The Soviets had handily defeated the Japanese in a large-scale border war in 1939, so memories of 1905 weren’t a deciding factor.
The problem was that at the time of the Doolittle Raid, Soviet Russia was still in a precarious position against Nazi Germany and didn’t want to risk a two-front war.
Why not just claim the airmen died?
Because they didn’t?
The U.S. could have sequestered the airmen for the rest of the war to keep the secret. Or, they could take the much simpler route of playing along with the pretense that they “escaped”. Which not incidentally allows them to celebrate their return as heroes, which was a potentially a big morale boost both on the homefront and in the forces actually fighting and dying, and kept the faith with the men.
It was in the interests of pretty much everyone involved to pretend that the U.S. Airmen were interned in accordance with international law and staged a daring escape. To an extent, it was even in the interests of the Japanese, who were no more eager to open up another front than the Soviets were.
When the purpose of the raid was to create actual named heroes they could parade around the USA to drum up enthusiasm for the war effort, buying bonds, rationing, etc., damn straight keeping those guys secret would have been tough.
To cite Dr. Stangelove
The whole point is lost if you keep it a secret.
All sorts of things are proposed which are not seriously considered and since that suggestion would have broken the rules concerning neutral shipping to the USSR then it would not have made it out of a committee.
As is noted above, the USSR was in a precarious position with Germany and did not want a war with Japan at the time. Japan also didn’t want a war with the Soviets and the US wanted Russia to not collapse. It was in the interest of all the parties to keep them out of the Pacific War.
The US shipped a huge amount of material to the Soviets during the war and one of the routes was to the north of Japan. The rules of neutrality prevented the US from shipping “war material” that way. So, they couldn’t ship tanks but they could ship trucks since that was for “civilian” use. I’m sure the Germans under Karyusha barrages mounted on Lend-Lease trucks would not appreciate the fine difference.
Heck, they didn’t want to get involved against Japan until Japan had been taken care of.
I assume too by mid-1943 the war in the Pacific had heated up enough that the Soviets figured the Japanese were too busy elsewhere to raise a fuss over “lax security” at a prison camp and initial rage over the attack had tempered somewhat.
Look at it the other way. Why risk a war with Japan over freeing less than 6 men, when hundreds of thousands are dying daily? It’s easier to inconvenience the 6 American guys than to risk war on yet another front.
Not to mention, you don’t plan on entering an ally’s airspace without consulting them first, and the Doolittle Raid was too Top Secret to do that.
That’s not a fair assessment of the situation. The Soviets did more than their share against the Nazis and were in far more danger than the US ever was.
I’m not as strong on the European theater but IIRC wasn’t something like 75% of German deaths (or casualties?) on the Eastern front?
The US wanted the Soviets to participate in the Pacific war but recognized the necessity of defeating Germany first. The US negotiated with Stalin in order to bring them in after the fall of Berlin. These negotiations happened before the atomic bomb test proved it was successful, and the US was concerned about the difficult of defeating the Japanese Imperial Army.
Roosevelt was more than willing to trade spheres of influence in certain regions of Asia to save American lives.
Sure, the Soviets had good reason to want to avoid war with Japan. I’m not criticizing them for that. Heck, I have a hard time criticizing any country for avoiding a war, for any reason. But the fact remains that they declared war on Japan only after the A-bomb.
There’s an argument to be made that things had shifted such on the American side, with the death of Roosevelt, that the A-bombs were dropped when they were at least in part with an aim to deprive the Soviets of an opportunity to make good on their promise to enter the war against Japan within 90 days of Germany’s defeat.
It’s not like the Soviets just had all these troops massed in the East and they were waiting for an opportunistic moment to invade: it was what they had promised to do following Germany’s defeat. And it was a promise that was growing less and less in the US’s own interests for the Soviets to make good on as it became clear that Japan might well be defeated without the need to cede territory in Asia to the USSR.
And as, simultaneously, it was becoming more clear that the USSR in general and Stalin in particular were not going to be allies in the following peace.
“My enemy’s enemy is my friend” is good doctrine in a pinch, but the word “temporary” belongs in there sotto voce
My enemy’s enemy is my temporary friend until my current enemy is no longer an insurmountable problem.
Maxim 29: The enemy of my enemy is my enemy’s enemy. No more. No less.
Then it should be trivial for you to produce a cite demonstrating that the declaration of war was determined by the atomic bombing.
Is it enough for me to point out that August 8 is two days after August 6, or do I need to refer to my supply of classified correspondence among Stalin’s inner circle?
August 8 is also precisely three months less one day after the war in Europe ended. Stalin’s agreement with the Allies was that the USSR would enter the Pacific War within 3 months of the war in Europe ending. The Russians didn’t just throw together an invasion force in two days in reaction to the dropping of the A-Bomb.
I don’t believe that anyone has mentioned: It was expected that the Doolittle raiders would be launched closer to Japan than they were. They would have a larger fuel reserve and would be able to fly further into China. But the carrier task force was detected while they were still steaming towards Japan, and the B-25 Mitchells were launched farther out than expected.
Now, it might be argued that this could have been anticipated and there should have been a backup plan with a landing in Russia, but that’s a different argument.