Atomic bombs aside, what was the second-best means the US had to force a Japanese surrender in 1945?Say the Manhattan Project got its funding held up by a few years, or Little Boy and Fat Man were both duds, or the Japanese leadership gets its moderates purged by another coup and they steadfast refuse to surrender, what's Plan B? Blockade Japan? Invade Japan? Use biological and chemical weapons on a massive scale? Secretly agree to serious concessions while maintaining the public fiction of "unconditional surrender" (which is kinda what happened anyway in reality)? Gamble on Soviet entry into the war being enough to force a surrender anyway?
>>65402496Bat bombs I guess considering they only got shelved because of nukes>grab a million bats and strap them with incendiaries>cram them into convenient bomb shaped delivery package>drop them over enemy territory>bats fly off and nest in every nook and cranny>incendaries go off, everything erupts in flames>massacre a million bats in the process, RIP but at least they get a war memorial
>>65402496>what was the second-best means the US had to force a Japanese surrender in 1945?Blockade and air-dropped mine starvation campaign. Probably could've had a surrender by '46 once 75% of Japan was dead.
>>65402496>Atomic bombs aside, what was the second-best means the US had to force a Japanese surrender in 1945?Total blockade resulting in millions of deaths through starvation and other issues.They would've folded with minimal American casualties, but a LOT of people would die.
Concentrated attacks on tunnels and bridges—targets previously bypassed in favor of cities and factories—must have proven effective. As part of Operation Olympic, plans were even considered to bomb and destroy the Kanmon Tunnel, thereby isolating Kyushu.
>>65402520this was an actual plan that was considered too wasteful of human lives and shelved
Just having LeMay keep firebombing their cities in the old fashioned way. The substantial British Naval and strategic bomber forces were increasingly being diverted to the Pacific after Germany's surrender and LeMay and Bomber Harris had basically planned to level every single city on the Japanese islands with CONSTANT 1000-bomber raids day and night while the US and Royal Navy were preparing plans for complete and total blockade off all Jap ports causing massive starvation and economic collapse on top of that.So basically the result would've been the same but it wouldve taken a lot longer and cost way more Japanese lives ironically.
>>65402496>Atomic bombs aside, what was the second-best means the US had to force a Japanese surrender in 1945?For a given value of "best", continuing to bomb the ever-living fuck out of them while leaking the Soviet invasion plans. The Japanese weren't invited to Yalta so what the fuck did they know?> Secretly agree to serious concessions while maintaining the public fiction of "unconditional surrender" (which is kinda what happened anyway in reality)Not really, no. The Japanese weren't in a position to make more than token demands (most of which were ignored, leading to things like the emperor getting mogged on camera) after the drubbing they'd taken and were fully aware of this, but they wildly miscalculated what the US wanted out of them. They thought they were going to get Nuremberg'd and annexed and yadda yadda but what really ended up happening is that the US was keenly aware of Japan's value as an ally and given what they'd just spent the last few decades doing to all of their neighbors the Japanese jumped at the offer to shelter under America's wing. Seriously - Japan was pretty much the only place between California and Germany that wasn't razed, an enemy of the US (yeah, the USSR goes here and everyone knew it) and/or dysfunctional beyond belief.
>>65402496Atomic bomb was the second best measure you dumb fucking dimwitThey were starving the Japanese with sea mines already, that was #1 and there are still sea mines there today
>>65402496Submarines and naval mines to blockade the islands, then just fire bomb every city one by one like they did Tokyo.
>>65402496> Gamble on Soviet entry into the war being enough to force a surrender anyway?Lol.Lmao.
>>65402601>LeMay and Bomber Harris had basically planned to level every single city on the Japanese islandsImagine how disappointed they were when they heard about the nukes. Thousands of cities saved, and for what?
>>65402982>and for what?Anime and JAV?
>>65402985I don't think Bomber Harris got to enjoy JAV.
>>65403041Civilization is when old men plant trees knowing they will not live to enjoy their shade.
>Atomic bombs aside, what was the second-best means the US had to force a Japanese surrender in 1945?Blockade them into mass famine
they were already prepping downfall before the nukes were dropped, it would have been the most impressive feat of military arms in history. they did not have time to starve out the japs, they would have just had to grind them up in their tank treads until the government came to their senses and surrendered.
>>65402496invasion. the japanese had little left to oppose that and being totally sea blockaded the fight wouldnt have been long.
>>65403082>krüger>eichelberger>nimitz>spaatzkind of ironic that it would have been german admirals and german generals leading the attack on japan.
>>65403041Who's to say that he didnt get to enjoy some Ukiyo-e before he passed?
>>65402496The intent of the nukes was to get Japan to surrender to the US so that it didn't surrender to the USSR, which was gearing up for its own invasion. Without the nukes, The US probably would have upped the intensity of its firebombing campaign to get the same effect, or Japan would have just surrendered to the USSR (resulting in a drastically different geopolitical landscape than today)
>>65403094>didn't surrender to the USSR, which was gearing up for its own invasionnigger the soviets didn't have the landing craft or navy to pull of a landing of the japanese mainlandthe struggeld with getting onto Sakalin and Kuril islands and those where only lightly held and without much air cover or a naval presenceon top of that the Japanese high command and military fucking hated the communists and had ben very activly suppresing them in Japanwhy would they chose to surrender to them over the Western Allies?
>>65402496>Atomic bombs aside, what was the second-best means the US had to force a Japanese surrender in 1945?threatening to let soviets do the invasion landing and occupation
>>65403082And thanks to those PENCIL-NECKED POINDEXTERS in the UN-MANLY-HATTAN PROJECT who never once threw a PIGSKIN beyond than 9 yards in their LIFE, we were ROBBED I say by God Almighty (please forgive me, Sir) ROBBED of T28 action.
>>65403094>>65403104The Japanese were in constant talks with the USSR before the surrender, they saw them as the only third party that they could negotiate with the allies through. The shock of the USSR's invasion of manchuria was two fold, they lost one of their few remaining cards for negotiating and the one last conduit for negotiation. Some have argued this was enough to shock them into coming to the table and the nooks were just a coincident, like they had shrugged off worse bombings for months but packed it in right after the USSR joined.
>>65403091Much like the Nisei battalion being sent to fight in Europe, officers of German extraction were funneled to the Pacific theater. The head of MacArthur's intel shop was a fascist sympathizer who larped as a German aristocrat.
>>65403113>The Japanese were in constant talks with the USSR before the surrender, they saw them as the only third party that they could negotiate with the allies through.Not so much "talks" as it was Prince Konoe and Sato aimlessly walking around Moscow while trying to get an audience with Molotov and Stalin, with the occasional angry telegram sent back to Suzuki
