Was the Hiroshima atomic bomb a measure to intimidate the USSR?

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1. Jamison F says

   I believe it was both, it was done to intimidate the Soviets but also to end the war sooner. Yes the Japanese navy was destroyed but they did have aircraft that could be used for kamikazes and there were still 2,000,000+ troops on the home islands. The United States was basing its decision on the defense of Okinawa where the Japanese defended to the last. If the invasion happened and we had a 4 to 1 kill death ratio we still lost 500,000 troops, it just wasn't an option to invade when you drop 2 bombs and they surrender.

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2. LA Triguy says

   The conventional justification for the atomic bombings is that they prevented the invasion of Japan, thus saving countless lives on both sides. But this idea does not hold up under closer scrutiny. Japan's military had been reduced to practically nothing. As an island nation, Japan relies completely on its navy for its strategic offensive capability. By 1945, we had 30 aircraft carriers to their none, 20 battleships to their none, hundreds of cruisers, destroyers, and submarines to their fifty, 50,000 combat aircraft to their 5,000, 50 million tons of commercial merchant ships to their less than 5 million tons, etc. But most importantly, we had unlimited supplies of oil to their none. They were completely cut off and surrounded by the US Navy, and nothing was getting in or out of the home islands. Without steel and oil, they could only build wooden ships powered by sails and oars. Surrender or no surrender, they were done. We could have easily kept them in strategic isolation for decades with little effort. They were no longer a threat. There is no compelling military justification for either an invasion or the atomic bombs. An invasion would have been a senseless waste of lives against a nation that was not a threat. Therefore, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians to stop a senseless invasion is also, by definition, senseless. It may take decades or even centuries, but eventually future generations will come to see this.

   Perhaps revenge was the real motive. After all, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and their military committed many horrible war crimes. It is completely understandable that the US and its allies would have a strong desire for retribution. But the Geneva Conventions prohibit collective punishments and reprisals against the general population. The Geneva Conventions state that people should not be punished for crimes they did not personally commit. Nevertheless, many Americans believe the Japanese citizens deserved the atomic bombs to pay for the crimes of their government. But of course, if anyone ever did that to our citizens we would call it terrorism.

   The US understood that the Soviets would be strategic competitors in the post-war environment. By August 1945 the chess pieces for the Cold War were already being placed. The Soviets invaded Manchuria and made rapid advances against the Japanese army, which was demoralized, cut off, and isolated from any strategic support. Manhuria was easily occupied by the Soviets, and it became the base for Mao Zedong and his communist victory four years later in the civil war against the nationalists. The Soviets made amphibious landings in Sakhalin and the Kurile Islands, occupying both. They made rapid advances down the Korean peninsula, and were stopped only by the rushed insertion of US troops at Inchon on 8 September 1945. And the Soviets had plans to invade the northernmost Japanese home island of Hokkaido well before the planned US invasion of Kyushu. So I think there is a lot of truth to your statement.

   EDIT. It was written that there were kamikaze aircraft and 2,000,000 troops on the Japanese islands, and that these would cause serious losses in the invasion. But without the invasion, the kamikazes and 2M troops were strategically irrelevant. The kamikazes had a very limited range, they were flown by unskilled pilots, and they could not be effectively massed against any target except a large, immobile invasion fleet that has to stay in place to support the beachhead. They were completely ineffective against the fast, mobile, heavily armed carrier battle groups that were constantly ranging up and down the Japanese islands bombing and strafing at will. They were equally ineffective against the submarines that had been strangling the Japanese economy since 1942. And without their navy, what would those 2M Japanese troops do? Swim across the South China Sea and retake the Philippines? Or maybe flap their arms and fly across the Pacific to land on Hawaii? From a strategic perspective, the invasion would have been the stupidest action imaginable, becauase all it would do was provide meaningful targets for the kamikazes and the immobile dug-in Japanese troops instead of maintaining the harmless strategic isolation of a broken, defeated enemy. Even though their leaders were too stubborn to realize it, in 1945 Japan was finished as a strategic player in the West Pacific.

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