"So Nimitz sacrificed 7,000 Marines to save the lives of hundreds of pilots? MacArthur would have found a way to bypass Iwo Jima."
And if Roosevelt hadn't been so enamored with Stalin we would have had bases in Siberia, on Soviet soil, that we didn't have to fight to gain.
There are some very active discussions on Quora about this by amateur historians, myself included, about this.
Roosevelt was besotted by Stalin. The USA saved the Soviets' bacon with Lend Lease. Still, Stalin claimed that he couldn't let us have bases on Soviet soil, near Vladivostok, which would have made bombing Japan a milk run. And rather than pressing the point, Roosevelt gave in to the tyrant's excuses. Marines fought many, many bloody battles to gain those islands.
And why did Stalin not want to give us bases? Because he was paranoid, and also he was secretly laughing, every day, at how gullible the westerners were.
Vladivostok is only 500 miles from Tokyo. Even Okinawa, which was our last island to capture after 3 bloody years, is 700 miles from Tokyo.
We gave the Soviets everything they needed to finally turn the tide against the Nazis in 1943. All we had to do was hold up a couple months worth of Lend Lease shipments to have our way. Stalin would have caved. He might have been overthrown by the Politboro.
To his credit, Roosevelt revealed on his deathbed that he never should have trusted Stalin. A little too late, I think, to save the blood, effort, and lives of all those Marines.
As for the MacArthur comment? I assume he would have had the fortitude to force the issue. He was already enough of a hellraiser.
From HistoryNet: Over 29 thousand B-29 air crewmen saved because they could land on Iwo. Some 7000 lost taking Iwo.
So I guess the answer is yes it was worth it.
IIRC, Roosevelt never made it to his deathbed. He died of a massive cerebral hemorrhage; his last known words were “I have such a terrible headache”. I would like to know when FDR expressed remorse for his coddling of Stalin.
Ironically, his third term VP Henry Wallace who was such a commie that he was bumped from the 1944 ticket by Harry Truman, later expressed his regret at how he had been used by the Soviets for propaganda purposes.
Fantastic post..!
some of the points you raised were things I had not considered.
“And why did Stalin not want to give us bases? Because he was paranoid, and also he was secretly laughing, every day, at how gullible the westerners were.”
Another possible reason. It would have meant war with Japan. To allow the Americans to use Soviet Far East territory for air bases to attack Japan would have violated the 1941 Soviet Japanese non aggression pact. The Soviet strength in the Far East had been greatly reduced because the Soviets needed the troops to save Moscow in the winter of 41. The Soviets did not return those divisions or their equipment to the Far East until late March 1945. This was in preparation for their attack on the Japanese in August. War in 1944 with the Japanese would have been a two front affair. Something that the Soviet High Command advised Stalin to avoid at all cost.