I always found it fascinating that while the Japanese were considered the fanatics they surrendered before a single inch of the Home Islands was touched by an enemy soldier. While the more “reasonable” Germans didn’t give up until virtually their entire country was overrun.
Atomic Bombs will do that!
The Germans hadn’t been nuked twice.
58 of their 60 biggest cities were effectively burned to the ground. They were also touched with a couple of nukes, the same week that Stalin declared war on them.
It all boiled down to the boss making the call. Hirohito survived the war, as a result of his call.
The Japanese fanatics had prepared to die down to the last school girl.
Had a couple of German cities been nuked early on, they would have done the same as the Japs. They didn't know that we only had a couple of the bombs.
Foreign Sex Slaves (Comfort Women) trained for combat (note that they weren't trusted with real weapons - they were told to pick them up from dead soldiers during combat.)
many gruesome pictures of smiling Japanese soldiers just cannot be posted here.
25 April 1945, Benito Mussolini was captured by Italian partisans, publicly hung, and had his body defiled on camera.
30 April, Hitler commits suicide. 2 May, Berlin surrenders. Soviet forces begin rounding up Nazis and German elites for summary execution and Siberian Gulags, and imposing their oppressive Government on the conquered areas.
Toyama, Japan, August 1, 1945, after Japan's main Island had endured months of intensifying daily/nightly firebombing. Formerly a big producer of aluminum, the city was 95 percent demolished that night. 69 other cities were also hit that night. Firestorms destroyed more than the bombs, in their wooden cities (unlike Germany). The majority of the Japanese population were city dwellers.
August 6th, Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
August 7th, President Harry S. Truman called again for Japan's surrender, warning them to "expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth." Diplomatically, Japan was led to believe that atomic bombs were to become part of the routine nightly bombing raids.
August 8th, 1945, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, and invaded the Imperial Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo. The Russians had previously overrun Hitler's headquarters in Berlin
August 9th, Atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki
Nagasaki, August 10, 1945
Japan publicly announced their surrender on 15 August, But the Emperor had made the decision on the 10th. They had virtually no defense industry or Navy remaining, and inadequate remaining capacity to feed the population, or treat their daily mass casualties. It was not in time to avoid serious famine in the aftermath.