10 Incredible What-Ifs That Could Have Changed The Course Of History

6. ...The USSR Had Invaded Japan?

For the longest time after the USA had joined World War II in December 1941, they had been bugging the USSR to assist the fight in the Far East, and likewise the Soviets had regularly pleaded with the Americans and British to open a Second Front in Europe long before D-Day in June 1944. The Russians eventually agreed, but it was not until just a week before the Japanese surrender that the Red Army invaded.

The Soviets and Mongolians invaded the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo (in north-east China) on 9th August, 1945 - three days after the US dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima - and on the same day the Americans decimated Nagasaki with a second nuclear warhead. Although the Red Army's rapid defeat of the Japanese army in Machukuo, Mengjiang, Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands, and northern Korea greatly weakened the Kwantung Army, it was the US atomic bombs that proved decisive in forcing surrender and the eventual peace treaty signing on 2nd September.

The intention of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was to partition Japan in the same way in which Germany was split between West and East. Stalin planned to secretly invade the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, and could have insisted on the Soviets keeping control of this area of the nation, with the southern Island going to the Western Powers, as well as Tokyo being partitioned just as Berlin was, if he had done so.

Thankfully, the Japanese surrendered before this could occur and Japan did not become a hotbed of the Cold War like Berlin did. Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos were fought over in Asia during the Cold War - imagine if you added Japan into that mix too...