No one in the US believed that we wouldn't have to expect less than 200,000 dead; not 20,000.
Operation Olympic included using nuclear weapons... on the battlefield.
The plan was that we'd have to drop nuclear weapons on entire Japanese army formations, and send the Marines in behind them. There is a reason we produced 400,000 Purple Heart medals for the initial invasion. Operation Olympic would have included round-the-clock fire-bombing of Japan. The assumption of all military planners was that the Japanese would have to be buried in, or burned out of, every cave in the entirety of Japan.
Operation Olympic would have been equal parts war, and equal parts genocide.
Now, in my estimation, it seems like the Japanese had actually waged a successful psy-op on Iwo Jima and Okinawa to make the Americans think this. Inevitably, the Japanese civilian draftees, conscripts, old men, children, and some women would have surrendered en mass, but not before the Americans had killed millions.
There were people who hoped that an invasion wouldn't have to be done, and that instead a blockade could have been done instead.
Let me be clear: a blockade would have been worse for Japan than the bombs. A blockade wasn't an economic sanction. A blockade was meant to starve the Japanese into surrender. This means that the Americans would have inflicted an intentional famine. See the horrors of a famine in: Ukraine, Greece, Crete, and China to understand the villainy of such an act of war. Sure, fewer Americans would have died (assuming the Japanese & Navy would have only tried a handful of major raids on blockading ships), but the atrocities on the Japanese people as they began to eat their own shoes would have taken quite a toll on anyone who claims the nukes were a better option. This, and the best American estimates are that the war would have dragged on into 1949.
That's assuming that the Soviets cared about a blockade. The Soviet Invasion was clear on how they would treat the Japanese: they would burn everything in front of them, and they would take no prisoners. The Soviets were glad to not take prisoners. If a blockade had been established, Japan would be a communist state, mostly populated by Russians, and most of the Japanese would have been fully exterminated.
There is no question. In a war filled with horror and brutality, the nuclear bomb was the only sane way to end the war without genocide.
That's because anti-nuclear sentiment in the west was always Soviet Propaganda.
Look into any non-western, anti-nuclear, political movements.
You won't find any that aren't explicitly funded by the Soviet Union.
This is because the Soviets were always secretly well below the Americans on strategic nuclear capability. If you prevent the Americans from building nukes in the first place, though...
This is comically stupid.
No one in the US believed that we wouldn't have to expect less than 200,000 dead; not 20,000.
Operation Olympic included using nuclear weapons... on the battlefield.
The plan was that we'd have to drop nuclear weapons on entire Japanese army formations, and send the Marines in behind them. There is a reason we produced 400,000 Purple Heart medals for the initial invasion. Operation Olympic would have included round-the-clock fire-bombing of Japan. The assumption of all military planners was that the Japanese would have to be buried in, or burned out of, every cave in the entirety of Japan.
Operation Olympic would have been equal parts war, and equal parts genocide.
Now, in my estimation, it seems like the Japanese had actually waged a successful psy-op on Iwo Jima and Okinawa to make the Americans think this. Inevitably, the Japanese civilian draftees, conscripts, old men, children, and some women would have surrendered en mass, but not before the Americans had killed millions.
There were people who hoped that an invasion wouldn't have to be done, and that instead a blockade could have been done instead.
Let me be clear: a blockade would have been worse for Japan than the bombs. A blockade wasn't an economic sanction. A blockade was meant to starve the Japanese into surrender. This means that the Americans would have inflicted an intentional famine. See the horrors of a famine in: Ukraine, Greece, Crete, and China to understand the villainy of such an act of war. Sure, fewer Americans would have died (assuming the Japanese & Navy would have only tried a handful of major raids on blockading ships), but the atrocities on the Japanese people as they began to eat their own shoes would have taken quite a toll on anyone who claims the nukes were a better option. This, and the best American estimates are that the war would have dragged on into 1949.
That's assuming that the Soviets cared about a blockade. The Soviet Invasion was clear on how they would treat the Japanese: they would burn everything in front of them, and they would take no prisoners. The Soviets were glad to not take prisoners. If a blockade had been established, Japan would be a communist state, mostly populated by Russians, and most of the Japanese would have been fully exterminated.
There is no question. In a war filled with horror and brutality, the nuclear bomb was the only sane way to end the war without genocide.
Yes the threat of the Soviet invasion isn't even included in the article.
That's because anti-nuclear sentiment in the west was always Soviet Propaganda.
Look into any non-western, anti-nuclear, political movements.
You won't find any that aren't explicitly funded by the Soviet Union.
This is because the Soviets were always secretly well below the Americans on strategic nuclear capability. If you prevent the Americans from building nukes in the first place, though...