this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2024
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There's strong arguments to be made that we nuked them so that they'd surrender to us instead of the Russians.
3 prongs.
It was also to show off the nukes to the Russians
Why do one thing when can do many thing same time
The Russians had zero ability to invade the Japanese home islands. The Russian official declaration of war only cut off a potential way for the Japanese to broker a peace through a neutral Russia.
I suspect they could've gained a limited (big emphasis on limited) ability to invade the Japanese islands if/once they seized coastal Chinese and Korean regions that were under Japanese control, some ships might've been around.