I rather trust the US Strategic bombing survey’s opinion more than your “belief”
Yes, but they didn’t form that opinion until well after the atom bombs had been dropped, and they formed it in part on the basis of evidence which they didn’t (and couldn’t) gather until after the Japanese surrender. That can’t tell us very much about the motivation of those who took the decision to drop the bombs, can it?
I have never doubted the propriety of dropping the bomb. It was the right thing to do under the circumstances. What I get annoyed by is when people bring up the tired old (and discredited) story of the “invasion being a bloodbath” and the bomb “saving lives”. As if none of the post surrender information and analysis had happened.
Operation Market Garden was fought in Sept. 1944 in hopes of ending the war sooner. It was based on the belief the Germans were dispirited and in disarray. They proved to be quite wrong. A bad defeat for the Allies.
Dec 1944 and a daring German counter attack. It came close to working.
I’d say shortly after the Battle of the Bulge it was clear the Germans were out of needed fuel and supplies. German surrender was only a matter of time.
Wikipedia does a nice job of detailing Germany’s end.
Amazing how quickly they came apart after the Battle of the Bulge. Troops penetrated deep into Germany in just 4 months.
The USSBS had its own agenda in promoting the decisive effect of the bombing campaigns in both Europe and the Pacific. It’s basing that conclusion upon facts not in evidence; that Japan’s leadership would see that it was defeated and proceed to do the logical thing and surrender rather than choose national suicide before admitting defeat; something the Japanese leadership was in fact more than willing to do. You’d do well to include the two preceding paragraphs to your quote, to see where the USSBS draws this dubious conclusion from, bolding mine:
Color me unsurprised that the advocates of strategic bombing think that bombing alone could have (note the word could) exerted sufficient pressure to bring about unconditional surrender and obviate the need for invasion. Color me unconvinced as well; there is no evidence to suggest the responsible leaders of Japan weren’t willing to sacrifice those 2,000,000 troops and 9,000 planes on the home islands, along with the entire civilian population of Japan before admitting defeat. As the slogan of the day went, ichioku gyokusai - the hundred million die together.
I’ve heard it argued convincingly that Operation Autumn Mist made the war even shorter, as Hitler expended his last armoured reserve and precious fuel capturing snowbound forest ultimately worthless to Germany. It made the western Allies more cautious but did nothing to stop the Soviet juggernaut advancing from the east.
As did RAF Bomber Command, speaking of predicting the war’s end Sir Arthur Harris thought in December, 1943 that bombing could bring about the collapse of Germany by April, 1944.
The Bomb did save lives. If the USA had continued either with any of the three plans:
Starve them out
Bomb them out
or Invade
the Japanese civilian losses alone would have been much higher.
The civilian looses in China were 100K per month- or more. This would have greatly increased with Soviet intervention.
Historian Robert P. Newman concluded that each month that the war continued in 1945 would have produced the deaths of ‘upwards of 250,000 people, mostly Asian but some Westerners.’"[28]
I’d never heard of a Jody Call before (maybe have the excuse of not being American), so Googled it. The things that you learn via this board !
There was the habit which British soldiers got into in the latter stages of World War I, of spinning glum fantasies of the war going on for many decades, with almost nothing changing. The fantasiser imagined himself and his squadmates coming, in time, to be fighting in the trenches alongside their sons; and later on (if any of them were still alive) their being elderly gents fighting alongside their grandsons…
I recall reading once about the deliberations of the Japanese cabinet or war council after Hiroshima. The emperor decided to surrender, and said that because the atomic bomb was so incredibly destructive, there was no shame, cowardice, or loss of face in surrendering against overwhelming one-sided power.
If anything, the bomb gave the Japanese an excuse to surrender rather than fight to the death.
In fact, the Americans were in a hurry to get the Japanese cleaned up before the soviets started taking some of the islands.
Interestingly, the invasion plan included atomic bombs. It wasn’t always an either/or. If anything, it would’ve been much worse for all parties. Experts advised after an atomic bomb was dropped, not to enter the area for 48 hours!
Along with the Japanese, there would’ve been thousands of US troops dying from the radiation.
I would appreciate references to books that discuss whether or not political leaders and their military advisers considered trade-offs between the duration of the war and another factor like military deaths or civilian deaths.
By leaders, I probably mean only FDR and maybe Churchill. It is pretty clear what Hitler’s ideas on the subject would have been, and I can’t really see someone going to Stalin and saying "But Comrade, if we slow down and don’t try so hard to take Berlin by May Day, we can spare the lives of a whole Division… ". He would have said “Yes, but what is your point?”
I can however, imagine a General going to his boss and saying “Why do we have to take (Saipan, Peleliu, Iwo Jima, whatever)? Just besiege it.” That fact that some of those places may have had lots of provisions just means that it would have increased the time of the war. Trading something, even war materials, to combatants like Hungary in exchange for civilians is another example.
No it didn’t, not remotely. Its aim, let us recall, was to cut through the seam between the Commonwealth and US forces and retake Antwerp. Then the British would retreat back to England (Dunkirk Mark II, if you will) and the Western Allies would sue for peace.
There was no such seam, really, and the Germans barely dipped their toes in the Meuse: the sea was a distant dream.
While its true that airpower advocates have been guilty (both diuring WW2 and after) of being too optimistic about the ability of airpower to win wars, I have never heard the SBS as being anything but objective. I have read their report in depth, if anything the were extremely critical of the issue of the deployment of airpower in the wars.
Nor is that the only opinion, many Allied generals were of that opinion as well, McCay (whom no one can accuse of being softhearted) MacArthur, as well as Nimitz.
November 1 seems fantastically optimistic, considering the Japanese determination to endure suffering and loss as long as they had a chance to inflict damage on their mortal enemies. Even so, both the bombing of Japanese cities and the starvation due to the submarine blockade would have killed large numbers of Japanese civilians. I don’t have the figures handy, but at a certain point those deaths would have exceeded those caused by the atomic bombings. Is that point before or after the speculative November 1?
1 November has not been chosen on a whim. It was the date of the proposed US invasion of Khyusu Islands.
Even fanatics got to eat. The winter of 1945-1946 was a near famine even with massive US food aid. Japan was an is an Island nation. The blockade was so effective, that it more or less cut of the home islands from contact with the outside world, and shipping was more or less all sunk by mid 1945. There already was a shortage of almost every conceivable war material, foodstuff and fuel and was only going to get worse.
As it is the 1 November date probably was not going to happen. The Sovs were planning to inavde the home islands by September 1945 at the latest. That would have brought forward (a much reduced in scope) US invasion and also expended most of Japans last resources anyway.
There had never been a question if the Allies would win against Imperial Japan, it was just a question of when. A rough timeline of the key events for looking at how the war planners would have looked at the Pacific war follows.
Even before WWII started for the Americans, it had been agreed that defeating Germany first was the higher priority. The Allied forces actually were allocated more resources than originally planned.
Prewar planning had counted on the US forces in the Philippines holing up, and did not anticipate Japan’s abilities. Even worse were the British efforts, or lack thereof. Everyone had underestimated their abilities.
The Japanese actually did much better than they had anticipated in early 1942, and at less cost to themselves. However, first the draw at the Battle of Coral Sea and then the stinging defeat at Midway in June, 1942 marked the high point of Japanese expansion.
It took another year for the Allies to figure out what to do, and the July 1943 launch of Operation Cartwheel, the twin-axis attack with MacArthur advancing along New Guinea, and Nimitz along the various islands with the aim of isolating Rabaul pretty much set the timetable for the remainder of the war. Although it look longer than anticipated at the start (and what doesn’t?) it gave roughly fixed the end of the war.
Although both campaigns were become progressively more efficient, the change in Japanese tactics in Iwo Jima and Okinawa in February to March and from early April to mid-June demonstrated that the end game was going to be much bloodier and take much longer than previously anticipated.
Dissonance points out, at the February 1945 Yelta Conference, Roosevelt asked for, and obtained a commitment from Stalin to declare war on Japan within three months of the defeat of Germany. It was entirely coincidence that this came right between the two atomic bombs.
The Trinity test wasn’t until July 16, so it was about three weeks between that and the actual use. Had the bomb not worked, then the war would have ended sometime in 1946.
They were having to make manpower decisions during the early summer. How many of the army in Germany should they send home and how many more to draft.
My WAG is that no one felt confident enough to really guess, but if they were to have, perhaps it would be:
Thinking prior to Dec. 7th. –> Sometime in 1943.
Thinking prior to Midway —> Holy shit. Close your eyes and pray. (We will win, but who knows when?)
Thinking at the commencement of Operation Cartwheel. –> '45 to '46.
Thinking prior to Iwo Jima —> end of '45, beginning of '46.
Thinking prior to Trinity —> Summer if we’re lucky, the bomb words and they surrender. Summer of '46 otherwise.
Some replies to specific comments:
I mostly agree, but the peace feelers the Japanese were putting out in July of '45 were ludicrous. I don’t think the US took their signs seriously.
QFT
It’s far, far more complicated than this, and involves competing groups of power within Japan. The IJA would have fought on to the last man, had the emperor not intervened.
Although the declaration of war and Soviet fighting gets the short stick in the American telling of the war, that was as significant factor in Japan’s surrender.
As we’ve discussed before, the Supreme War Council was split three to three to continue the war, even after the two atomic bombs and the Soviet declaration of war.
As well as the Western POWs who were slated to be executed. (The Chinese POWs already were.)
Completely wrong and not worth responding to.
That was the entire point of island hopping (which MacArthur claimed credit but it was really the Navy). They bypassed key Japanese bases. However, they were not willing to sit by forever and allow the Japanese to just build themselves up stronger and stronger. It was a horrible war and they had to just keep going.
They were overly optimistic about their chances, but that did not affect the overall planning for the war.
Way before.
By late July and early August, the various war planning departments for the Pacific were getting the reports from the strategic bombings in Europe, and were starting the change their targets to reflect these reports, including increased attention to the transportation system.
Unique among the combatants, Japan relied on ocean transport for various necessary supplies, including foodstuff. The calorie intake was steadily decreasing, and with the loss of the Ryukyu islands, the cut-off of sugar imports itself would have caused more starvation. US subs and mining was starting to hurt the transportation of rice from Hokkaido, which would have made the winter of '45 deadly for many civilians.
Manufacturing as pretty much ending, but the IJA had stockpiled enough ammunition in addition to the combined tokkou (kamikize) planes. They had one last good fight left in them.
Well, both the Allies and the Japanese questioned that, so I guess there* had* been a question. Mind you yes, there were apparently a small group of Japanese leaders who thought they couldn’t win- but didnt say anything.
Yes, with 20/20 hindsight we can see that a Japanese victory was unlikely. But the Americans were scared and many Japanese leaders were confidant.
Good point about the POWs, you’re right here. Any delay would have doomed the Allied POWs.
It’s something that I have seen raised numerous times in numerous places. Both the US and British bombing assessments are frequently viewed with skepticism for various alleged shortcomings such as [ul]
[li]Attemting to influence post-war funding allocations[/li][li]Justifying a possible over-investment in the bombing arm during the war[/li][li]Covering up military errors made by those responsible for directing the bombing campaign[/li][li]Inadvertent bias of the ‘hammer in hand, lots of things look like they need nailing’ type[/li][/ul]
If anything the Japanese one is more questioned than the German one, from what I have seen.
Whether such criticism is valid is another matter, but there’s certainly plenty of it out there.
There’s this:
There’s also the “Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.” which is based upon no actual evidence whatsoever; the responsible leaders of Japan were quite prepared for national suicide before defeat.
They’re not very long reports, and pointing out obvious faults that had occurred during the war doesn’t make them extremely critical, it just makes them critical. It also doesn’t make them unbiased.
Are they of the opinion that Japan would have surrendered unconditionally by 1 Nov 1945 or are they of the opinion that an invasion wasn’t strictly necessary and that Japan could have been left to starve, a process which would take significantly longer than until 1 November and involved the deaths by starvation of millions of civilians? Because there is a huge difference between the two, and only the USSBS is claiming the former.
Excuse me? Exactly where in the hell did you read this nonsense? With what non-existent amphibious lift were the Soviets planning on invading the Japanese home islands with in September 1945?