in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped,
1) We used to hear that all the time by the revisionists, starting in 1945. "The submarines had sunk all their merchant fleet, they were starving" ad nauseum. In the meantine, 1,000 allied prisoners of war were dying each day in Jap prison camps. (When a group of us were together in school, and someone brought up that Bad Americans B/S, I'd tell them to pretend that the rest of us had sons and husbands in those prisons, so please tell us why they should die, because we didn't want to look bad. Deer in headlights.)
2)How many Allied soldiers and civilians would have been killed while we waited? Japan had over 2 million men under arms in China and Burma and they weren't using blanks.
3) When people in those nations who suffered under Jap rule were asked if we should have dropped the bomb, many replied in the sense of "Why did you drop only two?"
4) Some American diplomat was talking with a Jap counterpart after the war and the Jap said they surrendered because they didn't want to be hit with a third bomb. When told we used the only two we had, he replied "If we had known you had only two . . ." and then stopped, but the meaning was clear.
5) Can't remember which book, but it reprinted a pep talk by a Jap general to his troops. It went along the lines of "Yes, things look really bad, but if we redouble our effort and prove out willingness to die for the emperor, we can still win." He gave that speech AFTER the second bomb was dropped.
even if Russia had not entered the war
What kind of crap is that? Russia's intervention did not cause them to surrender earlier, it was the A-Bombs. Russia told us they would attack in August of '45 and they would have taken most of Northern Japan before we could have gotten there - and they would have been divided like Korea was.
I went to Mira Costa college in Oceanside, CA, near Camp Pendleton. The night classes I went to had a majority of retired Marines. Our Paki physics teacher told us America dropped the bomb was racism. Many in the class hung their heads. WTF??? I told the Paki that half the Marines in this class wouldn't be here today if we hadn't have dropped the bomb. A few of the head hangers had an epiphany then. I also told him that Col. Tibbets had mentioned his job was a administrative nightmare in the early days as he had to plan for a bomb drop on Germany as well as Japan. Gremany had the good sense to cave in after Hitler committed suicide and that was the only reason they were spared. The interesting "IF" would be, what if Hirohito committed seppuku? Would the Japs have fought on?
All these "IFs" fall into the category my dad classified them: "If the queen had balls, she'd be king."
What troops in Burma? Burma was finished in early May of 1945. Zipper was proposed for the recapture of Malaya. The Dutch East Indies were already liberated by then as well.
“Gremany had the good sense to cave in after Hitler committed suicide and that was the only reason they were spared.”
Defense of Germany was untenable once the Rhine was crossed. The Germans themselves knew it. Hitler did not commit suicide until the Battle of Berlin, and the Allies had occupied most of what became West Germany.
As for dropping the Atomic bomb to keep Russia out - that’s contrary to the opinion that dropping it was necessary to win the war, is it not?