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In an alternate universe, FDR doesn't die in 1945. He refuses to nuke the Japanese and the war drags out for 2 more years, tripling the number of American war dead. In 1949, after an incredible 16 years on the throne, FDR retires with a popularity rating in the teens. In the mean time, the Soviet Union has taken advantage of his weakness to absorb large amounts of Europe into its sphere including Austria and Finland. Hokkaido is now a Russian island. The communist party wins a plurality in French elections. In the United States, FDR is widely regarded as akin to Neville Chamberlain.
To me, it seems like FDR's biggest sin was that he was simply wrong about Communism. The Pollyanna attitude of his administration toward the Soviet Union is shocking when we read about it today. And his interventions during the Great Depression were largely ineffective. FDR died at the right time. His historical legacy remains intact because of Truman.
In an alternate universe the US just settles on a peace deal with Japan rather than surrender. Instead of relying on a racist caricature of the Japanese being completely insane and willing to fight to the last man, woman and child if the white man ever sets foots on their sacred shores, I think it's more prudent to assume that the Japanese high command recognized that the war was over and was looking for ways to end it on equal terms. Which, according to the mainstream US story, was exactly what was happening and was indeed the purpose behind the alleged Japanese plan of 'Ketsu Go'.
The notion that the only way to end the war was with American boots in Tokyo is a mythical one. The US did not need to drop the bombs since it did not need the complete subjugation of Japan. On that note, the US had no grand strategic forethought that could reach past the nose of the allegedly jewish propaganda described above. Leaving them with the USSR in Europe and China in Asia.
As is the case with most of the foreign policy ventures of the past, we are living through the failures of 'great' historical figures who amounted to little other than drinking the cool-aid of their time. With history serving as a sugarcoat that we can use to help convince ourselves that we are the end product of 'great' men making the best out of a bad situation. Things just happen, the moral arch of history bent in such a way that we had to do what was done. So no matter how inhumane and horrible we acted, just know it was ultimately justified. God bless and Amen.
Dropping the bombs was not simply about ending the war, it was also about sending a message how the post-war world would shape up (especially to Stalin and Soviet Russia): look what we can do. Don't piss us off.
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No, it's still not. The fight-to-the-last-man "caricature" didn't come from racism, it came from a combination of the Japanese "Glorious Death of One Hundred Million" campaign and their army-prompted civilian mass suicides on already-taken islands. The Japanese high command wasn't looking for ways to end the war before any nukes were dropped; they were attempting a coup d'état to try and prevent a surrender after two nukes.
It is and the Wikipedia link in your linked comment says exactly the same thing I did.
Like I said in my comment, the only reason for nuking Japan was to induce unconditional surrender. And my overarching point was the US did not need Japan to surrender in the first place.
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In an alternate universe you could also have posited what actually happened and say this would have destroyed the legacy of FDR and Churchill, you cannot underestimate the power of post-war narrative building. I grew up hearing "If the United States hadn't defeated Hitler we would all be speaking German right now" and genuinely believing that we stopped Germany from conquering the entire world. So that map looks good in comparison to that post-war narrative and the legacy of those involved remains intact.
If France and Germany stay out of the war, what alternative map do you think arises that looks better than the one we ended up with? An Eastern Europe dominated by the Soviets was bad, but it's a dream world in comparison to one dominated by the Germans. Considering that the non-Jewish Poles either executed or forced into labor by the Nazis during the relatively brief period of occupation numbers in the millions, being a Soviet satellite was a walk in the park in comparison. More likely, though, the Germans would have lost the war in a similar manner to how they actually did (no, I don't think there were enough troops defending the west to have made a difference), except the Soviet Steamroller wouldn't have stopped at the Elbe. Stalin would have taken all of Germany, plus Finland, Greece, Yugoslavia, Austria, and Italy. And that's assuming that Hitler never pushed into Denmark or the Low Countries, which would have been easy pickings. I don't see how the US, UK and France all stay out of this war and the result is somehow better.
I can imagine a dream world where Germany becomes the leader of a continental European entente that includes Poland in the fold. Hitler made peace offers in 1940 that entailed making Poland an independent protectorate, is that really different from their EU and NATO membership today? That map looks like the map of today but minus a Cold War that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war...
Hitler wanted an alliance with Poland against the Soviet Union, and the Poles were inclined to negotiate with the Germans until some bad timing with leadership transitioning and pressure from the British to not negotiate with the Germans.
When Germany was in its strongest negotiating position in 1941, the Deputy Fuhrer Rudolf Hess solo-piloted an airplane to Scotland, strapped on a parachute for the first time, and bailed out in an attempt to go around Churchill and make contact with England's peace factions. Apparently the peace offer was "the Nazis would withdraw from western Europe, in exchange for British neutrality over a planned attack on Russia". It's hard to doubt the sincerity of Rudolf Hess wanting to avoid war with Great Britain given what he did as the leader second in command only to Hitler.
Hess, by the way, was tried as a major war criminal at Nuremberg and convicted. He received a sentence of life in prison, and remained in prison longer than any other German leader until he committed suicide at the age of 93.
I won't speculate who would have won a war between Germany and the Soviet Union in either of those alt-history scenarios. Whoever wins that war, there is no chance in my mind the outcome would have been worse than what actually happened, with Churchill refusing every peace offer made by the Germans and settling for nothing less than unconditional surrender after the complete destruction of Europe and tens of millions of deaths, the Soviet conquest of Eastern Europe, and the "denazification" psychological warfare that consolidated the truth regime we all live under today.
I can imagine a dream world where the Soviets become the leader of a continental entente that includes Poland in the fold. Is the Warsaw Pact really any different than EU or NATO membership today? That is, I can if I pretend that the USSR wasn't a horrible state that killed millions and violated the human rights of everyone else. You can continue to play a game of "let's pretend" and claim that anti-German propaganda was merely post-hoc rationalization for the US getting involved in war, but it doesn't fly. The German state actually was that bad. Any "independent" Poland in such a system would only have been independent to the extent that the German transplants would have had some form of self-government after liquidating the native population. This isn't some wild speculation; it's what Hitler said himself, and what Hitler started to implement during the occupation.
Yes, because the Warsaw Pact became the immediate enemy of Western Europe, and West Germany (composed mostly of former Nazi leadership) became the immediate ally of the West. How is this at all coherent? Why couldn't we just skip to that part where Germany is allied with Western Europe against the Soviet Union (which is what Hitler explicitly wanted) without destroying Europe and gifting the USSR half the continent? If Poland had entered the fold as a satellite for Western Europe as Germany had wanted, and as Poland is today, then that is the more logical outcome unless you buy into the post-war propaganda lies that Germany aspired to conquer Western Europe and the world. Hitler also wanted Great Britain as an ally against the Soviet Union, so why was a Total War with unconditional surrender necessary to align West Germany with the West against the USSR?
The US, Great Britain, and France wanted war with Germany and Germany did not want war with them. Instead, we fought an entire World War and destroyed Europe in order to create a pact for a true enemy to the West. It's completely incoherent and unjustifiable without the post-war mythos.
That was the appraisal of General Patton by the way:
Patton wanted to arm the just-defeated Germans and attack the Soviet Union, proposing we "may have been fighting the wrong enemy." How do people's hearts not sink for Europe when they realize what could have been avoided if the West hadn't waged total war with unconditional surrender demands on Germany, rebuffing Germany's peace offers every step of the way? Obviously, their mind is on the post-war mythos rather than the reality of the situation at the time which is much harder to defend without relying on those narratives.
You're leaving out the part where the Nazis still control Germany and Eastern Europe. The situation today isn't what Hitler wanted because Poland and all the rest are actually independent countries run by their own people and not satellites settled with German transplants with the native population relegated to second-class citizens at best and exterminated at worst. They also have at least some semblance of modern democratic, liberal institutions that Hitler never would have tolerated. This is what the West thought was worth fighting a war over.
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Yeah, I was trying to think of places that the Soviet Union would have snatched with a weakened U.S. and it wasn't easy because they had already snatched so much. I think unquestionably Hokkaido, Austria, Finland, and Greece. Beyond that, I don't know. Maybe Turkey, Cyprus, parts of Iran?
Why FDR continues to get a pass for enabling and celebrating a genocidal dictator I'll never know.
Definitely Turkey. The USSR trying to wrest the straits away from Turkey after the war is the reason it's in NATO.
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