CALCULATED VENGEANCE

This entry is a sort of postscript to the one on Yamamoto and Japan. (See my entry Yamamoto, posted on my blog on February 19^th, 2011.)

The fact that Stalin was sore at Japan for the 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese war was evident in his very special passion for the old valse triste On the Hillocks of Manchuria (its author was the military band musician and decorated war hero Ilya Alexeevich Shatrov) and the heroic patriotic song Varyag (surprisingly, its original author was the Austrian poet and writer Rudolf Greinz) about the sinking of the Russian war cruiser Varyag, both pieces relating to the tragic events of that war. It is only natural that his will for belated vengeance was a factor in his quasi-friendly dealings with Japan during World War II.

I do believe that the Soviet complicity in the death of the former partner Admiral Yamamoto, and the Soviet unwillingness to serve as a mediator between Japan and the United States at the end of the war, at Japan’s request (what a cool irony that would have been for Stalin to reenact the role of Teddy Roosevelt, in 1905, mediating the Treaty of Portsmouth, which ended the war between Russia and Japan) may have been symptomatic of that old hostility, particularly on Stalin’s part. I am quite sure that he was privately satisfied when the two American bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. By the same token, it was obvious to Stalin that, because of the two bombs, Japan would now become an eternal enemy to the United States, and, as everybody knows, an enemy of my enemy is my friend.

But Comrade Stalin had yet another good reason to be content. As a result of that fateful action, the United States suddenly found itself “disarmed,” as it had possessed only these two weapons in its nuclear arsenal prior to that particular time, and now that these had been gone, it would take some time to replenish the stock. In the meantime, America would not be able to use its nuclear superpower status as a “bargaining chip” against the USSR, before the Russians acquired nuclear weapons of their own. A triple triumph for Stalin here: to punish Russia’s erstwhile nemesis for the past humiliation, to disarm the current nemesis, and to set them both against each other, all with one devastating blow, in which Russia ostensibly had no part, and therefore could not take the blame.

How far had he been able to calculate this? It shouldn’t have been too difficult, after all. He must have seen, with his celebrated foresight, the Japanese samurai fighting the war to the death… Only the two superbombs dropped by the US on Japan could in effect put an end to the samurai’s dogged resistance... Et voilà!