Russia at war 1941-1945

return from Potsdam. There was no suggestion of the Russians being more nervous than before.

If there was anything strange about these negotiations with the Chinese on something which had already been approved in advance by both Roosevelt and Churchill, it was the Chinese attempt to draw out the discussions. What was behind these delaying tactics has since been explained by Mr Byrnes: "If Stalin and Chiang were still negotiating, it might delay Soviet entrance and the Japanese might surrender.

[J. Byrnes, All in One Lifetime (New York, 1958), pp. 291-9.]

And to drag out the Moscow discussions was precisely what on July 23 Chiang Kai-shek had been asked by Washington to do.

On the face of it, these Soviet-Chinese talks, which went on for a fortnight (from June 30

to July 14) before Potsdam, and for another week (August 7 to 14) after Potsdam, should have been little more than a formality. True, the Yalta Agreement said that "the agreement concerning Outer Mongolia and ports and railroads ... will require concurrence of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek"; but it also said:

The President [Roosevelt] will take measures to obtain this concurrence. .. The

Heads of the three Great Powers have agreed that these claims of the Soviet Union shall be unquestionably fulfilled after Japan has been defeated.

Yet the talks on the above questions and on the Friendship and Alliance Pact with China, also provided for in the Yalta Agreement, were not concluded—as they were expected to be—before the Soviet Union entered the war on August 8, i.e. two days after the

Hiroshima bomb.

It was the atom bomb that precipitated Russia's entry into the war. No doubt, after the bomb, Chiang Kai-shek would have liked to back out of the agreement with Russia, but it was scarcely possible in view of Roosevelt's and Churchill's firm commitments at Yalta

— and, above all, perhaps, because there was now an enormous Russian army

overrunning Manchuria.

What annoyed the Russians at Potsdam was not the vague news of some American

"super-bomb", but the "Potsdam Ultimatum" to Japan of July 26 demanding unconditional surrender. They claim that they had not been consulted about this Anglo-American-Chinese Ultimatum, and when they asked that its publication be postponed for two days, they were told that it had already been released. This may well have made them wonder whether the United States and Britain were not in a hurry to obtain a Japanese capitulation before the Soviet Union entered the war.

They may have wondered—and yet they did nothing about it, still assuming that the war could not be won in a short time without their participation. And they were certainly going to participate, since Stalin thought the spoils promised him at Yalta well worth a major military effort.

There is much conflicting evidence about the Japanese response to the Potsdam

Ultimatum. According to both the American official version and the Russian (repeated in the official History) the Japanese rejected it; according to certain Japanese sources, the Japanese Government "virtually" accepted it, though it asked for further clarifications.

[The German writer Anton Zischka, Krieg oder Frieden (War or Peace), Gütersloh, 1961, pp. 61-5 puts forward the view that the Japanese reply to the Ultimatum was either

accidentally or, more probably, deliberately mistranslated by certain American officials, Premier Suzuki's "no comment pending further information" being translated as "we are ignoring the ultimatum", the word mokusatsu meaning either "ignoring" or "no comment", according to the context.]

Be that as it may, it is certain that on August 2 Ambassador Sato paid an urgent visit to Molotov in connection with the Potsdam Ultimatum; he was anxious to obtain the

immediate cessation of hostilities and hoped that, with Russian mediation, the absolutely crucial question of the Emperor—not mentioned in the Potsdam Ultimatum—would be

settled in an acceptable manner. Molotov was totally unresponsive, obviously unwilling to see Japan capitulate before Russia had joined in the war. When, six days later, he asked Sato to call on him, it was only to inform him of the Soviet Union's declaration of war on Japan. That was two days after the Hiroshima bomb.

The wording of the Soviet declaration of war on Japan was odd. It said that, since the capitulation of Germany, Japan was the only Great Power wanting to continue the war; since Japan had rejected the Potsdam Ultimatum the Japanese Government's proposals

that the Soviet Government act as a mediator had "lost all basis". Since Japan had refused to capitulate, the Allies had asked the Soviet Union to join in the war, and so to shorten it.