concerning the status of the Emperor—the very question Ambassador Sato put to
Molotov on August 2, four days before the Hiroshima bomb, and six days before the
Soviet declaration of war.
[How unnecessary it was to drop the atom bomb is shown by Major-General J. F. C.
Fuller in The Second World War (London, 1948), p. 395: "On the 10th a broadcast from Tokyo announced the acceptance of the Potsdam Ultimatum 'with the understanding that
[it] does not comprise any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of the Emperor as a sovereign ruler'. On the following day the Allies replied: 'From the moment of surrender the authority of the Emperor... shall be subject to the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers'. [In other words, there was no question of hanging the Emperor as a war
criminal.]
"Why was this not made clear in the Declaration of July 26? Had it been, would not
[Truman's] 'purpose of God' have been more Christianly followed?" Fuller comments. He also says that the requests made to Russia as early as May to intercede as a mediator must have made it clear to the Western Powers that Japan's position was catastrophic, and that she was completely ripe for surrender. The only obstacle was the question of the
Emperor.]
Even assuming that the Japanese would have continued to resist and that the saving of American lives was all that was at stake, then the dropping of the bomb could still have been held up until September, just before the invasion of Kyushu—which would have cost a lot of American lives. If the bomb was dropped in a desperate hurry on August 6, it must have been because Truman was determined to drop it before the Russians had
entered the war—which they were expected to do, in accordance with the Yalta
Agreement, not much later than the 8th.
[Asked in 1960 whether there was any urgency to end the war in the Pacific before the Russians became too deeply involved, Mr Byrnes replied: "There certainly was on my part. We wanted to get through with the Japanese phase of the war before the Russians came in." (U.S. News and World Report, August 15, 1960.)]
But that was not alclass="underline" the bomb, as is so clearly suggested by Truman, Byrnes, Stimson and others, was dropped very largely in order to impress Russia with America's great might. Ending the war in Japan was incidental (the end of this war was clearly in sight, anyway), but stopping the Russians in Asia and checking them in Eastern Europe was
fundamental.
Whether the Russians intended to stick closely to the Yalta Agreement and enter the war on August 8 is not altogether certain; but once the bomb had been dropped, the Russians could not afford to delay; for what if Japan capitulated as a result of the bomb before Russia entered the war? It was essential to enter the war before such a Japanese
capitulation, if Russia was to receive her territorial "reward" and play any part in the occupation of Korea—and Japan.
The real irony of it all is that Japan was ready to capitulate both without the atom bomb and without Russian intervention. But this suited neither the USA, nor the Soviet Union, both of which had to strike the "decisive" blow.
It is interesting to note that the present-day History does not breathe a word about Stalin's
"revenge for 1904", but attributes Russia's entry into the war to three high-minded motives: 1) security against future Japanese aggression; 2) Russia's sacred duty to her Western Allies; and, 3) her moral duty to help, China, Korea and other Asian peoples in their struggle against the Japanese imperialists.
The "new look" of American policy after the dropping of the atom bomb soon became apparent. On August 16 Truman declared that, unlike Germany, Japan would not be
divided into occupation zones. Truman firmly rejected the Russian proposal that the
Japanese surrender to Russian troops in northern Hokkaido; nor were the Russians to take any part whatsoever in the occupation of Japan. Truman went even further: on August 18
he asked that the Russians let the Americans use one of the Kurile Islands as an air base, a proposal that Stalin rejected with a great show of indignation.
[ Correspondence between Stalin and the Presidents of the USA and the Prime Ministers of Great Britain.. . (Moscow 1957), vol. II, pp. 267-8.]
The uneasiness and anxiety created in Russia by the atom bomb were such that, soon
after the capitulation of Japan, Russian correspondents visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki and deliberately reported that the bombs had not been nearly as destructive as the
Americans had made out; if there were very heavy casualties, it was because of the
inflammable nature of Japanese houses, and any city with stone houses and adequate
shelters would not have suffered nearly as much. The correspondents said they had
interviewed several people who had escaped injury by simply lying down in an ordinary trench!
These stories about the relative innocuousness of the atom bomb were not only intended to reassure the Russian public, but also to support the theory that it was not the atom bomb, but the destruction of the Kwantung Army by the Russians, that had brought Japan to her knees.
They did not make much impression in Russia. Everybody there fully realised that the atom bomb had become an immense factor in the world's power politics, and believed
that, although the two bombs had killed or maimed a few hundred thousand Japanese,
their real purpose was, first and foremost, to intimidate Russia.
After causing a spell of anxiety and bewilderment, all the bombs did, in effect, was to create on the Russian side a feeling of anger and acute distrust vis à vis the West. Far from becoming more amenable, the Soviet Government became more stubborn.
[The only major exception was Iran, where Moscow yielded to American pressure by
evacuating Iranian Azerbaijan.]
Inside Russia, too, the régime became much harder after the war instead of becoming
softer, as so many had hoped it would be.
It was scarcely a coincidence that, ten days after Hiroshima, the Supreme Soviet should have instructed the Gosplan—the State Planning Commission—and the Council of
People's Commissars to get busy on a new Five-Year Plan. No breathing-space was to be allowed to the Russian people; the great industrial and economic reconstruction of the country was to start immediately. And, together with it, the making of the Russian atom bomb.
The end of the war was to be followed by years of disappointment and frustration for the Russian people. The wartime hopes of a Big Three Peace gave way to the reality of the Cold War and the "Iron Curtain". The happy illusions of 1944 that the Soviet régime would become more liberal, and life easier and freer after the war, soon went up in
smoke. For one thing the Soviet economy was largely in ruins, and to rebuild it a gigantic programme of austerity and hard work was called for. The policy of restoring heavy
industry as fast as possible meant that consumer goods remained scarce for a long time.
Housing conditions were bad and food was short. The NKVD, which had shown a certain
discretion during the war, came into its own again and a new terror developed which did not come to an end until 1953, after Stalin's death.
Yet despite the disappointments that followed it, the grim but heroic national war of 1941-5 remains both the most fearful and the proudest memory of the Russian people—a war which, for all her losses, turned Russia into the greatest Power oil the Old World.
Already it almost seems an historical epic of a bygone age—which can never be repeated.
To the Russian people the thought of another war is doubly horrifying; for it would be a war without its Sebastopol, Leningrad or Stalingrad; a war in which—everywhere—there would be only victims and no heroes.