The later, never-ending, negotiations over the Korean police action proved that negotiations can last for more than 60 years without ever resolving the conflict. How many more months, or years, or decades should WWII, the deadliest war ever fought by mankind, have continued?
Imperial Japan had it’s own atomic weapon program. When the Nazi submarine U-234 surrender after VE day, it was transporting cargo included technical drawings, examples of the newest electric torpedoes, one crated Me 262 jet aircraft, a Henschel Hs 293 glide bomb and what was later listed on the US Unloading Manifest as 550 kg (1,210 lb) of uranium oxide. In the 1997 book Hirschfeld, Wolfgang Hirschfeld reported that he saw about 50 lead cubes with 23 centimetres (9.1 in) sides, and “U-235” painted on each, loaded into the boat’s cylindrical mine shafts.
Given more time, the Imperial military could have built more jet aircraft, more effective weapons, and a working model of an atomic bomb. Or maybe just enough dirty bombs to force a stalemate?
This puts me in the odd position of saying something good about Stalin.
There are many places that the USSR withdrew from after WWII. E.g.,
Eastern Austria.
Northernmost Norway.
Parts of Finland. (But kept the parts Finland was forced to concede.)
The Danish island of Bornholm.
Parts of Yugoslavia.
Manchuria.
Time for a little strategic reality. We wanted the Soviet Union to attack Japan. Japan hadn’t attacked the Soviet Union; the Soviet Union had no need to fight Japan like they had Germany. So if we wanted the Soviet Union to start a new war, we had to give them a reason to do it. And what we offered was territory in Japan. From the American point of view, we weren’t giving away our territory. If some Japanese people ended up living under a Soviet puppet regime then it sucked for them but it wasn’t our problem.
Japanese industry had almost totally collapsed by 1945. The submarine campaign had destroyed 77% of Japan’s shipping and the country could barely feed itself. Producing even existing designs was a struggle, let alone any improved aircraft. And any sort of nuclear program was sheer fantasy. Given more time the Imperial military could not have done any of the things you list.
As many have already said, if Japan had not surrendered in August 1945, millions of her civilians would have died from starvation and continued bombing, hundreds of thousands of her military would have died defending against an invasion and the Allies would have suffered tens of thousands of casualties in the invasion.
It’s obvious that the Imperial Japanese had not yet given up the fight, and were still planning on defending their homeland. To the death.
Assuming that the U-234 had delivered it’s cargo, I suppose it’s possible that the Imperial Japanese would have simply returned the U-234’s unused, unwanted, unneeded, cargo to Germany, or they would have made every effort to use it for their war effort.
Excellent point
As much as Stalin was feared and despised, he was actually quite intelligent and a very well read person and he wrote a lot.
One interesting story I heard about Stalin is despite the USA trying to keep the development of the B-29 secret (as well as the atomic bomb), he knew about both of them
With the lend lease, he also requested several B-29’s (this is when it was still under design) hoping that it would get by the supply clerks, but no such luck
A B-29 (or two?) made an emergency landing in Russian territory, and he wouldn’t give them back. The Russians used it to copy a bomber of their own.
I am surprised that he gave up part of Finland. Russia has had a hard on for Finland since Peter the Great. It is said by some crass people that Finland sided with Germany in WWII so that they could kill Russians.
It is somewhat satisfying that Stalin laid for hours after a stroke in his own urine because his minions were afraid to enter his office without invitation.
There is a good reason that Russians would always steal designs if they could. The soviet system did not tolerate mistakes and so if they could steal American designs and produce them they at least knew the design worked. As a result Russian pilots would often die from design flaws that American planes had fixed five years previously.