Russia at war 1941-1945

This defeat of the Russian troops in 1904 left a bitter memory in the minds of our people. Our people waited and believed that this blot would some day be erased.

We, people of the older generation, waited for this day for forty years. Now this day has come.

In conclusion he said that peace had come at last, that the Soviet Union was no longer threatened by either Germany or Japan, and he paid a tribute to the armed forces of the Soviet Union, the United States, China and Great Britain who had won this victory over Japan.

There were fireworks that night to celebrate Victory over Japan; but in and around Red Square there was barely one-tenth of the crowd that had turned out to celebrate the defeat of Germany on May 9.

It was a hollow victory, and everybody was conscious of it. For many years afterwards the official Soviet line was (and still is, though rather less emphatically) that Japan capitulated because of the Soviet Union's entry into the war: if the mighty Kwantung Army had not been defeated, Japan's resistance to America and Britain would have

continued for years, and cost them a million lives or more. It was, in fact, precisely the same argument as that Truman, Churchill and others applied to the atom bombs which,

they said, had precipitated Japan's unconditional surrender and had so saved untold

American and British lives. In reality the best evidence shows that Japan was on the point of surrendering at the time of the Potsdam Ultimatum, and merely wanted assurances

concerning the status of the Emperor—the very question Ambassador Sato put to

Molotov on August 2, four days before the Hiroshima bomb, and six days before the

Soviet declaration of war.

[How unnecessary it was to drop the atom bomb is shown by Major-General J. F. C.

Fuller in The Second World War (London, 1948), p. 395: "On the 10th a broadcast from Tokyo announced the acceptance of the Potsdam Ultimatum 'with the understanding that

[it] does not comprise any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of the Emperor as a sovereign ruler'. On the following day the Allies replied: 'From the moment of surrender the authority of the Emperor... shall be subject to the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers'. [In other words, there was no question of hanging the Emperor as a war

criminal.]

"Why was this not made clear in the Declaration of July 26? Had it been, would not

[Truman's] 'purpose of God' have been more Christianly followed?" Fuller comments. He also says that the requests made to Russia as early as May to intercede as a mediator must have made it clear to the Western Powers that Japan's position was catastrophic, and that she was completely ripe for surrender. The only obstacle was the question of the

Emperor.]

Even assuming that the Japanese would have continued to resist and that the saving of American lives was all that was at stake, then the dropping of the bomb could still have been held up until September, just before the invasion of Kyushu—which would have cost a lot of American lives. If the bomb was dropped in a desperate hurry on August 6, it must have been because Truman was determined to drop it before the Russians had

entered the war—which they were expected to do, in accordance with the Yalta

Agreement, not much later than the 8th.

[Asked in 1960 whether there was any urgency to end the war in the Pacific before the Russians became too deeply involved, Mr Byrnes replied: "There certainly was on my part. We wanted to get through with the Japanese phase of the war before the Russians came in." (U.S. News and World Report, August 15, 1960.)]

But that was not all: the bomb, as is so clearly suggested by Truman, Byrnes, Stimson and others, was dropped very largely in order to impress Russia with America's great might. Ending the war in Japan was incidental (the end of this war was clearly in sight, anyway), but stopping the Russians in Asia and checking them in Eastern Europe was

fundamental.

Whether the Russians intended to stick closely to the Yalta Agreement and enter the war on August 8 is not altogether certain; but once the bomb had been dropped, the Russians could not afford to delay; for what if Japan capitulated as a result of the bomb before Russia entered the war? It was essential to enter the war before such a Japanese

capitulation, if Russia was to receive her territorial "reward" and play any part in the occupation of Korea—and Japan.

The real irony of it all is that Japan was ready to capitulate both without the atom bomb and without Russian intervention. But this suited neither the USA, nor the Soviet Union, both of which had to strike the "decisive" blow.