of thier strategy.
Once the Emperor became aware Japan's loss was eminent its not exactly guess work he as well as his civilian advisors realized a surrendere to American that left the Emperor untouched and unpunished was much preferred VS surrendering to the Russians after what the Red army did to the citizens especially the woman of what would later became East Germany.