Let me see if I can paraphrase this..
Sarcasm mode engaged…
”The US,GB and their Allie’s were big bad bullies that insisted on kicking poor helpless Japan by Bombing them and threatening to invade. And if they had only been nicer and given poor little Japan a chance it would have seen the error of its ways and ended the war without this Nasty Wasty nukes or an invasion “
Does that more or less sum it up?
Sarcasm mode ended…
And exactly what makes you believe that Japan would surrender on its own if just left alone? Other then wishful thinking and revisionist history?
Part of the Japanese military didn’t want to surrender in the OTL after firebombings (that could be worse then the Nukes) and with the Two nukes and with the blockade and with the destruction up to that point of the Navy and the elimination of most of Japans army.
But somehow Japan was going to magically have a change of heart, realizing it had just been ”wrong” and surrender.
You do realize that unlike Germany Much of Japan STILL does not teach or otherwise get that what it did in WW2 was wrong.
And Japan Sure planned on fighting through any invasion its preparations for being invaded are well documented. So if they in part wanted to fight on after the Nukes and had big plans to fight on after the Invasion and had fought on after the war had OBVIOUSLY turn against them just what in Sams Hill would lead yof to believe that leaving the alone would get them to surrender?
This is yet again another of these posts we get here about every other month or so that seams to have as it’s sole and only point to try and “prove” that the US was actually the evil bad guy in WW2 because it hurt poor little Japan. And it used those nasty waste nuclear weapons.
Frankly this entire topic and all its older relatives with more or less the same point is ridiculous in the extreme and sorry if I sound harsh but this constant rehashing of this frankly stupid concept is getting old. It is also insulting to all those that fought in the war and suffered so horribly to secure the victory.
It is past time that we create for this concept the equivalent of the Infamous Sea Mammal treatment. One spot we can send all of the people with this idea to.
Now for some general observations
1) Unconditional Surrender: This was extremely common in war for as long as it has existed. Genghis Khan insisted upon it. The Alliance t hat took out Nepoleon insisted upon it, And we get it in wars from the US Civil war yo WW1 (yes it started out like it would be negotiated but the West dictated 100% of the terms) If you TRULY win a war it comes with unconditional surrender. Conditions only happen if one side is tireed if fighting but the other side can’t really beat them such as the Russia/Japanese war in which Japan won all the battles that counted but could never invade Russia and force it to unconditional surrender. Or is both sides have just had enough and want to go home. Or Alternatively you can have one side offer some terms to get an early surrender. Usually these terms are more face saving then anything.
2) The Nuclear Bombs: these have way way way too much propaganda behind them. And they were in no way shape or form the nasty easty terrible realky bad and scary bombs that many (most?) seam to think they were. They did not make Japan uninhabitable nor did they do more destruction or kill more people then the US (And Great Britain for that matter) could do if the wanted. And in fact it can easily be pointed out that the Firebombing of Tokyo was worse and that even in Europe with its more resilient construction the firebombing of cities such as Hamburg demonstrated that you don’t need a nuclear weapon to destroy as city and or kill tens if not hundreds of thousands of people. If you have a big enough fleet of bombers and more of less control the airspace
What the Nuclear Bombs DID DO was demonstrate that the US could do with one Aircraft and one bomb what used to take hundreds if not thousands of bombers to do.
The significance of this is to Japan in WW2 was that Japan was hoping for EXACTLY what the OP is suggesting. That the US would more of less decide that invading Japan would be too deadly And that maintaining a long term blockade and bombing campaign would be too costly and that the US would just get tiered of the war and go home to there nice homes and their families. Because despite everything that had happened during the war Japan still thought the US was soft and would not pay the price to achieve total victory. And the OPs suggestion would play into that completely tgus Japan would NEVER surrender.
But with the Atomic Bombs it was definitively demonstrated that the US didn’t need to keep thousands of bombers and hundreds of thousands of men on hand to keep destroying Japan they could just send one Bomber a week and destroy one city or military base per aircraft and this was easily maintained. So any chance that Japan could cause so many US deaths be fighting off an invasion was gone and Japan realized it. So at that point they knew they could never inflict enough death on the US for them to give up as Japan would never be allowed to get close enough to the US to truly harm them again as the US would simply stand back and nuke them into the Stone Age.
3) Historical Revisionism and the Bad reputation of the “BOMB”. Between books writen by folks that have a vested interest in making Japan look better or the US look worse and the propaganda machine that has had 70 years to try and make nuclear weapons look bad we have an amazing amount of folks today that both underestimate how bad Japan was, how stubborn parts of the Japanese Military and Government was and at the same time make the Atomic Bombs look like the evilest weapons ever devised and that only truly evil governments would own them much less ever USE them. When in reality the Atomic weapons used in WW2 were not all that much more cat then a 1000 bomber raid. Yes they had radiation and fall out issues but even these are greatly exaggerated. Don’t get me wrong they are powerful weapons that hopefully will never be used again, But the destruction of other cities both inJapan and in Germany demonstrates that they were not THAT much worse then what could be done conventionally.
4) Total war vs Modern war. Another point that I think is often lost today is that modern warfare is not the same as WW2 was. Starting with Korea and all the way up through the Current mess in most wars we have had one side which was in no way threatened by the other side. For example Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm etc the US could lose the war but it would mot Effect the US itself. Same thing with Say the Falklands and GB or Afghanistan and the USSR. So these were all limited conflicts, So these wars could “aford” to be more limited in the weapons used and how they were used and as the technology allowed for more accuracy it was possible to chose one or two buildings in a city to be targeted where as in WW2 you were doing good if you could hit a give section of a city. So our wars have became much ”cleaner” and less generally destructive as the years have gone by. (Yes war is still horrible, but in general the horror is more conf than in the past.
As for true wars of survival where the losing sides both stood a good chance of having there existence ended or at least radically changed they have been between smaller countries with less ability to field massive armies and Airforce and such as the great powers of WW2 could. So while horribly destructive they too were on a much reduced scale the WW2.
So it is wrong to try and judge the war WW2 (or any other war from long ago) by the standards we use today.
As for OPs original suggestion. Not only is it ASB levels of impossible to get the US to do it which is why he makes no attempt whatsoever to explain how it happened, but is it also a tru stupid idea from the point of view of the US and it’s Allies. As it would play right into the hands of the Japanese in that it would indicate (rightly or not) to Japan that the US and the Allies were weak willed and would not be willing yo pay the cost to see the war to its final conclusion and as a result of this Japan would fight on. As such the assumption that Japan would surrender on anything close to terms that the US or anyone else would accept is flat wrong. As noted elsewhere even with everything that happened a faction of the Japanese government/military didn’t want yo surrender so going easy on them sure is not going yo get them to give up.
At “best” Japan would try for a cease-fire and a peace along the lines of.. you go home and we go back to pre WW2 positions . Thus making the Pacific war pointless from the point of view of the Allie’s.
So the OPs suggestion is both ASB and frankly about the Dumbest thing the US could do. The US and its Allie’s had the equipment, the technology and the manpower in place and the strategic positioning to end the war and they did so. Slowing. Down and holding off would have ultimately destroyed that and probably gave Japan the advantage to force a tie. As even the US in WW2 was not in a position that it could afford economically nor politicly to sustain its forces at this level indefinitely. Its men (and women) had fought hard and paid dearly to get to the point that they could with just a bit more effort, force Japan to surrender. And you want them to give up on that? And let Japan negotiate its way out of the very mess that Japan created not with one dumb idea to attack one country but by a serious of attacks on MULTIPLE countries that did nothing to Japan but stand in there way ranging from China to the US to France GB and Australia to name but a few.
Japan had spent decades on this course of action deliberately attacking others. This goes in part as far back as it’s war vs Russia. And while its military and its government had gotten worse over the years this was nothing new to Japan. It didn’t just wake up one morning in 1941 and say.. “hay I have an idea let’s attack the US AND GB and all their allies“. This was decades of bad decision, and the belief that only Japan was strong enough. And everyone else was too weak willed to resist them. Reinf by the simple fact that no one Had resisted them. Jest as the argument that France and GB giving in to Hitler early on created the monster that we ended up with Japan constantly get away with its various aggressions spawned its actions in December of 1941.
And as an added bonus. If you want a racist government then you have no farther to look than Japan in WW2. While the US GB and the rest were by no means good about this back then. Japan made them all look good. Its very war policy was predicated on the Superiority of the Japanese People over EVERYONE ELSE in the world and they knew they could not truly win the war by sheer military force or economic power but that the rest of the world would simply not stand up to the cost it would take to beat Japan. It was sheer arrogance and racism that made Japan believe that it would win against multiple stronger opponents all at the same time simply because the Japanese People were that much better then everyone else.
So hopefully this thread will stick a stake through the heart of this topic once and for all. Because the constant repeats of this basic concept is getting out of control.
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