An overlooked A-bomb issue: the wait-a-couple-weeks argument

[Bucky]

36. Thanks for responding. I've based my arguments on primary sources, hence contradictions.

(1) Truman's disclosure may have been vague, but Stalin knew it was the A-bomb and more about what an atomic bomb could do than Truman. Stalin's intel on Manhattan had the date for testing the bomb wrong and he chewed out Beria for not informing him of a successful test. Stalin was expecting this news. Truman no going into details without a full tech spec on a highly classified project is understandable. When Stalin met with US Ambassador Harriman to inform the US about the Soviet declaration on Japan in August, he revealed that he had a nuke program himself and knew about the German, US, and British atomic projects. Stalin was not out of the loop on atomics

(2) I agree, the time table for the Soviet invasion was impressive. However he'd started moving units into place, attempting to do so undetected, from June of '45. Ambassador Sato wasn't fooled; his intel in Russia revealed the eastward troop movements, but his superiors in Tokyo chose to ignore this and continue to rely on Stalin's good offices. The fact that Stalin moved up the dates of his invasion is quite well documented in declassified Soviet records, although including this in a Hiroshima analysis may not be more current than 2005, when Prof. Hasegawa published his research in Racing the Enemy.

Stalin at Potsdam told Truman and Churchill that he'd be ready to launch his attack on Japan in the second half of August. Upon getting word from Truman about the Bomb, he moved the date up to August 11th. When the Hiroshima bomb was dropped, he moved the date up another 48 hours, to August 9th. It was this sudden mass invasion that got the Japanese to surrender. It was during the discussion of how to accept the Potsdam Declaration that the Big Six heard about Nagasaki, which didn't seem to shock them as much as Russia.

(3) I'm not making these arguments. I'm basing them on a well respected professor's research. I love a good verbal scrap, but I don't argue against facts and I don't argue against success. But to use logic, please remember that Stalin had agreed at Yalta in 1944 to join the war by 90 days after Germany's fall. That happened in April. Stalin very much wanted to get a toe in the Pacific so that he'd control the ports at Darien and Port Arthur. What was really holding him up was his pledge to talk out term with Chaing Kai Shek before entering the war (Stalin had little desire to support Mao at this point). The Chinese also wanted Darien and Port Arthur, so the negotiations stalled.

Stalin eventually broke that one promise from Yalta in order to get into the war ASAP. But he wasn't going to wait to start preparing for the war against Japan until after the 90-day timeline or until after Potsdam. Preparations began at the latest by June, but planning certainly began in May. Moving up the invasion date by about two weeks (in two steps) wasn't shaving 40% off the prep time for invasion. It was shaving off two weeks out of more than two months of relocation activity. Again, read the book. \ Elsewhere in this thread I've provided a link to it online.