America never nukes Japan ?

what if for whatever reason, the U.S. never nukes Japan? How long would ww2 go on ?

What will be the cost of a land invasion if it happens ?

Will the USSR intervene ?

And how will it take place ?
 
A fact that often gets overlooked is that the Emperor was already considering surrender before the atomic bombs were dropped. Even if there were no atomic bombings, the increasing hopelessness of Japan's situation would have caused the Emperor to take the same course he did IOTL. After all, the US was dropping every kind of bomb on Japan. Whether the bombs were nuclear or not make little difference in regards to the destruction being caused.

As for the Soviets, there was a bit of a desire for Hokkaido, but without any experience or capability in amphibious landings, they would have required US assistance, which the US was not willing to give.
 
I'm part of the people that think the surrender of Japan was caused by the entry of the Soviets and their conquest of Manchuria. No invasion of the homelands would have been neccesary even if they didn't use the atomic bombs. If they did, you don't want to know what would have happened, but lets just say it would overshadow the holocaust.

The atomic bombs more orl ess gave a better excuse to surrender to the US than their fear of the USSR. That would have looked worse.
 
Korea probably gets bombed a few years later, if only so these new weapons can be tested in a live combat situation.
 
A fact that often gets overlooked is that the Emperor was already considering surrender before the atomic bombs were dropped. Even if there were no atomic bombings, the increasing hopelessness of Japan's situation would have caused the Emperor to take the same course he did IOTL.

On the other hand there was already an attempted military coup when the Emperor announced the surrender. Without the atomic bombings that coup probably gets more support, possibly even succeeds.
 
Another great question and thank you. So many variables. The US had the bomb but chose not to use it. The US never had the bomb; never developed it. The US had the bomb but not in time for WW2. So on and so on. The coup attempt succeeds. Japan surrenders without the bombs being used. Japan fights to the very end with or without the bombs being used.

They say the bombs helped end the war with Japan. We will never know for sure. Had the home island invasions occurred on schedule it may have cost 10 million Japanese lives and up to 1 million allied causalities. Like already suggested, using the two, (2) bombs against Japan perhaps, (perhaps) saved the entire northern hemisphere from using many many bombs later?

I for one still do not understand how the world in general and the Soviet Union and the Allies dodged the nuclear bullet. In this case nuclear war. We all had them. Seems nobody used them. Thank goodness for that. Had a nuclear WW3 occurred it would have set modern civilization back a couple hundred years. Can we even imagine 2-3 billion dead over 30 years? Wow!

War is such a waste. Much better to wage peace. The B29 bomber program was the most expensive USA war project. The bomb was the second most expensive. What if both were not needed to end WW2 in the pacific? I dunno that.
 
Whether the bombs were nuclear or not make little difference in regards to the destruction being caused.

As for the Soviets, there was a bit of a desire for Hokkaido, but without any experience or capability in amphibious landings, they would have required US assistance, which the US was not willing to give.
You're right about the a-bombs. They were more an excuse for Japanese surrender than motivation. The real fear was a Soviet invasion. The Soviets planned to hit the beaches by November (possibly an unrealistic goal--just as unrealistic as their alarmingly swift 11-day burn through Manchuria in August.

Soviets may have been new to the amphibious game, but they did okay in taking the Kurils in the days before (and just after) the Emperor's surrender announcement. Thinking they could take Hokkaido is a conservative estimate. It's quite plausible they could have gotten onto northern Honshu before March 1946, which was the Pentagon's tentative invasion date for the main island
 

kernals12

Banned
The US invasion of Japan becomes a bloodbath. 20 million casualties were estimated. And Harry Truman might be forced to allow Stalin to partition Japan.
 
The atomic bombs more or less gave a better excuse to surrender to the US than their fear of the USSR. That would have looked worse.
It's more of a binkie to American students of history than justified in the primary sources of 1945.

Japan was certainly more eager to surrender to the Americans. But the documents are pretty clear that Russia was the bigger boogie man.

I'm part of the people that think the surrender of Japan was caused by the entry of the Soviets and their conquest of Manchuria. No invasion of the homelands would have been necessary even if they didn't use the atomic bombs. If they did, you don't want to know what would have happened, but lets just say it would overshadow the holocaust.

I'm not sure that surrender without invasion was a given. Certainly the Americans couldn't have known it. The talks brokered through the Moscow diplomatic community were going very slowly and featured both deep deception by the pro-entanglement Soviet diplomats and self-delusion by Japanese diplomats who thought surrender short of "unconditionality" was feasible. I can easily envision everybody diddling around for another three months until the November invasion of Kyushu happens. Further bombing of Japanese targets between August and November were being debated--including use of other WMDs--before the atomic bombs became state of the art. Had Hiroshima not been an option in August, by November there wouldn't have been a better tactical option for taking the caves of Kyush than phosgene gas bombing of entrenchments. American war planners were mortified by the thought of taking the four islands the same way Okinawa was taken.
 
The US invasion of Japan becomes a bloodbath. 20 million casualties were estimated. And Harry Truman might be forced to allow Stalin to partition Japan.

Long after the war, after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings came under question, the citation of "millions of casualties" came into vogue among people who wanted to support Truman's decision. But the Pentagon's planners (who'd gotten pretty good at estimating battlefield casualty and mortality rates) expected about 200k American losses and didn't predict estimates of Japanese losses. You can justify a guess of 2-5 million Japanese deaths, but 20 mil seems a bit too Paraguayan than the actual history suggests.
 
What if for whatever reason, the U.S. never nukes Japan? How long would ww2 go on ?
Best guess: Spring 1946. The planned November invasion of Kyushu would have been a godawful mess for the Americans. US leaders rightly feared the US public drifting into a war weariness. In the end, I think the American public would've stuck it out. But morale was bound to be a factor in military planning. Kyushu would probably lead to a strategic reevaluation of the Okinawa model of flame-throwing cave after cave across an entrenched battlement.

I think a shift to limited gas warfare to take out entrenched positions would become the logical replacement to the a-bombing strategy. After Kyushu, it might not only be troops but also civilian targets (wherever there was war-manufacturing taking place--which includes the production sites scattered all over the cities of Japan) getting gassed. Ugly, but a politically justifiable alternative to 6 figure casualties in Honshu. The Japanese had done enough in China, Korea, and the Philippines to justify such an extreme "necessity" by the Americans.

The Soviets were already going amphibious on the Kuril Islands by August 1945. They would have been in Hokkaido by October--maybe sooner. Cf, note how quickly Stalin's boys cut through the IJ Army in Manchuria. Realistic or not, the expectation was bound to be that the Russians were aiming for Tokyo by war's end. Unrealistic, maybe, but a legit fear at the time

What will be the cost of a land invasion if it happens ?

Ugly. I forget what I got when I researched this topic 20 years ago. But ISTR the Pentagon estimating 70-90,000 dead for Kyushu and over half again that many for Honshu.​

Will the USSR intervene ?
Does the pope shit in the woods? Yes, Russia was already prepping an invasion of Japan. I doubt winter conditions would have been an impediment to Soviet performance.​

And how will it take place ?
Soviets were already taking the Kurils and pressing onto Hokkaido. Even MacArthur wanted them to add their bodies to the fight. The Soviet'd be breaking out of beachhead into a wider island-wide war by November. Americans might be diverted into China to prevent a Polandization of Northern China. Despite American desire to wear the Japanese down with embargoes and the like, Soviet invasions would proably force the Americans' hand. They'd allow much more Allied participation (OTL, the Americans wanted to keep Britain, France, and sundry Commonwealth nations from getting a slice of the action. With the Reds all in, that reluctance would fade when the US began its own Honshu campaign in the spring. The most likely scenario would be a bisected Japan and a bisected China. There would be no "Chinese occupation zone," as such would be insane to permit, so Japan would be split three ways, not four. Out of necessity, Russia would get a port--most likely Niigata. Korea might well end up fully communist, altho Soviets might trade off the South to keep Niigata.

Given the geography, the Cold War in east Asia would be a lot messier than Europe. The equivalent of the Korean War would be played out across China. The potential for it going hot (read US vs Soviet fighting, including nukes) is much greater than the relatively more balanced European theater.​
 
Long after the war, after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings came under question, the citation of "millions of casualties" came into vogue among people who wanted to support Truman's decision. But the Pentagon's planners (who'd gotten pretty good at estimating battlefield casualty and mortality rates) expected about 200k American losses and didn't predict estimates of Japanese losses. You can justify a guess of 2-5 million Japanese deaths, but 20 mil seems a bit too Paraguayan than the actual history suggests.

However, if a bombs were not used against Hiroshima and Nagasaki, then one wonders whether a-bombs would be used against the defense of the beaches to be invaded as originally planned and how would complete non use of a bombs on the invasion.
 
"The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming!!!!" In the better conditions of August, the Russians barely managed to take the Kuriles. While Hokkaido had limited troops, the ability of the Russians to do a significant assault was quite limited, and the Soviets had NEVER done anything more than very local amphibious hops and those were done in the Black Sea or Baltic. Mounting an amphibious assault to Hokkaido with a large enough force to take and occupy it, and keeping the force supplied is simply beyond their capabilities. Trying to do so in the weather and marine conditions in November, or anytime until the spring is well beyond Soviet capabilities, and would be a stretch for the experienced and much larger US Pacific Fleet. Sure they could romp through Manchuria, the Kwantung Army was a shell, take Southern Sakhalin, and probably get all of Korea...invading the Japanese Home Islands, at least any sooner than Spring, 1946 and with major extra LL and US help.
 
Apparently, the mining of the Japanese coastal waters would have caused hunger death by the millions. It was however, not particular glamourous for B-29 crews to chuck a handful of mines in the water, but it would have meant the difference.
 
Apparently, the mining of the Japanese coastal waters would have caused hunger death by the millions. It was however, not particular glamourous for B-29 crews to chuck a handful of mines in the water, but it would have meant the difference.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Starvation

Mining of Japanese Home Waters had been done in OTL and hunger among population was observed. If Japan surrendered a few months later than OTL or the aerial mining started earlier, full blown starvation would have happened.

Food insecurity wide spread in immediate post war years, further loss of lifes was prevented by American supplies.
 
The Soviets were receiving American assistance to do just that.

Project Hula

Project Hula was not designed to aid an Soviet invasion of Hokkaido:

Project Hula was a program during World War II in which the United States transferred naval vessels to the Soviet Union in anticipation of the Soviets eventually joining the war against Japan, specifically in preparation for planned Soviet invasions of southern Sakhalin and the Kuril islands.

The amount of shipping and material transferred to USSR was insufficient to mount an invasion and information can be found the wiki page you cited:

Many people believed that Project Hula would have given the Soviet Union the ability to invade the Japanese home islands. However, many historians agreed it was still not enough for the Soviets to pose a serious threat to Tokyo. As of 20 December 1945, 3,741 American lend-lease ships were given to the Soviets, 36 of which were capable of mounting an invasion of Japan. This was clearly not enough to pose a large threat to Japanese forces in the mainland.[42] Given how the Soviets conducted in their invasions of southern Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands with limited U.S. Navy ships and landing craft, it was likely that Soviets would not have succeeded in taking entire Japanese-occupied territories, including Hokkaido.

For example, the Soviets in their invasion of southern Sakhalin on August 11 outnumbered the Japanese by a factor of three but they were unable to advance due to strong Japanese resistance. The Soviet invasion of the Kuril Islands took place after Japan's capitulation on August 15, and despite this, the Japanese forces in these islands resisted quite fiercely (although some of them were unwilling to fight due to Japan's surrender on August 15). In the Battle of Shumshu, the Soviets had 8,821 troops unsupported by tanks and without larger warships. The well-established Japanese garrison had 8,500 troops and fielded around 77 tanks. The Battle of Shumshu lasted for five days in which the Soviets lost over 516 troops and five of the sixteen landing ships (most of these ships were ex-U.S. Navy) to Japanese coastal artillery while the Japanese lost over 256 troops. At the end, Soviet casualties totaled up to 1,567 while the Japanese suffered 1,018 casualties, making it the only battle in the 1945 Soviet–Japanese War where Russian losses exceeded the Japanese. If the war had actually gone on, the death toll among the Soviets in their invasion of the Kuril Islands would have been far higher and the logistics supply would be severely strained due to lack of Soviet capability to supply its forces and equipment overseas. At the time of Japan's surrender, an estimated 50,000 Japanese soldiers were stationed in Hokkaido[43][44][[[Wikipedia:Citing_sources|page needed]]]_46-0" class="reference" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1; font-family: inherit; font-size: 0.75em; background: none; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;">[45][46]

During World War II, the Japanese had a naval base at Paramushiro in the Kuril Islands and several bases in Hokkaido. The Sea of Japanwas patrolled by the Imperial Japanese Navyday and night. If there was any Soviet Navy presence on those waters, the Japanese would have been aware of it. Since Japan and the Soviet Union were neutral up until the Soviets' declaration of war on Japan in August 1945, the Port of Vladivostok and other seaports in the Soviet Union were constantly watched by Japanese observers based in their own held territories in Manchuria, Korea, Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands.[47]

The Yalta Conference gave the Soviet Union the right to invade the southern Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, but not the Japanese home islands. According to Thomas B. Allen and Norman Polmar, detailed Soviet plans for the Far East invasions had been carefully drawn up, except that the landing for Hokkaido "existed in detail" only in Stalin's mind and that it was "unlikely that Stalin had interests in taking Manchuria and even taking on Hokkaido. Even if he wanted to grab as much territory in Asia as possible, he was too much focused on establishing a blockhead in Europe compared to Asia."[48] Two days before Japan's surrender on August 15, 1945, Commissar Nikita Khrushchev and Marshal Meretskov suggested that they should invade Hokkaido, but majority of Soviet diplomats and officers, including Vyacheslav Molotovand Georgy Zhukov opposed it on the grounds that they still didn't have enough landing craft and equipment needed for the invasion; thus, if they tried anyway, it would dangerously expose their troops to a fierce Japanese defense, and that it would violate the Yalta agreement with the Western Allies, which forbade the Soviets from invading the Japanese home islands.[49]

On September 11, 1947, a memo was written by American leaders[who?] concerning American troop withdrawal from their occupation of Japan:

Japan is not likely to present a threat to the security of the United States at any time in the foreseeable future. United States security measures in the Far East are, therefore, designed to primarily to safeguard, without the means available, against Russian armed aggression in the Orient. With respect to Japan, present estimates of Soviet capabilities recognize Russia's lack of adequate naval forces to carry out an amphibious assault on the Japanese Islands...Inasmuch as current United States air and land forces in Japan are considered adequate to disrupt the continued support of such an invasion after the initial surprise assaults, Soviet success would be extremely limited.[50]
 
An old post of mine:


**
You should know that the [Strategic Bombing]Survey has been subjected to severe criticism from some historians:

"...In particular, both [Robert] Newman and [Barton] Bernstein, in examining the Survey's postwar interrogation transcripts of high-ranking Japanese officials, concluded that the evidence for the so-called 'pre-November' claim was weak and that significant counterevidence had gone unacknowledged in the Survey's reports.

"Contrary to the conclusions in the Bombing Survey's two major 1946 reports, for example, Prince Konoe Fumimaro had stated in his postwar interrogation that the war would probably have gone on *throughout 1945* if the atomic bomb had not been dropped on Japan. In his own postwar interrogation, Premier Suzuki had also indicated that the atomic bombing made an important difference in ending the war, and only after some coaxing by survey questioners had Privy Seal Kido Koicho given them testimony that the atomic bomb had been unnecessary.

"Both Newman and Bernstein contended that Nitze had overargued his case and that Nitze had believed that the scheduled mid-August bombing of Japanese railroads, with the likely resulting food shortage, would very probably (Nitze said 'in all probability') have produced Japan's surrender before the November invasion. In Newman's harsh judgment, Nitze had misused the interview sources with Japanese leaders, thereby totally invalidating his contention that a pre-November surrender would have 'in all probability' been achieved without the atomic bomb.

"Bernstein, while finding that Nitze's 'in all probability' contention was too firm, sought briefly to examine the likely impact of the bombing of railroads, of the damaging of the already burdened Japanese internal transportation network, and of looming food shortages in Japan. Bernstein concluded that Nitze had been far too optimistic about a pre-November surrender, without the A- bombing, Soviet entrance into the war, or modified surrender terms allowing an emperor-as-figurehead system. But Bernstein contended, as he had in other work, that Soviet entry, the continuing conventional warfare, and allowance of an emperor system might well have ended the war before November without an invasion." https://books.google.com/books?id=XjW49VTRhxQC&pg=PA30

For a whole book devoted to an attack on the Strategic Bombing Survey, see Gian P. Gentile, *How Effective is Strategic Bombing? Lessons Learned From World War II to Kosovo.* http://nyupress.org/books/9780814731352/

In my view, critics of the A-bomb decision are wrong to rely on the flawed Strategic Bombing Survey. Arguably, of course, they do not have to so so, since after all the Soviets *did* enter the war, and that certainly played *some* role in Japan's decision to surrender (though its relative importance compared to the atomic bombings can be endlessly debated). In any event, even if we knew for sure that the combination of the Soviet entry and conventional bombing would (at least with a promise to keep a figurehead Emperor) have avoided an invasion--and we cannot *know* that, though it is certainly plausible--we still have to take into account the large numbers of deaths that a continuation of the war for a couple of months, even without an invasion, would bring.

But in any event, relying on the Survey is IMO even more fallacious than taking it for granted that an invasion would have been required without the atomic bombs.

https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...ntil-after-world-war-ii.350262/#post-10596970
 
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