I'm pretty sure historians can read the notes the Japanese government had about their decision making.
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I'm pretty sure historians can read the notes the Japanese government had about their decision making.
Yes they can.
But seriously, would you blame them for preferring a surrender to the Americans compared to the Soviets?
Also, the Americans used the bomb to quicken the surrender with the aim of keeping the USSR out of Chinese territory.
Oh no, they really intended to do final battle and the atomic bombings ended that plan (well, they convinced 2 guys to convince the emperor to convince the decisive vote). These were people who put bayonets on machine guns; they really were that nuts.
http://world.guns.ru/machine/jap/type-96-99-e.html
http://www.thortrains.com/getright/shootlmg.html
Well damn... that's insane. They would die and possibly cause a partitioning of Japan as Russia has the incentive to invade Manchuria and Korea. If anything it would be worse of for them, as Japan would be more 'American' and Russia would dominate Korea and northern China.
They didn't really think it like that. As far as they were concerned losing the war was going to be the end of Japan, that's it. Only after the end did they realise that it wasn't going to be the end. Well, those who didn't kill themselves or get hanged afterwards did.
Yet they planned various strategies and campaigns which shook the world.
Japanese are strange, from their Bushido to anime.
Japanese strategy is perfectly explicable- they planned on a quick decisive war. Given all the previous modern wars they had finished (1894/5, 1904/5) had worked that way, it didn't seem entirely insane on their end. Heck "attack before declaring war and sink the enemy fleet" was exactly their strategy in 1904.
The problem was they fundamentally miscalculated how Americans think. They also didn't have an exit plan. This isn't unique (a humorous modern example is Motorola and Iridium), but the scale of it is incredible; unlike Hitler, Japan had a group of people who all thought they could pull it off until the end.
Bushido also isn't that strange. The West had something similar with chivalry. It is a code of honor that emerged among a war class after it was no longer militarily necessary in order to justify its superiority over the new upstarts. Japanese Bushido during WW1 was about trying to compensate for material disadvantages by concentrating on aggressiveness. To a degree it worked; if you don't have anti-tank weaponry, having a guy run up to a tank with a petrol bomb and disable its engine works and requires disregarding physical danger. Unfortunately the Japanese couldn't leave well enough alone and went far beyond what could be rationally justified. It didn't help that the treatment of conscripts was appalling.
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Their strategy was good in the beginning, I agree but they didn't plan ahead.
Agreed, they expected the neutral Americans to just spread their legs for the Japs, but failed to account the collective wrath of the US. However the battle was never one of survival for the US, but containment. Unlike the USSR, the Americans didn't really have to worry about invasion.
Bushido is strange because it leads to contempt of surrendering even with the logic of escape and fighting back again. Also it's a lot more intense then chivalry, which no one actually cared about (in terms of states and countries).
I don't think so. One thing I know though - it was Malenkov who tried to predict and prevent a nuclear war with the US a decade before Khruschev and Kennedy came to a compromise over Cuba. This made him an outcast during the immediate post-Stalin era, which eventually led to his ousting by Khruschev, who took a more hardline stance at first, in order to attract Molotov to his side. But I don't think that the majority of people even imagined the real scale of a potential worldwide nuclear holocaust, even Malenkov probably didn't. Lots of other stuff was on people's mind though and the general public very often remaind inert towards international news and events, as much of that was filtered through the official Soviet sources and censorship structures, making the kind of anti-war movements and open scientific and policy debates we saw then in the West impossible.
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It's actually quite interesting how secretive the USSR was in concerns with nuclear weaponry. Unlike the Americans who became paranoid on a nuclear war, the Soviet citizens were barely even told about.
It was openly speculated in Russia that the outside world was just fiction made by KGB agents. You could never know. Period. This lack of knowledge made people very ambivalent, although people were aware of the Cuban crisis.
My dad grew up in the 50's BUT thanks to him making a radio he started picking up those alarmist Voice of America broadcasts. Then he smelled the coffee. After a stint as librarian in the nuclear archives (during conscription) he tried to escape 6 times into Finland.
My dad grew up in the 50's BUT thanks to him making a radio he started picking up those alarmist Voice of America broadcasts. Then he smelled the coffee. After a stint as librarian in the nuclear archives (during conscription) he tried to escape 6 times into Finland.
That was more like siding with whomever was nearby to assist them after the Winter War.
They did not actively participate in the Leningrad offence, even though took part of the siege. IIRC Mannerheim was not a fan of the idea of advancing past the Western Karelia.
Yeah, in Finland we didn't put our faith in the "ultimate victory" Hitler was after and the assumption was that a peace with the Soviets would have to be a negotiated one. Taking Leningrad, or directly helping the Germans to take it, would have thrown away the possibility for negotiated peace and turned the war into a life or death struggle.
Luckily our leadership never went down that path.
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That's true, but still... it's disappointing when a cool Scandinavian country starts using the Swastika.
AFAIK Finns used swastika way before nazies came to power.
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Well so did the Buddhists in India, but I doubt the Finns used it as a symbol of renewal and peace.
A lot of people around the world used it (including Slavs), before Hitler it was a perfectly good symbol.
I know but... wait if the Finns were using it before Hitler (unless you mean the Norse religion) then doesn't it make it their fault, because I sincerely doubt the Finns were putting Swastika's on their gear to represent good things?
Of course if you mean the symbol for the Scandinavian Gods... well that's different.
