Decisive Darkness: What if Japan hadn't surrendered in 1945?

[The Red]

As in the sense of being the only independent state in Japan's sphere. Hence, an island.

No.....I definitely didn't get that allegorical sense while reading it. It seems more like a genuine mistake. Unless he left something out to help flesh out the metaphorically sense of "island".

Chris is right, the perils of another early morning update, although I do like that metaphor Kome.

3. How possible was it that TTL Korea wouldn't be as Soviet-controlled as OTL North Korea was?

What I want is a Korea that is at least not led by that crazy Kim il-sung but somebody more moderate, idealistically a somebody who (like Yugoslavia, Indonesia or India) can balance on the politically bipolar tightrope and maintain political neutrality. I don't know how long this TL would take us, but I hope in this future the leader wouldn't be Kim.

Curiousone's already fielded the order of battle inquiry and he's basically spot on. The initial amphibious landing in Korea is outnumbered but it's troops are better experienced and better equpped than many of the Japanese, many of whom are the greenest of the green. Although the Soviets didn't occupy the whole peninsula until the
Soviet forces from Siberia and Inner Mongolia rolled across the Yalu in September to link up with the beachead.

As for Soviet control, Kim has been quick to follow this advance and is already in Korea by late September. Though the future of the area's occupation remains uncertain, until Japan surrenders he can enjoy unhindered access to the whole peninsula, as well as being included in the surrender of the remaining Japanese troops, to help exaggerate his contribution to the Korean resistance, a myth that will aid his rallying of the liberated workers and peasants.

Imagine OTL scenes such as this October 1945 gathering, but in both North and South.

 

[mlp]

1. 1st Far Eastern Front
........
Whether they split it up would seem to depend on how willing they are to abide by previous agreements with the U.S about the 38th Parallel.

seems my only hope is to expect the Soviets to take all of the Korean peninsula and establish a Korean government that turns out to be more politically neutral than IOTL.

 

[mlp]

Chris is right, the perils of another early morning update, although I do like that metaphor Kome.
........
Imagine OTL scenes such as this October 1945 gathering, but in both North and South.

also, please note:
1. Kim was very bad at speaking Korean. He was only able to read his speech in Pyongyang because the Soviets gave him a language trainer.
2. His name itself is not even his. It was from another famous Korean general who fought in Jiandao.
3. He was not even an independence fighter but was a Major in the Soviet army.
(the point is not whether these facts are right or wrong. the point is that the North Korean (Korean, in this case) population knew these facts and distrusted him as leader.)
All of these things debase his prominence as a North Korean leader. If we are somehow butterflying away the Korean War, it would be safe to assume his position would be filled by someone else. There are some things that cannot be replaced by Soviet influence.

 

[The Red]

also, please note:
1. Kim was very bad at speaking Korean. He was only able to read his speech in Pyongyang because the Soviets gave him a language trainer.
2. His name itself is not even his. It was from another famous Korean general who fought in Jiandao.
3. He was not even an independence fighter but was a Major in the Soviet army.
All of these things debase his prominence as a North Korean leader. If we are somehow butterflying away the Korean War, it would be safe to assume his position would be filled by someone else. There are some things that cannot be replaced by Soviet influence.

These facts were what made Kim such an excellent puppet in Stalin's eyes, a Soviet officer with no real ties to either the nation or a local Communist/Socialist party to get in the way of Soviet control.

 

[mlp]

Theese fact were what made Kim such an excellent puppet in Stalin's eyes, a Soviet officer with no real ties to either the nation or a local Communist/Socialist party to get in the way of Soviet control.

In stalin's eyes, yes obviously. that was exactly why he was chosen.
but that does not mean he would be chosen as leader by the Korean people.

 

[mlp]

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Seventeenth_Area_Army

http://www.history.army.mil/books/wwii/MacArthur Reports/MacArthur V1/Images/p_104.jpg

215,000 Men: 2 Combat Divisions, 5 Depot Divisions, 1 Brigade.

As to Korean resistance..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provisional_Government_of_the_Republic_of_Korea
A Korean government in exile in Kuomintang.

Their army, the KLA working with the Americans, due to be dropped in on 20th August (note the Americans aren't doing this TTL since they're still preparing for Kyushu).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Liberation_Army
1000 men. With a few thousand more potentially waiting in Manchuria.

question- what happened to the Japanese armies in Manchuria? seems I forgot to emphasize that part of the question. I believed the Japanese fell back so quickly in part because they were trying to hold a defensive line at the Korean peninsula.

 

[Curiousone]

question- what happened to the Japanese armies in Manchuria? seems I forgot to emphasize that part of the question. I believed the Japanese fell back so quickly in part because they were trying to hold a defensive line at the Korean peninsula.

Go's & wiki's what happened OTL to the Japanese order of Battle in the Kwangtung Army..

[lmgtfy.com]

- "34th Army (an independent field army responsible for the areas between the Third and Seventeenth Area Armies in North Korea)"
"..it completed a transfer from China to Hamhung, in northern Korea, where it was assigned border patrol during against possible incursions by the Soviet Union into Korea and part of southern Manchukuo. It was overrun by the Soviet Red Army during the Soviet invasion of Manchuria at the end of World War II."

Unavailable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Fourth_Army

Driven back to Harbin.

Unavailable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Fifth_Army

By the time of the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, its poorly equipped and poorly trained forces were no longer a match for the experienced battle-hardened Soviet armored divisions, and it was driven back into defensive positions in Andong Province along the Korean border by the time of the surrender of Japan. It was formally disbanded at Jixi.

Falling back on the mountainous Korean border.
Maybe available, maybe cut off by Soviet advances towards Pyongyang via Amphibious landing sites.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Third_Army

During the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, its poorly trained and under-equipped forces were no match for the experienced battle-hardened Soviet Army, and it was forced back from various locations in Kirin province to the Korean border, surrendering at the end of the war in Yanji and Hunchun, in what is now part of the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture of northeast China.

Similar but a little worse.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Thirtieth_Army

Raised days before invasion. Brief struggle before some remnants defected. Surrendered during invasion.
Unavailable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Forty-Fourth_Army

Focus of the inner pincer movement, fights on but surrenders at Mudken.
Unavailable.

http://stonebooks.com/archives/031109.shtml

Seems the Amphibious invasions on Korea were about cutting off the Kwangtung supply lines in Korea, so even if troops make it back it's possible they've little to fight with.

From the early part of an academic thread on a similar topic before David.M.Glantz himself appears & sets out some info, one commenter here states the Soviets landed T-34/85's amphibiously during their Far East operations (so not just light stuff like Su-74's.. interesting).

http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbro...2&week=b&msg=kQ1Z0Wtrdybu/cJnQ62Jfg&user=&pw=

 

[The Red]

but that does not mean he would be chosen as leader by the Korean people.

No, but Stalin wasn't particularly concerned about legitimacy, that always lay with those who counted the votes on his opinion, namely himself. Although the Soviets will still make an effort to weave a fiction about Kim's prominent role in the resistance, and if anyone major objects they can always disappear.

 

[The Mahnovite]

Do I sense 3 more nukes dropped? Then again, it seems Soviets will progress further, which is good.

And Curiousone brings up some good points- American armor is not unbeatable for the Japanese. The American invasion may be repulsed, unless The Soviets lend them IS-2-s and T-34/85-s.

 

[Curiousone]

Do I sense 3 more nukes dropped? Then again, it seems Soviets will progress further, which is good.

And Curiousone brings up some good points- American armor is not unbeatable for the Japanese. The American invasion may be repulsed, unless The Soviets lend them IS-2-s and T-34/85-s.

I don't think the Americans would ask for IS-2's or T-34/85's (or get them). If they felt they needed anything heavier they'd employ M-26 Pershings. The point is more simply that their plans to use armour to make thrusts along the Kanto plain will run into trouble and higher than expected casualties.

That and as one of the commentors noted in the thread David.M.Glantz commented in, the red volcanic sand near the Kyushu invasion beaches doesn't support Armour. Mixes with water under tracks & becomes 'like ice'. Impacts on using them to take out cave bunkers.

 

[ObssesedNuker]

On Korea: Part of the reason for the DPRK's insanity today is the result of the peninsula's continued division. Without the division, we may see the DPRK follow the pattern of the other East Asian communist dictatorships more closely.

 

[Chris S]

https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/giangrec.htm

This speech on the likely nature of Downfall makes some interesting points regarding challenges of any invasion.

...snip....

A note of caution. While Giangreco has apparently done a lot of research into the topic, I've read his book and it has at least a few prominent errors and some very questionable assumptions:

- he erroneously and off-handedly dismissed any potential for a Soviet landing in Hokkaido by claiming that the Soviets would not have been able to provide air cover. What's more he cites Glantz' epic work on the Soviet Strategic Offensive in Manchuria as his source for this when anyone familiar with Glantz' would have not drawn such a conclusion based on the facts alone of what kind of aircraft the Soviets were operating in theatre and the new air bases they were capturing in southern Sakhalin...

- he plays up a presumed 45-day delay for Olympic/Majestic but a Pentagon study done in the 1960s and repeated in 1985 suggested no more than a 2-week delay. It's a little curious that he seems to either no nothing about those studies or had decided to overlook them....

- he attempts to play up how Kyushu would be like Okinawa in terms of conditions and the Kanto Plain would be like Vietnam (again in terms of conditions), but fails to note that in Vietnam, while the terrain was not the best for combat, this still didn't stop a mixed American army of conscripts and volunteers who had mostly not fought a major war in years from actually winning quite a few battles. While the US DID lose some battles in Vietnam and some battles were indecisive, there were also instances where the Americans won (sometimes winning tactical victories but not strategic victories). By contrast the Kanto Plain would have seen an American army with a lot of veterans fighting an army that was not a guerrilla army like the VC but a regular army employing a mix of regular and irregular tactics. And unlike the VC, the Japanese are less likely to withdraw (not being a guerrilla army and all that) but instead usually showed a tendency to fight til they were no longer capable of fighting and had to withdraw or be annihilated. That's a very different way of fighting than what the Viet Cong did in Vietnam itself and if the VC had done that in Vietnam they would likely have been extinguished as a fighting force long before the Vietnam War was even halfway to being concluded.

- he strangely theorizes that after the Americans reach their stop-line in Kyushu they would likely continue to send forces piece-meal up the western and eastern coastal plains to engage the Japanese who would have withdrawn well north of the American stop-lines to a redoubt and only been sending raiding forces south. If I'm not mistaken one of the lessons MacArthur drew from previous engagements with the Japanese was that some of the most vicious fighting occurred when the Americans attempted to clear the entire area of Japanese troops. Since Macarthur apparently had no intention whatsoever of clearing all of Kyushu of the Japanese forces on the island, it is odd that anyone would take the position that the Americans would be sending forces north of the stop-line to continue engagements with the Japanese when all the objectives would have been met.

 

[Chris S]

In stalin's eyes, yes obviously. that was exactly why he was chosen.
but that does not mean he would be chosen as leader by the Korean people.

Considering that the Soviets ensured the communists were in control in the north and that they facilitated only communists who Stalin liked it seems odd to be arguing about whether or not Kim would have been chosen as a leader by the Koreans themselves. In both North and South Korea, neither leader was particularly well loved and would likely have not have been chosen if the Koreans could have truly freely exercised their choice.

If Stalin likes Kim, then Kim will become a leader in Korea (whether all of Korea or a part of Korea).

To get a Korean Tito, you need to have the Soviets only passing through Korea and leaving there after the war is done so the indigenous communists can develop as happened in Yugoslavia. Otherwise you will get Stalin-picked leaders as eventually happened in Poland, Bulgaria, Romania or Hungary.

 

[The Red]

Do I sense 3 more nukes dropped? .

How did you sense that?

 

[mlp]

Considering that the Soviets ensured the communists were in control in the north and that they facilitated only communists who Stalin liked it seems odd to be arguing about whether or not Kim would have been chosen as a leader by the Koreans themselves. In both North and South Korea, neither leader was particularly well loved and would likely have not have been chosen if the Koreans could have truly freely exercised their choice.

If Stalin likes Kim, then Kim will become a leader in Korea (whether all of Korea or a part of Korea).

To get a Korean Tito, you need to have the Soviets only passing through Korea and leaving there after the war is done so the indigenous communists can develop as happened in Yugoslavia. Otherwise you will get Stalin-picked leaders as eventually happened in Poland, Bulgaria, Romania or Hungary.

Sounds much better. Except I don't know how we could make the Soviets leave Korea after the war.
Also, is there a way to bring the Korean Provisional Government (KPG, exiled in Chongqing) to Korea?

 

[Curiousone]

Sounds much better. Except I don't know how we could make the Soviets leave Korea after the war.

Maybe in the negotiations over a Korea over-run & de-facto occupied by the Soviets the Americans settle for no Soviet presence in the country instead of arguing over the 38th parallel. The Soviets acquiesce so long as there's no American presence there either.

Like the 50/50 split Churchill made with Stalin over Yugoslavia. Difficult since one of the reasons the Soviets couldn't easily subdue Yugoslavia was the strength and number of their partisans, there's not much like that in Korea.

Maybe if Korea's seen as a starving (it already was OTL), burnt-out liability (scorched earth policy by the 17th Army Group in retreat)? The Soviets starved the Ukrainians after the war to feed the East Germans, keep face in front of the West. What would they feed the several million starving Koreans of OTL let alone TTL with?

 

[The Red]

Also, is there a way to bring the Korean Provisional Government (KPG, exiled in Chongqing) to Korea?

There's no real way to get them there without going through Soviet lines, and even if the Soviets let them through there's a danger they'll simply arrest them afterwards as they did in Poland.

 

[Clandango]

Read only the first post but I look forward to this greatly. Anyone want to keep a scoreboard for the lives, prisoners, buildings, and such destoryed?

 

[Chris S]

Sounds much better. Except I don't know how we could make the Soviets leave Korea after the war.
Also, is there a way to bring the Korean Provisional Government (KPG, exiled in Chongqing) to Korea?

I don't like the idea of writing TLs to achieve a specific outcome. It feels very fake. Very forced.

Much rather to start from a point and see where logic and plausibility lead.

And logically it's a remote possibility that the Soviets leave early.

 

[Clandango]

Ahhh, and I believe that Stalin still has Chiang's only son as a hostage.