Reddede USAs atombomber ikke Danmark og Europa fra Sovjetisk besættelse?

Nogle af min fars første billeder tog han som 12-årig i sommeren af 1945 efter det tyske nederlag af RAF fly og engelske krigsskibe der aflagde besøg i København og andre steder i Danmark. Efter nazisternes overgivelse besøgte marskal Montgomery som bekendt København og kørte gennem byens gader. Fra maj til juli 1945 lagde britiske skibe til kaj, mens RAF-fly landede i hobetal.

Men hvorfor var det nødvendigt? Normalt, med en disciplineret hær der havde overgivet sig (en besættelseshær som i øvrigt ikke havde deltaget i mange kampe overhovedet) ville en sådan magtdemonstration være unødvendig. 

Men briterne var ikke i Danmark for de overgivende tyske fanger; De var der for at beskytte imod den Røde Hær.

En af de mest almindelige kritikpunkter vedrørende USAs brug af atombomber er, at de "kun" blev brugt til at intimidere Stalin (hvilket antyder, at Sovjetunionens leder var en troværdig allieret af Vesten, som burde have fået lov til at deltage i krigen i Stillehavet i stedet for at blive behandlet på sådan en modbydelig måde).

Hvad der ikke nævnes er at det lykkedes faktisk atombomben at sabotere Kremls (hemmelige) planer — ikke med hensyn til, eller ikke kun med hensyn til, Japan eller det asiatiske kontinent, men med hensyn til… Vesteuropa.

For en gangs skyld vil en artikel om Hiroshima faktisk ikke handle om amerikanerne og japanerne — hvis land var langt mere brutalt og blodtørstigt end deres nazistiske allieredes. (Den Kejserlige japanske hær var faktisk lige så ond som nazisternes SS, og mere dødbringende, hvilket fremgår af den forfærdelige behandling af civile under Japans "Reign of Terror".) Nej, denne artikel vil handle om sovjetterne og europæerne.

Efterhånden som man lærer, hvordan den "pålidelige" Vojd planlagde at forråde sine allierede og lade den røde hærs divisioner stryge henover og erobre hele Europa (den vestlige del såvel som den østlige del) — det vil sige indtil Beria nedlagde planerne, da han informerede Stalin om Amerikas skræmmende nye våben — kan jeg kun sige, hvor taknemmelig jeg er, og hvor taknemmelige vi alle burde være, for at Harry Truman kastede atombomber over Hiroshima og Nagasaki. Bomber, der faktisk reddede utallige liv (aligato, Glenn Reynolds-san og Ed Driscoll-san).

Hovedkernen i denne historie er billeder taget af min far i den spæde alder af 12 år (Eskil Svane har lige fejret 93. fødselsdag) af den britiske styrkeopbygning i løbet af sommeren 1945 efter nazisternes kapitulation på V-E Day.

Montgomerys britiske styrker stormede til Nordtyskland og kom i forvejen af den Røde Hær ved at fremtvinge overgivelsen af de tyske styrker i Nordtyskland og det besatte Danmark, og hele regionen undgik dermed Polens, Rumæniens, Bulgariens og alle de andre østlandes 40 års skæbne.

Mange roser russerne for at have vundet Anden Verdenskrig, men et vigtigt spørgsmål bør stilles: Hvis det ikke havde været for Storbritannien og USA, ville russerne, ville Stalin ikke have fortsat hele vejen til Atlanterhavet og også erobret hele Vesteuropa (eller i det mindste fastlandet)?

Min far tog til København sammen med sin onkel og besøgte byens havn og flyvepladser for at se den britiske armada i havnen og flyene lande på flyvepladserne. Han var som sagt kun 12 år gammel og noget der imponerede ham mest var de nye jet fly, hvis motore kun kunne høres efter flyene var fløjet forbi.

Montgomery kører gennem København den 12. maj 1945 (min fars foto som 12-årig) 

HMS Birmingham lægger til kaj den 10. maj 1945 (foto af Eskil Svane, 12 år gammel)

HMS Birmingham i hovedstadens havn den 10. maj

HMS Birmingham var ret populær blandt det danske folk

Mosquitoes ved Kastrup lufthavn, 1. juli 1945

En RAF Spitfire deltager i et flyshow ved Kastrup (sandsynligvis 
ikke kun for danskerne, men for enhver tilstedeværende sovjetisk diplomat) 

Douglas Dakota DC3'ere ved Danmarks største lufthavn

Sovjetunionens (hemmelige) intentioner og planer blev bekræftet, efter at Antony Beevor  tilbragte tid i Moskva, hvor han afdækkede mange tidligere tophemmelige dokumenter i arkiverne, hvilket førte til, at han i sin historie om The Second World War skrev om "de to ubarmhjertige totalitære systemer, der nærede sig af hinanden."

I det næstsidste kapitel, Cities of the Dead, skriver Beevor, at efter den tyske hovedstads fald i maj 1945, aflagde den amerikanske ambassadør i Moskva et besøg i Kreml:

'It must be very pleasant for you', [Averell] Harriman said, making conversation, … 'to be in Berlin after all your country has suffered.'  The Soviet leader eyed him. … 'Tsar Alexander went all the way to Paris,' he replied.

That was not entirely a joke.  Well before Churchill's [notion of a war erupting between the Western allies and their USSR ally], a meeting of the Politburo in 1944 had decided to order the Stavka to plan for the invasion of France and Italy, a General Shtemenko later told Beria's son.  The Red Army offensive was to be combined 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 realization of these plans.  It was expected that the Americans would abandon a Europe fallen into chaos, while Britain and France would be paralysed 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 these 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

… 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

"De vestlige allierede fandt ud af, at de kun kunne befri halvdelen af Europa på bekostning af at slavebinde den anden halvdel." Det skete, forklarer Antony Beevor på de sidste sider af sin 900-siders bog, at "den ene halvdel af Europa måtte ofres til den stalinistiske magt for at redde den anden halvdel."

(Faktisk, i "Nordtyskland nærmede den britiske 7. panserdivision sig Hamborg, mens den 11. panserdivision rykkede hurtigt frem mod Lübeck ved Østersøen. Dette fulgte Churchills hemmelige instruktion til feltmarskal Montgomery … om at forhindre den røde hær i at erobre Danmark".)

Forbløffende nyheder

Dette er forbløffende nyheder. Intet mindre. Hvad siger det om brugen af atombomberne — for ikke at nævne McCarthyismen sammen med den påståede paranoia omkring den senere "Red scare" samt de amerikanske neanderthalers påståede tåbelighed?

Når utilfredse vestlige eliter — en hel del af dem fra Europa, især Vesteuropa — kritiserer Onkel Sams atombombninger af Hiroshima og Nagasaki som onde og unyttige krigsforbrydelser og ikke mere end en (decideret hadefuld?) advarsel til USSR, mener de det normalt som om, at titusindvis af japanske borgere blev ofret blot for at forhindre intet mere harmløst end et par håndfulde (tapre) soldater i Koba's Røde Hær i at slutte sig til på en eller anden måde i sejren over det japanske imperium.

Men som vi kan se, er revisionisterne og post-facto-kritikerne, for ikke at nævne kommunismebeundrerne – en hel del af dem, igen, fra Vesteuropa – der hævder, at Hiroshima havde ringe militær værdi, men i stedet var et strategisk kneb for at imponere Stalin, ikke klar over, at Manhattan-projektets atombombe gjorde mere, langt mere, og ikke i Asien og på Stillehavsfronten, men på den europæiske front en halv verden væk.

Det var sandelig et tegn til den røde hær, og det forhindrede Stalin i at forlænge krigen nådesløst efter nazisternes nederlag og opnå sit projekt om at overtage hele det europæiske kontinent.

I øvrigt, mens vestlige regeringer rutinemæssigt bliver taget til ansvar for egoistisk at forvente, at tyskerne og russerne ville udtømme hinanden på Østfronten (eller forvente det samme 40 år senere under f.eks. Irak-Iran-krigen), er der en teori om, at det faktisk var Stalin, der forventede, at hans vestlige allierede og tyskerne ville udtømme hinanden på Vestfronten; og at nederlaget under Operation Market Garden samt tilbageslaget under Ardenneroffensiven (Amerikas mest blodige slag under Anden Verdenskrig) i det perspektiv skyldtes, at Moskva, uanset om det var direkte eller indirekte, delte efterretninger med Berlin — deres formodede dødsfjende. (Sikke vidunderlige allierede, disse russere.)

For at opsummere:

I Modern Times (The World From the Twenties to the Nineties) skriver Paul Johnson, at

Der var næppe en forbrydelse, som nazisterne eller Bushido-ridderne havde begået, eller endda forestillet sig, som det sovjetiske regime ikke også havde udført, normalt i endnu større skala. Det anvendte præcis den type system, der havde frembragt krigen og dens rædsler. Mere specifikt havde den nazistisk-sovjetiske pagt fra september 1939 og den japansk-sovjetiske pagt fra april 1941 gjort aksemagternes aggressioner mulige.

Faktisk startede Hitler og Stalin Anden Verdenskrig sammen. Som Jeff Jacoby påpeger: I de første to år af Anden Verdenskrig var Nazityskland og Sovjetrusland allierede, hvor Führer og Vozhd i hemmelighed planlagde og i fællesskab startede krigen, der forårsagede så meget rædsel og ødelæggelse.

There is no denying that a vast number of Soviet citizens lost their lives in World War II. Without the Russian people’s appalling suffering and sacrifice, the Allies might not have triumphed in the end.

But there is also no denying that Moscow was Nazi Germany’s partner in unleashing the war, the deadliest in human history, in the first place. Victory Day is a good opportunity to review the record of Russian culpability in plunging the world into war — a record the Kremlin’s propagandists have been trying to obscure for decades.

 … for the first two years of World War II, Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were allies. They secretly planned and jointly began the war that inflicted such horror and destruction. 

In the months that followed the Nazi-Soviet takeover of Poland, as Hitler’s troops conquered Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Holland, and France and bombed much of London into rubble, Stalin’s forces continued their illegal war of aggression and conquest. [the three Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania), the formerly Romanian territories of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, Finland…]

 … In short, for the first two years of World War II, Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were allies. They secretly planned and jointly began the war that inflicted such horror and destruction.  

Som Timothy Snyders bog "Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin" påpeger, kappedes diktatorerne med hinanden i blodbadene og ødelæggelsen af de erobrede territorier.

Desuden vidnede en litauer om, at hans far havde sagt, at hvis han havde valget, ville han hellere leve under 10 års nazistisk besættelse end under et enkelt års kommunistisk besættelse.

Bestemt efter Hitlers forræderi og hans invasion af USSR, men muligvis endda før, var Stalins mål at besejre aksemagterne, men hans endelige mål var derefter at vende sig mod sine allierede og sætte sine divisioner imod dem, der havde støttet ham i alle disse år, og overtage hele kontinentet, og dette beordrede han Politbureauet og NKVD til at planlægge.

Det eneste, der afbrød planen om 400 sovjetiske divisioner om at iværksætte et brutalt, forræderisk og blodigt angreb på Stalins tidligere allierede, var nyheden om atombomberne og erkendelsen af, at de kunne bruges mod russiske hære såvel som japanske byer.

Efterkrigshistorie

Er der nogensinde nogen, der joker, sukker eller ruller med øjnene om paranoia eller heksejagter vedrørende nazisme eller fascisme? Nej, og med god grund. (Efter at have skrålet og fniset i årevis om Godwin's Law, har venstrefløjen droppet alle foregivelser og viser sin sædvanlige dobbeltmoral, da den uophørligt har brugt fascisme/nazisme/Hitler-anklagen mod konservative og medlemmer af det Republikanske Parti — et parti som er pure… anti-regering (!).)

Hvorfor skulle nogen (Joseph McCarthy først blandt dem) så beskrives som paranoid over for et regime, der på den indre front myrder millioner af sine borgere, og på den ydre front faktisk planlagde en invasion af Europa og Vesten (med hjælp fra disse landes indenlandske — dvs. forræderiske — kommunistpartier) — og underkaster alle erobrede territorier og lande den samme blodige interne politik, som havde fundet sted i Østeuropas Bloodlands?

Dette bringer de såkaldte "paranoide" "heksejagter" mod kommunister i efterkrigstidens Amerika op. Her er et spørgsmål, der sjældent bliver rejst: Hvem var leder af Kreml, da udtrykket "McCarthyisme" blev opfundet? En fyr ved navn Stalin. Hvad angår House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), er et andet spørgsmål, hvor mange mennesker der er klar over, at det udskældte råd ikke udelukkende var involveret med kommunister? Blev det ikke dannet året før den nazistisk/sovjetiske ikke-angrebstraktat i 1938 for at undersøge illoyalitet begået af subversive organisationer med tilknytning til enten pro-sovjetiske kommunister eller — jovist — pro-tyske fascister?

Det er bestemt tid til to ting: at Hiroshima ophører med at være en undskyldning for antiamerikanisme, og at "McCarthyisme" ophører med at blive brugt som et angiveligt neutralt og objektivt udtryk.

Dette indlæg kunne slutte her.

Men som en slags tilføjelse til dette indlæg, lad mig kort henvise til min afsløring vedrørende filmen Oppenheimer, hvor medlemmer af de sædvanlige medier i deres enstemmige ros omhyggeligt har overset det faktum, at de to forfattere af bogen bag filmen var begge redaktører og forfattere hos "The Nation", dvs månedsbladet af… USAs kommunistiske parti.  

Over 13 år efter at Antony Beevor kom med forbløffende afsløringer fra Kremls ovennævnte arkiver (The Second World War blev udgivet i 2012), accepteres historikerens konklusioner stadig ikke af eliten (de bliver ikke udfordret — med gode eller ej — de ignoreres simpelthen), hvilket får dem til at kalde modstand mod kommunismen og USSR for "en politisk bevægelse præget af rangløse, uvidende, antiintellektuelle, xenofobiske demagoger".

Lad dette synke ind: Begge forfattere af bogen (Kai Bird og Martin J Sherwin) bag det, som New York Times kalder "Christopher Nolans komplekse, levende portræt af J. Robert Oppenheimer, 'atombombens fader'" — "en strålende præstation i formel og konceptuel henseende" — arbejdede på The Nation og var derfor i en eller anden egenskab tæt på kommunismen samt uvægerligt også eksperter i at udspy antiamerikanisme. 

 

Relateret — på engelsk: • For the first two years of World War II, Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were allies; Hitler and Stalin secretly planned and jointly began the war that inflicted such horror and destruction
• Stalin's Death at 70: Some Mind-Boggling Revelations About Stalin, World War II, and a Century of Russian History

Also related:
• Hiroshima 15: Examining the Issues Surrounding the Dropping of Atomic Bombs on Japan (Erik Svane) 

• Hiroshima 17: During WWII, Japan Killed 7 Times More People (Most of Them Civilians) than They Lost (Victor Davis Hanson) 

• Hiroshima 18: The Imperial Japanese Army was every bit as evil as the Nazi SS, and more lethal (Trent Telenko)

• Hiroshima 19: The Horrific Treatment of Civilians During Japan's "Reign of Terror"

• Hiroshima 14: "I regard Hiroshima revisionism as the greatest hoax in American history" (Robert Maddox)

• Hiroshima 13: Although It Is Not Said Openly, Hiroshima Also Played a Purifying Role, IE the Baptism of a New Japan, the Event that Put an End to 50 Years of Crimes (Le Monde)

• Hiroshima 20: The Day the Pilot Who Led the Attack on Pearl Harbour Met the Pilot of the Enola Gay

• Hiroshima 12: Political Correctness in Japan: The comment "tramples on the feelings of victims", so… Shut the F**k Up and Lose Your Job! (re the forced resignation of Japan's defense (!) minister)

• Hiroshima 11: If Western elites cannot find perfection in history, they see no good at all; most never learned the narrative of WWII, only what was wrong about it (Victor Davis Hanson)

• Hiroshima 10: If Not for the Atom Bombs, Japan, as we know it today, would not exist (S L Sanger, author of “Working on the Bomb”)

• Hiroshima 9: Over one million warning leaflets were dropped over Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and 33 other Japanese cities 5 days before the Hiroshima bombing (Bill Whittle)

• Hiroshima 8: Was It Wrong to Use the Atom Bomb on Japan? (Father Wilson Miscamble)

• Hiroshima 7: Some Facts About Hiroshima and World War II That You Hear Neither From America's MSM, University Élites, and History Books, Nor From Japan's (New York Times)

• Hiroshima 16: Did Japan's top officers know a bomber was approaching Nagasaki, 5 hours beforehand, and do nothing?

• Hiroshima 6: "Lance or spear practice was a regular women's exercise to practice for the anticipated U.S. landing" (a Japanese American)

• Hiroshima 5: Japan's plans for defense involved mobilizing the civilian population, including women and children, for the customary suicidal battle tactics (Thomas Sowell)

• Hiroshima 4: "Les 300 000 morts d'Hiroshima ont épargné bien davantage de Japonais, qui auraient été écrasés sous des bombes ordinaires" (Charles de Gaulle)

• Hiroshima 3: A mainland invasion could have resulted in millions of Japanese deaths—and that's not counting civilians (Wall Street Journal)

• Hiroshima 2: Hand-wringing over Hiroshima is just virtue-signaling by people who never said a bad word about Stalin or Mao’s mass murders (Glenn Reynolds)

• Hiroshima 1: Unlike the ends of the majority of conflicts, World War II in the Pacific grew increasingly bloody as U.S. forces approached the Japanese homeland (Erik Svane)

Hiroshima 1945: Didn't the A-Bombs Prevent the Red Army from Sweeping through Western Europe and the Entire Continent from Falling Under Stalin's Iron Fist?

One of the most common criticisms concerning the use of the atomic bombs is that it was "only" used to intimidate Stalin (suggesting that the head of the USSR was a trustworthy ally of the West who should have been allowed to join the war in the Pacific theater instead of being treated in such a cruel fashion). 

What is not addressed is that the atomic bomb did indeed sabotage the Kremlin's (secret) plans — not with regards, or not only with regards, to Japan or to the Asian continent, but with regards to… Western Europe.

For two decades before being abruptly and brutally canceled, No Pasarán regularly brought stories about little-known facts and quotes regarding the atomic bombings over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the summer of 1945 (the full list of articles on the Wayback Machine can be found at the bottom of this post). The present post is certainly one of the most important of them all.

For once, indeed, the crux will not be on the Americans and the Japanese — whose country was far more brutal and bloodthirsty than that of their Nazi allies. Indeed, the Imperial Japanese Army was every bit as evil as the Nazi SS, and more lethal, as evidenced by the horrific treatment of civilians during Japan's "Reign of Terror". No, the crux will be on the Soviets and the Europeans.

As you learn how the "trustworthy" Vojd was planning on betraying his allies and letting the Red Army's divisions run roughshod through and conquer all of Europe (the Western part as well as the Eastern part) — that is, until Beria shot the plans down when he informed Stalin of America's terrifying new weapon — all I can say is how grateful I am, and how grateful we should all be, for Harry Truman dropping A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Bombs which indeed saved countless lives (aligato, Glenn Reynolds-san and Ed Driscoll-san).

The main gist of this story picks up below photos taken by my father at the tender age of 12 of the British forces build-up during the Summer of 1945 after the Nazi surrender on V-E Day.

Montgomery's British forces rushed to the North of Germany, beating the Red Army in forcing the surrender of the German forces in Northern Germany and occupied Denmark (that will be the content of a future post), and thus avoiding the fate of Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, and all the other Eastern countries — for 40-something years.

Many praise the Russians for winning World War II. If it hadn't been for the Anglo-Americans, wouldn't the Russians, wouldn't Stalin, have continued all the way to the Atlantic Ocean, taking all of Western Europe (or at least the mainland) as well?

 

Following the Nazi surrender, Marshall Montgomery paid a visit to Copenhagen and drove through its streets. From May to July 1945, British ships accosted and RAF planes landed in droves. Normally, with a disciplined army having surrendered (one which moreover hadn't engaged in much fighting whatsoever), such a show of force would be unnecessary. But they weren't there for the surrendering German prisoners; they were there to guard against the Red Army

Accompanied by his uncle, my father went to Copenhagen and visited the city's harbor and airfields to see the British armada at the harbor and the planes landing in the airfields. He was all of 12 years old. (Update: MMMMMMM.)

Montgomery driving through Copenhagen on May 12, 1945 (my father's photo at age 12)

HMS Birmingham docks on May 10, 1945 (photo by Eskil Svane, 12)

HMS Birmingham in København Harbor on May 10

HMS Birmingham was quite popular with the Danish people

Mosquitoes at Kastrup airfield, July 1, 1945

A Spitfire on Kastrup airfield as the RAF holds on airshow (and
probably not just for the Danes, but for any Soviet diplomat present)

Douglas Dakota DC3s on show at Denmark's largest airfield

The Soviet Union's (secret) intentions and plans were confirmed after Antony Beevor spent time in Moscow, unearthing many a previously top secret document in the archives, and leading to his writing in his history of The Second World War about "the two pitiless totalitarian systems which fed off each other."

In the penultimate chapter, Cities of the Dead, Beevor writes that after the German capital fell in May 1945, the American ambassador to Moscow paid a visit to the Kremlin:

'It must be very pleasant for you', [Averell] Harriman said, making conversation, … 'to be in Berlin after all your country has suffered.'  The Soviet leader eyed him. … 'Tsar Alexander went all the way to Paris,' he replied.

That was not entirely a joke.  Well before Churchill's [notion of a war erupting between the Western allies and their USSR ally], a meeting of the Politburo in 1944 had decided to order the Stavka to plan for the invasion of France and Italy, a General Shtemenko later told Beria's son.  The Red Army offensive was to be combined 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 realization of these plans.  It was expected that the Americans would abandon a Europe fallen into chaos, while Britain and France would be paralysed 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 these 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

… 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

"The western Allies were finding that they could liberate half of Europe only at the cost of enslaving the other half." As it happened, explains Antony Beevor in the final pages of his 900-page book, "one half of Europe had to be sacrificed to the Stalinist maw to save the other half."

(Indeed, in "Northern Germany the British 7th Armored Division was approaching Hamburg, while the 11th Armoured Division advanced rapidly ahead towards Lübeck on the Baltic. This followed Churchill's secret instruction to Field Marshall Montgomery … to prevent the Red Army from seizing Denmark".)

Astounding News

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. 

But as we can see, the revisionists and Post-facto critics not to mention communism admirers — quite a number of them, again, from Western Europe — who claim that Hiroshima had little military value but instead was a strategic ploy to impress Stalin do not realize that the Manhattan Project's atomic bomb did more, far more, and not in Asia and on the Pacific front but on the European front half a world away.

It was indeed a sign to the Red Army, and it did prevent Stalin from prolonging the war mercilessly after the Nazis' defeat and achieving his project to take over all of European continent. 

Incidentally, while Western governments are routinely taken to task for expecting selfishly that the Germans and the Russians bleed each other dry on the Eastern Front (or expecting the same, 40 years later, during the Iraq-Iran war), there is a theory that it was in fact Stalin who expected his Western allies and the Germans to bleed each other dry on the Western Front; and that, in that perspective, the defeat during Operation Market Garden and the near-defeat during the Battle of the Bulge (America's most bloody battle during World War II) were due to Moscow sharing, however directly or indirectly, intelligence with Berlin — their assumed mortal enemy. (What wonderful allies, those Russians.)

To recap: 

In Modern Times (The World From the Twenties to the Nineties), Paul Johnson writes that

There was scarcely a crime the Nazis or the knights of Bushido had committed, or even imagined, which the Soviet regime hand not also perpetrated, usually on an even larger scale.  It ran precisely the type of system which had produced the war and its horrors.  More specifically, the Nazi-Soviet Pact of September 1939 and the Japanese-Soviet Pact of April 1941 had made the Axis aggressions possible.

Indeed, Hitler and Stalin started the WWII together. As Jeff Jacoby points out, For the first two years of World War II, Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were allies, with the Führer and the Vozhd secretly planning and jointly beginning the war that inflicted such horror and destruction 

There is no denying that a vast number of Soviet citizens lost their lives in World War II. Without the Russian people’s appalling suffering and sacrifice, the Allies might not have triumphed in the end.

But there is also no denying that Moscow was Nazi Germany’s partner in unleashing the war, the deadliest in human history, in the first place. Victory Day is a good opportunity to review the record of Russian culpability in plunging the world into war — a record the Kremlin’s propagandists have been trying to obscure for decades.

 … for the first two years of World War II, Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were allies. They secretly planned and jointly began the war that inflicted such horror and destruction. 

In the months that followed the Nazi-Soviet takeover of Poland, as Hitler’s troops conquered Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Holland, and France and bombed much of London into rubble, Stalin’s forces continued their illegal war of aggression and conquest. [the three Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania), the formerly Romanian territories of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, Finland…]

 … In short, for the first two years of World War II, Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were allies. They secretly planned and jointly began the war that inflicted such horror and destruction.  

As Timothy Snyder’s book “Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin” points out, the dictators vied with each other in the bloodbaths and the destruction of the conquered territories.

Moreover, a Lithuanian testified that his father had said if he had the choice, he would rather live under 10 years of Nazi occupation than under one single year of communist occupation.

Certainly after Hitler's betrayal and his invasion of the USSR, but possibly even before, Stalin's goal was to defeat the Axis powers but his ultimate goal was to turn thereafter against his allies and sic his divisions against those who had supported him all these years and take over the entire continent, and this he ordered the Politburo and the NKVD to plan.

The only thing that aborted the plan of 400 Soviet divisions launching a brutal, a traitorous, and a bloody attack on his erstwhile allies was the news of the atomic bombs and their use over two Japanese cities.

Post-War History

Is there ever anyone who jokes or sighs or rolls his eyes about paranoia or witch hunts regarding Nazism or fascism? No, and with good reason. (Indeed, after ranting and giggling for years and years about Godwin's Law, the left has dropped all pretenses and shows its usual double standards as it has been using the fascism/Nazism/Hitler charge ceaselessly against conservatives and members of the — anti-government (!) — Republican Party.) 

Why, then, should anyone (Joseph McCarthy first among them) be described as paranoid about a régime that, on the internal front, murders millions of its citizens and, on the external front, was indeed planning an invasion of Europe and the West (with the aid of those countries' domestic — i.e., traitorous — communist parties) — submitting all conquered territories and countries to the same bloody internal policies as had occurred in Eastern Europe's Bloodlands?

This brings up the so-called "paranoid" "witch hunts" against communists in post-war America. Here is a question that is seldom brought up: Who was head of the Kremlin when the term "McCarthyism" was coined? A fellow by the name of Stalin. As for the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), another question is, how many people are aware that the maligned council was not solely involved with communists? Indeed, wasn't it formed the year prior to the Nazi/Soviet non-aggression treaty, in 1938, to investigate disloyalty by subversive organizations tied to either pro-Soviet communists or — yes — pro-German fascists?

It is certainly time for two things: for Hiroshima to cease being an excuse for anti-Americanism and for "McCarthyism" to cease to be used as an allegedly neutral and objective expression.
This post could end here. 

But as a sort of addendum to this post, let me briefly refer to my revelation regarding the movie Oppenheimer, where, in their unanimous praise, members of the MSM have carefully glossed over the fact that The 2 Authors of the Book Behind the Movie Were Both Editors and Writers at "The Nation".

Over 13 years after Antony Beevor came out with astonishing revelations from the Kremlin's archives mentioned above (The Second World War was published in 2012), the historian's conclusions are still not accepted by the élites (they are not challenged — with arguments good or otherwise — they are simply ignored), leading them to call opposition to communism and to the USSR "a political movement characterized by rank know-nothing, anti-intellectual, xenophobic demagogues."

Let this sink in: Both of the authors of the book behind what the New York Times calls "Christopher Nolan’s complex, vivid portrait of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the 'father of the atomic bomb'” — "a brilliant achievement in formal and conceptual terms" — worked at The Nation and were therefore, in some capacity or other, close to communism and invariably doubling as experts in spewing anti-Americanism.

Full details here: Hollywood Shocker — The Authors of the Book Behind Nolan's "Oppenheimer" Were Both Editors and Writers at "The Nation"

Related: • For the first two years of World War II, Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were allies; Hitler and Stalin secretly planned and jointly began the war that inflicted such horror and destruction
• Stalin's Death at 70: Some Mind-Boggling Revelations About Stalin, World War II, and a Century of Russian History

Also related:
• Hiroshima 15: Examining the Issues Surrounding the Dropping of Atomic Bombs on Japan (Erik Svane) 

• Hiroshima 17: During WWII, Japan Killed 7 Times More People (Most of Them Civilians) than They Lost (Victor Davis Hanson) 

• Hiroshima 18: The Imperial Japanese Army was every bit as evil as the Nazi SS, and more lethal (Trent Telenko)

• Hiroshima 19: The Horrific Treatment of Civilians During Japan's "Reign of Terror"

• Hiroshima 14: "I regard Hiroshima revisionism as the greatest hoax in American history" (Robert Maddox)

• Hiroshima 13: Although It Is Not Said Openly, Hiroshima Also Played a Purifying Role, IE the Baptism of a New Japan, the Event that Put an End to 50 Years of Crimes (Le Monde)

• Hiroshima 20: The Day the Pilot Who Led the Attack on Pearl Harbour Met the Pilot of the Enola Gay

• Hiroshima 12: Political Correctness in Japan: The comment "tramples on the feelings of victims", so… Shut the F**k Up and Lose Your Job! (re the forced resignation of Japan's defense (!) minister)

• Hiroshima 11: If Western elites cannot find perfection in history, they see no good at all; most never learned the narrative of WWII, only what was wrong about it (Victor Davis Hanson)

• Hiroshima 10: If Not for the Atom Bombs, Japan, as we know it today, would not exist (S L Sanger, author of “Working on the Bomb”)

• Hiroshima 9: Over one million warning leaflets were dropped over Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and 33 other Japanese cities 5 days before the Hiroshima bombing (Bill Whittle)

• Hiroshima 8: Was It Wrong to Use the Atom Bomb on Japan? (Father Wilson Miscamble)

• Hiroshima 7: Some Facts About Hiroshima and World War II That You Hear Neither From America's MSM, University Élites, and History Books, Nor From Japan's (New York Times)

• Hiroshima 16: Did Japan's top officers know a bomber was approaching Nagasaki, 5 hours beforehand, and do nothing?

• Hiroshima 6: "Lance or spear practice was a regular women's exercise to practice for the anticipated U.S. landing" (a Japanese American)

• Hiroshima 5: Japan's plans for defense involved mobilizing the civilian population, including women and children, for the customary suicidal battle tactics (Thomas Sowell)

• Hiroshima 4: "Les 300 000 morts d'Hiroshima ont épargné bien davantage de Japonais, qui auraient été écrasés sous des bombes ordinaires" (Charles de Gaulle)

• Hiroshima 3: A mainland invasion could have resulted in millions of Japanese deaths—and that's not counting civilians (Wall Street Journal)

• Hiroshima 2: Hand-wringing over Hiroshima is just virtue-signaling by people who never said a bad word about Stalin or Mao’s mass murders (Glenn Reynolds)

• Hiroshima 1: Unlike the ends of the majority of conflicts, World War II in the Pacific grew increasingly bloody as U.S. forces approached the Japanese homeland (Erik Svane)