General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: An overlooked A-bomb issue: the wait-a-couple-weeks argument [View all]joshcryer
(62,269 posts)But to say that Japan would've surrendered ignores the Kyūjō Incident, which is direct evidence that honor and willingness to sacrifice were pivotal in Imperial Japanese culture at the time. I can propose a perfectly legitimate alternate history where instead of surrendering Japan goes on to be overrun by the Soviets because they have the bodies to throw at the problem and several million Japanese people go to their graves. Then the US nukes the Soviets a few years later as they advance through the Fulda Gap to take the rest of EU after having partitioned up as much of it as they could.
I agree though that we could've waited, but even the off chance that the Soviets had succeeded we would've looked bad and we couldn't risk it. Then there would've been no viable target with which to use the weapon, until the Soviets started chopping up the Eastern Bloc, which we'd decided was OK.