Stalin and the Last Days of World War II

When I began looking into the defeat of the Japanese in World War II, I was surprised to find so much written about the Soviet Union. Of course, the Soviet Union was a major factor in the war against the Germans—it lost more soldiers than any other country in the war.

But how important was the USSR in the Pacific? Quite important, as it turns out. The Soviet Union, the atomic bomb, and the potential invasion of Japan all were tightly entwined in the decisions made in the last days of the war.

This is my third and final post on the American decision to use the atom bomb. I’m not trying to judge the decision. As an educated layperson looking freshly at history, I just want to understand it.

In my first post I pointed out that President Truman knew nothing about the bomb until Franklin Roosevelt’s death in April 1945. The bomb was used less than four months later. Thus, it had enormous momentum and would have been difficult to stop. (Given how ill Roosevelt was, it is strange that he did not inform his vice president of such a major event; one historian calls this failure “disgraceful.”)[1]

In the second post I discussed whether the U. S. demand for unconditional surrender kept the Japanese from surrendering. This remains a genuine question. Had the Americans assured that the emperor could remain in his position, the “peace party” in Japan would have been even more eager to end the war.

However, the enormous resistance (and prominence) of the “war party”—even after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed and the emperor had prepared a surrender statement—weakens this otherwise persuasive claim. A violent coup to stop the emperor’s surrender statement from being broadcast to the public was almost successful; a general was killed in cold blood and another committed ritual suicide. [2]

Now, I have arrived at my third topic: the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union

Until the atom bomb was dropped the Soviet Union had not been involved in the Pacific War. In 1941, when Germany attacked the USSR, Joseph Stalin knew that he couldn’t fight a war on both eastern and western fronts. So rather than fight Germany’s ally, Stalin signed a neutrality pact with Japan that would supposedly last until 1946.

But once the war in Europe began to turn in favor of the Allies, Stalin shifted. As early as the 1943 Big Three conference in Iran’s capital, Tehran,  Stalin talked about entering the war against Japan—in return for spoils of war.

So, in February 1945, at the Yalta conference in the Crimea, Stalin made a deal with Roosevelt. He promised to enter the war against Japan three months after the war in Europe ended (it would take that long, he said, to move sufficient troops to the East). In return, the U.S. promised a package of rewards including transfer of the Kuril Islands and southern Sakhalin to the Soviet Union, recognition of Outer Mongolia as a Soviet satellite,  and more. Stalin also wanted to be involved in the occupation of Japan and entering the war was probably the best way to make that happen.

The Manhattan Project

During this time the Manhattan Project lurked in the background. Between February and July of 1945, it became increasingly likely that a weapon of unbelievable power would be ready.

If the bomb was successful, perhaps the U S. wouldn’t need the Soviets  to defeat the Japanese. There was, indeed, a strong group within the U.S. leadership who didn’t want the USSR to enter the war at all. They feared it would enable the Soviets to expand into Asia. Thus, without the bomb, Truman faced a dilemma: “whether he should seek Soviet participation in the war or attempt to prevent the Soviets from entering the war.” [3]

Adding to the turmoil was the mounting evidence that the Japanese would defend their country to the death. Fighting on the Japanese-owned islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa caused 15,000 U. S. soldier deaths. Twenty-two thousand Japanese troops died on Iwo Jima. Perhaps 100,000 died on Okinawa, plus a similar number of civilians.  A foretaste of the invasion to come, Okinawa is considered one of the deadliest battles in history. [4]

Complicating matters was the fact that Japan wanted the Soviet Union to negotiate a peace with the United States! The Emperor made this decision on June 22 and the Japanese began seeking help in July, with the goal of sending Fumimaro Konoye, a prince and former premier, to Moscow to negotiate. But the Soviets refused to see him, constantly putting him off. As William Craig says, “The Russians had other things on their minds. Stalin was making plans to enter the war against Japan.” [5]

U.S. leadership knew about these Japanese efforts through intercepted messages, but did not take any action. According to Wilson D.  Miscamble,  the U. S. commitment to unconditional surrender overrode “the tentative, back-channel efforts of certain civilians in Tokyo to enlist the Soviet Union in negotiating.”[6] And, according to David Reese, the initial goal of the Japanese (before the emperor’s dictate) was to persuade the USSR to stay out of the war, not to end it. [7]

Once the first bomb was dropped on August 6, Stalin mobilized his troops to fight the Japanese army in Manchuria, hoping to get a foothold before the Japanese surrendered. And he did. The USSR and Japan fought until September 5, 1945, well after August 14, the day the emperor announced that Japan would surrender to the Americans.

The result was that the USSR  did obtain “all the territories that were promised by the Yalta Agreement,” says Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, at least temporarily. But it did not get a share in the occupation of Japan, and it earned the “long-term enmity of the Japanese, which lingers on to this day.”[8] Very soon, the USSR started its own race for an atomic bomb and the Cold War was on.

Afterword

I would like to conclude my discussion of the atom bomb with a question I have neglected. That is, just how much worse was the atom bomb than the fire-bombings that preceded it? I don’t have room to address (nor do my readers have the patience to read about) this topic at length. The death totals are very uncertain, but one expert, Michael Sherry, estimates the following [9].

Hiroshima, August 6, 1945:  130,000 dead.

Nagasaki:  August 9, 1945: 60,000 dead.

Fire-bombing of Tokyo on March 10, 1945:  100,000 dead.

Thus, the  decision to go all-out on civilian destruction was made long before the first atom bomb exploded.

The image of Joseph Stalin, Harry Truman and Winston Churchill at Potsdam is from the National Archives and is in the public domain.

Notes

[1] Wilson S. Miscamble. The Most Controversial Decision: Truman, the Atomic Bombs, and the Defeat of Japan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 26.

[2] This is described in detail by William Craig in The Fall of Japan (New York: Dial Press, 1967).

[3] Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Review of Unconditional: The Japanese Surrender in World War II by Marc Gallicchio. In H-Diplo Roundtable  XXIII-18, Diane Labrosse, ed.,  January 3, 2018, https://issforum.org/roundtables/PDF/Roundtable-XXIII-18.pdf, 18.

[4] Sources include the Okinawa History Fact Sheet from the Air Force; Iwo Jima and Okinawa: Death at Japan’s Doorstep from the World War II Museum; and Battle of Okinawa from History.com.

[5] Craig, 40–42.

[6] Miscamble, 80.

[7] David Reese, The Defeat of Japan (Westport CT: Praeger, 1997), 116.

[8] Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, “The Soviet Factor in Ending the Pacific War.” In The End of the Pacific War: Reappraisals, Hasegawa, ed. (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 2007), 227.

[9] Michael S. Sherry, The Rise of American Air Power: The Creation of Armageddon (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 406, note 76.