It was going to be a bloodbath of death on both sides….the Japanese were well prepared to defend the home island…
B1L1D8 on
Would have been horrendous for the US Military and the Japanese population. Likely would have then asked, or they’d come anyways, the Soviets for help and the US did NOT want that.
GraniteGeekNH on
My dad, who was a Marine second lieutenant in the Pacific at the time, joked that if the atom bomb hadn’t worked then I wouldn’t exist – because he wouldn’t have survived the invasion of Japan. Young, inexperienced 2nd lt’s were cannon fodder in that war
Leotard_Cohen on
What’s the threshhold at which you stop trying to make secretive operation codenames and just cut to the chase?
AegisPlays314 on
Worth noting of course that most military leaders never considered this an actual possibility; it was planned but without any path to execution, like thousands of other military operations that also were never carried out. Eisenhower and Nimitz both claimed in the years following the a-bomb that a blockade would’ve done the job quickly just the same.
The bloody invasion myth was invented in the years following the nuke to justify a nuclear holocaust that was as much planned to establish supremacy in the postwar order and prevent the Soviet Union from taking any significant piece of the Japanese empire as it was to actually achieve a goal in the war itself (which makes it a clear-cut war crime)
GustavoistSoldier on
The nukes prevented this operation from happening
RussiaUN1789 on
And we all know it would’ve been a blood bath on both sides
Signal_Quarter_74 on
The blockade and firebombings had completely destroyed Japan’s industrial capacity. Starvation was settling in. And the Soviets were steamrolling across Manchuria + Korea, and had invaded the South Sakhalin. That was the state on August 15th, the day of surrender in our timeline.
I just don’t see a way that Japan wouldn’t have surrendered before Nov 1 when Downfall was to commence. Especially when you consider that we would have nuked anything left standing in September and October with bomb production being about 3-4 a month by then. Plus the Soviets would have eliminated all Japanese presence on Korea, and were going to invade Hokkaido by September (might not have gone well but the shock factor of an invasion of Mainland Japan would have certainly pushed the gears towards surrender).
Operation Downfall has always seemed to be a bit of worst case scenario fantasy like Operation Unthinkable. Fascinating and horrifying to think about though
Howling_Fire on
Japan itself would have been a barren wasteland if this operation went through.
Alarmed_Error7440 on
Dropping the atom bombs was probably the greatest single humanitarian action of the 20th century.
11 Comments
It was going to be a bloodbath of death on both sides….the Japanese were well prepared to defend the home island…
Would have been horrendous for the US Military and the Japanese population. Likely would have then asked, or they’d come anyways, the Soviets for help and the US did NOT want that.
My dad, who was a Marine second lieutenant in the Pacific at the time, joked that if the atom bomb hadn’t worked then I wouldn’t exist – because he wouldn’t have survived the invasion of Japan. Young, inexperienced 2nd lt’s were cannon fodder in that war
What’s the threshhold at which you stop trying to make secretive operation codenames and just cut to the chase?
Worth noting of course that most military leaders never considered this an actual possibility; it was planned but without any path to execution, like thousands of other military operations that also were never carried out. Eisenhower and Nimitz both claimed in the years following the a-bomb that a blockade would’ve done the job quickly just the same.
The bloody invasion myth was invented in the years following the nuke to justify a nuclear holocaust that was as much planned to establish supremacy in the postwar order and prevent the Soviet Union from taking any significant piece of the Japanese empire as it was to actually achieve a goal in the war itself (which makes it a clear-cut war crime)
The nukes prevented this operation from happening
And we all know it would’ve been a blood bath on both sides
The blockade and firebombings had completely destroyed Japan’s industrial capacity. Starvation was settling in. And the Soviets were steamrolling across Manchuria + Korea, and had invaded the South Sakhalin. That was the state on August 15th, the day of surrender in our timeline.
I just don’t see a way that Japan wouldn’t have surrendered before Nov 1 when Downfall was to commence. Especially when you consider that we would have nuked anything left standing in September and October with bomb production being about 3-4 a month by then. Plus the Soviets would have eliminated all Japanese presence on Korea, and were going to invade Hokkaido by September (might not have gone well but the shock factor of an invasion of Mainland Japan would have certainly pushed the gears towards surrender).
Operation Downfall has always seemed to be a bit of worst case scenario fantasy like Operation Unthinkable. Fascinating and horrifying to think about though
Japan itself would have been a barren wasteland if this operation went through.
Dropping the atom bombs was probably the greatest single humanitarian action of the 20th century.
There is a good fanfic that tells how the invasion would have happened. [Decisive Darkness](https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/decisive-darkness-what-if-japan-hadnt-surrendered-in-1945.296250/): What if Japan hadn’t surrendered in 1945?