One thing I’ve pondered from time to time concerns events post WWII. After Germany surrendered the allies basically split the country in twain and Berlin was rendered up to the gods of politics resulting in the infamous Berlin wall, in which East and West were kept apart until its collapse 50 years later (speaking in round numbers).
I have wondered, that if that was Germany’s fate, then how did Japan get off so easily. Why didn’t the allies opt to make a north and south , or east and west Japans? Why did no wall spilt Tokoyo?
The easy answer is that the asian culture that pervaded Japan at the time would not allow invaders to rule thier country, after all they had entire families leaping off of cliffs to avoid falling into the hands of the “evil” westerners. That the slightest suggestion of doing the same to Tokoyo would have re-ignited the war.
However, something tells me that it wasn’t fear of Japanese revolt that kept the Land of the Rising Sun from becoming diced up like a pizza pie by the Allies. Can anyone fill in the blanks?
Well, when you ask why, “… didn’t the allies opt …” you imply that the division of Germany was something that could have been decided differently. Not so, I believe. The Russians, or rather the USSR, had a huge army already in place in Berlin and everywhere else (approximately) east of the Elbe river.
Germany was thus divided into east and west in spite of anything the western allies could do short of going to war. So we decided to do what we had to do.
The military situation in Japan at the end of the war bore no resemblance to that in Germany.
The simple answer is, Germany was divided because part of it was conquered by the Soviet Union and part of its was conquered by the U.S. and Britain. To put it mildly, after the war, the U.S. and the Soviets had very different ideas of the shape Germany should take. Since each side had large numbers of troops on the scene to enforce its will, Germany was divided for decades, with one half dominated by the Soiets and the other half… sort-of-dominated by the U.S.
However, the Soviet Union played almost no part in the conquest of Japan (in fact, the USSR didn’t even declare war on Japan until 1945). Since Soviet troops never occupied Japan, there was no need to divide the country.
Of course, if the U.S. didn’t have atomic bombs, things might have turned out differently. A large-scale invasion of Japan was being planned, and the Russians were GOING to be part of that invasion. Many historians believe that Truman dropped the atomic bomb on Japan, in part, to avoid letting the Soviet Union get troops into Japan. If the Soviets HAD taken part in an invasion of Japan, they might well have occupied parts of Japan for decades, too.
Geography was one big reason. Germany was actually located between Russia, England, and France.
Another reason was history: more bad blood between Germany and the Allies than with Japan, so there wasn’t the feeling that the country itself had to be physically split into fourths to prevent WWIII.
Finally, there’s the big issue of contribution–the U.S. did most of the work against Japan, unlike the war on the continent. In fact, it is now generally accepted that the atomic bombing of Nagasaki was done for the primary purpose of squeezing a surrender out of Japan before Russia could get its tentacles on it. Russia had just declared victory against Germany and IIRC, had already declared war on Japan. The U.S. and USSR were fairweather allies, hence the cold war breaking out immediately after WWII. The last thing we wanted was a Russian section of Japan. In fact, some famous historian has said that the last shot of WWII was the first shot of the cold war–sorry, no cite.
I think the main reason was that the Soviet Union was officially neutral in its relations with Japan during most of the war. It was 100% commited to fighting the Nazis. Therfore they sent troops straight into Germany, and seized Berlin, thus gaining a zone of occupation. However the USSR did not declare war against Japan until the summer of 1945, when they invaded Manchuria and the Korean Penisnula (that is why Korea is divided).
Japan may have been eventually invaded by the Soviets from the north and Americans from the south, but of course the atomic bombs hastened the end of the war. Japan did get off easy in one symbolic matter, they kept their head of state.
The Soviet Union did annex southern Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands from Japan, which is still a matter of some dispute. But the USSR was not in any real position in August of 1945 to demand an occupation zone in Japan. They had barely fought in that theatre.
Later, many Soviets and other historians did accuse Truman of having this outcome in mind in his decision to drop atomic bombs.
The Soviets didn’t open hostilities on Japan until the last few days of the war. The Los Angeles Times headline for August 9, 1945 read RUSSIA ATTACKS JAPAN, SECOND ATOMIC BOMBING. The story under the headline says that the Soviets had been hostile to Japan for many years, but had only declared war a few hours before the attack. They had apparently been intending to go to war with Japan all along but had made the war with Germany a higher priority. They probably hurried their attack on Japan (meaning Japanese forces in Manchuria) because of the atomic bombings.
Anyway, I agree with the people who say Japan would possibly have been partitioned if the war had gone on much longer and the Soviets had been more involved.
Actually, zombie dude13 what you describe actually did occur, just not to Japan. Administration of Korea was divided among the four Allied nations, with France, Britain and the US in charge of southern Korea, and the USSR in charge of the north, with the dividing line pretty close to where it is now, at the 38th parallel. As with Germany, it was agreed that this separation would just be temporary, but things didn’t turn out that way.
I would imagine it to be quite the contrary. The US has always been home to massive amounts of German immigrants, and the German culture is very similar to that of the US. I’d imagine it was much easier to villify the Japanese, because they were so radically different. We had internment camps for Asians, but not Germans. A look at POW treatment would probably show that there was more bad blood towards the japanese than towards the Germans as well.
Hola!
As mentioned before the Russians were not at war with the Empire of Japan until the last second of the war. I am not sure that the Russians were even involbved in a battle with the Japanese.
The Russians and the Japanese were in a war in the early 20th Century (1908-1909?) called the Russo-Japanese war, in which the Japanese won.
Before the war, the Japanese ruled the southern half of Sakahlin Island which is straight north from Japan itself. Stalin took the southern half after the war.
Actually, there was an internment camp for Europeans, both Germans and Italians and perhaps some others. I think only citizens of those countries were interned there, unlike the others where American citizens of Japanese descent were interned. This is one of the mostly forgotten aspects of the war.
Another is that Austria and Vienna was also divided into four sectors in the post-war era, just as Germany and Berlin were. In 1955, the Soviets proposed that the occupation of Austria be terminated on the condition that the country become completely neutral.[sup]1[/sup] I suspect they did this for strategic reasons, but have never read up on it to be sure.
[sup]1[/sup] It’s too bad that this happened because it prevented Kennedy from visiting West Vienna and declaring “Ich bin ein Wiener”.
Japanese were much more heavily vilified than Germans (and Italians hardly at all). I guess there were many reasons for this, including that throughout the midwest there were many who thought the US was on the wrong side in the European war. There was so much anti-war sentiment in the US that a myth has grown up that Roosevelt sat on advance warning of the Pearl Harbor attack so as to guarantee that the US would declare war.
Actually, this was one of the things that sparked my curiousity.
>>>>what you describe actually did occur, just not to Japan. Administration of Korea was divided among the four Allied nations, with France, Britain and the US in charge of southern Korea, and the USSR in charge of the north, with the dividing line pretty close to where it is now, at the 38th parallel<<<<<
Exactly, and I kind of figured that they would have done the same with Japan. Regardless of how involved in the war with the Japanese that the Russians were, I am sure Stalin (in all his meglomania) would have demanded a piece of the pie. His silence, really kind of shocked me considering all the land he snatched up right after the war to form the Soviet Union. The guy was power hungry and a psycho dictator who murdered more people than Hitler. Surely he would have made demands on the rest of the Allies regardless of his ionvolvement. The way I view it, France and Britain were both wiped out after the war with Germany, and the US was pretty glad that the European battle was over. I really doubt that any of them would have protested too much had Stalin made such demands.
I guess in this case, possession was 9/10ths of the negotiation. The Soviet Union already had troops masses inside Germany and Korea when the respective fights ended, so division was the only workable option. In Japan, the US was only Allied presence, and was able to keep everything for itself.
Stalin was power hungry, but the war had taken a lot out of the USSR. The US, on the other hand, was stronger than ever and had a new toy that nobody else could play with (granted, we used our only two on Japan, but nobody else knew that and we could make more soon enough). Most of the top brass was already looking at Stalin as the next big enemy, so I don’t think they would have been as willing to give up Japan without a fight as you suspect they would. France and Britain really wouldn’t have had much say in the matter.
The Russians caught the Japanese completely off guard and were tremendously successful. They quickly overran large parts of N. China in no time. The quickness and magnitude of their losses played an important role in convincing some Japanese leaders that unconditional surrender was needed. (Some had hoped that Stalin would broker a truce.) The thought of revenge minded Russians landing in Japan unnerved them.
Maybe the few days of battle on “The Western Front” in the Pacific was lopsided, but it was definitely an astonishing military victory for the Russians.
I’ll have to throw a flag on this one, too. ‘Asian culture’ or no…Japan was ruled by foreigners for several years after the war. Unless you think MacArthur and company had become naturalized citizens.
Why didn’t they keep Manchuria for themselves? This would have been strategically essential, in keeping the Chinese at bay, and maintaining the Stalinist doctrine from Moscow.