The Allies would have won without the superweapon though (remember, Hitler had already surrended and Japan was clearly on the ropes well before Hiroshima), and the jury is still out in whether it even sped things up.
"Downfall" by Richard Frank
https://www.amazon.com/Downfall-End-Imperial-Japanese-Empire...
"Code-Name Downfall" by Thomas Allen
https://www.amazon.com/Code-Name-Downfall-Secret-Japan-Dropp...
summarize those please
The second bomb made it clear that the first one was not a one-off, and that the US was going to nuke the cities one by one. The Japanese also had intelligence (that turned out to be false) that Tokyo was the next target.
I've read a couple accounts by anti-nuclear activists who held that the USSR was the reason for the surrender, but if you compare those accounts with the ones written by historians, the former are crackpots.
An invasion of Japan would be an absolutely massive operation (see D-Day) and the USSR was in no position to mount one.
There’s a minute-by-minute historical analysis[1], a 1967 film[2] (starring Toshiro Mifune! Gotta find this one…), a 2015 remake[3] of the 1967 film, and apparently a forthcoming graphic novel[4].
Fundamentally, the idea of “Japan” making a decision to surrender the way (say) Truman made the decision to drop the bombs is a misleading framing.
At this time, political, military and—crucially—effective police power in Japan was distributed among individuals and groups, notably the young officer corps, with very different motivations, beliefs, and principles.
The atomic bombs, the Russian invasion, the particulars of the negotiations with the US over terms of surrender… all were “merely” external forces influencing a chaotic, unstable equilibrium.
Ultimately, in some combination those forces tipped the center of that power from one equilibrium: “The war is lost, but if we surrender now internal forces will destroy Japan as a nation even if the Allies don’t.”
…to another: “The Emperor must make an extraordinary intervention to end the war immediately.”
And it was a most close run thing!
[1] https://www.tohokingdom.com/books/japans_longest_day_kodansh...
[2] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062041/
[3] https://youtu.be/tDgQqnDKrdI
[4] https://greenbeanbookspdx.indielite.org/book/9784805317792
Long before Ukrainian war, I've many times talked with Russians about bombs used on Japan.
And now I must say you very important thing - Russians are so crazy anti-humanists, that this really could be reason for fears of Japanese about USSR invasion.
To be honest, I think bombs was enough to intimidate Japanese, but I think, even without bombs, Russians behavior at war, with US Land-lease technical/economical support would be enough to convince Japanese to surrender, may be later, sought.
I don't raise that as justification and personally wish we were never stupid enough as a species to build such a weapon, but we tend to be that stupid. I do, though, agree that we likely would have lost more people on both sides and for Japan that number still would have included a large number of civilians.
Frankly, I don't know how one could ever make the decision that killing 100,000 is "worth it" and I hope I never have to.
Personally I think we should never have tried to invent the nuclear bomb to begin with, avoiding the decision entirely. I understand the whole "but then the enemy would have it first" argument, I just don't buy it. Sure, maybe the "enemy" would go on to invent it but that's a burden they'll have to bear.
Sometimes standing on principle includes dying on principle, we seem to have lost the importance of all that along the way. I chalk that up to the increase rate of invention making it too scary to take a step back, even for a moment, to decide whether we should do something that we know we can do.
Doesn't hold.