Japan Surrenders Before Atomic Bombs?

Prior to the dropping of the atomic bombs, Truman issued a somewhat vague warning to the Japanese Governement about facing utter destruction if they did not surrender.
In OTL they of course ignored it and hunkered down for the worse.

But what if instead they simply gave in? Unconditional surrender is offered and the bombs are never dropped.

What are the effects on post-war Japan with Nagasaki and Hiroshima still intact?

With out the psychological shock of nuclear destruction, does militarism get as marginalized as it is in OTL?
 
Why would they?

There was no evidence that Truman actually possessed the destructive capabilities he promised to unleash, and the Japanese were banking on the Soviets maintaining their somewhat benevolent neutrality.
 
Maybe the Soviets invaded earlier?
And sacrifice troops that are actively gaining territory in Europe?

Of course, there was a build up of troops in east Siberia since 1944, but to Stalin, Asia was a secondary front.

You'd have to end the war in Europe earlier, which can be done quite easily.
 
Prior to the dropping of the atomic bombs, Truman issued a somewhat vague warning to the Japanese Governement about facing utter destruction if they did not surrender.
In OTL they of course ignored it and hunkered down for the worse.

But what if instead they simply gave in? Unconditional surrender is offered and the bombs are never dropped.

What are the effects on post-war Japan with Nagasaki and Hiroshima still intact?

With out the psychological shock of nuclear destruction, does militarism get as marginalized as it is in OTL?

In order for your scenario to be credible, the fanatical militarism that permeated the general staff and dominated the national culture at the time would have had to somehow diminished to a significant degree already. Japan was all in, doubled down, and determined to fight to the last man, woman, and child. They were telling the women and children to attack American troops with sharp sticks. In order to go from that to suddenly caving in to a "somewhat vague warning" from Truman, something has to happen to completely change the national psyche. I don't know what that would have been (and have a hard time imagining a reasonable scenario), but if it had happened, it doesn't seem that fanatical militarism would suddenly again become a problem after they surrendered.

Sorry... just having a hard time getting my mind wrapped around it.
 
It makes sense that Japan may have surrendered after the first bomb was dropped, especially if the Emperor made the surrender statement sooner and it reached the people before the Nagasaki bomb was dropped. So Nagasaki could have been spared, but sorry about your luck, Hiroshima; if the USA has the bomb and doesn't really feel like invading, it's going to use it.
 
There's no way Japan surrenders prior to August of 1945 under any circumstances. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that the bombs are required for a surrender. Just that it would take longer. If Japan surrenders without nukes being dropped, I still think the nation would maintain the same level of commitment to international pacifism that it does today, for good and ill. Remember: While Hiroshima and Nagasaki were perfect examples of psychological warfare, pretty much every city in Japan had been leveled by this point. More people died in a firebombing of Tokyo in March of '45 then in Nagasaki when Fat Man was dropped. So it wasn't like the Japanese people hadn't been suffering from the consequences of war until August 5. And because of the sheer level of nationwide devastation, I don't think two more intact cities would have mattered all that much in the grand scheme of things when it came to the cost of reconstruction.

One thing I feel a lot of people don't realize though is the bombing serving as an "example". And I don't exactly mean the sometimes-floated idea that "Truman wanted to show off America's new toys to Stalin in order to gain concessions at post-war negotiating" thing (though that isn't too far-fetched). Once the Cold War got into full-swing the US and USSR were producing tens of thousands of bombs that were usually far more powerful than Fat Man and Little Boy. When those bombs were dropped, the world saw exactly what these bombs were capable of. Including the leaders of the United States and Soviet Union. And while that may have gotten them initially excited for having such capacity for destruction, once it became clear that any war would result in massive damage on a global scale, suddenly the idea of nuclear war became terrifying. Without Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the city-destroying capabilities of these bombs would have been just theoretical in the eyes of military and political leaders. Without the images the destruction brought, Presidents and General-Secretaries alike may have thought "Well, cities got destroyed in WWII all the time, it isn't anything we can't handle." The sheer horror of nuclear weapons wouldn't register. There's a difference between seeing a chart of a bomb radius learned from testing, and seeing pictures of children dying of radiation poisoning.

Let's say the Cuban Missile Crisis occurs as it did OTL in this world were Truman showed restraint. There were plenty of generals within the top leadership on both sides who were fine with escalating tensions to open warfare, and that was with the world knowing what they were capable of. Who's to say that if it was all still theoretical, Jack Kennedy would not have been as reluctant to go to war over the missiles? Maybe he would have ordered a bombing like his generals were asking for. Maybe the Soviets would've responded in kind. And maybe nuclear hell would've come in October 1962.
 
Maybe the Soviets invaded earlier?

They had little incentive to do so, and even less logistical capability.

First of all, they were apparently reasonably content to let America reduce Japan while they focused on putting themselves into a position to steal half of Europe. There's a lot of debate on whether Truman had to drag the Soviets into the Asian war or had to slow them down to keep them from barging in, but in either scenario it didn't give Stalin a significant strategic advantage to invade any earlier than he had to. Every day that we bled a little more out of Japan made it that much easier for him to walk in and plant a flag on Japanese soil in time to earn a seat at the table when it came to dividing up Japan. It wasn't as important for them to invade early as it was to simply invade before it was over.

Now. Having said that, yes - in a perfect world, if he could have just walked ashore in Hokkaido with 4 or 5 divisions and established a comfortable beachhead, then of course it would have been to his overall advantage. But it was never as easy as that, and trying to force the issue would have come at considerable cost.

Stalin had promised Truman at Yalta that he would declare war on Japan within 3 months of the surrender of Germany, and that date would have been August 8. As of July 15 or 16 (can't recall exactly), Marshal Vasilevsky (Commander in Chief of Soviet Forces in The Far East) cautioned Stalin that he was not yet ready to attack Manchuria (let alone invade the Home Islands). On August 3, he notified Stalin that Manchuria was a go any time from August 5 onward. It wasn't as though Vasilevsky was just sitting around surfing porn on the internet; Stalin had made it clear that being in a position to attack Japan as early as possible was a very high priority, and Vasilevsky was doing everything he could to make that logistically viable. It just was not possible to get all those pieces in place.

Stalin understood this, and apparently accepted it. Given everything he had to work with at the time, it appeared that the United States would probably not be on a position to invade Southern Japan any sooner than October or (most likely) early November. Given Stalin's strategic goals, invading Northern Japan anytime as late as September or early October would have given him a seat at the table when it was time to carve the turkey. So attacking the Kwangtun Army in Manchuria in early August was a perfectly reasonable and entirely acceptable step on the path toward his strategic objective, and in fact probably gave him much more breathing room than he thought he needed.

Could Russia have invaded Hokkaido before early August? Debatable, but arguably possible, I suppose. Would they have had a good reason to try it? Not by any standard that I would consider reasonable, unless they had made it a priority at least a year earlier, at a time when they needed every man, every gallon of gas, and every drop of blood to roll the German armies back to the west. I think it's a huge stretch to imagine the Red Army invading Japan before the bombs were dropped.
 
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I think nuclear weapons would have been used before then, Korea probable.

That's another good possibility. MacArthur was pretty trigger happy to use them. And Truman did intentionally keep the war "limited" as a means of avoiding unnecessary confrontation with the Soviets. If the destructive power of nukes isn't fully realized, what's stopping one or both men from ordering one dropped on Beijing?
 
I think nuclear weapons would have been used before then, Korea probable.
Exactly my thought. Of course, that depends on no butterflies between '45 and '50, something rather unlikely. There are all sorts of variables including exactly how much of Korea the Soviets occupy, what effects the timing of Japan's surrender has on China and the civil war, and what's going on in Europe. Depending on what happens, someone - almost certainly the US but the SU is more possible as we get further along - could pop one off in China or Europe.
 
There's no way Japan surrenders prior to August of 1945 under any circumstances. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that the bombs are required for a surrender. Just that it would take longer. If Japan surrenders without nukes being dropped, I still think the nation would maintain the same level of commitment to international pacifism that it does today, for good and ill. Remember: While Hiroshima and Nagasaki were perfect examples of psychological warfare, pretty much every city in Japan had been leveled by this point. More people died in a firebombing of Tokyo in March of '45 then in Nagasaki when Fat Man was dropped. So it wasn't like the Japanese people hadn't been suffering from the consequences of war until August 5. And because of the sheer level of nationwide devastation, I don't think two more intact cities would have mattered all that much in the grand scheme of things when it came to the cost of reconstruction.

That's such an insightful and well-articulated post, I hesitate to disagree with even a word of it. But I do have to wonder about this paragraph. Psychologically, I think there's an enormous difference between accepting that your country was not only defeated but humiliated (or even devastated), and understanding that your country was literally on the brink of cultural extermination. I think the stark, coldblooded horror of the atomic bombs left a scar on the minds of the Japanese people that nothing else could have done.

We have to keep in mind that even after the bombings, many Japanese citizens were unable to accept that they had been defeated. I'm not at all saying that in order to completely subjugate a country and break the will of its people it's necessary to instantaneously incinerate or vaporize tens of thousands of women and children, but... if you do happen to instantaneously incinerate or vaporize tens of thousands of women and children, it's going to make a very different and very deeper impression upon the national psyche than if you had not. Certainly the Japanese people (by and large) understood and accepted that they had been defeated and even devastated; but absent the horror of the bombs, the lingering memory of their gruesome effect, and the gnawing anxiety over how much worse it might have been had the government not surrendered, I don't believe the Japanese commitment to pacifism could or would have been anywhere near as deep or as broad, or as longlasting. For decades after WWII, Japanese culture was literally obsessed with the concept of nuclear horrors, and the influence is still seen today in some of their art forms.

People remembered this differently - far differently - than they would have if the point had not been hammered home as clearly and as brutally as it was. The "holy ****, look at how close we came" factor is a significant driving force behind the Japanese commitment to pacifism (or at least, non-aggressiveness) that persists until this day. I believe that anything short of that would have led to a more shallow, tenuous commitment to pacifism.
 
Why would they?

There was no evidence that Truman actually possessed the destructive capabilities he promised to unleash, and the Japanese were banking on the Soviets maintaining their somewhat benevolent neutrality.

Well given the fire bombing of Tokyo, maybe for this scenario the Japanese government (Emperor Hirohito primarily) concludes that Truman's statement is warning them of multiple Desden-espe bombing raids on multiple cities at once.
Regardless of what it could be, the goal is to get them to surrender before Nagasaki and Hiroshima is destroyed.
 

trurle

Banned
Prior to the dropping of the atomic bombs, Truman issued a somewhat vague warning to the Japanese Governement about facing utter destruction if they did not surrender.
In OTL they of course ignored it and hunkered down for the worse.

But what if instead they simply gave in? Unconditional surrender is offered and the bombs are never dropped.

What are the effects on post-war Japan with Nagasaki and Hiroshima still intact?

With out the psychological shock of nuclear destruction, does militarism get as marginalized as it is in OTL?

This was pretty possible. Dominant contribution to the Japanese decision to surrender came from rapid defeat by Soviet Union in Manchuria, not from nuclear bombardment. Make Soviets attack a 10 days earlier, and the Japan surrenders before nuclear bomb is ready.

The most likely effect is marginalization of Kyushu. IOTL, Fukuoka has become the dominant city of West Japan post-war, but without nuclear bombing Hiroshima was on the way to become the dominant industrial and cultural centre of West Japan.

Psychological shock due bombing in Japan should not be exaggerated. Actually "war-discrediting shock" concept was the lame American excuse intended to justify the nuclear bombing. Main shock, as I already said, was delivered by Soviets. Japan thought to keep its colonies, and then the army protecting main colonies (Manchukuo and Korea) was crippled in just a week, the continuation of fighting has become meaningless.

Actually, given the Japan will not be nuked, the high likelihood exist what Americans would use the nuclear weapons in opening stages of Korean war. The anti-nuclear lobby in US was nearly non-existing prior to Hiroshima.
 
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