Did dropping atomic bombs deter Stalin from invading Western Europe on the heels of defeating Nazi Germany?
This blogger asks if nuking Japan saved Western Europe from the USSR (via Instapundit).
He bases that position on the surprising revelation from Antony Beevor that I quoted in this post:
[A] meeting of the Politburo in 1944 had decided to order the Stavka to plan for the invasion of France and Italy, as General Shtemenko later told Beria's son. The Red Army offensive was to be combined with with a seizure of power by the local Communist Parties. In addition, Shtemenko explained, "a landing in Norway was provided for, as well as the seizure of the Straits [with Denmark.] A substantial budget was allocated for the realisation of these plans. It was expected that the Americans would abandon a Europe fallen into chaos, while Britain and France would be paralyzed by their colonial problems. The Soviet Union possessed 400 experienced divisions, ready to bound forward like tigers. It was calculated that the whole operation would take no more than a month ... All those plans were aborted when Stalin learned from [Beria] that the Americans had the atom bomb and were putting it into mass production." Stalin apparently told Beria "that if Roosevelt had still been alive, we would have succeeded." This, it seems, was the main reason why Stalin suspected that Roosevelt had been secretly assassinated. (765) ...
Stalin had achieved everything he wanted at Potsdam, even though he had been forced to cancel the invasion of western Europe out of fear of the atom bomb. (767)
For once, Russian paranoia worked for us.
The blogger rightly states:
This is astounding news. Nothing less. What does it say about the use of the atomic bombs — not to mention, for that matter, McCarthyism along with the alleged paranoia regarding the later Red "Scare" as well as the alleged daftness of the American people?
When unhappy Western elites — quite a number of them from Europe, especially Western Europe — criticize Uncle Sam's atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as evil and useless war crimes and no more than a(n outright hateful?) warning to the USSR, they usually mean it to mean that tens of thousands of Japanese citizens were sacrificed simply to prevent nothing more harmless than a few handfuls of (gallant soldiers in) Koba's Red Army joining in some little way in the victory over the Japanese Empire.
Remember too that Stalin allied with Hitler, seemingly hoping Germany would exhaust itself in another war with Britain and France--exhausting them in the process--and leaving Europe open to Soviet domination.*
Clearly Stalin thought his moment had arrived even if tens of millions of Soviets had to die to get him to that point.
I focused on a defense of NATO against charges that the defensive alliance provoked Soviet hostility. But now we know the very existence of a free Western Europe depended on the use of atomic bombs.
And perhaps this event has shaped Russia's apparent belief today that the threat of nuclear weapons will deter an enemy from liberating territory that Russia has captured. Because didn't that essentially happen with the implicit American nuclear threat that kept Stalin from advancing to the Atlantic coast through the Allied forces still in Europe after defeating Germany?
And keep in mind that not dropping the bomb also would not have saved Japanese lives. Japanese fanatical nationalists thought Japan could keep fighting even after two atomic bombs destroyed two Japanese cities. And tried to sabotage Japan's surrender.
What are the odds the Japanese would have overcome the nationalists and surrendered without the atomic strikes? And would America have risked its army invading Japan when the prospect of D-Day 2.0 in Europe loomed? The invasion of Japan would have been bloody and destructive enough. Instead, America might have blockaded Japan and starved it into submission, at a horrible price in Japanese civilian lives.
Which would have wrecked American efforts to turn Japan into an anti-communist ally in the Cold War. Which would have resulted in South Korea falling to North Korea.
The West would have been crippled and denied the chance to expand with Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan the opportunity to join the West. Not to mention democracy's advances in Europe.
UPDATE: Related thoughts. While there is no evidence that the U.S. needlessly nuked a Japan on the cusp of surrendering in order to scare Stalin, the fact that Stalin was apparently scared into not invading Western Europe is not proof of the false charge.
*A ploy the Russians used in the Pacific at the same time, and have tried to do again with China versus America and our allies.
NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
