I’m accepting the premise of the Allied powers including the Soviet Union. Japan had hoped that the Soviet Union would meditate a peace after the war with Germany given that the two countries made peace with each other in the 1941. There were even preliminary negotiations that the Soviet Union dragged on in July 1945. Then, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan roughly around the time that the bombs were dropped.

And Japan wasn’t just arguing for the emperor. There were other conditions to the surrender, including no occupation and internally trying Japanese for was crimes instead of an international tribunal. Those conditions were unacceptable. By the time there was only one condition, an atomic bomb had been dropped.

I think you’ve already been told this, but that’s a false dichotomy based on bald-faced lies.

The three options were invasion, bombing until submission, and accepting a conditional surrender. Conditional surrender was off the table.

The US was already in the process of leveling Japanese cities due to strategic bombing and would have continued to do so if it didn’t drop nuclear weapons. A blockade was also implemented, in part to starve the population into unconditional surrender.

It is funny how much anti-nuclear people focus on the dropping of two bombs when they were only a fraction of the total deaths caused. And try, those two bombs were a major part of the deliberations on the Japanese side when deciding to surrender in which we have first account records while the decision was being made.

I don’t think you can really equivocate between “accepting that there will be civilians who die when you fire artillery at military targets” vs “vaporizing civilians by the tens of thousands in an instant to make a point”.

It can when the numbers of casualties under your direct command number in the hundreds of thousands while the death rate of the belligerent side doesn’t meaningfully change between the two options. A landing in Japan was never going to be as easy as the landing in Normandy, and the landing at Normandy was the most logically difficult of the war.

But the myth about the Soviets being especially cruel to the Nazis is one of many fascist myths propagated to reverse the roles of victim and genocidaire

I’m not talking about Soviets being especially cruel, but taking actions to preserve their own forces over protecting civilians of countries they were at war with.

No. I said that a country is going to value the lives of its own people over the lives of others in making military decisions. This isn’t just an American thing.

I never said that.

The Western Allies slowed their approach into Germany because it was agreed between them and the Soviet Union on what the occupation zones should have been prior to the invasion.

In a humanitarian gesture, should the Western Allies have accepted a German surrender in which Germany surrendered only on the condition that they would be occupied by the Americans?

What nation is going to prefer the death of its own citizens over the death of civilians of a country they are at war with? Did the Soviet Union treat Nazi Germany with that kind of grace?

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