I recently got involved in a discussion on the "Guardian"s comment threads, on the inevitable subject of the necessity of the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One claim made was that Truman dropped the bomb in order to (a) deter the Soviets, and (b) to get a Japanese surrender before the Soviets could invade.
Which got me to thinking; would a Soviet invasion of Japan from the North have been a possibility? From what I can see, installing a force on Sakhalin was no great challenge. Anything more than that would have severely strained credibility; the Pacific Fleet was all but non-existent, and the Soviets had no experience at all of large scale amphibious operations - and no shipping designed to support it. The La Perouse Straight is of similar width to the English Channel, with (if anything) worse weather. And, of course they'd have faced intense Japanese resistance al;l the way up to the Kamikaze
I couldn't see the Soviets being in a position to launch an invasion attempt before spring '46, at the earliest; I can, however envisage circumstances that would have extended the war to that point (a technical failure during "Trinity", and Olympic postponed due to adverse weather in September '45).
Any thoughts on a timeline based on that PoD - including how the American and Allies might have responded?
An afterthought - can we avoid debate over Truman's motives for dropping the bomb? That's been done to death...
Which got me to thinking; would a Soviet invasion of Japan from the North have been a possibility? From what I can see, installing a force on Sakhalin was no great challenge. Anything more than that would have severely strained credibility; the Pacific Fleet was all but non-existent, and the Soviets had no experience at all of large scale amphibious operations - and no shipping designed to support it. The La Perouse Straight is of similar width to the English Channel, with (if anything) worse weather. And, of course they'd have faced intense Japanese resistance al;l the way up to the Kamikaze
I couldn't see the Soviets being in a position to launch an invasion attempt before spring '46, at the earliest; I can, however envisage circumstances that would have extended the war to that point (a technical failure during "Trinity", and Olympic postponed due to adverse weather in September '45).
Any thoughts on a timeline based on that PoD - including how the American and Allies might have responded?
An afterthought - can we avoid debate over Truman's motives for dropping the bomb? That's been done to death...
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