Soviet Nuclear Weapons and the Korean War?

Fairly simple question but would Stalin have given his permission for Kim Il-Sung to invade if the US still had a monopoly on the bomb? Now I know that he gave it provided that Mao would agree to send reinforcements if needed as the Soviets wouldn't get directly involved themselves, which China needing Soviet support was pretty guaranteed to give, but even staying out directly would he still risk the possible conflict with the US without his own nuclear deterrent do people think?
 

RousseauX

Donor
Yes because Stalin actually didn't care that much about Korea, the reason why the Soviets gave the go ahead was because they misread US diplomatic messages as the US did not consider Korea to be a vital US interest. Thus Stalin did not expect a big US military response to occur in the first place.

If the US simply stated firmly that South Korea was an American interest then the war never happens.
 
Fairly simple question but would Stalin have given his permission for Kim Il-Sung to invade if the US still had a monopoly on the bomb? Now I know that he gave it provided that Mao would agree to send reinforcements if needed as the Soviets wouldn't get directly involved themselves, which China needing Soviet support was pretty guaranteed to give, but even staying out directly would he still risk the possible conflict with the US without his own nuclear deterrent do people think?

The US did not have a monopoly on the bomb. Stalin had 1 or 2.
 

burmafrd

Banned
The US had so many more bombs then the Russians did and plus they actually had a way to deliver them.

That is why Truman was an idiot to be worried about the Russians doing anything.
 
The US had so many more bombs then the Russians did and plus they actually had a way to deliver them.

That is why Truman was an idiot to be worried about the Russians doing anything.

Calling Truman an idiot means ignoring the realities of politics. The Russians PROBABLY had a small number of bombs. But there was no way the Prime Ministers of Britain, France, West Germany, Italy and Japan would risk 5 atom bombs on their soil.
 
Yeah, I'm not keen on Truman since I'm a conservative, but using hindsight he is a very decent man for not killing, what, 30 million people, after famines (infrastructure is destroyed; food in the fields means nothing to the cities) are included, just to score an advantage.
 
Yeah, I'm not keen on Truman since I'm a conservative, but using hindsight he is a very decent man for not killing, what, 30 million people, after famines (infrastructure is destroyed; food in the fields means nothing to the cities) are included, just to score an advantage.

In hindsight, Hitler was decent for not using chemical weapons, when it could have lead to the deaths millions in western Europe, so there's that for him.

This logic is terrible. Truman had the power to prevent that destruction of infrastructure and potential famine, but didn't, instead allowing hundreds of thousands to die. Accepting a surrender later than necessary doesn't make you good just because you could have waited longer.
 
In hindsight, Hitler was decent for not using chemical weapons, when it could have lead to the deaths millions in western Europe, so there's that for him.

This logic is terrible. Truman had the power to prevent that destruction of infrastructure and potential famine, but didn't, instead allowing hundreds of thousands to die. Accepting a surrender later than necessary doesn't make you good just because you could have waited longer.

Are you in the wrong thread? This is the Korean War one, not whether Hiroshima was good. And is sacrificing a million in London or Berlin worth it for destroying the USSR, causing millions of deaths there in the process? OTL shows we did not need to nuke the Soviets to win. I don't support killing millions of Soviets just to keep the US #1. And Hitler did use nerve gas to kill millions, in the Holocaust.
 
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