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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

“Uncle Joe was shrewd.”

No he was not.

“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.”

The pact was signed in 1939. In June 1940, Stalin, the guy you credit with enormous foresight, was taken completely by surprise and had left the Soviet Union completely unprepared for the Nazi attack - which ensured that all the benefits of the previous year’s agreement were lost.

“But Churchill and Roosevelt worked out with him that he would break the pact and invade Japan three months after Germany surrendered.”

That was due to the West’s concern over Japan’s fanatical armed forces causing enormous casualties from an invasion force. At the time of the decision, the atom bomb was still untested. Churchill and FDR needed Soviet assistance taking down Japan. How does this credit Stalin with anything?

“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.”

Factually false. Tokyo had been incinerated due to a mass aerial US led bombing campaign that culminated on March 10th 1945. It was not on the atom bomb targeting list. Kokura, which was originally the main target versus Nagasaki, would have been next.

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.

On July 1 the U.S had material for three bombs - one U-235 and 2 Pu-239. The physicists knew the design for the U-235 bomb would work, but they weren't sure of the Pu-239 design. So they built a tower in the New Mexico desert, put one of the P-239 bombs on it and detonated it on July 16, 1945. It worked. So they sent the materials for the two other bombs to the Marianas and they were used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Due to production limitations the U.S. wouldn't have nuclear material for another bomb until sometime in 1946. So the invasion of Japan would have started in the Fall of 1945 if Japan hadn't surrendered.