[philwelch]

The alternatives to dropping the atomic bombs were:

1. Blockade Japan until enough of the country starves to death that they surrender

2. Invade Japan and end up killing Japanese civilians who have all been brainwashed to rush invading troops with grenades and improvised weapons, as happened in Okinawa.

Additionally, both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were military targets. Hiroshima had an army HQ and Nagasaki was a major naval base. Yes, they wanted to select a secondary target that hadn’t been bombed before to demonstrate the power of the bomb to the Japanese, but if terror bombing was the sole intention, they would have hit Kyoto.

In the final analysis, dropping the atomic bombs was the best long term outcome for both Japan and the allied powers. Was it “honorable”? War isn’t about honor; it’s about making the best out of a choice of bad decisions. Maybe the Japanese should have considered that before they invaded China to start the damn war in the first place.

Also,

> the U.S. should have been disbarred from holding nuclear weapons after that

“Disbarred”? By who, exactly? And how?

[ndsipa_pomu]

> “Disbarred”? By who, exactly? And how?

Well, that's an interesting question.

In an alternate timeline, the people of the U.S. could have persuaded politicians that it was in their interest to disallow individual nations from having full control of nuclear weapons. Possibly put them under control of a multi-national organisation?

[mrguyorama]

The problem with "nobody should have nuclear weapons" is that anyone who defects is in such a position of power that you basically cannot protect yourself from them. Unfortunately, the only stable situation in nuclear warfare is MAD and extreme nuclear taboo, which predominantly comes from MAD.

This is why nearly every country with nukes has an openly available and distributed "nuclear strategy" that comes close to saying "we won't use them if you don't", and why even Putin has towed that line so far.

[actionfromafar]

Isn't there a decent argument nowadays that the nuclear bombs didn't even matter that much to Japan military command?

That it was the threat of Soviet invasion which really tipped the scales.

[vkou]

> That it was the threat of Soviet invasion which really tipped the scales.

That's exactly what tipped the scales. The Soviet betrayal of the non-aggression pact, their march through the Inner Mongolia desert (Which Japanese planners considered impossible, given the lack of logistics infrastructure in it), their blitz through Manchuria, the complete collapse of Japan's positions in it, as well as the Soviet naval invasion of the Sakhalin and Kuril islands was what brought the war to a close. Japan could not continue the war without access to Manchuria, and was really, really not interested in getting occupied by the Soviets.

[philwelch]

People always claim this, but it doesn't make very much sense to me. The Soviets did invade Manchuria I think the same day as the Nagasaki bombing, but a full invasion even of occupied China, let alone the home islands, would have been logistically challenging for them, and the Japanese would have known this. It would require sending and supplying troops through Siberia, which even today has limited infrastructure. They possibly could have used Western transport ships to stage their forces somewhere in the Pacific, but those transports would have already been full of American and British troops being staged in the theater for the same purpose.

At any rate, Japan prior to the atomic bombings had two reasons to surrender: the blockade and impending starvation of the Japanese people and the risk of an American invasion of the home islands. The Soviet invasion of Manchuria and the atomic bombings represented two more reasons. The entire weight of circumstances forced Japan to surrender when it did; I think it's very hard to deny that the atomic bombs were not a necessary aspect of that.