As far as the Japanese go, I understand that most of their leadership was aiming for a conditional surrender... which is not what we gave them. There were probably one or two who thought that they could still "win" (there always is), there were certainly some who felt so shamed that they committed suicide, etc. Japanese society just wasn't flexible enough at the time.
JQBogus wrote:The Soviet declaration may have sped up the process, but it wasn't necessary to it. And yeah, the Japanese leadership most definitely didn't want Japan partitioned into occupation zones where -any- of those zones were occupied by the Soviets. From the Japanese perspective, the USSR both the history and proximity to try to keep parts of Japan if they ever got their mitts on them.
Actually, Russia still
does have a few islands that they seized during WW2. There's been a minor three-way (US, Japan, Russia/USSR) diplomatic conflict around them since the war.
As for the Soviets in WW2, let's be frank: the Germans weren't
realistically going to
defeat the Russians at any point, though they might have been able to acquire a negotiated truce. One of the big problems that they had is that the Soviets were actually able to move a lot of their factories beyond the reach of the Germans (I think beyond the Ural mountains), so unless the Germans managed to get bombers that could do the job they were never actually going to eliminate the USSR's industrial capacity. Also, while the Soviets
never had most of their vehicles working (they were always aware that we would
accidentally steam-roll them if the Cold War turned hot, for example), the vehicles that
did work would work during the Russian Winter, which was generally not the case for German designs: one way or another, the Nazis were going to have major losses each winter for a few years, which the Soviets could replace easier than them. If the Soviets had been able to keep their factories running (and, obviously, expanding) for a decade or two, only intervention by the
Allies would likely have been enough to keep Germany unconquered. Also during that time, they would have had time to come closer to everyone else in terms of artillery: the Soviets had bombers and incompetents, while everyone else was more balanced (except for the USA, which went the
other direction with artillery: the artillery crews could guide the infantry over the radio in how to give spotting directions, and things were organized such that other artillery crews both could and did take "bombardments of opportunity").
But, really, in general this shouldn't be too surprising. During the most recent recession, the total GDP that America
lost was comparable to Germany's
total GDP, both lost and retained. If either the USSR or the USA had fought the Nazis for a decade or two then the Nazis would have lost, because they just weren't in the same weight bracket in the first place. But at least they were in a better position than Japan or Italy, both of which were considered incapable of standing without German support.
As for Hitler and Stalin, it's time for another piece of frankness (mostly directed at Greyhome): Stalin
always intended to attack Hitler. Stalin's big problem during the initial attack is pretty simple: he was so worried about a
coup that he didn't have any attention to spare. When he first heard the news he was
relieved, because his first thought was that
the coup might be starting right then. He had, after all, not merely instigated genocides and purges against his own countrymen, but had accidentally destroyed the
only strain of wheat that could survive in some parts of the USSR's breadbasket: when last I heard, they
still couldn't grow wheat there, despite the passage of decades, and the Soviet leadership was coming to understand it then. The Germans were a military threat, but strategically were actually inferior to the Russian system (the competent generals were mostly dead, but the strategic system was quite good for a hierarchical system, while the Germans basically had the
tactical Blitzkrieg: once again, the Germans were fighting beyond their weight class).