Subject: Re: The TACOrettes keep coming
River vs. Ocean: The Red Army was the world's master of land warfare and river crossings, but they had almost no experience organizing and executing massive, long-range, over-the-shore ocean invasions.

On the other hand, the American fleet sat off the shores of Japan with over a million men ready to storm ashore. They had the craft to get them ashore, the beans and bullets to sustain an invasion, and the battleships, cruisers and aircraft carriers to mount a supportive bombardment.

The USSR possessed little to none of these resources

At the end of World War II the Russian Army had more than 11 million soldiers in uniform. While many/most of those were on the Eastern front, Hitler was gone, and few were needed after that except as a policing force in Berlin proper. Russia had moved entire industries inland at the outset of the war, you think transporting soldiers would have been hard?

Meanwhile Stalin declared war (abrogated the non-aggression pact that had kept Japan’s back door protected) and the Russian Army swept through Manchuria and North Korea attacking Japanese forces (those areas were important resource bases for the Japanese war machine), they took Sakhalin Island , and the entire Kursk island chain that stretches between Russia and Japan. Russia may not have had the naval resources we did, but pretending they couldn’t bring strength to bear is sorely mistaken.

Was the “air war” over Japan important? Sure, but even massive - war crimes worthy - bombing didn’t bring them to the table. The first ATOMIC BOMB didn’t either. They were already bereft of an Air Force (a pitiful few kamikazees left) and Navy (one undamaged air craft carrier and three very damaged ones still floating) and no Army to speak of, as those troops were chasing glory in other parts of the Empire or fighting a rear guard action trying to hold onto it. In fact the Japanese were preparing for an invasion of the home islands with children and old men and bamboo sticks.

Yes, they finally caved after the second atomic bomb, but barely. The cabinet was evenly split, and in a highly unusual move the Emperor cast a vote and he chose peace (surrender).

It was the accumulation of “losing Naval power”, “losing Air power”, “losing land battles in Asia”, “supply chain strangulation”, “introduction of vast new fighting force from Russia”, “facing Russia from land and the US from sea” and finally ‘atomic weapons” which brought surrender. I would hardly credit it to “aerial bombardment” even though the final coup de grâce was delivered by an airplane.

[For those who are interested, Tom Hanks’ 20 part “History of World War II” starts Monday night on the History Channel. I have my TiVo set.]

World War II With Tom Hanks’ Review: Reconsidering an All-Consuming Conflict
The actor hosts a 20-part series on the History Channel that pulls off the seemingly impossible by offering a fresh perspective on our most studied and scrutinized war.]

In the meantime, this highly ambitious, informative and entertaining series takes the most analyzed, scrutinized, dramatized and idealized event of the 20th century and makes it feel like something you never learned about in school. Because if you’re an average American, you didn’t. Not this way.

https://www.wsj.com/arts-cultu...

I will be interested to see if it lives up to the hype. Even if it doesn’t, I’ll watch it all, it’s one of my fascinations.