The Soviets were supposed to join in. We asked them to.
Prior to that they asked us to join in in Europe, and we dithered in Africa.
I am aware of that, but we knew that we had to defeat Japan before the Soviets could invade her.
That doesn't add up. The Soviet advance was part of defeating Japan. It was faced with nukes from afar plus Russians up close. Simultaneous, not serial.
I don't understand what I am saying that does not add up.
The Soviets agreed to declare war on Japan after Germany was defeated. That agreement predates the atomic bomb by years. The soviets kept that agreement, and started advancing toward Japan from the West. We were not in a position to but Japan under a siege to starve them into giving up, because the Soviets would have continued their advance from the west, and even invade the islands. If we had not invaded the islands, or if we had not ended the war before they could do that, the Soviets would have done the same thing they did in Germany. If we had not used the atomic bomb, we would have been forced to invade Japan to beat the soviets to it, which would have resulted in a million casualties. If we allowed the Soviets to invade Japan, Japan would have ended up as another East Germany.
That's projecting far too much speculation. The original statement was that "we had to defeat Japan before the Soviets could invade". That's simply not the case. The goal at that time and place, of both the US and the USSR, was Japanese surrender. Invasions by either country are not mutually exclusive.
Along the same lines:
If we had not nuked or invaded Japan, the Soviet Union would have, with the end result of Japan and South Korea having been lost to communism, just like Eastern Europe.
"Communism" was not a player in this war. Imperialism was. They're not even related. Again, the mutual goal, of the US, the USSR, China, Vietnam, Malaysia and all the other related countries on the receiving end of that imperialism, was repelling Japan, not any kind of economic system.
This later fear-fantasy about "commies invading" was a comic book fantasy cooked up by the Dulles Brothers and Jimmy Byrnes and their ilk, for the purpose of keeping this country in a state of war if possible or at the least war mentality. All these places fighting for their own independence from colonial chains, like Ho in Vietnam (who was also our ally against Japan) were fighting for themselves and their own independence; they were not fighting to be delivered into the hands of one controlling power over another.
The fuel of Imperialism cannot be understated here. Japan wanted an empire. Britain had an established empire; France had an empire beginning to decline; Spain and Portugal had fading empires already in decline. And the US, seeing some of those empires decline, particularly of Spain and later Britain, wanted in on the action too, beginning with McKinley and the Philippines and Cuba. None of that was for a purpose of "communism" or "capitalism"; all of it was for the purpose of exploitation and getting the controlling entity fat off the resources of the vanquished.
Although an unrelated war, that's the same thing that was going on in Europe. "Old-Empire" Britain and France in heated competition with "New-Empire" upstarts Germany and Italy, neither of which existed as unified countries until the second half of the 19th century. They got a late start onto the road Spain, Portugal, Britain, France and Holland had already gone down since the 16th century especially with the discovery of the Americas. Again, for the same purpose: exploitation of other people's resources, especially at that time in Africa, the last available colonizable continent that Spain, England, France, Portugal and Holland, all of which were much older entities than Germany and Italy, hadn't already grabbed and swapped around.
Again, nothing to do with "communism". It's high time to recognize that Emmanuel Goldstein tactic for the polarization propaganda it was. As noted above, it was cooked up expressly to keep this country in an imperialist state of mind.
All I can offer you on this is that we can agree to disagree.
It's worth the rumination though.
This may veer somewhat off topic, but in pursuit of the whole "commie" mythology ... a 2004 film called "Heir to an Execution" supplied me with a lightbulb epiphany of perspective all of this. It's by Ivy Meeropol, who is the granddaughter of Juilius and Ethel Rosenberg. The revealing comment was not in the film itself but in the director's commentary track, something she I guess thought was a throwaway anecdote but I found it profound. The filmmaker was not setting out to examine the political dynamics behind the execution of her grandparents; rather she was exploring who they were as people.
She relates how her father, Michael Rosenberg-Meeropol (adopted after his parents' execution) would play a child's game with his father, Julius Rosenberg in which the boy Michael would get on his hands and knees and pretend to be a bridge. Julius his father would then run a toy truck over his back saying "Here comes the American truck" and Michael would stay in place allowing the truck to pass. Then Julius would run the truck again saying "and here comes the Fascist truck" and Michael would stand up, sending the Fascist truck tumbling to its doom, whereupon Julius would shake his hand and congratulate the boy on defeating the Fascists.
That's when it dawned on me ---- all this "commie" this, "Commie" that rah-rah fearmongereing boogieman massive propaganda campaign we know all too well, was not aimed at its targets because they were "Communist" but rather, because they were Anti-Fascist. They were a threat not to "America" or "freedom" or whatever emotional buzzword of the day, but rather. they were a threat to Fascism and Imperialism, the former being a tool to effect the latter. Being "pro-communist" threatens nothing; being anti-Fascist very much does. After all only "anti" denotes a threat to anything. It's right there in the definition of the prefix. But you can't sell a demonization on the basis that "they're against fascism" so you invent the "Commie" brouhaha and dress it up as a "threat".
And that leads to the next eye-opener, albeit specific to European derivation rather than directly on the topic of war in the Pacific, and that is: we often teach ourselves that in WW2, the European side of it, "Fascism was defeated", in that Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy were vanquished. That's not true. Those countries were defeated; Hitler and Mussolini were defeated. But on the other hand their contemporary fascist Francisco Franco, was not. "We" didn't even fight him. That's why I point out that what we were fighting was Imperialism, and specifically picking sides of whose Imperialism. Germany invaded its neighbors all around it in the cause of (first) corralling German culture into one larger state, and (subsequently) for more Liebensraum (room) for them. Spain however didn't invade France or Portugal or Morocco or even Andorra. So fascism, common to both, wasn't the impetus for Germany; Imperialism was.
The revealed perspective is this:
The hyper-right wing Fascist totalitarianism did not lose World War Two. It lived on, got assimilated and thrived, and continues to thrive right now. Hitler lost WW2. Mussolini lost WW2. But their fascist inclinations did not. Not only did they survive in Spain, and soon take over Greece; they also survived and assimilated in the US with the whole "Red Scare" and "Red Channels" and "blacklisting" and McCarthyism and the endless demonization of the mythological "Commies" everywhere, from Europe to Iran to Guatemala to Southeast Asia to various independence movements in Africa. Hitler's secret police system simply took on new English names as the "CIA" (externally) and "FBI" (internally), accomplishing the same task for the victors as it had for the vanquished. They're still with us today right down to mandatory flag worship at football games and classrooms, endless wars on "Commies", and the ongoing "Commie conquest" fantasy itself that still hasn't been seen for the fascistic propaganda it was.
Fascist totalitarianism wasn't exterminated; it was moved. We're living in it. Example: "Commie" Guatemala could not be allowed to stand while it was a threat to the Fascist collusion of the State and United Fruit (replace "Guatemala" with "Cuba", same thing. different result). Example two: "Commie" Iran could not be allowed to have its own government either, as it was a threat to the Fascist union of the State and Big Oil. So Fascist totalitarianism stepped in and "fixed" that too. Other examples abound.
That's why the whole Red Scare business was relentlessly marketed and mythologized used as military pretext: the egalitarian spirit of the target "Commies" threatens the Fascist-authoritarian doctrine of a top-down striated meritocracy where the State rules and the people submit and obey. Fascist totalitarianism demands obedience; democracy invites the opposite. Free expression is a threat. Therefore, they must be eliminated, under whatever name works. That's arguably where the whole infamous conformist mentality of the 1950s comes from.
And it's not a random coincidence that this is the same period where the same Fascist element started demonizing and polarizing the term "Liberalism", which is in fact what founded this nation on very different principles. Liberalism by definition means free expression; that is a direct threat to Authoritarianism, therefore it must be redefined as the "enemy".
For that matter Hitler did the same thing, creating the S.A. "Brownshirts" to assault Communists and send them to be the opening act at Dachau. Our methods are more covert and subtle; instead of a Dachau we have Red Channels and a HUAC and a malleable media selling every kind of demonization quote from "I have here in my hand a list..." to "they'll fall like dominoes" to "get that sumbitch off the field, he's fired". All in the name of mob mentality State-worship and You'd Better Submit.
Same shit, different day, the State demands that you obey.
Watch your TV every day and above all else Do What We Say.
And to accomplish that they'll invent whatever Emmanuel Goldstein serves the purpose. If Göbbels were alive right now he'd be in absolute awe.
/ End tangential rumination
Long story shortened, that's why I have to reject the idea that there was some "competition" for conquest of Japan going on or that it had anything to do with "communist conquest". That's a propaganda myth and it needs to be seen through. Japan was clearly out for Empire and had been for decades; the USSR had not.
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