(December 4, 2022 at 9:51 am)TaraJo Wrote: Look at the condition of Hiroshima and Nagasaki today. Then look at the current condition of Warsaw. Or Bucharest. Or Prague. Or just about any Eastern European city. Japanese cities are thriving, industrialized, modernized cities even after being nuked. Eastern Europe is still poor and underdeveloped and undereducated. Even if the USSR wasn't the reason Japan surrendered, in hindsight, it certainly worked out for them in the long run.
Japan was paying attention to how the allies treated conquered nations: Russia wanted to build satellite states with no independence and were little more than Soviet colonies. Western nations wanted to rebuild and reform them into democratic states like the UK and America. When they knew they were losing the war regardless, they delayed a bit to try to get better terms of surrender from the allies but when the USSR turned its attention to Japan, the only term they cared about was to keep the soviets out of Japan.
Prague is one of the most beautiful cities I've visited, perhaps partly because it hasn't turned into a set of modern high-rise buildings.
