Some of those taking part in this thread would have been able to carry out a more realistic discussion of this matter if they’d been familiar with the works of Richard B. Frank, D.M. Giangreco, and David M. Glantz. There are many scholars who have made valuable contributions in this area. So much, in fact, that it is almost impossible to catch up with it all. However, anyone studying the books and articles of this trio will come away with a strong grounding in the factors determining how the war actually played out and why. Naturally no one is going to plow through their work during the short life of this thread but I hope that if this or a similar subject comes up in the future – and it undoubtedly will – that a few more correspondents will have had a chance to check out these historians who have a comprehensive understanding of the endgame in the Pacific and East Asia.
See Frank’s book is
Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire,
https://www.amazon.com/Downfall-End-Imperial-Japanese-Empire/dp/0141001461, and here is his superb presentation at the Harry S. Truman Library,
https://www.c-span.org/video/?327055-1/discussion-fall-japanese-empire where he spoke about the events leading up to Japan’s surrender. Giangreco’s
Hell to Pay: Operation Downfall and the Invasion of Japan, 1945-1947,
https://www.amazon.com/D.-M.-Giangreco/e/B001IU0QNC, is regularly described as the definitive work on U.S. and Japanese plans for both the invasion and defense of Japan. A view of his work and experience, somewhat different than his standard Naval Institute Press bio, appears on reddit,
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/9ieegj/whats_your_opinion_on_dm_giangrecos_hell_to_pay/.
David Glantz (Colonel, US Army, ret.) was the founding director of the Soviet Army Studies Office, at the Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, an organization that continues to do important work today under the name Foreign Military Studies Office. Glantz is also the long-time founder and editor of the
Journal of Slavic Military Studies and has written dozens of authoritative books and articles on the military of the former Soviet Union. His “August Storm” volumes on the Soviet offensive against Japan at the end of World War II are absolutely priceless.
Anyone looking to purchase used copies of his “August Storm” volumes should, however, be aware that there are two different sets available that have very similar names. They’ll want to make sure that they are getting the 2003 volumes,
Soviet 1945 Strategic Offensive in Manchuria, 1945: August Storm and
Soviet Operational and Tactical Combat in Manchuria, 1945: August Storm from Frank Cass Publishers. The earlier and less comprehensive 1983 volumes – which are nevertheless rock-solid works – are titled
August Storm: The Soviet 1945 Strategic Offensive in Manchuria (Leavenworth Papers No. 7) and
August Storm: Soviet Tactical and Operational Combat in Manchuria, 1945 (Leavenworth Papers No. 8).
By the time that Glantz produced the 2003 set he’d been able to benefit greatly from the upsurge in archival material that became available after the breakup of the Soviet Union. And it was a good thing that he took advantage of this while he could because the “openness” started to close off almost as quickly as it had begun and now comes in the form of periodic, official spurts instead of through independent research of primary source materials. Nevertheless, the result is that his knowledge, which broadened exponentially between the 1983 and 2003 sets, is still expanding because, unlike many authors who will write a book or two on a given subject and then move on, he continues to educate himself. This has prompted Glantz, as Genrexx noted earlier, to modify his opinion in some areas. For example, while he formerly expressed that the Soviets might have been able to conduct a successful operation in Northern Hokkaido, he has since come to the conclusion that “any military operations against Hokkaido were infeasible, even if Stalin had decided to challenge Truman – which he didn’t.” (D.M. Giangreco,
Hell to Pay, p258)
Interestingly, the change (or maybe it’s better to say “refinement”) of his opinion over the years is itself of some value to this thread because his earlier, discarded views are far better known than what he knows now. Giangreco notes that: “When producing the 2003 book [Glantz] had less information available to him and knowledge of the Japanese situation was largely limited to how it was characterized in the Russian after-action reports. The piecemealing out of documents from the former Soviet Union has been an ongoing frustration for Glantz. He notes that the material available to researchers is still limited and that this is unlikely to change significantly any time soon. Said Glantz: ‘The mail’s still out. There’s one more – maybe three, four, five more – rounds [of document releases to come] before we’re through’.” (Giangreco,
Hell to Pay, p509)
Here is Glantz speaking on “Stalin and the Soviet Union's Pacific War Strategy” at the same Navy Memorial event where be made the statements quoted by Giangreco,
https://www.c-span.org/video/?327355-3/discussion-josef-stalin-soviet-unions-pacific-war-strategy. Giangreco’s presentation later that evening on U.S., Soviet and Japanese operational plans for combat on Hokkaido can be found at,
https://www.c-span.org/video/?327355-5/strategies-invasion-defense-japan, and includes Frank and Glantz who were invited on stage by Giangreco during the Q&A to elaborate on Soviet intentions and capabilities. The two new chapters in
Hell to Pay on the secret and extensive U.S.-Soviet cooperation against Japan, 11 and 17, are a must read. Chapter 17 covers U.S., Soviet, and Japanese plans for the invasion – and defense – of Hokkaido and Chapter 11 the massive U.S. support to Soviet operations in the Far East.
Giangreco also has some interesting thoughts on how and why this support remained essentially unknown for so long at a shortened text version of a Pritzker Military Museum presentation here,
https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/169567. Although it was apparently on the Web at one time through the U.S. Army’s Foreign Military Studies Office, I have been unable to locate the paper on the secret Project Milepost deliveries by Jacob W. Kipp and former Soviet general Makhmut Akhmetevich Gareev. However, while Richard A. Russell’s
Project Hula: Secret Soviet-American Cooperation in the War Against Japan (Navy Historical Center, 1997) is out of print, it can be easily obtained on the Web.
And, by the way, Barry Bull’s comment that “Project Hula was not designed to aid a Soviet invasion of Hokkaido” is completely supported, not in Giangreco’s Chapter 17, The Hokkaido Myth, but in Chapter 11, To Break Japan’s Spine where the secret pre-Yalta negotiations and massive shipment of supplies to directly support Soviet operations against Japan are exhaustively detailed. Chapter 17 fully supports sloreck and Genrexx.