I have heard this theory before and by people who sounded competent.
My opinion is that it is the stupidest idea I have ever heard put forward by normal people.
The Russians waited until they knew it was over then declared war to gobble up as much territory as they could.
They sure did. Uncle Joe was shrewd. He knew exactly how to get maximum results with minimum effort. Look at what he did in 1940 after the Ribbentrop/Molotov Pact was signed with Germany...Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, all gobbled up in record time.
He also told the Japanese one thing and the Allies another. The neutrality pact between Japan and the USSR said that either party could break it with twelve months’ notice. Stalin gave that notice in the late spring of 1945, after V-E Day. But Churchill and Roosevelt worked out with him that he would break the pact and invade Japan three months after Germany surrendered. They kept that timetable exactly. Germany surrendered on May 8, the Soviets invaded Manchuria on August 8.
Had the hard-liners in the Japanese government succeeded in continuing the war, it’s likely that Tokyo would have been the target of the third atomic bomb later in August. Meanwhile, the Soviets would have been preparing to cross into northern Japan, which was nowhere near as defended as southern Japan...and of course, we would have been preparing to invade Japan, which would have made Normandy and Okinawa combined look like a Boy Scout hike. As much of a war criminal as Hirohito was, his realization that Japan was finished saved millions of lives in the end.
}:-)4
yes.
opportunism.
“The Russians waited until they knew it was over then declared war to gobble up as much territory as they could.”
Bingo.
“The Russians waited until they knew it was over then declared war to gobble up as much territory as they could.”
Well yes. Until that time however the imperial hardliners believed their mainland forces could be used to assist in the defense of Japan. The simultaneous declaration of war and attack by the Soviets dashed that illusion.
In Manchuria the IJA was overrun on a wide front by vastly superior land and air forces. At that point there was no hope of avoiding defeat. Surrender was rational to save their Asian forces and the home island from certain destruction.
It’s a credible argument.