Haley LeudemannRobert EllisWorld Civ. 24/14/18What if the US did not bomb Japan?We have come to the time in this class where we have talked a little bit about what would have happened if the US had not dropped that atomic bombs on Japan. Would we have had to invade Japan? If we invaded, we would have killed millions on both sides; so the bombings actually saved lives.

I believe that the use of the atomic bomb saved hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of lives on both sides. That without its use the war would have continued for many months. What was probably ahead and what the atomic bomb might accomplish could have made any different decision.

There are critics that argue that history would have taken a more humane and wiser path if the weapons were not used or even available. I believe this is true. The article states that “To this day, no pre, Hiroshima document has been produced from Japan demonstrating that any one of these eight men ever contemplated a termination of the war on any terms that could, or should, have been acceptable to the United States and her allies”. This basically says that there has not been a document from Japan showing that any of the eight men ever thought about ending the war. Over the course of the first three months of 1945, Japan’s military leaders forged a strategy they called Ketsu Go, which meant “Operation Decisive”, to obtain the political bargaining chips to terminate the war in a way they could abide. They were certain hat no amount of blockade and bombardment, even if it meant losing the lives of millions of their countrymen, could get them to yield.

They examined many options after this, but none of them seemed to be the right fit. Japanese soldiers continued to hold many of the islands in the Pacific and even the islands that they had lost were still inhabited by soldiers who hid in caves and came out to kill Allied troops.I think that Japan would have put up a great fight, but in the end if we would have invaded them they would have lost. Japan would have fought with everything they had until the last man was dead, they would not have given up and surrendered. I believe that the use of the atomic bombs brought the war to an end. If we had not used them the war could have went on for many more months, maybe even years.

It took two bombings for Japan to consider surrendering to the US, then four days later they accepted the Potsdam terms.The Russians might have occupied Japan as well and started the Cold War there instead of it being in Germany by dividing the country into two halves; one free and the other communist. The Cold War was a state of geopolitical tension after World War II, it was fought between the Eastern Bloc and the Western Bloc. The Cold War split the temporary wartime alliance against Nazi Germany, leaving the Soviet Union and the United States as two superpowers with profound economic and political differences.

The communist party controlled everything including the press, the military, the economy, and many organizations. The first phase of the Cold War began in the first two years after the end of the Second World War in 1945. The Berlin Blockade was the first major crisis of the Cold War in 1948-1949. The expansion and escalation sparked more crises, including the Suez Crisis of 1956, the Berlin Crisis of 1961, and even the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. The USSR crushed the 1968 Prague Spring liberalization program in Czechoslovakia, and the Vietnam War from 1955–1975 ended with the defeat of the US-backed Republic of Vietnam, prompting further adjustments.

By the 1970’s both sides became interested in making allies in hopes to create a more stable international system.The United States increased diplomatic, military, and economic pressures on the Soviet Union, at a time when the communist state was already suffering from economic stagnation. In the mid-1980s, the new Soviet leader Gorbachev introduced the liberalizing reforms of reorganization in 198, 7and openness around 1985 which ended the Soviet involvement in Afghanistan. In 1989 there was a wave of revolutions that peacefully, with the exception of the Romanian Revolution, overthrew all of the communist regimes of Central and Eastern Europe.

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union lost control and was banned following an abortive coup attempt in August 1991. This in turn led to the formal dissolution of the USSR in December 1991 and the falling of the communist regimes in other countries such as Mongolia, Cambodia and South Yemen. The United States has remained as the world’s only superpower.