Another alternate history post:

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

This one asks but a simple question: what would happen if the United States did not drop Fat Man and Little Boy in August 1945? A delay might be simpler by simply moving the start of the Manhattan Project down a year to 1942 so that the USA is required to invade Japan in 1945 where it did not in the real world.

The way I see it is that the Japanese leadership was not at all likely to surrender, and without the atomic bomb the USA will be hitting the Imperial Japanese in an Allied version of Operation Citadel: the landing zones are known for both sides and they've both made extensive preparations for it. I do think in the event of such a scenario that the Soviets would have done a lot more in Manchuria, probably gained all of Sakhalin and started blitzing through Hokkaido at the same time as the USA's punching through the Kanto Plain.

One thing that's always been an interesting hypothetical is what would happen assuming the IJA tries banzai charges right into the Soviet army of 1945 where it had enough firepower and callousness about human life to make good sport out of that kind of tactics. I see absolutely no reason that banzai charges right at the Soviet military are going to work any better than they did at the US military. The USA at the time was quite peachy keen on Axis civilian deaths, and the Soviets after 4 brutal years of warfare against Nazi Germany are hardly inclined to fight and die any more than they have to. If anything the situation might well end up reversed, the US Army making headlong attacks without real sense to and the Soviets accepting surrenders of cities that allow for it, using firepower to annihilate any that refuse.

Your thoughts? In this case the A-Bomb would probably be available by 1946 and for a real nightmare might have been used by both sides in whatever happens in the Korean peninsula.

Comments

[telemann.livejournal.com]

I wonder why Japan wasn't split up into four zones of occupation like Germany was, but I just assume it was logistics-- Japan was so far geographically removed from the other Allies and certainly the United States didn't want to see a Soviet occupation force anywhere on the Japanese islands.

[ygrii-blop.livejournal.com]

The U.S. government was quite forward-looking in the 1940s. They knew we were going to need all those cheap transistors in the '50s and '60s.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Ha!

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

It was more because the Soviets only (re)-entered the war against Japan in August 1945 and Japan surrendered in September. In this scenario Japan is a US-Soviet occupation zone and the Soviet Union likely gets a counter to West Berlin. Whether that would reduce or amplify tensions in the Cold War depends on how much of a cynic one is about both sides.

[ygrii-blop.livejournal.com]

Why so serious? You'll make an excellent middle school principal. You're humorless, literal, and so, so serious. Practice saying this: When you come to our school, it's time to take your fun cap off and put your serious cap on.

Good luck.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Because the USA was able to fight Germany and Italy in Europe at the same time as it fought Japan single-handedly and kicked its ass from one end of the Pacific to the other. Stalin agreed to this rationale as that had been the reason for the occupation zones being divided in Europe after the war the way they were (incidentally he also kept his word with regard to the division of spheres of influence, where Hitler did nothing of the sort. The two were evil on different scales).

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Lawful Evil vs. Just Plain Evil?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

No, both were Lawful Evil, that's what Totalitarianism is. Rather the Soviets saw mass murder as the means to an end, and had little qualms about using it thus. The Nazis saw it as not merely the means but also the end in itself, which is why Stalin secured a loyal pocket in the Ukraine after the Holodomor but Hitler's policies, particularly when enforced by a self-proclaimed "brutal dog" like Erich Koch led to the amazing feat of the Ukrainians taking disproportionate casualties in favor of the Soviet Union.

That should speak volumes about what Nazi rule really meant. Both were evil, one a more pragmatic evil, the other the closest thing to supervillainy the world has ever seen.

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

> I wonder why Japan wasn't split up into four zones of occupation
> like Germany was

Because aside from some smallish naval battles and the seizure of some anachronistic European colonies very early in the war, the Pacific was an all American Show.

If the zones would have been set up according to respective allied contribution in theater, I guess Australia would have had a good argument to run a zone, but no one else.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Depends on what one considers the Battle of Khalkin Ghol to be.....

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

Well, since we were talking about the occupation of the home islands, my idea of "in theater" are those operations leading to that occupation.

So I don't think Khalkin Ghol is an argument for giving the Soviets administrative rights to some section of the Japanese home islands, although it would be a very powerful argument for doing the same in Manchuria and Mongolia.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

This is an alternate history where due to the Bomb the Soviets invade as per their agreement with the Allies. It's Alternate History week, hence this particular topic being brought up. I think it's funny the Soviets are ignored in discussions of Downfall given that their army, even when so abysmally commanded the Finns handed their asses to them dealt Japan its biggest defeat before it entered World War II.

And in this scenario the USSR's military is at its best with its most talented crop of generals ever....

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

Nod, though as per telemann's question I was talking outside of the alternate history.

In real history, Stalin had agreed (at Yalta, I presume) to attack the Japanese 3 months after victory over Germany.

And I believe they did so, to the day.

But (getting back into the Alternate history) I think Soviet interests would have been predominantly on the mainland, shoring up their client state of Mongolia and solidifying interests in Manchuria. The bulk of the Japanese Army was still on Asian Mainland, so there would have been plenty for them to do, and I think that the U.S. would have been mostly satisfied to let them do so.

I think Trueman's view of the Soviets was very different from Roosevelt's, and I think he was swayed by Churchill's criticisms of Stalin in ways Roosevelt was not. Even with a massive butcher bill to be paid on the Japanese home islands, I don't think the American leadership of the time would have acquiesced to a split North and South Japan.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

That they did.

I don't necessarily think so. After all, Japan had attacked the USSR in 1938-9 and the Soviet victory at Nomonhan would not have seemed enough to the USSR of 1945. The Soviets had obliterated that army in the rather short amount of time in real life, and here it would be quite tempting to invade Japan once the bulk of Japanese troops are occupied with the US Army and Navy against them.

Japan's mobility would be nil to nada against the Soviets in this case and the Soviets would have the perfect ability to negate what amounts to the tactics of the Germans in the late part of the war without the firepower to go with it. The bitter irony is that the more the Soviets conquer faster in the short term, the more Japanese are going to be living after the war's over.

[usekh.livejournal.com]

Well that's news to the thousands of ANZAC troops who died in the Pacific.

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

Well, I did mention Australia, though like most evil Americans I lumped NZ in with them.

But if you want to talk numbers, Aussie deaths in the Pacific theater were less than 2% of American Deaths. (1,820 as opposed to 95,660) I don't have figures for NZ. Commitments of Troops, ships, and materials were a similar proportion.

I don't mean to dismiss the sacrifices of Australian and New Zealand troops... any soldier who dies has given all he has. But France and Britain bought their places as countries at the grim table of European administration with deaths in the hundreds of thousands.

[usekh.livejournal.com]

My apologies I missed Australia, lack of sleep. However whilst I am not sure on numbers there were a lot of Commonwealth forces in Burma and such.

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

True, China / Burma / India was typically considered a separate theater than the Pacific, so the casualty numbers I quoted earlier don't reflect them, even though they were fighting the Japanese.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately like the contributions of the Poles to the European War after 1939 that was overlooked then and now. Despite that the fighting in New Guinea was on par with any in World War II for sheer nightmarish nastiness. This and the CBI theater were detached because for all the effort put into them the events of the war ended up making them "sideshows" by the end despite that these "sideshows" had been essential to allowing that end to be as simple as it was.