What would have happened if there was an invasion of Japan, bearing in mind that the official estimate of american dead was 1million.
Soviets take Kuriles, Hokkaido Island and perhaps Aomori prefecture before the Western allies are even in a position to launch an invasion.
There is a good possibility that Japanese resistance to the Soviets is less than to the Western Allies and there is a rush to surrender to them. Sort of Germans in reverse. Soviets have shown no eveidence of the race hatred that the USMC has.
At this point you have to decide if the atom bombs were used. If they were there is a real possibility of a general surrender to the Allies in which Soviets have occupied a significant proportion of the home islands. In this case the Soviets are in a very good barganing position in Europe.
If no atom bombs are used then two possibilities present themselves: a rapid surrender due to the shock of August Storm, possibly with an attempted military coup in Japan by the war faction. Alternatively a long drawn out war in which the Soviets hunker down with what they have whilst the Western Allies throw themselves at the beaches in an attempt to gain as much of the home islands as possible.
In all cases the losses are far lower than the worst predictions.
Not to mention the ramifications of having a communist North Japan.
What would have happened if there was an invasion of Japan, bearing in mind that the official estimate of american dead was 1million.
More civilian casualties spread through out the entire home island. These are a people that were willing to commit suicide rather than surrender to Allied forces. After the eventual capitulation of Japanese forces, which would take a long long time, I think you'd see a war crimes tribunal the likes of which would blow the ones for the Nazis out of the water. America would be highly pissed at having been dragged through the blood after such a long war in Europe and the Pacific. Be interesting to see the regime changes occurring afterward. Very probably no Eisenhower as president as Americans get tired of anything military for a decade to come.
.. 220,000 people died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and they were all innocent civilians.
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The Survey has estimated that the damage and casualties caused at Hiroshima by the one atomic bomb dropped from a single plane would have required 220 B-29s carrying 1,200 tons of incendiary bombs, 400 tons of high-explosive bombs, and 500 tons of anti-personnel fragmentation bombs, if conventional weapons, rather than an atomic bomb, had been used. One hundred and twenty-five B-29s carrying 1,200 tons of bombs
would have been required to approximate the damage and casualties at Nagasaki. This estimate pre-supposed bombing under conditions similar to those existing when the atomic bombs were dropped and bombing accuracy equal to the average attained by the Twentieth Air Force during the last 3 months of the war
The entire "200,000 died for nothing" argument ignores reality. The United states killed more Japanese civilians when it bombed Tokyo on March 9-10 of 1945, killing between 90 and 125,000 people from immediate effect and destroying 41 square kilometers of the city and did so with far less positive effect than the attack against Hiroshima when 60-70,000 people died and 12 square km of the city was destroyed or when 40-70,000 died in Nagasaki. At least the nuclear weapons managed to create political conditions that the "peace" faction of the Japanese leadership was able to get the war stopped. NOTHING before then had worked, the two bombs almost weren't enough, but the attempted coup misfired.
I wouldn't say as many as the atomic bombings, but perhaps the civilian deaths would have been somewhat high. However, I don't know as if our planes were going to be focused on bombing and shooting farmhouses instead of industrial and military targerts. Likewise, I would suppose the civilians would have evacuated from bombed areas as well.To imagine, for even a moment, that the simple preparations for the invasion of Kyushu would not have caused the deaths of at least as many Japanese civilians as died at either of the two A-Bomb sites is simply silly. To pretend that civilians in the tens of thousands would not have died before the invasion date of November 1, 1945 from heavy bomber strikes as well as fighter bomber sweeps over Kyushu, which were shooting up everything from trains to oxcarts and rowboats, ingores reality.
If more Japanese were saved at all, it would not have been by all that much (and I mean very much not that much). And those dead would have been combatants largely and not civilians who, due to the fate of history, became an unwilling part in an act of terrorism to instate fear in the Japanese via the murder of thousands of innocent civilians. The American soldier deaths would likely not in any way have been higher than those of the Japanese civilians who actually did die, and that is what matters. Screw national lines; it is an issue of humanity. Likewise, you could just be willing to accept the conditional surrender, keep the Emperor, and avoid invasion altogether.Far more Japanese lives were saved by Hiroshima and Nagasaki than were lost there, not that that argument really matters. That 20,000 or more Americans lived who would have died had the invasion been necessary is beyond all question, and that IS the number that mattered then and matters now.
Revenge should not have been the policy of a nation which sought to make itself morally superior to its enemy and that's what Hiroshima and Nagasaki were; revenge. They were revenge for Pearl Harbor, and to show our moral superiority, we also led a sneak attack -without warning- and killed far more innocents in those cities than they did in Hawaii.The Japanese sowed the wind; it was entirely correct that they reaped the whirlwind.
. And those dead would have been combatants largely and not civilians who, do to the fate of history, became an unwilling part in an act of terrorism to instate fear in the Japanese via the murder of thousands of innocent civilians. The American soldier deaths would not in any way have been higher than those of the Japanese civilians who actually did die, and that is what matters. Screw national lines; it is an issue of humanity. Likewise, you could just be willing to accept the conditional surrender, keep the Emperor, and avoid invasion altogether.
The fire bombing should not have been carried out as it was then. However, where they did happen, it was often focused on striking industrialized targets. While that was the borderline purpose of nuking Hiroshima, the real purpose was to make a strike of terror. To kill as many civilians as possible because they were not looking at just bombing factories. They wanted an area where a whole bunch of people lived around the factories for maximum death. And those people were civilians which makes the focus on killing them far different than that of killing soldiers. With invasion, Japan would have capitulated and you would have a death tole perhaps comparable to Hiroshima and Nagasaki at most, but among soldiers, not civilians, and in which case the nuclear genie is not released. The "peace" faction would have won out any way because the "war" faction didn't have any resources left. The soldiers were all either dead, tired, or poorly equipped; the supposedly mighty civilian militias were poorly equipped in I'm going to say not all that fanatic as to go into suicide attacks on any massive scale, and at worst, the people may have very well rebelled against the Emperor and military regime.
I wouldn't say as many as the atomic bombings, but perhaps the civilian deaths would have been somewhat high. However, I don't know as if our planes were going to be focused on bombing and shooting farmhouses instead of industrial and military targerts. Likewise, I would suppose the civilians would have evacuated from bombed areas as well.
If more Japanese were saved at all, it would not have been by all that much (and I mean very much not that much). And those dead would have been combatants largely and not civilians who, due to the fate of history, became an unwilling part in an act of terrorism to instate fear in the Japanese via the murder of thousands of innocent civilians. The American soldier deaths would likely not in any way have been higher than those of the Japanese civilians who actually did die, and that is what matters. Screw national lines; it is an issue of humanity. Likewise, you could just be willing to accept the conditional surrender, keep the Emperor, and avoid invasion altogether.
Revenge should not have been the policy of a nation which sought to make itself morally superior to its enemy and that's what Hiroshima and Nagasaki were; revenge. They were revenge for Pearl Harbor, and to show our moral superiority, we also led a sneak attack -without warning- and killed far more innocents in those cities than they did in Hawaii.
Could a war breakout in Japan instead of Korea in the 50s? Or maybe Korean and Japanese wars at the same time?
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were both held out from the general targeting list, however it is not true that they were no signficant military targets.