I noticed on Reddit there are a lot of people that claim the USSR played no role in causing Japan to surrender because...

Puyi then became a nice person rehabilitated through work and died in the 1960's as a communist living a simple life working as a gardener.

Tbh, the answer is a lot more balanced and nuanced. It was the compilation of all of the events leading up to the surrender (the bombings of strategic manufacturing centers, the American offensive in the Pacific, and the expiration of the treaty with the Soviets) that eventually lead to the surrender. The Japanese military cabinet was more then willing to fight only one of the two superpowers and before the removal of critical manufacturing centers had no intention of surrendering at all, with even the cabinet having plans to remove the Emperor from a leadership role if necessary. A land battle would have still been devestating to everyone involved, but with both the soviets and the US pushing in on different fronts and most of their infrastructure bombed already, the decision came ultimately down to who was there first and who had the better deal.

I mean technicaly the British concentration camps did start as refugee camps/internment but Haige was pefectly content to ignore the requirements that the rapidly rising number of interned brought. His later decision to release thousands of Boers (after the attempt to slander Hobbhouse failed) was also particuarly cruel as he had already ordered their homes and farms burned down, leaving them without food or shelter in a war. Haig was a complete bastard and the fact that nobody in the chain of command considered it important that the death rates went from average to sky high (and down to levels better than the UK after britishows the levels of barbarism the upper class were willing to stoop to after buying their way there with daddies money.
/worthless, unwanted rant over

Right but you do have people claiming the USSR was too stupid to be a threat to mainland Japan, in the idea Soviet planes were too shit to fly the 200KM from to Busan to Kitakyushu and their navy too shit to move troops across that 200KM gap.

This, let's not be ridiculous and pretend it was just a single country.

The US had already secured naval and land supremacy in the Pacific, meaning Japan was effectively cut off from many of its holdings in Asia, and thus much of their supply chain. Let's not forget that Japan only even attacked the US because they wanted us to give their oil back (which they would need for their other conquests). When the US refused to continue to provide them oil, Japan was producing only 10% of the current oil needs domestically, the US providing the other 90%, and they only had two years worth of reserves. They captured indonesia, but they would no longer have been able to get indonesian oil back to Japan.

The US also contributed a lot of resources in the form of cars and guns to the USSR. Wikipedia:

However, the US was very hesitant to invade the islands themselves. In general the US preferred to produce rather than sacrifice during WWII, because they had the luxury of having that option. Japan knew that the Soviets were not so reluctant. I think it is a complete mistake to claim that Japan was afraid of losing their Manchurian/Korean holdings, because that is inconsistent with the fact that they gave up those holdings when they surrendered. However, the threat of Stalin invading mainland Japan was a decisive factor, because he wouldn't have been as reluctant as the US

...

Losing Korea and Manchuria did remove what remaining industry Japan had still intact.

How's the first one not just true? If the English king had won, he'd have moved his court to wealthy and prestigious Paris, making England a rather thinly populated part of the new and improved Kingdom of France.

Looking into Manchuria during WWII, I found out there are apologists for Imperial Japan.

The nuclear bombs were just the cherry on top of all the bombing we've been doing to Japan. The Soviets never would've been able to get onto the Japanese mainland, whereas we would've. Losing their mainland possessions and armies would've been devastating but the Japanese already proved that they were able to withstand catastrophic casualties and fight to the last man in those types of situations. It was the eventuality of a US invasion of Japan that forced them into surrender.

You do realize they invaded the Kuril islands and doing airborne invasions in Manchuria yet you think the Soviets never be able to get onto Japan even though the US always feared a Soviet invasion of Japan ever since the US occupied Japan?

Please tell me how they'd be able to get enough troops in to secure a foothold on the Japanese mainland. The defenses in the Kurils were a joke compared to what the Japanese would've had and given on their home turf, not to mention the Soviets invaded basically a few days before the Japanese surrendered. The only way to invade the mainland with a big enough force would've been through a naval landing and guess what the Soviets didn't have in the Pacific '45?

The USSR did have a plan they stole from the Germans invasion of Norway, use airborne forces to secure ports so troops ships can just go dock to dock.

A lot of the west, specifically in the United States, like to massively overreact how much the United States really did in the war. The Soviets lost nearly 60 times more than the Americans did and pushed all the way to Berlin, meanwhile while the Americans basically jumped into Normandy and bombed Japan in the last second and said "we're the best, guys!".

It makes sense why they think this when you consider that World War 2 is seen as the "great battle for freedom" in the United States, and saying "America beat Japan and Germany, assisted by France, the United Kingdom, and Russia!" probably would boost Cold War morale more than "The Soviet Union beat Japan and Germany, assisted by France, the United Kingdom, and the United States!".

Of course, it was the Americans who capitulated the Japanese through nuclear bombs. But if the Americans never dropped the bombs on Japan (or the Japanese nation still didn't surrender), it would be the Soviets who would have gotten to Japan easily.

Pic is from a poll in France- but it still applies.

I never even knew that the Soviets fought on the Pacific front.

why are you on reddit?

/thread