Murphy_Slaw
LE
So as not to derail the https://www.arrse.co.uk/community/threads/hiroshima-day.301190/page-7#post-10184625 I thought I'd start a new one.
When the USA dropped the first atomic bomb it sent shockwaves around the world, in particular in the Soviet Union. America then followed up with a second a few days later. It could be argued the second one was more about impressing Stalin than defeating Japan. I believe that Stalin was planning on taking as large a share of Manchuria and China as he could manage (claiming to be a liberator and then a protecting force),however Japan's surrender and more importantly Americas show of strenghth, curtailed his plans.
It is no secret that Stalin had aspirations in both the east and the west and he may have pushed his luck had it not been for the start of the nuclear age. Fast forward a handful of years, the Soviets get the nuke and the Cold War begins in earnest. There then follows 40 years or so of attempts by both sides to increase their area of influence without actually comming face to face directly. Again I put this down to the fact that by now we all know what a nuclear war would look llike, plus the fact that the because America has already used the bomb in anger, the Soviets are convinced they would not hesitate to use it again if necessary.
The closest we came to MAD was arguably the Cuban missile crisis. Would Kruschev have backed down if the Americans had not used the bomb in Japan?
The Hiroshima Day thread is largly concerned with how many lives were saved by not invading mainland Japan. I would add that one of the reasons the cold war remained cold is that after 1945 everyone knew what the power of a nuclear bomb could do, therefor the two bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved even more lives in the long run.
When the USA dropped the first atomic bomb it sent shockwaves around the world, in particular in the Soviet Union. America then followed up with a second a few days later. It could be argued the second one was more about impressing Stalin than defeating Japan. I believe that Stalin was planning on taking as large a share of Manchuria and China as he could manage (claiming to be a liberator and then a protecting force),however Japan's surrender and more importantly Americas show of strenghth, curtailed his plans.
It is no secret that Stalin had aspirations in both the east and the west and he may have pushed his luck had it not been for the start of the nuclear age. Fast forward a handful of years, the Soviets get the nuke and the Cold War begins in earnest. There then follows 40 years or so of attempts by both sides to increase their area of influence without actually comming face to face directly. Again I put this down to the fact that by now we all know what a nuclear war would look llike, plus the fact that the because America has already used the bomb in anger, the Soviets are convinced they would not hesitate to use it again if necessary.
The closest we came to MAD was arguably the Cuban missile crisis. Would Kruschev have backed down if the Americans had not used the bomb in Japan?
The Hiroshima Day thread is largly concerned with how many lives were saved by not invading mainland Japan. I would add that one of the reasons the cold war remained cold is that after 1945 everyone knew what the power of a nuclear bomb could do, therefor the two bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved even more lives in the long run.
