@leyonhjelm @NEETzsche @Zergling_man @stux

> We did pick the wrong side of that one

No, we didn't: we just bailed too soon. Churchill wanted to keep going. :churchillsmug:

Before Hitler took the Sylvia Plath exit, he designated successors, and they tried to surrender to the West, and said "Look, Hitler killed himself and he was kind of a dick anyway. We'll gladly get directly under Allied command as long as we can point our guns east or at least not have to surrender any of our men to Stalin." We were not sure whether or not this was a ploy and Hitler was still alive buying time, and aside from that, Stalin had already cautioned us not to accept the surrender of too many Germans because otherwise, he'd assume that we were planning to point them east. Since he made it to Berlin before we could, it was in his interest to keep us in the dark about basically everything.

It's hard to say what would have happened in Manchuria if the USSR had not cut Japan off, but Germany's surrender was something Japan had been dreading, as they expected that the cessation of hostilities with Germany would free up the USSR to point *their* guns east. As they'd almost lost Moscow to the Axis already, it seems unlikely the USSR could have held up.