If Mary Astor knew in 1941 that Communist, Stalin, was killing millions, why did US president Roosevelt call him Uncle Joe?

@Thinkerbell The military was planning for a land invasion, but you're probably correct, the American public wouldn't have stood for it. By 1946, everyone was tired of the war and the casualties from a land invasion would have been unacceptable. One can only imagine what the ensuing cease-fire and treaty would have looked like. I'm sure Japan would have been allowed to keep its military. Imagine how Chinese communism and the Korean and Vietnam wars would have gone with an anti-communist Imperial Japan. For all we know, we would have been allies by the 1960s.

@LeopoldBloom

Truman's decision to use nuclear weapons against Japan was really quite straightforward.

If he hadn't, and there had been a million American casualties in a land invasion, and it came out after the war that he hadn't used the atomic bombs, can you imagine the public outcry? "You had a weapon like THAT, but you didn't use it and let a million of our soldiers get killed or wounded instead? Are you CRAZY?!"

Yes, we probably would have been allies with Japan, even if we had not democratized them.

@Thinkerbell Yes, it ended the war, avoided a land invasion, and showed the USSR what the effect of a nuke was. I have no doubt that if Japan had surrendered before the bomb was dropped, nukes would have been used in a subsequent war with a far more devastating effect.

@MistyCee Not really. We needed the USSR to defeat Hitler.